by Amy Sohn
“Um, sure,” she said. “Of course.”
When I got off the phone, I took out a notepad, put it on my lap, and wrote a column about the love issue. I called it “The Line of Seriousness.” But when I read it over and envisioned him seeing it in the paper, I got queasy. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know just how upset I was about his slowtoexpressloveia. I was afraid it might make the situation even worse. But my sentiments were real, and I didn’t want to tone them down for his benefit, so I E-mailed the column to Turner and hoped everything would work out.
It didn’t. The day the column came out, Adam called me at work. “Is that what you really feel?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Does it really upset you that much that I can’t say it?”
“No!” I shouted. “It doesn’t upset me that much! I mean, sure, it bothered me a smidgen, but what I was going for in that piece . . . I mean, what I was aiming at was to exaggerate my fear. You know, for comic effect. To make it out that I was like totally bummed about you not saying it. I’m not really that bummed. Not at all.”
“Good,” he said.
Over the next couple weeks I tried to think of other things to write about besides my insecurity, but that was the only aspect of my life that interested me. My next column, “Green Girl,” was about the rampant jealousy I felt whenever Adam and I went to a party and he talked to another woman. Then there was “Breathing Room,” about the time I asked him to move in with me and he said he was nowhere near ready, and “The Phantom Woman,” about my fear that he would leave me for a woman who had all the confidence I lacked.
The only bonus to my incessant insecurity-chronicling was that it finally created some reader response. Turner forwarded me personal letters like “Why are you sticking with Novel Lover, Ariel? He doesn’t seem to appreciate you at all” and “If you want a guy who treats you right, you can always call me.” And in “The Mail” even my diehard detractors began to take pity on me:
Ariel Steiner could get any guy in the city. Why she’s sticking with such a commitmentphobic, neurotic weirdo like Novel Lover is a mystery to me.
FRED SADOWSKY, West Village
At first, I thought Ariel Steiner had finally met her match. But now I’ve changed my mind. Novel Lover is a screwup, Ariel! He’s never going to give you the love you’re looking for until he works out his issues with his mother. This is a common problem with Jewish men. Trust me. I know. Tell Novel Lover to get a good therapist and then come back to you.
HOWARD KESSEL. Upper East Side
As exciting as it was to be getting letters again, they only made the Adam situation even worse. Each Wednesday when a new reader weighed in on our relationship, Adam would call me at work and ask anxiously, “Do you think that guy’s right? Do you feel like I’m not giving you enough love?”
“Well, maybe you could give me just one percent more,” I’d say, and then he’d let out a long sigh and hang up quickly.
We were eating dinner at a Lebanese place on Atlantic Avenue the night “The Phantom Woman” came out when he said, “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“Lately I’ve been feeling like you’re playing me too close. Men need to be able to chase in order to feel good about themselves, and I haven’t been able to chase you lately. I want you to try to wait for me to come to you. Like in Field of Dreams. ‘If you build it, they will come.’ I will come. I just need to feel like coming to you is a choice that I’m making. Like I’m the one soliciting you, instead of you always soliciting me. I don’t think I should sleep over tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have to wake up in my own bed to do good work on my novel.”
This was a strange tune. He’d never had a problem sleeping at my place before. “OK,” I said. “Then I’ll sleep at yours.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea either. I want my apartment to be my own space, my cave.”
“Cave? Have you been reading John Gray?”
“I was leafing through the book the other day at the supermarket, and it’s not all crap. There are some very wise things in there. Men need a place they can call their own.”
“All right,” I sighed. “But what about tomorrow? Will you sleep over tomorrow night?”
And then he uttered the six words that every woman loathes to hear: “Let’s just play it by ear.”
“Why are you feeling like this?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
But I did. Although he never said it flat out, I knew the cause of his claustrophobia: my column. It was slowly driving him away. He wouldn’t have wanted to drift if I hadn’t been hitting him over the head with the fact that I was getting afraid. There was no gap between what I felt and what he knew I felt. I had been letting him know on a weekly basis, and in no uncertain terms, that he had all the power, and when a guy knows he has all the power, he flees. I couldn’t let Adam flee. He was the love of my life. He just didn’t know I was the love of his. I had to find a way to even the scales.
I got the idea how to do it after we saw the Sam Shepard one-acts at the Public. Sam Shepard was my second-biggest matinee idol after Nick Fenster. My lust for him first sprouted when I saw Baby Boom at age thirteen. As soon as Diane Keaton awoke in Shepard’s veterinary office and his creased brow and tender eyes appeared on that screen, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I got my first period.
Sophomore year at Brown, I was assigned Fool for Love and Other Plays for a playwriting class. I was sitting on my bed reading Curse of the Starving Class one night when I found myself flipping back to the cover to stare at his photo. His chin was resting in his hand, and it looked like he was thinking, You’re a very naughty girl. I was a naughty girl. I stuck one hand down my pants and held the book with the other, and imagined the two of us going at it on his veterinary examining table, with various farm animals—and a nude and eager Diane Keaton—periodically wandering in to join in our country romp.
So when I read that three of Shepard’s plays were running on a bill at the Public, I got a pair of tickets for Adam and me. The first two were decent but didn’t blow either of us away. At intermission, we went out into the lobby, and I was leaning against a pillar, absentmindedly stroking his dome, when I suddenly saw him point straight ahead and exclaim, “There’s Shepard!” I followed his finger. Lo and behold, it was no lie. Sam Shepard himself was heading for the door.
“I wonder if he’s leaving,” Adam said.
“He’s probably just going for a smoke. Shepard smokes,” I sighed.
I was right. Through the glass, we watched him light up. He stood just to the left of the revolving door, leaning against the wall of the Public, tall and intense, smoke curling out of his mouth.
“Should we follow him?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I can’t talk to him. What would I say?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to go outside.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
The truth was no. Adam might have been the love of my life, but I was on my way to flirt with a living icon. I didn’t want my boyfriend coming along for the ride.
“It’s up to you,” I said, and went through the revolving door. It was a cold night and I was wearing a thin G.I. Joe T-shirt, so my nipples perked up immediately. I turned to Shepard so he could see how hard they were, then crossed over to his left so I would be out of Adam’s view. I wanted Adam to watch Shepard smiling at me and not be able to see what I was doing that was making him smile.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” said Shepard.
“So, what do you think?”
“About what?” He dragged in on a Marlboro while keeping his noncigarette hand tucked in his armpit. Somehow I always knew he’d be a Marlboro man. His fingers held the cigarette so hard the filter was flattened between them. I noticed that he had a beautiful healthy head of hair, soft and brown
. His cheeks were sunken and his front teeth were crooked. I was juicing hard.
“What do you think about the plays?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“Um, I liked the second one better than the first.”
“Why?”
Christ, this wasn’t any fun. I didn’t want to critique the evening. I wanted to tell him about my veterinary fantasy. I wanted to ask him what it was like touring with the Rolling Thunder Revue and tell him that “Brownsville Girl” was one of my all-time favorite songs. I wanted to tell him that a few years before I’d seen this movie on TV starring him and that French twat Julie Delpy, where they have a torrid affair without knowing they’re father and daughter, and that I’d masturbated to his love scenes, imagining I was his long-lost daughter lover.
“Why?” I repeated. “Because the first one was a little more static, more one-level, I guess.” There was another pause. He ashed. “Do you live in the city?” I asked.
“No.”
“Where do you live?”
“In the Midwest.” I could tell he was protecting his anonymity. He knew it was important not to reveal his state of residency because I could be a psycho with a secret plan to stalk him, Jessica Lange, and their kids in a bizarre Cape Fear replay.
The revolving door turned. Adam came through, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. “This is my boyfriend,” I said. I was acutely aware of the way the word “boyfriend” sounded in my mouth.
“Thank you for your plays,” said Adam.
Uch. I knew I wasn’t exactly spitting out the witty ones myself, but that kind of banal compliment struck me as the last thing a tough ex-cowboy like Shepard would want to hear. Adam made some boring comments about the one-acts and then there was a lull. I had to fill that lull! If Shepard got tired of us, he’d go back inside and my only interaction with a major seventies rebel and number four on my list of sexiest men alive, right after Johnny Depp, Fred Ward, and Ed Harris, would end on a disappointing note. I had to think on my feet.
“Do you have a tattoo?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
He didn’t answer. He just looked at me quizzically, a little embarrassed. I knew I’d overstepped my boundaries. Gotten too personal. I was drowning standing up.
Adam jumped in to save me. “She wants to know because I told her this story about how once I was in Elaine’s and I saw you, and I called this friend of mine who loves your work and said, ‘Sam Shepard’s here!’ and while I was on the phone with him I noticed that you had this tattoo on your left hand that my friend has too—a crescent moon. So I said, ‘And you won’t believe it! He has the same tattoo on his hand that you do!’ And my friend said, ‘Why do you think I have it, man?’ ”
We both looked eagerly at Shepard for his reaction shot. He smiled halfheartedly and flicked what remained of the cigarette out into the snow. He flicked that butt like he’d been flicking butts since before he could walk.
“Well, nice talking to you,” he said, keeping his left hand tucked in his armpit, and revolved through the door.
Adam and I looked at each other. “I think we did all right,” he said. “I think he liked the tattoo story.”
“I think he thought it was stupid. Why’d you come outside?”
“Well, I was in there imagining you talking to him and I just thought, I can’t pass up an opportunity like this, so I came out. I know you probably wanted to be alone with him. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure.”
The third one-act, Action, was kick-ass great. Shepard like it ought to be. Violent, alive, and intense. Adam was into it too because both the actors in it had shaved bald heads. On our way out we saw Shepard in the lobby. He smiled and said, “What did you think?”
“That was great!” I yelled.
“That was something else,” said Adam.
“Well, thanks for coming,” Shepard drawled lowly.
That night in bed, Adam and I had the best sex we’d had since we’d gotten together. We did it missionary, with my hand on my clit, and then he flipped me over and tweaked me till I came. I thought about Shepard the whole time through so my orgasm was long and intense.
The next morning, after Adam left, I sat down to write my column. The part about meeting Shepard was easy, but when I got to the part where Adam and I were in bed, I didn’t know what to do. Maybe he’d get upset if he knew I’d been thinking about Shepard. Maybe it was best not to include that part. But then it struck me that including it might be a wiser move than I knew. Adam would get totally jealous when he read it! He’d despise Shepard and at the same time, realize how much he loved me!
As Novel Lover ran the back of his hand across my nipples. I imagined that they were the butts of two Marlboros being pinched between Shepard’s rough, callused fingers. As we rolled around under the covers. I fantasized that after I came through the revolving door. Shepard took one look at me. lifted me up. carried me to the wall, pulled down his pants, then drove his Midwestern member into me hard and fast, right there on Lafayette Street. Novel Lover flipped me onto my stomach and ground my beef, and Shepard in my mind flipped me down onto the snow. Novel Lover’s train came a-running. and Shepard’s tooth of crime came prancing into the blue bitch of my cowboy mouth. I let out a yelp, Novel Lover moaned, and I squeezed him out, soft and easy.
•
On Monday night, Turner sent me an E-mail saying, “Good column, kid,” and Corinne left me a message saying she thought it was my best in weeks. Maybe what was good for my relationship was just as good for my career.
The afternoon it came out, Adam called me at work. “Hey,” I said coolly.
“I just wanted to say, great column this week.”
He was trying to be clever, I could tell. He didn’t want to let on that I’d made him jealous. Two could play this game as well as one.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You captured Shepard really well.”
“I tried.”
“And that part at the end where you fantasize about him when you’re in bed with me . . .”
“What about it?”
“Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious.”
“Hilarious?”
“Oh my God, it cracked me up. I read it over lunch and nearly spit out my food, it was so funny.”
“You thought it was funny?”
“Wasn’t that what you were going for?”
“I guess so, but—”
“I’m telling you, Ariel, you’re a brilliant comic writer. You’re like the nineties Elaine May.”
“I’m glad you thought it was funny,” I said slowly, “but it was also true.”
“I know! That’s what made it so funny.”
“So it doesn’t bother you that I—”
“Not at all! As a matter of fact, I was thinking about someone else that night too.”
“You were?”
“Yeah,” he murmured.
“Who were you thinking of?”
“Jessica Lange.”
I banged the receiver hard against my skull, hoping I’d get a blood clot and die. Not only had my plan completely backfired, but now I would have to wonder whether Adam was thinking about Jessica every time we did it. I couldn’t believe he was so forgiving. I couldn’t believe it was so hard to get a rise out of him. I had to up the ante.
The next day I got a message from Jason Levin, the monogamy-opposed ISO man. “I’ve been union organizing in Chicago for the past few years,” he said, “but I just got a teaching job in the South Bronx and I moved to Park Slope a few weeks ago. I’ve been reading your column and enjoying it immensely. I was hoping we could get together for a drink, tonight maybe, if you’re free.” I called him back immediately and we made plans to meet at a Korean bar on First Avenue.
“You look good,” he said when he walked in.
“Thanks,” I said. “So do you.” That was a lie. He seemed shorter than I remembered, and haggard, and he had a slightly desperate, frenzied
gaze in his eyes.
“You seem more mature. More grown-up,” she said.
“Monogamy will do that to a girl.”
“Who is this Novel Lover, anyway?”
“His name’s Adam. He’s a writer. What about you? Have you been seeing anyone lately?”
“My girlfriend broke up with me two months ago. We were together for a year and a half.” So that explained the desperate gaze. Men who aren’t used to being single always look shell-shocked when they first get back on the saddle.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yeah. How long have you and Adam been together?”
“A few months.”
“And you’re happy?”
“Oh my God, yes! I’m totally in love with him. He really knows how to treat a woman right. He respects me. He’s such a refreshing change of pace from all the jerks I dated in the past.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You said you were against monogamy when the truth was you couldn’t fall in love with me. If you knew that, you should have dumped me after a week, instead of duping me into thinking we had something.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just really confused. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He leaned in close. “You have such pretty eyes, Ariel. I never noticed them before.”
“There were a lot of things you didn’t notice about me,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “So you’re really in love with this guy, huh?”
“Yeah. Totally. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.”
For the next hour and a half we just made small talk, and although it was pleasant enough, it made me realize Jason wasn’t nearly the genius I’d made him out to be. He was bright and articulate and he still had this shy, charismatic charm, but he didn’t seem as brave or brilliant as he used to. He just seemed like a moderately intelligent, moderately attractive single guy.
When we finished our drinks he walked me to Second Avenue so I could hail a downtown cab. “I had a good time with you,” he said. “We should hang out again.”
