They are also a bunch of disgusting punks. They leave bags of garbage in our shared hallway for days, when it’s not that hard to walk it down the stairs to the garbage room. And there are girls in the morning streaming out, looking like hell at 8:00 AM, ruining my morning coffee. At least I have the good sense to kick my men out after we’re done. In and out in two hours or less. I don’t pretend to be nice. I take what I can and move on. They should have the common courtesy to do the same.
The only one of them worth anything is the fourth—fifth? one of the extras, anyway—roommate. There’s no way this kid is working on Wall Street. He’s a shaggy, pretty thing with a slow shuffle for a walk, who comes in and out at all hours of the night, always on some sort of errand, getting a six-pack of beer or late-night slices of pizza, dragging a backpack stuffed with mystery items that bulge out the sides. His thick lips and strong jaw always seem to be working on something—gum, a cigarette, or the inside of his cheek. Not that you can see much under all his hair, a blond shag that looks gray under the dim lights of the elevator. But even though he keeps his head down, I know he’s tracking everything around him. He’s looked at me before, raised his head slightly, pushed his hair up, made that connection as he dragged his feet by me in the hall. I know he’s on the ball, he’s just undercover.
I’d invite him to play with me.
I REFRESH each of my five browser windows, squeeze my hands together, hard, like in a pissed-off prayer. My nails are ratty—I picked off the edges of the cuticles on the subway this morning, and I bit at my nails tonight at the computer, in between sips of a twelve-dollar chardonnay. (Good enough, but not great.) I should get a manicure, but I don’t get manicures. It is so hard when you know what you’re supposed to do, but then you don’t bother doing it.
It’s the same men in all the windows. Old, horny, stoned. I’m looking for the coked-up indie-rock boy who doesn’t want to go to sleep yet and has tattoos on his arms of things that remind him how he’s supposed to be in life.
This translates to “Be strong” in Swahili. This is the name of the first band I ever saw that made me realize I could get out of Oklahoma. She was my first girlfriend, and she taught me not to be afraid of love. I can’t tell you what this means, it’s far too personal. No offense.
None taken.
I would take a bartender getting off his shift, too. They’re angry and edgy, and I like that. I have an itch I need to get scratched on nights like these, and disgruntled service-industry workers, they like to scratch.
All I see is one new guy with a Star Trek reference in his profile name, and then the rest of the regulars. They’d beg their case once again, if I let them. You won’t regret it. I’ll make you scream all night long. Let me lick you and please you.
But they have body hair in weird patches, or no body hair at all, and lumpy asses. And they’re not funny enough, they have bad taste in music, and I sense that the little conversation we would have before we got to the sex, I would not enjoy. I used to think it didn’t matter, but apparently I can’t have anonymous sex with someone who isn’t at least a little bit interesting.
I’ve tried it before, a few months back when I was first afflicted with this fever. This guy—my age, which is why I gave him a shot, thought we might have a little something in common—showed up in a peasant shirt and blue jeans that were like a second skin; 3:00 AM, and a peasant shirt. He sat on the edge of the couch, slowly unlacing his hiking boots, looking up at me, smiling, and I was suddenly shot with a volt of terror that he might actually say something to me, and that I would have to say something back.
He had curly hair that stood out from his head and a long thin nose with a tremendous bump on it. I wondered if he was Jewish. I actually have a thing for Jewish men. My ex-boyfriend Alan, the real-estate agent from Chicago, he was Jewish and had the nicest hairy chest. He would squeeze me all over and keep me warm. I need help with that. Keeping warm. If left alone for too long, I’ll freeze to death. Maybe this new Jew could help.
And then as he squirmed out of his pants, I thought, well, it’s winter, that’s why he wore the boots, even though it makes no sense to wear something so difficult to untie if you’re going to get naked, and maybe those absurdly tight jeans, those were the only ones he had clean, but at least he wore something clean, and that shirt, maybe he’s an artist, or at the very least, artsy.
“What do you do?” I asked him. Looking for the tiniest tinge of attraction.
“I’m an accountant,” he said.
When he finally got his pants down and shirt off, all that was left was an absurdly skinny man in atrocious tie-dyed boxer shorts, worn wool socks sagging around his ankles. If it were possible for my nipples to do the inverse of an erection, that they could somehow sink back inward, this vision would have surely done it.