You look at the house again. Then you start the car and go round the circle and out the driveway, hoping no one heard the crunching of the gravel as you went past the front door. You will go for a drink, just one quick drink before you go home.
As you drive, you find yourself wondering if that is why some men never want to marry. Because they are smart enough to know that no matter how well you get along, no matter how well you understand each other, once you start sharing lives completely, wholeheartedly, you must arrive at this point eventually. You wonder if they never want to marry because they are smart enough to know you can only forget about your life in the company of people who are not part of your life.
And as you drive you wonder if it would make a difference if she worked too, if she had a job as stressful as yours, if she too couldn’t sleep at night. If perhaps then there’d be some sense of camaraderie, some sense of the two of you battling together against the world. You wonder if things would be better somehow if she worked too. But you doubt it. If she worked too it seems like then, in addition to reminding you of all the responsibilities you have somehow accumulated outside your work, she would also remind you of all the responsibilities you have fought for inside your work. And it also seems like then, if she worked too, when she came home she’d want to talk to you as little as you wanted to talk to her.
You drive past a fast-food restaurant, some place that serves tacos or burgers, some place with a “drive-thru.” You realize you haven’t eaten all day. You pull in behind a beat-up pickup. A five- or ten-year-old compact pulls in behind you. When you roll down the window to order, the sound of your engine completely drowns the sounds of theirs.
And when you pull up to the drive-thru window, the attendant looks surprised but he doesn’t say anything until he hands you your change. Then he can no longer help himself and he says, “Man, if I had a car like that I wouldn’t be eating here!” And you smile, and nod, and take your change.
You drive over to a deserted edge of the parking lot and look down at the food he gave you in its paper bag. It’s messy and for a second you consider eating it sitting outside on the curb but then you’d definitely ruin the seat of your pants and you don’t want to eat inside because you don’t want to leave the car alone in this particular parking lot so you tell yourself you’ll just be extra careful of the leather and begin eating in the car. But half-way through eating some kind of vegetable squirms loose, some kind of vegetable covered with some kind of sauce, and instinctively you snap your legs together to catch it and it lands in the crotch of your $1,000 pants. And, cursing, you pick it up between thumb and forefinger and open the door with your pinky and your elbow and get out of the car and put the food down on the ground and wipe yourself off with a napkin. It looks OK there and then but in the morning, in the sunlight, you will look at the pants and see that they are ruined. So now you stand there and eat, leaning slightly forward with each bite, and wonder why you didn’t think of eating this way before.
And maybe as you eat you look over at a bar across the street, a bar you never really noticed before. It’s a little run-down but there are lots of cars around it, the kind of cars that were a good value when they were bought a few years ago, that would be a person’s first car or a family’s second, the kind of cars that, once they are a few years old, parents give their children when they go away to college. And maybe as you finish your food a new one pulls up and parks outside the bar. And maybe, just maybe, four or five young girls get out, there because this bar doesn’t card, there because they know as well as the local police know this bar makes most of its money off underage drinkers. You find yourself wondering how you can tell they’re young from this distance when you can’t even see the make of their car. They are overdressed for the kind of bar they are going to, wear cocktail dresses, have spent time on their hair. Even from across the street you can tell they spent time on their hair. Even from across the street you can tell they are looking to get laid.
And maybe when you are done eating, you find yourself driving across the street to the bar. It’s as good as anywhere, right? You’re just going to have one drink and head home probably anyway. Why bother driving another five miles to the only bar within forty miles that serves the scotch you like? And if there’s a little something to look at while you drink, so much the better.
You park around back, away from the other cars and out of sight of the street. You figure that’s less risky than leaving the car in the parking lot where it might get hit or where someone could see it from the street and might try to steal it. Who’s going to know it’s even there around back?
And maybe when you go inside, leaving your jacket and tie in the car, maybe the girls you think you saw getting out of the car are playing pool. And maybe for some reason, after you finish your first drink, after everyone in the bar has long since stopped staring at you, you find yourself putting your name on the board. And maybe you end up playing pool with those girls.
After the break, after they overcome their initial shyness, after they are done speculating in whispers among themselves about what you’re doing in their bar, the boldest one of them, skeptical for some reason, asks you what you do. “So what do you do anyway?” she asks.
And when you tell them, trying to put it as simply as possible, they all look a little confused except one girl who ventures, “Is that like a kind of merchant banking?”
And when you tell her that merchant banking is very similar to what you do she nods and says, “Yeah, I saw a movie about that once.”
And then they all start talking to you, asking you about what you do, where you went to college, where you live, whether you’ve been to certain places and what they’re like if you have. And for some reason you discover you are proud when you give the answers to these questions, answers that only an hour ago depressed you to even think about let alone say out loud. One of them knows your house, says, “Not that huge place you can only just see from the road?” They all start talking to you except the bold girl who first spoke to you. She sits and talks to three or four boys who sit nearby, boys she and her friends obviously already know a little bit. For a little while, the boys don’t even look at you, or if they do it’s just a disgusted glance. But then, when you start buying rounds of expensive drinks, drinks they could never afford, when you include them in those rounds, when you start actually enjoying your money for the first time in as long as you can remember, they suddenly want to talk to you, are suddenly standing near you instead of on the other side of the table like the girls, lean over your shoulder and give you advice on your shots, ask you questions about your business as if they already knew all about it, questions that always end in “right?” or begin with “But don’t you think . . . ”
At one point two of the boys head for the bathroom, arguing about what you meant by something, but, finding it full and unable to wait, they go outside to pee.
And they come back in saying, “Dude! Is that your car out there?! It’s awesome!” And the girls see that the boys they were so impressed by a few hours ago are impressed by you, by the fact that a certain thing belongs to you. They ask them about it, what is so special about it. And the boys talk about it, know its specifications far better than you do. Except the gas mileage, the one specification you do know, the one specification you have calculated. For the gas mileage they only know the fictional figure written in the handbook. One of them mentions the price among the list of numbers he reels off. Of course, he forgets to include the tax, and the import fees, and the fact that these cars are so hard to get that the dealer asked 15 percent over sticker on yours, he forgets these numbers the sum of which would be enough to pay for a year of his college tuition and living expenses. The other, in response to a question from one of the girls, says, “Let’s just say that that’s more power than you could ever possibly need.”
Then one of the boys, one who didn’t go outside, asks if they can sit in it. And you are surprised, strangely thrilled. “Sure!” you say. “If you want to.”
And everyone troops outside to see the car. The girls stand back a little while the boys crowd around. As they take their turns sitting in the driver’s seat, you notice the mud on their shoes but don’t say anything — you don’t want to seem too uptight, uncool. Then you remember the box of cigars you had taken up to Boston, illegal cigars, cigars that each cost more than these kids would probably spend in three days on food. And you get it out and unseal it and offer them around. The boys each take one, the girls share one.
Back inside, the boys look at you after their first drags, after they hold their first drags in their mouths too long, and nod and say, “Wow,” and “Great,” as if they knew. And they stubbornly finish them even though one of them looks a little green by the time he is done. The girls don’t even finish the one between them, it ends up smoldering, an abandoned wet little stump with rings of clashing lipstick.
And maybe, just maybe, you catch one of the girls looking at you, the one who saw the movie once, catch her not joining in the conversation around her, looking at you with a serious expression. She looks away in a hurry. And later you see her friends teasing her quietly. And maybe, just maybe, as it gets late, she asks if you’ll take her back to campus. You agree — after all, why not, you’re not too drunk to drive. You wouldn’t do it if you were, you’re not irresponsible, you don’t want to go to jail.
And as you drive, she talks to you. She is done with questions about you, she knows everything about you she needs to know, wants to know, would even understand. Instead she begins to talk about herself incessantly. And for some reason you are fascinated, not bored as you are when women your own age talk like this. You could listen to her talk about her problems endlessly, about her grades, about her parents, about her teachers, not just because her problems aren’t really problems, not just because you know everything will be fine, but, you realize, because her problems have nothing to do with you, because her life has nothing to do with your life. And when she talks about her hopes, about how she wants to be a veterinarian, you can listen and smile and nod and say “that would be exciting” or “I’ve been there, it’s beautiful in the spring” because they are still hopes, because they have not yet become worries. Because her hopes remind you hope exists at all.
And maybe, just maybe, she asks if you want to see her room. And that’s the moment when you realize you need to make a decision. That’s the moment when you ask yourself what you are doing here, what you are going to do here. That’s the moment when you realize you haven’t been thinking about the “SNAFU” since you started playing pool, when you realize you haven’t thought about the front door to your house opening since you started talking to this girl and her friends.
But when you actually find yourself in her room, her room with a poster of some obscure independent film and a stuffed koala on her bed, her room with a picture of only her mother and her siblings on her desk, her room with the former family computer, you have second thoughts, feel awkward, out of place, like you shouldn’t be there, like you should be ashamed to be there. You begin thinking that maybe you’ve made a mistake, that this is undignified. But then in one smooth, practiced motion, she slips her dress off over her head, reveals those breasts that look like they are actually trying to leap free from their confinement, walks over to you in her underwear and stands on tiptoe and sticks her tongue in your mouth while she starts to undo your belt and you forget all about that.
And maybe, just maybe, underneath her panties, she has a tattoo of a red teddy bear walking in profile on its hind legs. And maybe, just maybe, seeing how crazy it makes you, she jerks you off on it. And then maybe she scoops up some of your semen and, looking right at you, licks it off the ends of her fingers. It has been years since your wife — your wonderful, understanding wife — has done anything like that.
“‘For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.’” — Achilles, Iliad 9:312
And even the nicest girls we sleep with, the ones we find the most charming, the ones our families ask us about, say, “What happened to Jenni — she was so nice.” Even they love it when we abuse them in bed. Yes, abuse them. Even they ask questions like, “Am I your slut? Your whore? Your dirty bitch?” and then shudder when you say, “Yes. . . yes.” Even they ask us to tie them up, to blindfold them, to use them.
And if they don’t like it, if you use those words and they stop moving, put their hand on your mouth, say, “Don’t say that — don’t use that word — I don’t like it,” if they say they don’t want to try being handcuffed to the towel rack in the bathroom, they’re never any good in bed. They may be brilliant. They may be nice. They may be witty, charming, etc., etc. They may be doing something for women’s liberation (over what? over whom?). But they’re never any good in bed.
And it’s not because we feel threatened, it’s not because they’re taking control. It’s not because of that and that’s not what they’re doing anyway. Every man likes a dominant woman once in a while, a woman to order him around, to tell him what to do in bed, to say, “Eat my pussy,” and, “Good. Now fuck me. But don’t cum until I tell you to.” Some men like that all the time.
No, it’s because they want there to be a balance of power. They want things to be equal. It’s because they don’t understand good sex has nothing to do with equality.
It may seem like a minor thing when we tip a waitress a little more because she smiles.
It may seem like a minor thing that corporations employ more beautiful women in sales than in other departments.
It may seem like a minor thing that being a centerfold has become a perfectly legitimate route to celebrity.
These all may seem like minor things.
And when we began looking for a house, you loved everywhere. You loved the place where the kitchen was too small. You loved the place with no land. You loved the place next to the school yard.