Over $19 cocktails Thomas lavishes me with compliments about my outfit, my wit, my hair. His flattery is a bit effusive, but undeniably pleasant, appropriate for the task at hand.
Thomas asks me attentive questions, listens attentively to my answers. The chef comes to our table, sets down two tiny plates of caviar amuses-bouches. Thomas stands and they hug. Am I imagining it, or is Thomas sneaking peeks at me to make sure I’m suitably impressed?
Over diver scallops crudo with yellow tomato gazpacho, Thomas moves to my side of the booth, positions himself so our thighs are pressed against each other’s. I guess I’m not a bi-impersonator after all. I feel the forces of lust gathering not far from where his leg brushes mine.
Over hanger steak with cannellini bean panzanella, Thomas takes my hand, traces lazy, sexy circles in my palm with one finger. Oh my God, I think. This is actually going to happen. Is this desire I’m feeling, or panic? Or both?
Over a shared corn ice cream sundae with cornmeal blondies and salted toffee sauce, Thomas asks me to follow him to his Malibu beach house to have sex with his wife while he watches. “Or,” he offers, “you can leave your car here and spend the night with us, and I’ll bring you back in the morning.”
Oh.
Oh.
“If I pass on your offer,” I say, “can I still eat my half of the sundae?”
Thomas looks confused. Then he laughs. “Of course,” he says. “But I wish you’d reconsider.”
“Not going to happen,” I say, spooning hot, salty caramel sauce into my mouth.
The valet, plus tip, costs more than I would have spent if I’d stayed home and ordered takeout. I guess Thomas would have covered that if I’d said yes. Compared to the emotional fallout of that, the twenty bucks seems like a steal.
—
I’M TEMPTED TO GIVE UP on dating for another year or another decade, but that won’t get me across the bridge. Out there in my world of writers, artists, and sixties refugees, there’s got to be one man or one woman who wants to take a no-strings, tender tumble with me. I e-mail a few friends who know me well enough not to ask what I’m looking for or why I’m looking for it.
A New York painter writes to e-introduce me to her studio-mate, Maya, a fifty-year-old Brooklyn art professor and single lesbian who’s headed to L.A. to interview for a job. Over e-mail, then a few phone calls, Maya and I establish a jokey, flirtatious connection. When I first see her on my FaceTime screen, I think, “I could totally lie down with this woman.”
But can I do that and then get up again, without hurting her or myself? Maya seems to be just what the love doctor ordered: pretty and upbeat, animated and sweet. On the other hand, she’s a fifty-year-old woman. I haven’t met many of those who check the “casual sex” box without mentally checking “by which I mean long-term relationship.”
“You’re like some horrible horny frat boy,” Celia tells me.
“What’s wrong with sex sans attachment? As long as I’m honest.”
“That’s what all the horrible horny frat boys say.”
During our last phone call before Maya leaves for L.A., I tell her exactly what I’m ready for and not ready for and why. I tell her that my bungalow is my safety zone, off-limits to strangers, even strangers with whom I’m planning a hot tryst. I tell her that if my frat-boy approach is a deal-breaker, I’ll understand.
Maya asks why I’m repeating myself. She says I was clear from the start. She assures me that she isn’t in the market for a girlfriend and that she’s always up for some fun. “How cool it is that we found each other,” she says cheerily, “so we can share a few days of that?” Hugely relieved, hugely nervous, hugely excited, I arrange to spend a long weekend in Maya’s hotel room on Hermosa Beach.
“Do you want my AARP membership number?” I ask. “I can probably get you a discount.”
“Oh, definitely,” Maya says with distinct sarcasm. “I’ll call up this totally straight hotel in this totally straight beach town and tell them the woman who’s coming to my room for hot sex is a senior citizen, and we want the AARP discount.”
I laugh. Three thousand miles and ten years away, Maya laughs. And then we’re laughing so hard I have a tiny pee-leakage incident, befitting the senior citizen I am.
—
I HAVEN’T BEEN NAKED in front of a new lover since 1996, and my body has sustained some serious damage since then. With just twenty-four hours to make myself tryst-ready, I text Charlotte, my L.A. style guru, to ask where she gets waxed. Her salon of choice is called, enticingly, Paradise Spa.
“It’s not fancy, but they do a great job,” Charlotte says. “And it’s cheap.” Better yet, Paradise is conveniently located a few blocks from Bellissima. Things are still strange at work, which makes me nervous about leaving for an hour, even at lunchtime. But a girl has to do what a girl has to do.
My first surprise, upon entering the pearlescent gates of Paradise, is delivered by an aesthetician who introduces herself, through a thick Korean accent, as Candy. Candy grabs my elbow and steers me into a wax-splattered cubicle, yanks the pale-blue curtain closed, and makes the universal hand signal for “Get naked.” In Berkeley, the waxing women worked around my panties, enlisting my hands to make the relevant crevices available, taking great care to keep their own fingers at a respectable distance from my erogenous zones.
Not so Paradise. Factory-farmed chickens are plucked more gently than this. Waxing always hurts, but this hurts more. I bite my lips to keep from yowling as Candy dips and rips, rips and dips, grunting gutturally with each jerk of a paper strip as if she’s setting fire to her mons pubis, not mine.
Then Candy barks something at me that sounds like “Gamm robot.”
I regard her uncomprehendingly. She repeats the unintelligible phrase.
I give Candy the universal shrug for “Huh?” Candy gives me the universal hand signal for “Flip over.” Like Helen Keller at the water fountain, I suddenly understand that she’s been saying “Give me your butt.”
No Berkeley aesthetician ever asked for my butt. Nor would I have given it to her. But I’m a stranger in a strange land, doing what the Romans do. I have no idea what Candy has in mind for my butt, but whatever it is, she does it all day every day. What could possibly go wrong?
“Best offer I’ve had in years,” I mutter, and flip onto my belly.
This time I do yell out loud. There’s no helping it. Candy is tearing the skin off my netherest region.
“Too much hair,” she says. I sit up, wincing, to find Candy shaking her head disapprovingly. “Come sooner next time,” she says. I don’t bother to explain that she’s just gone where no waxer has ever been.
I stagger out of Paradise and back to work, my inner thighs Velcroed to each other by sticky residue. In the Bellissima bathroom I take a deep breath, step in front of the mirror, and face the newly truly naked me.
Nothing in decades of Berkeley bikini waxing prepared me for this. I see more of myself than I’ve seen since age eleven. In fact, that’s exactly how my pudendum looks: like it belongs to an eleven-year-old. Is this what Joanne had in mind for me? Making myself attractive to lovers who want sex with preadolescent girls?
I’m meeting Maya in five hours. I’m not sure what to hope for at this point. Growing my pubic hair back by tonight doesn’t seem possible. A merkin, though no doubt available at any of the many prop houses within blocks of here, seems like a tacky accessory to wear to a first date. Hoping that Maya doesn’t have pedophile predilections, I pray that I’m not her first Brazilian’ed lover.
—
MY HEART IS POUNDING, my armpits damp with dread as I pull open the seawater-spattered glass door of the Whaler’s Inn. I look around the lobby and there she is, my late-life deflowerer, smiling at me from a navy blue easy chair, her unlined face lit by an anchor-shaped lamp. She stands to greet me. As Maya’s photos promised, she’s a few i
nches taller than I am, with a leaner, stronger body than mine.
Damn. She’s ten years younger and better looking? How am I supposed to summon a shred of confidence? Looking at her makes me want to keep my clothes on. Knowing what we’re here for makes me want to take them off.
Am I really going to do this? Have sex with a stranger?
Maya pulls me close, runs her hands down my back. I feel her breasts against my breasts, her hipbones against mine. I feel like lying down with her this minute in this cheesy lobby. I feel like throwing up.
“We fit,” Maya murmurs into my ear.
I nod against her shoulder awkwardly. I’m a pimply-faced fourteen-year-old boy.
“You feel good,” Maya whispers. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“Did you—” I stammer, gesturing at the reception desk.
“I checked us in.” Maya takes a step back and smiles at me. “Old-farts’ discount and all.”
She takes my hand and leads me to the elevator. The moment the elevator door closes behind us, she does what she’d promised to do, what I’d asked her to do, to keep me from changing my mind. She gives me no choice. She presses me against the wall and she pushes into me and she grabs my hair and she kisses me hard.
I don’t feel it.
No. That’s not it.
I feel it. But I don’t want it.
The elevator glides to a stop. I follow Maya down the carpeted hall, past pastel prints of sailboats and pelicans.
“This is us,” she says. She opens the door, pulls me inside. She puts her hands on my shoulders, looks into my eyes. “You sure you’re good with this?” she asks me.
“Positive,” I lie.
“I want you. Do you want me?”
I nod, and she kisses me again. I close my eyes. I don’t like what I see inside my head, so I open them again. Kissing Maya feels nothing like kissing my wife. Beyond her shoulders a king-sized percale island awaits us. I tell myself I’ll like this more when we’re actually in bed.
“I love your dress,” Maya murmurs, pulling it over my head. She lays me back against the pile of pillows, wriggling out of her shearling vest, her shocking pink minidress. “I love this,” she says hoarsely, running her hands down my sides.
I burst into tears. And suddenly I’m sobbing from the deepest place in me, crying and coughing and gulping for air, and I can’t stop.
Maya wraps us both in the bedspread, holds me like a swaddled child. “It’s okay,” she says. “Go ahead. Cry.”
Maya holds me until the room is dark and I’m catching my breath, hiccupping and dripping snot. “Sexy,” I say, reaching for a Kleenex. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You’re fine. Don’t go anywhere.” She pads into the bathroom. I feel better without her. And I want her to come back.
I hear water running. Oh, good, I think: she’s taking a shower. She’ll be gone for a while. I take a deep breath, let it out. But then she’s back, carrying a white terry-cloth robe.
“I’m running us a bath,” Maya says, wrapping me in the robe. It’s heavy and soft and warm. How could I have imagined going back to men? Women are everything. Hot lover, compassionate friend, nurturing mom.
“I thought I was ready,” I say, blowing my nose, elephant style. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have—”
Maya touches a manicured, calloused finger to my lips. “Let’s take a bath,” she says, pulling me off the bed.
I don’t want to take a bath with Maya. I want to go home. But how can I say no to this sweet woman?
Maya leads me into the bathroom. I let her take off my robe. She climbs into the tub and beckons to me. I lean back against her tight torso and soft breasts and I look at our legs splayed out in front of us, hers long and muscular and pale, mine thicker and tanned.
I turn around and for the first time I look at Maya, really look at her. She looks nothing like my wife. And she looks really good.
“Can I kiss you?” I say.
Maya does what I ask her to do, the things my wife didn’t need me to ask her to do. She does things she wants to do, things I don’t know to ask her to do. It feels good and it makes me cry and it feels good and it makes me cry and it makes me cry and it feels good. I start to lose myself, I start to go, and then I see my wife’s face floating behind my closed eyes, and my eyes fly open.
“Sorry,” I pant. “I just can’t.”
Maya rolls over me and lies next to me and takes me into her arms.
In the morning the room is daytime bright despite the closed blackout drapes. Is there no way to get a break from the goddamn sunshine of L.A.?
Across the tangled white expanse, a stranger sleeps. A pretty stranger who picked me up and walked me across that bridge, who gave me pleasure and received it. No one could have been kinder than Maya was to me last night. No one could have moved more smoothly between nurturing and seduction, between passion and care.
Maya stretches, purrs, opens her eyes and smiles. “Morning,” she says, reaching for me.
I don’t want to touch her. I want to jump up, throw on my clothes, and go home.
But I climb into Maya’s arms and I give that walk across the bridge another try.
When I leave the Whaler’s Inn on Sunday night, it’s done. My wife is no longer the last person I’ll ever have sex with, even if I’m pretty sure she’s still the last person I’ll ever love.
FIFTEEN
In my old life, my married life, I was the world’s worst hostess. I was fine with cohosting the dinner parties and backyard barbecues and Christmas-Eve-oysters-and-Champagne feasts that my wife and I threw. When a guest had too many oysters or too much fun, I was fine with tucking her into our pristine, underutilized guest bed. For one night.
A two-nighter? Doable.
Three nights? Teeth-grittable.
But when friends without hotel budgets—which is to say, our friends—asked to stay longer than a weekend, I’d instantly shed my identity as a perpetually oversharing memoirist and become a member of that heretofore mysterious species, the “private person.” The threat of a long-term guest, especially from my wife’s side of the aisle, turned me into the Locked-Nest Monster, imagining my foibles and farts and fakeries exposed; my pathetic finances stretched beyond the breaking point, my daily doings observed.
As it happened, I shared my fortress with a far more generous soul. My wife hosted her friends and mine with grace and enthusiasm, which made her foe, not friend, when it came to repelling interlopers. Each time a guest threatened a stay, I attempted to recruit my wife to the cause. I have a book to finish. You know I can’t write with people in the house. Easy for you to be welcoming—you’re never home. I’m having a root canal that week; I need solitude when I’m in pain.
When my efforts failed, I was not above sidling up to my wife, nuzzling her neck, and asking her how I could possibly make loud, beautiful love to her with a houseguest in the next room.
The truth, dim to me then but blazingly obvious now: I was a possessive, insecure, developmentally arrested child posing as an adult; a cheapskate with a scarcity mentality and a balance sheet tattooed onto my brain. I saw houseguests as freeloaders who were out to drain me emotionally and financially. I was an Olympic-level control freak who wanted my life and my wife to myself.
I knew better. Of course I did. I was an early adopter of the sharing economy. I came of age in communes, for Christ’s sake. I’d been in therapy since the age of five. I was aware of my abandonment issues and trust issues; I’d paid good money to learn the importance of not inflicting them on others. I knew I should openheartedly offer shelter to those who needed it, just as many people, over the decades, had openheartedly offered shelter to me.
I wanted to keep my out-of-town friends. I wanted my wife to keep hers—the ones I liked, at least. I wanted to stay married. And so, having failed to enlist my wife in my campaign,
I’d gulp down dread and preemptive annoyance and squeak out the requisite invitation.
Intentions be damned. I just couldn’t pull it off. Arrival day invariably proved that my mouth had written a check my soul couldn’t cash. Feeling trapped and resentful, I’d “welcome” our guests with a forced smile and an icy hug. Then I’d spend the duration of their visits secretly listing the interloper’s atrocities: doors left open or closed too loudly, empty coffee cups left on nightstands for whole minutes at a time, my fancy toothpaste wantonly consumed. As I counted down the days till departure, my grievances swarmed like tsetse flies in my cold black heart. Even if I’d liked our guests before they arrived, by the time they left I hated them for “making” me feel and behave so meanly. I knew I was right about them, whether my wife saw it or not. Out of love for her, I felt it was my responsibility to point out her friends’ flaws. “You deserve to be treated better than this,” I’d advise her, sidestepping the fact that I was the one who was treating her badly. “Your friends are taking advantage of you.”
I saw my case as airtight the night I came home to find Stacy, a Chicago friend of my wife’s, sitting at our kitchen table, staring into space with an empty bottle of expensive vodka in front of her. Our expensive vodka, of course.
“Are you okay?” I asked Stacy, concealing my resentment under a veneer of faux concern. Stacy cast her bloodshot eyes in my general direction and nodded wobbily. “I finished off your booze. Sorry about that.”
“No problem,” I said, and went to bed to lie in wait for my wife.
“Did you talk to Stacy?” I whispered when my wife got into bed, certain we were about to resolve our houseguest problem once and for all.
I felt my wife’s body tense up. “Uh-huh. Why?”
“She’s drunk.”
“So?”
“On our vodka.”
“So?”
A million responses flew to my lips, all of them useless. There was nothing I could say to convince my wife to stop inviting these moochers to our house or, better yet, to drop them entirely. After a few years, they simply stopped showing up. Did I kvetch in my sleep? Or did the straight white line of my mouth tell them all they needed to know?
The New Old Me Page 15
