by Amy Sohn
He was fully naked and stroking himself. “Oh no,” he said when he saw the rubbers.
“So you don’t want to do it?” I said. Two could play this game.
He pulled me to him and said, “I guess I’ll just hold my nose.” I unwrapped the condom and unrolled it.
I climbed on top and leaned myself forward, using CAT, just like Liz had said to do, and roamed around. “Mmmmm,” I said. Everything around my pelvis got warm so I pressed my face even closer.
“Ya suffocating me,” he said.
I put one hand over his mouth and moved more vigorously. “Shut up, you little hoo-ah,” I said. Instead of getting angry he just grinned and put his hands on my hips. I felt clear and hot, like a body more than a brain. I thought about him coming through my door. I remembered this quote I’d read somewhere, that the best part of making love to a woman was climbing the steps to her apartment, and I wondered why if that was true so many guys didn’t make it that far.
But I felt like things had changed since he’d tied me up in the boiler room, like I’d freed him to be a decent guy. We could do anything now. I could tie him up with rope and whip his fat middle-aged ass.
I moved around like I was stirring soup, focusing all my energy on my clit. I tried not to think about anything except how good it felt. I closed my eyes and kept my hands planted by Powell’s face. I imagined secretaries required to give blow jobs to their bosses, and women in forests making love to men with heads of wolves. I imagined important business conferences with each man assigned a personal female attendant, clothed only in expensive lingerie, there to wait on him hand and foot. I thought about the scene on The Sopranos where the guys did it with a huge group of Icelandic stewardesses. I remembered the part in Candy where Professor Mephesto grabs her breast and her sherry glass drops to the floor. These images warred it out in my mind, some lingering longer than others, some potent immediately while others flitted away. Twenty minutes later something miraculous happened: I came.
“Oh my God!” I said, less out of orgasmic delight than shock.
“Get a hold of yasself,” Powell said.
“Oh my God ah my God ah ma gah I’m a guy! I’m a guy! I’m a guy!”
“Calm your animus down,” Powell said, removing my hand from his mouth.
“So this is what it’s like!” I said as the contractions subsided. “To just use someone for what they can give to you! You’re nothing but a piece of abdomen rubbing against my clit! You’re flesh attached to a body! A tool, a toy!” I raised my hands up in the air like an athlete who’d just won a game.
“Are you going to do this every time?”
“Leamme alone,” I said. “This is a big moment for me. I see what all the fuss is about.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is why so many men are jerks to women. When you fuck to come it changes everything. Women fall in love because they have to find a reason to fuck the guy without coming but men don’t need a reason and that’s why they’re so blasé about commitment.”
“You sound like me,” he said, like that was the biggest compliment he could give.
I held on to the bottom of the condom and climbed off. He stared at his erection like I was a waiter who’d forgotten to clear the table.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m finished. Can’t go any longer.”
“Whaddaya mean you’re finished?”
“I want to feel what it’s like to be a guy. To fuck to come and nothing more.”
He looked slightly stunned, but then the stunned look was replaced with something more resigned, like he was too exhausted to put up a fight. “You’re not going to argue?” I said.
“You know I have the heart of a complacent woman.”
I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I was exuberant and alive, my cheeks flushed. I got back in bed and spooned him, resting my chin in that place between his head and his shoulder. He put his hand on my ass and pulled me closer, which surprised me so much I almost leaned over to check and be sure it was him. It was the best night of my year: I’d fucked to come and gotten Hank Powell to sleep over.
Just as I was drifting off I heard a strange whirring noise coming from up above. It sounded like an industrial fan or a vacuum cleaner. There was a moan—I couldn’t tell who it was—followed by another, lower-pitched electronic hum. The lights flickered off for a second and then came back on. “Ohhhhh,” said my dad. It was hard to tell if he was in pain or pleasure.
“Is that who I think it is?” Powell said.
“Uh-huh.” I nodded, throwing a pillow over my face to muffle the noise.
“You like that?” Liz said.
“Do I like it?” my dad exclaimed. “That feels am az ing!”
I rolled over onto my side and groaned. There was a third humming noise, this one higher-pitched like a bee, and then a giggle and a yelp.
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Powell. “Are they running a factory up there?”
“She’s very into equipment,” I said.
“It sounds like he is too.”
“Turn it faster!” my dad said, like he was calling plays at a football game. “Oh yes! Yes!”
“Does he know you’re here?” Powell said.
“I think he thinks I’m working. I switched my shift tonight to be with you.”
“Oh, Elizabeth,” my father cried. “This is heavenly!”
Six months ago I was a normal first-year rabbinical student, my greatest concerns being whether I’d finish my Mishnah reading in time for class and sitting far away from Stu Zaritsky so he wouldn’t stare at my tits during modern Hebrew. Now I couldn’t even have a guy over without being aurally accosted by my father and my upstairs neighbor’s electronic sex show.
“Oh baby!” my dad said. “I’m gonna come!”
“I’m gonna go,” I told Powell, getting up.
“Are you kidding?” he said, standing up on the bed so he could hear better. “This is action! This is primal shit right here.”
“It’s only primal if it’s your parents!”
“It’s postmodern primal, then!” he said. “Don’t you see what an incredible opportunity this is for your psychic self? Your dad’s having sex with a surrogate you while you’re down here with a surrogate him!”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s fallen off the pedestal and launched himself into the Industrial Age with a woman young enough to be his kid! What’s going through your brain right now? What are you thinking about?” He cocked his head at me and gave me a deep, searching look.
“About how I want to run out of the apartment!” I said. I bolted into the living room with my clothes and began to throw them on.
“You gotta get through this!” Powell cried, chasing after me and holding my arms. “Break free!”
My father said “Ahhh,” and Liz said “Yes, baby!” I didn’t know how many heads they were working with, and how many holes. And I didn’t want to know. I hoped nobody got electrocuted. How would I explain it to my mother?
Just as I was dressed and almost out the door I heard my father’s high-pitched “Oh broooooooother!” sail through the floorboards, into my ears, right into the part of my brain that would form all of my future relationships with men.
“Why are you being so self-pitying?” Powell asked, jumping up and down like a crazy circus man. “This is wonda ful! It’s you coming face-to-face with your animus problem! Your father image is breaking through the ceiling of your idealization. You have incontrovertible proof that the man’s a cheater, and not only that but an energy sucker. You’ll never be able to see him the same way again.”
“I know!”
“You shouldn’t lament it. It’s the truth that’s going to catapult you into your adulthood. You should have separated from your folks fifteen years ago but you’ve delayed it till now! Until you recognize your father as an entity separate from you, an entity capable of his own needs that is not stern or controlling or punitive, you will fo
rever be married to your parents and unable to have a healthy relationship.” He was eyeing me with a dangerous smile. His penis was perking up again, the condom still on.
“Now that is seriously sick,” I said.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “When I overhear the shattering of the bourgeois ideal I get excited.”
I leapt up and bolted backwards toward the wall. “I’m not going to have sex with you at a moment like this! I’m dealing with some serious shit here.”
“You’re too sanctimonious,” he said, with a scowl.
“I don’t think it’s sanctimonious for a girl not to be in the mood given the circumstances.”
“I thought you were different,” he said, shaking his head angrily. “But you backpedal and lead with fear!”
“Not everyone has such an easy time breaking off the shackles of the bourgeois ideal! What if they decide to go for another round?”
He shook his head and pulled the condom off. “Ow!” he said, as a hair caught in it. “You see? This is why I never use them.” He stormed into the bedroom and began putting on his pants.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting outta here.”
“But I thought you’d spend the night,” I said.
“I thought so too,” he said. “But nothing is ever simple.” He put on the rest of his clothes and walked out, the door slamming loudly behind him.
I lay down on my bed and tried to block everything out. Every time I took one step forward the men in my life had to throw me back on the floor. My father was assaulting me with his sex and whether he knew it or not, it didn’t matter. He had stopped caring about anyone but himself.
It was bad enough that I knew his vocalization of choice but now I’d have trouble just looking him in the eye. I had no idea he was so open-minded. These toys were the equivalent of high-speed cable access. Once you signed on there was no going back. Liz owned practically the entire Good Vibrations catalogue. She had undoubtedly introduced him to areas he’d never explored before, positions he didn’t know existed. Before long she’d find a way to make him come from his nostrils. How could he go back to my mom now that he had a new bag of tricks?
Powell had been not just useless but actively detrimental to my sanity. I had invited him over with the hopes it would take our relationship to a new level and instead he had only proven that he was bona fide crazy. If he’d heard what he’d heard and it made him horny, what did it say about his ability to take care of me on a long-term basis?
I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. My face was haggard and sad and from the side my jawline looked just like my dad’s. He always had to barge his way into my affairs even if it meant coming through the ceiling. How could I take any pleasure in my very first hands-free O when it was followed immediately by something like this?
I dropped out of school and he’d decided he liked being unemployed. I found an older man and immediately he grabbed for a younger woman. I came from fucking and he’d suddenly discovered perineal joy. It just wasn’t fair. No matter what I did he had to upstage me.
AT five o’clock the next night there was a knock on my door. I hoped it was Powell coming to apologize for being such a jerk but when I looked through the peephole I saw my dad. He looked crazed and giddy. Maybe it was residual voltage from the night before. “What is it?” I said, opening up.
“Your mother found out.” He didn’t seem sad or even worried. He seemed happy.
I felt my heart plummet out of my chest down through the first three floors into the basement of the building. “What?” I said, holding my hand against the oven to steady myself. “How?”
“The details aren’t important,” he said. “What is important is that it was the best thing that ever happened to our marriage!”
I couldn’t believe it. All my fantasies about her being capable of forgiveness had come true. Once he explained just how wrong he’d been my mom had seen a humanity in him he hadn’t displayed in years, realized how much she really loved him, and decided to forgive and forget.
“So you’re leaving Liz?” I asked, my voice cracking happily.
“Leaving her?” he said. “I’m moving in with her!”
Rights are
Like Tights
IT turned out my mom had found out through her friend Carol Landsman, who had spotted my dad and Liz canoodling at Halcyon, the coffee shop on Smith, and deliberated for a week before breaking down and calling. When my dad arrived home from an interview in the city my mom began throwing computer books at him, screaming that she was a moron for thinking he was job hunting when clearly he was hunting for something else.
She said the woman had to be a whore because only a whore would ever sleep with him and my brilliant father cried out that she was a graduate student, at which point my mom put two and two together and realized it was Liz. My dad didn’t deny it, sending my mom into another burst of fury, which involved her picking up one of the dining room chairs and getting it over her head before he wrenched it out of her hands and begged her to get a hold of herself. That was when she threatened to call the cops. Before she could, he went down to the bedroom for some clothes, ran out, called Nina Halberstam, and told her to go over quick to make sure my mom was OK.
When he finished the story my head felt thick like I had just taken a Tylenol PM. “So that’s it?” I said, trying to find enough saliva in my mouth to get a sentence out. “It’s all over, just like that? You’re not going to go into couples therapy and try to work it out?”
“Are you out of your mind?” he said. “Did you think she was going to forgive me? Mom’s practically Sicilian when it comes to forgiveness. She’s still mad at me for the time I prank-called her the first year of our marriage pretending to be her Israeli ex-boyfriend Yigal, wanting her back. Did you honestly think she’d forgive me for sleeping with another woman?”
“Maybe,” I whispered hollowly. I wandered over to the kitchen table and sat down in a chair, feeling my heart throbbing in my chest. “I thought that was what you meant when you said you were in process. I thought it meant you were weighing the value of staying.”
“I was,” he said, “but if I was going to stay with her I wasn’t going to confess!”
“So you didn’t even try to argue with her?”
“She was going to call the cops—I had to get out of there! And she had those fierce eyes, the ones that mean she’s not in the mood for a discussion.” His passivity made him useless at a time like this; how could he argue when she was the strong-willed one?
“Why do you have to move in with Liz?” I said. “You could rent your own place. Just see how things go. Maybe with a little bit of time you’ll feel better. You’ll miss Mom.”
“I don’t see any point in postponing what I’m sure would be an eventual move-in anyway. Liz said she’d make room for me in her place and next month we could start looking for a place together.”
I slid down from the chair onto the floor like a dead Glenn Close leaving a streak of blood on the bathroom tile wall. “I know it sounds strange,” he said, heaving me up, “but once Mom told me she knew, it was like this huge weight was lifted off me. And then when I saw Elizabeth and she seemed so happy, well, everything became clear.”
“I thought you loved Mom.”
“Of course I love her. But we’ve been married thirty-two years and people change. It’s a different kind of love. I’m just so glad everything’s out in the open now, that Liz and I don’t have to hide.” He made it sound like they were some lesbian couple from the 1940s instead of an oversexed alter kocker and a nymphomaniacal trophy girl. “Elizabeth and I have to be able to be together without sneaking around. Without being ashamed of our love.”
Hearing the words “love” and “Elizabeth” in the same sentence made me have to swallow hard not to upchuck. “Just look on the bright side,” he said, squeezing my shoulders from behind me. “You and I could start spending a lot more time together.”
“That’s
not a bright side.”
“It’s what I’ve always wanted! Now that Liz and I can be in the open you and I can go to lunch together every day!”
“I don’t want to spend any time with you. Don’t you get it? I want you to go home.”
“I can’t do that now. And even if I could, I don’t think it’s what I want.” I squinted, trying to see if there was anything recognizable about his face. But he was a different person—not just because he’d lost twenty pounds, but because he seemed totally unrepentant. He sat down next to me and rested his hand in his chin. “I know it’s hard right now,” he said, “but I think we’ll both get used to this soon.”
“I can’t believe I was so stupid as to think you were being honest with me at the bar. When you told me to give you more time, that was all just a ploy because you were afraid I was going to tell Mom?”
“It wasn’t a ploy. I was searching. I was lost.”
“You sound like Billy Graham,” I said. “The Jewish Billy Graham.”
“Please don’t do this,” he said. “I know it’s a strange situation but don’t despair yet. It’s all just a little too new.” He brushed some crumbs off the table into his hand, walked over to the garbage can, and threw them in. Then he turned around brightly and said, “So Liz wanted to know if she could cook for the both of us tonight. Whaddaya say? You could invite Hank. It’ll be a double date.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“It could be fun!” I stood up, walked him out the door, and closed it in his face. He kept knocking and knocking but I turned up NPR so I couldn’t hear.
THE first person I called was Powell. He didn’t say anything for a while and then he sighed and said, “He wanted to be caught. Men cheat overtly because they don’t believe they’re entitled to happiness without strings.”
“But if he wanted to be caught, then—you mean he wanted out of the marriage?”
“Of course.”
“So you think it’s over? I was hoping this could be the best thing for my parents.” Even I didn’t believe it as I said it. “Maybe now that they have everything out in the open they can finally be together again, in an honest way.”
