Unreliable Narrators
He bound my hair in his fist and swiveled my skull slowly in front of his face like he was examining a piece of merchandise. “Gorgeous,” he said to himself, his grip tugging at my roots. Our fucking would be intensely painful. The night before I’d been with another hung man and I was sure the sensation would make me pass out. I graded it an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, not knowing what a ten would be. It was the type of pain that lifts you out of a world where pain is not possible. Surrender pain. It would be two days before I’d get to my gynecologist. I had to ride it out.
Moments before, he compared me to a friend I’d introduced him to: “She’s very sweet, authentic. Not as calculating and guarded as you.”
“That’s why she needs me in her life,” I said, with a blade’s flash laugh. Even earlier, he’d gone on about what a difficult woman I would be to date, how impossible it must be for me to have any romantic relationships. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re not trying to date me then, isn’t it?” I replied.
“You’re just a overly cerebral princess who thinks she special,” he said, like that would hurt me. I don’t know how to take that assessment seriously from someone who pays to spend time with me. It doesn’t mean anything for him to insult me. Doesn’t hating the person you’re having sex with just mean you hate yourself?
“Oh, that’s a spirited blow job,” he would say later as he lay on the couch. “There’s some spirit! This is better than last time. You’re feeling competitive.” I’ve never had an inferiority complex about my oral abilities but I’d seen my friend quite literally suck the come out of men in under 90 seconds from first contact to final pull off. “She gives head like a stripper,” he told me. “They get really good at doing it quick. She’s a tornado.” I was dressed in the lingerie he’d bought hours before, stockings high on my thighs.
By the end of the day I actually liked him. He passed through vile to whatever comes after. Recognizable? I caught myself actually caring about what he was saying, about his equally horrible rich friends and the stupid girls who fuck him for free or at least for the dangled carrot of some new clothes and a paid-for flight to wherever he happens to be.
*
I love the limbo of airports when I’m there alone. It feels like a safe space, my private place. Once in Chicago, at 5am, the entire terminal was full of Navy, and from states away my best friend texted me that her husband was being sent back to war.
*
The photographer was the one who flirted. I’d never met him before until he took my pictures, and they were not very good so he promised me a second set and I actually got wet while he shot me the first time, which is such a cliche. I’d only worked with women or friends before, so I wasn’t used to someone murmuring “god, that’s sexy,” when I piked my ass in the air for the camera.
I hadn’t expected him to be attractive. There was something almost doggish about the lines around his mouth and somehow this slight resemblance to a pit bull worked with his gentleness. He dressed well. I trusted two things: 1) that he flattered most women shamelessly and 2) he still usually meant what he said. The second time was at his home and I don’t think he kissed me then though he did the first. We sat side by side as his kitchen table.
“When was the last time you had a boyfriend?” He asked.
And I said, “I don’t know how to answer that,” which was both honest and not honest, the only way I know how to be.
He emailed me later about the two of us going to see “Sleep No More” and I experienced a desire I didn’t think I would allow myself to satisfy, and it felt so sweet and so cruel. For a brief time, he felt like my secret, like a portrait in a heart locket against the bones of my chest. He was something to daydream on. I came more than once imagining him treating me meanly, in a way I doubt he ever would. I didn’t tell him my real name.
*
I finally decided I had to do something with my money. At my first bank, the man asked, “what are you saving this for, a house or…?” and I felt my body coil back a little as I snapped, “I’m not saving it for anything, it’s just money I don’t need to spend right now.” Unnecessarily angry at the mindset that money is meant to be spent, because of course it is but I somehow think of accruing as a value in itself. Gold for the gates of Heaven.
At the second bank, the woman beamed at me. “Good girl,” she kept saying. “Good girl. Keep saving.” She thought I was so responsible.
