by Lisa Cach
He wasn’t one, was he? At thirty-six? Surely it wasn’t possible. I’d known a few quiet, nondescript guys, and most of them were raging sexual beasts beneath the placid exterior. They might not have women falling all over them, but once they had one in their clutches, they went nuts, showing a hell of a lot more innovation and attentive enthusiasm than good-looking guys who didn’t have to work for their pleasures.
Wade was a decent-looking, friendly guy. I couldn’t believe that at least one woman hadn’t let him have his way with her.
He was wearing Jockey shorts, and his penis was nowhere in sight. I opened the fly of his pants wider, then yanked on them until Wade obligingly raised his hips so I could slide them down.
Ah, there it was. A small bulge nestled alongside his testicles. It didn’t look particularly excited to meet me.
I lay my hand over the white cotton and pressed, rubbing gently, waiting to feel a change in size.
Nothing. It remained the size of a garden slug.
I waited a little longer, massaging, bending to breathe on it through the knit as if giving it the breath of life. There was a bit of stirring, not as much as there should be, but something.
Hoping he’d have told me if there was anything communicable down there I wouldn’t want to touch, I slipped my hand under the band of his briefs and touched the frightened creature skin-to-skin.
I compressed the entirety of it within the palm of my hand. I teased the head with my fingertip, feeling the opening at the top, looking for that first telltale drop of pre-cum. I cupped and tickled his balls. There was a slight thickening, and nothing more.
Maybe he was just nervous. Maybe he was one of those guys who trained himself to not get hard, so that he wouldn’t come too soon.
I lay down on my side, my head level with his chest, and continued to play.
“Hannah,” he said, his voice cracking.
I cradled his penis like a baby mouse in my hand. “Yes?” I answered, practicing in my head the reassurances I would give. It’s okay, it happens to everyone sometimes. No, I don’t mind. Don’t worry about it. I’m enjoying just touching you. Relax.
“There’s something you should know.”
My hand stilled. Oh, God. He did have an STD.
He took a shaky breath. “This is my first time—”
He really was a virgin? What did one do with a virgin? I was going to have to be even more reassuring than I had been already. “It is? How far have you gone with a woman?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
He made a gurgling sound, something like a hysterical laugh in the back of his throat. “With a woman? A kiss, is all.”
I frowned, sitting up and looking at him, hand still on his privates. He glanced at me, then went back to staring at the ceiling. His emphasis on “with a woman” struck me as odd. “So no one has ever touched you like I’ve been doing?” I asked, to clarify, wanting to take my hand out of his underpants but not wanting to make the guy feel rejected, in case my suspicion was wrong.
“This is my first time being…intimate…with a woman. It’s been men up till now.”
I snatched my hand out of his shorts, wanting to bolt to the sink and scrub it with bleach and hot water at the thought of where his penis had ventured.
“Don’t worry, I don’t have HIV or anything,” he said sarcastically, and pushed himself into a sitting position, finally looking me in the eye.
“Why?” I asked hoarsely, as the information sank in and I realized I’d been throwing myself at a gay guy. Beyond the embarrassment of my idiocy for not figuring it out on my own was a feeling of being utterly unfeminine. There must be something masculine about me, if a gay guy would go for me. I wanted to cry. “Why did you answer my ad?”
“It’s a new city, a new job. I wanted to try a new life,” he said, the previous sarcasm giving way to a sad resignation.
I wanted to hit him. Of course he couldn’t alter his sexual orientation on a whim—and he a biologist! He should know better! And he’d been selfish enough to drag me into his experiment.
“I’ve always thought women were beautiful,” he said, “so I thought I might give it a try. I wanted to see what it was like to live like everyone else.”
“Oh lucky me, to be your test rat,” I said. I was in no mood to be sympathetic.
“I really like you. You’re smart and confident. I wish it would have worked.” He glanced down at his crotch. “It just didn’t.”
“But why me?” I asked. I didn’t care what he was going through, I was too busy trying to find sense in a dating world suddenly gone upside down and inside out. “Do I come across as masculine?” I whined.
“I don’t know why you.” He shrugged, and gave his unresponsive weenie a quick rub. “I just liked you. It sounded like we’d have fun together. We did have fun together, didn’t we?”
“I guess.” If you call it that. I tramped through the rain and looked at owl vomit for this?
“I mean, we can still be friends, can’t we? I’m sorry if I hurt you, but it’s really not about you. I’d like to still do things with you.”
My lips parted, and I stared in incredulity. I was getting the same speech I’d given guys in the past. And it was about me—he’d chosen me, after all—and no, I didn’t want to be his friend. I suddenly realized that the only thing that had kept me interested this long was the challenge of overcoming his passivity.
Without that challenge, he was just a boring, confused guy with a nice dog.
And he’d let me fondle his weenie. Thank God I hadn’t put it in my mouth. The thought of where it had been made me ill.
I stood up and found my coat, feeling a thousand miles from my own movements. “I’ve gotta think about this,” I lied. “I’ll let you know.”
“You aren’t mad at me, are you?”
“Surprised, is all. I’ll let you know, okay?” I said, incapable of more. I had to get out of there.
“Okay. Call me.”
Yeah, right.
Eleven
Walking Shoes
“At least you know now why he was so unsure all the time,” Louise said as we crossed the street from my house to Laurelhurst Park, beginning our Sunday constitutional. The park was wooded with fir at this end, where we poor folk lived. Half a block away on either side, the houses lining the edge of the park were big, old and expensive, with carefully tended yards.
“Yeah, he had no clue how he was supposed to behave as a heterosexual. I suppose I should think it funny, how worried he must have been the whole time, that he’d give himself away,” I said, still not thinking it funny. “And no wonder he gave me such a strange look when I made that comment about the elephant clitoris making things easy on a guy. He had no idea what I was talking about.”
“Are you still upset about it?” she asked. “I mean, are you okay with it? That had to be a blow to your ego.”
“I worked out my own form of therapy,” I said, smiling.
“How’s that?” she asked, curious.
“I made a Voodoo Wade doll.”
“What?”
“Voodoo Wade,” I repeated. “I made a little doll and dressed it like him, and then I hung it by a length of filament in front of the window in my sewing room. He spins in the drafts, sort of like a twisting corpse on a noose.”
“And this helps?”
“Well, then I was downtown and got the bright idea to stop in a toy store and look for a slingshot. I couldn’t find one, but I did find a fabulous rubber band gun.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Yup. So whenever I start feeling cranky about Wade’s sexual orientation experiment, I sit on the floor with my gun and shoot him.”
“I love it.”
“It’s very therapeutic. I do his screams myself, which Cassie finds a bit disturbing. I have to do it quietly at night, or she gets upset.”
We took one of the paved paths that wound through the interior, past lawns of sloping green.
“Are you go
ing to give up on the Internet dating now?” she asked, sounding a bit like a scolding mother. It was hard to take someone with freckles and curls seriously, though.
“I don’t know. I mean, it wasn’t a dangerous experience. It was just weird.” I wasn’t willing yet to admit my mate-shopping plan was a failure. “You haven’t had any offers to meet anyone?” I asked.
“I haven’t been replying to any of my e-mails,” she said quietly.
“Louise!” What was wrong with my friends?
“It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Fair to whom?”
“To them. Not when I’m not really interested. You’re going to give me a lecture about this, I know, but, well, I’m kind of interested in Derek.”
“The divorced guy? Oh, Louise. Say it isn’t so.”
“I know, I know. I know all about guys on the rebound, divorce, all of that. But he’s so easy to talk to, and we went to dinner again on Friday—”
“Louise!”
“I know! I’m bad. But it was just friendly, I promise.”
“You know this isn’t a good idea.”
“I know,” she said.
“But you’re going to do it anyway.”
“It’s just friendly.”
We came out the other end of the park and crossed the street to the opposite sidewalk, heading deeper into the Laurelhurst neighborhood. I liked to imagine which house I would live in, if I had the money.
“Does he show any interest in you, beyond the friendly?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell,” she said, warming to the topic, probably taking my question for a sign I thought it was okay, after all. “Sometimes I think so, but all the guys who work there, they’re counselors so they’re a little like women in some ways. They all like to talk, and I mean about people, not sports or toys. It’s not like your average computer or business guy. So I don’t know if he’s opening up to me more than he would to anyone else.”
“Who suggested dinner?”
“It was mutual. Or maybe he did. It just kind of happened. We got off at the same time, and as we were walking out we started talking about that new Chinese restaurant a block away, and we decided to try it.” She peeked at me. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t know. Who’s to say it might not work? If it wasn’t going to, she’d find out soon enough on her own, and then I could say, “I told you so.” “Be careful,” I added.
“I know!”
“Maybe you should meet a few of those guys who wrote to you. It’ll keep you from getting too caught up in Derek.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she said.
I knew she wouldn’t. “Cassie hasn’t gone out with anyone, either,” I admitted. My friends were a bunch of cowards. “Do you know if Scott has?”
“He did, last night,” she said, and cast me a glance.
“You’re kidding!”
“Some woman who just got her law degree, and has started working at the Clackamas County D.A.’s office. He says she’s really smart.”
“Really.” My surprise was being replaced by some other, vaguely uncomfortable feeling. She had a law degree. Huh. “Is she pretty?”
“He says so. She’s almost as tall as he is. He says it’s nice to be able to look a woman in the eye for a change.”
I only came up to his chin. Not that it mattered. “Does he like her?”
“He says it’s too soon to tell yet. You’ll have to call him, and get the full story. We got interrupted when his beeper went off.”
“Hmm.” The news brought me down for some reason. “Yeah, I’ll have to call him.”
I get a confused gay guy, and Scott finds a beautiful lawyer. I should have been happy for him. Instead, I was jealous, and I thought I knew why. The Internet dating was my idea: I deserved to find success first.
I hoped the lawyer thing fizzled. She was probably too pushy for him, anyway. Too aggressive. I didn’t have to worry.
Twelve
Embroidered Linen
“How do I get rid of that little picture?”
“It’s the PIP button, Dad. It means ‘picture in picture,’” I said as Dad fiddled with the remote control, trying to remove the box in the lower right-hand corner of the television screen.
The sound went mute, then came back on at wall-shaking volume.
“Here, I’ll do it!” I said, grabbing the remote and returning all to rights.
“I don’t know why they have to make it so complicated. What are all these buttons for, anyway? ‘Learning.’ What’s a ‘learning’ button do?”
“You point the remote at your skull, press it, and suddenly it all makes sense.”
“Ha, ha, very funny.”
I got up and went to go help Mom in the kitchen. There was a pork roast in the oven, seasoned with rosemary, and the smell was making my mouth water. Apples were waiting to be peeled and diced for applesauce, so I took a knife and set to work as Mom started cutting shortening into flour for biscuits.
Home was a two-storied 1930 farmhouse, in a neighborhood of houses of much newer vintage. There was nothing left of the original farm, the land having been developed long before my parents bought the house. Mom had liked the old look of it, and Dad had spent every year since making repairs to the structure, and swearing that, “Next time we’re buying a new house.” The threat used to scare me, thinking we’d have to move, but eventually I got used to it and realized he had no intention of relocating.
The yards, both front and back, were filled with bird feeders and baths, and Mom’s carefully tended beds of roses. There was a workshop out back that Dad had built, for his “projects,” but mostly it seemed a place for him to store his junk, out of Mom’s sight.
When Mom wasn’t gardening or feeding Dad, she was volunteering at the library twice a week. She loved popular novels, and while Dad would sit and watch his games on the television, the volume loud enough to vibrate bones, she would be in her own world inside her head. I think all those years of teaching third-graders trained her to tune out at will.
All in all, I thought I was pretty lucky in the parents I’d gotten. They weren’t sophisticated, they weren’t wealthy, but they were kind and loving, and were still together, despite the occasional snippy argument that I was, thankfully, no longer around to hear.
“Have you been meeting any nice boys?” Mom asked.
“There’s no one at the moment.” I had told her about the unexpected end to my relationship with Wade.
“I just can’t stop thinking about that biologist. That poor confused boy.”
I frowned at her. “Poor confused boy? What about me? I’m the one you should feel sorry for.”
She waved off my words. “You’re strong, you always come through. But that poor boy. How miserable he must be. Are you going to stay in touch, stay his friend?”
“No! Jeez, Mom, why would I?”
“He sounds like he needs a friend.”
“He shouldn’t have lied to me. He should have let me know up front what was going on.”
“Poor boy.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” She was making me feel guilty, when I was the victim. Wasn’t I? “I don’t want him as a friend. We really have very little in common.”
“Then why did you date him? You should be friends with the men you date. The passion doesn’t last, you know. You need a friendship for when it goes away.”
“Do you feel like you and Dad have a friendship?”
She scooped biscuit batter and dropped it in rough mounds on a cookie sheet. “We have comfort, and familiarity.”
“Mom?” Comfort and familiarity? That was all?
She smiled, rather sadly, I thought. “Choose someone you can talk to.”
“You and Dad love each other, don’t you?”
“Of course I love your father. He’s just not much for conversation.”
I added water and sugar to the pan of diced apples and set them on the stove to cook, my ros
y view of my parents shaken.
I didn’t really want to know of the disappointments my mother had suffered in her marriage. I wanted to think it was happy and content, and that the same situation was waiting for me, once I found the right guy.
I especially didn’t like to think that all that time Mom had been sitting with a Jackie Collins novel in her hands, she was secretly wishing Dad would shut off the television and talk to her. How long had Mom been yearning for something more than she had?
Were there any happy marriages, once you looked beyond the surface?
Maybe I’d be better off staying single, and childless.
But no, that didn’t hold appeal, either. I could too easily see a future filled with day after day of endless alterations, thousands of pants to be hemmed, bridesmaids’ dresses to be constructed, pillow shams to be made.
I could spend the next fifty years in a cramped apartment surrounded by other people’s clothes, never advancing beyond subsistence level, never getting far enough ahead to buy a house or to take a real vacation. With age my fingers would cramp with arthritis, I’d lose my ability to sew, and then eventually I’d die, a forgotten old woman with no one to mourn her passing.
Ugh. How was that for a depressing thought? At least with a husband I’d have someone to carp at, and blame my troubles on.
I spread the hand-embroidered linen cloth on the table, set it, then wandered back out to the living room and dropped onto the couch. Dad had a golf tournament on, which was about the least offensive one could get, sound-wise, in televised sports. Even the announcers had hushed voices.
Dad and I sat in silence, watching soft-bellied men in saggy clothing.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Unn?” he grunted, not taking his eyes from the screen.
“If you had to give me advice about what type of guy to marry, what would it be?”
“What?”
“Dad, hello?” I said, waving my arms.
He finally looked away from the screen. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, Dad, you must have at least one piece of wisdom to impart.”
“I’m not good at this stuff.”
