Reefdog

by Robert Wintner

  Marcia broke the ice with a flourish. Her enthusiasm in sexual exchange suggested years of practice in the field. Ravi used condoms religiously at the beginning of their romance but still suffered angst; she was from San Francisco. She assured him of no worries; she’d been without a man for at least seven years, longer than gestation of the dreaded disease. And she’d never been with a man who’d been with a man. How could she be so certain? She said a woman knows a few things and should be given credit. How did she know who he’d been with, and if he’d always been safe? She said she knew because she could tell and because she trusted him to tell her the truth. She sounded screwy but looked fresh as a catalog offering, so perfectly preened and buffed, with nary a dimple out of place, no creases or folds in the generous offering. Forty-five? Seven years without?

  She made no sense, but with concise enunciation and eloquent syntax she could speak around an issue like it was jam on toast instead of a deadly virus. So he diddled her for a minute or two and then sought meaning with his tongue in her crotch for a few more minutes, then went ahead bareback. Hey, San Francisco. A clinical psychologist. Who better to know the odds and safe bets?

  Marcia shared her vision quest. It included experiential data—her phrase—and she needed to test something for herself. Her latest dilemma was in the parental/friendship interface with her daughter. She wouldn’t say her daughter’s age because age should not be important. Her daughter was post-pubescent at any rate and came to Mummy, asking innocently as a young lass, “Mummy, I really liked my last three boyfriends, Darius, Martin, and Francis. They weren’t really my boyfriends because I didn’t want them to think I was loose, so I didn’t let any of them… you know. They stopped calling. That’s what they do. So I let Pierre do what he wants. I do what he asks. I thought it was disgusting at first. Now I’m used to it, but I still think it’s weird. Ew. He says he’s in love, but I don’t want to go out with him anymore. Am I doing this wrong?”

  The constrained response began with, No, dear, you aren’t doing anything wrong, but that doesn’t mean you should… What I mean is, you can’t… You can’t…

  Ravi waited for the moral of the story. The daughter had experimented in a way the mother called unwise, though the daughter’s experience in love was greater than her own. “I had sexual intercourse with a man I hardly knew and got preggers with Samantha. It was rather clinical and went nowhere, really, except for making her, meaning Samantha. But frankly, I’ve held back.”

  The bigger question: Had Mummy been doing this wrong? Frustrated and lonely as a heterosexual woman in San Francisco can be, Marcia had resisted the temptation to gobble up any straight, educated, and socially adjusted man she met. She’d met a few, but they were so predictable, pithy and urbane—and soft, like city men. She had doubts but decided to wait for the right man. And wait and wait—because her standards had meaning. She realized on seeing Ravi at work and play that he had a love affair with life, that he alone could replace Dirk. Dirk was her dildo, who she praised for selfless giving, sparing them both many evenings of solitude.

  Ravi seemed perfect for the grand experiment, in which a real man would be granted the same free license only Dirk had enjoyed, to see if they could bond as one. Scratching the big itch would be easy if she could establish intimacy with another person. Is that unreasonable? No, and she was bound for glory on the highest levels of spirit and emotion. She shuddered, confiding her sense that this could be “it.” She assured him that he could be so much more than the rippled dive guy in the spray-paint Speedos, and the cavalry was on the way because nobody should go through life as a sex object. Not to worry; they had their best years remaining.

  Willing to bet her credentials as a clinical psychologist with twenty-three years’ experience, she pegged Ravi for sensitivity. She was a woman, so Speedo-tinted glasses may have influenced her vision of his inner glow. Not to worry once more—he could unleash the love so long gone from her life.

  She seemed complicated, and her psychosexual conundrum felt murky. Naturally gifted at sperm extraction, she sank quickly and woefully to love and its failures in her life. Referencing her life as a separate entity, she enumerated her life’s assets and liabilities. She longed to correct her life’s deficiencies. He felt her life engulf him as it had her, like a net.

  On the day they parted company, she had a friend call him from San Francisco, “a mediator, if you will, to see if we might work through this.” She’d left that morning, leaving him half asleep, hormonally spent, in the solace of she who understood best: Meow. Ravi told the friend that the work was done. “Done?” So Ravi explained that Marcia was clingy and neurotic, except in brief lapses when she praised him and God for her orgasm. “Hmm. I see.”

  Yet the friend persisted: Marcia needed Ravi to return her love, and she waited that very minute in her condo nearby—a short walk from where he sat—waited for the love of her life to say he would.

  “Would what?”

  “You know. Return her love.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe tell her you called me but I wasn’t home.”

  “Oh, please.”

  So Ravi told the friend that he felt no love. He’d liked her at first, and liked her even more after the first sex, but he was really glad she left because she couldn’t keep up, and he was a really horny guy. She called him a failure and said his life was empty. She’d asked, “How long do you think a grown man can blow bubbles with tourists?” The friend said that two lives find success as one life shared. But success for the goose was a straightjacket for the gander. Ravi told the friend that Marcia was unhappy, unstable, and unacceptable. With luck, the friend would help her work through these obstacles in finding the true love she needed.

  The friend asked, “Don’t you see?”

  Ravi thought the friend saw very little but the view from his navel, with his head so far up his ass. But that felt unkind, possibly hostile. Ravi asked if he should move to San Francisco and become a clinical psychology intern and get laid and analyzed at will.

  The friend said, “Yes! If that’s what you want.”

  But beyond glib humor was the lesson in delusional love: Marcia would have moved in—would have phoned the daughter to pack the essentials and come on over. Don’t worry—the movers can get the rest. Marcia wanted to grab this eternal love, wanted to shape him up and snap him out of his ridiculous stupor, wanted total realization of the man and his feelings. Marcia and the charter crowd asked: Who but a fool gets up at dawn to play in the ocean, smoke dope, and bag the odd tourist? Enjoying warm days with no view whatsoever to the cruel winter ahead is not a future.

  Marcia ended her week in Paradise sorting stats on emasculation and reconstruction. Alas, Ravi could not cure her life but gave what he could till the weekend. By then the beach shack got crowded and insensitive. He’d wanted distance, which is not a sign of love.

  Marcia’s last day began and ended at first light when she twisted her head to see Skinny sitting by Ravi’s pillow, purring. Ravi had been stroking her head—Marcia’s—with one hand while she ate him. He scratched Skinny’s chin with the other hand, generating intense satisfaction in the cat but conflict in the woman. He had naively assumed all needs met in the females nearby. With so much purring and moaning, each to her or his own, life seemed good, promising another beautiful day—till the woman stopped and spoke accusingly, “You love that cat more than you love me.”

  Well, fuck, duh. What was your first clue? Of course he did.

  What a dumb thing to say.

  But he couldn’t respond. Not that it mattered; morning service was fading fast, unless he could say something equally foolish, like, Oh, no, I love you much more than Skinny.

  Fat chance.

  He tried, “No, I don’t; we just know each other better.”

  Which was true. Marcia’s initial take on Skinny had been far more challenging to the man and the cat: “Not much to look at.”

  Au contraire, Skinny loomed large, seven pounds of orange fluf
f with a baby face. Ravi had let it go, deferring to potential. But it lingered through the week to Saturday morning and blowjobus interruptus.

  Marcia had risen, indignant as an urban professional forced to rectify the untenably inappropriate. Grabbing her things, she’d huffed to the door. Hearing no apology, no nothing from the bonehead in the sack, she’d left, her parting counsel, “Let her suck your dick.”

  Ravi called out, “You’re crazy. She’s cute as a button!” Then he asked Skinny: “Who needs three blowjobs in a night and a day?” Skinny, also stumped, commiserated in her way. Not that she, Skinny, would deny him any affection, but Marcia’s suggestion wouldn’t have worked, and besides, it wasn’t like that between them. She was a cat, providing love, and he had the others for the other. Marcia’s exit seemed inevitable, perhaps demonstrating God’s plan in creating both cats and women. What a relief.

  He hoped he would not hear from Marcia again. He pictured her by the phone in her condo—the friend assured Marcia’s “full confidence in Ravi’s integrity as a man,” meaning he would call once he realized what she represented, what they had going, and the sheer, raw potential dead ahead. Except for one glitch: They had nothing. He saw it clearly, his vision confirmed by her melodramatic exit and pining, classic symptoms of manipulative people. He didn’t call. He wallowed in the warm, fuzzy feel of not calling, but he set the wallow aside too; it seemed so harsh, and she was gone.

  She would leave the next day anyway and could likely use the free time to regroup, reassess, fix her face, and think of home. There—there’s a nicer frame for a difficult picture.

  Ravi snoozed late then rose to a glorious day off with nothing to do, no dive or female company or the endless maintenance of either. He wondered what was worse, a heart-rending loss like Annie or a mental bitch who finally left. He strolled out and headed up for coffee, retail, a double latte with a pastry.

  He thought of her first with warmth and hoped she might find her man, and things would be better because she’d learned what real men want and what those men will give in return. If she met a guy from San Francisco and he had a good job in town and wore a suit and made good dough and wore his feelings on his sleeve with no inkling of assertiveness, things might work out. That guy might be strolling down Union Avenue right now wondering when Ms. Right would come along—when Ms. Right would come into his life.

  Marcia might approach romance more humbly with tempered expectations, and maybe she wouldn’t browbeat the new guy till the second weekend. So things could work out.

  Love her more than Skinny? Shut up!

  Yet he could be a tad more subtle with his cat. Affection for a beast, even a cute fuzzy one, in the presence of women, should not be confusing. He and Skinny shared domestic bliss in this, their time on earth together. It was nobody’s business but their own—but he would avoid spooking the guests at critical junctures. Maybe if he’d grabbed her ears—Marcia’s. And he laughed.

  Basha Rivka often advised: Tzim lachen. It should be to laugh. He couldn’t very well tell his mother of this tourist woman’s jealousy of a chin scratch for the cat during a blowjob, but he felt Basha Rivka would laugh too since they had their health—all three of them.

  At the main road, he began to cross when a pickup with big wheels drove slowly past. The driver mumbled, “Fockeen haole suck.” Ravi wanted to tell him that “fucking haole” would have done, without the “suck.” But the guy had no sense of humor after spending forty grand buggering up a used truck. So he nodded and gave the right of way. The truck guy peeled into the parking lot on a roaring cloud, not quite rolling over. What a show. What a great return on investment.

  Local hostility seemed isolated and rare. Ravi didn’t take it personally but as a sign of the times. Maybe the signs wouldn’t change. Who knew? Once an exotic destination, Maui felt pressured, with too many humans competing for Paradise.

  He crossed to the parking lot to see if he and the driver could reach an understanding. Finding the truck but not the driver was perhaps best, what with resolution so unlikely. Who had what to give? So he held communion with the truck and walked back to the coffee shop, disappointed that his shot of sugar and caffeine would be soured by a dose of vinegar. Such was the world, pressing a righteous man to balance what felt hazardous.

  What else could he do? Everybody felt swept along in a tsunami of development with an undercurrent of more, more, more. Who could be more convenient to blame than each other? A few rude boys claimed dominance and something or other, even though their forebears arrived in freighters and not outrigger canoes. They also measured their substance as a matter of tenure but got no respect.

  The guy could have said, Hey, brother. But the taunt and threat better reflected him. Things would get worse. Who got what and how much of it would further inflame, with so many haves having so much and so many others feeling the squeeze.

  But was that any reason for a guy to call me a haole suck? No. His family came a hundred years ago, or two hundred, as coolie labor, in the influx of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and the rest, when the missionary sugar company took everything and gave little but debt in the company store. The missionaries took land from the Hawaiians and labor from the Asians. The missionaries were white.

  That wasn’t me, but the guy in the truck would rather be hateful than right. Let the chips fall. Is it my fault they’re all blue chips in your prime beach areas? Does my place look like Santa Barbara? Do I really care if a piece of the rock was only a million dollars two years ago and now runs three million or five million, seven point nine or twelve million?

  Ah, well—the sun climbed higher on another beautiful day for those who could afford it. Those who couldn’t afford it wondered where to go and what to do. Or maybe they only thought they couldn’t afford it. Ravi Rockulz had everything he needed, including a million-dollar view, a cat to confide in, and more recent blowjobs under his belt than a fellow needs on any given day.

  Too bad the coffee place was crowded out the door with pale tourists and more tourists piling out of matching Hummers, happily exclaiming that next year they would rent the Ferrari too, just to have it for their fabulous few days, which would be way better than the Porsche. They had the Porsche last year, and it was okay, but the Ferrari along with the Hummer would really be the best package.

  Hey, it was no big deal that tourists were jamming the place with flesh and talk. A guy had plenty coffee at home, along with bread for toast and a smidge of lilikoi jelly left. And what a great day for a walk before breakfast—except for the troubling view of the woodland by the reef down the shoreline that used to be Maluaka and Black Sand, being leveled for new condos at twelve to fifteen million.

  A Hawaiian man stood in the road above the rubble that last week was a forest home to critters, now cleared and prepped with dynamite to blast away for underground parking for Hummers and Ferraris. The Hawaiian wore an orange vest and held a red flag. How could a Hawaiian support the destruction? Ravi said in passing, “You know, this used to be beautiful.”

  “Used to be,” the man said.

  Yeah, well, the guy in the truck was confused on which whites were which, but this sun-baked Hawaiian knew the score; it didn’t even matter because the place was going down. Everyone felt the pressure of more, more, more going to less and less. What could the guy do, give up his job? Well, yes, he could. But he wouldn’t.

  Nobody wants to dwell on the negative, but Ravi stared out, at the end. A man lives till he dies, and he’s better off any day under blue sky and water. But he couldn’t help the regret; oh, man, here we go again. Here again, a man recognized a moment of change. Change should be good. Change is evidence of life. A common bumper sticker said: All who wander are not lost. Too bad that most wanderers were lost, or yet to be found, but the road still waited for a man who loved nature with a few good years remaining. Elder Brahmins or Buddhists or watermen set out with faith, only faith. Not that Ravi Rockulz was old. Not by a long shot.

  Besides, nineteen
years in one place did not make him a rolling stone. He’d stopped pleading his case years ago. Basha Rivka’s chronic tongue clicking, wincing, and gnashing was meant to wake him up. She asked, “What is it that you do? What do I say? My son is what? He’s a… a swimming schlep? What?”

  “If you need to tell anybody anything, you can tell them I’m developing a career in tourism with an emphasis on ocean recreation.”

  “Big shot! Who knew?”

  “How is that thing on your neck?” And so on, the browbeaten and the beater, till he beat her to the punch and led the fray elsewhere, to where she lived and worried.

  “Hmm. Don’t ask.” But of course he asked in self-defense and because not asking would indict a wayward son who didn’t even ask about that thing on her neck. Then he listened to what the doctor, a real goniff, meaning that he could steal with integrity, and oy, what he had her trying that week! And the other doctor was so young, so… dumb, but she liked him, even though he’d wanted her to try new drugs to work miracles, and we really don’t believe in that sort of thing. Ravi listened to diagnosis, prescriptions, symptoms—to who was sick or recently dead, like Sadie Kornblatt, who up and quit her medications one day because she felt so bad. Forty pills, twenty each morning and evening for twenty years, she took. So many pills nobody needs like a hole in the head, so she quit one morning and that afternoon she felt better but died. “It just goes to show you.”