Naked Men

by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett

  But now comes the hard part: I’ve got to tell uptight teacher-man that we’ve got a date with the girls. Well, screw him—everything he’s got in life is because of me. If I hadn’t lent him a hand, he’d still be there in his lame apartment, depressed and unemployed, living with that harpy Sandra and taking out the trash every night.

  “Javier, man, I didn’t have time to tell you earlier what with all the rehearsals and being so nervous about the opening, but I had to set up a date with Genoveva and that other chick tonight. I didn’t have a choice, man. They insisted, really drove me nuts. They found out we were premiering the new show, and now they’re waiting for us out at one of the tables.”

  Shit, what a look! I don’t know if I’d dare go up on stage to fight with him after a glare like that. The dude’s spear doesn’t have a real point, but he might impale me with it anyway. But the worst thing is he just says, “You should have told me.” That’s it. That’s the teacher’s damn problem—he’s one of a kind. If he were like everybody else, he would have gotten pissed off and yelled at me. And then you give it right back to him, yelling too, so you end up even. But no, the guy just looks at you like he wants to kill you, leaves you feeling like shit and not knowing what to say or do.

  “So you’re not going to leave me high and dry, then?”

  “No, if you set it up, I’ll go with you.”

  “Hey, man, it seems like I missed something. What’s going on with you and that chick? You used to like her! Did something happen? Things get weird?”

  “Drop it, Iván.”

  “I’ll drop it, but if we’re friends, it doesn’t really make sense for you not to tell me things—especially if those things are happening with chicks we’ve been going out with together the whole time.”

  “I said drop it, Iván. I’ll go with you and that’s that. That’s what you want, right?”

  “OK, OK, man. Forget I said anything.”

  The hell with the teacher and his shitty temper, goddammit! Better just leave things alone—it’s not worth getting pissed off.

  Anyway, I thought my bosom buddy might blow me off, but no, it was OK. He didn’t scowl when we went over to their table. I imagine it was also because Irene wasn’t dressed like she usually was, like a secretary on her day off. No, she’d done herself up all super sexy in a lowcut black minidress and black fishnet stockings, wearing black eyeliner and red lipstick. I’d never noticed she was so hot before. I was almost sorry I hadn’t told the teacher I’d take care of both of them.

  We went out to eat. The teacher was good, as usual: courteous, gallant . . . not exactly a bundle of laughs, pretty serious, but no bad vibes. And the two women, especially Genoveva, going on and on about the performance: you were great, what an original number, those Roman costumes, blah blah blah.

  We had a hearty dinner, but we only had a few drinks in case something sparked later. As we left the restaurant, where we’d all go our separate ways, I thought: now’s when the teacher says goodbye and leaves the three of us to figure something out on our own. But no, not at all: I went off with Geno, and Javier stayed chatting with the chick on the sidewalk like it was no big deal.

  I’m not nosy. I don’t generally give a crap what happens to other people, and I don’t even look at those gossip magazines that are always shrieking about who’s getting married or divorced. What do I care? I actually find those people who want to know everything and go around butting into other people’s business really embarrassing. But this is different—I’m dying to know what’s going on with Irene and Javier, what’s going on right this moment. I asked Genoveva, and she said Irene hadn’t let anything slip either. Something really big has happened, is happening, or is about to happen—though it could also be rich kids’ bullshit.

  * * *

  “Shall we go to a hotel?” Irene asks.

  “No, Irene, not this time. We’re practically old friends at this point, so why don’t you come back to my place for a drink? If you don’t want that, we can just go our separate ways right now.”

  “Do you not like hotels?”

  “There are lots of things I don’t like, hotels among them. Are you coming?”

  “All right, but let’s make one thing really clear: I’m still paying, even if we’re at your house.”

  “No problem. You want to pay, and I want to charge. Works out perfectly.”

  We hail a taxi. She’s not nervous, and neither am I. She’s really dressed up today—she’s wearing makeup and a sexy dress. Why? Ever since Iván told me about this surprise encounter, I’ve been determined to do things the way I want. First, in my own home. I’m tired of going up to a room that this girl’s rented for the sole purpose of watching me take off my underwear. I can take them off here, just like I do every night before bed. I’m done with these tired routines. Beforehand, I’ll offer her a drink, and while I’m pouring it she can check out the bookcases in the living room, which are full of books. She’ll also see that my apartment is clean and tidy. Maybe that’ll show her I’m not a slum kid, a cheap whore.

  Just as I imagined it, the first thing that catches her eye when she walks in is my books. She goes over and examines them a good long while. I leave her there and head to the kitchen to make our drinks. I realize that I’m tired. My arms hurt. We’ve had a number of days of intense exercise getting the gladiator number down pat. I go back to the living room holding a glass in each hand and—oh, delight!—she is still absorbed in looking at the books, the only difference being that she is now naked. Her black dress and her underwear are lying on the sofa. I don’t say anything. I put the drinks on the table and start to remove my clothes. I lean against the wall, watching her. It’s strange to watch her slowly move, distant from me, to watch her pick up a book, page through it, and then put it back, and at the same to be able to see her straight back, her firm butt, the soft curves of her hips. Finally she turns around.

  “You really like reading.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I haven’t read many books in my life. I always had my work at the company. I figured I could read when I was old.”

  “Irene,” I tell her. “I’m going to come over to you. I can’t stand this anymore. If you don’t want that, please just get dressed and go.”

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  He does what he’s said he’s going to do: he comes toward me. He presses his body against mine, and I feel his penis against my belly. He kisses my lips. He kisses my entire body, kneeling before me. Then he pulls me to the sofa. I start to desire him, as if something were gnawing at my insides. It’s an overwhelming sensation, one that makes me tremble, makes me dizzy, frightens me, staggers me. I no longer see the room, reality, my own identity. I don’t know who I am or who he is. I don’t care. And then heat, a heat that uncoils the entrails. There is no longer him or me—we are one, and on fire. I return to the protection of the maternal cloister, where nothing exists yet.

  “Irene,” I murmur in her ear.

  She doesn’t answer, doesn’t breathe. I look at her.

  When I penetrate her, she emits a sigh, a growl, a yelp. I don’t know what kind of sound it is—it’s something animal and yet also spiritual, almost mystical. We are lying on the sofa, one on top of the other, spent. Her eyes are closed; she’s congested, still panting a little. Looking at her, I am amazed. What life experiences has this woman had? Am I the first man she’s been with? Is this the best sex she’s had? I tenderly kiss her hair. I am moved—she’s like a little girl who’s fallen asleep. She doesn’t move at all; she’s still deep within herself, in her atmosphere, swaying in the air or floating in the sea.

  Our position is unnatural, and when I sit up a little, we both roll off the sofa onto the rug. I start laughing. I want to laugh: I’m euphoric, full of life, contented to my core, drugged by her sensations and mine. She opens her eyes, as if she’d suddenly awakened, as if she wer
e returning from far away.

  “Are you OK?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  But it’s not true—I’m not OK. I would have liked to stay up in the clouds a little longer, not coming back down to earth, not existing. I’d never experienced such agonizing sensations in my life. For the first time in my conscious existence, I was able to escape myself, escape the past and the future. Now I just feel cold. I don’t know what time it is. I have to leave.

  “That was wild, huh?” Javier says.

  And I don’t know how to respond. I am once more in my own skin, once more myself though not entirely. I’ve got to finish pulling myself back together, take the reins again, regain control.

  “Yeah, it was fantastic. And you didn’t call me baby, which is a plus.”

  A chilling response. Strange sense of humor. She dresses quickly. She looks for her purse, places the money on the table. She asks me where the bathroom is.

  While she’s out of the room, I try to get a handle on her reaction. She’s ashamed, overwhelmed by having allowed herself to be taken beyond her limits. She’s a businesswoman, an executive, a frigid woman who wanted to see men naked only to demonstrate her power, her control. This behavior after such mind-blowing sex doesn’t surprise me. It certainly doesn’t offend me. She uses her phone to call a taxi. She shakes my hand goodbye. I’m still naked. I start laughing again. She smiles faintly.

  “We’ll see each other again soon, I hope,” I say, and grab one of her hands.

  “Genoveva will call you.”

  Genoveva! What does Genoveva have to do with this? Whatever—she has the right to keep the fiction going a while longer. But if everything that happened tonight was real—and it was—she’ll be back soon. And that’ll make me happy because now I definitely want to see her again, and screw again like we did today.

  * * *

  I went straight to the factory this morning, though I’m not really sure why. All I do when I go there is listen to complaints and get bad news. If it weren’t for Papá, for Papá’s memory, I’d have sold the place already. But today when I woke up I felt energized, wanting to do something, to act. Maybe so I could stop thinking about what happened last night. As soon as I opened my eyes, yesterday’s sensations came flooding back. I started feeling prickling in my ovaries, chills all over my body, weakness in my legs. I’d never experienced something so intense, so brutal. I’m all mixed up. I’m forty years old. How have I lived this long? I’m a forty-year-old woman who’s basically just lost her virginity. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Luckily, I lost it with a prostitute. It could be a lot worse: with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years, with a divorced man I’d been set up with in the hope I’d rebuild my love life, the way Genoveva had planned. No, at least I took care of it myself—I paid for what I wanted, didn’t let myself get carried away by a supposed love story. Still, I’m surprised. I hadn’t realized that desire could be so intense and the fulfilling of it so animal.

  Still in bed, having only recently returned to consciousness from sleep, I focus on all the pinpricks of pleasure that my body is magically keeping alive. I haven’t tried to shake them off. Quite the opposite: I’ve let myself float away on them. Maybe in sexual terms I’ve been cold my whole life. But it’s clear I’m not frigid. I used to think about the issue a lot, though it didn’t really bother me. I had everything that people considered the keys to happiness: money, a husband, an important job, social prestige . . . and yet now I find that I lacked that element that anyone can enjoy: pleasure.

  Impulsively, I picked up the telephone on my night table to call Javier. Thankfully, I’ve still got half a wit about me, and I aborted the operation. I can’t allow myself even the slightest bit of fantasy. Javier is an escort—I mustn’t forget that. He charges for his sexual services. What for me was a profound encounter is a humdrum routine for him. Every night he goes to bed with different women he doesn’t even know. I can’t think of him the way I would a normal man. He isn’t one.

  One thing is more important to me than anything else in the world: maintaining control over myself. I’m on my own. Papá doesn’t live with me anymore. Beneath my feet yawns the void. One misstep on this slender tightrope, and I’ll fall and fall, never hitting anything solid. Just falling.

  I’m not going to call Javier for now. The sensations he awoke in me and that persist in my body are mine alone now. I think I can live off of them a while longer, summon them rather than chasing them away, keep them under my control.

  * * *

  When I woke up this morning, I almost called her. It would have been the usual thing to do after last night’s torrid sex. Couples generally talk about these subjects with a certain intimacy, celebrating having squeezed every drop of pleasure out of a moment of life together. But I immediately discard the idea. She may have given herself to me utterly, but she’d swiftly pulled herself back together. I still remember her stony satisfaction that I hadn’t called her “baby,” and her goodbye: “Genoveva will call you.” Just because we had a great time in the sack doesn’t mean any social barriers have tumbled down: she’s still a lady, and I’m still a whore. That’s what’s at the core of her reaction, even apart from whatever shame she feels at having let herself get carried away. Then I realized I couldn’t call her anyway: I don’t have her number. I’ll ask Iván to get it, and then I’ll call her. That way I can hopefully avoid having that woman act as the intermediary between us again. I think it would be better if she and Iván didn’t take care of setting things up for us anymore, though maybe I’m wrong.

  Iván calls to invite me out for a beer. I figure he wants to gossip, and sure enough, we’ve hardly sat down when he asks how things went with Irene yesterday. I’m tired of playing cat and mouse with him on the subject, so I tell him it was awesome and that I need her phone number so I can call her. He looks startled. He doesn’t have her number; he’ll ask Genoveva. Then he pauses.

  “But you’re not getting hung up on her, are you?”

  “No, man, no way!”

  “Good.”

  That’s good, man, because if you swear undying love to the first chick you screw a couple of times, you’re in trouble—you’re going to fuck it all up. I think at a fundamental level the teacher still hasn’t realized how this movie plays out. Being an escort allows you to have a different kind of life from your average working stiff. If you surveyed all the guys who dance at the club, how many of them are going to turn out to have a girlfriend or a steady chick? Not one, man—the club isn’t an office or a bank branch. And we’re not like everybody else. You can’t live like other people if you spend your weekends shaking your naked ass in a club. He saw that firsthand with that goddamn pain in the ass Sandra, who put him out on the street quick as a flash. When you do this for a living, you can’t have a partner—it causes too many problems. That goes double if, besides being a stripper, you’re also an escort and screw other chicks during the week. But that’s the good part, right?—not being tied down like a goddamn schmoe every day with the missus, the mother-in-law, the kids, the dog. We’re free—we can do whatever the hell we feel like, take care of ourselves and not have to worry about anybody else. But if the teacher doesn’t get that and just wants to go back to having what he had when he was with Sandra, we’re in trouble.

  Iván forgot to ask Genoveva for Irene’s number. I had to remind him the next day. He didn’t call me with the number until eight at night. I was at home, reading. I sensed a hint of insolence in his voice—it’s clear he doesn’t want me to have direct access to the girl. Maybe it’s just his fear that I’ll get “hung up” on somebody, or maybe he likes to be in control of things.

  At last I could call her. She answered immediately. “It’s Javier.” A moment of silence, and then a cool “Oh, hi, how are you?”

  “Did you know I was going to call?”

  “I figured you would. Genoveva asked me permis
sion to give you my number.”

  “And you gave it to her.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Did you want me to call?”

  “Listen, Javier, I can’t really talk right now. I’m very busy.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you were still working.”

  This was a mistake. A bad move. If I want to see her, I’m going to have to change strategies fast.

  “Work comes first, dear.”

  “Absolutely. That’s why I thought maybe we could get together tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Do you need money?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t tonight. Tomorrow . . . let me think . . . I’ll check my schedule. I’ll give you a call.”

  Perfect. As long as I don’t give up my official role as an escort, she’s OK with it.

  The phone rang at ten in the morning. Her schedule! Such a conventional fib.

  “Let’s meet at nine tonight at Saisons, a French restaurant. If you don’t mind, we can go back to your place afterward. Hotels are a nuisance, and I have to stay in them so much for work that I’ve come to loathe them.”

  Sick of hotels! The packed schedule, the work trips . . . The truth is she wants to see me as soon as possible, right? I’ve been thinking about that amazing sex constantly. I’m sure she’ll be counting the hours till tonight. She might be a strange woman, even a little unstable, but crazy or not, sex like we had the other day isn’t so easy to find. Neither of us is a kid at this point—we both realize there’s a special chemistry between us.