Run Catch Kiss

by Amy Sohn

  “Shut your mouth,” he said. And it stung, but in such a familiar way it felt like a salve. I was a fuckup and he was my hero, and when he was cruel, it only made me love him more.

  I looked over at him reading his magazine and I wanted to tell him the truth about where I had been. And instead of telling me, “You don’t have to tell your parents everything,” he would forgive me and say it would all be OK, and then I would explain that he wouldn’t have to worry anymore, because I was going to change, and stop humiliating him, make him proud—the way he used to be before the column, before the mess.

  As the train pulled into High Street, he put the magazine into his bag and said, “Feel like coming over for dinner? I’m sure Mom and Zach would love to see you.”

  I saw myself going over for dinner and I saw it being the same as it was in the car to Philadelphia. We’d talk about everything except my column and I wouldn’t get up the courage to ask what he really thought. It would just be more of the feeble jokes and one-liners, and the prospect of another evening of that was more painful than the prospect of no contact at all.

  “Actually, I’m kind of tired,” I said. “I hope that’s—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I understand.” The doors opened. He gave a little wave good-bye and walked out.

  •

  When I got to my building I found two more fan letters, forwarded from Turner, in the mailbox:

  Dear Ariel,

  Reading your column is the highlight of my week. I think it’s brave of you to admit to having a sex drive, to admit that girls want to get laid just as much as guys do. Don’t pay any attention to those Victorian-minded assholes out there. They’re just lonely and hitter. Stay as strong as you are.

  Your Loyal Fan, CAROLINE SEEGER

  Dear Ariel,

  Sometimes I hate you, sometimes I love you, but mostly I just want to be you.

  DENISE VENETTI

  I took the letters up to the apartment, put them in the folder under the bed, and sat down at the computer. For my father I wanted to be good, but for my readers I had to stay bad. I was the girl women wanted to be. I was the sex no one else was having. The city was counting on me to live out its lowbrow urges. I had to write about Show World, but I had to tell it like it wasn’t.

  Run Catch Kiss

  True Confessions of a Single Girl

  ARIEL STEINER

  Smutlife

  [Note to my parents: D.N.R. (Do Not Read)]

  I’ve always wanted to have sex in a porno movie booth, so last week I finally did. I called up the testicular exhibitionist Royalton Shakes and told him to meet me at Show World Cinemas on 42nd and Eighth. When I arrived he was munching on a hot dog and wearing a huge bright smile. We went inside the entrance and looked at the dildos together and laughed about how big they were. Then I led him to the turnstile and we bought our tokens. I winked at the token man on my way in.

  We went into a booth, locked the door behind us, and sat down side by side on the jerk-off ledge. I put in a token and chose a movie with two chicks. I love watching chicks get it on. Then I pushed Royalton to his knees facing me, pulled down my jeans, and hiked my legs up against the opposite wall.

  The two girls were roommates and one had always been secretly attracted to the other, so one day she finally admitted it to her roommate, and that’s how they got together. I imagined Royalton was my roommate and I was the girl in the movie. He was such a terrific muff muncher that it only took three tokens to make the kitty purr. “That was fabulous,” I said. “Now you pick a movie.”

  He chose one with two guys. I didn’t pass judgment. They were going at it in an alleyway. There wasn’t much dialogue other than “Oh. yeah.” Royalton pulled his pants to his knees and I knelt down and took his huge and beautiful member between my eager lips. Boy. did it taste good. I love giving head. It’s my favorite thing in the world. I could do nothing all day except give head and my life would not feel incomplete.

  But soon his cock grew too huge for even me to stand, so I pulled my mouth off, turned my back, placed one hand on either side of the screen, and leaned right over. He growled like a wild pig. placed his hands on my hips, and drove right into my Lincoln Tunnel. I love sex doggie style. It’s my favorite thing in the world next to giving head. I could do nothing all day except give head and do doggie style and my life would not feel incomplete.

  My face was just a few inches from the screen so I could see the men up close and personal. This experience was turning out to be a million times more exciting than I ever could have imagined. One cock in my face, one inside me, the smell of other men’s spooge in my nostrils, the noises of all the lust films playing in the different booths.

  As Royalton continued to rip me in two, I periodically reached into my jeans to insert new tokens. These regular interruptions only heightened Royalton’s fervor. Just as the man in the movie let out a low moan, Royalton let out one of his own, and I felt his tremendous trunk begin to pulse. His rigor mortis so thrilled my gleaming manhole that I was surprised to find a tremor rushing through me as well.

  He sighed and I sighed, and then he slid the pup out. smooth and slow. I turned to face him and gave him a doting look, glad that I had finally lived out my fantasy, glad that he had been there to help me do it.

  We dressed quickly and walked out onto the street. There was a Ben & Jerry’s opposite the theater, so we went inside and he bought me a Vermonster. It was messy and white, and as it dripped down my chin I regretted that I hadn’t let him jizz in my mouth, because nothing makes me grin like the sweet fresh taste of seed.

  I shared this thought with Royalton and he suggested we return to the theater. We wiped our mouths and went back to Show World. Luckily, our honeymoon booth was still empty, so we went in and picked another movie, and I sucked him till he came in my throat.

  6

  WHEN I FINISHED THE COLUMN I turned off my computer and went to get something to eat. A new bar had opened around the corner, on Court and Nelson, and I had seen a sign in the window that said they sold hot knishes, so I walked over. Most of the men there were middle-aged Italian locals, but at the end of the bar a young guy in a button-down plaid shirt was smoking a cigarette and sipping a beer. I panned down his body like the camera in Thelma and Louise for the shot of Brad Pitt when I suddenly realized I knew that chest.

  It was Jake Datner, my boyfriend for a very brief period during tenth grade. We met at a Saturday-night youth-group sleep-over at his temple, Rodeph Shalom, and I was immediately bowled over by his self-deprecation and biting wit. We flirted all throughout Havdalah services, and when it was time to get ready for bed, he put his sleeping bag next to mine. At two in the morning he woke me up and kissed me, and we snuck off into one of the Hebrew school classrooms to dry-hump on the floor behind one of the desks.

  From then on we met every day after school at his apartment on West End Avenue to fool around in his room before his parents came home, and we talked on the phone for an hour each night. But after a month we somehow ran out of things to say, so we amicably and mutually decided to end it. Later that year he dropped out of youth group and I never saw him again. I’d heard he went to Harvard but I hadn’t spoken to him since we were fifteen.

  Maybe it was fate that I had decided to come to this bar on this night. Maybe it was God’s way of helping me pull my head out of the sand. I sat down next to him. He looked up, startled, then smiled when he recognized me. “Hey, Ariel,” he said. “Long time no see. I’ve been reading your stuff. You’re a good writer.” I slit my eyes to see if he was insinuating anything sexual, but he didn’t seem to be. “I was reading this article in the New Republic about Maureen Dowd and female journalists and it made me think of you.” He reached for his bicycle messenger bag, pulled out the magazine, and handed it to me.

  “Can I keep it?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  Maureen Dowd can suck my left one, but I was nonetheless impressed by the gift. The act of him giving me his New
Republic proved that he either had a brain or was clever enough to know I’d be impressed by the gesture. The dick of his IQ grew hard as a rock in the pussy of my heart.

  “What are you doing in this neighborhood?” I asked.

  “I live on Third Street.”

  He lived in Carroll Gardens! It had to be an omen that I’d come to this bar. Our relationship would be so convenient! And my dad would love that I was dating a guy I met in youth group. It would mitigate all the tsuris I’d given him since I started writing “Run Catch Kiss.” Surely he wouldn’t be embarrassed if my column described hot sex with a Jew, a Harvard grad, a good guy.

  As Jake and I continued to talk, I realized that he still possessed all the traits I’d liked about him when he was fifteen. He was charming and funny, and he’d held on to his Yiddish-film-star good looks—pale skin, pink lips, long lashes.

  I asked him what he did for a living and he said he wanted to be a playwright but was supporting himself with a job in desktop publishing. I told him how I got my column and he said, “You have a lot of guts.” I liked that. It had been a long time since a guy had been more taken by my ambition than any of my other qualities.

  But after we’d been talking about half an hour, he said, “I’m pretty tired. I guess I should be getting home soon.”

  “I’ll walk you there,” I said.

  As we headed down the street, I slowly inched closer to him until I was rubbing my side against his. He stopped walking and looked at me. I pushed him against a building and dove for his mouth. His lips were full and extrasoft and he was not a biter. I remembered what a skilled kisser he’d been back in youth group. He held my neck while he did it, and after a while he pulled away and stared at my face. I knew that was a good sign, because when guys just want to use you, they don’t pull away to stare at your face.

  “I’m so glad I ran into you,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  We grinned like ninnies and kissed again, and then I pushed my voice into secretary register and said, “Jake? Would you like to be in my column?”

  He blushed and said, “Maybe.” It wasn’t the most encouraging answer, but it wasn’t the least, either. I wrote down my number on an ATM receipt and he said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  •

  The next night he invited me over and I sat on his couch and told him the stories of every guy I’d been with since I moved to the city, except the Show World one. He listened calmly, like he wasn’t freaked in the slightest. That was probably because he’d read them all already, but I was flattered anyway.

  He told me about this mutually self-destructive relationship he’d had at Harvard and it made me like him even more. We got into a discussion about the grossest lies people used in dumping us, and agreed that “It’s not you, it’s me” topped the list. I asked him to give me a tour of his apartment, and minutes after we got to the bedroom we were horizontal on his futon. He played with me for forty minutes until I came, and then I sucked him a little and finished him off with my hand. Right as I was falling asleep, he whispered, “Ariel, you bewitch me.” I almost died.

  •

  The next night I slept over again. When I woke up in the morning he was looking at me with a worried expression. “What is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t mean to jump the gun or anything,” he said, “but there’s something I’m concerned about.”

  “What?”

  “That you’re going to write about me. Relationships consist of the said and the unsaid, and every relationship needs to have some unsaid. If you write about me I’ll know your unsaid, and it could be bad for us.”

  This was not what I wanted to hear. I had already been plotting out the beginning of my next column: I was going to write about me asking him to be in it and him saying maybe. It would be totally meta-, and meta- was very cutting edge these days.

  “But I’m feeling good about you,” I said. “I like you. It’s only in bad relationships that there’s a huge gap between the said and the unsaid. Wouldn’t it be OK for me to write about you if I wrote good things?”

  “No,” he said. “It still makes me nervous. I want you to promise never to write about me.”

  “OK,” I said dubiously. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is. I don’t want to be just another story to you.”

  I understood what he meant. He wanted me to affirm that he was different from the boys who could be reduced to a thousand words. He was asking me to put him in a different category than my litany of rock-tool flings by not making our relationship public. He’d made himself patently clear: if I wrote about him in my column, I’d never get to see his again. I had to honor his request. Yet honoring his request left me with a huge predicament.

  I was on the brink of Serious Change, and I wanted my readers—and parents—to know. I was tired of carrying the metropolitan smut torch. I didn’t want to mine my past again and pretend I was still single when I wasn’t. But if I couldn’t write about Jake, and I didn’t want to distort the truth anymore, I wasn’t sure what else I could do.

  That afternoon Corinne Riley, the Week senior editor, left a message on my machine inviting me to a book party at a SoHo gallery for a famous lecherous writer. She said there would be food and booze and interesting people. Maybe the party could be the answer to my Jake problem. Maybe something exciting would happen—like a brawl between two hot young novelists—and I’d be there to document it. That column could be the beginning of a whole new bent for me. If I played my cards right I could slowly transform myself from pomo ho to shrewd, keen observer of the urban literati.

  I called Corinne back immediately and told her I’d go. “Wear something cute,” she said. I opted for a tight black minidress with plastic gold beading around the neck, black stockings, and the red go-go boots.

  The entire place was swarming with fops and anorexics. I felt completely out of place and Corinne was nowhere in sight. I headed straight for the bar, pounded wine, and wolfed down cheese sticks, trying to act like an independent, important sex columnist who didn’t need to talk to anybody in order to feel cool. All these skinny women with bad posture and British accents kept traipsing past me, and each time one went by I’d get an incredible urge to stick my finger out and try to topple her.

  Forty-five minutes later I spotted Corinne coming through the door. She was wearing a print blouse and a knee-length tweed skirt with black motorcycle boots. I stumbled over and said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m drunk.” In my eagerness to hug her, my wineglass tipped and some of it spilled on the floor. She grabbed my napkin and leaned down to wipe it up. That was when I noticed she was wearing garters.

  “Wow,” I said. “Garters.”

  “I always wear garters,” she said. “They’re much less restrictive than panty hose.”

  “I’m wearing control-top tights,” I said, lifting my skirt to show her.

  She laughed. “You shouldn’t wear control-top with a dress that’s so short. The control part shows under the hem. It’s tacky.” This chick meant serious business.

  A few minutes later the crowd started moving toward a podium, and the lecherous writer began to read. I wanted to be a shrewd, keen observer of the urban literati, but his voice was so droning it made me want to go to sleep.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Corinne whispered.

  “OK,” I whispered back. So my next column wouldn’t be about the party. Instead it would be a vivid portrait of a strong female beat writer trying to make it in a prejudiced and ugly world.

  We headed outside and I linked my arm through hers. When we hit Prince she said, “Let’s stop in the J. Crew store. I want to check out some clothes.” She took jackets and sweaters off the rack and held them up to me, telling me which ones I’d look best in. As she lifted up a black cashmere sweater I noticed that she had beautiful nails. Long, painted, and filed.

  “Have you ever been a hand model?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, “for a
couple years in high school, but then I ran into some cuticle problems and had to give it up.”

  “Do you think I could be one?” I asked, proffering my hand.

  “No,” she said, inspecting it and pursing her lips. “You have dyke hands.”

  “What?”

  “Dirty, stubby nails. Dyke hands.” She turned her back and headed for another clothing rack.

  Was she trying to find out which league I batted for? Was she indirectly propositioning me? Or was she just one of those ultrahip straight girls who felt comfortable throwing the word dyke around?

  We left the store and walked to a café on Greene Street. She bought us cappuccinos and we sat down at a table in the back. We dished about Turner and Jensen, the conservative politics of the paper, and undergarments.

  “So, when you buy garters,” I said, “do you buy them with matching underwear? Or do you not care about that?”

  “I rarely wear underwear.”

  Ooh boy. “Are you wearing any tonight?”

  “No.” She smiled lasciviously. It seemed like she was flirting with me. I was a solipsist but these signs were loud and clear. And I knew Jake wouldn’t mind if I told him I hooked up with a chick, because guys never mind when their girlfriends cheat on them with chicks. More often, they want details.

  Before I could decide what to do, though, she stood up, said, “I should go home. I have to finish this piece on squatters,” kissed me on the cheek good-bye, and walked out the door. I couldn’t believe it. The broad had been rattling my chain all along!

  But on the cab ride home I realized there was a way I could make a play for Corinne without having to ask her consent. If I wrote a column about the two of us getting it on, I could accomplish three simultaneous goals: keeping my column spicy, staying in the relationship with Jake, and fictitiously living out my long-held lezzie urges. It was a totally different thing to fictionalize an affair with a man than to fictionalize one with a woman. The former was lame; the latter was subversive. If I pretended I was bi, “Run Catch Kiss” would grow in popularity among lesbians, bicurious girls, straight men, and maybe even gay men. Turner and Jensen would eat it up. It would be the twist of all twists: the straight slut bends.