A Republican, huh? You know, this was the first time (save for born-again religious farm kids at Southwestern Illinois) that I ever had met someone young claiming to be Republican, proud of it, ready to take on all arguments about it.
“Reagan will knock Jimmy back to his Sunday school class come the ’80 elections, just you watch.”
Reagan? Mr. B Movies?
“Yeah, Mr. B Movies,” she said, getting up to clear away our plates. “He’s the most persuasive, slickest packaging of a conservative agenda this century; the interests he represents are going to turn back Johnson’s Great Society bullshit. But I don’t want to talk politics, please.” She took my plate.
Emma, my friend Emma, I mentioned, had a theory that Reagan was the Antichrist.
“I’m not much on Christs or Antichrists, but if he’s going to cut my taxes, pour tons into the military-industrial complex and whip the economy into shape, I’ll vote for him. I would sleep with Milton Friedman, so there. You mention your friend Emma a lot.”
Didn’t mean to, I said.
“Where does she work? What does she do?”
She wants to be a poet. She works for temp agencies, odd jobs.
“Has she published? Does she have an agent?”
No.
“Is she any good?”
I think so, but she’s a bit shy with her stuff.
Connie put the dishes in the sink, muttering, “No one ever got anywhere being that. Shy, I mean.”
No, I guess not.
Connie ran some water in the sink. In a moment she came back to the table with two brandy glasses. “Ceme caramelles in a second. A little pre-dessert brandy?”
Sure. Pile it on, I can get used to living like this.
“This Emma,” she said as she poured, “she’s someone you’re involved with at the moment?”
(Hmm, not wasting any time, is she?) Uh, well, I said, she was my roommate last year.
“So you’ve broken up?”
Why am I lying? Why am I trying to make Connie think Emma and I had an affair? That’s a dumb question: for sexual credit, of course. But what I want to tell Connie is that I’m wildly attracted to her but that my social life to date has defeated me and I’m scared to make a move. Maybe if I hadn’t met Emma—no, forget Emma, she has nothing to do with this evening.
“She was always rude to me on the phone, this Emma girl. Got the impression that she resented my being your friend.” Connie resumed her place, after placing the ceme caramelles before us.
Yes, I told her, Emma did resent her.
Connie continued eating, a trace of a smile between bites. “Whatever for? Could it be…”
Yes?
“Just a thought.”
Silence for a minute—a minute in which I knew what she meant and she knew that I knew what she meant.
“Let’s go in the living room,” she said, rising.
I sat down on the plush sofa. She sat beside me, an inch away.
“Something wrong?” she asked, nestling in.
No, why do you ask?
“Oh it’s just you seemed to jump a bit—the body language is all wrong, kid. Nervous about something?”
No, I said, nothing at all. (Calm down, I told myself, get realistic here …)
“What kind of music do you like?”
I told her I liked anything, that I would like to know what she liked, actually. She got up and slapped in a tape cassette of some classical piano music, very tinkly and romantic … no wait, here comes an orchestra, so that makes this a … a symphony? No, no, what’s the word—Emma knew about classical music, why didn’t anything rub off? Sonata. That’s it. Nice sonata, I said.
Connie smiled, “It’s a concerto actually—”
SHIT. CONCERTO, that’s what I meant …
“I made this tape myself,” she went on, leaning into me, a pressure ever so slight. I adjusted myself so I could be more leaned against. “It’s sort of a favorites tape, I got five slow movements from Romantic piano concertos and put them back to back—this is Rachmaninoff’s First, Chopin’s First is next, then Brahms’s Second—it took me ages to follow it, and now it’s my favorite. Beethoven’s Third and, the killer, Ravel’s slow movement. I die every time I hear that one. I used to have a lover who put that on and I think of him everytime I hear it … You must have music like that.”
Gee, what to say … Like, there’s this Elton John song I slow-danced to with Karen Schmitt at the high-school prom but that wasn’t going to cut it beside Chopin. Quick, what classical music did I know? William Tell Overture. Beethoven’s duh-duh-duh-DUH Fifth Symphony. Flight of the Bumblebee. Yeah, that’s it, I always think of my old lovers when I hear the Flight of the Bumblebee. I’m hopeless. I said there was lots of reminiscent music for me too, but I couldn’t think of anything that really got to me.
“Mid-period Beatles slays me too,” she said. “I can’t even put them on anymore, nostalgia overwhelms me. I’m back at my high-school prom with Davie Epstein, in Brookline, Massachusetts. I’d gotten my Harvard acceptance and he was going to stay in Brookline and work in his Dad’s real-estate office. Oh god.”
Why didn’t I say what I had to say about Karen Schmitt? Connie wasn’t a snob, she wouldn’t have sneered at me for not knowing classical music. She’s sharing her thoughts with me and I’m being worthless here … I said that I envied her having specific memories like she had to the Beatles. The Beatles for me broke up when I was in tenth grade which doesn’t mean I didn’t remember them but they were my older brother’s property, if you see what I mean.
“All that seems a long time ago,” she said blankly.
Were you a campus protester?
“You kidding?” Connie smiled, and laughed a little, knocking her hair back. “Miss Reactionary here? I thought the governor shoulda turned the teargas on ’em, Ronnie Reagan-like.”
We both laughed because she was obviously joking. At least, I think she was joking. Maybe she wasn’t.
“Ever been in a demonstration, Gil? I have. It’s just a mob enjoying itself. ‘Let’s go take the administration building!’ And everyone goes yeahhhhh and then everyone runs to see how far they can get—it’s a blast. I got caught in the one at Columbia when I was down here seeing my boyfriend. No one’s honest enough to admit they were fun—they were all the most serious business in the world, all of them meaningful and pure, not a trace of levity, just a holy purpose. If you’ve ever been in one you know how it’s just a mob getting out of hand, getting off on itself.”
Yeah but they were protesting the Vietnam War which was worth making a little noise about, tearing up a little property over. If she had been a guy she would have had to go fight—
“College deferment.”
Didn’t she find that a little hypocritical?
“I’m just a realist, Gil. I’m not saying college deferment was fair, it wasn’t. Lower-class whites and blacks fought Vietnam because they went to crummy schools, couldn’t get into college given their environments. But that’s how life’s always worked. But we’re talking politics again.”
Yes, but I was learning a lot talking politics with her because it was becoming obvious I was falling for a very civilized Fascist. Hey, I’m thinking to myself, maybe Emma is right, you aren’t this kind of person—you’re not her class, you’re not her type. What kind of future is remotely possible here? None. What’s worse is that I don’t have enough sophistication to argue with her, she would win every argument even though I was right. Nah, this is doomed. Maybe I should just get up and tell her I’ll call again and just go away. There, I felt better already, the burden of having to sleep with her is off my shoulders and other parts of my body. I can relax. I can walk out of here a free man—
“I think you should stay here tonight,” she said, putting a hand on my leg. “What do you say?”
I say nothing.
“You’ve been nervous all night, kid. If you were sitting over there worried about making a move or whether you should
or not, or whether I liked you or … or whatever you were thinking, I think you should know it’s all right…”
What was I going to say? Guess I’ll know when I hear myself say it.
“… and from the moment when I came backstage to see you after the play, I think I knew where I wanted to take this relationship…”
It was like in those out-of-body experiences, where you look down and see yourself. I wished I was out of my particular body, come to think of it. I was just SO not ready for this.
“… so you tell me, what do you think?”
After a minute, I said: gee, we’ve just gotten to know each other and all—
“If you want to,” she said, moving closer, homing in—the heart is racing now—“then don’t hestitate to tell me. No need to be nervous around me.” She was an inch from my face. Great perfume, I notice. Figures.
Uh, I said, uh well, I don’t know that I’m ready yet …
Connie smiled, undeterred. “You know,” she said quietly, slowly, and very sexually, “that Emma girl’s got you spooked, hasn’t she? You are this far from falling in love with me, but she’s got you afraid to step out of line.”
I nodded. God, I was being vulnerable. I always thought it would be this miserable to be vulnerable and wimpy before a beautiful woman … but you know, vulnerability can take you a lonnnnng way. I don’t think I’d ever realized that. It was beginning to dawn on me then that my virginlike fear and trembling might have had its appeal.
“Now,” she said, her voice gravelly, her face very close to mine, kissing territory, “I think you should just consider stepping out of line. Hm? Think that’s a good idea?” She put her hand behind my hair on my neck, slipping a finger between my neck and the collar.
You may be disappointed, I said.
“Ooooh no, no,” she smiled, her lips fuller suddenly, that perfume having the intended effect. “I’m never disappointed. I always have a good time. In fact, let me tell you what. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, for starters. In time, I think we could think of many, many things to do.” She scooted herself over to lean across my lap; her arm lowered to my back, the other hand came up to play with that dopey disco-age puffed-up haircut we guys thought looked so cool at the time. You oughta see my ŕesuḿe picture. You oughta see the photos I have of myself—I look like Farrah Fawcett, feathered hair. YUCK. But I guess you don’t care about my hair. I guess you want me to get on with this Sex Scene.
“Nooo, don’t worry about a thing, kid. Ole Connie doesn’t ever have a bad time. Because she’s not after a quickie, a one-night stand, she’s after a night of intimacy, of talking…” She tightened her grip on me. I felt it incumbent on me to slip my own hand up to her back. “… of telling stories, of getting to know one another—what better place than…” She nodded toward the door to the left of us.
The bedroom? I ask. (Boy, I’m really Einstein tonight …)
“Uh-huh,” she said, slowly nodding. “Silk sheets. Cost this girl a fortune. Ever spent the night against silk sheets?”
I’d settle for clean sheets given how often I do laundry.
“Well then, I think for educational purposes you should stay over. Silk sheets and all.”
I said that it had occurred to me that I was out of my depth. This was her last chance to opt out. She reassured me:
“Hey kid, I never slum it. I only go for class.”
Class, me?
“No, I mean it, you’re one classy dude—”
(Note to readers: cut the woman a break for “one classy dude,” this was 1978. Those were important words for me and I’m sorry they were in ’70s lingo.)
“—and you gotta drop those deadbeats.”
You mean Emma.
She kissed me lightly; I could feel her breath on my lips a moment before she touched them with her own. “Uh-hm, I mean Emma. Cut her off.” Another kiss. “Give her a little room, hm?” And another kiss. Okay, okay, I’m warming up here. “Let her know that there are other people in the world, people who are…” Pause. Come on, finish the sentence, Connie. “… willing to spend all night, I mean every single minute, I mean not wasting a second, making love to you.” She moved in for the kill now, pinning me to the sofa, taking my head in her hands. “Would you like that?”
I said I thought I could fit it in my schedule.
“I know you’d like to, because it’s been a while since the woman you love has been doing what she should have been doing…”
I began to protest, to keep up my Emma-affair story.
“No, you can’t fool Constance, don’t even try.”
No, I said, it indeed had been a while …
“That’s a shame,” she said, loosening my tie. “A real shame. All that time, you could have been over here with me, getting the works, right? Hm?” She smiled as she bent forward to kiss me more significantly. I mean, I know I’m sitting there being kissed and I should be falling into the experience romance-novellike, but I was sitting there being strangely objective, thinking: Wow, this woman can kiss. She can cook, she can set up a pretty good seduction too. I’m being made here—putty in her hands. Should this disturb me? Well, even if it should it’s not. I guess at some point I have to kick in and do my part too. Kiss back in other words, get the ball rolling. But wait.
Connie hopped up. “Be back,” she said, walking toward the bedroom. “Don’t go away now.” The door closed behind her. Sex preparations. God, this was of such a different echelon from the Monica grope-and-pounce lecheries. This is real movie sex, I said to myself. This could be filmed. Well, she could be filmed. God knows what will become of me in there, in the Bedroom. Odd. I used to have serious postcoital tristesse back in my fumbling college encounters—it was always disillusioning, empty-making, sort of a big letdown. Now I’m having precoital tristesse. Stop thinking, I tell myself—can’t you ever go on automatic?
Do you remember the guy waaaay back there talking about sex for the Average Middle-Class Heterosexual American Male in his early twenties? WELL, HE’S BACK! And he has decided on a similar list for the Average Middle-Class Heterosexual American Male in his mid-twenties. One doesn’t look for types anymore, the women are irrelevant really, but one’s relationships fall into a number of categories:
1. The Transition Woman.
The woman, like Connie for me, who takes you from post-adolescent sex (backseat fumblings, stopwatch sex, grope search and destroy …) to adult sex (silk sheets, lots of seemingly profound talk in bed, foreplay, glasses of brandy). You feel older, wiser, newer, better afterward. And you almost invariably have the right perspective on it, and nearly never fall in love with her.
2a. The Placemarker.
These can go on for years. You love them. They are nice. They love you (usually very much) but you know out there somewhere is someone better. This woman is so cheated on, it’s not funny—she doesn’t know half of what goes on behind her back. Most long-term girlfriends are like this. On occasion this woman moves in, but usually the guy will insist on separate accommodations for the sake of noncommitment.
2b. The Maybe-Wife.
Yeah, you’ll give it a shot, commitment, fidelity, sincerity, loyalty … but it will still seem something is missing. Some marry this woman, the first long-term well-working relationship after college. Looks good on paper. But I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot of growing up left to do yet and those sacrifices you make for the Maybe-Wife (or real-life wife) will eat at you around twenty-eight or twenty-nine (“I coulda been halfway up the ladder by now if I hadn’t stayed in Podunk while you finished beautician school…” etc.) and she will get the blame for much she shouldn’t. In fact, every time the guy misses being free for a moment—a spare baseball ticket he can’t accept, a night out with the boys he can’t participate in, the single ex-roommate wanting to do the town while he has to drag his feet—the Maybe-Wife is going to get the abuse for it. In time, the Maybe-Wife, once so important, so viable, will be shuttled to Placemarker status whe
reupon she will be in danger of replacement. I never went for a Maybe-Wife. All my theater friends had these heavydeep’n real relationships going on, lots of fighting, lots of tears, lots of compromises.
3. The Quality Item.
Ah, she’s still around, not as present or as possible as before, but she’s got staying power. You’ll throw it all over, every concern, every contingency, for this one. Because you have asked yourself this question a lot lately: why am I in the middle of the prime of my life without having had my true and lasting and endlessly perfect love? (Yeah, there’s another one of these lists before the book ends—thought I’d warn you.)
ANYWAY, there I was with the Transition Woman.
Her bedroom was worth everything—she could have been a lot less than she was and I would have stayed for the plush soft carpet, the new silk sheets, the sheer ease and comfort and quiet and coolness which her air conditioner provided. I could stay there, lying beside her, my arm across her waist, forever. She was right: the night did seem to stretch out before us. It was eleven or so according to the glowing digital clock.
“Plenty of time for an encore,” she said.
If I’m up to it.
“You will be,” she said, nestling closer. “You wanted that a lot, kid. Been a while?”
About a hundred years.
“I love it when a man is hungry. You know he means it.”
While I’m contemplating the C-grade dialogue, her hand moves lower.
“That’s the spirit,” she said, rolling about to lie on top of me. She brushed the hair out of my eyes. “Let’s tell dirty stories, hm? Like your first time?”
Emma Who Saved My Life Page 23
