by Zack Love
Nevertheless, the twenty-three-year-olds worked well together as wingmen in a club. Trevor’s redwood perspective in any crowd enabled him quickly to find the part of the club with the greatest potential “play.” He would then nudge Narc, raise his eyebrows with a boyish enthusiasm, and Narc would know that it was time to follow the Tower radar. Once they were within speaking distance of the females in question, the women would ordinarily make some joke amongst themselves about Trevor’s remarkable height, at which point Narc would jump into the conversation with something like, “If you think he looks different, wait until you hear him speak!” This line worked like magic, making the women naturally curious to hear Trevor speak. Trevor would always refuse initially, by bashfully shaking his head, but eventually Narc would say something that would get Trevor speaking. And as soon as the women heard Trevor’s deep voice and disarmingly suave and sophisticated British style of speaking, they became even more intrigued by the pair of tall, exotically handsome men. Narc particularly enjoyed the moment when he and Trevor were asked the inevitable “What do you do?” question, because the answer they gave would only further impress the women, making Narc temporarily value the prestigious education he ordinarily dismissed.
Thanks to his dapper dress, charmingly debonair manner, and strikingly good looks, Trevor had no difficulty attracting women. But his Puritan superego, particular esthetic standards, and impossible height requirements together restricted his “cumulative scorecard” to just a handful of women. Trevor was happy to flirt with any attractive woman who showed an interest in him, but, for a variety of practical and psychological reasons, Trevor would almost never consider dating her – particularly if she was under six feet tall.
“Don’t you realize how much that limits your game?” Narc remarked, when he first learned of Trevor’s requirement over a dinner of ramen soup at Tome, a Japanese restaurant near the Columbia University campus.
“I know. It’s a bloody curse, being six-seven,” Trevor explained, in his British accent. “But what’s a man of my height to do?”
“Learn to stoop.”
“You’re expecting me to stoop down to your level?” Trevor quipped. “You know my upbringing wouldn’t permit that!”
“I’m not talking about upbringing, Trevor. I’m talking about downbringing. To a normal female height. For God’s sake, the average American woman is about five-five. If you expect at least seven more inches, you’re basically limited to the female basketball players in this country.”
“And what would be so tragic about that? At least I’d have one more thing in common with the lady.”
The waiter took away their bowls and left them the check.
“But I’m not even talkin’ about a serious girlfriend here, yo. What about having a short fling? Literally.”
“You know I don’t believe in those, Narc.”
“All right, how about a long fling with a short woman? Just to see if you might like it.”
“Narc, you telling me to consider women under six feet is like me telling you to consider women under five-eight.” Trevor knew that Narc, at six-three, preferred women who were between five-nine and six feet.
“That’s bullshit, Trevor.”
“It’s not bollocks at all. Why should seven inches mean any more to you than to me?”
“Trevor, seven inches shorter represents a much larger percentage decrease for me than it does for you.”
“I have to concede that that’s a legitimate rebuttal.”
Trevor checked the bill and put his ten-dollar share on the table.
“Shouldn’t you try going below six feet at least once?” Narc insisted, putting down his ten dollars on top of Trevor’s.
“But I have, Narc. I dated one woman who was substantially below six feet tall and it was bloody awful. My flatmate at Oxford had introduced me to her. And she was a really fit bird, so I overlooked the fact that she was only five-seven. But dating her was an unmitigated calamity.”
“What was so bad about it?”
“First of all, she was one of these marathon kisser types, who loved kissing in public, and – ”
“I thought you hate PDA.”
“I do. But she bloody loved it. She would try to kiss me in the bloody loo if it were a unisex. And after her five-minute kisses I’d start to get these neck cramps, especially if I had just finished a few hours of fitness and it was parky weather out.”
The two put their winter coats on and headed out of the restaurant.
“What the hell is ‘parky?’”
“That’s British slang for cold. Like this bloody weather we’ve got now,” he said, as they ventured into the snowy New York winter outside.
“Please, Trevor. Don’t use anything but Oxford English around me,” Narc said mockingly.
“I try to, but on occasion you cause me to slip into more vernacular speech because of your own fondness for informal colloquialisms. Anyway, besides the physical discomfort of kissing her, it was also a bit embarrassing to be with someone who looked so much shorter than me.”
“That can definitely look funny.”
“Funny? She was a foot shorter than me and it looked completely awkward. At times, I even feared that others seeing us from afar might think that I was engaged in some sort of illicit relation with a minor.”
“You crack me up, Trevor.”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Everything about you. How you think, how you speak. You’re a total character, bro.”
“I’d thank you for your remarks if I thought that I could take them as a compliment.”
“See what I mean? You’re the only guy on the whole fucking planet who would say something like that. Which is why I love you!”
And in a rare moment of spontaneous fraternal affection, Narc effusively threw a bear hug around his giant friend’s chest. Trevor fended him off in squeamish amusement, saying, “Stop that now!” Trying to wrest Narc off his body as they both stumbled into a pile of snow, Trevor added, “Even close friends should avoid the appearance of homosexual affinities between them.” The comment made Narc laugh too hard to maintain his grip, and he eventually fell off.
Trying to resume a serious conversation, as they brushed the snow off themselves, Trevor continued: “It isn’t as though I didn’t make a good faith effort to make the relationship succeed. We dated for a respectable six months.”
“So you shagged her?” Narc asked playfully, in a feigned British accent. He loved watching Trevor get embarrassed at a pointed question about his sexual history.
“No comment,” Trevor replied, unmoved. He had grown accustomed to Narc’s games.
“I’m just trying to see whether height matters for you in bed.”
“I will say this much: height is a factor whose importance can surface in a variety of areas in life.”
Narc knew that that was Trevor’s way of saying that height does, in fact, affect sexual compatibility.
But the gentlemanly giant was also saying much more. He really wanted someone who could relate to the psychology of being a physical misfit in a world designed for shorter people. He preferred a person who understood what it’s like always to be the tallest one in the group. He wanted someone who could relate to the daily problems he had with things that most people take for granted, like finding sufficiently large clothes or fitting into spaces made for a smaller populace – from subway trains and elevators to taxis and planes.
Chapter 11
Heeb Gets Hurt in DC
Five years after shopping for an apartment and losing his virginity in a marble kitchen, Lucky Chucky was defying every statistic about the longevity of jobs, flats, and mates in New York City. Not only was he living in the same apartment with the same woman and working at the same company, he was now happily married to Carolina and serving as the number two executive officer of her company.
Heeb, of course, was not so lucky. Everyone he met in DC was a political lobbyist, a political consultant,
a political lawyer, a political journalist, a political pundit, a political staff member, or just plain political. The math and science geek who never quite found his crowd in the intellectually more diverse city of Boston found it all the more difficult to find his place in DC – particularly without Carlos around. Heeb made good money in what he considered a prestigious job, but he had a hard time finding women in DC who were impressed by the title “Deputy Chief Actuary.”
He got along well enough with his colleagues, and with Jerry, the CEO of the company, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Heeb. Both men were five-seven, roughly 170 pounds, and had fleshy figures and a similar physiognomy, so they appeared strikingly similar – except for the fact that Jerry still had all of his hair. Jerry was five years Heeb’s senior, but – much to Heeb’s chagrin – people who thought the two were brothers always assumed that Heeb was the older sibling. Eventually, Heeb learned to deliver his sarcastic clarification in increasingly good-humored form: “No, he’s older and he’s not my brother. But I donated my hair for his toupee so that he’d give me the job.”
Heeb worked long hours and many weekends supervising complex group projects and preparing for the seemingly interminable series of stressful actuary exams that were a part of his profession. But he earned good money and enjoyed a relatively flexible schedule that enabled him to get away for a four-day weekend every month or so. For his first two years after college, he alternated these weekend trips between family visits to Philadelphia; Boston trips to see Titus, with whom he regularly spoke on the phone; and stays in New York City, where he would visit Carlos.
When Heeb first met Carolina (about six months into her relationship with Carlos), he was flabbergasted by her beauty and brains, and how Carlos had ended up with her so fortuitously.
“You see why I nicknamed him ‘Lucky Chucky?’” he asked her.
“I used to hate that name,” Carlos chimed in.
“Until the day you met her, right? Then you finally came to accept your Lucky Chuckyness.”
“Chucky?” Carolina repeated skeptically. “I think it sounds awful.”
“But don’t you think ‘Lucky Chucky’ sounds better than ‘Lucky Carlos?’” Heeb ventured.
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But Carolina Carlos sounds even better. And it’s not because I prefer alliteration to rhyme.”
“She’s got a point there, Heeb. I didn’t get lucky. I got Carolina.”
“I guess so.”
Fortunately for Heeb, when Carolina first met her husband’s former college roommate, she correctly concluded that there wasn’t a safer man with whom to let Carlos go out without her. And she was happy to use the time alone to work on her dissertation or catch up with her girlfriends. So for Heeb it was just like the good old days – except with a much bigger playground at their disposal. Carlos, who was hopelessly in love with his wife and not at all interested in meeting any other women, was still the perfect wingman for Heeb. Just as in college, Carlos never competed with Heeb for the many women who gravitated towards the Latin heartthrob. Instead, he always directed them to Heeb, whom he would praise and build up as effusively and charmingly as ever.
At the start of his third year in DC, Sammy met a cute, twenty-four-year-old, Japanese exchange student at Georgetown, studying international relations. At five-three, her petite figure, tiny porcelain hands, and light steps seemed to complement her culturally bred habits of profuse politeness. When she laughed, her face lit up and she quickly covered her mouth, as if to quell any improperly excessive mirth. She had long dark hair extending to her mid-back, and eight tiny freckles splashed about her small nose and soft, narrow cheeks.
Her name was Yumi, which Heeb affectionately mispronounced as “Yummy.” When they first met, her English wasn’t good enough for her to catch the pun or to bother trying to correct what she thought was his poor pronunciation of her name. She was by far the prettiest female Sammy had ever dated and he couldn’t quite explain why she had taken any significant interest in him. The real reason was a fairly simple one: timing. Heeb had serendipitously sat next to her on the flight from New York to DC, and – upon arriving in DC – they shared a cab from the airport. So Yumi’s first day in the U.S. consisted of several hours of continuous conversation with a man who ended up paying for her cab, helping her with her three enormous suitcases, translating her broken English into something that the housing and university officials could understand, and generally assisting her with settling in. He gave her his phone number and encouraged her to call him whenever she needed any help, which she regularly did. He was all too happy to drive twenty minutes at midnight to help her locate a drug store that was still open.
Two weeks into her stay, Yumi had found her prince charming and his name was Sammy Laffowitz. And after a month of dating her, Sammy finally ended his eighteen months of solo pleasure (his last climax that wasn’t self-induced had been in New York City, when Chucky brought out Heeb’s Kojak). It was also the first time in his life that Heeb had slept with an Asian. He was helplessly attracted to her and enthralled by the quality and frequency of their sex together. And because she appeared to be falling for him as well, he would occasionally indulge the thought that he might actually retire from being a bachelor, regardless of what his family might think or how many additional women he had always assumed he would date before settling down.
Yumi was also the most sensual person Heeb had ever intimately known, and she immensely enjoyed introducing him to a fetish that he would virtually obsess over forever after: toe arousal. Yumi so masterfully employed a technique of licking and sucking Heeb’s toes that he became dizzy with pleasure and the desire to climax through his toe tips.
After a few months of such terrific touching and a genuinely interesting and loving companionship, Sammy began to dismiss his initial feelings for Yumi as mere infatuation, and gradually came to acknowledge that he had fallen in love for the first time in his life. He respected her intelligence and was drawn to her person. He saw Yumi as an irresistibly adorable woman who really understood him, despite the charming Japanese idiosyncrasies that culturally separated her from him but that Heeb had come to cherish. He became so convinced that Yumi brought out the best in him that he was prepared to break all family rules and prior plans, in order to stay with her. Within four months, Yumi moved into Sammy’s spacious two-bedroom apartment and Sammy refused to accept any rent money from her.
She had tremendous leverage with Heeb – particularly as her English improved – because he was absolutely smitten by her, and spared no effort or expense to please her. Early in their relationship, he took great pleasure in helping her with all of the logistical and practical problems that she faced as a foreigner with broken English visiting the U.S. for the first time. He enthusiastically assisted her with any issue that she brought to his attention or he anticipated in advance. She was also devoted to him, and would happily cook Japanese meals for him, take him shopping for more stylish clothes, teach him how to dance to hip-hop music, and humor his excitement about some obscure statistical innovation he had proudly devised for a work-related project.
Yumi was a gifted and assiduous student of the English language. By her tenth month in DC, her English was good enough to sustain personal and introspective discussions that were some of the most profound and satisfying that Heeb had ever had with a female. His relationship with Yumi made everything about DC – and life in general – seem infinitely better, and this worried Heeb on occasion. A latent concern lingered in his mind: how could a single person exert so much influence on his overall wellbeing? His gut told him that he was too vulnerable.
And his instincts were right. Heeb made the mistake of bringing Yumi to his company’s annual banquet ball. It was the first time that he had even opted to attend the black tie gala, and he was so proud to be involved with a woman like Yumi, and she had become such an integral part of his life, that he couldn’t imagine going without her.
Yumi was all too honored to be invited.
She had always been intrigued by his firm – given its impressive international stature and scope (including an office in Tokyo) – and she was curious to meet Jerry, the CEO mentioned in so many of Heeb’s funny work anecdotes. Excited to dress up for the occasion, Yumi wore a shoulderless, velvet crimson gown that seductively hugged her petite figure and (unbeknownst to her) made Heeb feel strangely inadequate at the event – as if he wasn’t worthy of such an attractive girlfriend.
The night commenced uneventfully, with Sammy making the rounds and saying all of the hellos that he politically needed to say to solidify or improve his ties with all of the executives above him. By his side, conducting parallel conversations, Yumi learned that Heeb’s colleagues all considered Jerry to be a witty, brilliant, and visionary man. She also learned that he had recently gone through a bad divorce.
A little later, Jerry walked in fashionably late with Nadine, a former swimsuit model. Virtually everyone present regarded her as the sexiest female of the night, but Jerry was immediately taken by Yumi – a fact that made her feel like the star of the evening. Sammy, however, was too busy politicking to discern the fast evolving energy between his girlfriend and his boss. When he finally noticed that Yumi was talking to Jerry, he began to walk towards them. But before he could get any closer, Nadine approached Sammy and chatted him up for another fifteen minutes.
Yumi caught a suspicious look from Sammy and tried to end her conversation with Jerry. “I should probably get back to Sammy now,” she said. “But I’m glad that I got to meet you, after hearing so much about you.”
“What you’ve heard is all lies! I’m a ruthless, capitalist taskmaster looking for more slaves,” he replied playfully.
“So you like to play master and servant?” Yumi asked, amused.
“In the Tokyo office I have to play servant because no one understands my commands. But here I usually play master.”
