“You want to see what I’ve been working on?” he asked, as I rolled the knife over the palm of my hand. “It’s a short film I shot in school. It might make you vomit.”
He plugged a camera in to the TV. He was on the screen, walking in a parking lot toward a high-voltage barbed-wire fence. He electrocuted his arm on the fence, then fell to the ground.
I realized it was the film that had gotten him locked into the psychiatric ward.
“Isn’t that awesome?” he asked.
“Totally,” I answered.
Robert lifted his sleeve and showed me four parallel lines of raw, red flesh. “You like my electrocution scars? I think they changed my life.”
“Didn’t you go to an asylum after this film?”
“Yeah man. It was nuts. They thought I was crazy and suicidal.”
“I wonder why.”
“They also didn’t like it when I told them Hitler was my role model.”
“Hitler?”
“Yeah man. I fucking love Hitler.”
I couldn’t smile at any of the things he told me, so I accepted one more Valium instead. We turned the TV on and I placed my head on his thin torso, letting the rest of my body twist on the hard cold floor. I thought about my friends in Rome, the ones I’d had sit-ins with at my high school, the ones who taught me to be interested in politics and suspicious of America, the imperialist devil. What would they think of me if they saw me bundled on that floor, clinging to a Hitler fanatic? But again, the rubber-suit rules were clear. If I wanted it to work, I should not think too much. I should not feel too much.
We undressed and embraced. Robert threw my underwear on the floor. I noticed it had discharge on it and turned it upside down. Then I felt a tremor, an imperceptible quiver, and his minuscule penis rose. He put a condom on and pushed me on top of him. I spilled over his bony hips trying to keep myself light, afraid I might suffocate him with my curves. I moved up and down, back and forth, feeling nothing inside me, hoping his facial expressions would betray a sensation of pleasure or presence, but they didn’t. I thought of the bowls of pasta my mother tried to shove down his throat, our little Italian world with our sit-down lunches in the middle of Van Nuys, and the screenplay he was writing with my father—all those things standing between us.
It lasted two minutes—the apathetic humping disguised as sex. I looked down at him, a strange, small creature with vacant eyes. He was gazing at a commercial on TV. Then it was over. He rolled off the condom. I couldn’t tell if there was anything in it.
In the car ride back home we didn’t speak. This time I smoked my cigarette without asking if it was okay. He coughed and rolled the window down a crack.
8
Ugly men who do not read. I’m attracted to them. If one is to have meaningless sex, one should at least pick people with admirable physical qualities. Sex with pretty, stupid men is never as fun as sex with ugly, stupid men. Ugly men who do not read might not become prominent people, but they sure have prominent chins. Like, maybe they have boxy chins or chins with dimples—chins that trick you into thinking they are brave. They enjoy spitting and groping girls in abandoned buildings. They want to do simple things that feel right, like electrocuting themselves on high-voltage barbed-wire fences. Sometimes they look stupid in public situations, like when they crawl in sewer canals or scream inside movie theaters. They might like visual things like art or film. They watch movies about people having sex with dead people. They call them romantic comedies.
In moments of solitude, an ugly man who doesn’t read will be exactly where you want him to be. He will give you moral support or a leather jacket from Berlin with a rare patch on the back. They can only have certain pieces of a girl’s flesh in their mouths at a time, but you are still willing to give them what they want because nothing better is coming along.
—
This was the excerpt of the essay I wrote for health class that Mrs. Anders read over the phone to my parents when she called and asked them to come in. The topic of our final exam was abstinence and STDs. I got suspended. I could not understand why. I thought I’d written a great paper. I was so excited about it I even sent it to a literary journal I found out about at the library. They were looking for submissions for their next issue. The theme would be “Bad Sex.” I thought I’d fit right in. But it wasn’t just the essay that got me in trouble. Leafing through my health textbook, Mrs. Anders discovered horrific Nazi phrases and swastika scribbles. Someone had transformed the face of a Boy Scout into that of a young Hitler by giving him a mustache and parting his hair on the side. I realized it must have been Robert. All those times he slid into my room and infiltrated my backpack, he wasn’t just leaving me notes, he was defacing my books.
The principal called me in to his office and asked to see the rest of my schoolbooks. We found plenty more drawings and offensive writings.
“I wasn’t expecting this from you,” Mrs. Anders said while I waited for my parents to pick me up. “After everything your country is going through.” I tried to convince her I had not done the drawings. I was a communist’s daughter. I couldn’t draw that well and it wasn’t my handwriting. It did not matter. If someone I knew had done that to the books, it said something about me, about my own immorality.
I stayed on the office chair waiting. Azar, my macrocephalic PE buddy, peeked her big head inside. I lied and told her I was going home because I was feeling sick. She became frantic and asked me if I thought I’d be better by the following day. She crept inside the room.
“It’s my birthday tomorrow. You must bring me a balloon.”
I was confused.
“That’s what friends do here when it’s someone’s birthday. The more balloons a girl has on her birthday, the more popular she is. My mom said she’d get me two, but I don’t want it to look like I’m buying my own balloons.” She looked at me with serious, pleading eyes. “You have to bring me one and give it to me in front of everyone in class. They need to see.”
“Of course, Azar.”
I was moved by her big head. I wanted to tell her she should grow her hair out so it wouldn’t look like a ball.
“The balloon should be pink. It should say ‘Happy Birthday.’ Better if you find something with hearts or kittens.”
I promised her I would bring her the balloon.
—
“I have no words.” My mother looked like a martyr as we walked to the school parking lot with a handful of papers that determined the amount of days of suspension—three plus a week of community service cleaning up school grounds after hours.
“Slut!” my father screamed at me as we got inside the car. “My daughter is a total slut!”
Suddenly Ettore had transformed into an Italian patriarch I had never met before.
“You were the one working with a psychopath. It’s not my fault if Robert’s hero is Adolf Hitler!” I tried to defend myself.