He’d turned up the heat and I didn’t like it. I tried to deflect the subject to Lucy, but I was aware of him edging closer as he told me there was nothing between them. His aftershave assailed my nostrils through the cigarette smoke. There was something on the solitary plasma behind the bar about the conjoined twins, the Wilks sisters from Arkansas. “I guess what I’m saying—” Miles dropped his voice as his eyes hooded — “is that I think it would be great to make love.”
When I told him I wasn’t like that, he misunderstood me, his eyebrows sloping upward. “You dig chicks?”
I told him I didn’t just sleep with people I’d barely met. He shrugged and said he guessed his problem was that he tended “to work on that side of things at South Beach speed.” He let his face crumple into a smile, then raised his hands to yank on imaginary reins. “Slow down, cowboy!”
I wanted to tell the Mileses and Lucys of this world that I don’t do casual sex, not because I’m a prude, but because I simply have to like or at least be excited by somebody before I sleep with them. And I certainly won’t do it a second time unless I’m fond of them. “It’s just the way I’m made,” I told him. “Casual sex always seems to me like glorified masturbation with a narcissist who needs an audience.”
I was hoping that would put him in his place, but it didn’t even seem to register. “You know, I respect that, but, and I gotta be honest here, I think you’re a hot girl and I really want to get to know you better.”
A pulse banged in my temples; one of those migraines I’m prone to; it came on like a flash flood. The pain is often so intense it produces burning, excruciating images behind my retinas. I really needed to be lying on my couch in the darkness, or distracting myself; on the Internet looking at cute animals, doing my emails, or even mixing resin in my workshop. I didn’t want to be in the raucous bar with this guy anymore.
As the jukebox got louder, I could feel myself growing less present. Miles’s eyes seemed to sink back into the shadow of his deep, dark sockets. I could barely see them, but I could still hear his voice, soft yet insistent, “. . . and I don’t play messed-up games,” his baleful face telegraphing the painfully sincere response I was supposed to give him.
“Right . . .”
Then he said, “. . . because honesty is the coolest currency you can bring into any relationship.”
That was exactly the sort of thing that Jerry would say. I almost felt like laughing, anything to forget this banging pain in my jawbone, which spiked through the depression I was sliding into. Too much alcohol. As Miles shouted up another round, I kept thinking of Jerry, the way he’d encourage me to drink, then get me to take all my clothes off and stand still, by the entry to our bathroom. Then turn round. And again. And Lucy. Making me go through the same damn thing.
I should have spoken out. And I did, when I felt Miles’s tongue in my ear.
“No,” I shouted, causing a few people to turn around. I pushed him away, sprung to my feet, and rushed outside, heading onto Collins and hailing a cab. I don’t know if he came after me and shouted my name: LENA, WAIT, or if it was just something I imagined through all the tumbling chaos inside my head.
The cab driver, Latino, a cross dangling from his mirror and statuettes of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on either side of his dash, smiled at me in something resembling pity. I remained silent as the cab sliced through the flooded streets.
When I got back home I couldn’t stop thinking about Jerry. The good times; when he and I were untouchable. I started crying. I emailed Mom and then stayed online to order a chorizo thin-crust pizza and a whole Key lime pie. The migraine pressure abated as I looked at Cute Overload and the food was delivered about forty minutes later. I settled on the couch, put the TV on: a film where Al Pacino was a Hollywood movie director, concealing from the world that the leading starlet, whom he discovered, is really a computer-generated program. I looked at the pizza, its oils staining the cardboard box, those red slices of chorizo vividly clashing with the molten cheese they sat embedded in. Then I focused on the pie in the plastic container, anticipating that wonderful rush of blade-sharp citrus tang in every bite. But first the pizza. One slice of each, then into the refrigerator with the rest. A treat that would last all week.
Pacino’s character was using the computer-generated starlet to get back with his ex-wife, who is played by that lovely actress Catherine Keener. She who has never, ever been, and never, ever will be, a single pound overweight in her life.
Then the end credits came up, tearing me out of my trance. I looked at the empty packaging on the floor in front of me. All the food was gone. The burning clench of fear inside my chest, as tears ran down my face. I calculated the calories and wailed in my pain.
My initial impulse was to go to the bathroom and force myself to puke it all up. Instead I headed to my studio to try and work through it, like Lucy suggested. I was outside fiddling frantically with the key in the lock, desperately trying to take myself into another place where I could forget about what I’d just done, when there was a horrible stinging pain in my buttock, like some kind of bug had bitten me!
I hobbled back inside in agony, and lay face down on the couch, deluged in my tears of despair. My cell started to vibrate: it was Lucy. I told her what had happened (the bite, not the food) and she said she would come right over. I forced myself up and hid the empty boxes under my bed as I knew she’d go through every cupboard. I had to do those Morning Pages, which actually made me feel better. Then I switched on the treadmill I’d set up in the living room, and even though my backside was still stinging, I started to walk.
I ROSE EARLY
and bundled the Total Gym into the back of the car. Morning was the MMMA and some kickboxing with two stressed-out bulldyke parole officers whose patch includes Little Haiti.
Sacré bleu!
Then lunch at Whole Paycheck, a spinach wheat lasagne nestling on a bed of more spinach; no more than five hundred cal struck up on the iPhone’s Lifemap app. Then off to the erroneously named Bodysculpt to meet with Lena Sorenson.
Sorenson weighed in at 197.5. And yes, it was on the official scale. But it’s still far too slow. The way she squealed with delight that she was under two hundred just irritated the fuck out of me. I decided that I was going to cardio her ass and burn shit off her. I started her on the elliptical, and doing a 4 × 15-minute workout, increasing the resistance level from 8 to 10 to 12 to 14. Then as Miles ambles in, flashing that easy smile which initially passes off as cool, until you realize the guy is just, well, a little dim, I switch Sorenson onto a treadmill, set at 6 mph.
After some stretching, Miles climbs on the machine next to hers. Sorenson turned as he greeted her with a nod and a grin. He made some cheesy remark I couldn’t catch. Sorenson responded with a tentative smile, but she wasn’t a happy camper. Not only was I working her at increased gradient, I commanded her to go flat out every fourth minute, for one solid minute. — I’m trying to boot up your metabolism.
She responded with the recalcitrant sulk of the fat loser. It cuts no ice.
You do as I say, for I am the higher power, I am the bod god and you will submit before me . . .
For the last five minutes, I ramped it up to ten, asking her to go flat out for the last two. As she gasped toward the end of the session, I pointed to the calorie counter. — Seven hundred and twenty-two!
That’s
what I need from you.
That’s
what you have to bring me!
She shakily returned my offered up high five and repaired, sweating and gasping, to the juice bar for a carrot-and-broccoli concoction. Then Miles, towel slung around his shoulders, sauntered across to her, and I heard him say, — You seemed to be putting a lot in today.
And then my nice little old Jewish lady, Sophia Rosenbaum, arrived. Sophia has recently lost her husband. It’s taken her a long time to come out and start doing things. So I gave her a mild workout on the cycle to protect a knee already pulped to floating shards of bone and slivers of cartilage by the ravages of time. I listened to her tales of children and grandchildren in faraway places, all the time spying on Miles and Sorenson.
And yes, after vanishing for her shower, Lena comes over all candy-assed, to get my approval to leave with Miles, who is waiting by the door, himself showered, wet hair combed back, teeth hanging out to dry. Approve? If only the dumbass little fuck knew that I’d just set her up to have the shit banged out of her! I get back to Sophia as they sneak off out the club.
After putting Sophia through her paces and having an iced tea with her, I picked up the keys for Mom and Lieb’s downtown rabbit hutch, then headed over there. From the top floor I looked out and down. On one side I could see Interstate 95 with cars streaming along it, but the sidewalks were empty. Yes, you can work out here, and in total privacy, so I went back downstairs and hauled the Total Gym out the trunk of the Caddy and into the elevator, setting it up in Mom’s apartment. Then I went to the gym next door, realizing that the treadmills are on a set of wheels you can lower by use of a foot pedal. I pushed one of them through to the apartment. Not cool, but hey-ho, I was only borrowing it. Looking up at the steel beam overhead, I did a little pole dance, stripper-style, on one of the support pillars, which is scaffolding width, locking my legs around it, supporting my own weight easily as I hung upside down, letting the blood rush to my head. Trying to imagine the likes of Sorensen doing that! I then had a decent workout, while watching the sky change behind all the deserted apartment blocks around me.
By early evening I got to the MMMA, and a session in the ring, practicing combos on the pads with Emilio. If Bodysculpt is a pristine nightclub, then the MMMA is a sweat factory. At the bank of machines, the sound of strained grunts over the crash of metal-on-metal evoke a shithouse for the chronically constipated, housed in some shabby railroad goods yard. This is intensified by the fuck-you-in-the-ass blare of the boxing rounds signal with its authoritative green-amber-red glow sequence. Across the other side of the hangar, groups of boxers pummel their bags in combos barked out by the instructor, above the pounding insistence of urban hip hop.
Emilio and I have a bond; both warriors, yes, and both almost but not quite good enough. Whatever anybody says, there are winners and there are the rest. Second is as good as last. I hit my wall back in 2007 at the Marriott Orlando World Center, when I lost my last chance to become a World Muay Thai Champion. I’d made the semifinal in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the previous year, but ran across an unyielding bull of a chick, whom I can’t bring myself to name, but who looked like Marvin Hagler in a leotard, with faster, heavier hands and feet. I met her again the next year. I’d trained like a mofo and I was at my peak for the rematch. Once again, I fought gamely, but that animal dyke majored in the hurt business and kicked like a fucking mule. It’s not good for the soul to dwell on two bad defeats, so all I’ll say is that I realized I was never going to get past that bitch, who was almost four years younger than me. Competitive career over.
Emilio gets it. There’s a great shot of him on the canvas after being knocked out for the first time. It’s obviously not on display here, but I’ve seen it, and I can relate. It’s that what-the-fuck-just-happened expression; not so much fear, but that slow, sad dawning of the recognition that you’ve just run into your own limitations, as his executioner strutted above him. But I love Emilio’s balls; he’d opted for a warrior pro strike pad rather than full shield, which meant he had to be quick to protect himself from the combos he shouted at me to execute. His nostrils flared, with his face set in blazing concentration, as I unleashed a series of blows and kicks at him.
When we wound up, I had my first session with Annette Cushing, who impressively maintained her composure as she entered the cavernous building. Most Bodysculpt clients would never have made it through those doors. I took her over to one of the heavy bags, and showed her how to wrap her hands. Then we had a good fifteen-minute warm-up, before I demonstrated the basic fighting stance and steps. I had her shadowboxing in the mirror with me for ten. Then I showed her the range of blows and kicks on the bags, working her up to high intensity, only stopping to refine her technique. We finished with some abdominal conditioning exercises and stretching out. Annette was drained, the sweat bursting from her. And also as high as a crack whore with a winning lotto ticket in her purse. — I’ve never had a workout like that before, Lucy. It’s the whole package!
Music to my ears, as I knew Mona, with her femme-girl Pilates, would be livid. So all good. We arranged another appointment before Grace Carillo came in and we trained together on the weights and bar.
Showering afterward, I tried not to think of Grace’s pussy (shaved, I imagined, with the shocking-pink interior spread open, contrasting nicely with the ebony skin), then went for a juice with Emilio before heading off.
So I get back home, there are no photographers or journos in sight, and I try to get into
The Biggest Loser
repeats (sometimes Bob and Jillian have the patience of saints) but kept wondering about Miles and if he’s fucking Sorenson.
I get the vibrator out, hellbent on pussy satiation but, frustratingly, I’m too distracted to get into it. Even for
Terminator 2
, perennially in my DVD player, which is the finest film ever fucking made, and one of the best feminist movies of all time. Forget the shrivel-dicked steroid monster; Linda Hamilton is the epitome of demented, badass cool. That anorexic fake-assed bitch who replaced Hamilton in the Connor role for the TV series: no fucking way, man. Those puny limbs never hauled that body up on an overhead bar. Notice how the pull-ups and chin-ups are never done in long shot. Give us a fucking break, broadcasters!