Vox

by Nicholson Baker

  “But separate showers, no nudity.”

  “No, very chaste,” she said.

  “What was he doing when you got out of the shower?”

  “He was peering inside a Venetian paperweight.”

  “Classic. He’d obviously heard your shower turn off, and then he’d stood there, holding the paperweight to his face for ten minutes, so that you would be sure to discover him in that casual pose, appreciating your trinket.”

  “Quite possible. Anyhow, he sat in the kitchen and we talked rather formally while I made a spiral kind of pasta and microwaved a packet of creamed chipped beef—this is a great dish, incidentally, Stouffer’s creamed chipped beef over any kind of pasta noodles—I have it about once a week. Lawrence made an elaborate pretense of being impressed by this super easy recipe, and when I poured the spirals from the drainer into a bowl he came over to where I was standing and he said, ‘I have to see this.’ I was going to simply slice the packet of creamed chipped open and dump it over the spirals, which is what I normally do, but I was feeling sneaky, I’d just had a shower, and you know about me and showers, but I hadn’t dithered, despite the major striptease fantasy I’d had at the circus, because obviously I couldn’t, since a man was in my apartment, so I was feeling devious, and so I got out some olive oil and poured a little of it on the spirals, and he—he was definitely not in the know about cooking, and I’m certainly not much of a cook myself—but he said, ‘So that’s how you keep them from sticking and clumping.’ I stirred them up, and they made an embarrassingly luscious sexy sound, and I just decided, fuck it, I’ve dressed this person, I’m feeding this person, I’m going to seduce this person, right now, today, so I said, I said, ‘How very strange,’ I said, ‘I just remembered something I haven’t thought of in years. I just remembered this kid in my junior high—you remind me of him in some ways—I just remembered his commenting that a certain girl must have used olive oil to put on her jeans.’ Well, I saw Lawrence’s little eyeballs roll at this. He said something obvious about extra virgin cold pressed and he snuffied out a nervous laugh and I thought, yes, I am in charge here, I am going to see this person’s penis get hard, and even though I have a smoldering yeast problem and so can’t really have full-fledged sex I am going to have my way with this person somehow. It was probably that Venezuelan ball-twirling screamer that put me in that mood, now that I think back. I mean, I felt powerful and shrewd and effortlessly in control and everything else I usually don’t feel. I cut open the packet of creamed chipped and I said, musingly, ‘My grandmother was very careful about money—she always used to say that she was as tight as the bark on a tree. And I used to think about what that really would feel like, whether bark does feel tight to the inner wood of the tree. I used to put on my jeans and take them off, thinking about that.’ Lawrence said, ‘Really!’ I said, ‘Yeah, although actually I didn’t like my jeans to be at all tight, even then. I liked them loose. The appeal was the rough fabric, and the rough stitching, very barklike, the appeal was of being in this sort of complete male embrace, but then when you took them off, being all smooth and curved.’ Lawrence nodded seriously. So I said, making the leap, I said, ‘And when I started getting my legs waxed, which is quite an expensive little procedure, I also thought of that phrase, as tight as the bark on a tree, when Leona, my waxer, began putting the little warm wax strips on my legs and letting them solidify for an instant and ripping them off.’ I said, ‘In fact, I just had my legs waxed yesterday.’ Lawrence said, ‘Is that right?’ and I said, ‘Yes, it’s amazing how much freer you feel after your legs are waxed—it’s almost as if you’ve become physically more limber—you want to leap around, and make high kicks, cavort.’ I waited for that to sink in and then I said, ‘Leona’s a tiny Ukrainian woman, and she makes this growly sound as she rips the strips of muslin and wax off, rrr, and when she’s done both my legs and there’s no more hurting, she rubs lotion into them, and it’s a surprisingly sensual experience.’ Lawrence was silent for a second and then he said, ‘I’m inexperienced with depilatory techniques. I’ve never known anyone who had her legs waxed.’ I said, ‘Let’s have dinner.’ ”

  “What a tactician!”

  “Not really. Anyhow, we had dinner, which was pretty tame. Lawrence had many virtues, he had a kind of bony broad-shoulderedness, and a deliberate way of blinking and looking at you when you spoke, and he was quite smart—he was a patent lawyer.”

  “Ah. Patent infringement?”

  “Yes indeed. But he had no conversational skills at all. He was putty in my hands. No, I’m actually making myself seem more completely sure of my powers than I felt—but still, I was pretty much in control. I started asking him how electrical things worked—you know, like what shortwave radio was, and how cordless telephones worked, and why it is that at drive-ins now you can hear the movie on the FM radio in your car. And he was full of interesting information, once you jump-started him that way. But the thing was, I kept a faint racy undertone going in the conversation. For instance, I’d say, ‘What do you think those ham-radio bulls really talked about? Do you think some of them were secretly gay, and they left their wives asleep and crept down to their finished basements in the middle of the night to have long conversations with friends in New Zealand or wherever?’ He said, ‘I suppose it’s a possibility.’ And about the drive-ins I said things like, ‘It must be much more comfortable and private in drive-ins now, because you can close the window completely, you don’t have that metal thing hanging there with the tinny sound, covered with yellow chipped paint, like a chaperone, you’re not attached to anything around you, it’s much more like being in a car on the expressway.’ He said he didn’t know exactly how drive-ins supplied the FM sound, because he hadn’t been to a drive-in since he was eight years old, but he said that technically speaking it was an easy problem to solve, for instance there was a thing advertised in the back of Popular Science that picks up any sound in the room and broadcasts it to FM radios within several hundred yards, it’s called a Bionic Mike Transmitter. I said, ‘Ooo, a Bionic Mike Transmitter!’ He said, ‘Oh sure, it’s this device that you can leave in this room, for instance, and it will broadcast any sound in the room to any nearby FM radio, if it’s correctly tuned.’ He said, ‘Of course it’s advertised with a big warning about how it’s not meant for illegal surveillance. But probably that’s what it’s used for.’ I said, ‘You mean that whatever I did, whatever intimate private activity I engaged in, would be heard by the people swooshing by in the cars on the expressway?’ He said, ‘If they were tuned correctly, yes.’ I said, ‘Hmmm.’ You see, my living room is on the second floor, about three hundred feet from a raised part of the expressway.”

  “In some eastern city,” he said.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “So what did Lawrence do when you expressed a keen interest in his description of the Bionic Mike Transducer?”

  “Transmitter. He asked if he could have a fourth helping of creamed chipped beef. Then we were finished and I started to clear the table and he said, ‘I’ll wash up.’ I said, ‘No, forget it, I’ll do it later,’ but he said, ‘No no really, I like washing up.’ So I said fine, and he cleaned the kitchen, quite efficiently, while I told him the plot of Dial M for Murder, really lingering over the hot letter that’s found on the body of the man with the pair of scissors in his back. You know? Lawrence listened carefully—he’d never seen the movie, if you can believe it. He said he didn’t like black-and-white movies. I said, ‘Fine, don’t like them, Dial M for Murder is in color.’ He said, ‘Oh.’ And then he said, ‘Well, I think Hitchcock was a fairly sick individual anyway.’ I said, ‘You’re probably right.’ Then he dried his hands with a paper towel and turned toward me holding the glass bottle of olive oil and he said, ‘Now, where does this go?’ I said, ‘Well, where would you like it to go?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.’ So I said, ‘Well sometimes, after I get my legs waxed, the day after, they’re still a little tender, and I’ve found that o
live oil really helps them feel better.’ Which wasn’t true, they feel fine the day after, but anyway.”

  “Erotic license.”

  “Exactly. He said, ‘But that would be terribly messy!’ I said, ‘So I’ll stand in the bathtub.’ And he said, ‘But won’t it be cold and clammy?’ So I turned the bottle of oil on its side and put it in the microwave for twenty seconds. He felt it and he shook his head and said, ‘I think it needs a full minute.’ So we leaned on the counter, looking at the microwave, while it heated the oil. When the five beeps beeped, Lawrence took it out, and we went to the bathroom together. I stood in the bathtub and pulled my shorts up high on my legs, and very solemnly he poured a little pool of olive oil on his fingers and rubbed it just above my knee.”

  “He was kneeling himself?”

  “Yes. The bathtub wasn’t really wet anymore—I mean it was still humid from both the showers, but we didn’t have the water running or anything. He said, ‘You’re very smooth.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ A rather powerful smell of olive oil surrounded us, and I began to feel quite Mediterranean and Bacchic, and honestly somewhat like a mushroom being lightly sautéed. He stared at his hand going over my skin, blinking at it. I pulled the sides of my shorts up higher so he could do more of my thighs, and I said, ‘Leona is very thorough. No follicle is left unmolested.’ Then, whoops, I wondered whether that was maybe too kinky for him and whether he might think that I was trying to give him the idea that Leona had gone over the edge and waxed off all my pubic hair, horrifying thought, so I said, ‘I mean, within limits.’ He just kept on dolloping oil on his fingers and rubbing it in. After a while I turned around and held on to the showerhead and he did the backs of my legs. He wasn’t artful at all, he didn’t know how to knead the deep muscles, but I could feel the intelligence and interest in his fingers when they came to each new dry curve. His hands went right up underneath the bagginess of my shorts. I liked that. He didn’t say anything. Once I think he cleared his throat. Finally he said, ‘Okay, I think that’s everything.’ I turned around and looked down at him: he was sitting with his legs crossed, looking at my legs, very closely, really letting his eyes travel over them. He had curly hair—he needed a haircut, in fact. He had the top of the olive oil in one hand and the bottle in the other, and before he stood up he pressed the circle of the plastic top back and forth up the inside of both my legs, in a zigzag. Then he stood up and handed me the bottle. He was blushing. I smiled at him and I said, ‘Are you suffering from any sticking or clumping?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, some.’ So I pulled on the waistband of his shorts and poured about a tablespoonful of oil in there.”

  “No kidding!”

  “Yes, well, he looked at me with shock. And I know I wouldn’t have been able to do it if they hadn’t really been my own shorts that I’d lent him. I said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. Take those off and I’ll see if I have another pair.’ So he marched that peculiar march that men do as they are taking off their pants. He was not erect by any means, but he wasn’t dormant either. I said, ‘Did the olive oil feel warm?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Would you like some more?’ and he said, ‘Maybe.’ So I held the mouth of the bottle right where his pubic hair bushed out, high on his cock, I mean near the base, not near the tip, because he was still drooping down, and I tipped it as if to pour it over him, but I didn’t actually let any come out. I just held it there. And the expectation of the warmth of the oil made his cock rise a little. I tipped the bottle even more, so that the olive oil was right in the neck, ready to pour out, but still I didn’t actually pour it. And his erection rose a little more, wanting the oil. It was like some kind of stage levitation. His hands were in little boyish fists at his sides. When he was almost horizontal, but still angling slightly downward, suddenly I poured the entire rest of the bottle over him, just glug glug glug glug glug, so that it flowed down its full cock length and fell with a buzzing sound onto the bathtub. And this was not a trivial amount of oil, this was about maybe a third of the bottle. The waste was itself exciting. It was like covering him in some amber glaze. He hurriedly moved his legs farther apart so he wouldn’t get oil spatter on his feet. By the time there were only a few last drips falling from the bottle, he was totally, I mean totally, hard. And of course with this success I had second thoughts. I almost wanted him to leave right then so that I could come in the shower by myself. I stepped out of the tub and I said, ‘Sorry, I got carried away. And the problem is, I have this darn yeast situation, so I can’t really do anything with that magnificent thing, much as I’d like to.’ He said, ‘Ah, that’s all right, I’ll just go home and take care of that myself, that’s no problem,’ he said, ‘but your tub, on the other hand, is a mess. Ask me to clean it and I will.’ I said, ‘Oh don’t worry about that, it’s just oil, it’s nothing.’ But he was on his own private trajectory, and he said, ‘That’s right, it’s oil, plus I have to say the tub is not terribly clean to begin with.’ I said, ‘No no no, don’t even think of it, really.’ He picked up an old dry Rescue pad that was in a corner and he held it up and he said, ‘Look, tell me to clean your tub.’ He’s standing there, a pantless patent lawyer, semierect, wearing my Danger Mouse T-shirt, holding the tiny curled-up green Rescue pad with a fierce expression. He wanted to clean my tub. I said, ‘Well, great. Please do. Sure.’ He asked for some Ajax, so I brought some from the kitchen, along with a folding chair so I could sit and watch. Well, this Lawrence turned out to be some kind of demon scrub-wizard. He hands me my bottles of shampoo, one by one. My tub is now naked! He squats in it, so that his testicles are practically gamboling in the giant teardrop of oil that’s on the bottom, and he takes the Ajax and he taps its rim against the edge of the tub, all the way around, so that these curtains of pale blue powder fall down the sides, kind of an aurora borealis effect, and then he moistens his Rescue pad and he starts scrubbing and scrubbing, every curve, every seam, talk about circling motions, my lord! He did the place where the shampoo bottles had been, that I’d simply defined as a safe haven for mildew, he was in there, grrr, grrrr, twisting and jamming that little sponge. Not that my tub is filthy, it isn’t, it’s just not sparkling, and there is a faint rich smell of mildew or something vaguely biological, which I kind of like, because it’s so closely associated by now with my private shower activity. But here I was watching this guy in my shower! He took down the Water Pik massage head and he rinsed off the parts he’d done, and he began to herd all the oil down the drain with hot water, and the oil and the Ajax had mixed and formed this awful stuff, like a roux first, and then when the water mixed in it became this yellow sort of foam, which didn’t daunt him, he took care of it. And then he started scrubbing his way toward the fittings, using liberal amounts of Ajax alternating with hot water. He said, ‘You don’t worry about scratching, do you?’ I said I didn’t. So he gnarled around the cold-water tap and he gnarled around the hot-water tap and he circled fiercely around the clitty thing that controls the drain, and then when the whole rest of the tub was absolutely gleaming, he went to the drain itself—he set aside the filter thing, and he reached two fingers way in, and he pulled out this revolting slime locket and splapped it against the side of the tub, and then he really went to work on that drain, around and around the rim of chrome, and deeper, right down to those dark crossbars, that I’d never gotten to, he worked the scrubber sponge in there, grrr, more Ajax, more circling, more hot water. I mean I was in a transport!”

  “I bet.”

  “Then I held out the trash can, and he threw out the drain slime and the Rescue pad, and he rinsed his hands, and he stood, and in the midst of this newly cleaned tub he started to rinse off his cock and his legs, where a little oil had fallen, and I watched the water go over him, I watched the way the even spray of the showerhead in his hand made all the hairs on his legs into these perfect perfect rows, like some ideal crop, and he was quite hairy, and so I slipped off my shorts and unders and sat on the far end of the bathtub and propped my left f
oot against a washcloth handle and I hung my right leg out over the edge of the bathtub, so I was wide open, and I said, ‘I’m a bit rank, too, do me,’ so he started playing the water over my legs and then directly on my … femalia, and I held my lips open so that he could see my inner wishbone, and the drops of water exploding on it, and as he sprayed me, he began to get hard again. But I can’t come with just water, so I started strumming myself, while he sprayed my hand, which was a lovely feeling, and I held out my left hand and he maneuvered closer to me and I took hold of his cock and tried to begin to jerk it off, but I didn’t do very well, because my own finger on my clit felt so good, and I couldn’t seem to keep the two kinds of masturbating motion going with my left and right hand independently, I was making big odd circles with his cock, so instead I took the showerhead from him and I said, ‘You’re on your own,’ and I sprayed his cock and some of his Danger Mouse T-shirt, that is, my Danger Mouse T-shirt, while he began stroking away, staring at my legs and my pussy, and I liked spraying him quite a lot, I liked aiming the water at his fist, I liked the sight of his wet T-shirt, and he had, this is rather bad of me to say, but he had a kind of gruesome-looking cock, a real monster, and the relief of not having that girth in me was itself almost enough to put me over the top, and it looked quite a bit more distinguished through the glint of the spray. But I also wanted the water on me—I wanted to spray him, but I wanted the water flowing on me as well—and suddenly it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, I remembered the elephant woman lifting her knee, and so I reached forward and pulled his hips toward me so that his legs straddled my left leg, and I lifted my knee, and he clamped his thighs around it, and I let my other leg sprawl so that I was absolutely wide open, and now, when I sprayed his cock and his hand the water streamed down his thighs and then down my thigh and on me. And it was exactly what I wanted, and it started to feel so good, and I said so, and suddenly he started stroking himself incredibly fast, it was this blur, like a sewing machine, and he produced this major jet of sperm at a diagonal right into the circular spray of the water, so that it fought against all the drops and was sort of torn apart by them, and he was clamping my leg, my smooth leg, extremely tight with those perfectly watergroomed thighs, and I shifted adroitly so that the poached sperm and hot-water runoff wouldn’t pour directly into me and possibly cause trouble, but so that it still poured over me. And then he took the showerhead again, and still holding his cock and still clamping my knee very tight, he sprayed slowly across my hand and my thighs very close with the water until I closed my eyes and came, imagining I was in front of a circus audience. So that was nice.”