Oksana, Behave!

by Maria Kuznetsova

  “Let’s go,” I say, grabbing his hand. We leave the park on the west side and cross the street toward the Dakota, which is always under renovation.

  I blink and I am sixteen again and my brother is almost four and we’re in the city with Papa, who has taken a day off work to show us around. Most people see the Dakota and think John Lennon, but Papa’s talking about Tchaikovsky, who came to America to visit a friend who lived in the building. He puts his arms around us and says, “Poor Tchaikovsky did not understand America. When he returned to Russia, he declared, ‘The man lives in a palace bigger than the czar’s. In front of its own private park!’ Imagine, he thought the man owned all of Central Park!”

  I laugh and say, “Why would anybody think that?”

  “Who’s Tchaikovsky?” my brother says.

  “An important man,” Papa says, and he seems sad for some bottomless reason. As if he knows he will die in a few weeks.

  But I’m not with Papa; I’m with Lee, who is liking the hand-holding a bit too much.

  I nod in the direction of the Freedom Tower. I say, “Monstrosity. Abomination.”

  “You can’t blame people for trying to move on, O,” he says.

  I walk faster and consider pointing out that the two beams of light they had kept up in place of the towers were stunning. Instead, I say, “There’s no moving on from that.”

  * * *

  —

  This time, he’s staying at the place of a friend who’s away at a bachelor party. He fucks me on the hardwood floor, which I chose over the leather couch by a gargantuan TV or the cushy bed. He pulls my hair and I claw at his neck and he holds me down, thrusting so deep inside me I swear I can feel the tip of his dick pushing up to the bottom of my throat, and I get a rise from seeing myself in the wall-length mirror with my head thrown back, Lee’s hand over my mouth. I come hard, once, then twice, and he pulls out and comes on my stomach just in time.

  “Careful,” I say. I am pretty sure my uterus will stage a walkout if I take one more Plan B. I imagine it crawling out from between my legs, holding a poster that says, WILL NOT WORK!

  “If you really wanted to be careful, you’d tell me to use a condom,” Lee says.

  “Fuck off,” I say, smacking him, and he laughs big and wipes me off and puts his head on my chest. When he lifts it, I give his pretty white throat a gentle lick and tell him to shower first. I aimlessly make myself come again in this banker’s apartment, because why not, a neat little hat trick for the day. But the sweet afterbuzz is ruined when I look in the mirror again and see my indignant mother popping in, lifting a finger as she says, “A classic case of too much freedom.” I shake her off. That’s when I notice I’m still wearing the necklace my brother gave me that morning. I’ve kept it on this whole time.

  Lee gets out of the shower in a towel and gives me a sad little smile. He is as pale as a baby’s ass, and his shoulders are broad and dotted with freckles. He is the definition of Ugly Hot, with a face like a car accident you can’t stop staring at because you can’t put your finger on why it attracts you, which I prefer to the eager, open-faced douches of Murray Hill. He puts on his glasses and they make him look like an old man with owl eyes, so fucking helpless that I want to either cradle him or put him out of his misery.

  He has a small tattoo of a wave on his upper back, a tribute to his sister, who drowned when they were kids. We only talked about it once, but he wrote a beautiful, thinly veiled story about it back at the writing workshop, which was when I fell a little bit in love with him. Now he’s staring at me and for a moment I expect him to talk about his sister.

  He says, “Can I ask you something, O? Do you fuck everybody like that?”

  “Like what?” I say, flashing a smile.

  But he is suddenly serious, and maybe it’s because he’s really done with the pills and coke this time, I don’t know—I’m just glad he doesn’t press me on it. He opens a bottle of red wine from his friend’s stash and lets it breathe while I shower in a bathroom with gleaming bamboo plants on the windowsills, and then we’re sitting on the balcony overlooking the park. My phone rings and it’s just Mama, so I silence it. It’s the third time she’s called, no doubt to beg me to come back.

  Lee raises a brow. “Some man is really itching to talk to you tonight.”

  “Can you blame him?” I say. I consider telling him what happened that morning—Mama saying ignorant shit in front of my brother—but it seems easier to play along.

  “You’re too good for him, whoever he is,” he says, squeezing my knee. His eyes settle into determination and I worry he’s going to say more.

  “If you could own all of Central Park, would you?” I say.

  He laughs, though I’m not really joking. “I don’t think so, O,” he tells me. “I don’t need all that much to be happy.”

  “Right,” I say, though I don’t believe him. If he had everything he needed, he wouldn’t keep returning to drugs, but I see no use in pointing this out.

  I gaze at the lush park. An old lady walks two poodles, tired-looking couples push strollers, and teenage girls in empire-waist dresses lick ice cream cones. Though I swore I’d never move to the city like all of my college classmates, I’ve been living here and working at the literary agency for three years now, and orbiting it for much longer than that, but I have never felt at home here. But now that I’m finally on the brink of leaving, I wonder if it will be impossible to go through with it.

  * * *

  —

  Lee preps me on the party in Gramercy Park on our way there, and the half bottle of his friend’s wine and another glass at dinner have made me feel up for the adventure. It’s a bunch of his buddies from Exeter he wants to see, and the host, a guy called Shifty, is apparently a tool who played water polo for UCLA, but he has a sick apartment, one that allows him to have a key to Gramercy Park, the only private park in Manhattan.

  His friend lives on the third floor of a building with a shiny marble interior, exactly the kind of Ivy League grad apartment I’ve avoided by living in Greenpoint and hanging with vaguely literary people, people who wouldn’t be caught dead sitting around watching American Psycho, like these guys probably still do. When Lee opens the door, the party’s already in full swing, though it’s not even close to midnight.

  “My man,” says a tall blond guy, rubbing Lee’s head and putting him in a headlock.

  Lee says, “Look at this handsome ball sack,” and introduces me to the guy, who I have already gathered is Shifty.

  “Welcome to my humble abode,” he says, shaking my hand. He seems sweeter and less full of himself than I expected, wearing his hotness like a borrowed sweater.

  “Not so humble,” I tell him, and he has a nice, easy laugh. His place has glass shelves, a black-and-white poster of fog blanketing the Golden Gate Bridge, a mammoth liquor cabinet, and a signed baseball on a gold stand.

  Lee is dicking around with the guys he really wanted to see, some of whom I’ve met during his previous visits: Parker, Highbridge, Nickers, Zuckerman, and two of their wives, two different tall bony beautiful women named Taylor, their wedding rings winking at me like stars. Man-boys like this make me relieved my barely teenaged brother is gay, that he will have an infinitely more interesting life that won’t involve blood diamonds, though it will be harder. They give me a once-over and I know I don’t fit in, with my BP tank top I’m five years too old to be wearing, high-waisted floral skirt, sparkly black Toms, and chunky turquoise brother necklace.

  Lee and I pour some whiskeys in the kitchen and take them to the balcony. Gramercy Park is bigger than I expected, with a black metal fence surrounding a leafy oasis. It seems almost staged under the streetlights. Even looking down into it feels like a slight violation, something I should have to pay for. I tell Lee I wouldn’t mind having a key to it.

  “Me neither,” he says. “Though whe
n I move to New York I won’t be anywhere near this place. Somewhere in Bushwick if I’m lucky,” he says, and that’s how he tells me that Nickers helped him get some marketing job, so he’s in the city to scope out apartments. Then I tell him I applied to PhD programs in Slavic studies, mostly on the West Coast, and he takes a long sip of his drink.

  “You never told me you were leaving,” he says.

  “You never told me you were coming.”

  He sighs and puts his head in his hands. “I don’t see you as a stuffy academic, O.”

  “I don’t either,” I say. I tell him I’ve basically stopped writing or reading for pleasure because of work and that in a PhD program I’d get to read my favorite books instead of submissions. But he doesn’t buy it. I say, “What do you see for me, then?”

  He drains his glass. “I see you here with me.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll get in anywhere,” I say. Yet another lie. I have been accepted to a program in Davis, California, but I have two more weeks to decide. My family has no idea I’m doing this. He’s the first person I’ve told.

  “You can’t leave,” he says. “You belong here.”

  I can’t argue, because he gives me a boyfriendly kiss that scares the hell out of me. The Taylors’ wedding rings materialize before me, shining menacingly. I want them to gouge my eyes out. I don’t want to see anymore.

  He tries again. “Sometimes I think it would have been easier if I didn’t have a sister. It’s hard to say goodbye to someone you love. But I’m grateful for all the time I had with her.”

  “That’s family. You don’t have a choice with family.”

  “I don’t have a choice with you.”

  “Of course you do,” I say. “I do too.” I don’t know if I believe what I’m saying. I want to tuck a strand of loose hair behind his ears, but I stop myself. Will they have guys like him in California? I can’t be too sure.

  We sit without talking. Two drunk girls on the balcony are complaining that they don’t get enough vacation days. Then Mama calls again.

  “I need to answer this,” I say, getting up, though I have no intention of taking the call. Lee shakes his head and puts a hand on my wrist.

  “I haven’t done a line in over a year, Oksana,” he says, like he is giving me flowers.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve been talking to Shifty for eternity by the fridge, which is plastered with save-the-date magnets, couples posing maniacally, smiles strained as they desperately try to prove they haven’t made an epic mistake. They pose on the beach, in Hoboken with the skyline behind them, in a field of wildflowers, on an artfully arranged pile of logs beside a creek, and they look exhausted, all of them, like they have been trapped inside the magnets, forcing those smiles for months. As for me, I prefer to hook up with men who are already married, to avoid the possibility of appearing on a magnet and everything that comes with it. All those men remind me of Mama’s husband, and I’d rather be alone than with a man like that.

  “These people look diseased,” I say, and Shifty laughs.

  He puts a hand on his chest in mock concern. “Should I call a doctor?” he says, and he gives me a big easy smile. He cranes his neck toward the balcony, where Lee is charming one of the girls who were there earlier, his hair flopping up and down as he gestures. Shifty says, “And, uh, you and Lee…”

  “Oh,” I say, still feeling Lee’s hand on my wrist. “It’s nothing serious.”

  Then someone dims the lights and starts blasting shit from an iPod. A dance party begins, which I’m pretty sure means everyone but Lee has snorted their fair share of blow, and though Lee and I are normally united in never dancing, because we suck at it, I am drunk enough to go for it, to sway to all the manic nothing songs blasting through the apartment: “Tik Tok,” “Sexy Bitch,” “Bad Romance,” “Rude Boy,” and “Empire State of Mind.” Though I know I should be moved by the raspy lyrics of the rebel Russian bard Vysotsky or the Soviet rock my parents listened to during their final years together, nothing makes me feel more pain than a perfect pop song after a few drinks, when I am open to the world’s ecstasy and horror, dancing like I have ten arms and ten legs and ten different hearts for breaking. The crowd thins and it’s just me and Shifty and the Taylors now, and suddenly I am making out with one of them and she tastes like cigarettes and lipstick and she even cups my ass, but someone yanks her away and the room is spinning and I’m back with Shifty. I can feel the firmness of his chest through his collared shirt. The music stops and I hear myself say, “What was California like?”

  “I loved it,” he says. “Especially the weather.”

  That’s it? I let go of his arm. “Was it different?”

  “Not really. Same people as here, just more palm trees. Better Mexican food. And good hiking,” he says. “Pretty hot girls too,” he adds with a demented grin, and then talks about how much he loved working at a start-up that made an app that let dogs tell their owners when they needed to use the bathroom. I realize how much my head is pounding and how badly I want to leave, and though the music is back on, Ke$ha singing about her own bad habits, it doesn’t thrill me anymore. It’s time to give Lee a civil goodbye and peace out.

  “Excuse me a sec,” I say.

  But Lee’s not on the balcony anymore, though the balcony girls are still bitching. I go down the hall and open the door to a room where one of the Taylors is getting fucked from behind, her husband’s jiggly white ass shaking up and down as he mounts her against a dresser.

  I hear Lee’s laugh in the next room and find him with his bros. He springs up after doing a line, and when he sees me, his face goes from excited to upset to kind of pissed. Nickers and Parker stand on either side of him, looking equally moon-eyed and jumpy, or maybe it’s Parker and then Nickers. His boys are quiet and I don’t know what to say. I cross my arms and he follows me to the bathroom since there’s nowhere else to go.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he says.

  “You said you haven’t done a line in over a year,” I say.

  “That was very true two hours ago.” He paces madly. “What do you care? I fucking pour my heart out to you and you go eye-fuck that low-voltage douche.”

  “Is that why you came here? To pour your heart out to me?”

  “Every time I come here, I come here for you, O. Isn’t that obvious?” he says, his chest rising. “What do I have to do to make this stick?” A poor choice of words. I think of him coming on my stomach, a spitball slicking down a chalkboard, the time a girl stuck gum in my hair in second grade and Mama had to chop a chunk off, laughing the whole time. His hair is wild now, a bit sweaty, his eyes bulge a little, and he won’t stop moving.

  “You’re fucked up right now,” I say. “We’ll talk later.”

  “I’m perfectly fine, darling,” he says. But he is not done with me yet. “There are other ways to fuck people, you know. You might even enjoy feeling another person close to you.”

  “Is that right?” I say, backing away from him. And I’m already looking at Shifty and he’s looking back at me.

  * * *

  —

  I sit on the floor of Shifty’s shiny minimalist man bathroom and send Mama a text to say I’ll call tomorrow, the most I will give her. She instantly writes back. You do not have to help with party. Just be there please. Love, Mama. I’m getting the spins and the tiled floor is crawling up and down the walls, so I hold on to the toilet but I can’t gather the courage to puke. I lean against the sink and stare at myself in the mirror. Mama pops up again, wagging that same damn finger and declaring, “A classic case of too much freedom.” Then it’s not just Mama I see but all of us, my brother and stepdad and me at the fucking breakfast table this morning.

  Mama and Sergei are going over the guest list for his birthday party and Mama says, “Of course Yuri and Matthew are coming; they wouldn
’t miss a chance to dance.” Yuri is Mama’s childhood friend who immigrated at fifteen, a decade before we moved here, and Matthew is Matthew Mussolini, third cousin of evil Mussolini, owner of a dance studio, and Yuri’s partner.

  “Poor Yuri,” Mama clucks. “He came to America at a vulnerable age and was confused and lonely, and naturally he was desperate for love. If he had stayed in Kiev longer, he would have developed a stronger sense of self and met a nice woman eventually. But in America, he was lost; he thought anything was possible. A classic case of too much freedom.”

  “You know that’s not how it works, right?” I say, eyeing my brother, who barely looks up. Since he came out to me a few months ago, I can’t let these things slide.

  “Of course, Oksana, you know everything,” Mama says, and then I throw my plate into the sink so hard it cracks in two and I tell them I changed my mind, I won’t be staying for the party, I have to go to the city to see a friend after all.

  “A lesbian friend,” I add when Mama tells me to behave. “A big, hot butch lesbian. If I’m around her long enough, I’ll turn gay and then I won’t get to have a great fucking family like this one.” This, at least, gets a chuckle from my brother.

  Sergei leans toward me. “Have you no pity for your mother?”

  How I hated him! This man whose idea of a fun evening was putting his arm around Mama and grumbling at the TV news while she sat with an amused look on her face, like she couldn’t believe he could get so worked up about the state of the world. Sure, he loved my mother, but could she really be enjoying herself? Sergei had never even been married before Mama’s friend Valentina set them up, and he didn’t drink. How could you trust a man like that?