My Old Man

by Amy Sohn

  “A crying baby isn’t the kind of natural I need,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “You sure you don’t have any condoms?”

  “I’m not gonna come in you,” he said, “so you don’t have to worry. I’m very good at not coming in women.”

  Before I could calculate the comfort quotient of the comment he turned me back onto my stomach. I did some math in my head. My period was over. I’d be all right. If this was the way he operated on all first dates, God only knew where his dick had been, but I tried not to think about that. If one thing was clear about Hank Powell it was that when it came to sex, things weren’t really about a conversation. This was a lame rationale for risky behavior but an accurate appraisal, I felt.

  He pushed up the dress again, looped his fingers against the waistband of my panties, and lowered them with one quick pull. Within a second he was in. I felt my body resisting, too nervous to open up. One thing I had loved about David was his never-ending supply of LifeStyles. It’s a big load off your chest when the guy does as he’s supposed to.

  “You gotta put something on,” I said, flipping over.

  “Why?”

  “Because…I’m from a different generation than you are.”

  “I know,” he said, sighing, “and this is exactly why I don’t have a lotta love for your generation.”

  He stood up and headed toward the bedroom. His pants were off and he walked like a woman, his head pushed forward like a bird’s, his legs long and lean, his hand resting on his paunch. I watched him disappear through the doors and then I looked down at my own body. My dress was hiked up to my chin, my bra pushed halfway up my breasts, the underwire bisecting them so it looked like I had four. I lowered it and placed my boobs in, then fixed my dress so it was normal.

  “The sheath is ready!” he called. I took a deep breath and went in. The lighting was soft and Powell was lying on his bed sporting wood.

  I climbed up next to him. He put his hand on my face, and kissed me, open-mouthed and rough. I felt his erection bang against my thigh. He reached over to the nightstand and unwrapped a condom. I took the wrapper. Spermicided Trojan. “Is this all you have?” I said.

  “What do you think this is, an all-you-can-eat buffet?”

  He started to unroll it onto himself but an inch of the way down he stopped, flustered, and said, “I don’t know which way is up.”

  “Lemme do it.”

  I climbed on top of him, inspected it, flipped it the other way, and unrolled it in about two seconds. “How’d you get so good at that?” he said.

  “Eighth grade health ed.”

  “You wicked child!” he said. He tackled me and tossed my clothes onto the floor.

  As he entered he started to growl. It wasn’t rhythmic along with the thrusting. It came out at odd intervals, from deep inside him like he was becoming someone else. His face was turned to the side, his eyes wild and strange, his hair messy with sweat. I felt like he was murdering me and I heard myself say, “It’s so wonderful and so terrible.”

  “Grrrrmmm,” he said loudly, taking me with more venom. Half of me wanted to cry and the other half wanted to etch it all in my brain because I knew no other guy would wreck me this well.

  When he came twenty minutes later, his face drenched, his armpits dripping, his hair wild and wet, he growled extra loudly and clawed at my shoulders with his hands. My eyes went wide and I watched him like a science experiment. He clawed, growled, and spasmed, clawed, growled, and spasmed, and then went heavy on top of me, his heart pounding against my own, his face resting in the crook of my neck.

  I gingerly put my hand on his back and he spasmed again with a grunt. I eased him out. He lay next to me on his back and I watched his chest rise and fall. I turned over and inspected myself in the closet mirror to see what I was feeling. I looked violated but exhilarated. Suddenly he was in the reflection too, propped up on his elbow.

  “You’ve completely transformed,” he said, his hand on my hip, the light so soft on my old-school body that I felt like that violin girl in the painting.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Look how soft your eyes are. You look so feminine, and tender.”

  My contacts were kind of sticking so it was hard to see the expression on my face but even from a distance I saw what he meant. I was tranquil and liquid, my cheeks glowing.

  “You calmed me down,” I said.

  I got up and went into the bathroom. His toilet was standard-issue, but the shower curtain was cream-colored and gauzy and looked as expensive as everything else. As I was peeing I noticed something colorful behind the curtain so I opened it. In the center of the tub was a blue basin filled with dozens of Barbie dolls in various states of undress, their heads turned backwards like little Linda Blairs, many with missing limbs. Their little shirts and dresses were littered on top, along with buckets and bath toys, boats and Tupperware cups. As I went to wash my hands I noticed that by the side of the sink there was a colorful wooden step stool with the name NORA spelled out by a series of acrobatic clowns.

  I padded back into the bedroom. He was lying in the same position, his eyes closed.

  “How old is your daughter?” I asked.

  “Five.”

  “Is her name Nora?”

  “No, it’s Tuwanda. I bought her the step stool just to confuse her. Of course her name is Nora.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me about her before?”

  “It didn’t come up.”

  “Are you ashamed to be a father?”

  “I’m a multifaceted man. I don’t show all a my facets at every moment. I’m like a diamond that way.”

  Clearly this was not the whole story. There had been half a dozen occasions when he could have said something about her but he’d chosen not to. Naturally, his reluctance to reveal her only made me want to meet her a thousand times more. “Where does she sleep?” I asked. He pointed to a door that I presumed led to a guest room. “How often do you see her?”

  “Three times a week.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “She’s smart and she likes to raise hell. She’s impish. She loves dolls but she hates skirts. She’s a tomboy.”

  “You better watch out,” I said, “because when tomboys grow up they turn into sluts.”

  “Believe me, I know. I’m glad she’s only five.”

  I wanted to ask if I could meet her but I decided his reticence was a sign I’d best not bombard. I felt Nora could be the answer to my own bourgeois predicament: it was a million times cooler to be a stepmom than a mom. You could deal with the good stuff without any of the bad. Nora wouldn’t be my responsibility so there was no danger I’d transform into an Ubermom, which meant I could maintain my piece-of-ass status. It could allow me to sample at the table of motherhood without actually taking a plate.

  The gleaming thought of child meeting made me horny and warm. I put my hand on his head and smoothed down his hair. I snuggled my nose into his armpit and took a deep, loving whiff.

  “Hmm,” I said dreamily, resting my head on his shoulder. “I wonder what I should do now.”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “It’s so late. Maybe I should sleep here.”

  He gazed at me intently and said, “For six months after my wife and I split up I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel around me on the bed. I was looking for her body. I would pat each portion of the sheets, on both sides of me, night after night until I realized I was totally alone, and then I would start to cry.”

  “That must have been very upsetting for you,” I said, stroking his cheek.

  “Are you kidding? I was crying from relief. It was a joyous, overwhelming flood of relief to finally be rid of that castrating bitch!”

  “How long has it been?” I said, jerking my hand away.

  “Three years. But I still have a hard time having anyone sleep over. I just can’t do it. My nature won’t allow it.”

  “What do you mean
your nature?”

  “I have a very strong connection with my nature and when it tells me not to do something I have to listen. Otherwise I become a trickster—the trickster for many years has been a very significant figure in my subconscious—and you don’t want to be around when I’m him. Put on ya clothes. I’ll walk ya home.” He got out of bed and I leaned over the edge to look for my bra.

  ON the way down my block we almost tripped over the PSB, the Pacific Street Bum. He was an enormous bearded Middle Eastern guy with a huge Buddhalike belly who lay on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot across from my apartment. He never asked for money, he just hung out horizontally, in varying degrees of consciousness. He used the green fence of the parking lot as shelves for all his stuff—I’d walk by and see shirts, shoes, individual socks resting in the nooks. Once I even saw a banana tottering but not falling.

  I had asked the guy in the beverage center down the block from my building if he knew anything about him and he said rumor had it he used to be a millionaire but lost all his money gambling. It was hard to believe. He looked like a caricature of a bum, with grime all over his face, and he always showed a little bit of plumber’s crack.

  From the corner it looked like he was sleeping but as we passed he raised his hand to the cigarette in his mouth and took a drag. I jumped.

  “You see what I mean about this being a bourgeois neighborhood?” said Powell. “Even the bums are spoiled.”

  When we got to my front door I said, “Thank you for dinner.”

  “Ya very welcome.”

  I wanted to race into his arms and kiss him a thousand times on the lips but I had a feeling it might not be the smoothest move. “I had a wonderful time,” I said.

  “And you,” he said, “are one of the more intriguing Gyno Americans I’ve encountered.”

  I nodded and waited for him to kiss me but instead he just said, “Awright. I’ll talk to you soon.” And before I was safely inside, insulated and safe from the PSB, he walked down the street.

  WHEN I got upstairs there was a note on my door from Liz that said, “Knock me up.”

  She opened the door in sweats and a T-shirt. Liz looks very different when she’s not dressed up. Her face seems skinny and frail and her body way too tiny. Her face was all blotchy like she’d been crying. “Are you all right?” I said.

  She shook her head no and led me in. Her place had the same layout as mine but it was sloppier. Every spare surface was covered with feminist textbooks, pop psychology, hard-rock CDs, and modern Jewish philosophy. Her desk was a beautiful glass Corbusier table and though it was a mess she had a fourteen-inch PowerBook right in the center, glowing regally. On the walls she had posters of the Smiths, Patti Smith, and the White Stripes, and her couch was draped with stoner Indian fabrics, the kind Deadheads had in college dorms. Her coffee table was bean-shaped with a projection of wood on it and her white Flokati rug was always filthy with pennies and pieces of dirt.

  She had a vinyl vacuum cleaner box next to the TV and inside there were a hundred pornos she’d collected over the years—many on DVD. Her favorite director was a guy named Joey Silvera, who she liked for his ass fetish and love of transsexuals. Together we had watched ten minutes of a film called A Clock Strikes Bizarre on Butt Row, but after an unsettling portion in which a Mexican girl with a mustache ejaculated on the camera I insisted we watch Double Indemnity instead.

  “So I met a cute Jew,” Liz said, lying on her back on the rug and folding her hands over her stomach, as I sat on the couch.

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I said.

  “Noooo,” she moaned. “Remember that JCC–Manhattan benefit I told you I was going to? Well, it was last night. I’m standing by the bar putting on my glasses so I could read the bar menu, when the sweetest-looking Jewboy came up to me. He had this flap of dark brown hair and the most amazing upper body, with a real old-fashioned Jew ass. You know when it kind of curves out in the Dockers?”

  “Bubble butt?”

  “Yes! He had the most incredible bubble butt! So he says to me, ‘Someone with eyes as beautiful as yours should never wear glasses.’ ” I snorted. “I know,” she said. “Then he said I looked like Daryl Hannah. Racheleh, do you have any idea how many times I have been told I look like Daryl Hannah? And they all think they’re the first to say it.”

  She didn’t look anything like Daryl Hannah, except that her hair was light and her eyes were blue. She always said she got her eyes from a slutty great-grandmother, who must have been raped by a Cossack.

  “It’s because men type us,” I said. “They find it hard to distinguish, so they just see us in broad categories. Men look at women the way black people look at white people.”

  “Exactly. But I was trying to be open-minded and patriotic and take what I could get. I said, ‘Yes, I’m the Jewish Daryl Hannah.’ He said, ‘The Daryl Hannah and Her Sisters.’ So we keep talking and it turns out he’s a lawyer for Skadden Arps. His name’s Brian Ittner and he lives on the Upper West. He’s into mountain climbing, dim sum, and this lymphoma charity. The male me. Could you die? We talk for like two hours, he asks me to his apartment for a nightcap, and all I can think in the cab over is, This is some first-rate BM.” That was Liz’s slang for Boyfriend Material. I had told her several times to pick a better acronym but she refused.

  “As we’re riding over we’re quoting Annie Hall, debating Middle East politics, and when we got to his place, on Sixty-seventh, he kind of lunged for me. We went to the bed, and he banged the shit out of me. I came three times—in the position, I might add,”—she looked at me imploringly—“and then he did, and when he pulled out I immediately felt The Shift.”

  “What’s The Shift?” I said.

  “You know. That cloud that hovers over them as soon as they jizz. The one that’s like a mushroom cloud spelling out ‘STAY AWAY.’ ”

  “Oh, that one,” I said. I had seen that look less than an hour before. Maybe this was a universal male quality I’d been lucky enough not to notice before because I’d always gone for men with the souls of women.

  “So I stood up and put my dress back on and then I looked at him and said, ‘Brian? I’m gonna go.’ He’s just lying there, under the covers, all postcoital and droopy-eyed, and he says, ‘You don’t mind if I stay in bed, do you?’ ”

  “Whaaat?”

  “Rachel, I have had men not walk me to a cab. I have had men not walk me to the lobby. But this man did not walk me to the door.” She sat upright and looked at me as though I had to know something she didn’t. “If he didn’t want a wife, why did he come to a JCC event? If he wanted a one-night stand why didn’t he just fuck one of the girls in the Condé Nast building where he works, one of the shiksas, the blondes with the blowouts?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She put her hands to her cheeks and moaned, “I let that Jewboy bang me and he wouldn’t even walk me to the door. Racheleh!” She grabbed both of my hands with hers. “I have to stop fucking!”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “Because I love fucking!” She started to tear up and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “I know what you mean,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “You want something more, something more ethereal and fulfilling, but men take one look at you and misunderstand. Women are sin, men want sin. Men are soul, women want soul.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she said, scowling.

  It had sounded so good when Powell had said it, but so stupid when I did. I had to work on my execution. “It’s just something I heard somewhere.”

  She eyed me warily and said, “If I ever run into him again at another event I will die. I will literally drop dead of mortification. I never want to see that Brian Ittner again.”

  “Brian Shittner,” I said.

  She laughed. “Yeah. I hope I never see Shittner again.”

  She got up, pulled a Kleenex from the box on her desk, and sat back down. “Oh, Racheleh. I just can
’t stand that look! That look! Right after they’ve rolled off, and they turn to you with this disdain, and you know all they’re thinking is, How do I get her out of here? When a man makes me come, I like him more. How come when we make them come, they like us less?”

  “Maybe because every time they come they feel closer to death.”

  “What’s that on your face?”

  My hands flew up to my cheeks. “What do you mean?”

  “It looks like a bruise or something, to the right of your mouth.” I jogged into the bathroom. She was right. I had a little shiner on my jaw, a one-inch circle of stubble scab that I must have gotten when Powell was kissing me.

  I put my finger to it gingerly and spotted Liz in the mirror behind me. I jumped. “So what is it?” Her blue eyes pierced mine. She always got abrasive when she was seeking information.

  “It must be a zit,” I said.

  “It doesn’t look like a zit,” she said. “It looks like a bruise.”

  She eyed me in the mirror like in a detective movie. She was trying to out-Columbo me but I wasn’t going to let her. There was something about Powell that made me want to keep him secret.

  I did an about-face and brushed past her into the living room. “Is something going on?” she said, following.

  “No.”

  “Where were you when I knocked?”

  “Having dinner with my parents,” I said quickly.

  “This late?”

  “Then I stopped at Roxy and had a drink.”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “Really?” she said. “’Cause you look JBF.”

  “What’s JBF?”

  “Just been fucked.”

  Though I was tempted to spill, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what Liz had to say. As out-there as she was about her own romantic choices, I was afraid that if I told her the truth she’d tell me I shouldn’t have slept with him on the first date, or let him in without a condom, however briefly. And even if she’d be right I wasn’t ready to have Powell looked at just yet. I wanted him to be mine and mine alone, not a pair of underwear to be hung out on a laundry line for the whole neighborhood to see. He might turn out to be the biggest mistake of my life but I wanted him to be my mistake.