The Indifference League (5 page)

“I'm gay, buddy. I'm gay.”

“When?” he finally says. “When did you know?”

“I've always known, really.”

“But what about you and Jake? What about all those other guys? What about …”

He stops himself. He can't say it.

What about that one time with me? Lying there on the beach under the full moon? With me stretched out beside you
? A
nd your shirt rolled up and my hands on your breasts?

You left blood-red lipstick prints all over my face and neck and chest.

I kissed my way down from your face to your stomach, and then I pushed up that red miniskirt, I pulled down those black lace panties, and I went places I'd never gone before.

With you. I went there with you.

Even with the mohawk and the tattoos and the clothes like a small-town auto mechanic's, Miss Demeanor is still beautiful to Mr. Nice Guy. He still sees her long hair shimmering black as crow feathers, brushing her bare shoulders as she lies back on the pebbles. He still feels the warm softness of her breasts in his hands. He still feels the tickle of her pubic hair against his nose and chin. He still wants her.

What about that night? What about that night with me?

Miss Demeanor reads his face and sighs again. Poor Mr. Nice Guy. She should have expected this.

“Buddy,” she says, “never underestimate the power of denial.”

THE
STATISTICIAN

“When you get a little older, you'll see how easy it is to become lured by the female of the species.”

— Batman, to Robin, from the TV series
Batman
, 1966–1968

T
he Statistician walks away from his campus office and toward the undergraduate student ghetto. There is a slight, uncharacteristic swagger in his measured pace. He runs through the numbers in his head:

The number of times that my wife and I have had sex in the past year: 7.

Expressed as a fraction of the total number of days in the year: 7/365.

He does a quick calculation.

A success rate of 1.9 percent.

Abysmal.

But, okay
, The Statistician thinks,
perhaps I'm biasing the numbers somewhat. Let's be realistic about it. Subtracting the number of days we can't have sex because of her menstrual cycle, or because one or the other of us is sick or otherwise incapacitated, let's say one week out of every four …

He frowns.

7/280. 2.5 percent.

Abysmal, indeed.

And The Statistician is not even using the narrow Bill Clinton definition of sex; in addition to penetrative intercourse, his figure includes manual and/or oral stimulation of the genitals by a sexual partner.

He sighs. The average married couple in his demographic bracket has sex together 2.5 times per week; Mr. And Mrs. Average get it on more times in one month than he and his wife do in an entire
year
. But there is something else, another set of numbers that he finds particularly difficult to reconcile.

The number of times I've stimulated my wife orally during our sexual encounters in the past year (expressed as a fraction): 7/7.

The number of times she's stimulated me orally during the same sexual encounters (expressed as a fraction): 0/7.

The number of times I've brought her to orgasm through oral stimulation during our nine-year marriage: 150 (estimated).

The number of times she's given me oral sex during our entire nine-year marriage: 2 (exact number).

The first time was on their wedding night. She had tried to swallow his ejaculate, but she ran squealing into the hotel-room lavatory to spit it in the sink. Before they could continue consummating their marriage, she had to guzzle down two full glasses of champagne “to get rid of the taste.”

The Statistician found this episode puzzling, since at least three of his former girlfriends had described his cum as tasting “sweet”; one even habitually “helped herself to some protein” as he drove her over to Sunday brunch with her parents. This particular girlfriend would then kiss her mother and father right on the lips as soon as she stepped into their pancake-and-bacon-scented home.

The Statistician's wife tried again a couple of nights later, but she gagged violently a few seconds into the process, mascara-blackened tears streaming down her face. He didn't mind the interruption much, though, since she immediately shrugged her lacy teddy onto the marble floor of the honeymoon suite, slipped into her tallest high-heels, then clip-clopped across the room and slowly bent over in front of the brass-studded ottoman, resting her elbows on the cool black leather.

The perfection of my wife's ass during our honeymoon, in comparison to all the other pairs of buttocks in the world, expressed as a percent: 90 percent.

How sexually excited I was by the vision of her in that position, with that upside-down-heart shaped ass up in the air and her long hair flowing over the ottoman and onto the floor, expressed as a percent (with one 100 percent representing orgasm-level excitement): 96 percent.

The Statistician encircled her small waist in his hands, and was able to complete eleven thrusts before exploding inside of her. He couldn't quite make it to an even dozen, let alone the triple digits to which he normally aspired. She just looked too good. It just felt too good.

*

The number of days after our honeymoon ended that she had her hair cut into its current shoulder-length bob: 3.

The relative perfection of my wife's ass, present day, in comparison to all the other pairs of buttocks in the world, expressed as a percent: still 90 percent.

Number of times my wife has assumed that enticing standing-bottoms-up position since our honeymoon: 0.

Number of times my wife has performed fellatio on me since our honeymoon: 0.

Every month for a year after their wedding, when his wife wouldn't let him come inside her because of her period or whatever other reason, The Statistician would suggest that perhaps she could please maybe (please!) consider trying to give him another blow job. She would consistently respond that it wasn't nice to
ask
for such things, that it was more gentlemanly to wait until they were
offered
.

Then she would roll over in bed, turning her back to him, a manoeuvre meant to convey her disappointment and disinterest. However, this also meant that her ninetieth-percentile ass was aimed in his direction all night, and The Statistician's resulting erection would keep him awake until sunrise.

Now every night she sleeps with her back turned to him. It's not a punishment anymore, just a habit.

Number of times in the past year I've had to get out of bed and sneak barefoot across the cold tile floor into the en suite bathroom, to stand on my tiptoes in front of the clamshell-shaped sink, imagining that my wife is bent over in front me, that my lotion-filled fist is her upturned vagina, just to relieve the tension enough that I can get a couple hours of sleep: 40 (estimated).

Number of times in the past year that I've performed a similar operation in front of the sink, imagining that my lotion-filled fist is her mouth instead: 60 (estimated).

*

The Statistician eventually stopped asking his wife for oral sex, but of course he didn't stop wanting it. Last year, in the car on their annual trip to Mr. Nice Guy's cottage, he asked her if maybe she found him less attractive than she used to. She just kissed his neck and smiled.

His brain knew that he should leave this tender moment alone, but his penis still wanted answers.

“If you're indeed still attracted to me, then how come you never …”

She knew where this was going before he even finished the sentence. She sighed, “Look, sweetie, one of these days I'll try again. When I'm ready, okay? My mouth is pretty small, and, well, your thing is pretty big.”

She could never call it a cock, a dick, a rod, or a prick. She could barely even refer to it as a penis, and that was only when she was speaking in clinical terms (“What are those abrasions on your penis?” or “Change your pants. I can see your penis through the ones you're wearing”). Otherwise, she always called it his “thing.”

“Getting my hand around it is difficult enough, never mind my mouth,” she said, shrugging her small shoulders. “It's enormous, really.”

Well! That made the Statistician feel pretty good. He'd measured it with a carpenter's ruler once (never mind why he had an erection while trimming a piece of shelving), and, regardless of whose calculation of average one compared it to, he knew that his cock was, statistically speaking, certainly longer and thicker than average. But,
enormous
? Well!

But later at Mr. Nice Guy's cottage, he watched his wife eat a whole cucumber, and then a banana, and The Statistician was pretty sure that his penis wasn't bigger than either of those things.

*

The Statistician double-checks the note cupped in his sweaty left palm. In neat, girly script, the pink paper reads:

He hesitates for a moment on the broken concrete steps of this former upper-middle-class brownstone, which has been converted into bachelor apartments for students who can't afford to live in the university residences.

Number of book club meetings my wife has attended in the past year compared to the number of times she's had sex with me, expressed as a ratio: 24:7.

Number of sex acts my wife has read about in the “literary romance novels” selected by her book club in the past year (calculation based on an assumed average 4 sex acts per book), compared to the number of times she's had actual sex with me in the past year, expressed as a ratio: 96:7.

Number of times in the past year that she has opened her legs for Pedro (the esthetician who trims and waxes her pubic hair) compared to the number of times she's opened her legs me, expressed as a ratio: 26:7.

For some reason, this figure in particular disturbs him the most. She goes to such pains, every two weeks and at no small expense, to have the entrance manicured so invitingly, and yet, as soon as he catches a glimpse of her neatly trimmed pubis and it has the desired effect on him, she closes the gates.

The Statistician presses the buzzer button for Apartment C. He shifts from side to side for a few minutes, waiting, perspiring. He is about to turn away when The Protégé peeks out through the mail slot, and then the door swings open.

“Hey there, Professor,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”

She's wearing a tight white tank top with no bra underneath. Her breasts retain close to 100 percent of their youthful firmness, forming nearly mathematically-perfect half-spheres, her nipples just a few degrees north of perfect centre. Judging from the coy language she used in his office this afternoon, and from the way she dipped her eyelashes and flicked her upper lip with the tip of her tongue after each sentence, The Statistician estimates that the probability of seeing her naked breasts today is perhaps about 66.7 percent, and her entire unclothed body, approximately 33.3 percent.

The Statistician reassures himself:
It is okay for me to do this. It's justified.

He follows her up the creaky, round-edged stairs, watching her muscular buttocks flex beneath her clingy red miniskirt. She's got an altogether different type of ass than his wife's, a smaller waist-to-hip ratio to be sure, a bit less cushion perhaps, rounder, firmer. Equally nice, though; another ninetieth-percentile butt. The Statistician's heart rate increases from 80 to 130 beats per minute, and it isn't just from climbing to the top of the stairs.

It's okay for me to do this.

The Protégée pushes open the door to her cluttered, claustrophobic bachelor apartment, which was likely nothing more than a walk-in closet during the building's previous life as a single-family home. Inside, they sit down together on the lone piece of furniture, a rumpled futon bed. Between her slightly parted knees, he glimpses her stoplight-yellow panties.
Proceed with Caution. Prepare to Stop.

It's justified
,
he tells himself again.

“So,” The Protégée says, opening a notebook filled with complex arithmetical scribbling, “like I mentioned in your office, I've really been having some difficulty making sense of these numbers.”

Her fingers brush his forearm as she flips the next page of her calculations open before him. Her thigh presses against his. She looks at him with big liquid eyes, her head titled slightly to one side, her lashes gently dropping at regular intervals. It's the same way his wife used to look at him around the time they got engaged. Before she cut her hair. Before the book club. Before Pedro the Esthetician. Before she started sleeping with her back to him. Before the numbers tapered off to seven times a year.

“The numbers never lie,” says The Statistician to The Protégée.