Johnny's a quilt. He took years to get sewn together. He cried out with the pain and time of it. He is all of a piece and perfectly ordered. He is worn down and fragile and all the stronger for the way life has rubbed against him. He is beautiful. And now he lies here on our bed, my husband, my hero, waiting for me.
“Have you ever had sex in a church?” he asked.
“Of course.”
It wasn't true. But God knows I'd wanted to. When I first got to New York I used to wander into churches all the time. I didn't have a job. I was either too warm or too cold. The streets were so noisy. I couldn't believe how many churches there were. Back in California when I pictured New York it was a big city just the way it really is but it didn't have any churches. I didn't think they would allow them. But they're all over the place and most of them are just another building on the street. I knew I was in them for peace and quiet but after a while I'd always get horny. Without fail. There was something so serene about them. They'd always deliver me unto myself. So I'd end up standing there behind a bench with my fingers on me. It wasn't a religious thing. Or the thrill of transgression. Transgress what? It was like being at home except I felt safer. But you have to be discreet. Churches echo. Once I came and heard myself a thousand times. I felt like the choir. I couldn't stop rubbing and singing. I went down on my knees. When I left going up the aisle an old man looked at me like I'd had an epiphany. I was embarrassed more than anything else. I had my hands over the bottom of my face like a veil.
I didn't tell Johnny this. I never do. It's better for him to imagine me than know me. So I just said, “Why do you ask.”
“Purely academic.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I was reading in Peeps diary. You remember I told you about Peeps writing in shorthand. He tells how he finds a girl in church and puts his hands on her and wants her then and there but he doesn't get her because she nearly sticks a pin in him. He describes her as a pretty maiden. A modest maiden.
And it reminded me of Bach having sex with the strange maiden in the church at Arnstad. Of course most sex in church is with oneself. The penitentials even set out punishment. 30 days fast at most for a monk. 50 days for a bishop. It was apparently very common. There is something about a church that makes people ⦔
“What?” I said because he stopped speaking.
“Most human,” he answered with a look on his face of surprise at his own words.
“Would you like to do it with me in a church?” I asked.
“Oh please.”
The way he said it I didn't know if he was begging or just begging off. Not that it mattered. I stretched out on the bed and opened myself to him.
Ike fired me today. He didn't do it by having some new girl come in to take my place. He was not afraid to confront me himself.
He asks me to come into his office. There are people in the gallery. Only once or twice did we have sex with people right outside. I wanted us to do that more often. I wanted us to do it someday with the door open. Ike wasn't ready for that yet. But I was unbuttoning my blouse when I closed his office door behind me.
“Don't,” he says. “No, Clara.”
I stop. Something's wrong. We have been lovers for 8 months. Because we never touched I had learned from my distance to see him like a painting. I knew the shadows his lashes made when something saddened him. I could tell from the bounce of his lower lip how grave might be the words from his mouth.
“What's the matter?”
“I don't want you working here any longer.”
I don't say anything until I do the math in my head. “My year isn't up.” I tried to make it sound light. Inside me I felt like I'd swallowed something heavy and bitter.
“This has nothing to do with time.”
“So you're not sick of ⦔
“When I say I can't stand the sight of you, it only means that the sight of you is too much for me to bear.”
You'd never know it. He was staring at me intensely while he talked. Maybe he actually thinks he's never going to see me again.
“I used to be a nice gay boy with lots of friends and a very stable life. By that I mean I was in full control of the disorder. I said I was a narcissist. But I wasn't really, because I had a life somewhere out there beyond the boundaries of my own flawed beauty. It's one thing to hit the gym every day or to twirl your dick around a few times in front of a mirror when you hope no one is watching. Or everyone. It's another thing to end up with no friends and no lovers but just your own hands giving you pleasure and to do it while the first woman you've ever lovedâpacem Momâis watching you. And you watch her too. And she even convinces you that vaginas have more to recommend them than their pretty name. But I can't touch you, Clara. You don't want me to anyway. And you don't want to touch me. So I end up making love to myself. When what I need is some other guy's dick in my hand not to mention up my narcissistic ass.”
I don't know what to say. I went out to my desk and got my bag. I probably should never have left it there anyway. I'm too trusting. I go back to Ike who is just sitting there staring at the space I'd been standing in. I open my bag and take out my purse and pull out the one photo I carry around of me and
Andy (the rest are in one of these books) His golden dick is in my hand. My lips are spread open on the top of it. That's all you can see: hand, dick, lips, and the blood of my hair. It's like the perfect ad for cocksucking. My father should blow it up and put it in his portfolio. I hand it to Ike. I see he sees it's me. He says, “What's this?” “For inspiration,” I tell him. “Which one of you am I supposed to be inspired by?” he asks.
It's my revenge. I know what he'll do with it. Long after I'm gone he'll look at that at night. I want him to be as alone as he's leaving me.
“I have something for you too,” he says.
I remember Monica's last day. “I'm not interested in lunch.”
He hands me a business card.
“Who's this?”
“My lawyer.”
“I'm sorry,” I tell him.
“For what?”
“I refuse to sign a pre-nuptial agreement.”
Ike knows a good joke when he hears one. Maybe I should marry him. How many people do you meet in your life who know when you're kidding.
When he gets done laughing he says, “I want you to go see Barry. Not today. Tomorrow. I'm going to call him this afternoon to tell him I want to set you up in business. On 2 conditions. I don't want a piece of it. This isn't an investment. But here they are. 1: not this business. I don't want you competing with me. And 2: I don't ever want to see you again in my life.”
Don't worry you prick. You won't ever see me again. Not with your eyes open.
“What was your first orgasm like?” he asks me.
“It was ⦠I don't remember.”
“Try. Please.”
“Why?”
“I want to understand.”
“What.”
“What it's like to be a woman. To be you. How am I going to learn these things if you don't tell me?”
“I don't trust you. I think you just want to get aroused.” Like my parents. Images of Carla in heat.
“No. This is purely intellectual.”
“Right.”
“I want to understand what it's like when you've never felt such a thing before. How could anyone have imagined it? What does a girl think when this thing happens to her? When it rolls through her. Such ecstasy. It must change your life forever.”
“What about yours.”
“It happened while I was asleep. I didn't even wake up. I thought I'd wet my pajamas. I dried my sheets with an entire box of tissues and stripped them from the bed and carried them secretly to the laundry. I was ashamed.”
“Not me.”
“I wouldn't think so.”
“You're right.”
“How so?”
“It was ecstasy.”
“I thought so.”
“And I was never the same.”
“Yes.”
“You're right about that too.”
“Yes. Thank you. And how old were you?”
“Not as young as some girls say they are. 11, I think.
Maybe 12. I wasn't riding a horse. I wasn't bouncing on a seesaw.”
“Were you alone?”
“Of course I was. It wasn't sex. I didn't know it had anything to do with sex. It was just me. I was totally alone. I was as alone as I've ever been in my life.”
“Were you touching yourself?”
“I was looking at myself. My body had begun to change. Just a little bit. More on the inside than anything else. I wasn't bleeding yet. But there was something going on under my skin. I could feel it. All the time. I was nervous. In an excited kind of way. I felt like soil, the earth, with something growing in it. Waiting for the sun.”
“By the window?”
“No. On my bed. At night. The moon was out. My bed was by the window, yes. I was naked. I used to lie there looking at myself in that light. I thought it made me pretty. My breasts were tiny. But I'd lie so they made shadows. And I'd watch them grow. The moon was turning me into a woman. I was growing soft little hairs. I couldn't see them. But I could feel them. And I loved my waist. I'd put my hands on both sides of it and push them in.”
“Trying to get a figure.”
“I suppose so. They weren't like my hands at all. I was very sensitive there. Then I learned to move them to the top. My stomach. I'd move them round and round over my bellybutton. And the night it happened I moved them down. I didn't know what I was doing. When my fingers got between my legs I pushed my legs together and trapped my hands there. It was like a struggle between my hands and my legs.”
“Who won?”
“My hands. What else. My legs opened up and I spread them as wide as I could. I had my feet flat on the bed and I
remember I was looking at my knees. They were shiny from the moon. They looked so little and so far away. But my fuzzy little pussy seemed to get closer and closer. I was pushing it toward me with one hand practically under my backside and caressing myself with the fingers of the other hand. I was amazed. It wasn't like in the bathtub. I usually washed in a jiffy. I wasn't ever very curious. But now I was learning so much. My hands kept moving faster while the rest of me felt like it was slowing down. My mind was racing. I had thoughts and pictures running through it and bumping into each other. I couldn't tell the words from the pictures. And then I heard myself go Oh. I took a breath so deep I thought I saw the whole world come sucked into my head. My mind went blank. Everything in it just disappeared. My legs came together and trapped my hands again and wouldn't let them move. But all the rest of me started to shake. The light was bouncing off my knees. My hair was tearing at my pillow. My tiny breasts were trembling. My stomach rose into the air. And the greatest feeling I had ever felt came rushing through me. Or over me. I didn't know if it was inside. Or out. Or both. Again and again and again. Again and again and again. I thought it would never end. I thought I was going to die.”
“Were you frightened?”
“Only that it would end.”
“And when it did end?”
“But I have no memory of that.”
“Did you fall asleep?”
“You must be kidding.”
“What did you do?”
“I prayed.”
“For what?”
“Forgiveness.”
“You felt guilty?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For not knowing.”
“Not knowing what?”
“How wonderful it could be.”
“Sex?”
“Life.”
I think I'm pregnant.
My period isn't late. I don't have strange appetites. My breasts aren't tender. I feel fine in the morning. My sex drive hasn't intensified. My weight's stable. My saliva hasn't thickened. My legs don't tire. My bowel movements are regular. My hair conditioner still works. Nothing smells different. My palms are dry. I don't want to leave work early. I've shed no sudden tears. My shoes fit. So does my skin.
But I think I'm pregnant. There's someone inside me. I don't feel it in my womb. I feel it in my eyes. Nothing looks quite the same. The air is tinged with color. My quilts and paintings give off light. The dark's no longer black but transparent. I lie awake at night and see the morning long before it comes. The moon is in the streets in the middle of the day. I look in the mirror and see my mother. I look at my husband and see him as a child. Everything comes together in what I see. There's a baby in my eyes. I just can't see him yet.
I'm giving Johnny a Broken Dishes for our first anniversary. It was made during the Depression by an Amish woman in Ohioâwestern Ohio most likely because it's cotton. The guy who trucked it in called it a Pinwheel. I asked him if he
was married. He said, “Sort of.” He probably thought I might want to fuck him and he couldn't decide if I'd be more likely to if he was free or taken.
“Did your wife ever throw anything at you?”
“Not really.”
“Did you ever throw anything at her?”
“I've got a nasty temper.”
“Did it break?”
“It always breaks. I make sure it breaks. That way I stop. I smash something. I keep from hitting her. Why'd you ask?”
I want to smash him. It's not a pleasant feeling. I used to have fantasies about fucking men. Now I want to smash them.
“I asked because I want you to look at this quilt from over here.” I pull him back from it. He looks at my hand on his arm. It's a rebuke and a promise. He didn't know what to make of it. Men always make the first touch. Your elbow, your wrist, a palm on your shoulder and the tips of fingers on your collarbone or my waist through a doorway. Gaining the upper hand.