Vida

by Marge Piercy

  “Nothing much.”

  This was getting sillier. The hell with it. “I guess we, I, should go to bed. It’s past twelve … “ She did not move.

  “Yeah … Well, would you like company? It’s stone cold.”

  “Yes, it’s cold. Yes, I mean I’d like company.”

  Tentatively he put his arm around her shoulders. Then he laughed. “We’re both so stiff. Feels like those awful parties in seventh grade when you begin necking, and all you can think is, are you doing it all wrong?”

  She laughed too, gratefully. “How is either of us supposed to mind-read? When nobody’s being piggy or pushing, it’s hard to read through the politeness.”

  “I do want to go to bed with you … I wanted to when we danced together two years ago, that time you don’t even remember.”

  “That isn’t true, Joel. It came back to me today from watching you” She did have a vague memory now, too generalized to be reliable. She would not have been open to anybody then; besides, looking at his face in the firelight, she suspected that he was a man becoming more attractive as the softness of adolescence wore through. Confidence had to replace diffidence before he could carry his finely modeled face boldly.

  His hand was surer on her shoulder as they turned to kiss. His mouth was soft but knowledgeable on hers, his tongue touching hers in small darts as if beginning to taste her. She felt relaxed, committed, curious. No more decisions. When they got up, she would put in her diaphragm. It was in her pack, in the inner pocket with a new tube of jelly she had bought for Leigh. Who, after all, was with Susannah.

  The bathroom felt cold as she put in the diaphragm, and the bed was too cold. They both undressed like a speeded-up old movie, tearing off clothes, flinging them, not from passion but from chill. On the slab of glacial sheets, their bodies met seeking comfort. Sleek, his skin, fine-grained and sleek. After Leigh’s body she noticed his lack of hair. As her hands moved over him, she kept wanting to see him, but that would have in wait. He felt good, his body compact, muscular, beautifully proportioned no more than five feet seven but built to last. Strong thighs, strong shoulders, strong arms, all with a satiny surface resilient as the flanks of a horse. Against her he was erect, making her breath catch.

  Shyly he nuzzled her breasts. “Do you like that?”

  She laughed breathily. “Of course”

  “Some women don’t.” He tongued her nipple.

  “This woman does. My breasts are very sensitive.”

  “Am I doing it too hard?”

  “Not sensitive bad.” When she got excited, she liked having her breasts squeezed, but she was hardly about to set out presenting him with a set of instructions as if she were a mechanical squirrel-resistant bird feeder to be assembled. “Sensitive for pleasure.”

  Then he slid his hand between her thighs; he touched her well. He was paying attention. She was struck by that. It was more like Eva touching her, a man who had been trained to pay attention to exactly what excited a particular woman, who was aware of the differences, the nuances, who listened for them as he touched. He made her feel almost clumsy taking his prick in her hand, because she felt less sure what he liked. She was beginning to feel an excitement that verged on aching. “Come in,” she said huskily into his throat. “Come in, now.”

  “You want me to come inside you?” He sounded almost surprised.

  “Please, now.” She guided him in.

  Again, the way he moved was good. No mindless thumping. He was trying out various strokes and angles and carefully monitoring her responses. The trouble with him is going to be getting him to relax, she thought, to flow. A little too much the careful handyman. Very complete training but wants passion. She tried working on his back in various high and low ways, across the neck muscles, kneading the buttocks, circling in the small of his back, but he seemed to think her pressures were hand signals to go faster, which she actually did not want.

  “Gently,” she said.

  Suddenly he reached between them and began to touch her clitoris as they were fucking, and she came in several moderate waves of electric pleasure.

  “I’ve come” she said. “Now your turn”

  “Did you really?” He sounded suspicious. “Take your time”

  ”I came. Really and fully. Now you come.”

  Suddenly he was soft in her. Yet she knew he had not climaxed “What’s wrong, Joel?” She cradled him against her.

  “Nothing. I don’t think I can come.”

  A man not going to come? This was a new one. “Why not? Let me excite you.”

  “No,” he said. “Really, it’s all right. Coming doesn’t mean that much to me.”

  Where have I heard that one? she thought. Me being polite.

  His relaxed penis slid from her, and they curled side by side. “You didn’t really come, did you?” he said sulkily.

  “Sure I did.”

  “But it was so fast.”

  “Fast?” They must have been fucking for five or six minutes by then. “I didn’t think I was fast. I wouldn’t have come right then if you hadn’t touched me that way, but that did it.”

  “Oh, you liked that? I wasn’t sure … But you really came, just from that?”

  “Why not? … What are you used to?”

  “I didn’t think women came from fucking.”

  “If it lasts long enough and if I’m excited first. A lot of women come more easily from being touched or eaten—but you’re not in bed with most women, just with me … Don’t you give me a hard time about that, too. There have been times when other women have made me feel like a fink, like a completely male-identified counterrevolutionary sellout, because I have orgasms from fucking.”

  He laughed. “Kiley told me fucking was oppressive to women.”

  “Well, it has been a lot. Men call the shots. Their shots. A lot of times you get into bed with a man and it’s like he’s fitting you into how he wants it. He wants to fuck in position A-4 or B-12 and you’re to put your legs up around him whether you like it or not and he wants you to do X and not Y and say certain words. Then he’ll go on for as long as he needs to come, which may be about ten seconds. That is oppressive. Also dull.”

  “Did I do that?”

  “Oh, Joel, not even slightly. My problem with you is that I came and you didn’t. That’s no more satisfying for me than it would be for you. I want you to have pleasure too.” It all sounded so exotic she felt like laughing and hugged him closer. Sex role reversal, all right, and she found it delightful. “What do you need to come?”

  “Nothing special. Just to be less nervous with you.” He grasped her tightly. In a short while his breathing began to open into sleep. She lay tangled with his strange pleasing body and smiled at the invisible ceiling. She felt as if she had come upon a truly new breed of human being, a man untouched by old macho roles, vulnerable and open, gentle and emotional as a woman. How dear he was, she thought, and stretched out relaxed under the weight of his thigh dropped across her, thick and substantial as a log.

  6

  Waking, they got up, padded to the kitchen. She laid a fire in the wood stove as he made coffee and juice. Then they retreated to bed with mugs, to lie there until the kitchen defrosted. “I love breakfast in bed” he mused. “Always had to drag myself out at home soon as my old man did. He sure did hate people being in bed when he was up. It had to do with him resenting having to support us all.”

  “What did your father do?”

  “He failed” Joel’s teeth glinted over the mug. “In textiles. A little shit executive. First in New Jersey. Then in Roanoke. Now he runs a carpet store in Fair Oaks—outside Sacramento. There’s one man who’s sure he’s been screwed, but he never looked up for the cause. His wife nags. His kids are ungrateful bums. The Blacks are greedy. The white trash whine and cause trouble. The unions are breaking business. The cheats on welfare raise taxes. All that talk about brown lung is ruining the textile industry.”

  Perhaps she had not realized how beautiful
he was because she had not stared at him. Suddenly she realized his eyes were no longer that hard green, but a rich dark brown. “Your eyes!”

  He dropped his gaze. “Forgot to put my lenses back in. Guess I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

  “You wear tinted contact lenses?” He nodded, rubbing his chin. “Got them when I was with Jimmy and things were hot and heavy … I like the way I look with green eyes. But you fell for that because your eyes really are the color of grass and you don’t even need those social worker glasses you left in the bathroom yesterday”“

  “Oh! I forgot them. Where are they?”

  “I stuck them in a drawer. So you wouldn’t wear them again till we leave. They’re stupid.”

  “But … you act as if I should care what color your eyes are. You look fine with brown eyes.”

  “Really? You don’t feel taken advantage of?”

  She laughed. “I only wish my brown hair was a wig and I could pull it off and underneath would be my own red hair”

  He shrugged. “Eh. I’m not crazy about red hair.”

  “You’d be about mine.”

  He grimaced mockingly at her. “I’m no hair freak. What I’m attracted to is your face and your body, but much more to you. Who you are. How you talk and laugh, what you say. You can’t fuck hair.”

  They walked the road behind the last dune, sand tracks with bleached grasses and maroon leaves of poison ivy growing in the shaggy middle. The tracks dipped into hollows that cupped the warmth of the sun, rose onto the dunes and into the wind, now and then giving them a dazzling cobalt ocean that soared way up the paler sky. A crisp breeze slapped them as they stood gazing on the empty beach far below where the long serpentine lines of breakers slithered in.

  How depressed she had been in Oyster Bay, and now she felt marve-lously restored. A little lovemaking, a good night’s sleep and a few days to play house. Her toes wiggled in her tennis shoes, her spine was fluid as the waves, her long legs pranced. A pretty boy, nothing more, nothing to roar about—but nice.

  “But if you hate Kevin, you’re still tied to him. Hating’s as passionate as loving,” he was saying, head down, glaring at the sand.

  “You make me feel I’ve got used to living in shorthand. As if I don’t have relationships any longer where people really call me out personally. The friends I’ve been living with the last couple of years, they’re nice women, but not articulate that way. With Leigh, with Natalie, I always have to … had to explain myself. They don’t either of them let you off the hook. But nobody else listens that carefully.”

  “Why would they?” he asked scornfully.

  “Why would you?”

  “What weapons do I have but knowing how to listen and psych people out?”

  “Don’t I do the same thing?”

  He shook his head. “You’re brighter than I am. Yes, you are—don’t pretend at me. You’re an intellectual. I never read a book even. You figure out what to do from facts or theories. But I pay sharp attention to people … Likely nobody’s been as interested in you as me … Leigh is your ex-husband. Who’s Natalie?”

  “My sister. Also my best friend.”

  ”Still? I’m not asking any questions. I might as well be dead to my family. A nice tombstone you can visit on Memorial Day. Our son. Run over by the government. Or a box shipped back from Nam. That would’ve been dandy.”

  “You don’t feel connected to them?”

  “That glue came unstuck years ago. Glue? Sure. Airplane glue is thicker than blood, and a lot more fun to sniff in the ninth grade, no lie” He flung himself down in the sand moodily. They were on a shelf hollowed from the dune face. The cliffs dropped off so abruptly the beach below was invisible under the shadow of the dune.

  Stretching out on the hot sand beside him, she sighed with pleasure. Her head filled with sky. The moment shimmered like a glass of full-bodied wine. Red. A Rhone. Purple Hermitage.

  “It’s real clever how you didn’t answer me about Kevin” he said, rising on an elbow. “How instead you flattered me to change the subject”

  “I wasn’t flattering you … I suppose I don’t want to think about Kevin because that makes me worry about heat and trouble, precautions. I want to escape from that a little.”

  “I’m not some aspirin you can take to get rid of a headache. This is real too.”

  “Is it?” She opened her eyes to smile at him. “Are you sure?”

  “Kevin counts because he’s a heavy. He was cadre. I’m just a little shit draft dodger”

  “Oooooh. Come, Joel. None of us are leading armies. You and I are in the same boat, as Laura put it.”

  “So why aren’t I real too?”

  “You are! But you’re ten years younger than me and hung up on Kiley. This is a vacation for both of us”

  “I’m no fucking vacation. I don’t want to sleep with you anymore if you feel like that.”

  “I assumed you felt like that too.” She sat up. “I do want to sleep with you.”

  “Just for the sex.” Head bowed, he was sulking. He sulked beautifully, but she felt a premonition of trouble.

  “What are you sleeping with me for? The exercise? I like you.”

  “Do you really?” He looked at her. His eyes were green again from the lenses. His own dark brown hid behind.

  “Was your hair really that color?” He had his cheek against her mons. “All of it”

  ”Too gaudy” he said. “You’d clash with everything” He ran his hands over her belly. “You compare things too much. What would it matter if we were both bald? We could still do this.”

  He lay half over her, kissing her and kissing her until she melted and put her hand on his cock to guide him in. But he refused to enter her yet. He teased her until she moaned and reached for him again, and then finally he entered. “I like it when you make noises like that,” he said.

  “Do noises bother you?”

  “No. I used to make more noises. I got in the habit of keeping quiet when a lot of us were living in a big house in Vermont—Hardscrabble” she said realizing he knew already.

  “I like seeing you. It’s scary making love in the dark with someone you don’t know yet.”

  “What would you be scared of, Joel?”

  “Does that feel good?”

  “Everything feels good.”

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I could lie to you. But I’d rather lie with you. Oh, that does feel good, that does” A twisting motion he had, as if he were actually screwing her. At a confluence of energies, a gathering of tensions and pulses, she knew she would come from that certain swollen urgency in the muscles around her vagina. After that gathering, unless the ceiling fell, the police burst in or he lost his erection, her orgasm was inevitable. Cautiously she brought her hand under him and cupped his balls, exploratorily, gently. “I’m going to come very soon. Very soon.”

  “Is like this good?”

  She only moaned, letting herself go in sound. If he liked noises, noises he would get. All that was incidental. If a partner wanted moaning, whistling, singing opera, so long as the act itself went along nicely, what did she care? The waves of orgasm radiated up to her breasts, more intense, more long-lasting than before, good, unendurably good. Then slowly dwindling, a sunset of the vagina. “Come now” she said. “Come”

  “Inside you?”

  “That’s what the diaphragm’s for.” Gently she began to squeeze his balls again. Please, let’s bring it off this time, right.

  He began driving harder, pushing high into her, and on impulse she raised her legs to let him enter more deeply. She could not climax with her legs up—her clitoris did not get enough impact—but after she had come she would just as soon endure less direct stimulation that became almost painful. She took her hand off his balls and wriggled it around to his ass. With a loud screaming moan, a sound such as an animal, charging, might make in pain or rut, he came. She could feel the contractions and the rush of the warm semen. With a gr
eat sigh she relaxed. He was truly functional. That was better. There.

  The night was clear and vibrant up to the Milky Way arched over the pond. They huddled on a small dock. Minute ripples tickled the sand, but the air was still, stiff as a cardboard. The lights in the far house twinkled yellow. “About the only thing I ever read for kicks was science fiction” Joel was saying. With his arm around her and the same coat over their backs, she could feel his deep voice in her ribs. “I wanted to go to some other world. Any other world.”

  “I never could get into it. Fancy gadgets, and all they could imagine were kings and queens and empires. Forward into the feudal past.”

  “I love gadgets … Imagine you’re a two-bit Jewish businessman trying to claw up a ways and what do you get? A son with reading problems who wants to work on cars. Bad karma.”

  “You’re not like anyone I was ever with” she mused. “Most of my lovers were intellectuals.” She felt his body tighten. “I don’t mean that in a positive way. Intellectuals are people to whom ideas are more real than people.”

  “Intellectuals read a lot, right? And there’s nothing to read at Laura’s except antinuke pamphlets and some Times from August … I see you pick up the pamphlets and toss them down again like you couldn’t care less.”

  “Well, I’m not awfully interested … “

  “Before you came I had nothing else to do, so I read some of them … and if it’s all for real, how can you not be interested?”

  “Nuclear power is basically a bourgeois issue,” she said, squinting up at the stars.

  “Oh.” He was silent awhile. “ ‘Cause that’s who cares?”

  “Right. Quality of life”

  “Oh … Who got upset about the Vietnam War first?”

  “Touche.” She turned to look at him. She was a bit surprised, a bit startled. “Do you want me to read the pamphlets?”

  “Yeah … It bothers me. I never thought about it before, but it gets to me … Like if there’s no future, what’s the point of what we did? You see? We might as well have got off on drugs and stayed high. I’d like to talk about that stuff, if you’ll read it. If you don’t mind talking about politics with me”