Naked Men

by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett

  And that’s how that ill-starred day ended. Everything had changed. It was the start of a new era for me. I don’t even know why I’m here. I’m the overemotional sort—as my darling grandmother used to call me, “a very sensitive boy.” Her best friend survived her by only a year. Neighbors told me about her death. They found my cell phone number on a grubby list the old woman kept on the sideboard. I went immediately, though I knew it was a ridiculous way to honor her. I felt bad for the poor woman. She and my grandmother kept each other company, helped each other as best they could, talked every day. Both of them had suffered great misfortunes. In my grandmother’s case, her daughter and son-in-law had died in a car accident. Juana’s traumas were more complicated, less presentable, even openly embarrassing: a son dead from a drug overdose and his wife in jail for reasons unknown. But those calamities were so devastating that they marked the women like a curse and set them apart, giving them superior status. The other old ladies living alone in the neighborhood could only gripe about everyday sorts of complaints: loneliness, ailments, progressive decline, money problems, memories of better times. But not my grandmother and Juana—they had a massive reserve of misfortune that weighed as much as an army kit bag. Besides the distresses of aging, which they had to face like anybody else, the two of them labored under the terrible burden of two sons who had died in the prime of life, neither of natural causes. As a result, everybody ascribed great dignity to them, elevating them into the aristocracy of sorrow and old age. That distinction made them the object of their neighbors’ devoted attentions: they brought bread and fruit, went to the Social Security office to get the old women’s prescriptions renewed, and had formally promised to let the grandsons know if anything happened. Me in my grandmother’s case, and Iván in Juana’s.

  Of the two of us, I was the good grandson. I visited her every Sunday without fail. I’d arrive around five and leave at seven. My grandmother would serve me an afternoon snack, as if I were a little kid. Always the same thing: chocolate cookies from the supermarket and Coca-Cola poured from a one-liter bottle, a little flat because she’d already opened it. I rarely had any desire to go see her, but I went anyway. Sandra would look at me uncomprehendingly: “Of course, Javier, you’ve got your morals!” She was right—otherwise I’d have spent my Sundays at home, serenely reading, without being hounded by a sense of moral obligation. I guess losing my parents had made me feel the lack of family more acutely, and that old woman was my only family, apart from my sister, who has her own family and never comes to visit.

  Occasionally Juana would join our Sunday cookies-and-Coke parties. That’s how I knew her grandson’s name was Iván and that he was the bad grandson. He never went to see her. At most he’d go by his grandmother’s house on Christmas, at some ungodly hour of the night after poor Juana had already eaten, asking if she was going to offer him a piddly little drink to celebrate the holiday. “The only thing he brings is chaos,” she’d say. I’d seen him once, and I recalled him vaguely: a guy about my age, looking like low-rent pimp, slim, wiry, with an earring in one ear and close-cropped hair.

  And there I was, in that half-empty funeral home, participating in Juana’s funeral rites: a small room that contained her closed casket with a heap of flower wreaths at its foot. The women next door told me that the deceased had made a monthly insurance payment so she could have a decent burial and a cemetery niche instead of being cremated. I guess I ended up going to the service because of their opinion of me. Since I was “the good grandson,” it wouldn’t be hard to preserve that reputation up to the very end. My grandmother’s end. After her friend’s death, any vestige of her existence would be extinguished forevermore. But I was itching to get out of there. It was all so horribly cheesy: the priest’s formulaic words, with the obligatory references to lowly life on earth and the glories of eternal life. The flowers, all paid for by the dead woman; the lack of real sorrow in everyone there . . . In the first row, I spotted the back of what had to be Iván. And it was he who blocked my escape when the service ended, coming up to me and holding out his hand.

  “How’s it going, Javier? It’s so great you came! I’m really grateful you’re here, man. My grandma always talked about you. She said you were the right kind of grandson. She told me you’re a teacher. Listen, I don’t really know how to go about saying this, but now that this bullshit with the priest is done, we have to go to the cemetery for the burial—my grandma didn’t want to be cremated. The neighborhood busybodies aren’t coming, of course. So it’s going to be just me with that asshole priest. Would you do me a solid and come along? If I’m alone with him, he might tell me off or something.”

  I should have refused, but I have a hard time saying no. Whenever I have to say it, I feel horrible. Plus I was amused by Iván’s notion that the priest was going to give him hell for his behavior—a preposterous idea, but an entertaining one. So I went with him. As we left the cemetery, grateful and happy the priest hadn’t scolded him, he invited me to go get a drink at a bar. I agreed to that too; after all, I was now an unemployed loser with nothing better to do.

  “So your mother couldn’t make it to the funeral, Iván?” I asked, trying to get him talking.

  “She’s sick.”

  Shit, this guy knows my mother’s in the joint. Grandma must have pounded that into his head. What he doesn’t know is that she’s nearly served out her sentence and is going to be released soon. She’s in the psych ward at the prison, but sometimes they let her out. I hadn’t wanted to tell her about her mother-in-law’s funeral. What for? I would have had to go pick her up. At first I used to go every once in a while. They’d call me from the joint to go out there, social services or something like that. I’d wait for her at the exit, and it was just like in the movies: she’d pass me her bag and I’d open up the trunk. She looked like shit, with repulsive bags under her eyes. The last day I went, she was wearing a short-sleeved top and looked so skinny that it seemed like they’d plunged her arms into the stew pot and pulled them out again once all the meat had fallen off her bones. Anyway, I never went back. I haven’t seen her much since I turned fifteen. I managed to make it on my own, damn it. I was sick and tired of her fucking drug problems. And I’ve seen even less of my father. What a family! The goddamn Holy Family! They should get a church at least as big as Gaudí’s. But this Javier dude probably thinks I’m into drugs too. I tell everybody there’s no way. To be honest, always hearing about how he was such a good grandson, I kind of figured he’d be a dumbass, but he seems like a good guy. Just because he was nice to his grandma doesn’t mean he’s automatically a dipshit. Sometimes I used to think I should go see the poor woman too—but then I just wouldn’t feel like it. I already knew what would happen, exactly what she’d say: “Are you eating healthy? Are you going to bed early? Are you getting into any trouble?” Always hinting everything was my mother’s fault. Not her precious son’s, of course—her son who croaked of an overdose purely by chance. God carried him straight up to heaven, he was such a good boy. My mother was the riffraff, the junkie, the one who’d reeled my father in and led him down a bad path. Well, fuck you, grandma! If you died believing that, you had it all wrong!

  “You’re a teacher, right? At a Catholic girls’ school?”

  “I’m a teacher, yes.”

  This Iván guy is a piece of work. Who knows what he’s imagining when he says “teacher.” He’s probably the type who watches a lot of American TV shows. Judging from his serious expression, he’s probably picturing me wearing a graduation cap. But he must have gone to school at some point. Maybe he was one of those violent kids who would threaten the math teacher or slash the principal’s tires. He looks at me in amazement. His eyes are lively and intense. He seems like a smart guy on the whole. I wonder what he does for work. It could be anything: personal trainer, car mechanic. I don’t think he’s a salesman. He seems proud, like he’s got nothing to prove, and is wary of everyone he meets. No matter what, he’s
got an existential mess on his hands: father who OD’d, mother in jail. Is he a tortured soul? Maybe he never looks back. Now I’m going to have to tell him I lost my job. It’ll be the second time I’ve told somebody. The first person was Sandra. Does it bother me to admit it? I think it does. Before, back when there was no crisis and everybody had a job, being unemployed didn’t seem like such a big deal. You just started considering what to do next: look for another job, go back to school, change careers. Not now—now we all know that losing your job means joining a club that is not so easy to get out of. It’s like announcing you have an incurable disease. Like admitting you’re just another failure who hasn’t been able to overcome bad luck, those situations that only the strongest, the smartest, the best survive. But I’m not going to tell Iván any of that, because he’ll dump the noble teacher image and realize I’m stuck in the same reality as him. I’ve decided I like Iván. It’s fun listening to him talk.

  “The nuns fired you? Shit, man, that’s rough!”

  Throwing a teacher out on the damn street! How are kids supposed to respect their teachers when they know they can be fired just like that? The thing is, now everybody’s getting the ax: doctors, lawyers . . . It doesn’t matter how many degrees you’ve got. The nuns just gave this guy the boot. I knew I liked him! I can’t stand nuns and priests. I didn’t know any at first because we never went to mass and stuff in my family. But when my mother was hooked on drugs, they told her to go to the parish because there was this young priest there who was really cool and could help her out. I was just a little kid, but sometimes I had to go with her. Sometimes my father came too. The hope was that being with the family would help her get off the stuff faster and start leading a normal life. I think my father stopped going pretty quickly, but I kept on, and I found it incredibly embarrassing to hang out with the other kids there, knowing they were all there for the same reason as me. The cool priest would look at me really sadly, like I was a little lamb being taken to the slaughter: “Poor kid, with a junkie for a mom! Thank God she asked for God’s help and came to God’s house—now every goddamn thing’s gonna be OK!” But my mother had only signed up for that crap with the idea of wheedling some cash out of the cool priest. And she did, just enough for two more months’ worth of coke. She didn’t go back after that. But by then I had the priests’ number, and now Javier here is telling me about the nuns, which must be the same thing but the chick version—meaning even worse. The dude’s a good guy. I’m going to see if I can help him out, hell, if only for occasionally putting up with my grandma’s bullshit: “Are you eating well, sleeping well, getting into any trouble?” I’m going to help this guy. I like him.

  “Say, Javier, give me your cell number. Do you use WhatsApp, are you on Facebook? Let’s get together sometime and grab a beer, huh? What are you doing, man? Put your money away. My treat. As if, man!”

  * * *

  By now everybody knows I’m getting a divorce, and everybody knows why. I haven’t told anybody but my closest friends, but it doesn’t matter—people know. I go to the company to work, and they look at me funny. They feel off balance when I’m around. Some feel obliged to say something. If David weren’t the company’s lawyer, they’d keep quiet; they’d pretend. But this is all too obvious, and the ones who work with me on a daily basis feel obliged to offer something in the way of condolences. It’s funny, because they can’t figure out how to go about it, where to even start. I considered writing a note the way famous people do on their blogs: “Owing to irreconcilable differences and after many years of happiness and lives fruitfully shared, we must announce the end of our marriage. We will, however, remain friends.” Then I discarded the idea. I’m not famous; I don’t have to explain anything to anybody. I don’t care what they think. I called the personnel officer into my office and informed him that David would be leaving the company. The struggle between discretion and curiosity was visible on his face. “Voluntarily,” I added. The bastard has put me in a difficult position. I’d love to tell everybody he’s leaving me for another woman—but how? Playing the wounded victim, full of rage, trying to be funny, ironic, knowing: “As everybody knows, when men get to a certain age, they need a young girl to tell them how wonderful they are.” I don’t like any of those approaches, though keeping quiet may be worse. I don’t want anyone to think I’m so gutted that I’m trying to conceal what happened.

  The reactions of the married friends we used to go out with regularly have been cautious. A lot of them have split up in the past few years. Those of us who were still together—what did we do when they split? Thinking back, I remember a single scene performed on repeated occasions. It didn’t matter what the couple in question was going through—the drama always played out the same way. First, solidarity with the more affronted or weaker party, if there was one. Then a display of impartiality: “I’m not going to take sides.” Third, we’d relax and the endless gossip about the recently divorced couple would begin. Way deep down, it made you feel good when other couples split up. For those of us who were still married, it confirmed that we belonged to the world of happy people. There were always jokes: “Look out, any day now I’m going to kick this man/woman to the curb. I’ve had it up to here!” Gentle punches on the shoulder, quick kisses, protests, laughter. We were all proud that we were still in the fight. The fact that our marriages lasted while others fell apart was evidence not just of enduring conjugal love but of emotional stability, maturity, intelligence, responsibility.

  I don’t really remember what we gossiped about, but it was pretty much the same with every divorce. The tone varied, but there was a script for every occasion: first loves who had stayed together too long, financial difficulties, fatigue from living together . . . It’s impossible to be terribly original, since marriage contracts don’t allow for much variation—they’ve been pretty much identical since the Paleolithic. To make up for it, we weren’t too vulgar in our gossip. We’d provide commentary on the psychology of the divorcing pair, describe significant details we’d witnessed that had presaged an abrupt end to the relationship. We’d point out ill-judged ways of doing things, whether by one member of the couple or by both. It wasn’t a roasting session—nobody was rude or went too far. When we seemed to have exhausted the subject, someone might make a cheeky joke, but there was no malice involved. But the subject wasn’t so easily exhausted. It would come up again every weekend we got together. A single divorce provided fodder for a couple of months, even a year if it had some element that made it more exciting than usual.

  And now all that civilized chitchat will be about me and David and the long years of our marriage. I’m sure they’re hashing out all the mistakes we made as a couple. And they’re probably correct in their diagnoses, even in their prescriptions for treatments that might have kept us together. Too late. Since David and I broke up, I’ve gone out with our group of friends a couple of times, to have dinner at the club. I don’t plan to do it again. I’m bored by their fakery, the artificially neutral conversations, the sympathy and deference they show me. I imagine what they must say when I’m not around. It’s irksome to discover I’m just like everybody else, utterly unremarkable. That’s something I’ll never forgive David for: he’s turned me into just another abandoned wife, like thousands of others.

  Other times I’ve gone out just with the women. One on one, those female friends have been more bearable. Less hypocritical. The married ones tell me about struggles in their own lives in a compensatory effort, exaggerating problems with their husbands or children to forge a bond of solidarity with me. The divorced ones give me advice: how to weather the initial storm, how to deal with loneliness. They all claim to be delighted to be free of their husbands. They all fully enjoy their newfound independence, their freedom, their not having to answer to anybody. I never ask them what they did to wrangle themselves such splendid lives—I know they’d be offended. I guess ultimately they live their lives the way everybody else does, doing what they c
an and passing the time. If achieving female happiness meant getting married and then getting divorced in order to understand and appreciate freedom, all women would go that route, but that’s not how it is. The ones who get divorced all struggle with financial issues. The ones with children have to find a way to fill the father’s role too. Even the ones who are most enthusiastic about their breakups encounter problems they’ve never had to face before. So don’t tell me you’re the happiest woman on earth, sweetie. I’m over forty, and I know better.

  How do I feel, how am I, how am I doing after the split? I don’t know. I enjoy going to bed alone at night. The bed we shared for so many years is all mine now. I stretch out on the diagonal, spread my arms wide. I’m comfortable. I can turn on the bedside lamp in the middle of the night, turn on the radio without worrying about bothering anybody. Going to bed alone gives me peace. Waking up alone in the morning, not so much. I open my eyes and immediately note a clenching in my chest. I think about the things I’m going to do next: get up, shower, make coffee, pick out my clothes, get dressed. I feel an incomprehensible unease, an immense lethargy. I’d rather stay in bed a while longer. I’ve arrived at the office late three times now.

  Do I miss David, David himself—his personality, his way of talking, of walking, of seeing? I don’t think so. I feel a certain nostalgia for having someone by my side, that’s all. There’s a space that seems empty—I guess that must be loneliness. David didn’t bother me; I could have stayed married to him my whole life. Even though we worked at the same company, we didn’t see much of each other. We had different schedules. I ate dinner, and he didn’t. I would watch television, and he’d hunker down in front of the computer. I went to bed early, and he’d stay up reading a while longer. On weekends we’d go to the club, but he always played golf and I played tennis. We’d have dinner in the restaurant with our group of friends, never the two of us alone. On vacations we’d visit a foreign country, just a short stay. Then the summer house: golf for him, tennis for me, and swimming for both of us. We didn’t take romantic walks through the countryside or spend intimate evenings together, just the two of us in candlelight. Neither of us seemed to want those things. At the beginning of our marriage, we made love frequently. Later, he still wanted to but I didn’t; our encounters grew less frequent and eventually disappeared altogether. I thought it was normal. I’ve never been a passionate woman. I’d never slept with anyone before David. I wasn’t even interested in sex during college, where I studied economics. I never felt attracted to anybody. I’m a cold fish, I know. A psychoanalyst would tell me it’s because I grew up without a mother. So stupid. I could have stayed married to David forever.