by Dermot Davis
I do what I usually do when I’m hungry but don’t know what to eat: hold open the refrigerator door and stare at what’s in there, imagining combos in my head: hm, pigs in a blanket with cocktail sausages and shrimp? I don’t think so. Besides, I think Frances is a vegetarian, so I’ll play it safe and make some eggs. Are eggs vegetarian?
“Help you find something?” says a voice and I turn and it’s Chuck, dressed in a robe.
“Eggs,” I manage to say.
“Yeah, me too,” he says “Sent down to make eggs for the missus. Want to join forces?”
“Sure.”
It helps that Chuck knows where everything is but it doesn’t help that I can’t get last night’s phone dialogue out of my head: making eggs for the hot little chickadee, I sing-song to myself like I have no internal discipline.
“Does Frances like hot spices in her eggs?”
“Yeah, I guess. Who doesn’t, right? Eggs and hot spices, oh yeah,” I babble, mindlessly, feeling beyond awkward.
“You want to start the toast?” he asks.
“Toast, yes. Toast and eggs, goes together like…” I can’t think of anything, so I stop mid-sentence. I can feel him looking at me out the corner of his eye. He thinks I’m weird. Which is what the kettle does, says a voice inside, calls the pot black or maybe it’s the pot that calls the kettle black, either way…He thinks I’m weird? He’s weird.
“How’s the toast coming?” he asks, knowing that the toast is not coming along so well considering that I can’t find the bread or the toaster. “The bread is in a bread bin behind the juicer and we use the toaster oven on the top left shelf,” he says and, for some reason, I can’t help thinking that he’s judging me as an idiot. Or maybe I’m just feeling antagonistic towards him, like we rub each other the wrong way. I’ve no idea why, but sometimes two people simply don’t like each other.
“I really need that toast,” he says. “The eggs are almost done.”
Why doesn’t he come out and say, ‘how hard can it be to make toast, moron?’ because that’s the way he’s sounding.
“Why don’t you keep an eyes on these and I’ll start the toast,” he says. “I know my way around. It is my kitchen, after all.” He smiles but I can see right through him. He’s not fooling anyone with that fake smile.
“Good morning, Martin,” Doris stands in the doorway, also in a robe.
“Morning.”
“Honey,” she says to Chuck, “I’ll be in with Frances. We can all eat together.”
“Okay,” says Chuck and when he turns, she has left. “In with Frances where?” he says to me. “Where did you two guys sleep?”
“In the office,” I say smartly and promptly turn to go to the bathroom. When a plate drops and crashes on the floor, I don’t turn back to look.
Like a slumber party for adults, the four of us sit on the floor of the office eating toast and eggs. Chuck and I never say a word throughout the entire meal, in fact he can’t even look at me, nor I at him. Our lack of participation isn’t even noticed, as Doris and Frances talk the whole time. I guess they need to catch up about stuff: their jobs, their mother and so on.
I get the impression that they don’t talk much to each other, except maybe around holidays. Probably because Doris is on the road so much, that would make sense. Seriously, that woman needs to get a different job, closer to home or just plain home. How long can their marriage last like this? It’s obviously not my place to say but, come on, if the only way you can make love to your husband is on the phone, an idiot could tell you that it’s a problem.
After breakfast I finally get Frances all to myself. So we walk into Fairfax to window shop and hang out at a coffee shop. There aren’t many windows to window shop, I count six in total and not one is of any interest to me, mostly women’s fashion, antiques and a bunch of restaurants. I don’t care. I am with Frances and we are walking hand in hand, actually it is more meandering than walking.
And I know that she is enjoying it too. I can see it in her eyes, she is so relaxed and has a smile on her face the entire time. We don’t talk about our relationship or Zen or even about relationships of the past, thank heavens. It is more, ‘Oh, look at that,’ when she sees something she likes or ‘Oh, that’s cute,’ when she notices a nice house or a pretty garden or something.
I am enjoying her company so much that I don’t stop even once to take a photograph. It is like I don’t want to let go her hand; her soft, tender hand that seems to fit perfectly into mine, just the way our bodies fit perfectly into each other at night.
I love how she keeps telling me that whatever it is I’m doing, just normal, everyday stuff, is cute. Nobody has ever told me before that the ordinary stuff that I do, all the time, is cute. Like the way I hold the coffee mug, not by the handle but sort of grab the entire mug in my hand and drink away from the handle…apparently, that’s cute. I’ve been doing that all of my life. Or the way I kind of bite my lower lip when I’m thinking hard, that is also cute. Even the way I put a sweater on, in one fell swoop, she finds that cute, too. I play it down and tell her that it’s just the way I’ve always been doing things but secretly, I’m loving it. It makes me feel like she really likes me, that I’m special to her. I want her to like me.
Even though we spent a few hours together, it feels like a brief moment and before I know it, we have to get back to get ready for dinner. She has arranged for us to meet Steve and Stacy for a meal in a restaurant somewhere and I as much as I am dreading it, I figure that whatever baggage comes with this delightful woman, it is okay by me. I’ll just have to get used to it. She’ll have to meet my friends at some point and I’ve no idea how she’ll react going out with Mike and Gloria to Frankey’s for Fear Factor Karaoke or Puke Poetry Slam night. The nicer I am in her world, the more open and accepting that I can be, well, I’m hoping that it will help to offset whatever second thoughts she might have when she enters my own peculiar world.
In theory, I’m down with accepting whatever baggage Frances comes with but, as I’m checking out the menu in some pretentious, over-priced, fake-French restaurant, sharing a table with Frances, Steve, Stacy and Janice, I can’t help but think how weird this whole escapade is.
I’m sitting with my girlfriend beside her ex, who’s old enough to be my father. Across the table is my girlfriend’s daughter who’s just about in the age range of the women that I would like to date and beside her is Stacy, who is the same age as me and dating someone probably older than her father. And, oh, yeah, they’re all freaks.
“What did you think of my short, Martin?” Janice asks.
“Excellent.”
“No, really. No bullshit. What did you think?”
“I thought it may have been a little bit, kinda verging on the pornographic.”
“But didn’t you get the politics?”
“The politics?”
“That in this version, the wife, the woman is in control.”
“And she’s a lesbian,” adds Stacy.
“Bisexual, actually,” corrects Janice.
“D. H. Lawrence’s wife wasn’t bisexual,” counters Stacy.
“So?” retorts Janice, “Virginia Woolf was married to a guy. She was a lesbian. Duh.”
“She didn’t write about sex.”
“So?”
“She probably wasn’t getting any,” jokes Steve because, let’s face it, all he does is joke. I have no idea what anyone is talking about here. Except the one thing I do catch is that these people don’t like each other very much.
“Your short film rocks!” I say to Janice in a tone that I hope will end this segment of the conversation. I’m in favor of focusing on the menus, so that we can order some food and get the heck out of here.
“Thank you, Martin,” Janice says, probably for the same reason.
I decide that I am just going to bury my head in the menu and for the rest of the evening say as little as possible and just let them go ahead and bite each other’s heads off with their sha
rp tongues.
The menu is really pissing me off too: I hate pretentious places like this where everything’s in French, as if that makes it taste better, with very minimal translations into English and then when you ask, the snobby waiter treats you like a philistine, ‘what, you don’t understand French? Mon Dieu! you are so ignorant’
So, in between Janice’s criticism of her mother, and Stacy and Janice’s nasty barb exchanges, not to mention, Steve’s contributions (which is to get the odd joke in, here and there, which always has some perverted double meaning), I’m starting to wonder more and more about Frances.
If it’s true that people judge people based on the friends that they keep and a person is guilty by association, then where does that leave Frances? What kind of person is she, really? I know so little about her. Granted, she’s related by blood in some cases but look at all these freaks and crackpots she hangs out with. What if she herself is a crazy person with multiple personalities and the nice person that I get to hang out is but one of many other nutcase personalities that she keeps hidden from my view?
Even if I am overreacting, and she is basically a kind and decent person, what is she doing with me? Why does she want a relationship with a guy that’s fourteen years her junior? And why has it taken me so long to start asking these questions? Like Steve said the other evening, does she see me as some kind of boy toy? Why isn’t she in relationship with a guy her own age? Actually, why isn’t she in a relationship, period?
All of a sudden I’m beginning to see things more clearly. This is just a little fling for her. I’m someone that Frances can amuse herself with in between her serious relationships. I don’t think that she’s taken me seriously since the first time we went out on a date together. I should have known that I was just an entertainment to her, especially when she joked about her first love being some dog next door, what was that about?
What about all this talk about Zen and honest communication and the way that she wants to be in control all of the time? Maybe she can’t hack it in a grownup relationship, and I’m a perfect candidate because she thinks I’m dumb and I won’t question or challenge her about anything that she says. She’s going to play with me like a cat plays with a mouse and then toss me aside when some Tomcat arrives on the scene and then it’s see you later, grasshopper.
“What are you thinking?” she asks as we drive back to L.A. in her fancy car, that she’s driving.
“I can’t believe that you have a twenty-year-old daughter and that you were married to that guy Steve and then you were married again to some mysterious dude, whose name you don’t even dare mention.”
“Okay,” she says, and I can hear her thinking, ‘where did this all come from and what do I say to pacify him.’ “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What’s to talk about?” I say and I don’t care if I’m sounding pissy.
“I was young and foolish, what can I say?”
“What are you doing with me?” I ask, “what is this, you and me? Why are you dating someone so young, I mean, comparatively young?”
“I’m not dating you because you’re young, Martin. I’m dating you because I like you.”
“I think you’re dating me because… I don’t know why you’re dating me. I don’t think you’re taking this seriously…taking me seriously at all. It’s like you’re just, I don’t know, biding your time till something better comes along.”
When Frances pulls to the side of the road and stops the car, it feels like somehow the roles have suddenly become reversed and she’s the guy and I’m the hormonally challenged girlfriend that’s throwing a hissy fit, all needy and vulnerable and shit. She looks me straight in the eyes.
“Of course I take you seriously. I take you very seriously. I wouldn’t have invited you to meet my family if I wasn’t serious about you. I don’t take boyfriends to visit my family, Martin. I didn’t say anything but taking you home was a big deal for me.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say, sheepishly. “I didn’t know it was a big deal.”
“It was a very big deal.” She puts her hand on my cheek. “I’m not playing with you, sweetie, if that’s what you’re worried about. I like you a whole lot.”
“You do?” I say, now feeling a lot better.
“Yes, I do. Which is why I wanted to invite you to a relationship seminar that’s starting next week.” She reaches into the glove box and hands me a brochure: ‘The Relationship Seminar You Can’t Afford To Miss.’ “What do you think?”
“A relationship seminar? Seriously? Isn’t that just for morons?”
“You’ve got nothing to learn?”
“I learn as I go. Like most people.”
“Sometimes it helps to know beforehand what to expect, don’t you think? It’s like, if you knew there was a mountain up ahead, you could bring some supplies, some rope or something.”
“If you knew there was mountain in the way, you’d stay home and watch TV and maybe watch someone else climb it on the Discovery Channel or something. I don’t know what we’re talking about.”
“I got pregnant at eighteen, married at twenty. I don’t regret having Janice but I sure as heck would have preferred to have had that parental talk before I left the house.”
“So, what you’re saying is that you don’t want to leap until you know what it is that you’re leaping into? I mean with all the books you read and these seminars and stuff…you’re trying to…minimize your risk?”
“I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to have better, more successful relationships…to understand better and not keep fucking up one relationship after another. Do you have the relationship thing all worked out? There’s nothing you need to learn or understand better?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Do you want to have a successful relationship with me?”
“I think that’s what I just said, Martin. Yes.”
“You want to be in love with me and be loved by me?”
“Again, yes.”
“Well, then we’re arguing about the same thing, except you think we have to read books and go to seminars and stuff, when all we have to do is, just do it!”
“Do what?”
“Fall in love.”
“Is that what you want, Martin? You want to fall in love with me? You want us to fall in love?”
“I’ll tell you exactly what I want. I want to feel the joy and the mystery and the passion of being in love. I want to stare into my lover’s eyes for hours and hours. I want to feel her skin against mine and caress it like it was the most precious thing in the world. I want to go somewhere I’ve never been before, somewhere so new, it’s going to blow my mind.” I took France’s hands in mine. “I would love to go there with you, Frances.”
“That’s so beautiful, Martin.”
“Thank you.”
“But I’m not your happiness. And you’re not mine. What you’re describing, you have to find within yourself or in your work or something.”
“What?” That was not the response I was expecting and against my better judgment, I stare at her for too long a moment with my mouth half open.
12. Falling In Love Again
Feeling deflated, confused and uncertain of the whole relationship thing, I’m done talking, so we hit the road again and both remain silent for what seems like an eternity. I really don’t know what her problem is. It’s almost as if every time we have the chance of having a romantic moment, she throws a bucket of cold water all over it and it pisses me off. Why be in relationship if you don’t want to be in love? It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if you’re dating and having sex and stuff, isn’t it a given that falling in love is part of the package?
Unless, of course, you agree that you’re just fuck buddies and everyone then knows that falling in love is not part of that arrangement. But we never agreed to that, unless it is for her but she just neglected to tell me. So maybe I am her boy toy, after all.
But th
en there’s the whole taking me up to meet her family thing, which is one thing fuck buddies do not do but then again, maybe she didn’t want to face her crazy family alone and she brought me up as some kind of support or maybe to create a distraction or something.
Another thing that fuck buddies do not do is that whole Zen sex thing with the putting your mind in your hands and being present to every friggin’ sensation in your body and having foreplay for like an hour before anything really happens. And what about the tantric sex thing where you ‘circulate energy’ but you don’t actually fuck; fuck buddies definitely don’t do that.
“I guess I’m just scared,” Frances finally says, breaking the deafening silence. “I can blame all the ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends that I want but I really haven’t been very good at relationship. It’s been one train wreck after another. I must really suck at relationship.”
Even though Frances smiles, I can see that it isn’t a real smile that comes from the heart and is more a smile of masked hurt. Although Frances is the first to break the silence with some kind of admission, and probably most people would welcome such a moment, but to be honest, I dread these heart to hearts, especially with a woman because I have no idea what the right things to say is.
“If I could give up on relationship altogether and be happy, I would, but I know that I wouldn’t be happy alone, just by myself. I do want what you want, I do, I’m just…terrified,” and the more she continues, all heart-felt and deep and obviously hurting from some past pain, the more I squirm inside: what do I say?
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” I say. “I think most people are scared inside.”
“Are you, Martin? Do you feel scared inside?”
“No. I don’t think so.” One of us has to stay strong.
“And you really want to be in love with me?” says Frances, brightening. Is she considering it?
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“You want to stare at me while I sleep and…run through the poppy fields playing catch and kiss and have mad passionate sex in every room and every nook and cranny of the house.”
