Zen and Sex (a laugh out loud Romantic Comedy)

by Dermot Davis

  Frances is so friggin’ complicated and unpredictable that I really don’t know if I’m up to the task. She talks and acts like she’s wise and in control but then she does or says something that’s utterly ridiculous and she comes across as some immature, wounded scaredy cat. I don’t get her at all. I mean if she really has all her shit together, why is she alone at her age, married twice and her whole past such a screw up?

  Then again, in some strange way, I do get her. She’s like no one I’ve never met before, exotic, yet familiar, all at the same time. I feel so comfortable with her and so understood, like I’ve never felt with any other woman before, as if, on some level, we’re great friends and compatriots that have known each other through many, many lifetimes. Or maybe I’ve just described how I feel about my mom. Do I have a mommy complex?

  Ughhh, it’s mind-numbingly complicated and maybe I should just go back to being alone where I’m not struggling with all this relationship stuff that I’m never, ever going to figure out or successfully get my head around.

  I should go back to her place and break it off, face to face. It shouldn’t come as any huge shock to her and considering whatever shit she was talking about when I told her that I loved her, it will probably be a massive relief to her too. At least I’ll give her the decency of telling her in person and not in an email or text like I’ve heard this younger generation is known to do. Besides, Janice has probably been on the phone to her, telling her that I suggested we all have a threesome and that she should dump my sorry ass. It’s a mess.

  On the drive over, I mentally rehearse what I’m going to say: Frances, we’re not right for each other. You need someone that’s into Zen and yoga and I’m better off with someone a bit more naïve that drinks beer like a guy, swears and eats red meat. Someone a bit more like your daughter, maybe.

  I shouldn’t mention her daughter, that’s just, euw.

  Frances, it’s been a wild ride and we had some fun times together but let’s get off this crazy merry-go-round relationship thing before someone gets hurt. I think we could be good friends, no, I think we could be great friends, so what do you say, partner? That sounds like how Spencer Tracy broke it off with Katherine Hepburn in a few of their comedies. I should rewatch some of those, they were funny.

  Frances, you’re too old for me. I’ve learnt some great things from you and I’ll be forever grateful but you’ve been around the block one too many times and at this point have too many miles on the clock for me to realistically consider any kind of future together. Eek, do I really think like this or am I channeling Mike? She wants…no, she deserves honest communication.

  Frances, I’m too young for you. I’ve only had one serious relationship in my life where I can honestly say that I was in love, whereas, you have had many, so maybe we’re just not evenly matched and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what you’re talking about most of the time. Okay, that’s the one. I’ll lead with this and see where it takes us.

  By the time I drive over there, eventually find parking and walk the six blocks to her place, I’m totally over it. In my head I’ve made peace with being alone and I’m already looking forward to getting back into my single life and my familiar routine of work, walks in the park, a few beers now and then with Mike and Gloria and maybe post newer stuff on my FaceBook page, which I’ve been seriously neglecting.

  When Frances opens her door, the look of relief and total joy on her face takes me completely by surprise. She instantly hugs me and squeezes me so tightly that I have a hard time breathing. Without releasing her embrace, she shuts the door with her foot and somehow lets me know that she wants us to hug a little while longer without either of us breaking off or even speaking.

  She’s so warm and soft and smells of flowers that I’m lulled into a mental state of repose and all I want to do is close my eyes and stay exactly where I am. When I do close my eyes, I get the weirdest feeling. I could so totally fool my body into thinking that instead of standing upright, I’m actually stretched out, relaxing in a nice hot bath. Because that’s exactly what hugging Frances feels like. It’s trippy.

  By the time her grip relaxes, I’m feeling relaxed and I’m aware that this is one of the most amazing hugs I’ve ever experienced. Before Frances, I’ve never thought much about the hug, probably because I haven’t met anyone that was so into it the way that she is. But lately, I’ve grown to really like hugging and appreciate more its place in the pantheon of meaningful touch between two people.

  When I hug Frances, or rather, when Frances hugs me and I hug her back, it’s as if all the worries of the day and of the mind simply float away and return to the ethers from whence they came. Nothing else seems to matter except holding her tightly, right here and right now and sometimes it’s actually hard to break off and feel that separation again. Holding her like this is so comforting and satisfying that it’s like I’ve come home…it just feels like home.

  “I’m so glad you came back,” she says sweetly, without loosening her hold.

  “Me too,” I say and as if I’ve just experienced some kind of ninja mind-wipe, all the stuff that I’ve been thinking and rehearsing just evaporates from my brain and leaves a sense of peace and calm in its place.

  “I love you too,” she says and I’m so caught off guard and so unprepared, that a tear forms in my left eye and runs itchily down my cheek.

  When she does break away from our hug, she does so very slowly and runs her hand down my arm to take hold of my hand. She looks into my eyes, which are now unashamedly teary and, with the most soulful look I’ve ever seen in anyone else’s eyes, she says, “Come lie down and hold me.”

  Leading me to her bedroom, still without breaking contact, she moves her body into mine on the bed so that I’m spooning her and, as if our bodies had no weight, it is like we float on the bed and merge into each other, her into me and me into her, so much so that I didn’t know where I end and she begins or where she ends and I begin.

  It is the most surreal and most sublime feeling that I’ve ever had in my life and maybe similar to that one night where Mike and I smoked too much pot and in one brief flash of a moment, I experienced what infinity must feel like.

  Then we both fall asleep.

  When I wake back up, the room is in semi-darkness and Frances’s face is lying against her pillow, facing me. As my eyes adjust, I can see that, if she was awake already, she has been watching me sleep. “Have you been watching me sleep?” I ask with a smile. No one has ever watched me sleep before.

  “You’re so well-behaved when you sleep,” she says, playfully. She kisses me tenderly and I hold her face with my free hand and then softly stroke her cheek. One by one, she slowly and sexily opens the buttons on my shirt, which totally arouses me.

  “What’s that?” she asks as she peels back the left side of my shirt.

  “What’s what?” I ask, before I suddenly and shockingly remember.

  “It looks like you have some kind of rash on your chest,” she says, squinting in the half light to get a better look.

  “Oh, that, no, it’s not a rash, I was going to tell you…”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I dropped by Janice’s place on my way home.”

  “Janice lives in Venice? That’s not on your way home.”

  “I wanted to return her DVD which was in my bag all the time and I…she told me to take care of it for her, that night, and I forgot and I figured she needed it and I was going to Venice anyway, to take some photos for a project I’m working on and anyway…”

  Looking more than a little alarmed, Frances gets out of bed, zips up her jeans, buttons up her blouse and acts like she doesn’t want to hear any more. It’s as if her mind is made up, even though I haven’t told her what happened and she wants me out of there, pronto.

  “Nothing happened,” I say, not knowing what to say. “She said that she does these tattoos and she insisted that she give me one, so I…”

  Frances leaves the bedroom and I hones
tly feel like a turd, whatever that feels like and I really just want to bolt out the front door and run away at full speed down the street rather than have the conversation that I need to have with Frances if this relationship has any chance of survival.

  Frances is in the kitchen making coffee when I sheepishly approach. “I don’t want to hear any more,” she says. “You should leave.”

  “I don’t want to leave,” I say, summoning all my bravery, “I want to talk this out.”

  “There is really nothing to talk about, Martin. Please go.”

  “Frances, nothing happened between us. Can’t we even discuss it?” I interpret her silence to mean that she really doesn’t want to talk and regretfully, at this moment can’t stand the sight of me, either. I almost turn to leave and, based on my track record to date, I normally would have been long gone but something inside me, some stubborn, principled part of me is saying that this is a defining moment in my life, and to turn heel and run could be so damaging that I’d regret it for the rest of my life.

  “Frances,” I say softly, “if I have learned anything from you it’s that honest communication is paramount to having any kind of relationship, with anybody. I know you feel like you hate me or despise me at this moment and I can understand that but if I walk out that door, then there’s probably no way we can come back from this. You said you wanted a conscious relationship with true and honest communication? Well, here it is. Or do you only want it when it’s on your terms?”

  “You crossed a line, Martin.”

  “Can you stop doing what you’re doing and we can sit down and talk?”

  “Fine,” says Frances, as she throws a dish cloth across the counter top.

  I sit down on the sofa as an invitation for her to join me. She does, although she sits away from me at the far end. I slowly and carefully tell her the story, beginning with finding the DVD in my car and ending with discovering that the Celtic knot tattoo was, in fact, something else. I talk about how I wasn’t really sure what it all meant or what was going through Janice’s mind, nor what she had hoped to achieve by her devious bait and switch. I finish the tale by somberly opening my shirt and revealing the tattoo for Frances to fully experience for herself: Hello mom.

  “I honestly don’t know if she was protecting you from another sex-crazed boyfriend or trying to get one over on you by bragging that she could have stolen a boyfriend from you, I don’t know.”

  “Could she?” asks Frances. “Could she have stolen a boyfriend from me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “She is going through some weird phase, lately.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “All this feminist stuff, she was never like that before. It’s probably a mix of whatever feminist courses she’s doing in college and a belated adolescence where she seems to blame me for all her childhood instability, not having a father…” As Frances becomes tearful, part of me heaves a sigh of relief that the intense pressure that was on me now seems to be off. I’m not sure if I should come closer and hold her but, rather than risk another rejection, or have the focus switch back to me, I stay put.

  “She actually told me that I ruined her entire childhood.” Frances can’t hold back her tears and I do move closer to embrace her, which she actually welcomes. She sobs in my arms.

  15. The Columbus Effect

  I sleep over with Frances but for the first night since we’ve been together, it isn’t sexy. In fact, I would describe our togetherness as downright cold and I barely sleep at all. Feeling very fragile and vulnerable, Frances asks me to stay but she seems to have withdrawn into herself. I feel like I’m superfluous to whatever it is that she’s going through and maybe would have been better off going home. It’s fierce awkward and I have no idea how to be with her or what to say to her when she’s being so distant like this.

  “We should get ready for the seminar,” she says and then I remember that it starts today and then I wonder: she now wants to go to a relationship seminar? Seriously?

  “You still want to go?” I ask gently.

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I do. I just wasn’t sure if…sure, let’s go.”

  I feel like now I’m walking on eggshells around her and I’ve no idea how to make things better between us. Does she just need some time? What is she thinking? Is she thinking about her daughter or me or her past failed relationships, what?

  “Would you like me to drive?” I ask, when we get to her car.

  “No, I’m fine,” she says, without looking at me.

  As we drive in silence I’m now wishing that I was somewhere else, anywhere else, besides going to some ludicrous relationship seminar with a woman that’s acting at best, like she doesn’t care about me and at worst, like she hates my guts.

  If I was with Mike, and he was acting like this, I’d punch him on the shoulder and say, ‘snap out of it, man, you’re depressing as fuck, let’s go grab a beer,’ and invariably he’d smile and say, ‘you’re right, dude, I’m feeling like crap today, let’s go get shit-faced,’ and off we’d go to the nearest bar and pretty much stay till closing. And that would be it, end of weirdness. You can’t do that with a woman. This silent shit sucks.

  We sit in a small function room of a hotel along with maybe twenty other couples and one strange guy on his own who probably misread the brochure that said it was for couples and not for single guys hoping to get coupled up. Dr. Redmond Clark is first up and he’s going to give a PowerPoint presentation about something called the Columbus Effect and other fascinating oddities.

  Dr. Clark is a total geek that seems to think in his head that he’s cool, which makes him come off looking ten times geekier. He cracks some lame jokes, presumably to get everyone to like him and maybe it’s his way of saying, hey I know I have a bunch of letters after my name but I’m a really cool guy and fun to have a beer with, too. Then he dims the lights and starts his presentation and in an instant he becomes deathly serious. I look at Frances and smile, as if to say, ‘can you believe this guy?’ but she doesn’t smile back. Not good.

  “One of the first questions I like to ask couples is, ‘why are you in relationship in the first place?’ Some people answer that question by saying: because it’s fun or I like the way she/he looks or I want someone to do stuff with, I don’t want to be alone…’

  “These are all valid answers but the one true, overriding answer is that the biology of evolution has hardwired you that way. The concern of evolution is not that you have someone to go to the movies with or to ensure that you have a dance partner, no. The concern of evolution is the continuance of the species. It’s the evolutionary impulse that is largely responsible for mate selection among animals. Humans, despite whether we might like to think otherwise, are no exception to that impulse.”

  Already bored, I look to Frances to see what kind of response a neutral smile will get me but she doesn’t shift her gaze from the PowerPoint slide of a bunch of words under the title, “Evolutionary Imperatives.” I look around the room to see who else thinks this is a load of you-know-what but not only are most people sitting forward in their seats, some of them are taking notes.

  I’d hate to be the only one here that feels like heckling but either the guys are really into it or they’re doing a good job of faking interest to keep their girlfriend’s happy. For the sake of the evolutionary imperative of the camaraderie of guyhood, I’m hoping it’s the latter.

  “Let’s look what happens when two people, ‘fall in love,’ shall we? First of all, the body releases an extremely potent chemical cocktail called phenylethylamine or PEA for short. This love soup provides the body with a natural high: colors seem brighter, the world seems friendlier and so on. Monkeys injected with PEA demonstrate hyper sexuality and “moonstruck” behavior with their companion. If their companion is removed, the monkey will experience immediate withdrawal symptoms or what we might call ‘love sickness.’ An amazing facet of this drug cocktail is that the drug only works in the presen
ce of the other lover, the object of one’s affection, you might say.

  “After two to four years, the body ceases production of PEA. Nature has done its work, perhaps hoping that within this period one or more offspring have been produced and after which it is now up to the couple to either stay together or leave.”

  I kind of mentally doze off with my eyes open while Dr. Coolgeek drones on and almost puts me to sleep. I rouse myself now and then to catch a few words and, in the midst of intense boredom, I notice a really cool thing. If I tune out and don’t pay attention to any words in particular but just let them all blend into each other, like that chant music that some yoga people listen to, I notice that my mind will ‘wake up’ to some specific words that get my attention, without my conscious mind having any control over it.

  Sex…intercourse…copulation…sexual…anal…conjugation. Maybe guys do have a one-track mind, after all. But then again, I am listening to a lecture on sex or evolution or some combination thereof. Then he shows a video showing two rats in a cage and that gets my attention.

  “Let’s talk about sex, shall we?’ he continues with a knowing smirk. “If you put a male and a female rat together in a cage, they will be observed to initially copulate at a high rate of repetition.” I hear some nervous laughs from people but then again, watching two rats going at it over and over again, it is kind of funny.

  “As the honeymoon period comes to an end, the rate of copulation declines considerably. Familiarity tends to lead to a lack of sexual interest.” The rats are now slowing down until finally they stop and one of the rats, I guess the male, gets bored and goes off sniffing for food or something. Then they replace one of the rats with another rat and it’s off to the races all over again.

  “If the female is removed and replaced by another, the male miraculously becomes rejuvenated and the rate of copulation is immediately restored to earlier, higher levels.” Okay, this is funny. “Scientists have called this the Columbus Effect. The same behavior is observed with monkeys and yes, you guessed it, humans. Sexual boredom is one of the strongest factors operating against stable relationships in both the human and animal kingdom. When sex between a couple comes to a halt, a break up in the relationship is sure to follow.”