Authors: Elisa Lorello
"Okay. It's just you and me and the music. No one can see us, and no one else is here. Pretend you're fully dressed. Do you like the music?"
I nodded.
"Good," he said. Let's dance."
The sweaty soles of my feet stuck to the floor. Devin tried again, patiently, without coaxing. "You can't please a man until you please yourself. Men like women who like their bodies, who feel comfortable in their own skin."
"I never met such a man. I've only met men who like women with bodies that would make Barbie wanna throw on a pair of sweats."
"Then you've been meeting the wrong men. Close your eyes. Pretend you're in your bedroom." He leaned closer and whispered, "No one can
judge
you, Andi, and no one
will
."
How did he know?
I began to sway to the music, and when I opened my eyes, I looked up and met his smile. I smiled back and moved even more. He began dancing too, and within minutes we were bathing in the bossa-nova beats, twirling and twisting and tapping. The two of us--an escort and a writing professor--dancing in our underwear in broad daylight on a hardwood floor in a loft on the West Side. All fear flew away; I felt free and light. When the music slowed down to a ballad, Devin extended his hand to me. "Wanna?" He asked. I took his hands and pressed myself close to him, anxiety creeping back in.
"I haven't done this in awhile," I confessed.
Not since Andrew and I danced at our friend Marcy's wedding two years ago, when he held me close and blew in my ear and looked into my eyes and told me he loved me, told me that the next time we danced it'd be at our own wedding...
"I mean, slow danced with a guy--not danced in my underwear in broad daylight. I've never done that."
He noted, "You're going to be doing a lot of 'firsts' from now on."
Hell, yeah.
We circled the floor awkwardly a few times, and then fell into rhythm. Devin held my hand as if it were porcelain, while resting his other hand on my back in the same gingerly manner. His skin was surprisingly smooth, and his scent was overpowering--no manufactured cologne could ever smell as good, I thought. I imagined someone trying, though: "Introducing Giorgio Armani's
Devin
..." My sweat turned to chills running from my feet up the backs of my legs and converging up my spine to my neck. I bravely decided to make eye contact--God, his eyes were so compassionate, so nonjudgmental, so
honest
. The chills turned into tingling, and I completely forgot we were both stripped down.
I wanted to kiss him.
The music stopped, and I could tell that he sensed my impulse. He let go of me and took a step back.
"You're gonna have to beat the men off with a stick," he said.
I said nothing, motionless.
"You can put your clothes back on now."
He snapped one of the shades open and it flapped wildly as the sun burst in and blinded me out of my daze. I put my knee-length denim skirt on first, followed by a soft red blouse. He also dressed.
"You know, you really do have a nice body. You should show it off more. And you look really good in red."
This time, I believed him.
That was my homework assignment: show off my body. His was to start keeping a journal, choose three paragraphs of his memoir to revise, and read an article called "Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience" by Peter Elbow ("the Paul McCartney of rhetoric and composition," I call him) in addition to two memoirs: one by Annie Dillard and the other by Stephen King.
That evening, I went clothes shopping at the Roosevelt Field Mall and purchased two low-cut, scoop-necked tees with cami-sleeves (a 2-for-$10-sale), one red and one periwinkle; and a short, sleek, linen skirt that flattened my tummy without straightening out my hips. I also bought a pair of espadrilles (another sale) with a 21/2-inch heel. As I passed the Gap on my way out, I spied a teenage boy with red hair folding shirts in front of a display table, who looked up at me for a moment and then resumed his folding, and I strutted all the way back to my car.
Chapter Seven
Week Three of the Arrangement
O
N THE DAY OF OUR THIRD VISIT, I TOOK OFF MY sandals and curled up on Devin's sofa as if I lived there myself, surprised by my sudden gesture of comfort and familiarity. Devin didn't seem to mind, however.
"So," I began, "tell me about your weekend."
He eyed me suspiciously. "You don't wanna look at my memoir? I revised more than three paragraphs."
"We'll get to that. First, tell me about your weekend. Rather, read to me."
He opened his laptop and read bits and pieces from his journal, mostly about the dates he was on, describing the women--he was quite descriptive of the women--and where they went.
"Okay. Now I want you to rewrite what you just read to me, only I want you to pretend you are writing a letter to your mother."
It was his turn to look at me with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. He stared at the screen for a few seconds, then started and stopped several times, feverishly backspacing or deleting. Meanwhile, I read his revised memoir, making notes in the margins. Finally, out of frustration, he stopped and revealed a look of surrender, diverting my attention from his draft to him.
"What," I said like a statement more than a question.
"Why am I writing my mother a letter about what I did over the weekend?"
"Because she lives across the country and you haven't written or spoken to her in awhile. You want to give her an idea of how you're living your life."
"First of all, my mother lives in Massapequa. Second of all, she wants to know nothing of my life--at least not
this
part of my life. Third of all, for what purpose would I--"
"
A-ha
!" I interrupted. "You said the magic word:
purpose
. Audience and purpose are inextricably linked. You write a cover letter with the purpose of getting an interview. You write a shopping list with the purpose of remembering what you need to buy, or giving the list to whomever's doing the shopping. You write a memoir for the purpose of recreating a memory or event to convey a new meaning for the reader, even if that reader is you. And each of these things takes place in a different context, be it the personal, daily life, the workplace, etcetera. If you are uncertain about your purpose, then your audience is ambiguous. If you are uncertain about your audience, then your writing is ambiguous."
"Makes sense."
"For example, what's the purpose of your journal?"
"I wrote it because you told me to."
"And the audience?"
He paused and thought for a second.
"You know, I just realized, I knew you were going to read it, so I had you in mind most of the time."
"How did that influence what you wrote?"
"Not so much what I wrote, but the way I wrote it. I thought a lot about the description and imagery. There were even times I felt as if I was talking to you."
"And if you were writing for a magazine... say, a profile piece: A Day in the Life of an Escort--how would you write that?"
"Depends on the magazine:
Reader's Digest
, or
Cosmo
?"
"You get the gist," I said, smiling and pointing at him.
He grinned proudly.
"I liked what Peter Elbow said about the idea that sometimes you've got to ignore your audience, and doing so can lead to better writing," he said as he flipped a page of the photocopied article until he found a passage that he underlined, and then read directly from it: "
As writers, then, we need to learn when to think about audience and when to put readers out of mind.
"
"Yes," I concurred.
"I had a hard time with the section in which he defended the claim that sometimes the audience is an audience of one: the self."
"Actually, I think he's responding to the claim that there's no such thing as private discourse, or no audience at all. And yet, I think both claims hold some truth. For example, in the film
Imagine
, John Lennon is trying to talk an obsessed fan back to reality. He basically tells the kid that the songs he wrote were for himself and no one else."
"Wow. I never thought of that."
"The kid had a hard time with it too. When he asked Lennon what he meant by 'you're gonna carry that weight,' Lennon wryly answered, 'That was Paul's tune. You'll have to ask him.'"
Devin grinned again, and I continued, "
The Simpsons
writers, the writers for the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons, all confessed to writing for themselves. That's why they're so damn funny. In such cases, you can tell when a writer stops writing for him or herself and starts trying to meet the expectations of an audience, especially when some executive asshole claims to know better. The show tanks as a result."
"So did McCartney," he added.
"But what if Lennon wrote songs that he didn't play for anyone or put on tape? What about the scripts that went into the fire without anyone's viewing? That's what Elbow means by private discourse. In those cases, you ignore all conventions of audience awareness,
including
the audience of self."
"Cool."
We then moved on to the other memoirs. "Why these two?" he asked. "What do they have in common?"
I responded, "Annie Dillard and Stephen King couldn't be more far apart in terms of genre and style. In those aspects, it's as if they come from different worlds. And yet, they speak the same language--that is to say, they know language so well, and use it the way a good painter uses light and color and form."
His eyes brightened at my art analogy. As we analyzed each memoir's content and language, we talked about ways Devin could use language to convey his meaning in his own memoir.
"I could use words that keep a reader interested. Not just for the sake of being smart or literary, but to make them feel like they're in that museum gallery with me."
"Very good," I said. "Make them feel what you want them to feel. You have absolute power, Devin. Other writers or teachers or readers can guide you, give you feedback, tell you what they like or don't like; but ultimately, it's your story and your truth."
"Wow," he said. "I had no idea."
"No idea what?"
"That I could do such a thing. I mean, I know writing has power. I guess I never thought of myself having access to it."
"Why wouldn't you?" I asked. He pondered this.
"I don't know." He grinned. "But I'm glad that I do."
Devin closed his laptop. Time was up.
"So," he began, "tell me about
your
weekend. I see you went shopping. Nice espadrilles, by the way." He winked.
I stuck out my ankle and proudly showed off my shoe, my toenails painted a deep red. He then switched the conversation. "Now it's
your
turn to do some freewriting."
I looked at him and raised my eyebrows.
"Make a list of what gets you in the mood," he instructed.
My back stiffened and my stomach tightened. He noticed this and rolled his eyes. "Here we go again," he said.
"Didn't we already cover this?" I said.
"When?"
"That day at Junior's."
"Andi, if you can't
talk
about good sex, how can you
have
good sex?"
I could've debated this point, but I kept my mouth shut and stared at my notepad instead. Like Devin, I struggled with what should have been a relatively easy assignment. After about five minutes, I only had three things on my list:
* having my neck (and pulse points) kissed
* having my feet rubbed
* Nat King Cole ballads
He made me read the list aloud and I felt the spark of his eyes burning through the page and stinging my skin.
"Cute," he said.
"
Cute?
" I asked, insulted.
"Yeah. That's it?"
I looked at him sheepishly. "Actually Devin, I never gave it much thought."
"How come?"
"I don't know. I guess I was always so self-conscious about whether I was doing it right or wrong that I never considered what I liked or disliked."
"Okay. Then tell me what you do to get the guy in the mood."
Again, I paused. "I don't know," I said after some thought.
He stood up and took off his shirt and, like last time, a flash of heat ran up my spine. "Pretend I'm your lover," he said.
Pretend? Woof.
"Touch me the way you'd touch him. Come on to me the way you'd come on to him. Do everything but kiss me."
"But what if kissing is one of the things I do?"
"I just don't want you to get carried away."
I looked at the floor in an attempt to hide my disappointment. "Okay."
I hesitated.
"Don't you think you should teach me how to kiss?" I asked.
He cracked a grin that mixed modesty with mischief. "You don't need to learn how to kiss."
"How do you know? You've never kissed me."
"I don't need to kiss you to know that kissing's not your problem."
"What is my problem?"
"Your problem is that you
think
you're a bad kisser; you
think
you're a bad lover. You think too much. Just
do
it, Andi. Be a good kisser. Be a good lover."
"Ha. Easy for you to say."
"Easy to do, too."
"Then what do I need you for?" I asked. Sarcasm aside, it was a good question, I thought. And I wanted him to answer it.
"You're so good at avoidance," he said. "You're supposed to be showing me how you get your guy in the mood."
I frowned, irked by his assertion. But rather than fuel his claim and further avoid the task by arguing the point with him, I stood and slowly approached him, feeling silly in this role-playing mode. He was six-foot-two, and the 2 1/2 inches on my shoes helped me reach up and run my fingers through his hair. It was short and full and silky and layered, and I moved even closer. He followed my hand as it moved through his hair by putting his own hand on my arm.