I stumble in half-pissed and Shelley's on the phone. Of my three female roommates, Shelley is the least attractive. She's got lovely tits and a decent collection of classical records with an emphasis on early music, but she's well-adjusted, a condition that makes my sort nervous, and on her throat just above the collarbone is this leech-like lump the length of a penny roll that she conceals only somewhat successfully under high collars and turtlenecks. It's Indian Summer now, and her neckline is low. There's a good two, two-and-a-half inches of cleavage showing, but then there's that awful leechy blotch dangling like the spider above Little Miss Muffett's curds and whey. The old pull and push. I'm attracted and repulsed, and a bit disgusted at being repulsed. It's impractical for one: these are beautiful and readily available tits. And then of course two: judging someone's personal worth on the basis of what amounts to the merest percentage of total skin area is shallow, to say the least, but there it is; I'm like a dog with a hunk of fat off the barbecue -- I know it's good, and I know I want it, I want it now, but it burns my tongue so badly all I can do is yelp, not chew, and that makes me angry.
So Shelley's on the phone and I'm half-pissed. Actually I'm very-near-thoroughly-pissed. And I'm attracted, repulsed, disgusted, and angry. I have this thing about women on the phone. Like Niagara Falls to me -- "slowly I turn..." It goes back to my mother, who I see before me now with a phone receiver staple-gunned to her cheek, pressing the buttons of a wall-model touchtone with a pencil's pink nub. In this picture I'm looking up imploringly with both hands cupped at the crotch of my tan corduroys. A question -- and it's a good one -- arises: Why then do I choose to people my apartment with college and grad-school-aged women, who -- one might assume and correctly I might add -- spend an inordinate amount of time on the telephone yakking? For now, in this very-near-thoroughly-pissed state, I can only say this: I'm re-evaluating.
"It's OK, Jenn," Shelley is saying. "Try to get some sleep." She rolls her eyes at me. "Jenn, it'll get better, Jenn, I promise."
"Is that Jenn?" I say, as if my question results from some penetrating detection. I've heard these calls before. Shelley is like a suicide hotline. All her Barnard friends are ready to jump out windows, an option not readily available to Shelley. We live on the ground floor. Maybe that's why they call her. But I'm not concerned with the motivations of chronically depressed Barnard upperclasswomen. Instead, I'm thinking about Film Production II, and Jenn's appearance in a colleague's 16mm short, the obligatory nude-romp-in-the-cemetery sequence, and I grab at the phone.
"Jenn, hold on," Shelley says as I paw the receiver.
"Jenn, are you home?" I say, impatiently. I've got the phone in one hand, I'm straight-arming Shelley with the other, the palm flat out on her shoulder, which renders the straight-arm ineffectual. See, even though I want to keep Shelley off me, I've got the presence of mind to avoid that blotch. I'm squeamish, a quality I find nauseating, and unmanly. It prevents me from getting what I think I want.
"Don't tell him, Jenn," Shelley shouts into the receiver.
I give Shelley a look, but it's not necessary. Jenn's not paying attention.
"And Shelley has your address?" I say.
I nod and hang up before she stops talking. Never give them time to think. The mind is a monkey, especially when it's in college.
"I don't know about this," Shelley says, shaking her head.
"Shell," I tell her, "she's lonely. So am I."
Shelley's got her arms folded, but not high enough to cover the splotch. "There's another word for what you are," she says.
"Don't flatter me now, Shelley, please." I slide a pink highlighter and a yellow 3x5 card along the kitchen table. "Chivalry," I say, "can't wait. The Arthurians knew this."
Shelley's period is medieval. She doesn't know whether to smile or puke. Still shaking her head, she takes up the highlighter.
"One of us is going to regret this," she says.
She leans an elbow against the kitchen table, affording me a full view of her chest. In my head I hear the love-cry of Hitchcock's Frenzy, the teeth-clenched urgency of the murderer's kiss-off. "Lovely," he moans. "Lovely!"
On Riverside Drive I take the shadowy promenade above the park. There's a professor I'm trying to date two doors down and I don't want her to see me rushing off on a half-baked date carrying a half-drunk double-litre of Folonari. Folonari's piss, a judgment I'm sure she shares. She's got class, this professor, a Katherine Hepburn type. Trouble is, she's suicidal, too. Wrote a book on it, it's her claim to fame. More attempts than Sylvia Plath, one less success. Next failure they'll make her the dean, you can take that to the bank. One night, right outside my window, there she is braless and carrying on, howling at the street sign about some injustice, until finally she melts into this little puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy's doused her with water. I forgo the chemise and leap out the window and against her protests escort her to her building, where against my protests her prick of a doorman takes over. Grandly, he covers her torso with the blazer of his monkey suit. A regular Ivanhoe. Still, tucked into the elevator, I knew where his eyes were going to travel. That's a funny thing about men: bad tits, good tits, vital or suicidal, we're gonna look. I've looking down the blouses of grandmothers leaning over strollers. I've lifted my eyes from the Times to the monkey bars. I can't say I'm not disgusted with myself, but I'm not not looking.
It's one of those damp clammy nights. I've got a blazer around my shoulders, my tie ends dangle from a half-assed Windsor. Casual but ready, you might say. My upstairs neighbors, another professor and his wife, both painters, pass by with their leashed whippets. Although the whippets strain at their collars to greet me, my neighbors pretend not to notice. I used to date their daughter who, once she got the full impact of my number, told them I was running some kind of harem downstairs. "Pussy pig," she called me, and I didn't bother to argue. We split up nasty and they sent her off to Barcelona, whence I began receiving postcards imploring my visit. She's learned so much about appearance, she says, both scientific and natural, she's certain we can work out our differences. This really gets me, I mean, there she is across an ocean, halfway around a planet, I couldn't see her with a telescope, and she's still concerned about her appeal. Weird, I think, and sad. Of course, that insecurity's got its upside, but the reference to science worries me.
Women struggle these days, and I feel bad about my ugly contribution. I see them crunching, fasting, applicating cremes. 11 p.m. and there they go, look out there's a whole flock of them. Jesus, what they go through. Late night joggers earning centiliters of frozen yogurt, watching for wackos, shying from Rottweilers, edging around pigeons preening at puddles. Once I leapt the width of a not-so-large promenade puddle and killed a pigeon, or at least I think I killed it. Came down right on its breast-bone. Sickening crackle. Half-shocked me. I couldn't imagine the stupid bird not scatting. I suppose it, too, was suicidal. In that case I did it a favor. Imagine finally working up the nerve to jump from the window only to discover wings flapping at your sides.
I had a chance, once, to be some kind of crusader. My brother had come
home from college with a dog-eared copy of Sisterhood is
Powerful. I remember thinking, "Wow, some of this shit is right
on!" But I got tired of dating women in hooded sweatshirts and earth
clogs. My erections required greater glamour. More and more my eyes
lingered on the magazine displays at kiosks (among which Shelley could
hold her own were it not for that unfortunate marking). So call me
counter-progressive, call me a throwback, and I say: What, you think
I'm proud of this? I'm not proud of this, it's just something I do. I
agree with you. It's myself I'm in disagreement with, but I'm still
myself.