Authors: Ann Royal Nicholas
“Oh,” Sarah said, humbled.
The conversation was taking a turn and I needed to use my mediation skills to smooth things over. I was always looking for an opportunity to practice mediating since I couldn’t find many paid ways to do it. “I think what we’re saying here, or at least some of us are saying, is that all books have
some
value, even if, as in the case of Ann Coulter’s books, their only value is as firestarter. Ford writes fiction but he has a truthful view of the world. Bascomb’s life is so boring it reminds people of their own boring lives, hence Rachel’s point and the one about how banal it was, though Sarah and Vicki’s point about the titanium beads in his balls may suggest something different. As Paige said, Ford does put words together beautifully. That quote about Thanksgiving being ‘a celebration of the slaughter of the righteous and deserving’ probably justified the purchase.”
“I’m glad I missed that,” mumbled Sarah. “I like Thanksgiving.”
Undeterred, I pressed on. “As for you, Jelicka, you’re a beautiful woman and give off the impression of great sexual awareness and confidence. Of course that doesn’t always mean you or any of us
feel
the way we might
look
to others. What I’m saying is that how a book is received is often out of the control of the person who wrote it.”
“That was interesting critiques, Maddie,” Quinn said once I’d finally stopped talking.
“She wants to be called Madelyn," Paige said.
“That was interesting,
Madelyn
.” Quinn turned to Jelicka. “And you’re just ‘hot,’ that’s all I can say. Hot and married so what are you whining about? You
get
sex.”
Jelicka rolled her eyes and sighed.
Meanwhile Quinn was still talking. “As opposed to
Madelyn
, who’s pretty hot herself but hasn’t had sex in a year and a half.”
Actually it had been twenty-two months. And if I didn’t meet anyone I wanted to have sex with, that twenty-two months would stretch to twenty-three, then twenty-four then, well, there was no end in sight until death did me part from this life. Sad that Islamic women don’t get 1000 sexy guys when they die defending their honor—I’d consider converting. I just find there’s a dearth of desirable men who might put an end to my self-imposed dry spell.
“What was with his wife who left him and went to Mull?” Kiki asked. “And where the hell is Mull?”
“Way up in the north of Scotland,” Rachel said. “Rough landscape, very remote.”
“Like Agoura,” Jelicka teased.
“Yeah. What
was
that?” asked Quinn. “His wife goes to Mull to
mull
over the crackpot fat slob her
ex-
husband had become. Meanwhile, her current husband who
hadn’t
abandoned her is sick in New Jersey—granted, his ridiculous wife could have been the reason he was sick. But didn’t
he
need her more? What’s the nobler path here?”
I glanced at Vicki, sitting quietly, looking out the window where darkness and rain prevailed.
“Maybe she didn’t like driving around New Jersey,” Paige offered.
“Frank must’ve been a real loser to make her want to go as far away as she could, with the possible exception of Antarctica, to be with a guy who barely registered her existence.”
Sometimes I wondered whether our standards for books and relationships were just too high.
“Look,” said Rachel, “not every character is going to be a cheerful, positive person whose character arc ends with him or her being better off than when the story started. Think of
The Hours,
or
Line of Beauty,
or
Madame Bovary
. Sometimes we have to accept the flaws in people. Frank Bascomb captures the nobility of carrying on no matter what.”
“I agree,” said Vicki, suddenly. “We’re all flawed. And I hate how our popular culture glorifies only healthy, sane, loveable thin people. Remember how, in my movie, the central character was overweight and crazy? Audiences warmed up to her because she kept trying to make something of herself. That never happened with Frank. I also think Ford was socially irresponsible. In an age of global warming and disaffection, he has his protagonist driving around New Jersey in a Suburban that gets ten miles a gallon. Frank is a grumpy consumer who orders clothes from L.L. Bean and complains about everything as he meets unlikable person after unlikable person. And maybe that’s the way a lot of white men are but that doesn’t mean it’s worth cutting down trees to print a book about him.” Vicki did not consider reading a book on an electronic device
reading
.
“What was going on with his daughter who might or might not be a lesbian?” I asked. “Was that whole scene in the gay bar supposed to be his coming to terms with his daughter having a boyfriend after years of living with Cookie, or whatever her name was, who Frank wanted to sleep with? I mean that’s not right. He’s sad because he didn’t get to have sex with his daughter's ex-girlfriend before she tried to go straight?”
“Poor guy struck out left and right,” said Paige. “To be pitied really—though, as I said, it’s well-written pity.”
“A hand job might have improved things for poor Frank, though that doesn’t exactly qualify as a
lay
of the land,” said Quinn.
“Just like oral sex isn’t really sex,” said Sarah with a wink.
“Hey”—I blurted involuntarily; I
am
, after all, the mother of a fourteen year-old girl and I’ve been a tad touchy on the subject of oral sex ever since Lila told me that some of her classmates had been caught giving blow jobs to the boys.
“We all need to be able to satisfy ourselves at the end of the day,” Jelicka sighed, “however we can.”
“Amen,” said Kiki. All heads turned. She hadn’t used that word since her conversion to Judaism. “What?”
Everyone was still staring at her.
“I’m havin’ a little religious crisis, tha’s awl. I still love going to temple with Saul and everything but lately I’ve been missing my Catholic girlhood for some reason.”
“You’re not going to convert back, are you?” Jelicka asked. Jelicka was Jewish too, but by birth, not marital conversion. “I don’t know if you can even do that.”
“Of course you can,” said Quinn. “You can be whatever religion you want.”
“Not in Iraq—not if you want to live,” I pointed out. Nobody stepped up to argue with me.
“I have no plans to re-convert,” Kiki went on. “Besides, every religion I’ve dabbled in is flawed. Or maybe I’m just tired.”
“Are we done talking about this book?” Paige asked. “I have babysitter issues this evening.”
“I am”—this from Vicki. “And to start the roundy-round, I might as well come out and tell everyone unless Sarah has already—yes, I have some sort of growth in my breast, and yes, I’m a little worried because none of these doctors seems to know what the best medical approach is. I might need a lumpectomy, which would leave me lumpless but the proud owner of a breast with a divot. Or I might need radiation, in which case I’ll be tired but functional. Or I might need a lumpectomy and radiation, in which case I’d have a bumpy breast
and
I’d be tired but functional. I might, however, need chemo in which case all the above would happen plus my hair will fall out. That said, I will go ballistic if any of you start treating me like some sort of sicko. Until I’m keeling over and losing my hair in fish soup, I don’t want you to treat me any differently.”
It seemed to me we were all sitting there with our jaws slightly open, the pause growing longer and longer, not sure what Vicki needed or wanted to hear.
“So, whose turn is it to pick the next book?” Sarah asked.
And so, just like that, we found out one of our inner circle was sick with something we all feared terribly we’d get ourselves. I said a prayer and made a private vow to increase my charitable contribution for breast cancer research. Even though we were unsure what to say that night, I knew we’d talk about it and send endless emails back and forth. Together the Clitties would formulate a plan to help Vicki in every way she needed it— from grocery shopping to cleaning to monitoring Enrique to whatever else needed tending to. But that night we honored Vicki by doing as she’d asked, though probably not as she truly wished.
“I think it's Madelyn's turn,” said Paige. “That’s what I remember from last month.”
“Has anyone read the new Jane Smiley?” Rachel asked.
“Rachel, you have to wait until it’s your turn again to pick a book,” Vicki said. “I think if we’ve established anything this evening, it’s that the hostess picks the book.”
“How about
The Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver?" Quinn suggested. “Or is that too obvious a choice?”
“What did she just
say
, Quinn?” Paige asked, rather too pointedly, I thought. “It’s Maddie’s, I mean Madelyn's turn to pick. But that
was
a great one and loved by book clubs all over the country.” Paige tended to like the obvious choices.
“It’s seven hundred pages,” I said. “I think I should pick something that we, as a group, have a chance of finishing. And it’s supposed to be something I’ve read, right?”
“How about the Calvin Trillin book about the death of his wife Alice?” offered Sarah. “It was only seventy-three pages. Though it
was
by a man.”
“Please, Maddie,” pleaded Jelicka desperately—too desperately for a woman who
has it all
. “Pick something we’ll
want
to read—even juicy trash at this point. Something we won’t want to put down.”
“It was good!” Sarah protested. “And short.”
“No more cancer books,” Vicki said. “That’s my second wish.”
“Of course,” said Sarah. “Sorry.”
Vicki patted Sarah on the knee. “I agree with Jelicka. Let’s just have some fun for a change. If I’m going to die, you know,
soon
—not saying I am, but if I am, I only want to read good, entertaining books that celebrate life.”
“How about something erotic?” suggested Quinn. “I think we all could probably use a book with some good sex scenes.”
“Can’t hurt,” Paige concurred. “But it has to be tasteful. My sex life has turned into a chore just a notch above folding laundry—in fact, folding laundry can often be a lot more rewarding.”
There was a beat of silence. Apparently none of us wanted to explore the sex-as-laundry metaphor. Probably because we didn’t want to be reminded about the times in our own lives when doing laundry had been more fulfilling than sex.
“Can erotica be well written?” I asked. “It always seems a little, I don’t know, cheap and tawdry or something. But maybe I just haven’t been exposed.”
“Well,
that’s
certainly true,” Quinn winked.
What did she mean? I wasn’t a total novice
—
how could I be? I'm forty-two and a mother.
“The new Jane Smiley is supposed to be pornographic,” Rachel said, not giving up. “The back cover says it’s ‘R’ for ravishing.”
“Does it really?” asked Jelicka. “What’s it called?”
“
Ten Days in the Valley
. No—hills.
Ten Days in the Hills.”
It seemed to me that Rachel only pretended not to know the title, dumbing down her large literary brain by acting absent-minded.
“Whatever you decide, Mad, I’ll read the whole thing, but I’m also going to read the Jane Smiley book,” Jelicka said, explaining. “See, what you don’t know is Roscoe had to give up Viagra because it conflicted with his heart medicine. I haven’t had sex in two months. I could really use a lover but living vicariously through a few bodice rippers is probably the safer choice.”
So that’s how my journey to Udi started, I guess—with a mandate to choose a sexy book. It would prove to be a very special book of cliterature that was certain to lift us all into a richer world of lust, sex and maybe even romance—something that appeared to be lacking in
all
our lives.
Chapter 4
What Quinn had said about me was sadly true—even if I chose to avoid thinking about why exactly it
was
true. The reality was I
hadn’t
been with a man in almost two years and it had been far longer since I’d felt a passionate fluttering for any of their ilk. Not since my marriage had ended—died out, really—not unlike a mammalian body whose lungs and heart had ceased operating.
As a mammal myself, I don’t
feel
dead most of the time. In fact, I’m alive enough to still seek connection with someone who will take me as I am, flaws included, but that’s always proved difficult. As I’ve gotten older, men seem more like aliens to me. And when I feel those flickers of physical desire, they are quickly squelched by the fear I might end up as the feeding tube in yet another relationship.
But enough of the self-analysis—my quest at this point was to choose a book that was both sexy and satisfying; a book that would appeal to Jelicka’s need for lust and Rachel’s for literary mastery. It had to be easier than finding Mr. Right but where was I to get my hands on such a book?
The last erotica I’d read was
Delta of Venus
back in my twenties and, when I was even younger, the juiciest parts of
Fanny Hill
. I’d flipped through
The G Spot:And Other Discoveries about Human Sexuality
carefully enough to discover my own—not that I was clear about what to do after that—but had dismissed this choice as too clinical. It might even insulting to the Muffs, since I knew we were all orgasmically aware, or at least claimed to be. Erica Jong’s
Fear of Flying
was a possibility, despite the fact it was a book my mother might have read. It could be that Ms. Jong’s “zipless fuck” hadn’t held up over the years, though it still sounded tantalizing to this Muff. I nixed two collections of erotic literature I already owned because short stories about sex were really too short for the extended read we craved, like foreplay that doesn’t quite get a girl to the point of no return. None of these choices did I consider worthy of the Cliterati.
Finding and reading a story that might get my libido going enough to forget my fear of relationships appealed to my dormant prurient, albeit neglected self, but after an hour perusing titles like
Princess Desire
,
Blind Obedience
and
Hard Candy
, at the Powell’s website, I was discouraged. Most of the titles seemed to be about bimbos meeting princes in foreign countries, who either tied them up and spanked them for long periods or rescued them from horrible husbands, but more likely rescued them from themselves. I wanted a story about a normal woman, maybe between thirty and fifty, who just wants to connect with another human being and have great sex without subsequent fallout.
Perhaps the characters would find love in the process, but that would be of secondary importance. Giving the Muffs a vicarious experience of better living through sex was what the book needed to do—what
Lay of the Land
might have been if it was by a woman about a woman with people getting laid, minimal driving and a satisfying ending.
Unfortunately, as I read the excerpts, there just didn’t seem to be anything that spoke to the particular brand of female angst I sought solace for. I took this to mean that either no one had written such a book, or that connection and love were not valued commodities in a novel with a lot of sex scenes. That alone posed an interesting thesis on whether sex and love could coexist in life if they were unable to in art, but that was a topic for Rachel and Vicki, the intellectuals in the group, to argue about, not me.
So one Tuesday when I had no cases to mediate and no consultations for potential cases to mediate in the future (unfortunately not an unusual circumstance for a Tuesday or any other day, for that matter), I got into my car after sending Lila off to school and headed into Los Angeles—Sunset Boulevard, to be exact, and Book Soup, one of those intimate, personalized-service bookstores that still exist in big cities. Shops like Book Soup were one of the only things I missed since moving to the suburbs—that and the anonymity of being able to do or wear pretty much anything without risk of being spotted by someone I knew. Here I could spend hours reading without being bothered or, if I wanted, seek knowledgeable assistance without so much as a raised eyebrow, searching for just the right book.
As I entered the Soup, a startlingly good-looking man with dark brown hair, light stubble and the deliberately casual, frumpy style of dress I’ve always liked in a man, passed me on his way out. He just walked right by me, making me feel as inconsequential as FOD, which is airport lingo for “foreign object debris.” You’ve seen the stuff. It’s all the bits of lint and crud that collects around baggage carousels, which can often be seen tumbling over the linoleum but which most people never notice as they hustle their bags to the curb. Were my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt so last season I didn't even merit a glance?
I knew my libido was low but my self-esteem was even lower. I felt like I hadn’t even registered to this guy as a person. Was he gay? How could he ignore me so egregiously? If I’d been a guy, I'd probably tell myself that a member of the opposite sex failing to acknowledge my presence
must
be gay. Herein lies a fundamental distinction between men (the heterosexual kind) and women, according to me: women can admit failure and men like to put a spin on things so their self-image doesn’t take a hit.
Now, I absolutely do not have a problem with gay men. My
problem
, if it’s a problem at all, is that I really
like
gay men. I’ve had a few crushes on gay men, in fact, which, duh, never end well. Gay men are generally sensitive and caring; they usually have some aesthetic sense (or at least an awareness that style matters) and they aren’t averse to housework. In most of the ways that matter, a gay man is the perfect life partner for a woman who prefers brunch with friends and shopping or a movie to NASCAR and the Final Four. If such a woman, say
me
, were to become half a couple with such a man, the only issue would be for both parties to find outside penises to play with that aren’t attached to men, or god forbid, the same man who might disrupt the relationship I was having with my gay partner.
On second thought, it’s too complicated.
It’s very sad that women don't arouse, in gay men, the kind of love and passion we crave. How could we? They’re gay. As far as I’m concerned, the only trouble with gay men is that homosexuality shrinks the field of eligible partners.
Let it go
, I said to myself as I moved further into the Soup, shaking free of my intellectual response to the handsome
déshabillé
of the sexy stranger. What was left in its place was a slight tingling at the top of my thighs, which I took as a good omen for the Cliterati and finding our next book.
“Justine felt her vulva opening and closing, throbbing in anticipation. She was not a virgin—far from it—but she’d not had a worthy lover in months. So when Antonio began to unbutton her blouse, cupping her breast in his strong swimmer’s hand, her body began to respond without hesitation, her skin pulsing with electricity. She felt a moistness between her legs and every time his fingertips graced her forearm, her ankle, her neck—she groaned—not only for the pleasure she was experiencing as he touched her, but for those pleasures she knew would come. She’d imagined a lover like this, patient, sensual, and of unquestionable beauty; but to have finally found him in Antonio, a man ten years younger than she, was beyond her wildest fantasies. Justine’s hands drifted slowly, sensually down his back, over his muscular frame and taut skin, still moist from the swim from which she’d disturbed him. He inhaled suddenly, closing his eyes. Then, with more purpose, his hand reached down, finding the hem of her dress, and lifting it gently, he slid his warm palm up her thigh to her buttocks, which he held tightly in his grasp, pulling her body against his sex.
‘I want you,’ he said—
‘Take me,’ Justine murmured. ‘Please, I can’t’—”
“Are you finding what you’re looking for?”
I looked up to find a man staring down at me as I sat slack-jawed and cross-legged on the carpeted floor of the Soup. It took me a few seconds to get Antonio out of my head and focus on the man looking at me, a few seconds before I realized he was the guy I’d seen earlier—the good-looking one who’d treated me like I was FOD. He’d come back.
Maybe he wasn’t gay.
Maybe he was just metrosexual, whatever that was. Or maybe he worked here, in which case he’d know what I was reading—I mean, really
know
. He wouldn’t be fooled by the fact that I’d carried the books over to the children’s section in an effort to avoid detection. I quickly closed the book, and lay it face down in my lap.
It was then that I noticed that the tingling I’d felt earlier at the top of my thighs had turned to flat out creaming. My vulva was throbbing, just like I imagined Justine’s must have been, and I was glad I’d covered it because I was pretty sure the throbbing was noticeable through my jeans. This, in turn, caused my cheeks to flush and my breath to quicken even more. Only a blind person would fail to see what was going on with me.
Over an hour had passed since I’d entered the store, and this man, who’d previously walked right by me, and who couldn’t have been older than thirty-four, now seemed to be looking at me with Bambi eyes, waiting for me to speak. Had I changed? Can one get over libido-loss so quickly? Was I giving off some kind of pheromones after my erotic read? I wasn’t completely sure what pheromones were or if I was emitting any but I liked the idea that I had some to which I could attribute the cute man’s return.
“Yes, I am. Thank you,” I said, trying to appear nonplussed. But then feeling the need to elaborate. “See it’s my turn to pick the next book for my book club so I’m checking out a few things.”
“In the children’s’ section.” One side of his mouth was lifting, which told me he wasn't buying it.
“Well,” I proceeded confidently, “I found myself in the children’s section but I have books from several sections, actually. Don't worry. I’ll put them back.”
“I’m not worried.” Now he was smiling at me. “That was a good one.” He was pointing to
Justine in Paradise
, still shielding my throbbing vulva. Clearly he must have been watching me for some time.
“Oh? Well, I’m supposed to pick something sexy.” I casually tossed
Justine
into my shopping basket with the other titles whereupon I stood up so as to appear in control of the situation.
He eyed my stash. So far I’d perused the classics,
The
Story of O
(too much bondage) and
100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed
(needs 101?). Both had contributed nicely to getting my fantasy juices flowing but neither was quite right for the Muffia. Nor was
Fifty Shades of Silly
because, well, that book was so silly it didn’t even seem relevant to anyone over 24. “Oh My!” Says heroine Anastasia Steele about 300 times.
That book did help me realize, however, that though my search continued it was no longer necessary for a book to possess artful syntax and word selection to make a girl feel horny.
“Ah, that explains it,” he said, returning his gaze to my face. “Those are all good. I think I’ve read most of them, at one time or another, but it’s been years of course.”
“Of course.”
Weren’t these books for women? Maybe he was gay after all. But he seemed to be making a pass, though it had been so long I wasn’t sure if I’d recognize a pass unless it was labeled. My own flirting techniques were decidedly rusty.
“So, are there any newer titles you can recommend?”
“Sorry, but I’ve been into political non-fiction pretty exclusively for the past seven or eight years. If you wanted to get the latest take on religion in politics or swine flu as a means of mind control, I’m your man. But I think you’d be making a good choice with any one of those.”
“I just thought you might have heard something, you know, since you work here.”
“Actually, I don’t work here.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Had he been watching me?
“My name’s Steve.” He offered his hand.
I took it. “Hi, Steve.”
“I don’t want to appear too forward but would you like to get a cup of coffee?”
Why was he paying attention to me now when I hadn’t existed before? Was it the books in my basket? Did it matter?
I wondered if his fingertips would send electrical charges across
my
skin, what his hands would be like on
my
buttocks. Could he be my zipless fuck—an erotic encounter with a stranger that renews a woman’s faith in the satisfaction of her abject lust?
He gazed out at me through soulful brown eyes, his hair falling around his face most appealingly. I could feel his animal intensity boring into me, which alone probably could have made me come if I’d looked into those big browns long enough, but I broke contact when I found myself wondering what his penis looked like—beautiful to be sure, in the way penises
are
beautiful, except of course when one notices that they’re completely ridiculous.