I met a woman at a club. We left together and she came home with me. The next morning I noticed the scars on her arms. She was still asleep in my bed and I thought it would be best not to mention them. In fact, I wondered if I should escape while I still had the chance. I could slip quietly away to Java Pit and drink some coffee, leaving her a note telling her to lock the door on her way out. However, by the time I’d finished in the bathroom, she was already standing naked in the hallway, her arms crossed over her chest, looking at some photographs on the wall. There were more scars on her thighs and stomach. “Coffee?” she asked.
In the kitchen, I put the pot on to brew. She sat down at the table, wearing the black t-shirt I’d worn the night before, which she’d picked up off the bedroom floor. She stared intently at me and, when I looked back at her, she said, “Yeah, I cut myself. It’s something I do.” Clearly she wanted me to ask her why.
A few weeks later I told her I wished she’d stop. “You’re a good person, a teacher, a valuable member of society,” I told her, “you don’t need to hurt yourself.” She smiled and touched my cheek lightly. In bed later, she said she’d stop cutting if I’d whip her ass with a leather strap.
“It turns me on,” she said. She got up and took a black belt from her purse and uncoiled it. Then she assumed a submissive position, naked on all fours, her breasts hanging down, the folded strap clenched between her teeth. She looked at me and opened her mouth so that the belt dropped onto the mattress. “Pick it up,” she told me, “and do it. Please.” I reached my hand forward and grabbed the belt. I folded it double and ran my hand along it. Then I let it hang at my side. I liked the weight of it, the smoothness of the leather. I walked behind her and drew the belt slowly across her buttocks, like a violinist bowing his instrument. Then I raised the belt above my shoulder and brought it down hard.
It didn’t really happen that way. Actually, it didn’t really happen at all. Though she did once ask me to spank her with my belt, I told her no, and that was the end of it. Still, I always wondered what it would have been like. It turned me on a little to think about the belt making contact with her flesh. I imagined the sharp slapping sound it would make, and how she’d flinch and cry out. Nevertheless, though she offered permission, and even begged me to do it, I didn’t want my pleasure to be connected to someone else’s pain and degradation. I didn’t want to reward myself for practicing cruelty, as sadism seemed like the surest way to blot out the distant star, the feint pinprick of light that emanated from my soul. So instead, I tried my best to ignore the obvious fact that she was continuing to cut herself. It was a subject we didn’t discuss.
We broke up several weeks later, over breakfast, at a cafe we both liked. As she nibbled her toast, she told me that her therapist had implied I wasn’t good for her. After their discussion, she had come to see that I was selfish and lacked empathy. She wanted to know what I thought.
I stared at her for a minute across the table. My coffee was too cold for another sip. “Beats me,” I said, finally. Then I slid out of the booth and moved toward the door, leaving her with the bill.
I think of a few times I used to sleep with one foot on the floor. I quit doing that in my thirties. I knew a lot of guys in college who wanted nothing more than to "slip out of bed" when they had had their way with a woman; I knew a few women who were like that too. Looking back, I wish I had been more curious, which means I wish I would have been more promiscuous, I suppose. I was never interested in sadomasochism, nor in joining a motorcycle club.
I once knew a young woman whose name was Ida, who was on the staff of the Northridge Reivew, who asked me one afternoon or evening at the Northridge Pub what I thought about anal sex. I can't remember my immediate response but I think I just said, "I've not gone there." She then asked if I needed a ride home. Of course I said, "Sure." She then excused herself and went to use the restroom. Poet Ron Pron,k who was along for the beer, said "Don't do it, Nick! She'll kill you in your sleep."He was serious, which made me laugh. "Where do you get this stuff, Ron?" I asked.
Ida and I went to my apartment in Burbank. I did not act on her suggestion. Thought of it was absurd. I wasn't that far gone. We were talking about something that both of us had some difficulty concentrating on when she said, "I think both of us have something else on our minds."
Carpe deim.
I wish I had seized more, I mean, I wish I had embraced the moment more than I did. I wasn't interested in that other thing, no more than I would have had she asked me to whip her with a belt. Leonard Cohen once said he was attracted to such intense relationships, but never felt comfortable with a woman, which I found surprising.
I was interested in getting to know Ida. We met at school the following day and had lunch, then she said she had to stop by home. I went with her in her little sports car. Her parents owned a mansion off Sunset Boulevard, but I think it was really near Hillcrest Drive in Beverly Hills. All I can remember were these white pillars and all that marble. We pulled into this curcular driveway. I started to get out of the car when Ida said, "Don't even think about it. My mother would have a fit!" I asked her why and she said, "You're Goy." The only reason I knew what that meant was because I had just read "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," by Mordecai Richler and only because I had read a collection of his short stories which I enjoyed. I can't remember now what compelled me to read Richter's stories. Anyway, I remained in the car. Ida and I drove away and that was the last time I saw her. It was "finals week" at Cal State Northridge, which was her excuse for not seeing me again. I think I bored her.
My favorite girlfriend, whose name was Linda, had moved to San Diego. It didn't matter, but I didn't fully comprehend why. I would discover years later she was Gay. It explained a lot. We saw countless movies together, enjoyed eating at Cafe Figaro on Melrose Avenue, and attending house concerts. That went on for two years, then she moved to San Diego to attend college because they offered a Bachelor's Degree in Stage Craft. Later, she matriculated to a college in Alaska where she got an Masters in Stage Craft. I never saw her again, but we remain distant friends. She lives in Seattle now, has a desk job doing something wholly unrelated to acting. She likes pickle ball. Ida was a fleeting interest, but a provacative one.
These days I watch a lot of movies and try to read something every day. I've no girlfriend nor any real interest in one, but there were all of those other times. I wish life was not so seemingly complicated. I was never interested in Ida's sexual interests, nor in conquering a friend like an enemy. I had a friend named Pat when I was ten withwhom I went to see the movie, "The Beat Generation" at the Tree Theater in Greensburg, Indiana, in 1959. In the movie there was this character who wore black leather gloves and went around knocking on doors where single women lived whom he had followed them home from some club or bar. It was a long time ago, I have forgotten the plot of the film. On our way home as we walked along the railroad track, I asked Pat what was going on with that guy who wore the black leather gloves. What did he do to those young women who answered the door?
"Are you stupid or what?" asked my friend. "He raped them!"
I asked him to define the word rape.
"That's what your father does to your mother every night," he said.
When I got home my parents were in the backyard talking with my father's sister, Ruth, and her husband, Tommy Land. My mother asked me what movie I had seen. I said, "The Beat Generation." She looked concerned. "What was the movie about," she asked. I said, "I don't know. There was this guy in the movie who raped all of these women."
My father and my uncle and aunt were laughing as my mother pulled me by the ear up the yard toward our house. I can't remember what she said to me.
I agree with Leonard Cohen, sex can sure complicate our lives.