The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

by Neil McKinnon

  “Oh, no! On the contrary, Leticia. You were the first inspiration of my life. Because of you I found my true vocation — the quest for love. You made me see that a woman’s anatomy was far more interesting than canvas and paints. Later I realized that so was her psyche.” I finished my liqueur and ordered a brandy.

  “Cock-eyed bride … moustache ride.” Someone had spent a lot of time training Don Emilio’s birds.

  Leticia rolled her eyes toward the parrots. “They’re very crude. Do you come here often? … and why do you say that a woman’s psyche is interesting?”

  “Yes, I do come here often. Don Emilio’s food is excellent. A woman’s psyche is interesting because it’s one of the few mysteries left. All of the other so-called mysteries are just problems to be solved. Women, their psyches and sex are mysteries to be lived — they can never be solved.” I signalled for another brandy.

  “Female … male … piece of tail.” The parrots shrieked together.

  Leticia frowned and put her hands over her ears. “Oh, shut up,” she said.

  It took a moment to realize she was talking to the parrots. “They can’t understand you,” I said.

  She laughed. “I know. Maybe you’re right. But isn’t it frustrating to have mysteries you can’t explain? Surely men are also mysteries, although I confess that I don’t find them that interesting.”

  “Gawk … squawk … grab your cock.”

  Don Emilio came into the garden carrying a plate of mango and papaya. The parrots sensed lunch and my words carried across the garden in the sudden silence. “Oh no, Leticia. Men aren’t mysteries. They’re an open book and the first paragraph says, ‘if you can’t eat it, screw it or hit it with a golf club, grab a beer and turn the page’. There’s a parody of an old English poem that speaks of men not loving without sex and of women refusing sex without love:

  Jack and Jill went up the hill

  To play an adult game.

  Jack came down with a broken crown,

  Jill needed love before she came.

  They never tried the match again

  The impasse was complete.

  Jack could only love you see

  If Jill was indiscreet.

  Do you remember what happened after you ripped my painting the second time?”

  “Yes I do,” she answered.

  “The sight of you naked set the direction of my life. I’m in your debt. Were it not for that incident I could have wasted my years. I might have become an engineer, a lawyer or, God forbid, a cleric. Thank you for not telling your aunt.”

  I pointed to her glass. “Are you ready for another?”

  “No thanks, but you go ahead.”

  I waved at Don Emilio.

  Leticia’s smile returned. “But you obviously didn’t understand then, and I’m afraid you still don’t. I would never have told. I liked you. I wanted you to do what you did and I was disappointed when you didn’t pursue the matter. I ripped your painting to provoke you. I had formulated no plan but what transpired followed the oldest blueprint in the world.”

  “Aha, Leticia. You make my point. Women are so mysterious they don’t even understand themselves.”

  She sipped her anisette. “You’re right. There were many things I didn’t understand. I had not yet developed the knowledge that sex was bad or alternatively, that it was a precious thing. But somehow I sensed it was a commodity and like any commodity it had power — the power of being desired. Even grown men rarely understand that. They gain their power from physical aggression and, occasionally, violence. Neither is a commodity and usually neither is desired. Therefore a man’s version of power is a puny thing — a gun that, when fired, produces a flag that says, ‘bang’. It’s ironic that I, a female, used physical aggression to gain your attention.”

  “You are making yourself sound like a whore,” I said. Her face went out of focus. “Surely you overstate the shituation.” My tongue was having difficulty placing letters in the correct location.

  “Maybe,” she answered. “I was too young to have received the message that the world sends to all women — that their bodies are less than ideal — and so I had not yet created the inhibitions that would ultimately cause me to believe that shame and self-loathing are a permanent part of the female identity. Even at that age I instinctively tendered sex for affection or, at least, the interest I mistook for affection.”

  She raised her glass and continued. “I may have started my sex life as a young offender but I became a parole officer. That’s a promotion given to all women when they learn that the so-called imperfections of a body are just traces of life and not the progenitors of shame or self-loathing.”

  I reached for my glass to return her salute, but mis-triangulated and knocked it from the table. It didn’t break. I bent to retrieve it and paused beneath the table to relish an unfamiliar stirring in my loins. Leticia’s sheer nylons, exposed to mid thigh, were inches from my face. Now, I thought, now! I dropped my glass again, reached for my briefcase, opened it, and extracted a small painting.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “A field of shunflowers … painted yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  “A memento … ’membrance of good times. Be so kind … rip it in half.”

  “Why?” she asked again.

  I was fully aroused. “Tear it … more interessing than before.” I held out the painting.

  Her face flushed. “Are you crazy? You want to re-create fifty years ago … or is this a ridiculous joke?”

  I staggered as I stood up. “Do it, Leticia. Iss bookend to our lifes.”

  “This is as vulgar as the parrots.” She looked at my erection. “I don’t want to be part of an old drunk’s wet dream. You’ll have to find another playmate … and …” She grabbed the painting and tore it in half. “You’ll have to find another piece of flowery pornography.”

  “Oh Lord and Mother of God! Thank you, Leticia.”

  She stared at me. “Is your life so lacking that you play kid’s games? I feel sorry for you.”

  Staggering, I took my leave of Leticia. I knew that, behind her anger and pity, she desired me but I sensed the attraction was not strong. If there is one thing I know, it is that the pursuit of an unwilling woman, while much romanticized, is fraught with diminishing returns, much like walking up a down escalator or hiking around the block to visit the house next door. Besides, her anger had distracted me and while my motive was research, I had also hoped for a delightful afternoon revisiting the site of my first sight — a fantasy that reached its climax and evaporated the moment she tore my painting.

  Days later, seated on Adriana’s patio, I tried to convey my frustration. “The reality is not like the imagination,” I said. “I’m disappointed.”

  “But, old man, you must know that what you call mystery is really illusion — it and disappointment are the true attributes of love. For example, the image of a man’s organ that I carried in my head was not a small organ … until I met you. Your shorts should carry the warning, ‘contents may cause drowsiness’.”

  “You’re wrong, my peevish puzzle. Love doesn’t care about size … and it’s more than an image in the head — there’s thought involved.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Perhaps it depends on which head you’re using when you do your thinking.”

  Sometimes Adriana’s insults sting and I consider putting a stop to our daily encounters. However, I immediately relent when I contemplate the sorrow that she would surely feel were she forced to go through life without me.

  “You’re also wrong about illusion,” I said. “My life in the service of love has taught me that women are indeed enigmatic, but like all things that perplex they conceal the truth of their own mystery. A real lover never swings for home runs — always for the stars — since love lies beyond lust and illusion. Truth becomes visible because genuine passion demands that lovers hide nothing from each other.”

  Adriana gave me a rueful smile. “I wish it
were that simple,” she said. “A man’s attention only means there’s pressure in his loins. You’re also wrong about home runs. A man wants grand slams. A woman, on the other hand, recognizes that the game is composed of running, hitting, fielding and walks. She knows it also includes strikeouts which she does not consider failures.”

  She smirked at her own wit. I said goodnight and made my way home to bed where I lay awake wondering why we spend so much time worrying about the future when contemplating the mysteries of the past may occasionally provide insight or a lesson.

  And the lesson … there are two. The first is, the search for love may owe its genesis to a confused preoccupation with anatomy, and the second is that attraction may disguise itself as aggression, perhaps the modern offspring of an ancient mating ritual. The corollary is that simulating the past may stimulate the present even if the result is the destruction of painted sunflowers that resemble runny eggs.

  My Albatross

  OUR CITY ORIGINATED YEARS AGO WHEN the area was settled by a few gentlemen who were assigned to the new world frontier by their wealthy families because they lacked the intellectual accoutrements to participate in enterprises at home. Referring to what has come to be known as the Principle of Poor Progenitors, a few cynical newcomers have speculated that everything that has happened since can be traced to both the leadership and the brains of these original pathfinders.

  My parents met during the holiday that celebrates the death of Bartolomé Albatross, one of these early pioneers and the first mayor of our town, who in 1792 had been masticated to death by a herd of wild cows as he laid the first cobble for a new road in what was then a large pasture. The road was to become the rain-soaked street on which Papa’s car skidded and failed to stop when my mother raced into his path in pursuit of a street dog. The dog had stolen a chicken she was carrying home for a special family dinner, always held on the day of the festival that honours the martyrdom of Mayor Albatross. She was sixteen and beautiful, and my father was enamoured long before they arrived at the clinic where he paid to have her fractured ankle treated. Later he drove her home and later still, after a courtship that was opposed by his parents, they were married. Until her dying day my mother maintained that Papa owed her the price of the chicken because she had been gaining on the dog when his car crashed into her.

  The original incident with Leticia had aroused my sleeping bantam-weight from hibernation and it was therefore inevitable that I embark on the quest that has been the preoccupation of males through history — the search for a female willing to explore and to be explored. Along the way I learned that, like new continents, every woman is different and that, unlike Cortez who burned his ships at Veracruz, would-be lovers must never enter uncharted territory without an adequate escape route. What I didn’t realize was that females, since the dawn of upright men, have engaged in exploratory journeys of their own albeit with slightly different goals and methodologies.

  By the time I was well into the second decade of my life I was aware of many of the tricks employed by both sexes in the search for love: the pretended disdain shown by a lady that causes a suitor to trip over his own feet while scurrying back and forth between panic and lust; the declarations of undying love sworn by a male whose frantic goal is the release of corralled ejaculate; the exaggerated pain experienced by a man with a slivered posterior acquired while straddling the fence that separates passion from feigned indifference; the moans of a female orgasmically anticipating the envious coos of girlfriends as they drool over her new engagement ring.

  Adolescence brought exciting changes to my life, not the least of which was a requirement for more frequent changes … of my sheets. I was fifteen when I finally entered the cathedral. After much fumbling with pubescent girls I was fortunate enough to encounter a willing lady who was three times my age and who, along with her husband, leased the villa next door to ours in the small resort town of Puerto Paraiso. Her name was Mimi Albatross and her husband Alvin was a direct descendant of our first mayor. Though they lived in New York, Alvin had been raised in our city and was a long-time friend of my father. The Albatrosses were well-moneyed and it was rumoured that they had acquired much of their wealth as a result of his activities in organized crime.

  One evening I accompanied my parents to a party that Mrs. Albatross threw to celebrate her husband’s forty-fifth birthday. I attended because I was broke and unable to participate in other activities. Father believed that denying me money or an allowance of any kind would stiffen my back and lead me to the strength of character needed to accomplish the goals that he planned on setting for me.

  There was no one of my age in attendance, so to alleviate the queasiness caused by teen boredom I went exploring. I soon found myself in the cellar, alone with Mr. Albatross’s wine collection.

  For more years than I care to remember the dark cloud of alcohol hovered over my life. It’s probable that the cloud was formed that night in the dim light of the Albatross cellar.

  I was exploring my second bottle of Chateau Margaux, marvelling at how the first had washed away my boredom, when voices appeared at the top of the stairs. I set the bottle on the floor and hid behind the wine rack. From my vantage point in the darkness I peered between the shelves and saw Mr. Albatross coming down the stairs closely followed by Señora Adora Reyes, my school principal.

  Señora Reyes was giggling. “I’ve heard of etchings, Alvin, but you’re the first to ask me into his cellar to view a wine collection.”

  Mr. Albatross didn’t answer but grasped her around the waist and kissed her. They immediately engaged in such frantic groping that a less astute individual than myself might have mistakenly concluded that they were wrestling. It continued until Señora Reyes stepped back and said, “Let me do it.”

  She raised her dress, pushed down a pair of white frilly panties, lifted her foot to step free and stumbled against the shelves. I was forced to react quickly to keep them from falling and exposing my presence.

  Then, the señora turned and looked at me. I almost said hello before I realized that her eyes couldn’t penetrate the inky murk behind the shelves. She bent over and braced herself as Mr. Albatross pushed from behind. I watched both their faces from the gloom as they began a knee knocking rhythm which caused the señora to yelp, Mr. Albatross to utter deep guttural sounds and the bottles to rattle.

  Somewhere in mid-knock, he moved his foot and tipped the Margaux that I hadn’t finished exploring. It clattered and gurgled as wine splashed around their feet. After a few minutes Mr. Albatross emitted a great final grunt and the señora sighed, “Oh no, are you finished already, Alvin?” He grunted again, backed up and zipped his pants.

  They climbed the stairs and I was left alone with the two empty bottles and Señora Reyes’ underwear. I opened another Margaux, put the panties in my pocket, lurched up the stairs and let myself into the party.

  Mr. Albatross was standing by his birthday cake. The wine bent my logic — here was a wealthy man and I had the means to acquire some of that wealth. I adopted a sophisticated swagger and sauntered over.

  “Hello Alvin.” I reached out, stumbled, lost my balance and plunged my hand through the cake as I tried to prevent a dive into the punch bowl.

  Mr. Albatross stepped back. “Careful, young man. My wife baked that herself.”

  “Forget it. I’ll buy you another.” I licked icing from my hand and washed it down with Margaux.

  He grinned. “It may take a while. From what I hear, your father doesn’t give you any money … and there are wine glasses at the bar, Alberto.”

  “I don’t need his charity. I’ll soon have lots of money.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Albatross, “and how will that come about?”

  “You’re going to give it to me, Alvin.” Though I was drunk, I remember a distinct feeling that I wasn’t being particularly clever.

  Mr. Albatross’s grin decreased to a tight smile. “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I have something for
sale that you want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “These.” I pulled Señora Reyes’ panties from my pocket.

  “Put those away, you idiot.” He moved in front of me so that the panties were not visible to the rest of the room. “Give them to me!”

  “Oh no, Alvin. Not ’til I get paid.” I pushed the flimsy evidence back into my pocket.

  “We’ll discuss this later, you little snot.” He pulled back his jacket, far enough to reveal a gun in a holster below his left armpit. “Now, get those out of here.” He gestured at my pocket.

  He’s going to kill me, I thought. But my mind was marching to the Margaux and it turned to the question, How much money should I demand?

  Hours later, I was still pondering though some of the wine-effects had dissipated. The party was a success. After our conversation, Mr. Albatross had celebrated to the extent that he was snoring loudly on a sofa by the time guests started to leave. Mrs. Albatross asked me to stay to help get him up to the bedroom. I was about to flee when she clumped back from saying goodbye to the last guests.

  I felt her breath on my neck and she reached around and grabbed that part of my anatomy that I had begun to fear was going to spend much of its life dependant on unemployment insurance. I knew immediately that she had drunk too much tequila — we were in plain view should Mr. Albatross choose to open his eyes. I remembered the gun and determined to resist. “Please don’t,” I whispered. “What if Mr. Albatross should wake up?”

  Though her action had produced a near-instant reaction, I gritted my teeth and summoned my willpower. “I’m resolved to stand firm,” I said.

  Her grip tightened. “Oh … you are!” she said. “And you are making a point.”

  The point I was making seemed to encourage her. In seconds, I was completely exposed and quite beyond a rational response, not that I would have been able to control any response, rational or otherwise. My immediate future was in Mrs. Albatross’s hands.

  Suddenly she let go, turned and bent over a table, simultaneously raising her dress so that I was afforded a view not only of the cathedral but of the surrounding landscape which rivalled the expanse of a small country.