The Sportin' Life

by Nancy Frederick

Liana was amused by the story, I know. I loved telling my tales of conquest to her, for she’d laugh and enjoy them as much as any guy, maybe even more, because Liana didn’t feel competitive with me the way a lot of guys I know do. It’s funny that I’m remembering Liana now, for it has been years since I’ve seen her and she’s 3,000 miles away.

  Memories are the strangest thing in the whole human condition. I love my own memories more than almost anything in my life. I can look back through the pages of this mental scrapbook and recall in intimate detail all the special moments, all that I’ve shared and experienced, and it’s better in recollection sometimes than it was in fact because I can edit out all the disappointments, the recriminations, the dismal scenes of departure and the accusations made by women who wanted too much, too soon, and were threatening to choke the life out of my very soul.

  In many way, Liana was the most compatible woman I’ve ever dated. I might have married Liana. I thought about marrying Liana every time I was with her, but of course I think about marrying them all, and that’s probably what has saved me so far from marrying anyone. I loved Liana’s apartment, not because it was spectacular in any way really, which it wasn’t at all, because I’ve been in much more luxurious, more well-appointed places owned by truly wealthy women, which Liana was not. Her place was comfortable and I always felt at home there, almost more at home than anywhere else I’ve been, including my childhood home and my own places.

  There were cold cuts and beer in the refrigerator, which Liana kept there for me, and I felt at ease about it all. I never felt like a guest but like a pampered, beloved treasure in Liana’s life. Normally, such extravagance of emotion would make me uncomfortable, and perhaps ultimately it did, but while I was there it was like the best vacation I ever had.

  Liana was beautiful. She had this elegant, perfect face, with each angle and plane sculpted thoughtfully and subtly. Even in a pony tail with no makeup Liana looked beautiful. Once I watched her do her makeup—I love that sort of thing—the intimacy of women and observing them in all their rituals. All she did was put on mascara and a touch of rouge. I have seen many women do their faces, and I like to think of myself as knowledgeable and sophisticated in those areas. So I asked her wasn’t she going to make cheekbones. And Liana laughed at me and replied, “Honey! Only God can make a cheekbone!”

  Liana often laughed at me as though she were witnessing some amusing cartoon about masculine foibles. Well, I pointed out to her that you can put a darker shading in the middle of your cheek and that creates cheekbones. It turned out that she knew all about this technique, but she explained to me that she already had cheekbones of her own and didn’t usually bother with much makeup. “I like my face pretty much the way it is,” she said.

  I liked it too, although I have to say that I can be very susceptible to women with more feminine artifice than Liana, who seemed to have none at all. She took being a woman for granted and didn’t even act as though there were all that much difference between men and women. Maybe that was because she enjoyed the company of men so much, I don’t know. No matter how soft and curvy and feminine she seemed, it didn’t matter, for she had the sort of keen intelligence that required you to take her as seriously as any man, despite her killer looks and seductively long hair.

  The real thing about Liana was her eyes. Even now I can’t quite decide the color, although the vision of her face is as clear to me as if we had just been together and not as time and dozens of other women’s faces have intervened. They were blue eyes, or gray, or green, I don’t know, but they were wide and clear as the ocean and they contained this light that I have never seen anywhere else—knowing, aware, keen, intelligent, yet open and unafraid and filled with affection, willingness and ultimately love and approval.

  Women always try to be sexy around me, and I really don’t know why that is, but as the cliché goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s one of my favorite things about them. Liana never had to try to be sexy—she was too natural for that. She was never shy about reaching for me or letting me see how much I turned her on. Even after I left her, I’d lie in bed and remember how sexy she was and year for her lips, her body, her company. Sometimes I just wanted to hear her voice, because Liana had the sexiest voice, so soft and clear and precise. I would dial her number then and wait for her to answer, hoping to get her machine so I could listen to the whole speech she’d recorded. If she answered, I got to hear her say hello a few times before the connection was broken.

  In fact, once I commented to her about her voice, and she laughed at me the way she always did and replied, “I know. I have a voice that can give a guy a hard-on over the phone.” She was right. Somehow I thought she didn’t know that, but the thing about Liana was that she always knew what was going on. She knew what she was all about and nothing about it embarrassed her. That seemed a little sinful to me somehow.

  I keep my cards a lot closer to my vest than Liana ever did, and perhaps it was ultimately her openness that made me leave her. I don’t know. I never really know why I leave them, only that I feel a sense that it is time to move on and there is always another pair of arms, lips, breasts, to lure me away. What was it that she said that time? I know—we were sitting on a blanket in Central Park one day and she was talking about the beach. “Pretend we’re at the beach,” she sighed, “lying in the sand. I love to lie in the sand because I can wriggle down into it, making it curve to fit against my body.” I feel that way too, and maybe everyone does, but it seems somehow in bad taste to say it, and I communicated that fact to Liana. There was heat and imagination in her eyes as she looked at me and laughed as usual.

  It was that heat, that willingness to realize and express her responses to the various forces of life and the desire to enjoy every one without apology that got to me. It’s one thing to be open during sex, and I am in no way a prude, as hundreds of women would no doubt tell you, but I like to maintain a certain degree of circumspection, and Liana never cared at all what anyone thought about anything. I could just see her confiding this fantasy to my boss while he blushed and harbored thoughts of disappearing with Liana to some island paradise where they could wriggle orgasmically in the sand together.

  In may ways, my memories of Liana are pretty amusing, for I remember her as a hot, wild babe, and I bet that although she would love that description of her, no one else on the planet would perceive it in her, because she was subtle and in no way did she dress like a hot babe. I look around now at all these California women and Liana would be rather prim and understated compared to them. No—it wasn’t over sexuality or exhibitionism that she represented but rather freedom to respond honestly and sometimes that scared me.

  Everyone I ever introduced her to, including members of my family, who’ve seen me with the whole parade of women through the years, adored Liana. They made a point of telling me how much they liked her, how intelligent she was, how savvy, how funny, how delightful. And then they’d say something like, “Where did you meet her,” as though I was some poor slob who’d happened on this treasure that in no way did I deserve. To this day they shake their heads in dismay if I should reminisce about her to them, as if I let my one shot at happiness get away, as if she gave me the heave-ho instead of the reverse.

  I think it was the socks that finally did it. Liana insisted on wearing these sweat socks to sleep. Sometimes she’d sleep naked, and sometimes in some silky thing she’d put on for my amusement, but always those socks. At first she left them on to make love, but when I complained, she lay them on the floor beside the bed and pull them on after we’d finished. She said she couldn’t sleep with cold feet. I just thought it was tacky and kept after her about it. Finally she said, “Honey if you want to suck on my toes, just say so and I’ll leave them off.” She knew I didn’t want to suck on her toes, and I knew it too. But I could see her making an off-color comment like that in public if that was where we happened to be when I was teasing her about the socks. I just didn’t care for the image.
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  By that time I had met Paula and had been seeing her on off nights when I wasn’t with Liana, so I drifted away as I usually do. I like to stagger my women, so that when I leave one, there is usually another to take up the slack. Actually, I don’t go out of my way to do it, but that’s the way it just works out. Things were different then—a lot less complicated and a lot more romantic. You could meet a woman and spend the night with her all in the same day without exchanging sexual resumes or medical reports. Being single now is much harder. Even if I wanted to remember each encounter I’ve had, it would probably be impossible. I didn’t get my first computer until ‘85.

  I met Paula at Poukipsie’s on Third. I had gone there with an old girlfriend and some of her chums. She had called to say a bunch of them were going dancing and would I want to meet them there. I have strict policies about old girlfriends. It’s OK to meet socially in a group, but there must be no contact or things can get really messy. You know the singles’ scene in bars—it’s all spider and the fly. Once I mentioned this to Liana and she laughed and asked me if I were a good spider. What can I say—I told her the truth—I’m usually the fly.

  The music was playing and this blonde came up to me and began talking. It was Paula. At first I told her I was married, because I was with Jamie and her friends, plus I was seeing Liana and one other woman on a real occasional basis and I really wasn’t looking for any action at the time. But she didn’t seem to care and she sighed a sigh of desire that women often emit when they’re around me and said, “Ooh, I want to dance with you.” Then she was in my arms and I began to respond to the closeness of her and what could I do but decide to change my story. The make believe marriage became an open marriage in which we were both free to be with other parties, and she didn’t seem to care either way. Women never have any ethics. No matter what the story is at the beginning, all they seem to want is to be with me on any terms. Then, later on they get mad at me because I’m not exclusive or theirs permanently or whatever the circumstances.

  I told Liana about my meeting with Paula. I thought she’d laugh as she had at all my other women stories, but she watched me silently in such a strange, intense way, and didn’t even smile about the open marriage joke or anything. I realize later that this story was happening in the present tense while all the others had been in the past tense and perhaps that was what got to her. I felt bad as I was telling it, seeing the flicker of pain in her clear eyes. Most women would have gotten angry, I guess, which is why I never tell them any of my stories, but Liana stayed calm. I reached for her hand as we walked down the street and she gave it to me for a moment but then pulled it away and put it in her pocket as though she were cold, not rejecting me. There was a long silence, and I know I felt awkward. Finally she spoke, “It’s OK, Kevin, I understand. You’re telling me, ‘This is what I am.’” But there was more pain than love in her eyes and she did nothing to shield me from the naked vision of her soul that her eyes always revealed so uncompromisingly.

  I don’t know what I felt after that, but we continued seeing each other for quite some time, and I knew that Liana still loved me as much as she ever did because she was the kind of person who would have ended it herself if her feelings had changed. I had Paula to divert me, though, and she was fun. All she ever wanted was sex and stroking, and I like those things very much.

  I would arrive at her apartment for a date to find her snuggled naked on the couch waiting for me. I never saw her actually dressed except for the night we met. No matter how many times I told her I liked to go out, Paula didn’t care, because she wanted just to stay at home and make love. I told her that I like undressing a woman, that she was depriving me of that pleasure by never bothering to get dressed in the first place but she shrugged and indicated that all took up too much time.

  After sex I would try to talk to her about my work, about my life, my career, the issues I struggled with daily. She would lie next to me happily cosseted in my arms and seem to be listening, but she never asked a question and in no way did any of her comments indicate that she comprehended anything at all that I was saying. It was then that I longed for Liana, because Liana had a way of really listening and becoming involved in what I was saying, of asking thought provoking question and offering insights into my problems. I guess I was a fool to trade her in, but where could we really have gone from where we were?

  I look back at my childhood and wonder whatever will become of the American family. Mine was average, no more dismal than any other, but still it was not filled with the small layer of satisfaction and deep happiness that the filmmakers promise. My parents were married their whole lives. I think that my mother never slept with a man other than my father. I don’t think that she slept with him either. He slept with anything that moved and I think she liked it that way so she had an excuse to reject him. They stayed together but she felt nothing more than disdain for him and I think it was her anger and disappointment over her circumstances that ultimately caused her death. Of course doctors have other terms to describe it, but I saw the reality of her life, not the pathology of her body.

  In our house it was the worst thing in the world to be likened to Dad. I still blush at the memory of someone innocently comparing me to my father, for I had learned that was no compliment. When my mother would intone, “You’re just like Daddy,” I would squirm and writhe inside and wish I could sink a thousand feet beneath the floor into oblivion. And she would see the chagrin, the embarrassment on my face and a secret smile would appear on her lips as though she had accomplished some mighty task.

  What did she really see of me or the boy I was, for what was there in me then at that age which could have brought to mind the blustery, passionate, womanizing qualities she grew to hate so in my dad? I was a model son and a good scholar, a teacher’s pet, on every team, well liked and popular. I was a success, but all she saw in me was the physical resemblance to my father, the face that I did not create but wore like a badge of terror instead of pride.

  None of it made any sense to me, not our family, nor my parents, nor the life that they created that we shared. Why did they stay together? Why did they marry at all? I couldn’t fathom the answers as a child, and now I am no closer to the sense of it all than I was then. I do know that it was far more typical than the families that litter the airwaves on television shows that promise to represent the heart and soul of America. That is not my heart and soul, nor is it my America.

  I gave up on my family at an early age. I distanced myself from them emotionally, and no matter how many family gatherings I faithfully attended, I knew that it was just a fiction, and I was glad to perpetuate it for their sakes. It was so much more heartening than the truth, which was that I wish I had never met them at all.

  I look back now on the memory of my mother and I try to feel the tender sentiments that a good son would have, and it almost works, until I remember our interactions and her comments and always feel a little ill at ease with myself, as though the mere remembrance of my mother can put me in the position of supplicant trying to win approval which will never be forthcoming. I feel dirty and slimy and unworthy of her love and affection—that if only I could find the key, the right set of behavior patterns, the right turn of my heart and soul, then I could be the one who would not remind her of Dad, the one who is good and nice and clean and perfect, the son she had wanted all along. What would it have taken for me to have succeeded in her eyes? What if I had graduated from college and had married and settled down in domesticity with one woman and had remained faithful to her forevermore? Would that have done it? I don’t know, but that is what I have tried to do, am trying to do, and maybe someday it will work out, and then I will feel a huge sigh of relief and approval coming down from the heavens in my direction and it will be my mother recognizing my worthiness at last.

  Fauna

  The Identity Crisis

  My mother named me Francis after my father. I guess she figured that if I had his name it wouldn’t matter that I wa
sn’t a boy and wasn’t what he wanted and therefore he would stick around. She was wrong. By the time I was three, he was history and my mother had something really choice to hold over my head: namely that I had ruined her love story, that I was the reason her prince charming had hit the road and that because of me she was forever doomed to spinster status. She never looked at another man again. Oh no, it was too much of a delight to tell people, “Francis and I, we have each other, and we don’t need any men around here to take care of us. We do just fine without them.”

  We stayed together through my childhood, bound into a unit so tight that no one else dared to enter. I never had a friend over and was never allowed to make any friends outside. If schoolmates would call to make play dates, Mother would politely decline, saying that she needed me at home, that we had other plans, that I wasn’t feeling well. Even if she did meet a man who wanted to take her out, Mother gave him the cold shoulder. Later, she’d return home and tell me how the new neighbor, or the mail man, or somebody had asked her out but she had said no because her Francis needed her.

  Until I was ten or so, I believe her story and I enjoyed being at the center of her world. Mother stayed at home, talking silly little projects to make a living, which she never accomplished very well at all, though she loved to tell me often how well she was taking care of me and about what we could and couldn’t afford on her salary. Years later I learned that Mother received a check each month from Francis Senior which she deposited into the bank and withdrew as needed.

  “Francis, get my slippers,” or “Francis, make my tea,” she’d demand, and I would happily oblige, believing that we indeed did love and take care of each other. Gradually her tone grew more strained and more strident, and she called and whined throughout my adolescence. By then I had a part time job at the mall and I happily turned over every cent to Mother because I wanted to help take care of us the way she did. She took the money as though it were her due and never said a word about it.