by Tara Ison
He tells me her website address, in case I want to “check out the competition.”
Yeah, right, I say. Gross.
He laughs. You have nothing to fear, he says. Hey, did you get a receipt?
He’s caressing the manila folder, and I realize he means for the copies, not the groceries. He can write off copies.
That’s okay, I tell him. My contribution to the arts.
God, you look pretty tonight, he tells me. He tugs my face over to him by my bangs and one ear lobe, gives me a kiss. I love you, he says, but it’s the tugging that hits home.
He asks for the check he’s going to pay with her cash, although I’ve been thinking I’d like to order more, and at the same time asks the waitress to give his ticket to the valet. He likes the car out front when we leave, waiting for us, when his girlfriend is in town. This gives us more time to park someplace—I can’t exactly invite him back to my house. I’m still hungry, the sashimi didn’t fill, but I don’t want to be selfish about his time and I can’t stay out too late either, or I’ll just get hell. I gather my jacket, my purse, my copy of his treatment, and watch him count out twenties like playing cards.
Don’t you . . . feel sort of funny? I ask, because I’ve always wanted to ask and right now I finally can’t bear not to, I feel too humiliated for him, sleeping with this woman old enough to be his mother, this woman who’s just using him.
About what?
Letting her support you.
You’re one to talk, he jeers. Still living at home.
Wait, I’m still going to school, I point out.
Yeah, and I’m still working on my script.
It’s completely different.
I know. Sweet deal you’ve got.
He thinks I’m spoiled, but I think it’s perfectly normal for people to live at home until they finish college.
It’s not that great, I tell him. Believe me, the second I graduate, I’m out of there.
Right. He looks at his watch. You’re probably at the library right now, huh? He winks at me, leaves with the groceries and stack of treatments, knowing I’ll follow. Knowing I’ll hurry.
We park on a side street and make love with the steering wheel jammed against my back. I look down to see where we’re joined, but the pleats of my skirt have fanned out over us. It’s my old plaid skirt from private school, my little-girl skirt, the shortest one I have. I move it aside to see, and my boyfriend palms then grips the insides of my thighs, digging in with his thumbs where it’s soft. He’s pushing hard, everywhere, and I start to come, and I think about the girlfriend’s little daughter. I hope she got a good dinner, too. I hope her father took her to a real restaurant, not fast food. Or that he made her something nutritious, balanced, all the basic food groups represented. The milk, the whole grains, a protein, a fruit. Organic.
I wonder if my boyfriend’s girlfriend ever questions how he spends her money, or what he does when she’s not in town. I’m coming and feeling bad for her, lying there tonight in all that pain and waiting for him to finish at the copy place. I wonder if tonight she’ll question why he smells of fish.
WHEN I GET home, I hurry straight to my room, wary and quiet and carrying my shoes. I’d told my father I’d be studying for midterms at the library, I’d be home late. The first few years after my mother left, I was eight or nine, and we were left alone together, he was always so nervous, so worried. He wanted to do everything right, be the perfect parent. Make a good home for me, make sure all my needs were met, give me lots of quality time. He was always careful I was eating right and getting my vitamin C, No candy before dinner, baby, here’s an orange, and Finish your milk, okay?, that he’d covered me tenderly and well in high-SPF sunscreen, that I had a full bath every night, Did you do your homework, don’t lie to me, now, that I brushed my teeth before bed. I was the first of my friends to get her bedroom all redone the way she wanted, to get her ears pierced, to get her own computer. He bought me a car when I was sixteen and gave me a credit card for gas. But he was so strict, suffocating, had all those rules, As long as you’re living in my house . . ., I’m the parent, you’re the child . . . or he’d get angry, grill me about where I’d be and with whom, Boys only want one thing . . ., and always wait up for me, I want you home by eleven from now on, I want you to always tell me if anyone ever pressures you to do anything you don’t want. . . . But I realized it was just because he cared so much. He wanted to keep us close, connected. And I proved myself so trustworthy over the years, got such good grades, was such a good girl, did everything I was supposed to, that he finally relaxed and eased off. He pretty much lets me come and go as I please now, thank God, hardly ever questions me anymore.
Like tonight. His bedroom door is closed, the light is off, but I tiptoe anyway, tiptoe past in a nervous rush.
I promised my boyfriend I’d read his treatment when I got home, but I decide to read it tomorrow, when I’m clearheaded. Instead, I go online and bring up the girlfriend’s site.
I’m on vacation, my babies! it announces. But here are some favorites to keep you happy until I return!
Just for logging on as a Visiting Guest, I can see a gallery of still photos (Freebies!) and a five-second loop of flicking tongue, leather-strapped breasts, an open-thighed flash of groomed red pubic hair, vivid, moist-looking skinfolds. I look for staple scars or needle marks or lingering bruises from previous work. I think last time was the breast job. Not to make them larger, he’d told me; to make up for the breastfeeding, pick them up a little. She’d had her nipples regrafted and reangled higher. I look for tiny Frankensteinish stitches around the areola. I peer and try to zoom in on the stills, but I can’t get close enough. The upturned breasts look beautiful. She looks beautiful. It all must have hurt, but there’s no pain on her face. She looks much younger than how old I suspect she really is. I can’t imagine how the current brow lift can make her any better. I didn’t know she was a redhead. I wonder if the daughter has red hair like her mother, too young for armpit or pubic fuzz, sure, but sweet, long little-girl red hair, strawberry or ginger, always smelling of sunshine and sunscreen and soap.
It’s $21.95 a month to become a member, an Elite Guest, which allows me access to community chats and restricted live videos. An Exclusive Guest ($49.95 a month) gets personal, virtual shows and Very Personal, Very SPECIAL Hands-On QUALITY TIME! with her. I use my father’s Visa and sign up with what I think are masculine-sounding initials.
Thanks, honey! comes up onscreen. When I’m Back In Town, You And I Will Spend Some Very, Very SPECIAL Hands-On QUALITY TIME Together! Meanwhile, You Be A Good Boy!
If my father notices the monthly charge on his Visa, I’ll tell him it’s an educational thing. An online listserve for research, or maybe a special kind of virtual tutoring. He’ll be happy I’m doing that, he’ll be very proud. I graduate next year, I’ll have to figure out what kind of lies to tell him then. I’ll need good lies, so he doesn’t worry, so he doesn’t get all upset.
THE TREATMENT FOR my boyfriend’s new script has story problems, all his friends except me seem to agree. Some holes, some loose ends, the inciting incident needs punching up, the second act drags. I thought it was wonderful, perfect, I told him I loved it just as it was. I always think his stories are amazing, but he never believes me, or he’s never satisfied. He went back to do more work on it for weeks and weeks, consumed and not seeing me, and finally finished what he now calls a ready-to-go-to-script treatment. Attached it to me in an e-mail: Can you read this asap, I need your feedback!? And take it to the copy place, make ten copies, please, please?? And come over to my place tonight, you pick up dinner, I’ll do hors d’oeuvres, I love you, yeah?
So? he asks. I’ve brought chili cheeseburgers from Tommy’s, his favorite; we’re eating them sitting on the carpeted floor of his studio apartment in the Hollywood Hills. It’s a converted garage, really; the actual house belongs to a ninety-six-year-old former bit player, who still lipsticks her mouth to look bee stung and uses his
rent to buy food. There are green-furred oranges on the kitchenette counter and a white-furred heel of whole grain bread. We have old Varietys across our laps, under our burgers and microwaved mini-chimichangas and dim sum laid out on the abandoned screen door he uses as a coffee table. The only other place to sit is the double futon, but it’s lumpy, unmade, and unlaundered, and we’ll wind up there anyway.
So? So?
So, it just gets better and better, I tell him. The story is wonderful. It feels so real. You’re absolutely ready to go to script.
I should just throw it away and start all over, he says.
He looks morose, opens another beer. After getting the copies and the cheeseburgers, I’d stopped to pick up the imported kind of beer he likes, a brand from some former Soviet country.
I should just burn it, he says. Put it through a fucking shredder. He kicks at the stack of copies I’ve brought. I hate that fucking story, he says.
No, you don’t, I tell him. If you didn’t still care about it, you wouldn’t be so upset.
I reach over to pat him, soothe him, but he jerks away.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, he says.
I know that you’re talented and you’re creative and you’re disciplined, I say. I wish you believed me. I wish you believed in yourself more.
Jesus, he says. Well, hey, thanks for reading it, anyway. Thanks for taking the precious time away from your precious fucking schoolwork.
I’ve been available, I point out. You’re the one who’s been preoccupied.
He eats the last dim sum, scrapes up chili with a finger.
I made an apple tart for dessert, I tell him. Will you eat some? Or we can split an orange?
He doesn’t answer; I get up and find most of a gallon of chunky skim milk in the mini-fridge. I’d like to throw it away, scrub dried spills from the sink. I’d like to clean his toilet, vacuum the gritty blue shag carpet, but don’t want to make him mad.
You don’t eat enough fruit, I say.
Fuck off, Mother, he says. He eats the last mini-chimichanga, rubs his hand on his shirt.
You need the vitamins.
Unbelievable.
I just worry about you, that’s all. I care. I love you.
And that’s what you think love feels like? he says. But he’s smiling, and I know he actually thinks I’m wonderful, that he needs me for this, he just doesn’t know how to say it, how to express it.
So, are you at the library right now? He reaches over to slide his dirty fingers through my hair.
No, I’m studying at my friend Stacy’s.
Do you have a friend Stacy?
No.
Wow.
He moves aside the used, chili-stained Varietys and pushes me flat on the floor. I’ve been wanting and waiting for this for weeks, it feels like it’s been a long, long time. I flatten out for him, spread all open, and he starts making love to me, but it’s so gently I can barely feel him there. I try to get into a tighter angle, so there’s some torsion, some clash, but he adjusts with me and it’s all too smooth and loose. He strokes my face, he’s being so sweet, and I’ll never come this way. I need the edge first, the clench of muscle, before I can go slack. Maybe he’s worried the floor is too hard, maybe he’s worried about hurting me by accident. I nod my head at the bed, and he slips out to let me go first. We lock in again and keep going. Now he’s stroking my hair, so I cross my wrists overhead and nudge them under his other hand, hoping he’ll grip them hard, give them a twist. I push my head up under his stroking hand, hoping he’ll grasp and tug my hair, make me strain. But he seems to want us even, balanced, and I just give up. I let him gently lunge and stroke away, and watch the square of paneled ceiling, the rustle of the jumbled sheets. There’s a stain on the pillowcase next to my head, the kind of leak a thin brownish fluid might make. I wish I could get up and wash all the linens. But not to wash away any trace of her. Just because I don’t like the thought of him sleeping in soiled sheets.
BY NOW SHE’S soaped herself up and given me, or the masculine-initialed me, a virtual bubble bath; squatted over the camera and peed to virtually spatter me; squirted lube on her fingernail-filed hand and pantomimed a good reaming; had me tie myself up at ankles and wrists (hard to do); assigned me a variety of punishments involving food or lack of, or sustaining physical positions; told me to lick her boots; acted out giving me an enema; pretended to apply alligator clamps to my nipples; cracked a leather riding crop at what’s supposed to be my ass, my scrotum, the tender soles of my feet; mashed her breasts into the camera and told me to suck; told me to call her Mommy; told me I’m a bad, dirty little boy. She’s played with herself and taunted me with shiny fingers, told me I’m not allowed to touch, mustn’t touch Mommy, bad dirty little boys aren’t allowed to touch. She’s a good actress, but I find it all very unengaging, and I’m bewildered there are guys willing to pay for such things. I’m bewildered there are guys who are turned on by this. I’ve logged on once or twice a week, very late at night when I’m sure my father is asleep, for my Very SPECIAL, Hands-On QUALITY TIME, and I keep looking for more of her, trying to get her closer. At first I thought I saw swelling from the brow lift, maybe the barest puncture marks from the staples along her hairline, but she’s been wearing bangs and I can’t see much. Otherwise, she looks exactly the same as she always has. I’m at a loss for what else to request, how to keep it going. The degradations, the hurts, the playacting—it’s all getting so lackluster, so old.
Hi, honey, she says to me. She’s sitting spread-legged on a chair, her red hair tugged into a bun, a gladiator-sized leather belt across her waist. Long black gloves.
Hi, Mommy, I type back. I type with one hand, I’m eating an orange with the other.
Have you been a good little boy? Beneath the bangs, she raises her eyebrows at the camera, and I wonder how she can still do that after the brow lift.
Yes, Mommy, I type.
Oh, you have? And what have you been up to? she asks.
I can’t think of any scenarios. It’s very late, and I’m tired. I spit a seed out of my mouth onto a paper towel. Too tart, the acid first, then some sweet.
Are you sure you’ve been a good boy? Or are you lying to me? she prompts.
No, Mommy. I wouldn’t lie to you.
Well, I think you are lying. And I don’t like it when you lie to me, you know that, don’t you? It hurts when you lie to me. She looks severe and yet, I realize, caring. Incredibly sincere. She cares a great deal whether I’ve been good or bad. And when I’m bad, it causes her pain.
Yes, I’m sorry. I’m lying, I’ve been bad.
Well, you know what that means, don’t you? She frowns, and I’m in thrall to her again, at what she must go through. You’ll have to know how much it hurts. You’ll have to be punished. But because I love you so much, I’m going to let you choose. She rises from the chair, opens a small cabinet that holds a variety of props. She removes a round blade of wood, like a pizza slide, like a large Ping-Pong paddle. How about this?
Spank me, Mommy. Of course, I think, we haven’t done that. So obvious. Why haven’t I just asked for that before?
Ah, she says. She puts the paddle back. That’s Mommy’s favorite, too.
She comes closer to the camera, slowly removing the gloves. She sits so that she’s only visible from the waist up, murmuring to me to drop my trousers, drop my underwear, lie down across her lap, That’s a good boy, no, a little higher, Mommy wants this bad little boy’s sweet behind a little higher, and I split open another orange. I hear a slapping sound, she must be whacking an open palm against her own thigh, just out of view. I spit out another seed—the problem with oranges, you have to fuss with seeds, with drip, so sticky, my father would always make me wash my hands afterward. The girlfriend keeps slapping away, This is good, and I wonder, for the first time, where the daughter is while her mother does all these shows. The late-at-night shows, she’s probably sleeping, sure, but what about during the day, when she gets home
from school? And how does her mother explain all the equipment, the cabinet with the paddles and crops and enema bag? Has the little girl ever stumbled into this stuff, this special room, by accident? Here, let me stop, rub you a little, good. And did that make her mother angry, that her daughter maybe broke a rule, did something she wasn’t supposed to? I wonder if the mother disciplines her daughter, not like she disciplines her clients, of course, but she probably spanks her now and then. That’s part of being a parent. Part of being the child. Maybe the little girl’s father, the ex-husband, is in charge of discipline. My father was, even before my mother left, he was usually the one to handle spanking. Now that doesn’t hurt too much, honey, does it? Maybe I should do it harder, then, like this? I imagine the little girl’s father stroking her hair, kissing her, telling her he has to do this, punish her, she’s been bad, telling her to pull up her skirt, pull down her panties, lie across his lap, just like my father. Like this, this? I’ve finished the orange but my hand is so sticky, I have to lick each finger one by one. Bent over his lap in a tense hunch, crying, at first, everything clenched, panties around my ankles like soft rope, the jolting slaps like awful gripping sunburn, like growing blaze, Believe me, sweetheart, this hurts me more than it hurts you, me crying and pleading, my body giving up into a drape, but he’d finally stop, when I was finally beyond hurt and fully loose.
That’s good, that’s my baby, yeah, she says.
My hand sticky and acid-wet, rubbing with her, rubbing faster, my eyes on the ceiling, hearing her slaps, she’s breathing hard and I’m breathing hard and then Now, yes, yes. I look at her then and see the sheen on her upper lip, her perfect, chemical-burned upper lip, they were right, it does hurt them more than it hurts me. Then candy, then ice cream.
Thank you, Mommy, I type.
My pleasure, baby, she says, sunny.
Then the screen goes blank and a message comes up: I’m Going On Vacation, Honey! When I’m Back In Town, You And I Will Spend Some Very, Very SPECIAL Hands-on QUALITY TIME Together! Meanwhile, You Be A Good Boy!
