“so,” I said, fiddling with my tea cup. “Everything at work is going
well, huh?”
“Great,” Julian responded brightly. “You sure you don’t want another bite
of this crème brûlée? I’m going to finish it.”
“I’m not a dessert person. Go ahead.” I watched him. “Good, huh?”
“Not really. Overbaked, like scrambled eggs.”
“Really? But you’re going to eat it anyway?”
“Sure.” He scooped up the last mouthful. “Check, please,” he called.
“So you didn’t like it. You ate it anyway, I see.” I tapped my spoon on
the table. “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
“Uh, I guess,” he said uncertainly. We’d only been going out for a few
weeks, and we’d had a few conversations like these, those
getting-to-know-you stabs in the dark. Now I could see him mentally
wrestling, trying to see what road I was leading him down. “I probably
didn’t need the calories. But I do bad things sometimes.”
I stopped tapping the spoon and looked at him. “Like what kinds of things?”
“Dessert?” he asked hopefully. “I don’t hold much expectations for a good crème brûlée.”
I nodded, thinking. “I think we need to have a talk.”
I’d been rehearsing this conversation in my head for some time now, ever since Julian and I had begun sleeping together fairly regularly.
The first time we’d been together, it seemed fine, if a little awkward.
True, I’d gone down on him, and he hadn’t reciprocated. Okay, that’s fine.
It’s the first time, right? Anything can be forgiven the first time. You’re
nervous, you’re clumsy, you don’t know what the other person expects. We’d
been tired that first night; we’d been groping for over two hours,
negotiating this panty here, this bra there. That first time, it’d be
lucky if one of you got off, incredible if it were both, and a virtual
miracle if it was simultaneous.
But the second time, still no reciprocation. Yes, he seemed willing,
eager even, to be with me in this compromising state of affairs, jeans
around our ankles and T-shirts thrown by the side of the bed. I watched him
watch me with a certain awe — perhaps it was shock — as if he couldn’t
really believe he was with me, there, naked, in my bed.
Maybe it was inexperience.
He had let it slip that I was the most aggressive woman he’d ever been with. Aggressive? Julian didn’t know the meaning of the word. The
third time, I asked him to go down on me. ( Honesty, communication,
openness, blah, blah, blah: all that stuff that’s conducive to a healthy
relationship.) And while he acquiesced, was it just me or did I sense a
certain reluctance? As I lay there on my back, I made a mental note to look
up the definitions of “aggressive” and “assertive.” Maybe Julian meant the
latter?
I started to ask him, “Julian, when you said aggressive, didn’t you
really mean …” How sexy, what timing. I’d had semantic discussions before
in bed, but never like this.
The truth of the matter is, as time went on, I simply did not think that
he was sexually attracted to me. Sure, it happens, but it had never
happened to me before, and I did not like it one bit. I knew he enjoyed
being with me; I knew in a general sense that I was an attractive person.
We liked going out for dinner, seeing movies, curling up on my sofa, and
maybe that would have to be enough. I wondered, would it be okay if Julian
never wanted to rip my clothes off and make mad passionate love to me on
the living room rug?
There almost always is one person in a couple who is more sexually motivated
than the other. And why should it always be the guy? I’d thought my libido
was no stronger than the average Jo, but maybe I was misinformed. Maybe I
was a nymphomaniac. A sex-starved, aggressive harridan, who would stop at
nothing to achieve her next orgasm, who cared nothing for the sweet, gentle
kind man who perhaps wasn’t as concerned as he should be about getting her off but still loved
her inside…
As I sat watching Julian eat his overbaked brûlée, the thought briefly
flitted through my mind that it would be too forward of me to stroke his
thigh under the table. He wouldn’t like it. I watched the waiter set down
the check. He probably thought we were this romantic couple,
the dessert just a prelude to going home and making mad love all
night long.
It was no use, Julian and me, and I knew it. Perhaps if I were
the man in this relationship, perhaps if I were a different person
altogether, it would be negotiable. But I couldn’t compartmentalize this
aspect of the relationship. Sex is too important to me, and I was feeling
too terrible.
the old man with watery blue eyes in the Tipperary pub looked at me curiously. “You wouldn’t be a feminist, would you now?”
I said, “Only strictly speaking.”
“Good,” he grunted. “Lovely girl. I was afraid you might be one of those I hear about. Just the other day, me friend Joe holds the door open for a young lass and her swain. She walks through, and then she turns to him and says ‘You’re a sexist pig.’ ‘Twas shocking, it was.”
It was shocking — so shocking, in fact, that I didn’t believe it. It sounded like an urban myth, like those stories about Pop Rocks perforating stomachs, car headlights signaling gang violence and Jamie Lee Curtis being a certified hermaphrodite.
But almost as hard to believe as the Irish lass’ Andrea Dworkin imitation was the act that supposedly inspired it. Who the hell holds doors open for women anymore? Could it be that Ireland was still so quaint they held on to this charming little act of gender deference? Hell, I’m moving. Count me in to that vast pool of immigrants flooding onto the Dun Laoghaire shores.
Lately, I’ve been feeling like something has gone terribly wrong in the dating etiquette department. Somehow, when American mothers and fathers instruct their sons in how to treat women fairly, decently and equitably, plain old politeness is getting tossed out with the bathwater.
“I went on a great date the other night,” Harriet told me. “He picked me up at my door. He held the door open for me. He walked me home. Oh, he was an OK guy, but I’ll definitely go out with him again. The experience was so … unique.”
Ah yes, the hoary old chestnut of feminism. I’d be the first to insist that doors should be held open for all and sundry. I’d even go so far as to say that after an evening out, friends should see their pal safely to the door, whether male, female or Jamie Lee Curtis. But where is it written that equality knocks out chivalry, in some weird ethical paper-scissors-rock game?
The other night, I struggled out of my date’s car with two heavy Christmas shopping bags. “Clod” (not his real name) watched me lug them into the restaurant. Once seated, Clod ordered himself a glass of wine. The waiter then asked me if I’d like anything. When the bill came, we looked it over, decided how much each of us owed and put down the correct amount. Clod later dropped me off on the corner of my street, asked if we could get together next week and sped off into the night.
Uh, OK. On paper, Clod didn’t do anything wrong. He was soft-spoken, well-intentioned, treated me with utter equality — and left me feeling completely unimpressed.
We girls have made a big stink out of being treated well, and rightly so, but somewhere along the line the message got garbled. “When I was in my 20s, it was okay to be the Good Old Guy when I was on a date,” I said to my friend Matt, “but now, I’m really tired of it.” Matt looked at me incredulously — a feminist saying she wanted to be treated like a girl? In Matt’s mind, “old world chivalry” was synonomous with “demeaning.” The recipients of said chivalry might get insulted; they might get mad. That was the message he’d gotten, growing up in in Berkeley in the ’60s and ’70s.
Well, news flash. Being treated equally doesn’t mean being treated like a soccer buddy. If you boys really, really want to impress a woman, try this novel approach. If you ask her out for a drink, offer to pick her up. Insist on paying for the check, no matter how vociferously she protests. (If she’s asked you out, let her pay if she wants. Make sure you pay the next time. Cheapness is not sexy.) Hold the door open for her. The more gallant among you will help her on with her coat. And always, always make sure she’s safely home.
An extreme example of this is my friend Kaitlin’s description of being the sole woman in a crowded elevator in Argentina. She’s crammed way in the back, and no one’s so much as glanced her way, but BING, when the elevator arrives at her floor, the men part like the Red Sea. Nobody moves until she’s sailed out the doors and is on her way.
Of course such behavior is silly; of course it’s a time waster. So are table manners. But in this day and age of voice mail, automated tellers, irate drivers and Internet flamers, what an oasis.
ah, the holidays. The air is nippy, Christmas trees twinkle merrily behind frost-covered windows. Beautifully wrapped presents are exchanged, drinks are raised in salute of Baby New Year. Eggnog flows freely, arteries are clogged so tightly that Extra Strength Liquid Plumr couldn’t shift ‘em. And then, there’s that event of all seasonal events: the Office Christmas Party.
What other time of year were you so profoundly aware of your dating — or non-dating — status? Those in relationships breathe a heavy sigh of relief, and us singles, well, I have one word: Beware. Beware of what a single person might do in the holiday season. Pour a few toddies down our throats and soon you’ll see us in some dark corner deep in conversation, the beer goggles firmly in place, with the Office Toad, convinced that the wart on the side of their face really is a rather charming mole. This is the time of year when all us singles feel a little more desperate than usual, a bit more ferocious toward our partnered pals, a little louder in our protestations that we love our freedom.
True, office Christmas parties ain’t what they used to be. Gone are the cheesy excesses of the ’50s OCP, the type depicted in Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment,” where secretaries dance on table tops with their lampshade-sporting bosses, martinis in one hand and cigarettes in the other. Gone, too, is the plain old expectation of ribald behavior that virtually defined the Office Christmas Party. The silver lining is that since the corporate world has stifled all such overt acts of impropriety, it’s a real thrill when someone makes a complete ass of themselves.
But, I am happy (I guess) to report, all excess has not vanished from the OCP. I recently attended a holiday bash thrown by a restaurant for which I used to work. My former colleagues were all beautiful people, totally free of ambition, untethered by the constraints of corporate mentality, who all drank and smoke and took Ecstasy all year round, not just during the trying holiday season. And it was clear from the moment I walked in that this party had not been smothered by ’90s conformity. The hordes of drunk men and women downing champagne and Manhattans had me turning to the mineral water. I was trying to engage in chitchat with a more lucid bunch when I felt someone come up behind me, nuzzle my neck, grasp my breasts and purr in my ear “I am so glad to see you!”
“Hey,” I said. I wondered if it was one of the cleaning guys that I used to feel sorry for. I looked down at the two hands covering my chest. It was Renee, whom I’d heard had just broken up with her boyfriend of four years, and was having a hard time adjusting. She kissed me again on the neck and flitted off to the bar in search of more champagne.
Everywhere — in corners, behind tables, on the dance floor, outside behind bushes — couples were locked head-to-head in deep drunken embraces or conversations. Mini-pizzas and crostini offered about on trays went ignored. The music pulsed and the lights were turned down even further as the mob of party animals swayed and groped.
What is it about entering a crowd delirious with excess that makes you feel stone-cold sober, and eager to stay that way? It’s like a train — you either have to get on quickly and slide down into oblivion or stand back. I was trying to explain my mineral water to Louisa as we sat with the smokers outside when Renee glided back and climbed on Louisa’s lap. “Can I kiss you?” she asked me. I leaned over aiming for her cheek when she turned her lips to me and gave me a full-blown smack with attempted tongue action.
“Jesus, Renee.” I glanced over at my former boss, who looked startled, then shrugged. “Employee bonding,” I called. Turning to Renee, I said, “I’m cutting you off.”
“Come on. Kiss me.”
“No.”
“You know you want to.” Well, she was right there. I did want to kiss somebody, just not her, and preferably not a female. I recognized that old OCP feeling, that yearning for bodily contact; it came up every year at every holiday party if I wasn’t dating someone exclusively. And now it appeared that I didn’t even have to be tipsy to feel that way.
“I don’t have to be Ms. Right,” Renee continued. “How ’bout just Ms. Right Now?” She climbed off Louisa’s lap and drifted toward the bar, blowing us a kiss.
“It’s so p.c. for girls to do that nowadays,” Louisa remarked. “Imagine if some guy had done that to you, Courtney. Nobody even batted an eye. Christmas parties sure have changed.”
“You think?” I asked. I didn’t agree. Yes, the OCP had undergone various mutations, but every year it was basically the same thing: a time to let your hair down in front of your coworkers sans the Monday morning regret. This is the kind of stuff we singles wait for all year.
And don’t forget: December 31 is just around the corner.
harriet, perched atop a ladder, daintily dabbed a spot of cornflower blue on her ceiling. “What do you think?” she called down to me.
“Looks good,” I said. I was sprawled out on the sofa, lending moral support, flipping through Harriet’s latest issue of The Nation. I hadn’t looked up. There are few activities in this world that I despise more than house-painting, and I wasn’t going to be roped into it. “I think The Nation could do with a humor column,” I said. “It’s so deadly serious nowadays.”
“So stop reading it.”
“I can’t. It’s telling me how to think. Cocktail parties are coming up. I need to be able to defend my knee-jerk liberal opinions.” The phone started to ring, somewhere, muffled under dropcloths. “Shall I get that?”
“You know, the colors always look completely different than the swatches. I don’t think this shade is right.”
I counted off another ring, then another. “I suppose I could go back to the store, but I’ve already opened the whole can ” Harriet continued. Ring. Ring. I looked up at her; she was frowning at her ceiling, deep in thought.
“I think your machine is unplugged,” I observed. “I’ll just go ahead and ” I said, as I started to root around.
“DON’T TOUCH THAT PHONE,” she shrieked.
“Jesus, Harriet. Okay, okay.” The ringing stopped, and we stared at one another in silence.
She climbed down the ladder, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, but it’s just… well, I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”
“Well, I got that impression.”
“I’m too angry to talk about it.”
“Okay.” I said. I returned to Katha Pollitt. “It’s just … ” She plopped herself down on the canvas-covered floor, and lay down. “I can’t take it anymore. You know I broke up with Alan?” Seeing my look of confusion, she repeated, “Alan. Alan. You know. I was sleeping with him. It was a nothing. Not a relationship. You couldn’t even call what I did breaking up, since we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend anyway.”
“Oh, yes.” I’d only met Alan once, at a party; Harriet very clearly had kept him away from our circle of friends. I remembered him in pieces: a fuzzy thrift store sweater, a pair of blue eyes behind thick glasses. His intense stare. Her avoidance of his gaze. His hand, reaching out for hers when he thought no one was looking, and her gentle brushing away of it. “You haven’t mentioned him recently.”
“I’m just so angry. Three weeks ago, I had the little talk. ‘It’s really not working out this way. You want more than I’m prepared to give. You’re sweet, but I don’t want to be in this kind of thing.’ You know, the usual, blah, blah, blah, let’s-just-be-friends stuff.”
“Did you? Want to be friends, that is?”
“Well, of course, at the time I did,” she said, flustered. “Don’t you always? And he seemed to accept it. I thought he did. We saw each other once after that. But, he keeps calling. And calling. And leaving these messages, and he gets angrier and angrier. ‘I can’t believe you haven’t called me. Call me. Call me.’ As if that conversation we had didn’t even exist.”
I rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t sound like you were very clear with him.”
“Yes, I was,” she insisted. “He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that I don’t want to go out with him. It’s starting to frighten me. And then I get so angry in return. I think, how dare he leave me that kind of message? Now I don’t want to be friends with him. He disgusts me, acting like this. I feel like he’s stalking me. “
Ah, the verb of the ’90s, I thought. Emotional terrorism. “Why don’t you just tell him again? Tell him you don’t want to be friends now. Tell him to leave you the fuck alone. But tell him something.” Harriet was silent. “Is there something else? Why can’t you tell him that?”
“I don’t know.” She started to cry. “I guess I feel guilty for some reason. I just don’t understand people that don’t understand the word no. All my women friends,” she said, sniffing, “when they hear that by some guy, they head for the hills. But guys, I don’t know what it is. A pride thing? It seems more and more that you have to hit them over the head with it.”
I suspected the answer was somewhere in the middle. Alan probably was a little dense in this matter of rejection. And Harriet, for whatever reason, had possibly been obscure, indicating in some little way a downcast turn of her eyes, a questioning inflection in her voice that she was not firm about her decision.
I pawed around for a tissue, and found the phone. It was an ordinary Princess phone; beige, bulky, looking curiously disinterested in all these emotional entanglements. I handed her my sweatshirt, indicating that she should wipe her nose, as it began to ring again. Once, twice, three times.
Then it stopped.
So, let’s hear about it!” said Matt excitedly. He took a gulp of Guinness. “Go on. I’m listening.”
We were sitting in the John Barleycorn in San Francisco, a bar not unlike many of the dark, seedy pubs that I’d just frequented in County Cavan. I took a careful sip of my pint.
“Well, I told you most of it on the phone,” I began. “Cavan was amazing. You know, they have 365 lakes in that county alone. One for every day of the year, they say. And then, I drove down to Dingle, and I had to go over this mountain, called Conor Pass. Did you and Kristin get my postcard? How is she, by the way?”
“She’s fine. Go on.”
“Oh. Well, then. So after Dingle, I went back up to Belfast. You know, it’s really changed since the IRA ceasefire –”
“Come on, Courtney,” Matt interrupted. “It isn’t like you to be so coy. Cut to the chase.”
I took another sip of my watery Guinness. “What are you talking about? Oh, that,” I said, sitting back. “No. Didn’t happen.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you serious?” “Yes. I didn’t. Not once. Not even close.” “Are you telling me that you didn’t get laid once there? Not once? A four-week trip? In repressed, Catholic Ireland?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“I can’t believe it.” Matt looked disappointed. Like many of my friends who were in committed relationships, he’d come to rely in a profound, vicarious way on my sexual life. Now, he actually looked like he might cry.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” I said. “Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. So what?”
“Well, you brought condoms,” he said. “It wasn’t like you couldn’t.”
“I brought one condom,” I corrected him. “Maybe I tempted the Gods too much. Anyway, what difference does it make?”
“Not much, I guess,” he said glumly.
“So anyway, I was driving over Conor Pass, and it was shrouded in fog. There were these lakes in the middle of the mountain,” I paused for a moment. “Matt! Hello! I’m talking to you.”
“But it’s not like you couldn’t,” he said. “You said there were opportunities–”
“Yes! There were. But I didn’t want to. So what? What is your problem? Sometimes it feels right, and other times it doesn’t. The men I met were all pretty much involved and I just didn’t feel like it. Okay? There’s always masturbation, you know.”
“Don’t talk to me about masturbation,” he said darkly. “I know all about that. It’s just … Courtney, we were relying on you.”
“For God’s sake, Matt. This is getting insulting.” Maybe Matt was trying to rattle me deliberately. The last time I’d seen him we’d had a rather uncomfortable conversation about faking orgasms. “Just who is ‘we,’ anyway?”
“All of us, your friends, your supporters. Let me put it this way,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Say I was a championship tennis player. And then, something happened, say I got injured, and I couldn’t play anymore. And you go to Ireland, and you take your tennis racquet. And you had all these opportunities to play, on these beautiful smooth courts. With wonderful, springy new balls. And yet, you don’t! Why? Why?”
I considered for a moment. “Because I don’t play tennis.”
Matt banged his pint glass down. “You know what I mean.”
“Clumsy though your metaphor is,” I admitted, “I do like tennis. I like to whack a few balls around. Although, I wouldn’t bring up that analogy with Kristin if I were you.” I looked at my watch. “Look, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t know why I didn’t sleep with anyone. I had other experiences though, which were just as exciting and fascinating and interesting. I’m not just this walking vagina, you know.”
“I never implied such a thing,” he said huffily. “Although, technically speaking ”
“For one thing, it was too cold to think about taking clothes off. And for another, drinking and eros are not such good bedfellows.” There were other, more salient points to make about travel and Ireland, but Matt was brooding. “You can borrow my tennis racquet any old time, honey. Just because you’re not a top-seeded player any more doesn’t mean you can’t whack some balls around with Kristin.” I leaned over and kissed the top of his head. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”
he was a free man in Paris. A little too free.
I was staring down at my newly born half-brother, Hugo. Predictably, I said “He’s adorable,” and everyone nodded. What baby isn’t? I searched inside myself for some sort of familial tug. Nope. Nothing there.
“Do you like living in Paris?” I asked my father’s girlfriend, whom I’d also just met for the first time. She is my age, and we looked at each other, quickly taking in clothes, hair, gestures. The air between us was brimming with questions, hiding behind all the good behavior that everyone was exhibiting.
“What was it like to have a baby in a foreign country?” I asked.
“Okay, I guess.” Hugo started to struggle and I dutifully handed him back to my father.
Wind and rain were whipping around the windows of their sixth-floor flat. I glanced around, thinking about my father’s previous houses in America, seemingly a million years ago. He’d split up very unamicably with my mother 16 years ago, each accusing the other of infidelity. Both stories had seeds of truth. His second wife was ten years his junior; not bad, considering all his lawyer colleagues were at this point trading in Wife #1 for something younger, flashier and less predictable.
But my father, never one to shy away from pushing the envelope, didn’t stop there. When his second marriage dissolved, he traded in his big-time-attorney lifestyle for something “more real.” He moved to Paris, found Dana, and announced his intention to live forevermore as a Hemingwayesque expatriate.
Yes, my father is cool. But most daughters don’t want cool. They want regular, boring, predictable kinda fathers. Yes, even me. His Parisian flat, with its homemade curtains and hastily painted walls, seemed shabby. But he was living on love. Anyone could see that.
“When he’s 18,” my father was saying, “he’ll have to decide whether he wants to be a French citizen or American.”
I suppressed a groan. Eighteen! I’d be nearly 49. I imagined myself entertaining Hugo and his friends at my house in California, me with iron-grey hair, and him looking like Kurt Cobain. I’d be handing out tea, and his long-haired loutish friends would be rolling their eyes, asking for Ricard. Let’s go see my half-sister in San Francisco, he’d have said, she’s an old bag but maybe she’s cool…
“I just can’t imagine how your mother did it,” my father was rattling on. “I think I went to work the same day you were born. And now I see that raising a baby takes two people, practically full time!” Dana nodded vigorously.
“I’ll tell her you’ve seen the light,” I said.
“You know, the health care is so much better here. I can’t believe how Americans put up with that health care system,” he said.
“I know, I know.” I’d gotten this lecture all over Europe and I was tired of it. I turned to my father. “What arrondisement is this? Let’s go on a walk. Show me your haunts.”
In the cafe around the corner, I turned to my father. “What do Stephen Stills, Barry Bostwick, Tony Randall and you all have in common? Let me answer that. You’ve all just had babies with women who are young enough to be your daughters. Just what is the deal?” I stared into my glass of Beaujolais, as if the answer were to be found in there.
“Why is it that you can go out and find someone my age when you’re 60?”
My father considered. “I’m 59, actually.” I waited.
“And Dana is older than you,” he said, reading my mind. “She’s 39, almost 40.”
“You’re old enough to be her father.”
He harumphed. “Will you stop saying that? I don’t think age makes any difference at all. It’s just a number, a chronological passing of time.”
“Another item that I’ll pass on to Mom.”
I was irritated. Men everywhere could get away with this, all the time, while women my mother’s age were forced to find those elusive males who perhaps weren’t as interested in an unlined face and pert tits.
But then I thought, well, get away with what? Dana was clearly a strong, independent woman, who probably had her pick of any number of men, her age or younger. She’d chosen a man 20 years her senior, so who was I to begrudge her that? A People magazine photo flashed through my mind of Anna Nicole Smith, wheeling her 90-year-old husband to be down the wedding aisle. His crinkled, apple-doll face was smiling fiercely, and she looked happy and triumphant. Who was getting the raw deal here? She’d inherit millions, and meanwhile Hubby could spend his last days with a poppet with a 45-inch chest. Maybe not the ideal union, but certainly equitable.
My father is no billionaire, and Dana is no centerfold. I thought about my half-brother sleeping on my father’s lap and the look of pleasure that had glowed from Dana and my father when I’d held Hugo, kissing his tiny button nose.
“Here’s to a new millennium,” I said. “I guess.”
I raised my glass. I wanted to say something cynical or witty, but my father’s silent look was practically begging me not to. So I smiled at him, wondering if the future father of my children was ten years old right now.
After all, it’s just a number.
