Naked Men

by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett

  I heard him shout. “Hang on! I’m with a hooker. I’ll be right there.”

  My heart clenched up. I realized what a mistake I’d made in coming.

  “No worries, I’ll come back!”

  I was almost to the door when he reappeared.

  “What the hell are you doing, man? Where are you going? You can’t even wait five minutes? We’re finished. I’ll pay her, and we’re all set.”

  I stared out the living room window, which didn’t have a view. A short while later, the two of them emerged. She was young, Caribbean-looking, coarse and exuberant. He was still naked.

  “Come on, girl, get a move on. It’s late, and my friend’s waiting!” he said.

  “Will you call me again?”

  “Call you? I’d rather get an impromptu blowjob on a street corner somewhere!”

  “So you’re going to be nasty, huh? Well, let’s hope that street corner is well lit, or they might not be able to find your dick.”

  I watched in a panic as Iván raised his hand to strike her. I leaped forward and grabbed his arm in the air. “That’s enough. Come on, let her go.”

  The woman spat on the floor and left. I was still gripping my friend’s arm. He looked at my face and, with a tense smile, said very softly, “You can let go, buddy, the assault’s over.”

  “I should come back tomorrow.”

  “No way, man! Let’s have a drink and you tell me how the old lady’s bonfire went. Want some whiskey?”

  “I’ll take a beer.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen. My heart was hammering, my chest squeezed by an enormous pressure. I tried unsuccessfully to calm down. He came back with the drinks.

  “First of all, man, tell me how you paid them at the prison.”

  “With a bank transfer.”

  “Well, give me your damn account number and I’ll make the deposit now.”

  “There’s no rush.”

  “No way, I’ll do it online right now.”

  I got out the receipts and documents and handed them over. He sat down at the computer and tapped away at the keyboard for a while.

  “All right, we’re square now. What the hell is this paper?”

  “A copy of the death certificate.”

  He tore it in half without even looking at it and threw it on the floor. He sat down on the sofa, still naked.

  “All right, now tell me.”

  “Why don’t you get dressed, Iván?”

  “Making you uncomfortable? It’s not like you’re queer!”

  “It’s awkward talking to you like this. We’re civilized people, right?”

  “Hell, man, we’re totally freaking civilized! All right, there you go. Better?”

  He’d placed a cushion over his crotch. Hostility was emanating not just from his eyes but from every pore of his skin, from those white teeth bared by his ferocious smile. Immediately, my only desire was to get the hell out of there, but I stifled the urge and asked, “What is it you want to know?”

  “I don’t know, man. Were they rude to you? Did they badmouth me for not going myself?”

  “No, not at all. Everything was very orderly, very professional. I signed a few documents on your behalf. They told me she’d had a heart attack during the night while going to the bathroom. They found her on the floor, already dead. They asked me if I wanted them to perform an autopsy, and I said no; I’m not sure if that was right.”

  “Great, man, that’s great. Why slice up dead people? Better to just leave them alone. By the way, did you see her?”

  “Your mother?” I paused a moment. I looked down, lowered my voice. “Yeah, I saw her.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing, really—she was there. It was a very nice funeral parlor.”

  “What about her body—how was it?”

  The fury and sarcasm were gone from his voice. He was looking at me with wide eyes, immensely anxious.

  “Well . . . you know what I thought, Iván? I thought she looked like a little bird that had fallen from a tree: small, parched, with dull, colorless feathers. It made me sad.”

  His face twisted in a strange grimace, completely distorted. He was unrecognizable. He let out a pained wail, got up, and went to his room. I heard his desolate sobbing, the sound of him pounding his fists on the mattress, or maybe the pillow. I got out of there as fast as I could. I know I should have stayed to try to comfort him, but how do you remove that kind of pain from a man’s head? And what did it have to do with me? What do I have to do with a man who tries to hit women?

  Things happen to me, it seems, without my being able to avoid them or have any influence on them. When I got home, my nerves were shot—I was tired, disgusted. Surprisingly, I fell asleep almost immediately.

  * * *

  It’s strange—I feel free as a bird, and at the same time it’s as if I’m no longer part of the world around me. The company was so important to me! It was the center of my life for a long time, and now it’s nothing, just smoke. I don’t feel any regret or guilt about selling it. Business is business—everything else is outmoded romanticism. Nobody gives their soul to their work anymore. To be successful and ride out this crisis would have taken all of my time and energy. Exhausting! I don’t want to struggle anymore.

  I should be happy: I’m free for the first time in my life. I don’t have any ties or obligations; nobody depends on me, and I don’t depend on anybody. I feel like running out into the street and shouting it to the world. Stopping people on street corners and telling them I can do whatever I like, rubbing their noses in it. Shaking them to make sure they understand. It’s frustrating to know that nobody cares what happens to me. It makes no difference to them whether I’m free or a slave, and that makes me angry. A contradiction.

  A while back I would have gone to the psychiatrist and told him I live in that contradiction: I’m free, and being free pisses me off. No doubt he would have given me some kind of relaxation pill. Not today—today I know how to relax on my own, the natural way. I’ll call Javier and hire him for tonight—assuming he’s free, of course. Maybe I should make some sort of arrangement with him, free him of other commitments and have him work for me exclusively. He might not accept; sleeping with other women may earn him not just money but pleasure. Does he feel the same pleasure with others that he does with me? He’s not faking it with me, I know that. He convulses, moans, collapses afterward. I never saw my husband experience that kind of pleasure. If he gives the same performance with the other women he sees, he’s a real pro.

  “Javier?”

  “Irene, what a surprise!”

  “Are you free tonight?”

  “Of course!”

  “Shall I come over around ten?”

  “Come earlier if you like!”

  “No, I have to work.”

  “All right, perfect. I’ll make us some dinner.”

  He’ll prepare a dinner with the whole pseudoromantic shebang. He’s done it before: candles on the table, mood music . . . It all seems quite tacky in his rattrap’s tiny living room.

  When he opened the door, I leaped at him. I yanked on his clothing and started to remove it. He was laughing, but I wasn’t. I wanted to fuck like never before. It was a hunger, a thirst. I’m an orangutan in heat, an animal. We roll around on the floor. I don’t want words or kisses or caresses or foreplay. I want to fuck. And we fuck. I get on top of him. I open my legs, close my legs, plunge down on his cock. We come almost instantly, both of us at the same time. Panting, sighs. When we’ve calmed down again, he looks into my eyes and starts giving me little kisses all over: my eyelids, my cheeks, my forehead. He moves to my neck and gives me chills. I pull away, trying to elude his mouth. He laughs hard and crushes me in an enormous hug, folding himself around me.

  “You’re wonderful,” he says.

  I try to
stand up, untie his knot. He stops me.

  “I won’t let you go,” he murmurs.

  He’s acting the part of the playful boyfriend, and it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know if the terrible anger I was feeling when I came here is gone yet. I get to my feet and pick up the clothing scattered around us.

  “Can I take a shower?”

  “Of course. While you shower, I’ll make dinner. A perfect arrangement.”

  He’s euphoric. I’m embarrassed about my recent effusion. I go into the bathroom. I can hear him humming in the kitchen. Yes, he’s euphoric. I poke through the things he has on a glass shelf: shaving cream, electric shaver, a huge bottle of cologne, some ibuprofen . . . Not much. I’d assumed a man who dances naked in a show would use fancy skin products, perfumes, massage oils. But no.

  I shower. My muscles gradually loosen under the hot water. I dry myself off with a towel that’s hanging on a hook. All the cells in my body are mine again and under control. As I’m rubbing myself with the towel, I remember that it’s used and feel squeamish. It’s silly, and I know it: you have sex with a man but are disgusted by his used towel. Of course, with Javier there’s sex but no intimacy. With David there was intimacy, but no pleasure. You can’t have it all at the same time. It doesn’t matter—we can take turns. Suddenly I realize my rage at my contradictions has evaporated. The natural method has been more effective than a psychiatrist’s pills.

  I go out into Javier’s living room. It’s so austere, so tiny, so full of books. In one corner he’s set the table for dinner. Just as I feared, he’s lit a candle.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he says, poking his head out of the kitchen.

  Salad and pasta. He must have had it all prepared in advance, because he got it ready really quickly. A bottle of white wine in a bag to keep it at the perfect temperature. I’ve seen this set piece in plenty of those American movies they show on TV. They’re for young people. Boy, girl, lit candle, wine. Something unexpected always ends up happening. It can be good or bad—doesn’t matter. It just has to surprise the viewer. And the outcome is always a foregone conclusion: they fall in love. I’ve never seen a movie where the girl pays the boy for sex.

  “Do you like the spaghetti?”

  “It’s great.”

  “I didn’t make the sauce. I bought it this afternoon in an Italian import shop.”

  She’s gorgeous like that, fresh out of the shower. The makeup she was wearing is gone. I like her better without it. Her features have also softened. When she got here she had sharp lines around her mouth, stress lines. She must be more relaxed after our intense hello. And now here we are, having dinner like any other couple.

  “I’m really happy you came, Irene.”

  “Thanks,” I respond, not knowing what else to say. I hope this doesn’t turn into an attempt at romance.

  “I actually needed this visit. I had a rough day yesterday. Iván’s mother died—she was in a prison psych hospital. He asked me to take care of everything because he didn’t feel capable of dealing with it. It was really depressing.”

  “Why did you have to do it?”

  “Iván’s relationship with his mother was pretty unique. Dysfunctional family, love/hate relationships . . . Things were complicated.”

  “Your friend isn’t a child anymore. He’s had time to work through his traumas.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “You’re very supportive.”

  “Are you not?”

  “To be supportive, you have to be either really happy or a really good person. Otherwise it’s better if you don’t get involved.”

  “Which quality are you lacking?”

  “Both. I’m not good or happy.”

  If I don’t shut this conversation down, he’s going to start asking personal questions that I don’t want to answer.

  “Is there any dessert, or am I being punished?”

  He rushes off to the kitchen and brings out a tub of ice cream. As he serves it, I have time to observe him at leisure. His hair is gleaming in the lamplight. He’s handsome today. We eat in silence. Suddenly he looks at me, very serious.

  “Yesterday I saw Iván’s mother in her casket. I started thinking I’d end up the same way: abandoned, alone in a corner, without anybody who cared whether I was dead or alive.”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  It’s like being stabbed with a knife. It catches me off guard, and my voice almost cracks. He notices. He gets up and comes over to me. He takes my hand, and we go over to the sofa and sit there, our arms around each other, in silence. After a while, I start feeling sleepy and let myself drift off.

  I awake with a start in the middle of the night. There’s no light in the living room. I’ve fallen asleep on the sofa, and Javier is lying on the rug. Nervous, I get up and try to step over him without waking him. I go to the window to peer at my watch in the light from the streetlamps.

  “It’s four o’clock,” I hear him say from the floor.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, but I have to go.”

  “Why? Go ahead and sleep here. If you want, I can give you my bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  “I have to go.”

  When he sees me move to take out my wallet to pay him, he jumps to his feet.

  “Not today, please.”

  There’s such authority in his voice, such desperation, such violence too, that I decide to obey and put the money away, even though I know I’m making a mistake I’ll come to regret.

  “Do you want me to call you a taxi?”

  “I’ll call one down on the street.”

  “Whatever you prefer.”

  He moves toward me, evidently to give me a kiss. I back away, trying not to seem like I’m rejecting him. I raise my hand to wave goodbye. I smile.

  “I’ll call you. Thanks for dinner.”

  It doesn’t really matter whether he kisses me in and of itself. But right then I couldn’t have borne even the slightest bit of intimacy. I went down the stairs and called a taxi from the sidewalk. When I got home, I found it lonely and silent, as always.

  * * *

  I should have given the teacher some kind of gift. He deserves it after that bullshit with my mom. Maybe I could give him one of my good contacts, the ones I keep for myself. Puri, for example, who’s a gold mine. The problem is, since we’ve been screwing around for almost three years, she might say she doesn’t want to switch. Though most likely it’d be the teacher who’d say no. He just wants to see tourists, do parties with large groups of women, and go around with that pain in the ass Irene. If I propose a divorced hairdresser, he’ll tell me he’s not interested. Doesn’t matter if I insist she’s the owner of a fancy salon and has a shit-ton of money and buckets of style—he’ll say no. He doesn’t give a damn about style. Just look at Irene—always so buttoned up, in flats and secretary blouses. Now that he’s earning a decent living, he could go out and buy a nice shirt or some Armani jeans. But no, he still goes around in his department store duds. Thankfully I made him pick up some black pants and a white shirt for parties, or the bastard would show up in a tracksuit.

  No, I’m going to forget about hooking him up with Puri. I should just go to a bookstore and buy a gift certificate. Then he can go and choose the books he wants. He might be excited about that, and I really want him to be happy. I want him to know I’m super grateful to him for dealing with that crap with my mother. I just didn’t have the stomach for it, no matter how the hospital people acted. Going there, enduring their platitudes, all of them lies, and then putting up with that rude director looking at me as if to say, “You never came to see her, you asshole.” No way. And I didn’t want to see her dead. I guess that crap about how “A mother is a mother” has some truth to it. Though mine was a sorry excuse for a mother. Maybe she did used to love me and would gaze at me
proudly, saying, “Look at this squirt—he’s my own son.” But just a while isn’t long enough. I remember one day when one of the priests, back when priests still got on my nerves, goes and says, “You must always be grateful to your mother for bringing you into the world. You owe her your existence. Her and God.” I thought: So mothers are like cats, right? They take care of you for a while, and then they just leave you to your own devices, and that’s apparently something to be grateful for. And let’s not even talk about God, always watching you in case you misbehave. You can all fuck off!

  Back then when my grandma used to take me to see the priests so they could counsel me, I’d really kick up some major hissy fits. I was always pissed off inside, and eventually I’d lose it. I was like those guys in the movies who’ve experienced something really brutal and they’re eaten up inside until they finally manage to get their revenge and are able to rest. But I didn’t have anyone to get revenge on. My parents? They were just a couple of losers, total trash. So I spent my life angry, and that anger came back to bite me in the ass. Things got worse and worse. Until one day I saw it all clearly and said to myself, “You’ve got to chill, man. The way you’re going, it’s just a matter of time before you crash and burn.” I started making my own way, leaving the past behind and taking care of myself. It’s true I’m still a bit of a hard-ass because of that time in my youth. I don’t like people’s bullshit, though instead of going for the jugular when somebody pulls some nasty trick, I turn on anyone who puts up with it. I can’t stand it when people just sit there and take somebody’s shit and don’t say anything! It pisses me off!

  I didn’t bother with any of the advice I got from my grandma, the priests, or anybody else. “You have to behave.” Screw that! “You have to go to school and study hard.” Up yours! “You have to get a decent job.” Buzz off! “You have to choose a good girl and start a family.” Get stuffed! I gave all that a hard pass, but I worked things out on my own, took care of myself. And here I am! Nobody can say anything now: I’ve got a cool apartment, a computer, a car, designer clothing, enough money to pay for my lifestyle . . . and all the chicks I want, whether they’re paying or I am.