by James, David
A Flaming Heterosexual
The three worst things in the world that you can hear are, in this order:
3. “The condom broke.”
2. “For your information, I’m his wife . . . or didn’t he tell you?”
1. The worst, however, is a sound. It is the sound of a smoke detector shrieking somewhere in your dark house at 2 A.M.
That is what I awoke to. At times like these, the first thing you think about is whether you forgot to turn off a stove burner before going to bed. Then, as you’re racing to put slippers on your feet, the next thought that goes through your mind is the toaster, followed by an unextinguished candle, an electrical short, and finally, a carelessly tossed cigarette. But since I hadn’t lit a candle in my house in ages and don’t allow smoking in my house, my mind raced back to the stove. I ran through the house, madly flipping on lights to see what was setting off the detector that clung to the ceiling just outside my kitchen. Oh, I thought, as I saw the bright orange flickering coming through my front window, my front door is on fire. Knucklehead started barking wildly just because there simply was something exciting going on. Doors, of course, rarely catch on fire by themselves, so as I flew over and fumbled at trying to free my fire extinguisher from its wall holster (Yes, I have a fully charged fire extinguisher in my house. Everyone should, so sue me for being prepared.), the ominous thought sprang into my head that someone deliberately did this. Or did they? Perhaps a flaming bag of dog poop gone wrong? No, no, it couldn’t be. Well, my doorbell wasn’t working, so if someone threw the bag on my front porch and rang the bell . . . No, that was silly, I thought as I kicked the front door open to get the flaming plane of wood away from the door frame and doused it with everything the fire extinguisher had to give. Four minutes later, satisfied that the door was out and the charred overhang wasn’t going to combust, I called the fire department, then Detective Becker. Of course, I repeatedly told the dispatcher at both phone numbers that the fire was out and I was okay, but that didn’t stop two industrial-sized fire trucks and Ken’s unmarked police car from screaming down my block with sirens wailing for everyone within a six-mile radius to hear. You’d think they were trying to put out a flaming 747.
As a crew of firemen and Ken converged on my house, I stood there, unable to speak, pointing toward the charred hulk of what was left of my newly refurbished mid-century door with the central doorknob. (It’s not easy to find replacements for a door like that.) All I could do was point. Then the tears welled up in my eyes and I just went to pieces.
Ken approached me and put his arms so tenderly around me, I didn’t know they were there until he pressed me to his chest and squeezed just a little, just enough to make me feel safe. I continued crying for some time, partly because of the shock of having my house and my life violated so viciously, and partly because I just liked being held by him and I was so thrilled to know someone like him was interested in me. Sometimes turning on the waterworks is the perfect tool that every woman should have in her female arsenal.
“There, there,” Ken cooed. “Everything’s going to be all right. I’m here now.”
And you know what? I believed him.
Ken spent the night with me. Not sitting in his car outside my home, but in my bed. We didn’t have sex . . . again. He just held me, and I for one, was more than happy to curl up inside the wonderful cove of his just-hairy-enough arm, which spent the night shielding me from whoever was planning to do me harm. After Alex and I had divorced, I had a few one-night stands with some guys I picked up, and instead of finding them wild and exhilarating, I just found them tawdry and sad. I was willing to take my time and I liked that Ken was doing the same. Two minds, one thought. But considering my past propensity of sleeping with gay men, I did have to ask the question to Ken.
“Ken, you are straight, right?”
“Yes, I’m straight. But if you want me to be gay, I’ll be gay . . . if that will help me win favors with you. I’ll go get the fabric swatches out of the trunk of my car.”
“I didn’t really doubt you, it’s just that, well, with us not making love . . . Don’t get me wrong, I love falling asleep in your arms, I just felt that maybe I wasn’t attractive—”
Ken held up a hand. “Stop right there, missy. I don’t seem to remember being handcuffed to your bed last night. I’ve spent two nights with you of my own accord.”
“Oh, Ken, I never do handcuffs on the first or second date. Next time.”
“I’m holding you to that. Amanda . . . ?”
“Yes, Ken?”
“I’m a divorcé, just like you. I want to take my time getting to know you. I don’t want to rush into anything. I want to think with my head as much as my heart. And I want you to do the same.”
I gave him a salute. “Yes, sir.”
“I want, more than anything, to be your best friend in the world first. Lover second.”
“That’s exactly what my husband said when we started dating.”
“C’mere, you,” he said, grabbing my hand and placing it on his crotch, which was welling up with excitement. “Does that feel like the reaction of a gay man?”
Alex had no trouble getting a stiffy with me, I thought. But I kept my thoughts to myself. “Nope, no, it doesn’t.”
I think one of the reasons so many women choose not to date is because there are so many jerks out there. I was never good at math, but the chances of encountering more than a few of them were high. My chances, however, were abnormally high. So high, in fact, that I wish I had the same odds in Las Vegas. I would end up owning the town.
Of course, a psychologist would probably suggest that believing that you had a high chance of meeting dickheads was just that—all in my head. The reality, I had to reluctantly concede, was that I allowed myself to be attracted to guys who weren’t a good choice. Or, more correctly, that I attracted the wrong kind of guys, and worse, that I allowed them to get over my dickhead filters (barriers, to you in therapy).
Matt was one of them. No, he was the one. He came before Alex. Right before. Matt was an asshole who had mesmerized me. We met at a real-estate open house at an over-the-top, overpriced tract mansion in West Bloomfield Hills shoehorned into a tiny sliver lot so that the builder could say his house was on the lake. It was—all forty feet of waterfront. Matt, well, I thought he was energetic, charismatic, and gregarious. The reality, which few of us see, was that he was manic-depressive, schizoaffective, and shallow, in that order. But I was a fool in love. And we all know what happens when we suspend our own good sense of judgment: We end up as just another link in the chain, chain, chain of fools. And me, I was the weak link, no doubt about it. I was so smart in school but so dumb when it came to relationships. I spoke French, German, and a good amount of Italian by the time I graduated college, but the one thing I couldn’t do is translate what Matt was really saying.
MATT: I’m gunna say something crazy. Now, don’t have a stroke.
WHAT HE WAS REALLY SAYING: I’m crazy.
HOW I WOULD TRANSLATE IT: I am about to propose something that, because of your low self-esteem and years of psychological belittling from everyone from your twisted old-country grandmother to Mrs. Lacey, your third-grade teacher who made you stay after school for two hours once a week practicing your cursive l ’s and t’s on the schoolroom chalkboard, you will initially realize is insane, but because of the aforementioned psychological dysfunction that cripples you to this very day, you will accept as brilliant and breakthrough because I said so. Because I am schizoaffective, and thankfully, most people like yourself don’t realize this very real psychological disorder even exists and certainly can’t see it when it’s staring you in the face, I perceive everything I do as utterly wonderful and create such an air of assuredness concerning my actions, weaker people accept what I say and do as the result of a talented mind, which is what it is.
HOW OTHERS WOULD TRANSLATE MATT: Amanda, this guy’s nutz with a capital Z. He spends money—mostly yours—like a drunken cong
ressman, he’s created more drama than Shakespeare, and he gets in and out of friendships whose duration can only be measured by atomic clocks.
ME: You don’t understand him. No one does. This is just the kind of exciting relationship I need to help me branch out and expand my horizons. I am trying to learn to think bigger, to not be so overly careful. I need to take risks in order to move onto higher things in life.
Never mind that I was, in fact, living with a man who fell into instant friendships with people, showing how lovable he was, only to drop them weeks later in a fury when they looked at him sideways. Or that I, with Matt’s help, was burning through money that I had so carefully stored up like a chipmunk expecting a brutal winter. I was becoming a woman under the influence, ditching the one rule in life that one should always follow: Follow your own instincts. Matt was putting a shine on a turd and I was buying it.
There’s an old saying: Live with a crazy person long enough and you’ll end up there yourself. Before our breakup, Matthew had made me so crazy, I got drunk one night and drove my car at 130 miles an hour on the freeway, hoping to accomplish I-don’t-know-what. Die like Lana Turner in The Bad and the Beautiful? Get arrested like Bette Davis in The Star? Luckily, I didn’t get pulled over, I didn’t get into an accident, and I made it home safely, until I pulled into my driveway. I got out of the car, vomited several times on my lawn on the way to my front door, and promptly fell asleep on a living room couch. Little did I know I had left my car in neutral with the key in the ignition, which, minutes later, pushed by the physics of Murphy’s Law, rolled down the driveway, plowed through a line of mailboxes, and ended up in Cranbrook Lake. Enough was enough.
Being nonconfrontational by nature, I decided to have the Mother of All Fights in order to push Matt out of my life, but fate intervened. Matt was having an affair with a bimbo behind my back. When crazy people have made a shambles of a life, they do what crazy people have done since the dawn of time: They move on to destroy a new life. So now you know how relieved I was when Alex stepped into my life and pushed Matthew out. Or came to the rescue, really.
In college, Alex, instead of taking all the dreary, skull-numbing classes that would eventually land him in a cubicle in an accounting firm or marketing behemoth, took classes that interested him. Especially those that gave him insight into human nature, he said. So he took a lot of psychology. A lot. Eventually, that’s what his major was, but he never pursued that line of work. As he told me over and over, abnormal psychology gave you insights into how the world really worked. With those tools, you had a leg up on the world that few others had. It was seeing what was really going on in people’s minds that held the key. As it turns out, his entire family took the same route. At last, I figured out what made his family so self-assured, so confident, so successful. It was as if they had the golden key to life that evaded the rest of us.
Anyway, to get back to the story, it was Alex who started showing me what was really happening in my life because I had given up my free will and followed Matt like Whitney Houston tagging after nutcase Bobby Brown.
And little by little, Matt began to recede in my life, the final push occurring when Alex packed up the last of Matt’s things and had them delivered to Matt’s bimbo girlfriend’s apartment. So, as a result, I have never looked back. More important, I have never forgotten.
So it was with this trepidation that I kissed Ken, got him to trust me and let me go about my day, unprotected, but he demanded that he return at the end of the day. Twist my arm.
He got in his car and headed back to the department. I got myself ready and hopped into my car. I had a lot of catching up to do. In fact, I had several offers on 2666 Boulder Drive, despite the fact that there had a been a murder there. I disclosed the fact, but people wanted to buy. It was 2005, after all . . . everything was selling.
I turned on the radio and adjusted the air conditioning, blasting it to cool down the car. I had never felt the air blow on my legs quite like that. Or maybe it was my panty hose. Still, it tickled.
Then I saw something that made my blood run cold. Dozens of small, black peas were crawling on my ankles. Black widow spiders. Females.
A tiny eternity passed. Should I beep the horn? No, black widows don’t like vibrations. Smash them? No, I’ll risk getting bitten if I miss and rile them up. So I just sat for a minute. Okay, think. Unless I try and grab them or provoke them, they won’t bite. They don’t know my leg from a log. Well, a little bit. My leg is warm, but a log is not, unless it’s been sitting in the sun, but nonetheless, no black widow spider would bite a log, so I was safe for the time being. Why was I thinking these thoughts? Plus, if one did bite me, I wouldn’t die, but probably get very sick. But then again, what if a lot of them bit me all at once? What if they gave off some kind of pheromone, some chemical or scent that made the other spiders go into a biting frenzy? My mind was running away with me. Okay, stop wondering and start thinking. Think clearly. Okay, black widows don’t like vibrations—that’s why they hide in piles of things that don’t move. Okay, my car is vibrating right now . . . not a good thing. First thing, Amanda: Turn off the air. I reached over slowly and turned the air conditioning off. Next thing: Turn off the engine. I reached over to the steering column and turned off the motor. Done. Good. Black widows don’t like light, so I must open the car doors if I can, because the lights will come on in the car and so will the ones in the door panel; plus, the sun will drive them back into the dark, under my seat. I got the driver’s side door open easily enough. I reached around slowly to the door behind me, pulled the door handle, and pushed the door open. I pushed it a little too hard, and the door opened to the end of the hinge, bounced, and slammed shut with a mild bang.
Fuck!
I looked down and the bang of the door must have vibrated the one spider hanging upside down on my calf, because it seemed to have lost its footing and dangled by one leg from a thread in my panty hose, then dropped to the car floor mat. I turned around again, pulled the door handle, then pushed the door behind me again, and this time gave it just enough of a push to keep it fully open, but not enough to make it bounce back closed. Next, I leaned across the center console and opened the front passenger door and pushed that open. This door bounced at the end of the hinge, but I was ready for it. My hand dove into my purse and pulled out my long comb, which I used like a sword to stop the door from banging shut. Success. The last door, the back-seat passenger on the other side of the car was too far away to risk opening. I had three doors open. Then I waited. Nothing happened for the first few minutes. I think the spiders were still confused about being in a car in the first place and not under a pile of wood or junk, or hiding in a crack in a rock wall. But the light started to work its magic. One by one, the spiders dropped from my legs and crawled with an agonizing slowness under my seat or uphill, past the brake pedal, and up into the bottom of the dashboard where they disappeared.
I waited another 15 minutes, fearing to move just yet. As I looked around, I finally realized that Becker had driven off some time ago, not even knowing that I was in danger. Then, as gingerly as a bomb defuser, I swung my legs slowly out of my door and held them as rigid as two long poles, inspecting the undersides of my legs to make sure all the spiders were gone. I then got out of the car and slowly walked into my house, through it, and into the backyard, where I slowly and carefully removed my clothes, then jumped in the pool just to be sure. I stayed at the bottom for as long as my breath could be held, all the while rubbing my legs and ass and crotch vigorously—don’t want any spiders to take up shop in those crevices. My oxygen spent, I popped to the surface, nude, but free of the creepy things.
From nowhere, Edwin appeared at the edge of the pool, oblivious to the fact that I had no clothes on.
“Miss Thorne, I’m having trouble finding fittings for that fancy European toilet you want me to install.”
Ken came screaming back to my house five minutes after I phoned him to tell him what happened. He almost kicked t
he door to his car open and bounded up the driveway toward me, throwing his arms around me and knocking the can of bug spray out of my hand.
“Thank God you’re safe,” he gushed. I was in the Ken Safe Zone again. I loved it. He held me for some time, then sure that the danger had passed, released me but kept his hands on my arms, as if to assess if there was any damage.
“I’m okay,” I answered a little too breathlessly. So sue me. Ken had that effect on me. Plus, he was really squeezing me. I needed to get some air back in my lungs. I bent over and retrieved the can of bug spray. “I try so hard to be green, but I’m afraid I opened fire on the assailants,” I said, holding up the can like it was a Beretta 9mm semiautomatic. “It was self-defense.”
“Shit, you are brave, Amanda. Any other woman would have panicked and been bitten. You did the right thing.”
“Now my car is going to smell like Raid. I really bombed the bitches.”
“No, your thinking was brilliant . . . using the light to drive the spiders back into hiding.”
“Aww shucks. Twern’t nuthin,” I said, kicking a bit of dirt from my driveway with my Prada loafer.
“I’m going to have a patrol car posted outside your house for a while.”
“Why, because you think someone tried to kill me?”
Ken shook his head. “No.”
“That’s funny. I was thinking the same thing. You don’t kill someone by setting their front door on fire. Or by putting spiders in someone’s car. It seems like an amateur. So what do you think it means?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replied, scrunching up his eyebrows in that adorable way of his.
“A warning?”
“A warning against what?”
“Against me . . . us snooping. I mean, Alex and I pretty much brought the house down at Mary Dodge’s office.”
“The ceiling?” he said, giving a little chuckle. “That was pretty funny.” He reminisced a while, then changed gears. “Listen, Amanda, I have to get going on another homicide. Are you going to be okay?”
