Authors: Zack Love
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath, as she turned on the faucet and pushed the fallen toothpaste down the drain. She eyed his toothbrush, tempted to brush her teeth with it. For a moment, she hesitated, guilty about not first getting his permission. But then she realized that she was about to pass all of her mouth germs to him anyway and proceeded to brush her teeth rather thoroughly with his toothbrush.
Meanwhile Heeb sat on the couch, trying to hit a relaxed pose for when she emerged from his bathroom, but thinking all along about the various excuses she might invent to try to back out of the whole thing. He was convinced that she was thoroughly disappointed. “She just needed the bathroom to regroup and plan her exit strategy,” he figured.
Despite his initial instincts about her, his insecurities caused him to forget the extent to which Melody was, in every respect, a misfit with unpredictably quirky tastes – from makeup to music to men to just about everything else. So Heeb needlessly brainstormed for ways to keep her at his place long enough to reestablish the charm and spontaneity that they had enjoyed online.
When she finally came out, he awkwardly tried to start a conversation on a safe topic but was braced for the worst.
“Do you like this music?” he asked hesitantly.
“Um, do you have any Johann Sebastian Bach?” she replied, anxiously.
“I have about seventy-five CDs of Bach…Why?”
“Bach is the only thing I listen to.”
“Oh.”
As Heeb went back to his CD collection, he suddenly felt as if the evening might still be on.
“Do you have Magnificat?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s right here.”
“Put it on.”
“OK.”
As he replaced The Cure with J.S. Bach, Heeb had his back turned to Melody and couldn’t see that she had slipped out of her sneakers and taken off her jean jacket. His apartment was soon filled with the harmoniously uplifting horns and choral refrains of Magnificat. He turned around and noticed that she had moved quite close to him. The intense musical environment had an almost hypnotic power to it, and came to symbolize all of their shared quirks already known or soon to be discovered.
She moved closer still and – as Heeb was about to say something – she put her index finger on his lips, and then let her finger run down his chin, over his Adam’s apple, down his chest, and over his chubby belly. As the music grew more solemn, she took off her T-shirt and began to undress Sammy as if participating in some holy rite one performs in the presence of one’s long lost love. Sammy, on the other hand, thought he was in some sort of surreal film or wet dream. But the self-conscious monologue in his head faded into a purely physical concentration on the lanky body before him, as Melody pressed her body against his and kissed her way from his mouth to his neck. Between their caressing and kissing, they made their way to the nearby sofa, and continued discovering each other’s bodies.
They had said nothing from the moment he answered her question about Bach until the moment they were lying in each other’s arms on Heeb’s couch, spent and ecstatic from their sexual exertions. The music had provided the dialogue for them. Anything else – any words before the sex itself – might have sounded contrived, awkward, out of place, or simply unworthy of the event that was to follow. And as they lay there, in their afterglow, they continued caressing each other while listening to the rest of the music.
When the CD ended, they were silent for a moment, as if in deference to the brilliant music that had just finished. But Heeb felt a potential awkwardness creeping in, precisely because they had said so little up until then, and because it now felt as if they could no longer postpone conversation. So Heeb resourcefully returned them to the playfulness of their online chat.
“So are we now Winners Of Lust?”
“Winners Of Love,” she replied with a smile as she kissed his neck. “Put one of the Brandenburgs on,” she instructed him. “Preferably the Fifth…And let’s go to your bedroom. Under the covers.”
“OK,” he replied, dutifully getting up to take care of the music.
“Do you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into?” she asked lightly, as she made her way into his bedroom.
As Heeb approached the entrance to his bedroom, he saw that Melody was already under the covers.
For the seemingly interminable walk to his bed, during which her nakedness was covered but his was not, he slipped into a self-conscious moment of doubt again, bewildered at how she was still at his place rather than trying to flee the fact that she had just had sex with this fat bald guy. He abruptly quickened his pace to the bed, as if to minimize any chance that she might suddenly change her mind about him now that she could inspect his overall appearance more carefully.
But Melody was thinking nothing of the sort. She was preparing to deliver to Heeb the terms and conditions of the intense relationship that they had just embarked upon together. He would need to get a cell phone so that she could reach him if he wasn’t at work or at home. He would need to accompany her on every morning and weekend dog walk (helping out with the dung cleanup would be a very nice gesture but certainly not an absolute requirement). He would need to speak to her no fewer than two hours per day, although phone calls and dog walks certainly counted towards this time. They needed to go to an art museum at least twice a month, and an independent art house film at least once a week. He needed to make sure that his breath and body odor were at all times perfectly fragrant (he had done a very good job thus far). And there were other things, but that was enough for now; the rest would be spelled out as the circumstances required.
Although Heeb intended to make a good faith effort to comply with Melody’s long list of demands, they came as a peculiar surprise to him because Melody was still an enigmatic, total stranger to him. Melody, on the other hand, felt as if she could tell Heeb anything. In a leap of intuitive faith, she believed that he understood her at the core better than anyone else ever had. This intuition was based on their online chat, their shared humor and musical taste, and, most importantly, his unparalleled ability to decrypt her riddle.
The explanation for Melody’s sudden intimacy was simple. Every person is a puzzle with a password. By solving the puzzle, the potential for emotional and physical intimacy is realized. There are two ways to solve the puzzle: 1) a lengthy courtship in which the pieces of the puzzle are gradually assembled, or 2) a brief utterance of that one password – unique to every person – that establishes the same level of legitimacy, comfort, and intimacy that can otherwise be achieved only through a methodical assembly of the various puzzle pieces found during numerous experiences together.
[2]
Heeb had achieved instant intimacy by uttering Melody’s password – a code that he had cracked through sheer cleverness rather than any deep and comprehensive intuition about who Melody was and what she really wanted. Thus, it was only with considerable effort and adjustment that Heeb could understand and accommodate Melody’s many needs. But why did he bother? After all, when he had first started chatting with Melody online, the most he actually wanted or hoped for was an adventurous one-night stand with a sexy oddball. However, during their first night and morning together, he realized that he was actually intrigued by her idiosyncrasies, and curious to understand her as well as she assumed he already did. He was also drawn to her – particularly when they showered together and her dark cosmetics and wild hairdo were washed away, leaving only traces of lilac in her dark brown hair.
The morning after their first encounter, a lazy Sunday, they ordered in breakfast and ate it on Heeb’s bed. She had a fruit salad and he had lox and bagels. Between mousy bites, Melody shared some additional facts about herself that gave Heeb pause.
“Do you know why it’s funny that my last name is Katz?”
Heeb felt a moment of alarm. “Your last name is Katz?”
“Yeah. Why? What’s the big deal?”
“So…So are you Jewish?” Heeb had just convinced himself that he was sufficiently intrigued by and attracted to Melody that he wanted to date her for a while. But this new information threatened a premature end to his “play period.” He had under a year left for “play,” and he thought he could enjoy dating Melody for a month or two and then move on to the caddish project of cramming in as much additional play as possible before his two-year search for a Jewish wife began. But if she was Jewish, he might be tempted to extend that initial month or two into something longer. Why? Because if that something longer was good enough to last as long as say, eight months, he would already be so close to the two-year search period, that he might as well just stick with Melody, rather than start over and risk finding no one as good as her in time to be married by thirty. So Heeb was worried that, if Melody Katz was, in fact, Jewish, he might already be compelled, on their first morning together, to entertain the possibility that he would marry her. And that would be it: Heeb would have met his wife on the Internet. Equally discordant with all of his childhood notions of matrimony was the idea that his wife would be someone he had slept with on their very first meeting. Then he recalled Lucky Chucky’s marriage story, and decided that this additional detail was acceptable, but still somewhat odd.
“I’m an atheist – or at least an agnostic,” she answered. “But technically I’m Jewish. I mean, my parents are Jewish…Why?”
“Oh. Never mind.”
“Are you?”
“Technically.”
“Well, technically you didn’t guess why it’s funny that my last name is Katz.”
“Why? Because you love cats?” Heeb ventured.
“Oh my God! You’re brilliant.”
“Am I right?”
“You should have been a tarot card reader or something. None of it’s legit, but they do have good intuition. I can’t believe you’re wasting your talents as an actuary.”
“So you really love cats?”
“Yeah. I have twelve living with me in my studio.”
“Wow…How nice,” Heeb replied with politic politeness, even though he had always harbored a passive aversion to cats – particularly in any quantity exceeding one.
“They’re all very well trained, and I’ve developed a very good deodorizing system, so my apartment actually smells really good.”
“I don’t care how good your system is. There’s no way I’m stepping foot into that studio,” Heeb thought to himself. And then he said to Melody, “Sounds like you’re the kind of cat lover they would feature in one of those human interest stories on the morning news.”
“It’s funny, because a journalist once offered to interview me for a story, but I’m really too shy for that sort of thing.”
During the weeks that followed their initial meeting, the taxing process of adjusting to Melody actually made Heeb care more about making the relationship work, even if it meant the unplanned, premature end of his play period. The mere fact of having to accommodate so many of Melody’s desiderata at his own expense made Heeb feel more invested in the relationship. The main requirement, of course, was his time – a demand that forced him to drop some of the very courses he had hoped would introduce him to women. After an extensive discussion, Heeb and Melody agreed that he would drop out of everything but photography, and that she would enroll in the same class with him – if they could persuade the instructor to let her join the class so late, based on her impressive portfolio of cat photographs taken over the last few years.
But despite Heeb’s Herculean efforts, he always seemed to fall short of fully satisfying Melody’s emotional needs. When he had to work late so that he couldn’t meet her or talk on the phone, she quickly grew angry and frustrated at his unavailability. After working for nearly half a year as a freelance dog walker, babysitter, web developer, math tutor, and housecleaner, she had forgotten what it’s like to have most of one’s life consumed by a full-time, New York City job. She now had an erratic schedule with large periods of free time during which she assumed or wished that Heeb would be available as well.
Perhaps their most irreconcilable difference was her unbounded and apparently unavoidable love of cats, a fact confirmed by the reliable presence of at least a dozen bristles clinging to her clothes or shoes at any given moment. By her own admission, her feline fixation had cost her a few long-term relationships over the years.
For a while, Heeb managed to find apparently neutral and understandable reasons for them to go back to his place rather than hers: it was more spacious and better equipped with home entertainment systems, it had a better Bach collection and easier access to good restaurants, and it was located closer to his office and to most of her odd jobs. But after about three weeks, Melody correctly concluded that the only reason he wouldn’t go back to her place – which he had never seen – was the prospect of being in a small studio with her and twelve cats.
As their relationship grew rockier, Heeb finally decided to call Carlos for advice.
Carlos was already aware of Melody’s many eccentricities and needy psychology and asked Heeb to remind him of her virtues. “I know you guys have great conversations and great sex, but is there anything more to this whole relationship?” he asked.
“Does there need to be?” Heeb asked lightheartedly.
“I suppose not,” Carlos replied in reflective amusement. “Well, let’s not forget about friendship, taking care of each other – ”
“We have that too. And she’s probably the first woman who has ever unconditionally loved me.”
“It sounds to me like she has a lot of conditions: two hours a day of communication, tolerating cats in ridiculous quantities, constantly keeping your breath and body odor in check, going to an independent film once a week, and – ”
“But those having nothing to do with me, Carlos. Except the odors. And that’s only because she’s very sensitive to scents and my breath is sometimes bad enough to kill the roaches in my apartment.”
“So you really think she loves you unconditionally?”
“Yes. It’s really the first time that a woman loves me exactly as I am. I think Yumi loved me more because of how well I treated her and because she really needed someone to help her when she first arrived. But Melody genuinely loves me for who I am. She’s not using me in any way. She needs me only on an emotional level…She’s just a bit crazy and expects me to put up with it. But she would never in a million years pull a Yumi on me. She thinks we’re perfect soul mates.”