Alternatives to Sex

by Stephen McCauley

  “Tell her to get rid of those boxes and papers,” Deirdre said. “It’s like walking into a dreamy one-bedroom filing cabinet.”

  “She’s pushed a lot of that around,” I said. “As much as she can. She has a bad back, plus problems with her knees, hips, shoulders, neck, wrists, tendons, and arches.”

  “I have a major U.D. on my hands, and both parties are getting desperate. The problem is, I have to sell each something the other one wants. That way they both end up feeling they’ve won. If you have her clear the place out some, I could drag both of them around. They’re newscasters.”

  U.D. was Deirdre’s code for Ugly Divorce. If you played your cards right, a U.D. was a dream come true. In the best-case scenario, you sold the property the couple owned jointly, and then got each of them into a new living space. You had to deal with a lot of acrimony, anger, and attorneys, but you might end up with three closings in one week. Despite her aversion to unhappy couples, and her feeling that all of these miserable people considered her shallow for being so blissfully married, Deirdre was the queen of the U.D. in our office.

  Deirdre’s dull husband, Raymond, had an especially good reputation among local newscasters, a pseudocelebrity subculture that seemed to marry and divorce and remarry within their own club with astonishing frequency. Their breakups were always ugly and usually involved cut-rate, tacky variations on the standard celebrity divorce details: vacations with mistresses, but to dreary destinations; plastic surgery bills, but from doctors on the fringes of Miami; squabbles over three and four cars, but usually old Toyotas.

  “I’ll get right on it,” I said. “Are you thinking of the place for the husband, or the wife?”

  “Either. It just has to be kept secret because they’d be mortified if word got out they were looking at such cheap places. They’re on one of those local stations no one watches, and I don’t think they’ve got two million if you put everything together. Fortunately, there’s no ‘child’ involved.” Everyone paid lip service to the joys of children, but no one in the office liked working with the mess and clutter of big happy families. “My one fear is that they’re going to realize they’re made for each other before the divorce goes through.”

  “Get them over there,” Jack said. “I’d love to see William score on this one.”

  Thinking About It

  I called Marty to arrange a time when I could come by and help hide some of her papers. She’d become amazingly agreeable on the subject of letting people in and organizing her schedule around my requests. Charlaine and all canine traces were kept carefully out of sight when people came to look at the place. There was never a whiff of cigarette smoke in the air, and finally she confessed to me (“Strictly on a Between Us Basis, William”) that she’d made major strides toward kicking the habit. “I’m down to one pack a day,” she told me.

  “That’s…great,” I said. “What had you been up to?”

  “OK, William, let me tell you something. That’s what I call Stepping in Someone’s Shit. Someone tells you they’ve practically stopped smoking, what you’re supposed to do is, you pat them on the back, you tell them congratulations, you take them out to dinner, you buy them a new stove. What you don’t do is turn judgmental and Step in Their Shit. OK?”

  We arranged a time for me to come by and help her, and she even agreed to let me rent her a small storage space not far from her building.

  “What do these people do?” she asked. She was keeping a detailed list of everyone who walked into the place, including ages, professions, income levels. When I told her they were newscasters, she perked up. “Maybe I could get a spot on their broadcast. I’d make excellent TV.”

  “It’s extremely local. Since you’re about to move west,” I reminded her, “it wouldn’t do you much good.”

  She sighed again with what sounded like disgust. “Look down at your feet, William. Are you looking? OK, you see that Shit right there, well, you’re doing it again. You’re Stepping in It.”

  “Sorry. Not to change the subject, but I assume you heard the good news about Edward’s apartment. It was one person who came by to look at it, and she took it right there and then. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “If you’re trying to tell me that it’s not your fault my place hasn’t sold, save your breath. Number one, I know it’s not your fault, and number two, it is your fault. So let’s just drop the comparisons.”

  “Fair enough. How’s he doing with that airline pilot romance?”

  “I don’t have time to sit around gossiping about my friends. If you’re so interested, ask him yourself. He told me he agreed to go to some cocktail party with you even though he hates the idea of going. Talk up my apartment out there. You never know.”

  Breathing Exercises

  To reach the fresh breezes and pounding surf of Nahant, you had to drive through some of the grittiest industrial areas surrounding Boston and cross the rusting hulk of the Tobin Bridge, site of notorious traffic problems and a number of high-profile suicide leaps. It was six o’clock when I drove onto the bridge with Edward in the passenger seat beside me. The sky was a light shade of purple, the day just beginning its slide into the pretty melancholy of twilight. Behind us, the city was glowing in that last hour of clear, fine-tuned sunshine, and off to our right, the smokestacks of a brick power station were belching white clouds of steam.

  We were running late; Edward’s bathroom preparations had taken even longer than usual. I’d expressed annoyance, but I was in no particular hurry to get to Charlotte and Samuel’s house. If I’d ever had a taste for large parties, I’d lost it years ago. Now I was more comfortable at small, muted gatherings at which people who know one another too well drink in moderation, feign interest in one another, discuss real estate, and go home early.

  It was a cool evening, and the chilled air blowing in the open windows of the car made it feel appropriately autumnal. We were halfway across the bridge and suspended above the inner reaches of Boston harbor when traffic came to a dead stop. Maybe there was an accident ahead or another of the construction projects that had been creating havoc in the city for more than a decade. Edward pushed back his seat so that he was nearly recumbent, closed his eyes, and made a sound that was close to a whimper.

  “Tell me when we get to the other side,” he croaked.

  “Nap time?”

  “You know I hate bridges. How did you talk me into coming on this excursion? If I’d known we’d be driving over this thing I could have done some mental preparation. Or stayed at home.”

  “Try to relax. I had no idea you’re phobic about bridges. You spend half your life at thirty-five thousand feet. We’re much closer to firm ground now.”

  “I didn’t say I enjoy flying, either. Why do you think I’m getting out of the business? I never did enjoy it, that’s the funny part. But at first I liked the idea of being nowhere most of the time, above traffic jams and lines at the supermarket and people trying to sell you something over the phone. It was always boring, obviously, but in a dependable, reassuring way. I’d imagine a happy relationship would be like that—dependable boredom is the whole point. It’s what makes it so nice.”

  He sighed, mourning his losses, and I reached out and took his hand. “We’ll be on the other side in a few minutes.”

  “And what’s over there? Used car dealerships and people I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should do some deep breathing. I’ve heard it’s good for anxiety.”

  “Yes, especially if you’ve taken ten milligrams of Xanax before you start.”

  It had been pointed out to me—by Andrew Scali, once divorce had made him an expert on the human psyche—that on the whole, I was more sympathetic to women than to men. I’d been insulted by this observation: I preferred to think of myself as universally empathic, even though I knew he was right. In the case of Andy, for example, I’d listened to his woes for years, taken some pleasure in helping him, but a great deal more in watching him reveal his vulnerabilities. Undoubtedly,
it was all about dominance and competition. But I felt surprisingly little of this with Edward. I just wanted to take care of him. His hand was cool and damp in mine, his fingers were twitching nervously, and I had a strong urge to take him in my arms and comfort him, stroke his curly hair. He looked small and beautiful lying back with his eyes closed, a threat to no one except, possibly, himself. But holding him was impossible, given the arrangement of the seats and the stick shift and the years of friendship.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, “but I’m fresh out of Xanax. Let’s give the breathing thing a try. I’ll do it with you.”

  He squeezed my hand and without opening his eyes, he said, “For someone else, that might help, but we’re both too ironic to start a meditation group.”

  The honeymoon period of any relationship, whether romantic or sexual or merely amiable, is a brief vacation from ironic detachment and sarcastic undercutting. Edward and I were long past that.

  “Maybe,” I said, “you’re anxious about leaving town, about moving, about being connected in some professional way with Marty. There must be some significance to the fact that you have an anxiety attack half an hour after I bring you Sylvia’s deposit and signed papers.”

  “Don’t try to coddle me,” Edward said. “I’d much rather you try to distract me. Tell me what you did last night.”

  The wind picked up, and I leaned across Edward’s body and rolled up his window. The water below us was ruffled with whitecaps and the pretty, oily mystery of pollution.

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t offer much of a distraction. I stayed home and did a little housecleaning, read for a few hours, then went to bed.”

  “You live the life of a monk, don’t you? Thomas Merton on his best day. If you’re going to lie about what you did, at least toss in a few details of regrettable behavior. Give me an hour of television, a few beers and a bag of potato chips, a desperate midnight call to that Belgian obsession of yours.”

  “Didier’s left town. And I don’t like beer.”

  “They don’t have to be plausible details.”

  “All right,” I said, “if it will make you happy.” There was no reason to think he’d believe the truth any more readily than he’d believe lies.

  Thomas Merton on his Best Day

  “I met someone online. In a chat room. Do you know what those are? Chat rooms? Have your computer lessons advanced that far?”

  “As far as I can tell, it’s a virtual place where strangers from different parts of the world gather and lie to each other. Who did you meet?”

  “He claimed to be called Alberto.”

  “How mellifluous. And you were who, Michelangelo?”

  “Everett.” I realized, for the first time, the similarity to my friend’s name, and hoped he didn’t notice it. “Anyway, he invited me to his place.”

  “How impulsive. Just like that.”

  “I’d sent him my picture.”

  “High school yearbook?”

  “Slightly more recent. He lived out in the suburbs, maybe twenty minutes from me. I wasn’t sure why I was driving all that way, and when I got there, it turned out to be a little ranch plopped into the middle of a cluster of similar houses.”

  “Depressing. This is why I’m against gay marriage and raising children and all of that. You start out wanting health care benefits and you end up living in a suburban ranch house with plastic toys on the front lawn.”

  It hadn’t been a depressing house. In fact, Alberto’s taste wasn’t far from mine—clean lines and sleek modern furniture, with the added attraction of playful colors and an appealing degree of clutter: magazines and books, some clothes tossed onto chairs, the kinds of things I couldn’t bear to see in my own house. There were older trees and immense, carefully sculpted bushes on either side of the property, giving the place the restful illusion of privacy. But I didn’t feel any special need to praise the decor to Edward or, for that matter, to talk too truthfully about Alberto himself. He’d looked amazingly similar to his photo, only more handsome in a lean, dark way. I even had the impression that his name truly was Alberto.

  “Give me a type,” Edward said.

  “Oh, French movie star of a certain era.”

  “Let’s make it specific. The young Alain Delon?”

  “Yes, if you like.”

  “Who wouldn’t like? Go on.”

  Upon walking into the house, I was thrown off balance by Alberto’s unexpected beauty, and by a wistful melancholy in his eyes. Seeing him, I had the same feeling of happy disorientation I’d had one year when my tax accountant told me I was getting a huge return from the IRS. I was so confused by his appearance and the contrast to the sorts of men I was used to meeting that, without going through the nice-place or can-I-have-a-glass-of-water charade, I took him in my arms, pulled his slim body against mine, and began kissing his mouth hungrily. I was even more disoriented when I realized that he was kissing back with greedy ardor, rising up on his toes so he could reach my mouth more easily.

  We were standing in the entry hall of the house. There was a mirror in front of us, and in it, I saw that my arms were wrapped around his back so tightly I appeared to be trying to squeeze the breath out of him. The house felt hermetically sealed off from the outside world, with the resonant silence of a vault. The only sound was the steady ticking of a clock in another room and an occasional sigh (from him or me, I wasn’t sure which) that in a different context might have been a cry of discomfort. Eventually, I reached down and grabbed his thighs in my hands. He leapt up and wrapped his legs around my hips, and I carried him into the living room and gently spilled him onto a big armless sofa. The room was dark except for the bluish muddle of a streetlight oozing in through the floor-to-ceiling curtains over an immense picture window. In that diffused light, Alberto looked even more handsome than before, his lips red and slightly swollen, his black eyes shining. He reached up from below me and started to unbuckle my belt, but I pushed his hands away. “Not yet,” I told him.

  I had his body pinned beneath mine and was cupping his face in my hands. I could see that he wasn’t young—there were a few streaks of gray in his hair—and for some reason, I was moved by this and wanted to possess him even more.

  He made another attempt at unbuckling my pants and then his own, but I pulled his hands away. Finally, he pushed himself from me, and sank down into the cushions. In a breathy slur, he said, “I want you to fuck me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But first, this.”

  At some point I glanced at the clock, loudly ticking on the mantelpiece, and realized that I’d been in the house for nearly an hour and hadn’t advanced past second base, or whatever the appropriate sports metaphor was. I wanted this to go on for much longer, and even had a confused hope that we would eventually wander into his bedroom, fall asleep on his bed, and wake throughout the night, starting up and breaking off, prolonging the entire event until well past dawn. I mumbled compliments about his smell and the warm softness of his skin.

  “Don’t,” I said, moving his hand. “I want to make you wait.”

  Bay rum; that, I realized, was what he smelled like. “I know,” he said. “But my boyfriend gets home in an hour, and I need time to shower and put my clothes in the washing machine.”

  In Theory, Yes

  “You must have approved of the laundry business,” Edward said.

  “In theory, yes. But at that moment, it was like being doused with cold water.”

  “Of course, you must have realized he wasn’t single. Living in the suburbs and all.”

  “I must have.”

  “And then what? The time constraint stoked the flames of your passion and there was a volcanic eruption of ecstasy?”

  “Yes, something along those lines,” I told him, and then added, to cut off all further sarcasm and comebacks, “End of story.”

  He turned toward me and opened his eyes. “I suppose it beat staying at home and scrubbing the bathtub.”

  In the end, that might have
been preferable. The news about the boyfriend had come as such a disappointment that I got up from the sofa and went to the bathroom. Suddenly, the entire house took on the aura of hostile territory or at least territory in which I had no place. The casual domesticity of shampoo bottles lined up along the edge of the bathtub, a ceramic mug holding two razors and two toothbrushes, and a pair of green towels draped over the shower curtain made me feel like an unwelcome intruder. Someone very well might wake up in the middle of the night and start making love to Alberto, but it was never going to be me.

  Half an hour later, I looked at Alberto’s pretty face, flushed with private passion, and was disappointed to realize that he was having sex with only one part of me. As for the rest, I was a third wheel—fourth if you count the absent boyfriend—and saying anything to remind him that I was in the room would only spoil his fun. Of course this was the whole point of most of these encounters, sexual congress efficiently reduced to its most essential components. I was breaking the rules by wanting more, and in addition to disappointment, I felt humiliated by my own desire. I came, I went, and as I was pulling out of the driveway, I realized I’d left behind a white sleeveless T-shirt that was, at that very moment, probably being crammed into the bottom of a wastebasket, underneath coffee grounds and cat litter.

  I hadn’t told Edward the whole story, and for his sake, I’d left out the most embarrassing and salient details, one being that lying on the sofa, holding Alberto’s face in my hands, I’d said, “I love you,” over and over in a feverish, mortifying whisper.

  Now, sitting in the car on the bridge, I heard Edward calling my name, as if he were trying to rouse me from sleep. He was sitting up, and it was me who had his eyes closed. I was breathing deeply, as if trying to fend off my own anxiety attack.

  “Time to get out of neutral,” he told me. “The traffic’s moving.”