The Virginity of Famous Men

by Christine Sneed

He closed his eyes; he could feel his heart beating harder. The cabbie hit the horn, cursing at a man crossing against the traffic light. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” said Michael, trying not to shout into the phone over the cabbie’s own shouting.

  “You were with that girl, weren’t you. The one with the stupid name.”

  “We went out for dinner, but I’m not with her now.”

  She exhaled. “I’m not saying we’ll have sex if you come down here.”

  “I didn’t think that.”

  “But we could,” she said.

  He was so startled by this that he blurted out a question that under other circumstances he would never have been bold enough to ask. “Have you read Tess’s blog? Please tell me the truth.”

  “Not for a while.” She paused. “Why are you asking me that?”

  “So you have read it?”

  “I’ve glanced at it once or twice, but I didn’t read any of her posts the whole way through. She’s not a very good writer. Quinn could do better.”

  “Yes, she probably could.”

  “I really doubt she’ll keep writing it for much longer,” said Sasha. “I bet she’s already getting tired of it.”

  The cabbie had pulled up to his building and was waiting for the fare. Michael gave him a ten and a five and motioned for him to keep the change. The streetlight directly in front of his building flickered dispiritedly; it had been doing that for two weeks, the bulb somehow holding on.

  “I have to get to bed,” he said, walking up to his building. “I have to be at work again at seven tomorrow.”

  “You’re not coming down here?” she asked.

  “Sasha, you know I can’t.”

  “Jim won’t know. I’d never tell him.”

  “Did you have sex with that guy you kissed? The one with the son who used the potato?”

  She exhaled. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “Did you?”

  “Michael, come on.”

  After a moment, he said, “I really should let you go.”

  “Okay,” she said and hung up.

  He felt drained and depressed but could not relax enough to fall asleep after he got into bed. After the narrow, ghostly clock hands moved past two, he got up again and tried to turn on his laptop, but the battery was dead and he realized that in his haste to get home to shower before meeting Sparrow, he’d forgotten the power cord at the office.

  I’m sorry, he texted to Sasha, not sure what he meant.

  She didn’t reply, but he could sense that she was awake five miles south, that his message had been seen and ignored.

  Did you pay the water bill? ;) he asked in a second message.

  She ignored this one too.

  If you’re awake, you could come over. He hit send before he could change his mind.

  Again, no reply. Maybe she was asleep after all. Maybe at Thanksgiving she would kiss him in the kitchen when everyone else was in the dining room waiting on the pies. Or maybe he would have Sparrow with him because she’d decided to give him another chance, and when his brother tried to flirt with her, she would not respond, at least not in the way that Tess had, smiling and blushing, every single time. She would not tell him in front of everyone that he needed to use dandruff shampoo because who did he think he was kidding? the others at the table trying not to stare at them as they argued, everyone thinking, he was certain, how they would never let themselves be this petty, this unhappy.

  He remembered a question that Sasha had asked him not long before she began working in Chicago. If he had a choice between losing one glove or two, which would he choose? Because it seemed to her that if you had to lose a glove, you might as well lose both—this way, whoever found them could keep wearing them, whereas one glove was useless for both the loser and the finder. What did he think?

  Well, sure, it did seem like it’d be best to lose both. That was fine with him. What would she do?

  She pursed her lips, trying to hide a smile, and said that because she was a mother, she bought two sets of everything. She’d rather just lose one glove and keep the remaining one in reserve.

  That’s hardly fair, he said, laughing a little.

  I know, she agreed. But it’s practical. I’m allowed to be practical. So are you, for that matter.

  At five A.M. she sent a text: Jim said you want to be a chef. Why didn’t you tell me?

  I guess I forgot to, he typed but didn’t hit send. Instead, he used his phone to check Tess’s blog. Aside from the older humiliating posts about the divorce, there was only a review of a rock concert she’d gone to with an undisclosed male companion two nights earlier:

  The lead singer (Wilder Peeples, in case you weren’t sure) forgot some of the words to the best songs (“Pink Plastic Poodle” & “Please Me”) and told us at the end of the show (instead of doing an encore, which was pretty lame of him to skip) that he had some advice for us: “Don’t lie. Buy local. Drink more water.” Later, on the way to the car, R. said, “He forgot to remind us to change our underwear too.” I burst out laughing. But then I thought it was okay, that Wilder only meant to be nice even if he was completely wasted?

  Michael posted a comment: “You’re both idiots.” Afterward, he went back to bed but still could not fall asleep.

  THE NEW, ALL-TRUE CV

  24 April 2010

  Dr. Sandra Matheson, Ph.D.

  Executive Vice President of Human Resources

  Elite Industries

  4200 N. Prairie Blvd.

  Omaha, NE 68182

  Dear Dr. Matheson:

  I am writing today to apply for the position of Chief Recruiter, Manufacturing Division, at Elite Industries, which I know from my research is the number one luxury T-shirt manufacturer in the Midwest, possibly in the United States, if not in all of North America. Your T-shirts are the most stylish articles of clothing in my closet, and I have been wearing your products for many years. My first Elite shirt was long-sleeved and purple, and I purchased it at a Prince concert with a month’s worth of babysitting money when I was thirteen. I attended this concert with my friend Elizabeth Pelsen, who no longer speaks to me, but I’ll save that story for later on in my application. The Prince T-shirt, which is more than twenty-five years old now, is still in excellent condition. On the front is a picture of the diminutive rock star sitting on a motorcycle (the same image is on his Purple Rain album cover, one you might also be familiar with), and the dates and cities of his tour are printed on the back. The fabric and stitching have held up very well through countless washings, even if the silk screening hasn’t fared as well. If you’d like, I can bring this shirt with me if you call me in for an interview (which of course I hope you will).

  After thinking for a long time about the stressful process of applying and interviewing for jobs, and all that these tasks entail, I have come to some conclusions about the methods employed by many HR departments in their day-to-day business of finding the best possible candidates for their companies’ available positions. As the attached curriculum vitae details, I have a degree in both finance and management organizational behavior from The Ohio State University (the “the” with its capital “T,” for some reason, is very important to OSU functionaries, though I’m still not sure that I understand why), and I have some unorthodox (but potentially revolutionary) ideas about how to make more lasting hires for every position in any company. Like you, however, I am most interested in helping to ensure the ongoing success of the hiring process at Elite Industries. Vetting potential employees is a fraught undertaking, of course, and during the interview period, a recruiter can never be sure if a candidate is what he or she appears to be, either on paper or in person.

  Although I realize that my CV should stress only the positive, my scholastic and professional accomplishments in particular, this document’s efficacy is doomed from the outset because it omits some of the most remarkable formative events of my life, whether they are personal successes or humiliating but character-bui
lding failures. With this in mind, the attached document is my attempt to offer you a more detailed and genuine picture of who I am. Most of the following information would ordinarily never be a feature of any job application, but because I had a near-death experience not long ago (which is detailed on the attached, ref. Disasters Averted or Otherwise), the same experience that eventually led me to come up with my innovative recruiting strategies, I have decided to dispense with the usual self-promoting subterfuge. As long as this impulse endures, I intend to embrace it, and I hope that you will be impressed and engaged by what you learn from my CV. (It should be noted that, on the whole, co-workers learn what a new hire’s shortcomings are only after he or she begins working alongside them. If I am offered the position I’m applying for today, I will do my best to help ensure that future Elite Industries job candidates will also be properly vetted.)

  Please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience at either 464-0021 or FanofElite@goodjob.com. I do hope to hear from you soon.

  Sincerely yours,

  Camille Roberts

  ENCL: experimental CV

  sample interview questions

  (PROTOTYPE: THE NEW, ALL-TRUE CV)

  Camille Roberts

  1624 N. Madison Dr.

  Winfield, NE 68140

  FanofElite@goodjob.com

  464-0021

  OBJECTIVE: To acquire a prestigious and lucrative position in Elite’s Human Resources department that will allow me to revolutionize hiring practices for current and future generations of workers. Also, to find love and marry above my current economic and social class. Husband-to-be will ideally have good teeth, a taut and well-muscled midsection, no kids from previous wives or girlfriends, no credit card or gambling debts or outstanding student loans, no history of consorting with prostitutes, no substance-abuse problems, including but not limited to cigarettes, alcohol, fatty foods, intravenous drugs, and prescription pills; he will not have any visible disabilities such as a limp, an overbite, or psoriasis, will own his own home, and will not spend whole weekends staring at the TV, cursing and cajoling various millionaire athletes as if he were their bipolar father. He will rarely, if ever, snore.

  FORMATIVE YEARS/EDUCATION

  Elementary & Junior High School

  Northborough Elementary and Junior High Schools, Northborough, MA

  –1978–79—I don’t think I was any more of a misfit than most, but I did have an unfortunate tendency of breaking out in facial hives whenever a teacher asked me a question, and although I usually knew the answer, I hated to have everyone’s demonic eyes staring at me, and soon they started to expect me to get hives and I always did, on some level not wanting to disappoint them, I guess, and also, I was so young and nervous by temperament, and had to eat ham-salad sandwiches for lunch more often than not, their smell aggressively permeating the orange-walled room where we all kept our sack lunches and coats and hats. On top of this, I had a well-meaning, sartorially conservative mother who dressed me in plaid skirts and buckle shoes and pigtails with ribbons. What young girl isn’t painfully anxious about everything having to do with school and with boys who stepped on shy girl-classmates’ toes to get their attention and called them Pimplehead and Piss-Pants for reasons that will not be explained here?

  –1979–80—All families have similarities and differences, the voice on the filmstrip said, just as all girls and boys have similarities and differences. Something else I learned that year: it is never a good idea to walk into your parents’ bedroom without knocking first, especially if you’ve had to skip your after-school Young Bible Scholars class because of an upset stomach, and therefore you arrive home early to discover what some of the main differences between boys and girls are. It is even more alarming if you walk in on your parents and one of them isn’t actually your parent but the parent of a classmate who is known for stealing small, valuable objects from neighbors’ houses, which, as an adult, you will later understand to be an act meant to punish his own parents rather than the people he stole from.

  –1982–83—If you were female and grew to be five feet seven inches tall by sixth grade and had largish front teeth that made you look, in some people’s opinion, like a fur-bearing, rapidly reproducing creature, and you needed a bra as big as a few of your classmates’ mothers’ bras, bigger in a few cases, you learned early on that life isn’t fair, that life is actually a cosmic joke played out over and over on the young, who are sometimes desperate enough to consider suicide by mixing bleach and chocolate milk but (luckily) never find the guts to drink this lethal, disgusting beverage.

  High School

  Somerville High School, Somerville, MA

  –August 1986—Shelley Zenk’s party between freshman and sophomore year is a classic example of an event that is supposed to be lost in the sands of time but fiercely refuses to be buried for any extended period. At Shelley’s house, I suffered the indignity of getting my monthly visitor while wearing a white skirt and having to call my parents to pick me up early, along with a second, worse indignity of first having allowed myself to be felt up by a buffoon named Steve Lish, who was known for eating oranges with the peels still on them, often forgot to wear deodorant, and at a talent show in the eighth grade burped the chorus of “Jessie’s Girl” to great acclaim and eventual detention.

  –April 1987—While babysitting for the Monroes, who lived on Paradise Lane in a split-level with a stained-glass window embedded in their front door that looked as if it had been stolen from a church, I went for a walk with the boy and girl I was in charge of for the night while the Monroes ate dinner at a fancy Indian restaurant near Harvard Square to celebrate their twelfth wedding anniversary. The boy and girl, Kyle and Alyssa, were riding in a wagon that I was pulling behind me, and they soon began giggling like asylum inmates. When I looked back to see why they were laughing, Kyle made an obscene hand gesture. In my embarrassed surprise, I accidentally overturned the wagon, both kids falling out, Kyle smacking his head on the sidewalk and unfortunately never being quite the same again. His parents didn’t sue my parents because we weren’t yet as litigious a society as we are today and Kyle’s grades didn’t get any worse; somehow they actually got better, but he acquired the habit of shouting at inappropriate times, often racial epithets or curse words that caused his parents to turn red and rush him out of movie theaters or away from the Fourth of July parade, and apparently caused his sister to avoid him more and more as they grew older.

  –October 1988—There was morning-after remorse but no unplanned pregnancy. There was a minor flare-up of something that required antibiotics and a seriously awkward conversation, conducted over the phone, with the boy in question, who, to my amazement, did not go out and tell forty of his closest friends, but this might have been due in part to the motorcycle accident he had later that day, one where he broke his collarbone and the femur of his left leg. While he was in the hospital being plastered over, his parents found out what else was wrong with him, and too cowardly to admit to his own faults, he blamed the bacteria and burning sensation on me. His stepmother soon called my parents and demanded that they stop letting their whorish daughter out of the house. Shelley Zenk was once again implicated: it was through her that I’d met this diseased coward who had, along with a motorcycle, three pairs of football cleats, two pairs of soccer shoes, a father with three DUIs, and a mother with a second husband and another two sons all living in a different state in a far coastal city.

  –March 1989—I let a boy in the afternoon senior English class plagiarize my Hamlet paper, which turned out to be a very bad idea because Mr. Weir and Mrs. Pottsfield didn’t believe that either of us had written it. Mr. Weir thought that Alex Crouse and I had gone in together and paid a smart kid from a nearby university to write it for us, because even though I earned good grades every quarter, I wasn’t supposed to know who Laurence Olivier was, let alone enough about theater performance to comment on his interpretation of Hamlet, because what high school kid knew anything about th
e English stage, let alone Sir Laurence Olivier? What Mr. Weir and Mrs. Pottsfield didn’t believe was that my parents had made me watch Olivier’s Hamlet on PBS, and I had taken notes on the way he portrayed Hamlet’s mental state. Was the Danish prince as crazy and hysterical as Ophelia? I thought he was, but to make such an argument at age seventeen is to risk teacherly censure, especially when just a year earlier Mr. Weir had caught me taking a roll of toilet paper out of the girls’ bathroom because I had a bad cold. But he thought that I planned to t.p. the trees outside the school, which had been happening a lot that fall term.

  College

  The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, Bachelor of Science Degree, May 1993

  Major—Business: Concentrations in Finance and Man-agement Organizational Behavior (I have no clear idea why I ended up majoring in these two disciplines. My temperament was probably better suited to a foreign language or an English literature degree, but from eighteen to twenty-one, it is very hard to know what you’re truly interested in, aside from looking pretty, avoiding public disgrace, having sexual relations with people who might or might not hurt you [badly], and making friends with people who might or might not hurt you [badly] either.)

  –Fall and spring semesters, Freshman year, 1989–90—Freud, Jung, and Poe: The id, the ego, the superego, the anima, the doppelgänger, the telltale heart. These were costumes some of us learned to dress up in at will. In tandem, we were trying on promiscuity, duplicity, scorn, madness (real or imagined), genius (real or imagined), self-destruction, alcoholism, Catholicism, individuality, Judaism, classism, racism. In many cases, during high school, we had already developed an early mastery of these disciplines, but if not, back then college allowed us the ideal breeding grounds for our lifelong obsessions and foibles. I also realized once and for all that I loathed my stepbrother (who is also the former classmate who stole small, valuable objects from neighbors), in part because when he came to visit me at The Ohio State University during his spring break from the tonier Colgate, he flashed my roommate and me, and when we both screamed, told us with a smirk to stop being such f **king prudes because it was just a joke and didn’t we know that college was supposed to be about letting it all hang out, despite the fact we had chosen lifeless and backward Columbus, on the lame eastern fringes of the boring Middle West, as the location of our coming-of-age experiences? (The previous sentence is a paraphrase, but the general tenor and meaning of his tirade have been preserved.)