We talked about traveling, history and science fiction. His truck smelled like dog and was littered with fast food wrappers and Dr. Pepper cans.
His house seemed filled with dogs- sweet, smelly, rambunctious creatures, eager for love and praise and thrown balls. I rumpled their floppy ears, threw the slobbery ball, and told them they were all “the bestest doggies, yes, the vewwy bestest. Josh loaded the pipe and passed it to me. We smoked, and petted and praised the dogs. I felt slightly awkward until, as things began to get comfortingly fuzzy, Josh kissed me gently and led me to the bedroom.
His room, like the rooms of all the men I had gone home with and would go home with, had little decoration and what there was seemed halfhearted. I spotted strong eyebolts in the ceiling and asked, half-jokingly, if he was into bondage. He was, and asked how I felt about it. I don’t like anything that’s too contrived, I said, but I don’t mind a little slap with my tickle. His body was leaner than any I had felt since high school. His beard was soft, his arms were strong, he held me down, and it was good, so good, with no false moves or fumbling. For perhaps the first time, I focused not on the man in my arms, but on my body’s response, stronger than it had ever been before. A string of hoarse obscenities spilled from his lips, sounding not angry, but grateful.
A memory of being four years old, of my grandmother taking me to her bank in Albany. Once again, I feel the cool metal counter as I run my open mouth along it. I feel the smooth, slightly pitted, rounded rectangles of the gum that came tumbling from the vending machine’s mouth into my grandmother’s waiting handkerchief. Sliding a red one onto my tongue, I wait, breathless, to see if it will be cherry or cinnamon.
Afterward I was dazed, sated and sleepy. Josh lay panting beside me. I ran my hand down his side and said, without thinking, “That was just like getting fucked at the bank by Grandma.” Hearing his shocked laughter, I realized that it was the single dirtiest thing I had ever said.
* * *
I was nine years old, sitting in the living room of my grandparents’ house. It was early in the morning and I was using the solitude of the hour to eat stale jelly nougats out of the forbidden candy dish while reading an Oz book. Hearing footsteps, I quickly swallowed and crammed the sticky wrappers under the couch cushions, to be retrieved and disposed of later.
My grandmother Sara appeared before me, stark naked. I was appalled. I didn’t know where to look. My family was not terribly modest, but we certainly didn’t make a habit of this sort of thing. Wrinkles everywhere, ugh. I fixed my eyes back on my book and said that I was fine, thanks, and breakfast in an hour would be great. Finally she left.
There are three things I inherited from my grandmother Sara- my long legs, my eyebrows that meet in the middle, and my wide inappropriate streak. Like Sara, I am apt to raise my skirt a little too high when I show you the bruises I got falling down last week. Like Sara, I find myself assessing other women, anxious to see how I compare. Like Sara, I am all too aware of any attractive men nearby. Like Sara, I have a tendency to say something outrageous and look surreptitiously around to see who noticed.
From my mother, I know that Sara and her mother Pauline were competitive for the attention of men. From Sara, I know that she was often ridiculed for being too thin. I imagine that I can feel her frustration at never being able to measure up to her elegant mother, the despair at being so tall and gangly, the determination to grab whatever scraps she could.
When I was younger, I had a prescribed role in life- the pretty girl’s quirky best friend. Always the confidante, quick to join any scheme, desperate to be more than a peripheral spear-carrier. I do not know for sure that my grandmother played this role, but I imagine that she did. Eventually, it begins to chafe. The soubrette looks for ways to upstage the ingénue.
And so it begins. The joke a trifle too naughty, the skirt a little short, the heel a bit too high. We cannot hope to win through innocence, so we are dissipated before our time. We read a little Dorothy Parker, drink our cocktails unadorned by fruit and fripperies, and take up smoking because it’s a wonderful prop. We flirt with other women’s husbands. Our own marriages end.
I don’t know much about my grandmother’s reaction to her divorce, other than that she went out on the singles circuit with frosted hair and gaudy cocktail rings. She remarried the year I was born, and although she was surprised when I called her husband a handsome man, she remained devoted to him until she slowly died of a series of strokes thirty-one years later.
I am still reacting to my own divorce.
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