We both laughed. Then she said, “If you believe it's there, maybe it is. So why don't you begin to let go of Wayne and try to find those things with someone else? Not because your mother says so, not because you can't care for yourself, but because you feel it will enrich your life.”
“And even if it doesn't,” I added, “at least I'll have some new material to work with.”
I FALL FOR BASTARDS
By Natasha Sarnoff
I remember the precise moment I stopped having affairs with bastards and switched to men who were good for me and I'm going to tell you why I did it and how it changed my life. I didn't stop dating rotten men because I had a fabulous insight in therapy, been to est, lost every member of my family in a plane crash or gone to India to work for the Peace Corps and seen the light. No. My conversion came about because I couldn't get in to see
Annie Hall
in a Manhattan movie theater on a Saturday night in August. It was the sixth day of a record heat wave and I got to the box office right after the last ticket had been sold. I was real upset even though I had already seen the movie.
The reason I was left to wander the scorched streets of Manhattan was a creep named Marvin Goldman. If that doesn't sound like a name you would ordinarily associate with a bastard, that is exactly the point I'm going to make.
I was once asked by a man why rotten men get the best women and nice guys have trouble scoring (at least that's what he observed). If anyone else is considering going into the bastard business, let me say that bastards are not what you expect them to be. They are definitely not mean, macho, insulting or ostensibly cruel. The true bastard, the guy born to the role, the one who can really hurt you, is usually a very nice human being with a name like Marvin, Harvey or Clifford.
My Marvin, the bastard who forever changed the course of my sexual destiny, was not wearing a black leather jacket, boots, or a Hell's Angel's t-shirt when I met him at a party, nor did he walk with a swagger. He was standing on the fringe of a lawn party in Southampton in a pair of blue jeans, white Adidas and an alligator shirt. He looked shy, ill at ease and frightened. A few inches shorter than I, he had a sunburn that made him look like a strawberry ice cream cone with glasses. I returned his “Hi” because I felt sorry for him and thought he was grateful to me for answering him.
Marvin wasn't rare. Before Marvin I'd known other bastards who were not only shy but capable of acts of generosity and gentleness you'd never expect from a rat. They genuinely wanted to make me happy. Lloyd made love to me as if I were a piece of fragile crystal, parting my legs and licking my clitoris so softly that it was like being aroused by a butterfly—though he knew when to metamorphose into a man.
Terry liked to raise my t-shirt, free my breasts and circle my nipples with his fingers as if he were worshipping at a shrine. He also wrote poetry. It is very easy for a normal woman to fall in love with a bastard because he is usually warm, loving, vulnerable and, at first, emotionally accessible. Often what he gives her is something she could not get anywhere else.
But I wasn't thinking about all this when I returned Marvin Goldman's “Hi.” I was thinking of how to get away from him. It was the first singles' party of the season. I had rented an alternate share in a group house and hoped to meet someone. Marvin Goldman was not what I had in mind.
“So do you come here often?” he asked.
“No,” I said, deadpan. “This is my first time.”
“Me, too,” he said. “I have a friend who comes here all the time. He said he met some fascinating people here.”
“No kidding,” I replied. “Like who?”
“Oh,” he shrugged, “Lauren Hutton … Christie Brinkley … Golda Meir. He liked Golda Meir the best but her career was too much. Israel this! PLO that! I mean he's not a male chauvinist pig at all. He thinks women should work. But there are limits.”
“So what happened?”
“They decided to be friends. In fact, he flew over for her funeral and felt lousy for months. He thought maybe he had been too demanding. Perhaps if he'd been a little more giving they could have made it.”
“He shouldn't blame himself. You can't change your basic nature.”
“I guess you're right,” he grinned. I grinned. His sunburned cheeks glowed.
“So listen,” he said. “What's your sign?”
I saw Marvin Goldman twice that week and twice the next. Two weeks after we met, on my next alternate weekend, we made it together on a blanket in the dunes. It was not a passionate, romantic occasion with me ripping off a pair of bikini panties soaking wet with the juices of my desire. I liked Marvin. He made me laugh. Hut he did not turn me on. However, I'd been out with him six times and it was now or never. Marvin may have come on like a nebbish, but he was not a jerk. I could either fuck him or lose him. I didn't want the latter.
And so I slipped off my jeans and dry underwear and lay beneath Marvin while his thin, short body in its pale, freckled skin writhed on top of mine. The best thing about the sex was that It didn't last long. And only after it was over did I begin to lull for him. The bastard rolled off me, put on his glasses, pushed them up the rim of his nose with his finger, propped his chin in the palm of his hand and said, “That was the worst sex I ever had.”
“No kidding,” I exclaimed. “Worse than the first time?”
“A lot worse. The first time at least I was curious. This time I knew how it was going to turn out.”
“Worse than Miriam Skolnick?” (Miriam weighed 207 pounds. He had told me about her.)
‘’A thousand times worse than Miriam Skolnick. At least I was doing, a good deed with her. I felt charitable. I could have taken it as a lax deduction.”
“Worse than all the women you were angry with, hated, couldn't may no to, but didn't want to do it with?”
“Worse than every single one of them,” he answered solemnly. “Of all the lousy lays I've ever had,” he went on, looking at me tenderly, “you were the worst.”
I began to feel a stirring of desire. Who can explain it? “Do you really mean that?” I asked. “You're not kidding me?”
“I swear,” he said. “You take the cake. You are the rottenest fuck I ever had in my life.”
A warm rush went up through my thighs and I moved closer to him.
“Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Positive,” he whispered softly. “Without a doubt.”
We were both grinning now. I pulled off my sweat shirt, which I'd left on during our amorous encounter, and pressed myself to him. My nipples were hard, my hands roamed his body. I ran my tongue over flesh that five minutes earlier I'd managed only to tolerate. I moved past his stomach toward his groin.
“Are you serious?” he said. “What do you think I am, Superman? I haven't been able to do that since I was 20.”
“If I'm the worst lay you ever had,” I said mischievously, “who knows what other records we might break? I'll take my chances.”
I licked his thighs, balls and limp penis, then took him in my mouth and swirled my tongue around his glans. As I kissed the base of his cock where it sprouted from stiff, wiry red hair, I felt a flicker of interest, but I wasn't sure.
“Well, what do you know?” I said.
“Don't get cocky,” he replied. “It means nothing.”
I kept working. He began to moan. “Oh God,” he cried. “Oh God. Oh God.” He became erect. Mounting him, I galloped, his body arching to meet mine, my buttocks slapping against his thighs.
The night air was chilly, but we were damp with sweat. Marvin was grinning wildly as I pounded on top of him. His hands wandered over my body and cupped my ass. I came and fell on him. Moments later he rolled me over and began to fuck me. His eyes were closed and his head flung back. Finally he shuddered, then slumped on top of me. I pulled the blanket over his shoulders.
“Am I still the worst lay you ever had?” I inquired.
“Not that time,” he answered. “That time you were the best.”
“The best?” I repeated. “You don't really mean that?”
“You're right,” he admitted. “You weren't really the best. I was just being nice. But the first time you were definitely the worst, and the second time you were really good.”
“Who was the best?”
“Kathleen O'Dougherty. My uncle's bookkeeper. We used to do it on the back stairs of his clock company in Fall River. She was the best. I'm sorry,” he said. “But you were definitely the worst.”
“I believe you,” I whispered tenderly. “I'm glad you told me the truth. I trust you now.”
There was an uncomfortable pause—the kind of pause that is the identifying mark of the bastard. A chill wind blew on the beach. I looked at him, waiting.
“Don't trust me,” he murmured.
Another pause. I knew what I had heard.
“Why not?”
“Just don't.”
He rolled off me. The moment passed. I could have pretended that it never happened. Marvin put on his glasses, propped his chin in his hand and asked, “So what's your sign?” Could such a person be a bastard?
I began spending weekends at Marvin's, where he had a full share and only two roommates instead of eight. We made it together often, in the dunes at night, on a sailboat in Gardners Bay, and in Marvin's bedroom, which opened onto a deck with a view of the ocean. During the week we ate dinner together in town and went to the movies. (I'm a school teacher and was off for the summer.) One of the movies we saw was
Annie Hall.
“You remind me of Woody Allen,” I told him after the movie. We were walking up Third Avenue toward Marvin's apartment. “You're funny like he is, confused and sort of shy. You even look a little like him. Just a little bit.”
“Women have told me that before,” he informed me. There was another one of those pauses. I was getting better at ignoring these long moments.
“Especially about the confused part,” he added.
There was another pause. Mine. And then I asked, “What do you mean confused? How?”
“I get scared. I run. I don't want to. I feel like a louse. But things get to a certain point and then I have to cut out. My shrink tells me I'm not a little boy anymore, but so far I haven't stopped.”
“Will you do it to me?”
“I hope not,” he responded. “I like you. Sometimes I think I even love you.”
“Sometimes I think I love you too,” I confessed.
“Don't,” he warned. “Just don't.”
“Why not?” I asked. I knew the answer but felt exasperated. “We have so much fun together. And we have great sex. So why not?”
“You said yourself. I'm confused.”
That night I made love to Marvin more passionately than ever before, as though I were trying to blot out his confusion. But in the weeks that followed, we discussed his problem with increasing frequency. He told me about all the women he had left and how he did not want to spend his life “going from woman to woman.” Sometimes his eyes filled up with tears. But by late August it became apparent he was not going to change. One Sunday night at the end of the weekend Marvin dropped me at my apartment and said, “I'd like us not to see each other for a while. I have to get my head together.”
“What about next weekend?” I pleaded wistfully.
“Let's not.”
“But it's not even my alternate weekend,” I joked. “Besides, I was going to tell you my sign.”
“Please,” he said. “Don't.”
I waited all week for the phone to ring and it didn't. I couldn't believe it. We had made love on the beach, gone sailing and cooked lobsters. By Saturday I had to see him. I took a train to Southampton, planning all the way how to tell him I would live with his confusion. He could stop seeing me for a few days every month. When I arrived at the house Marvin was leaving for the beach with a French designer we had met at a party. Marvin turned red and said, “Hi.” At least he had the grace to look ashamed.
“I was just in the neighborhood,” I said, “and wanted to pick up my hairdryer.”
I caught the next train back to New York. En route I saw in the papers that
Annie Hall
was playing at the Festival Theater. I decided to go because Woody Allen would remind me of Marvin. The city was a steaming canyon, but when I reached the Festival it looked as if every human being in town had come to see the movie. The last ticket was sold just as my turn came. So I stood on 57th Street feeling worse than I had in a long time. At that moment it occurred to me that Marvin Goldman was a bastard. It made no difference that he was confused, shy, scared, neurotic or hated doing what he had done. He was a creep. As long as I permitted people like him a foothold in my life I would be at the mercy of their confusion. Marvin had screwed up my weekend for me and it was his fault that I did not get to see
Annie Hall.
Since then I've stayed away from people who didn't seem to know what they wanted. Two years later I married my husband Hal, who has never been confused for more than 10 minutes, and that was in the hospital, when he was given a large dose of Demerol after his hernia operation.
LOUSY LOVERS: A REPAIR MANUAL
By Christina Tagliari
The other day I had lunch with my girlfriend Sheila. Quickly dispensing with the preliminaries—jobs and families—we moved on to more important topics—men and sex. Sheila mentioned that our mutual friend Felicia had broken up with David whom I had once dated.
“Felicia said he was cheap and a lousy fuck,” cracked Sheila.
I was surprised. David was a tightwad all right, but a lousy fuck he was certainly not. In my arms he was a sensuous, passionate and energetic lover. On trips to the country David brought along massage oils, leather whips, velvet ropes and a stack of erotic novels. In short he was a splendid fuck—like most of the men in my sex life. Not wishing to appear boastful, I kept my recollection of David the Swell to myself. If I had been totally honest, I would have told Shelia that I had never had a bad lover, that is, not for long.
When I was in my early twenties, I was pretty wayward. My friend Arlene and I dressed up in evening gowns and went to Philadelphia's snazziest hotel.
In the cocktail lounge we ordered daiquiries, hoping to lure some wealthy businessmen on expense accounts. A handsome pair quickly claimed us. We had a few laughs and were soon persuaded to go upstairs with Herb and Andrew to get stoned.