Authors: Elisa Lorello
"Please," I plead. "I just need more time. I can do this. I want to. I'm just not ready yet." I slip my robe on and quickly cover up.
"When, Cutch? When will you be ready? It's been almost a year."
"I don't know," I cry.
"What is wrong with you?"
"I don't know...I just can't. It doesn't feel right. Maybe if we wait 'til we're married. Maybe it would be more special then."
"Then what? You'll freeze up on our wedding night? No, Honey. I'm sorry. I know I said I'd wait for you, but I can't anymore. In fact..." he hesitates. "I wasn't going to tell you this, but there's someone else. A friend of mine named Tanya from the writer's group."
I feel the life force energy drain from my body.
"I was with her once, but told her I was in love with you. But now, she's fallen in love with me, and I told her I would let her know how things went this weekend."
"Are you telling me that you're TESTING me this weekend to see if I'll be a good enough lover so you can break up with your other lover?"
"Cutch, you have to understand. She doesn't have any issues, and she's more than ready. You can't ask me to wait for you anymore."
"I never asked you; you promised me on your own. Are you in love with her?"
He waits for a moment; then looks me in the eye. "I think so. Look, I would've been content to stay with you--"
"CONTENT??"
"--but this sex thing is really a problem for me. You just don't satisfy me, and your company isn't enough. I'm sorry. I don't mean to hurt your feelings."
I am too numb to be angry. I feel as if I've shrunken to the size of a stain on the carpet. "You can take me home, now," I say. I robotically walk to the bathroom, change, and hastily pack my bags...
"At least a year and a half ago, when Andrew and I were still together. Maybe longer," I lied.
"No kidding. So why'd you break up?"
"He decided to marry someone else." I looked down at the floor, avoiding Devin's eyes.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he replied, the tone of his voice softening. He took a sip of wine. "That's it?"
"What do you mean, 'that's it'? Isn't that enough?"
"Didn't he give you a reason as to why he chose this other woman?"
"Are you implying that it was
my
fault?"
He held up his hands as if to deflect a punch. "Whoa--
chill out!
I wasn't impl--I was just asking a question."
"Why?"
"Look, I'm just trying to get to know you, that's all. You asked me to be your teacher. I need to find out what you need to learn. Don't you do the same thing with your students--assess their needs?"
This guy was really starting to piss me off by throwing everything back into my face. I stood up and took the water bottle with me.
"Maybe we should forget this whole deal," I said, standing. Devin stood up too.
"I don't think we should. I think you really need it. And besides," he said, pointing to the laptop, "I'm liking this. I'm actually learning something."
I looked at the laptop on the cedar coffeetable. Somehow, it just didn't feel like an even trade. He was getting off way too easy, in more ways than one.
"Is this what you do?" he asked, moving in close to me. "Do you quit when it gets hard?"
"Do
you
?" I retorted, looking down at his crotch and then back into his eyes, nodding my head in the direction of where we were standing during our contrived foreplay session. Frankly, my boldness surprised me, and him too, because his back stiffened and he looked away from me.
"Time's up," he said coldly.
Chapter Eight
Week Four of the Arrangement
S
UNDAY AFTERNOON, TWO DAYS BEFORE DEVIN'S AND my fourth meeting, Maggie and I weaved between racks of sportswear at Express in the Roosevelt Field Mall. Clothes-shopping was typically a nightmare for both of us--I needed petite-plus sizes while she needed tall sizes and had trouble fitting blouses across her back and chest. And jeans? Forget it. A more humane form of torture would be to tie me to a chair while every woman in a size four lined up to say mean things to me.
"So? You've not said one word to me about your latest class with Devin the escort."
"Shhhh," I said. Maggie didn't exactly have an "inside voice." "And they're not 'classes', Mags. They're...it's an
arrangement
."
"Everything go okay?"
"It was fine."
She knew better, but didn't press me. So far, I'd been pretty detailed about what went on at the first couple of meetings, but I'd said nothing about what happened at the last one. Instead, she watched me pull out sleeveless camisoles and short skirts and hold them up to me in front of a nearby full-length mirror.
"You're getting daring," she said of my clothing choices. "So what've you learned so far?"
"That I've got a lot more to learn."
"What are you teaching him?"
"We just finished Elbow's 'Closing My Eyes' and this week we're moving on to David Bartholomae."
Maggie raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth. "
Bartholomae?
Geez, Andi, he's not getting a PhD! Isn't there something a little more racy?"
I shushed her again.
"The deal was that I teach him about writing and rhetoric, and he teaches me...what he knows."
"What's he writing?"
"A memoir about his first museum trip when he was a kid. He's actually a pretty good writer. He's got a flair for description. He just needs to practice and season it a little, you know?"
"Whatever you say," she said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"It just seems to me that you're squandering a golden opportunity."
"To do what?"
"I don't know--to dig deeper or something. Geez, Andi, you've got him reading
Bartholomae!
"
"That was the deal, though. I'm teaching him what I know, same as him. And he seems to be into it. At least that's what he tells me."
"Well, fine then. I guess you know what you're doing."
Maggie did nothing to boost my self-confidence; I wound up spending the rest of the day second-guessing my lesson plans, and composed numerous variations of letters, phone calls, and face-to-face confrontations of calling the whole arrangement off, acting on none of them.
***
I found myself looking forward to my meetings with Devin the way kids looked forward to going to an amusement park or their best friend's built-in pool on hot summer days. When we met at our usual time on Tuesday, Devin was his usual professional self, and neither of us said anything about the way things had ended the last time.
This time we switched turns and my instruction came first. Devin had me do figure drawings of two nude models, one male and one female, that he hired for the hour. Having not taken an art class since high school, and having never worked with models clad in anything less than cut-up sweatshirts, scrunchy socks, and acid-washed jeans that zippered down the ankles, my sketches were tight and stiff. The exception, of course, was the genital areas, which I practically ignored altogether. Devin watched over my shoulder for the first couple of drawings (which made me even more uncomfortable than the naked models did), then ripped the newsprint out of the pad and made me start over on a clean sheet, this time focusing solely on those neglected areas. The models seemed undisturbed by his instruction, even when he adjusted their poses and the lighting. How did they do it? I wondered. Stand there in the middle of the room, frozen in pose, watching me hone in on them?
Midway through the fourth sketch, I started to use the gummy eraser and other drawing tools Devin provided me, and my eyes shifted less apprehensively from model to newsprint.
By the seventh drawing, he nodded in approval. "Better," he said. "You're loosening up."
"Thanks," I said.
"Whattya think?"
"Of what?"
"Of your work?"
"I don't think I'm flattering them much."
"Ever seen a naked body this close up before?"
I remember the time my friend Candace stole a
Playgirl
from the drugstore she worked for in high school. At first I refuse to look at it, and she calls me a prude. To prove her wrong, I take it home for a week to "study." I spend an hour with it and then hide it under my bed for the rest of the week. When I give it back, Candace calls me a prude yet again because I refuse to show her my "favorite" picture.
"Sort of," I answered.
Why I didn't just lie and show any ol' picture to Candace, I don't know. Perhaps I lacked confidence in my faking it abilities and was afraid of picking the "wrong" one. I had thought myself some kind of weirdo back then--not because I was looking at these muscular men and their appendages, but because I wasn't turned on by them. The pinups of guys like Sting or Jon Bon Jovi, shirtless and in tight leather pants, were much more appealing and provocative. It seemed that the less I saw, the more I liked. And that trend had continued for the next fifteen years or so.
After I scrutinized bodies and wrestled with charcoal-based crayon and newsprint paper, Devin scrutinized and wrestled with various texts. We had moved from reading Peter Elbow articles to scholars David Bartholomae and Kenneth Burke who, among others, argue a theory that claims all writing, even personal, is constructed from previous texts and writers and social influences. Thus, writing, reading, and even teaching, is a social act.
"Art follows this same logic," Devin proposed. I didn't debate him.
We freewrote and talked about lessons we learned in school (both in and out of the classroom), family mottos, and regional dialects or word distinctions (people in Massachusetts call a water fountain a "bubbla"; upstate New Yorkers call soda "pop"), exploring language and style as a product of those contexts. Devin especially liked my New England pronunciation of "Foll Riv-ah" as opposed to the brusque Long Island "Fawl Rivuh."
"In other words, we're not just bringing our own interpretation to a text, but our upbringing, religious teaching, political persuasion, etcetera," he said.
"You know, you would make a good composition teacher, Devin. You really get this stuff."
He offered a humble smile. "Really?" He seemed touched by my compliment.
I returned his smile but bashfully looked away.
***
Two days later, Devin called me at home in the morning. Just out of the shower, I raced to catch the phone before the machine picked up, my towel slipping off. With one hand on the towel and another on the receiver, I answered with a hurried, "Hello?"
"Hey," he said, "it's me." As if we'd known each other for ages.
"Hi." My heart leapt into my throat. "What's up?"
"Nothing much."
An awkward silence passed through like a subway train.
"Did you have a question about this week's homework assignment?" I asked as my hair dripped water beads down the phone and onto the rug.
"Oh, uh, no." He paused. "I was just wondering, are you free this afternoon, like around three?"
The question stunned me.
"Yeah, I guess so. Why?"
"There's a gallery in Soho that's showing an exhibit of a new local artist. I thought you might like to see it." He sounded nervous.
"With you?" I felt like an idiot as I blurted the words.
"Yeah."
Together?
"Um, yeah. Okay," I said.
"Why don't we meet at my place," Devin suggested.
A date? Isn't this a violation of our contract?
"Okay."
"See you later," he said.
"Okay."
I hung up the phone, my hand shaking and heart pounding. What the hell just happened? Why hadn't I reminded him about the contract? Especially since
he
was the one who just broke it--Mr. You-absolutely-cannot-fall-in-love-with-me; Mr. No-socializing-otherwise-all-bets-are-off; Mr. All-business-all-the-time? Should I call him back and tell him that? Should I cancel? Should I not even go? What should I wear?
I showed up at his place around two-forty-five wearing a linen pencil skirt and a white cotton shirt. Casual, yet not too datey, I thought. He wore jeans and a t-shirt. My God, he was so gorgeous, especially in jeans and a t-shirt. His face lit up when he saw me.
"You look nice."
I tried to hide a smile, but failed.
"Why do you do that?" he asked.
"Do what?"
"Force yourself not to smile when someone pays you a compliment."
"I wasn't doing that. I was just, I don't know what I was doing--do I do that a lot?"
"You've got a great smile, Andi. Don't hide it."
I did it again. He emanated an enormous, electric grin to which I couldn't help but respond with one of my own.
As we headed to Soho, he filled me in on the exhibit and the artist.
"You really know this stuff, huh," I said. He shrugged, as if to say, it's no big deal. "Why don't you pursue it? It's not too late, you know." I quickly added, "How old are you, anyway? If you don't mind my asking."
He cocked an eyebrow. "Thirty-eight. And nah, I already have a job. Besides, being in the art business is a lot more pressure than people realize. It's also extremely hard to get into, like music or acting."
"I'm sure with your contacts and networking abilities, you'd have no problem."
"But I like being an escort."
Something about this last statement troubled me, and a sense of hopelessness settled in.
The gallery was small and empty; thus, it didn't take long to view the exhibit. I found myself more fixated on the fact that Devin and I were there together, violating the contract, than on the paintings. Afterwards, he turned to me.