Silence and the Word (23 page)

You had been walking down Guerrero,
exhausted. Class ran late. Missed the last bus and not enough for a
cab, so you were walking home after eleven. Street deserted—pools
of lamplight illuminating emptiness. Backpack heavy on your
shoulder and you wondering why the hell you decided to wear the
damn heels to class. The sexy professor who noticed your legs
yesterday was the reason. Stupid reason.

You’ve never been this close to a girl, for
this long. All through high school and college too, everyone
thought you were a ladies’ man; nobody noticed that all the girls
liked you and all the girls flirted, but none of them dated you
twice. They said, “You’re such a nice guy,” or “I just don’t feel
that way about you,” or, often, “Let’s just be friends, Mike.” You
smiled; you walked them to the door. Because you were, after all, a
nice guy.

Your feet hurt like hell, and finally you
stopped and took off the heels. Shoes in one hand, picking your way
carefully along the concrete sidewalk, watching for broken glass.
Unprepared for the swift figure out of the alley, his hand grabbing
your arm, a pocketknife at your throat. Heels in his face? Scream?
He dragged you into the alley, pressed you up against the wall.
Just a pocketknife, but the blade was sharp.

M
aybe sixteen, barely bearded and
acne-spotted. White boy with dead-cat breath and a high
voice.

“
Hey, bitch. Bitch, you’re gonna give me
some.”

Not wanting money. Visions of blood, and your
legs were shaking. Glad of the concrete wall at your back. Cool.
Calm.

“
You want sex?” Your voice didn’t
crack.

He was confused. Maybe he’d expected you to
scream.

“
Yeah.”

A nice guy, and you’d always figured that
someday, you’d meet a nice girl. Maybe a redhead, with green eyes
and pale skin. You’d be friends first, and you’d fall in love,
until one day, at a movie, you’d kiss her. And she’d kiss you back,
and you’d know that she loved you.

Here was the test. “Blow job’s fifty bucks.
You wanna fuck, it’ll be a hundred.” Didn’t let him see the fear.
As if you did this every day.

So when one girl in college did sit on your
bed, and lean against you, and started running her hand over your
thigh, up towards your crotch—you pulled away. She smelled sweet
and dark and musky, and you were so turned on you couldn’t think,
but you pulled away, because she wasn’t the girl you were looking
for. It might have been fun, but it wouldn’t have been right.

“
Where the fuck am I going to get that!”
He was shaking. “I’ve got a fucking knife on you and you want fifty
bucks?”

You sighed. A quiet voice screaming in the
back of your head, ignored. “Look, whatcha got?” The knife against
your throat.

He shrugged. “Maybe ten.”

“
Okay. But you gotta wear a
rubber.”

He didn’t move or speak. Sweat dripping down
his face and the stink of fear heavy in the air.

Every semester, every year, you figured the
right girl would come along. You graduated, and she still hadn’t
shown up. Then you were working, and there were no women in the
programmers’ basement. You started to get scared. Maybe you’d never
find her. Maybe she didn’t exist. After two years of that, you
figured that you had to get out of Indiana, go someplace new,
different.

He pulled the knife away from your throat,
held it tight in his right hand. Fumbled in his pocket with the
left, dragged out a crumpled five, a couple of ones. You took them,
not touching his fingers. Didn’t let your hand shake.

“
Don’t have a rubber.” He was halfway
apologetic, halfway belligerent. His forehead was sweating. Could
have lost it right there.

You slowly reached back, watching his eyes.
Watch the eyes, not the knife. Unzipped your backpack, stuffed the
money in. In a mesh pocket, among tampons and spare batteries,
found a single condom. Only God knew how long it’d been there.
Handed it to him.

So you moved to San Francisco, moved in with
a friend of your sister’s. Shefali. Just for a few months, until
you found a place of your own. She worked all day and took classes
at night, so you didn’t see her much, but didn’t much mind. Pretty,
but not really your type–too thin, too intense. A little
intimidating. Your friends would have told you to go for it, but
you’d waited so long already—you could wait a little longer.

He unzipped his pants, pulled out his cock.
Got the condom on, with difficulty. Stood there, waiting for you,
blinking.

You dropped to your knees on gravel. Muck on
your legs. Spit on your hand and grabbed his cock. Rubbed it ’til
it was hard. Then in your mouth, powdery-mint and latex. You almost
gagged then, but shoved it down. All down.

You were still waiting for your girl, and you
thought you knew what it’d be like. After that first kiss, after
lots of kissing, it would be slow and gentle. You’d talk a lot
first, that first time, calming her nerves and yours. Then some
kissing, touching, more talking. Slow and easy and gentle, just the
way she liked it. If you were lucky, that would be the girl you
married someday.

His hands tight in your hair. By the end, he
was fucking your mouth, slamming into your throat. When it was
done, he tossed the condom, zipped up, walked away. Tomorrow he’d
tell his friends he got a blow job from a hooker for only eight
bucks. He’d boast. He’d do this again.

You knelt there.

And then. You were running a program, trying
to find the bugs. Lost in it, and you don’t know how long it was
until you heard the banging at the door. You lifted your head,
confused. Shefali had a key. You went down the stairs, wondering
what had happened. Had she lost her key? Maybe it was a neighbor? A
fire? A shooting?

Once he was out of sight, the shakes took
over. Deep shudders and still you were biting back the moan.
Blankly you stood and started walking. Walking and walking. You
circled your block three times before you walked up the stairs to
the apartment and the door. Couldn’t find your keys. You slammed
your fist into the door until Michael opened it, his eyes
startled.

Now Shefali’s body is long against yours.
She’s kissing you hard, fierce, like she wants to swallow you
whole.

You can’t help reacting to this woman in
these arms, this woman who smells like night, this woman who wants
you.

Your head is swimming and your muscles are
tense. Her lips are traveling over yours, her tongue is entwining
with yours.

She wants you.

Your hands balled tight in the fabric of his
shirt, you pull him to you. You can feel him hard against you; he
must want you. He has to.

This can’t be right.

You take a deep breath and then pull back.
You catch her hands in yours, her hands that are still locked on
your shirt—as if she wants to drag you down or drag herself up.

You hold her hands and ask her with your
eyes, your voice. “Shefali, is this what you really want?”

Such a kind voice, and you nod. Mouth ‘yes,’
though your throat is still locked. Mouth ‘please.’

You don’t know her—you don’t even
particularly like her—but she wants you, she needs you.

You’re a nice guy, and she needs you.

Can you say no to that?

He surrenders then, hands gentle on your
back, lips moving against yours. He smells like open fields.

You release her hands. Her tongue thrusts
into your mouth. She leads you up the stairs, to her room, her bed.
Your hands travel uncertainly over her body, trying to erase the
imagined touch, to replace it with warm hands, with care. As gentle
as possible.

But she is not gentle with you.

So slow, so patient, and you cannot stand it.
You need speed, the rush of blood in your arteries and veins. He
does not know how to give it to you, and so you take it, digging
your nails into his back, biting down until you break the skin,
riding him until you and he and the room and the world dissolve
into light, into nothing at all.

Afterwards, she cries. Shefali weeps, and
terror rises in you and wonder if you have done the wrong thing, if
you have hurt her, hurt her worse, perhaps. You hold her close as
she tells you everything.

Weep while he holds you, until the tears have
washed a path down cheekbone and chin to opening throat. Tell him
everything, every detail.

Your stomach churns, and you are glad that
you did not ask her to go down on you. Not that you would have had
the nerve, even if this had been a normal date, at a normal time.
Not the first time.

He gets the seven dollars from your backpack
and you throw it out the window. He puts you in a shower. You both
go back to bed.

She is no longer shaking, and she smiles at
you, and the ghosts seem fainter now. Maybe it will be all right.
Maybe you did the right thing after all.

He holds you close and rubs your back until
you finally fall asleep in his arms.

She falls asleep before you, and you lie
there in the moonlight, tracing the line of her cheekbone with your
eyes.

This was not the way you had wanted it to
be.

In the morning, you wake before him. Sun
pours onto the bed and the alley seems a dream. A dream of rank
sweat and mint, terror and arousal. You shudder, biting your lip. A
hand between your thighs comes away damp.

You are crying again.

i will go |

up |

into the mountains |

the empty spaces | you will go down

where the wind | to the city

shuddering | a small room a

through quaking | single chair a

aspen | screech of

is the only | police or

conversation | ambulance

| and occasional

the air so clear | gunshots

and bright at |

dawn | the waves against

the sky every | the city shore

shade of gold | the temptation

the peaks sharp | to walk beside

like knives | them in the dark

the wind cold | at night

and startling | when your mind

| is racing

in the silence |

poems are | the constant

writing themselves | thudding

on crisp | waves lines bodies

white sheets | exploding

| on the pages

i remember |

the city | you remember me.

So this guy walks up to me on the street, at
something like 8 p.m., on that deserted stretch over by the park,
y’know? I’d be scared, except he’s just a kid, and he says, “Hey,
you wanna do this survey?” And I say, “What’s in it for me? I’m a
busy woman?” And he says “Five bucks—and if you answer the long
form, fifty.”

Well, fifty bucks is not something to sniff
at, y’know? There’s a lot I could buy for fifty bucks. There’s this
long black velvet coat over at Goodwill, only twenty bucks, and a
nice pair of rhinestone heels I’ve been eyeing, five bucks, and
that leaves twenty-five for the kids—half for them, half for me.
That’s fair, right? And that sounds so good, that I can see the
money’s already spent, so I’d better answer his question. So I tell
him, “Shoot.” And he says, “Do you masturbate?”

So I reach back my arm and I’m gonna belt him
a good one right there, only he ducks, see, and hollers out—”It’s
for the survey!” And I drop my arm and I say, “What the fuck kinda
survey is that?” And he says, “It’s a
fucking
survey, see?
The university is doing a survey on fucking. I got stuck with
asking women if they masturbate, which is not making me popular,
believe me. My roommate, he gets to ask guys where the best places
to get a blowjob are, lucky bastard. You wouldn’t believe how many
women have tried to hit me already today, lady. Look, one of them
got me.” And he shows me this bump on his forehead, under where his
greasy hair falls in his face. So I say, “What the hell kind of
school do you go to that does a fucking survey—never mind… . I
don’t wanna know.” So he’s standing there, waiting, and I’m
standing there, thinking.

“Do you gotta know my name?” I ask him. He
says, “Well, we have to put down a name, and an age, but you don’t
have to give me your real name. They won’t know.” And I think it
over, and finally, I think, ‘Sure. What the fuck. Give the kid a
thrill.’

“Put me down as Esmerelda. Esmerelda
Valentino, age twenty-eight.” Ever since I watched “I Dream of
Jeannie” as a kid, I’ve liked the name Esmerelda. “And the answer
to your question is ‘Yes’.” The kid scribbles something down on the
clipboard he’s holding, and then reaches into his pocket and hands
me a five. And I say, “Where’s my fifty?” And he says, “That’s only
for the only for the long form, Miz Esmerelda. Nobody wants to
answer the long form.” And I say, “Show me.”

So he hands over the clipboard, and there’s
this sheet of paper, with big words at the top—”How Do You
Masturbate?”– and a long list of questions below. Questions like,
“How many fingers do you use when you masturbate?” and “Do you
prefer clitoral or vaginal stimulation?” and “Have you ever
inserted foreign objects into your rectum?”

I hand back the board. “That’s what they want
to know? They got this list—that’s supposed to tell them how we do
it?” The kid nods his head, looking embarrassed. And I laugh.
’Cause it is just too damn funny, y’know? And I say, “Siddown, kid.
Grab a patch of sidewalk. That little list of yours won’t tell you
nothin’. I’ll tell you how I really do it.” So we sit down on the
sidewalk, and I stretch out my aching feet, ’cause it’d been a hard
day at the diner, and I close my eyes and start talking.

“It all starts with Johnny, see. Not Johnny
Stepanino, that lousy no-good bum that I’ve been seeing for the
past six years, who keeps promising me a ring, but do you see it on
my finger? Not him—he’s got stringy hair and doesn’t remember to
bathe half the time unless his momma tells him to; I wouldn’t give
him the time of day ’cept he’s got a good business and could really
take care of me and my kids. But he’s never gonna get up the nerve,
’cause his momma don’t like the idea of him marrying a girl who’s
only a little bit Italian, mostly mutt, and in any case dropped out
of high school when she got knocked up at sixteen. His mama don’t
like that idea at all.