Punish Me with Kisses

by William Bayer

  "Well," said Andy, "shall we undress each other, or shall each person undress himself."

  She glanced at him. "Why doesn't each person make his or her own decision?" she said.

  "The undressing part—that's what I call The Big Moment."

  "What's so big about it?" she asked.

  "Showdown time, when you finally see what you got. I had a girl up here couple of weeks ago who'd had a mastectomy. She didn't mention it, of course, until after the lights were out."

  "What did you do?" They were unbuttoning their shirts.

  "Told her it didn't matter. Didn't have the heart to tell her to leave."

  "But you wished you had, right?"

  "Sure. A bar encounter is supposed to be a turn-on, not a sensitive I'll-pretend-I-don't-notice-you're-missing-your boob kind of thing."

  That made her angry, made her want to talk tough like Suzie and put him down. "I know," she said, "I get turned off, too, when a guy has an undescended testicle. Hey—" she stopped undressing. "You don't, by any chance?"

  "Come find out," he said.

  She reached to his crotch, took hold.

  "Hung, aren't we?" she asked sarcastically.

  "I am. I hope we're not," he said.

  They fucked for an hour with a certain hostility generated by that exchange. She found it totally predictable and not without pleasure, too. They tried three positions. He made her come with his mouth, she got him excited with hers, and then she rode him to a second climax while he lay on his back. Not like Mac with his spankings, or Jamie Willensen with his three-way scenes, and not like Jared either—not so sensuous, so intense, and certainly not loving—just good clean ski-lodge sex. He wasn't a bad lay, she thought, but she didn't tell him that when she left. It was only when she got home, to find James perched on her window seat staring at her with reproach, that she realized the one thing they hadn't done was kiss each other on the mouth.

  The next morning, riding the subway, she felt a flush of power. She imagined her father reading the report: "Subject went to singles' bar, left with unidentified male; proceeded to his apartment, spent several hours there, returned home clothes disheveled, satisfied expression on her face—"

  Well, she thought, that ought to give him something to think about.

  She began to drop in at Aspen two or three times a week.

  Sometimes she only stayed a few minutes. The game was to find a partner and get out. If there wasn't anybody interesting around she'd go home and watch TV. Her kittens amused her, their little cries, their sudden leaps, but she didn't like being cooped up with James. It was as if he knew what she was doing, knew all about her degradations, her promiscuity, her shames. When she'd come home he'd be waiting for her, glaring, his back arched, his claws gripping the comforter or the window seat. She saw a connection between the way he hissed and the way her father whispered when he was mad.

  Dr. Bowles said she was imagining things, reading hostility into James when, in fact, he was filled with love. But one time when she brought a boy home, James stared at them while they were making love. She couldn't concentrate, couldn't come. The boy became irritated, called her "uptight." They quarreled, she ordered him to leave. He said it would be a pleasure, slammed the door. She was so mad afterwards she threw a book at James. He slithered along the wall then hid beneath the bed. Later, in the middle of the night, she awoke to find him hissing just inches from her face.

  She decided that if she were going to live like Suzie then she should really live like Suzie—not just assume her mannerisms, talk tough and screw around. No—beyond her compulsive fucking she had to be nasty sometimes, too. She re-read the put-downs in the diary, found them devastating. Her sister could be mean when she summed a lover up:

  Cox, Ligget, Bigelow, Trowbridge—sounds like an asshole lawfirm. Can't keep these creeps straight anymore. They're all alike in the dark—

  By the time Carl spilled his beans I was practically asleep (he's majoring in marine biology, talks endlessly of plankton, while all I think about is getting PLANKED)—

  R. Carter Slade, squickleydum, squickleydee. Moore gives less. David Frothingham—more ham than froth—

  Huge, malodorous, he insisted on extended 69, proved himself deficient both as blower and blowee—

  Timmy Hawkins (his was not the cock that launched a thousand ships). Oliver Steers (his halitosis made my clitoris wince)—

  Cindy and Jeremy Caldwell together last night, Orgytime—hurray! Very sweaty. Many positions. Then he shriveled like an untied balloon. While I was riding him and Cindy was sitting on his chest fondling my boobs, he muttered: "What you two girls doing up there, hey?"—

  —gone in the morning but left a message scribbled with lipstick on my belly. INSATIABLE CUNT! with an arrow pointing down. Thought this showed a certain amount of perspicacity and was thus sad to learn he left for Martha's Vineyard today, no doubt to further conquests, to fulfill less insatiable needs—

  Yes, Suzie's put-downs were snide, but there was the pathos of self-hatred underneath. Penny wondered if her father found a similar pathos when he read his surveillance reports on her. Did they suggest to him that she thought of herself as worthless? Did he think how he might rescue her from her debasing adventures in singles' bars? She tried to imagine his face as he read them, could only conjure the coldness of his stare.

  On the men who followed her she began to notice a look of concern. Had they received new orders? Were they worried about her safety? They were probably, she knew, worried more about their jobs. She decided to give them something new to worry about by giving them the slip.

  It was easy. She did it one Thursday evening in the maze of designers' rooms at Bloomingdale's, pretending she was pondering buying a chair, then losing her man between a rattan bedroom and a French provincial entrance hail. Pleased to be free of a tail for the first time in weeks, she went to a double feature, then prowled an all-night bookstore. When she returned home after two A.M., the man she'd lost stood nervously before her brownstone. She pretended not to notice him when she went inside, but couldn't help but observe his relief.

  She waited but there was no reaction from her father, no solicitous call, no invitation to play squash or lunch. She felt angry, unloved. What was the matter with him anyhow? Was he forcing her, the way he'd forced Suzie, to new provocations, new more desperate acts?

  The next night she went back to Aspen. Andy's type, she decided, was about the best available in the bar. She went home with a couple of others who approximated his style, junior investment bankers or advertising account executives from upper-middle class families who'd gone to the better schools. She thought of these guys as "honest brokers"—they were clean, had good bodies, were polite and more or less competent in bed. To go home with one of them was to enter into an unspoken contract: "I'll get you off two or three times, and you'll do the same for me."

  She went home with others from Aspen, not so clean, not so polite. Once she went with a medical student who lived in truly grubby graduate-student style (tattered fifth-hand furniture; dirty laundry heaped in the corner; sink filled with filthy dishes; ragged posters Scotchtaped to the walls). He was all nerves, ejaculated prematurely, apologized, then tried to tell her the story of his life. There was a browbeating mother, an anal-compulsive father, a brother who beat him up. "Oh, shit," she said after half an hour, "you're just one big Portnoy's Complaint." Driving back to her apartment she beat out her frustration on the back seat of the taxi while the driver eyed her anxiously in the mirror.

  She fell into the habit of checking certain things as soon as she got inside a lover's home. The furniture, of course, the books if there were any (too often, she found, there weren't), the pictures on the walls (she saw everything from a signed Picasso litho to a boy's chart depicting "Weapons of World War II"). But the place that revealed most was the medicine cabinet. Here, she felt, the subconscious was truly expressed. If an apartment was clean, but the cabinet full of old toothpaste stains, she could alm
ost predict the sort of sloppy screw she was going to get.

  Everyone, it seemed, took some kind of drugs—she found more Valium bottles than she cared to count. The fewer prescription medicines, the more normal and straight the sex; the more bottles, the more bizarre. Pep pills—watch out! Baby blue toothbrushes indicated immaturity. And there were certain things that decidedly turned her off, like designer signature colognes, artificial tanners and shower curtains fringed with mold.

  One lover named Chuck, an ambitious dentist with an apartment full of barbells, had stacks of back issues of Screw and Smut and Raunch and Suck piled up under his bed. He pulled them out as soon as they hit the sack, and they laughed together as they read the personal ads. They ended up going to a hard-core porn flick on Eighth Avenue, then rushed back to his apartment for a final screw. Wouldn't it have been incredible, she asked herself, thinking the evening over, safe at home in bed under the stern scrutiny of James—wouldn't it have been incredible if they'd happened to catch one of Jared's old pictures, maybe even his famous Pussy Ranch?

  It was the middle of February now, the coldest time of year. As soon as she awoke she called the weather bureau.

  If the wind chill factor brought the temperature below zero she didn't bother to go out and jog. On those days she felt awful, so on the days when it wasn't so cold she ran with a vengeance, leaving a trail, like an old-fashioned train, of puffs of freezing breath in the winter air. Running was the same as going to Aspen, a way to get out, bury herself in intense sensations, forget her misery, her pain. But sometimes she thought she was trying too hard, running so hard her chest ached, screwing so hard she made her vagina sore.

  She tried, too, to bury herself in work, writing memos to MacAllister so brilliant her intelligence would shine through like a diamond. Her remarks at edit meetings became piercing, sharp. Several times she noticed colleagues staring at her, whether hurt or dazzled she couldn't tell. She knew she could go to the top in publishing. Mac had told her so, and now other editors began to ask her opinion on their proposals, too. Lillian Ryan, realizing she was being left behind, tried again to become her confidante. Penny ignored her and asked Mac for a cubicle of her own. He assigned her to an office with a window. Lillian was trumped again.

  After her night with Chuck-the-dentist, Penny stayed away from Aspen for a week. She was fed up with young men, their bodies, their mannerisms, most of all their superficial poise. She longed for a mature and powerful lover, stern and tender, someone like Mac, she thought. But she knew that, alas, such as he were not to be found in singles' bars.

  Then one night she couldn't bear staying home. Her kittens, James, her TV got the better of her, and she found herself going back. As she re-entered Aspen she was filled with hostility. She hated her life, hated herself, hated this need she felt to try and break through her father's cold facade. It was as if she were now possessed by Suzie, as if Suzie's drives and cravings had taken hold. She wasn't sure anymore she wanted to live like Suzie, but felt driven by a force beyond her will.

  Contrary to Dr. Bowles' prescription she found that the more she yielded to her compulsions the more she felt compelled. Dr. Bowles listened to the tales of her sexual adventures with a beatific smile. When Penny complained that she didn't seem concerned, the psychiatrist's response was mild.

  "Of course I'm concerned, Penny. I think you're very sick. But you're in therapy now and that demands some rigor. The process is not to make you feel better. What we're trying to do is get you cured."

  "But I don't feel I'm being cured. I feel I'm being devoured."

  "Devoured by Suzie? Haunted by her? Could that idea and your extraordinary sexlife and this need you feel to get your father to pay attention—could all that just be a cover-up, a screen?"

  "I don't know. What could I be covering up?"

  "Perhaps you're distracting yourself from your real problem."

  "I wish I knew what that was."

  "Don't worry about it, Penny. In time it will be revealed. Meanwhile, I want you to start attending Group."

  "Group," which began at eleven on Friday nights and often lasted until two or three A.M. left her feeling exhilarated, if a little unsettled by the other patients' obsessions with their cats. Each of them owned a herd of the animals and they spoke constantly of the troubles they had with them: sickness, plagues, the economic burdens of feeding them, the amount of time this took. And they expressed great anxiety, too, about the constant threat of the Health Department which hung over all their heads.

  They had a means of dealing with that—distress calls, "Maydays." Each patient was on duty at a certain time. If a raid by the health authorities was imminent then the patient in trouble would call the patient on duty, who would in turn track down as many other patients as he could. Patients who received the Mayday signal were obliged to rush to the site, rescue the threatened cats, carry them back to their apartments and house them there until the crisis passed. It made sense though it occurred to Penny that people living under such a threat were living in states of extreme anxiety, and that this was counter to Dr. Bowles' idea that caring for cats was a gentling thing. She wanted to point this out but was hesitant to assert herself. She was new, after all, and the others seemed so sure.

  They were gentle with her, concerned about her welfare, full of questions about her relationship with her kittens, and particularly curious as to how she was getting on with James. They all seemed to know the old tiger cat, and a few, she gathered, had even lived with him. When she complained that James refused to cuddle and often stared at her and hissed, they smiled their all-knowing smiles and assured her he'd come around.

  "How well you two get along," said Wendy, "can be a barometer of your progress. When Dr. B's therapy starts taking hold, then you and James will start being friends."

  "He frightens me. He seems so hostile sometimes."

  "That's your projection," said Bob.

  "I feel he's judging me. Watching and judging."

  "Perhaps he is." They all smiled and nodded their heads.

  The men in the group seemed weak to her. They had drooping mustaches and slumped shoulders, and they didn't sit very straight. The women seemed stronger but astringent, asexual, dried up. Their legs bore scratches, and their clothes and hair were rank sometimes with the odor of their pets. Both men and women were intelligent, all mildly successful in their work. But there was an aura of marginality about them (though no more, she thought, than about the people she'd met in bars), a sense she had that they were nice neurotic people, undriven and totally entranced with Dr. Bowles.

  This wasn't so difficult for her to understand for she was entranced herself. The psychiatrist was so radiant with sympathy, so full of kindness, so calm and self-possessed, she acted as a perfect advertisement for her claims. Her theory was appealing, too, a cosmology, an over-arching concept of man's place in the universe in which all of nature, particularly the lesser animals exemplified by cats, had lessons to convey.

  Sometimes, ascending the stairs to Dr. Bowles' apartment, Penny would feel attracted by the stench. It came from the attic, Dr. Bowles' catroom, which she'd heard about but had never seen. The smell was like a pheromone that drew her up. If only, she thought, she could drop her defenses, give up her vanities, and yield, then perhaps she could come to love old James and learn the lessons he had to teach.

  There was a Mayday the last week of February. Penny was at an editorial meeting when a secretary came in and handed Mac a note. He raised his eyebrows—Ms. Chapman, it seemed, had an emergency call. Penny excused herself and took the call in her office. The patient on duty told her to hurry. The cats belonging to John, Dr. Bowles' oldest patient, were under attack. His neighbors had complained about the odor and a Health Department van was on its way.

  Penny, doing just as she'd been told, taxied home from work. She grabbed the two cat boxes she'd been issued, took another taxi to an address in Chelsea, and met the others there. It was an old brick tenement. Wendy was organizing
things at the curb. Everyone was working together, rushing up the four flights to John's apartment, stashing cats into carrying cases (three cats or six kittens to a box), then dashing back down to the street where Wendy was dispatching cabs.

  Penny felt her heart speed up as she charged the stairs. John's Puerto Rican neighbors were standing on the landings cursing in Spanish at the rescuers. A woman with a shrill voice yelled "Cat Freak!" as she swept by. She barely squeezed by two descending patients, their rescue boxes filled.

  When she reached John's apartment she was out of breath. The stench hit her even before she crossed the threshold, a nauseating odor of cat urine and male cat spray so foul, so sickening she feared she might throw up. John was in a state, flailing around his little apartment, grabbing for cats, missing, then grabbing again, finally catching one, cuddling it, telling it not to be afraid, then forcing it into a box. Though it was a cold February day, his shirt was wet with sweat. He told Penny he was giving her six females, then rattled off their names so fast she could barely take them in. "They like Puss 'n Boots brands," he yelled after her. "Chicken parts and tuna bits are best. They've all been vaccinated of course. I hope they get along with James—"

  His voice trailed off as she descended. She ran into three more patients on the stairs. They were worried, on the edge of panic. The Health Department van had just pulled up, and now John's neighbors were yelling to the officials while Wendy tried to distract them until the Mayday was complete.

  Penny was confronted by a chaotic sight as she stepped out onto the street. Wendy was gesticulating at a pair of men in uniforms, calling them "sadists" and "murderers," while the Puerto Ricans, leaning out of windows, were urging them to be quick. The woman who'd called her "cat freak" pointed at her as she came out. Penny turned, walked swiftly away, her arms sore in their sockets from lugging the carrying cases filled with cats.

  In the taxi riding home she found it difficult to blame John's neighbors. The smell that emanated from his apartment was horrible. Nobody should have to live with that. Yet, she thought, there was something lovely about the way they'd rescued the cats. She felt part of something bigger than herself, a group that cared more for little defenseless lives than the Health Code and the law. She even felt smug at the thought that she was a rescuer, a protector of animals normally brutalized by man. She'd subordinated herself, snatched away threatened creatures from the brink. For a few minutes she'd forgotten her troubles, so petty, she realized, in terms of creatures' lives and deaths.