Alternatives to Sex

by Stephen McCauley

  “You’re in luck, Everett—I’m in town on business again.”

  Apparently he remembered something I’d forgotten. “Okay.”

  He named a hotel, a garish faux castle off the highway about fifteen minutes from the city that was inexplicably popular with out-of-town businessmen despite the fact that they had to drive through rush hour traffic to get to their meetings. “I’m in room 473. Come on out. I’m getting a group together.”

  A few days ago, a call like this would have been a bonus—like having the waiter forget to charge you for the dessert. I would have figured out a way to finish dinner with Edward quickly and would have rushed to the hotel. But now it was just an unwelcome irritant. And fortunately, Edward was with me to keep me irritable. He was gazing straight ahead with a fixed, blank stare, indication that he probably was concentrating on how best to embellish the story about the passenger and finish it with a bang.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong number,” I said.

  “I don’t think I do. I recognize the voice. If you change your mind, you know where I am.” And then, continuing the theme from my earlier discussion with Edward: “The hotel has tons of free parking.”

  “I don’t know why I bother carrying this thing,” I said to Edward, flipping it closed. “Almost all I get is wrong numbers and solicitations.”

  “I know which that was.”

  The Beast

  The restaurant Edward had selected was the kind of place I used to loathe as pretentious but now found soothing. Everything in it, walls and lamps and drapes and chairs, was the color of sand. It was so warmly monochromatic, all of the patrons seemed to glow with life—the point, undoubtedly—and the colorful food appeared to be leaping off the plates like Technicolor cartoon figures.

  As soon as the waiter, a refreshingly homely man, had placed the salads in front of us and carefully adjusted the plates, I apologized to Edward for the invasive call.

  “Why would it matter to me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But you seemed annoyed. So I’m just saying, sorry.”

  “Your sex life is your own business,” he said.

  “You’re making assumptions.”

  “I notice you didn’t say ‘false assumptions.’”

  “Don’t be so critical. You’re important to me,” I said. I took a long sip of wine and felt it warm up little pockets of sentimentality all over my body. “You must know that.”

  “Let’s not get maudlin,” he said. “It’s a little late in the friendship for that.” He pushed around the pile of tomatoes, drizzled with something green. “Why does everything have to be stacked? What happened to food lying on a plate?”

  “It looks too much like airline food,” I told him.

  “Shows what you know. There is no airline food anymore.”

  “So what’s your big news, little man? What are these life-altering plans you wanted to discuss?”

  He dispensed with a few slices of tomato and then said, without looking up from his cutlery, “Marty is moving out to San Diego in December and asked me to go along.” He glared at me for a moment, as if he’d just accused me of something. When he was satisfied that I’d absorbed his bombshell, he added, “I applied to the airline for a transfer.”

  “Marty,” I said, dismissively, and immediately started digging through my salad to find the sugarcoated pecans.

  Marty was Edward’s friend, someone I’d always disliked and felt in competition with. Marty exerted an unhealthy degree of influence over Edward. Edward was susceptible to the influence, not wholly benign, because Marty was his ideal of rugged, strutting masculinity: a retired marine who’d served in the first Iraq debacle in the early 1990s and then started a business that Marty (and Edward, Marty’s mouthpiece) claimed was raking in several hundred grand a year. In terms of domineering personality, unapologetic machismo, and bulky muscularity, Marty would have been a perfect lover for Edward. Unfortunately, for the sake of Edward’s romantic prospects, Marty was a woman. Martine, in fact. A stocky African-American woman from Arkansas with the captivating voice and precise articulation of a Shakespearean actress.

  Marty had left the military about five years earlier and had started a self-help business that combined rigorous physical training and “empowerment and self-actualization” seminars. If you read between the lines of the promotional material on her Web site—the address was ReleaseTheBeast.com—the route to self-assertion was letting yourself be bullied into submission by Marty and doing exactly as she told you to do.

  “She has a lot of contacts on the West Coast,” Edward went on. “San Diego is crawling with military and ex-military, her natural constituency, and she figures she can double her business within the first year.”

  “I see. And where do you fit into the picture?”

  “I need to make some changes, William. I need a new line of work. She’s going to have to have a business partner in all of this, to set up a new office, handle promotion, that kind of thing. It’s an opportunity for me, and it’s not as if I’m drowning in opportunities these days.”

  “You don’t own a computer,” I reminded him.

  “I’ve been taking classes. You’d be surprised at how adept I am. The whole thing makes a lot of sense.”

  I was so irritated by this news, I pushed my plate away from me and leaned in toward Edward across the table and poked my finger into his flat, narrow chest. “It makes no sense at all, my friend. Do you want me to tell you why?”

  “Not really.”

  “In the first place, if Marty is doing so well with her business, as you’ve been claiming for years, why is she uprooting and moving three thousand miles? That’s a red flag right there. I guess you’re so dazzled by Marty’s beastliness, you don’t see it.” I stuffed some lettuce into my mouth. “You’ve got to think these things through. And you’re going to be flying and managing her business?”

  “Only for a year. Then, if everything goes as planned, I’m quitting the airline. You’re jealous of my friendship with Marty. You always have been.”

  “I’ve always been concerned about your friendship with Marty. She’s a petty dictator who makes a living—supposedly, but I haven’t seen her tax returns—by shouting at people eight hours a day.”

  “Forget Marty for the moment,” he said. “The important thing is, it makes sense for me.”

  “San Diego? All that sun? All those glaring, cloudless days? You burn easily, Edward. Your lips crack when you get too much sun. You think I don’t notice these things, but I do. You’ll blister and burn and dry up in that climate.”

  Edward glared at me with a hard expression in his pale blue eyes. “Have a little sympathy for me,” he said. “Be a little more sensitive.”

  “I am sympathetic, sweetheart. I know you want some changes, but you’re nearing forty. Just ride it out and do what everyone else does: get your teeth whitened and go on Zoloft.”

  Fasten Your Seat Belts

  Out of nowhere, Edward’s small face collapsed into a look of crestfallen misery and his eyes clouded over. “You don’t get it, William. You don’t know me at all. I’m unhappy.”

  There was so much bald emotion in this statement, I was speechless and hesitantly went back to my salad.

  “For starters, there’s my job. Just when I got used to the idea of being in a low-prestige rut with benefits, the world turns upside down and I’m suddenly on the front lines of the ‘war on terror,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean. You try it for a few months. Every time I get on a plane, I look around for a heavy object I can grab in case someone tries to slit my throat. It’s not what I signed up for. I went into it so I could wear a uniform and get paid to stare at guys’ crotches while I checked to see if their seat belts were fastened.”

  “Edward…”

  “And then there’s Boston. What am I doing here?” He looked around the restaurant with a smirk of dissatisfaction, already apart from the rest of the population. “I feel as if I’m hanging around waiting f
or something to happen, but what? What’s here for me?”

  I had no illusions about Boston being the world’s most vibrant cosmopolitan center, but I took the comment personally. It’s standard operating procedure to weep and rage against a lover or spouse’s steps toward abandoning you, but for the most part, you’re supposed to applaud friends for doing the same, and then help them pack.

  I wanted to say, “I’m here for you,” but instead of just blurting it out, I thought about whether or not I was there for Edward, and what the consequences of such a comment might be. Before I had time to say anything, the waiter strolled over to our table and asked for permission to take our salads. He had dark hair and a big, wide mouth, and his sand-colored T-shirt and stretchy pants could barely contain his compact body. I watched him as he walked off with the plates, trying to decide if the lack of an underwear line across the seat of his tight pants meant he was wearing a thong.

  “You should slip him your phone number,” Edward said. “He’s one of those insecure, overdeveloped bottoms who loves to be humiliated. Letting himself be used by an emaciated fifty-year-old who lives in the kind of neighborhood you live in would appeal to his masochism.”

  “I wish everyone would stop accusing me of being fifty,” I said. “Besides, I wasn’t thinking about him. I was thinking about your relocation plans.”

  “Oh,” Edward scoffed, “you always claim you’re above lust and longing and all those other untidy human emotions. You don’t fool me for a minute. That pathetic phone call a few minutes ago. I’m broiling hot in this sweater, but without it, I’ll look like a candy striper. Why didn’t you insist I take off this ridiculous red-and-white jersey?”

  “I don’t suppose it will be easy to get a transfer from the airline,” I said, hopefully. “They must have more important things to worry about than relocating you.”

  He smiled at me in the cold way I imagine he smiled at passengers he ordered to take their seats as instructed by the pilot. “I heard yesterday,” he said. “It’s been approved. You’ll be happy to hear, I’ve decided to give you the listing on my apartment, but I know you’ll forgo the commission.”

  Room 473

  I’ve always found my ability to detach from and deny some of my own feelings and fears a useful but creepy part of my personality. It raises the possibility that I might not be a truly good person. I like to think of myself as highly ethical, although what that boils down to isn’t making careful ethical choices but acting on impulse and then advertising my guilt and regret about having done so.

  I experienced a moment of intense sadness and even panic upon hearing how far Edward’s plans had advanced, but then I found my attention shifting, as if it had a life of its own, to the “pathetic” phone call I’d received an hour earlier. It seems to me defense mechanisms shouldn’t work if you’re aware that they’re defense mechanisms and you know at least some of what it is you’re defending against, but this one worked perfectly. So well, in fact, that I managed to talk Edward out of dessert (“Someone I know got food poisoning from the mousse here last week”) and, shortly thereafter, found myself on the highway, driving to a faux-castle hotel at seventy miles per hour, not thinking about Edward leaving town and what it would mean for me, not thinking about why I cared so much, not chiding myself for rushing headlong into the kind of behavior I’d sworn off, but running through a mental list of possible bodies and faces I could attach to the name “Dave.” Disappointment in myself flickered across my consciousness a few times, but I blocked it effectively with the familiar rationalizations about time and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  As soon as I pulled up to the hotel, I realized the appeal of the place was its immense, moatlike parking lot, a vast sprawl of macadam that could accommodate any number of cars. I admire the way Ian Schraeger revolutionized hotel decor, but given cable TV and free parking, most people would be happy to pay for overnight accommodations in a storage container.

  I shared the elevator with a young man and woman who were holding hands and staring straight ahead. “Nice night,” I said, thinking, Ha ha, you have no idea what I’m about to do.

  “I think it’s going to be a beautiful fall,” the woman said, no doubt thinking, Ha ha, you have no idea what we’re about to do.

  Looking at them, pressed against the wall opposite me, a happy unit of human intimacy, I thought about Charlotte and Samuel, headed to their romantic hotel room a couple of nights earlier. So much for my fantasies about forming a friendly foursome with them and Edward. Now I’d have to move full speed ahead in pursuing some other role. I took out my cell phone, an act that instantly made me feel important and less alone, and left a message on Samuel’s work phone. “Good evening, Mr. Thompson,” I said, all bluster and good cheer. “Give me a call on this phone or at the office. I’ve got some great properties for you and Charlotte to look at.”

  All garish pretense of castlelike decor was abandoned in the ornate lobby; the walls of the fourth-floor hallway were covered in a green material that had the slick feel of vinyl, and the carpeting made squeaking noises, like wet grass, as I walked on it.

  I knocked at room 473 and the door opened a crack. A faint whiff of smoke and sweat emerged, but very little light. At least I knew I had the right place.

  “Dave?” I said.

  “Come in.”

  The door swung open and I slipped into the dark room. But not completely dark, for the television set was on, flashing colored lights across a tangle of mostly naked bodies on one of two big beds.

  “Ah,” I said, pointing with my chin. “Mosh pit.”

  “Make yourself at home,” my host said.

  He had the kind of plump, nondescript face, puffy with alcohol, common on sportscasters and former athletes past their brief prime. I had a vague memory of having met him, but beyond that, I was blank. His features registered no particular recognition of me. A married businessman from somewhere west of Pennsylvania, I guessed. He’d probably called everyone he’d ever talked to within the Boston area code and taken his chances; the tangle on the bed was the result.

  He lumbered back into the bedroom, naked. Nudity comes in several varieties: the wholesome, the artistic, the erotic, and, case in point, the are-you-sure-you-wouldn’t-like-a-towel? There was something stooped and exhausted about his posture and even the way the flesh hung off his body. He stopped in front of the TV—checking out the porn to fire up the furnace, I assumed. But when I moved into the room a few steps, I saw that the on-screen action was one of those pampered, bow-tied, right-wing broadcasters using anger instead of information to promote imminent invasion of Iraq. These red-faced entertainers had been boosting their ratings for months by delivering a blanket kill-everyone-now message. As for the on-bed action, it was a little hard to make out. The exact number of bodies was unclear. And irrelevant. Once you get to three, it doesn’t make all that much difference. There were a few mandatory moans along the lines of “Oh, yeah,” and then someone tried to crank up the excitement by shouting, “Yeah!”

  Dave responded in an angry stage whisper: “I told you guys to keep it down. I don’t feel like getting tossed out of here.”

  He picked up the remote control for the TV, switched the channel to an antacid commercial, and turned up the volume: “…that bloated, burning sensation in your stomach. Rumbling gas and…”

  Leave now, I told myself. But thinking about the drive home and my ultra-clean house, I stretched out on the empty bed with my hands behind my head. It couldn’t hurt to watch.

  Please Charlotte

  Samuel Thompson worked for a company called Beacon Hill Solutions. I loved the open-ended mystery of the name. Solutions to what? I suppose the idea was to make you think that whatever problem you had, this group of consultants could help you solve it. Since the company was located on an upper floor of an office tower in the flat heart of the city’s financial district, “Beacon Hill” seemed to have been slapped on to give an aura of Brahmin respectability. I went to the BHS
Web site to try and find some information that might help me deal with Samuel, or at least give me something to talk about with him. There were ten consultants affiliated with the company, although what any of them actually did remained unclear. “Your business is our business,” I copied down onto my notes for Sam and Charlotte. “Making it work for you is what makes it work for us.” What’s that mean? More charades. A short biography of Samuel reassuringly mentioned that he had an MBA and previously had worked for Merrill Lynch for “more than a decade.” Mde a killing in mutual funds? Problm solver? Maybe he cn “make it work” for me? What’s “it”?

  There was a standard studio photo of Beacon Hill Solutions’ six senior partners: Samuel surrounded by three overfed men in dark suits, a plump, platinum blond woman, and a pale beauty with her hair pulled back so tightly, she appeared bald at first glance.

  Salesman, I jotted down. Partners resent his gd looks.

  When he finally returned my message a few days later, he sounded genuinely sorry that it had taken him so long to get back to me. “It’s been a little hellish here,” he said. “Our busiest season. Everyone wants to end the year with his problems solved. Come to think of it, that’s why Charlotte and I came to you—solve our real estate problems before Christmas. Along with everything else. You up for the job?”

  “It sounds a little daunting, but I’m willing to take a stab at it.”

  “Good man. I’m sorry that place we looked at wasn’t right for us.”

  “The first place is never right,” I said. This wasn’t true. The first place people look at is often perfect, but they almost never buy it for fear of finding something better as soon as they’ve put down the deposit. In most cases, closing the deal, like securing a marriage proposal, is a matter of chipping away at expectations. “Usually the first half dozen places aren’t right. I suggest we get those out of the way, too, so we can move on to something probable.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. He spoke with enthusiasm and vigor—absolutely—but there was an edge of distraction in his voice, and I could hear typing in the background, as if he were answering e-mails.