“Nice to meet you,” Paul says, and I can’t tell if he’s genuine or not.
Gabe nods. “Likewise. You work with Jane?”
All the men are looking at me, paralyzed in my stone-floor foyer, the white walls I hoped would be welcoming, but seem too bright now. I’m in too much light. I’m sure they can see through my skin.
“Whatcha doing there, Jane?” Gabe asks. He sounds fine. Comfortable. Like he hasn’t pieced together that I’ve kissed all of them.
I shrug.
“It’s my fault Jane’s acting shy,” Paul says. “I made a joke about anthropologists, and I’m sure she’s trying her damnedest to be polite and not give me a what for about English professors.”
“You’re an English professor?” Gabe asks.
Paul nods. “Don’t let that fool you, though. I’m actually an idiot.”
Gabe laughs. “I gotta get you a drink now. Jane and I are having wine, but I also brought some beer. Jane, sweetie, do you have anything else for them?”
Is Gabe acting like he’s my boyfriend? Like he just offers drinks to our guests?
“Vodka,” I say weakly. “Maybe tequila somewhere too.”
Paul smiles at me. A tad too widely. “Vodka it is. Let’s all have some.”
Somehow, I’m convinced to leave the foyer and we eat together. Maybe it was Paul and his enticing shots of ice-cold vodka with sugar and lemon juice, but we’re acting like we’re the best of friends while we’re sitting at the table, finished dinner plates pushed aside. I still don’t know how Paul and Chris came to be at my house. Together. Gabe hasn’t asked either. And we’re laughing. Yes, even me. The vodka helped. A lot of vodka helped.
“Have you seen her while she’s teaching?” Gabe asks Paul, leaning over his wiped-clean plate.
Paul nods. “Of course.” He leans back, folds his hands behind his head, elbows splayed, looking so damned comfortable.
“You have not.” I cross my arms.
“Like I’d let you see me when I’m stalking you.”
I laugh. “You were not.”
Paul smiles then looks at Gabe. “Rumor was that running around campus was a great anthropology professor who seemed like she actually cared, gave a damn about her students. And I’d heard she was hot.”
Chris laughs loudly. “Yes, she is.”
I catch Gabe’s eyes flicker with something other than camaraderie. It’s very quick, but something slithers across his gaze that seems a lot like jealousy, like what I thought he might look like once Paul and Chris walked into my house. I don’t blame Gabe if he is jealous. If roles were reversed…I’d have stormed out.
“So you caught her in class?” Gabe asks, the green-feeling or whatever that slithering look in his eyes is now covered and he’s egging the conversation on.
“Yes.” Paul nods and smiles at me. “I don’t even remember what you talking about. Sorry, Jane. But you took my breath away. You were in that gray skirt and gray shirt thing that’s almost translucent in some light, and you were laughing, and I knew…”
“Knew what?” Chris asks, pushing his empty plate away.
“That he wanted her,” Gabe finishes, his voice cold. His gaze darkens.
Everything stills as if all of us are holding our breath.
My heart is up in my throat. My stomach is—maybe—missing. I don’t know. I feel hollow and scared. Things are being said. Feelings are coming to light. And I might throw up.
Paul takes a shot of vodka and pours for everyone else. “I think we should get very drunk.”
Gabe looks at the shot glass offered him and crosses his arms.
Chris smiles and swallows the alcohol quickly then stares at me. “I knew it too. I knew it when I saw you in the bar—she tell you how we met?” Chris asks Paul and Gabe. They’re both quiet, and Chris continues, regardless. “Her friend had choked. Jane, here, the little hero, saved her by doing the Heimlich. But we’re still called in. And it was my job to get her out of the way so the guys could work on her friend. Man, Jane, you fought me. You kicked my shin—”
“I did?” I gasp.
Chris smiles yet again. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
He nods. “I knew it when I held you, while you were fighting to get back to your friend. I wanted you.”
“You did too?” Gabe asks, only looking at the shot glass. His voice deeper, colder.
“Yeah,” Chris keeps smiling.
How can he keep grinning like that? How is this happening? Are they going to storm out now? Gabe looks angry. My mouth fills with saliva. My stomach roils. If I throw up now, it will be the coup de gras of my humiliation. I shouldn’t think such things. The universe has a knack for always finding something more to either humiliate or hurt me. There is no such thing as rock bottom.
Needing clarity, needing space to process what’s happening, I lunge from the table, racing back to my kitchen island where Gabe’s neatly stacked the pots and pans, waiting to be cleaned. It’s so neat and tidy. My life used to be tidy.
No, that’s a lie.
There’s nothing tidy about having your husband cheat on you. There’s nothing tidy about cancer. There’s nothing tidy about surviving. It’s messy and chaotic, and sometimes I worry everyone can see the shamble that is me.
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” Paul says, standing at the table.
I turn and look over my shoulder at him, shrugging. “I’m sorry,” is all I can offer.
Paul walks to me. “This isn’t your fault, darling Jane.”
I brace myself against the counter, looking at Gabe’s stacked pans. I’m trying so hard not to feel ashamed, to not feel anything at all. And especially not to throw up.
“I knew it too,” Gabe says. I can’t see him, but his words rumble through me. I love how baritone his voice is. I love the gravel in his pitch. I’m going to miss the way he talks. I’m trying to brace for it, for when he leaves, but I know it will hurt when he storms out. I know it will hurt when they leave.
“I pulled her over for driving recklessly,” Gabe continues. “I was supposed to give her a ticket. Give her a lecture. Something. But there I was, feeling like I had to get her number. I just had to have it. I just knew.”
I shake my head. I can’t be hearing this.
“Jane, honey, come back to the table,” Paul says.
I turn, looking at three men looking at me. “I’m sorry.”
Chris stands and walks to me. “What for, baby?”
The baby has me a little undone. I gaze at each of them. They have to know how sorry I am, how ashamed. Why do I need to explain myself?
Chris caresses my shoulder. “You can’t help it if we all want to be closer to you, get to know you better, date you.”
“Yeah, she can’t help it.” Gabe stares at me, his blue eyes slitted, his face tense. “But she’s got to pick one of us.”
“Why?” Paul asks, shaking his head like what Gabe’s said is ludicrous.
Gabe’s visage tightens all the more. “Because that’s the way it’s done.”
Paul huffs. “Jane here is the anthropologist. She can explain this better than I can. But I don’t think she has to do anything conventionally. Unless she wants to.”
Gabe shakes his head and finally stands, turning and looking through the glass sliding doors to my secluded backyard. “That’s why you’re here, on the night I asked Jane to have a date with me? To make a play, to get her to choose you?”
Paul sighs. “I—I don’t know. Of course I want Jane just to myself. But instead, she’s got two other guys after her. Two. I knew of Chris, but I didn’t know about you.”
I look at Chris. “Why—how did you come with Paul to my house?”
He smiles sheepishly. “Honestly, he said you were a friend of his and he wanted to see you, and that’s all I heard. I just wanted to see you so badly that I jumped at the chance. Don’t laugh at me.”
I shake my head. “I would never laugh at you.”
; Chris’s smile turns more serious. “That’s why I like you so much.”
I shake my head. “See, none of you know me. None of you really knows me. So how do you know you like me enough to…to…do…I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
Paul sits down at the table. “Well, let’s get to know you, Jane.”
Gabe turns and slowly nods. “Yeah, let’s get to know you.”
“Where did you grow up?” Chris asks.
I actually growl. I can’t stand all the attention, the tension. Grabbing the vodka bottle, I march into my living room.
Diva? Moi?
Yes, I realize how I’m acting like a princess. But the growl and running away from the men is merited. They would surely run if they knew who I was, where I grew up. I can see them in my mind’s eye, how I’d say, Well, I grew up in a little commune not far from here. You might have heard about it since it made national news and the FBI and ATF were stationed there for months. But I escaped. I escaped before my uncle could marry me and before my father killed my mother and thirteen other members.
The men follow me into the living room.
Thy people shall be my people.
I shake my head as all three find places around the big sectional couch that I nest in.
“I don’t want to talk about my childhood,” I say, worried I sound like a petulant teenager.
Chris winces and sits close to me. “Sorry.”
I reach out and almost touch him but am too aware of the other men. “No, I’m sorry.”
Gabe sits at my other side and Paul’s the exact opposite of where I’m sitting, so he’s looking directly at me. I swallow, wondering just what his purpose is. What does he have in mind now?
Chris shrugs. “I forget that some people didn’t have the upbringing I had. Great folks. Hard working. We were poor, but happy.”
“Me too,” Gabe says.
Chris leans forward and grins at Gabe. “I know. Your old man is a legend at the station.”
During dinner, we’d found out that Gabe occasionally goes down to cook for the firemen because his father was a firefighter. It was a tradition his mother started when Gabe was a baby. And Gabe continued it after his mother was killed in an accident when he was only seventeen. His dad is now retired from the force, but Gabe loves to cook, so he considers it a good outlet for his hobby, cooking for a station of firemen.
Paul leans back. “I lived in six foster homes before I was eighteen.”
Chris looks at Paul, his mouth open. “Shit, man. I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” I whisper and spy on Paul with a new light shed on him. We have more in common than I’d thought. I’d guessed, because he’s so bright, so witty, so…just on the verge of cocky, that he was one of those boys who had everything—rich parents, nice car at sixteen, weed on the weekends, and a girlfriend who gave him blowjobs in the basement of his mansion.
But perhaps I should have known we had survival of a rough childhood in common. There’s always a slight edge to people like us. We try to hide it as best we can, but we know we’ve endured more than others. Only, it’s not a badge of honor. It’s a thing of shame, which we bury in six-foot-deep holes in our psyche.
Paul shrugs. “My mom was an addict. Still is. I have no clue where she is now. I gave up on her about ten years ago, when she stole every cent I had. But I’ll tell you, having her as my mother made for one hell of an entrance essay into Yale.”
That’s Paul’s defense mechanism. His too-dark humor. It makes people uncomfortable and that’s the point. He wants to stick people in the gut with his truth. But in actuality he wants people closer, I’d guess. But he hasn’t figured out how to do that yet, too ready to defend himself if someone else abandons him.
I get up and sit next to him, handing him the vodka bottle. “You need this.”
“Fuck, yes, I do.” He swigs a generous mouthful.
“I broke my foot when I was eight,” Gabe says.
Paul and I look at him.
He shrugs. “I thought we were telling sad stories to get the vodka and Jane.”
“If that’s the game,” Chris adds, laughing, “then let me tell you about a paper cut I got last week.”
Paul gets up and sits where I was, handing the bottle to Gabe. “Fuckers,” he says with no animosity.
I love men and their communications. Just like a magician’s puff of smoke, in a second of time, Paul, Gabe, and Chris are somehow closer, more friendly. Just one swearword and—poof!—they’re good buddies all over again. Honestly, since being raised in a society that purposely shuns, and seeing it performed by girls and women outside of the commune, it seems terribly barbaric and cruel compared to calling someone a fucker and laughing off whatever tension has been built.
Then the three men and I are teasing each other, drinking, and talking. Really talking. We’re playing a weird musical-chairs game with the vodka, where we’re constantly moving, rearranging where we’re sitting. As the hours pass, I feel the buildup of tension again. Only, maybe because of the booze, it doesn’t feel like a storm brewing. It doesn’t feel black, foreboding. It’s more red and sultry. It feels like the tension built at the end of a date, worrying if he’s going to kiss me or not. But which he I’m talking about I have no idea.
9
I wake and I’m fairly certain Metallica is setting up a home in my skull. My tongue is wearing a wool sweater, and I may just throw up. Not because of my nerves, but because of vodka. God, hangovers are the pits.
I can’t open my eyes. Not yet. And my right hip and lower back hurt. A lot. I’m pretty sure I’m lying in an awkward position, but I don’t want to move. Just give me five more seconds before Metallica moves on to their next song.
Finally, I slit my eyes open. My pillow is hard. Someone’s thigh. I’m lying on my side, I think, and I lift myself enough to see I’m in Gabe’s crotch. He’s passed out, sprawled as wide as possible on my couch. Chris’s head is on my hip, hampering me from moving much. Chris is also passed out, one hand wrapped around my thigh. He’s so cute when he’s sleeping, but my hips are aching. He’s younger than me. Younger than all of us. Only twenty-nine. And he’s always wanted to be a firefighter. He’s so idealistic you’d think it would make me cringe. But I think he’s beautiful. His angelic thoughts are lovely and I hope life will be wonderful and kind to him.
Somehow, I find a decorative pillow and extract myself from Chris while replacing my hip with the pillow. It works. Or Chris could be unconscious. God, we drank way too much.
Did anyone ever say professors were more mature than the rest of society? Well, that’s quite a lie. We’re probably just as puerile as the next person, if not even more so. We just have a great vocabulary to our immaturity.
I glance down at Gabe. He doesn’t seem to notice I’ve left his lap. He’s slightly snoring, which I think is endearing. He’s a year older than me. Paul is the oldest at thirty-seven. But Gabe…he seems the wisest out of us all. That saying of an old soul fits Gabe. And I love that he cooks for the firefighters because his father was one. He spoke a lot about his dad last night. His father is always tough, unforgiving, which makes for a difficult relationship, since Gabe worships his dad. I love Gabe’s vulnerability. He also has quite a bulge in his pants right now, and I’m wet. Even with Metallica paying me rent, I still like what I see. No, I love it.
Turning around, I wonder where Paul’s gone. I thought he passed out on the couch too, but there’s no sign of him. Tiptoeing though my house, I look at my driveway, where his black, late-model BMW is now missing. He’s left. And I’m sad about that. I have no idea what to do with the firefighter and cop in my house. But I thought Paul would know what to do.
I’d wondered what he’d been about last night. I still have no clue. But he hadn’t wanted to manipulate the situation so the other men would leave. In fact, he seemed to keep encouraging them to stay. But I have no idea what that means. It’s not like I could date all the men at once.
Oh, yes, I’m a
n anthropologist who knows all about polyandry. I teach it. My younger students, usually right around eighteen, giggle and blush, even the boys blush when I lecture about polyamorous relationships. But usually there’s an older student, a mom trying to finish her degree who approaches me, shyly at first, saying how her life would be so much easier with one more husband. She can imagine all the to-do lists done, the house clean, and her kids well taken care of. She can imagine her life less frantic, less pressure on her. And if her husband hadn’t given her an orgasm, she could go to the other husband for that.
We chuckle and I agree, saying it sounds wonderful.
As a graduate student, I was drawn to researching more about Nepal women who were in fraternal polyandrous marriages. That’s where two or more brothers marry the same wife. There’s no fighting for inheritance because all the brothers inherit. The brothers are the fathers of the children. Primogeniture is thought of as barbaric and cruel.
As a woman who’s come from a society where I wouldn’t inherit anything except what my uncle-husband might have wanted to give me, which would be beside what he’d give to his oldest son, fraternal polyandrous marriage sounded appealing. Apparently, the Romans were appalled when they discovered certain clans of Britons were polyandrous. Shaking their heads at the savages and their idiotic marriages. Killing the clans for their heathen ways.
And, no, not every man from my childhood had multiple wives. My uncle, who wanted to marry me, was monogamous until his wife died. Then he looked to me to fill that position.
I don’t have a real opinion about polygyny. But in the commune, women were inferior. That I have a problem with. I was raised to believe I would never matter as much as a man. Yet, through my veins pounded something contrary. I don’t know why I thought any kind of clashing belief. I really don’t. I was beaten into submission. But there was something in me, something with feathers and wings, that wouldn’t submit.
Still, I live in an environment that doesn’t allow much room for anything but what those Romans enforced through slaughtering the Britons two thousand years ago. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with monogamy. I love monogamy and wish I’d had it. But there’s the rub: there are so few who are committed, truly committed. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with monogamy or polyamorous relationships. Maybe there’s something wrong with the humans who go into those relationships.
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