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MY PROMISCUOUS BICENTENNIAL
I had been told Doreen was great. I
had also been told she had the
clap. I seduced her with one of my famous
homemade soups, plus a fifth of
cheap vodka.
After, as we lay on the
narrow bed, we talked for a delightful hour
about what we discovered was a
mutual obsession: screwing. I called it, at
one point, fucking; but she
slapped me, frowned that was crude. So I quietly
avoided further use of the
unrefinement.
She then, as the sting faded from my cheek, petulantly
pointed out how
her nipples didn’t work. She tweaked both, demonstrating how
they refused to
erect. I muttered, I wasn’t really a nipple guy anyway.
She asked, was I still seeing Faith?
“No. She got rid of me.”
Into my mind sprang the berries Faith’s nipples tautened into; and
those
limp dugs perhaps did a bit begin to disappoint…
Doreen was glad to hear
it, because when she had slept with Faith’s
husband, Faith had gotten
furious. She didn’t want to go through that again.
Faith was the
estranged wife of my best friend Jake. He and I never
discussed Faith; at
least, not Faith and me. It was Jake who had warned
about the clap; which he
knew for a fact, because, six months before, after
that mad night of
screwing Doreen, he had acquired a dose.
Jake had also claimed Doreen was
a nymphomaniac. And when I’d smilingly
confessed myself to be one too, he
countered, “Yes, but Doreen is no mere
garden variety.”
I was about
to boast neither was I, when the glint in his eye and the
sneer on his lips
reminded me I was then fucking his wife – however
estranged she be – and
consequently I should just shut up. I did.
It was, after all, such
careful reads of Jake’s face that kept Faith
and me out of our
conversations.
Then I noticed Doreen was peering into my face, in her
bedroom of
deepening shadows, saying, “Jake insists I gave him clap. He’s
nuts. He’s
not living with his wife. He’s a handsome guy – he’s screwing
around; he did
not get it from me.”
That was a relief. I didn’t care
about the nipples. It was OK not to
have to fuck my best friend’s wife
anymore. I could see Doreen now and then;
to see me through. Or maybe just
see Doreen. She liked my soup. Was a
promising drinking companion. And we
were having this wonderful talk, where
I was actually picking up a few
pointers on screwing.
For instance, men over fifty, when they try to
seduce you, first take
off their shoes; then suggest you do the same. She
knew, because she had
once allowed one to pick her up. She thought the shoe
business was silly;
but when in Rome…
She had been concerned the old
guy would have a similar problem, in a
different part of his anatomy, that
she had with her nipples. But that
turned out to be not true; especially
once she practiced on him her oral
expertise.
He, however, did fall
short on endurance.
But she in no way regretted the experience. It had
been educational.
She didn’t surrender her phone number, and she never again
visited that bar.
No great loss, as she had only been inside twice –
counting the night
previous to the experiment, when she had ducked in to
reconnoiter the
oldsters hunched over their cocktails.
They removed
their shoes first, they could get hard, but they didn’t
last long and shot
feebly. You couldn’t talk to them – they were bloated
with baggage, oozing
drivel about failed marriages, children they couldn’t
see but had to pay
for; expensive girlfriends who left; cheap girlfriends;
dead girlfriends
over whom they still blubbered…
I myself might have stuck with Doreen
into my own fifties – another
three decades. But the very next day,
following a successful experiment with
after-lunch sex – the entire joyride
me suppressing a fart from my own beef
stew – the unforgivable
occurred.
I excel at forgiving. I like to – easier than getting mad. And
getting
mad terminates conversation. I love to talk. Or more accurately –
listen,
interposing the occasional word to keep the person coming
forth.
I easily forgave Doreen when, the next week, pus leaked from my
pizzle.
Well, not that easily. Especially after the disaster following our
post-lunch session.
It was educational, taking the bus down to Public
Health. Sitting in
the waiting room with the boys; one player flouncing in
under a Panama with
a pheasant feather, remarking jauntily from below
aviator shades, “Here we
are again!”
And I so much admired, when I
finally got to him, the doctor’s
technique. How, once I’d obeyed the order
to drop pants, he bent over my
penis, mumbling, “Let’s have a look here,”
and had reamed – using a steel
pin hid in his left fist – my urethra quicker
than I could say shit!
slamming my own fist, in pinpoint-pizzle agony, down
on his desk.
I forgave her that. I should have known. It didn’t matter.
Nine days of
erythromycin and it was gone. Herby good as new. Unlike the
herpes. Which
failed significantly to erupt for another year; and hey –
maybe it wasn’t
Doreen. Although she was the only one who announced the
fact, and there were
only two others that year.
I admired her
technique. She disclosed, at the close of our sex talk,
when the room was
totally dark and sleep was overtaking our pleasantly
exhausted bodies…
mumbling into my face, “You might get herpes. It’s
nothing. Just sometimes
little blisters.”
Oh, I forgave her the herpes. I was playing with fire.
It was a known
risk. An affliction making the rounds of the magazines. And
after all, the
Soviets, at the time, had the whole town securely targeted
with a massive
overdose of thermo-nukes; not to mention the sinister
coincidence that our
President bore the same last name as the tycoon, also
from Michigan, who
first churned out all the cars. How was I to know for
sure I’d live long
enough to contract whatever disease?
Besides, I
more importantly that afternoon should have realized that
the unforgivable
lurked….
Doreen lived in a swank apartment with Faith’s sister Hope and
Hope’s
husband – a pleasant enough, intelligent older man of twenty-six
(Hope was
twenty), who was a well-payed supervisor at the phone company.
Hope and Bob
were that week on vacation in London. So, after lunch, Doreen
and I used her
apartment-mates’ kingsize.
I figured Doreen guided us
into the larger bedroom in order to explore
wider maneuvers on the bigger
bed. And we did. I also guessed it heartened
Doreen to be screwing Faith’s
ex-boytoy on Faith’s younger sister’s marriage
bed. It probably did. I
myself caught a few sparks of vengeance joy.
This was all forgivable. All
understandable. All human. But none of it
touched on the real reason Doreen
chose the kingsize.
She threw off the sweaty sheets we had just crawled
under – sex organs
(except her nipples) beginning a gradual and comforting
return to normal
tension and size. She then wiggled nude down to the foot;
reached out over
the oak frame; plugged in – two feet beyond that frame –
the big screen TV,
with already the volume turned full up. Into the room a
game show exploded.
She retrieved from under the bed the remote. Adjusted
the color to
perfection. Burrowed back up under the sheets. Slouched on
extra pillows,
angling head so as to glue eyes to tube.
Television –
the deadliest conversation killer known to man. She had
shepherded me into
the master bedroom to experience the paradise of post
coital
television.
Neither of us smoked. Though I would have much preferred she
lit up –
tobacco stimulates talk. And no herpes, no clap, no venereal warts,
no
fullblown crab infestation compares in horror to the soul rot howling
suddenly from the bottom of the bed.
I excused myself. Slipped into
my clothes. Muttered something about
going down to the corner for a pack of
smokes.
She smiled at a new deepfreeze touted on the big screen. Nodded
vaguely
– connection between thought and voice cut.
I left her the
remainder of the stew. I was sleazy. I was crude. My
intestinal gas reeks. I
am not handsome. But limits – like everybody insists
they have – I do
have.
To the very writing of this account I have not found it in my heart
to
forgive that plug. Because it was the plug, it was the switch, it was
that
sucking-in electronic box I should have spied the moment we entered the
room. It was not Doreen. Because Doreen was not.
I know she never
really was. Because I myself barely – by the skin of
my teeth – am. Please –
talk. Go ahead – let yourself go; to be guided ever
so slightly by my
occasional tweak. Forgive me if I, to get comfortable,
remove first my
shoes.
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