I Take You (22 page)

On the next block, she stops and turns to me. “I think I’m in love with your father.”

I pull her along. We pass the open door of a quiet wine bar and peek inside. Soft jazz is playing. The padded leather stools are mostly empty.

“This place is super tasteful,” Freddy says. “Let’s leave.”

I drag her inside. The bartender wipes down the counter in front of us. “What are you ladies drinking?”

“The blood of our oppressors,” I say.

“Or absinthe,” Freddy says.

“Let’s recap,” I say. “My father is cheating on his current wife with his ex-wife, on whom he’s cheating with his other ex-wife. How is that possible?”

“Parents,” Freddy says. “They grow up so fast.”

What is Jane thinking? She’s married to a really nice guy (ancestry issues aside). Is she going to throw it all away for Dad, who cheated on her with her best friend? And what about poor Mom? She’s going to have her heart broken all over again.

Our drinks arrive. They taste awful, but soon I feel a comforting glow. My phone rings. It’s Henry. I ignore it. Freddy starts chatting up the girl on her right. I glance to my left. The seat is empty, which is a relief. I half expected to see the Ghost of Christmas Future sitting there, with his black cloak and skeletal hands and everything, saying, “Did you see what I saw back there? Were you paying attention? Because, sweetheart? That’s
you
.”

I pluck at Freddy’s sleeve. She turns to me. “How did you break off your engagements?” I ask.

She gives me a very loving look. She senses that I have finally made a decision.

“You can’t think about it too hard,” she tells me. “You just get it done. Walk in and say, ‘Will? It’s over. We’re wrong for each other.’ And then you leave. Quick and clean.”

“Doesn’t he deserve the truth?”

“The last thing that boy deserves,” she says gently, “is the truth.”

We order another round of drinks. My phone pings with a text:

—Please pick up your phone. We need to talk.

—this is yr daughter, fyi

—I know that!

—what the hell, henry? what are you doing?

—I’m afraid I don’t know how to explain it.

—try

—I ran into Jane last month in Aspen. She was looking so well. We had coffee. We spent the entire time talking about you.

—oh no. this ones not on me

—That’s not what I meant! These last few months have been very trying for me, darling. Trina’s been back and forth to Europe. You know I don’t like to be alone. I’m very dull company.

…

—:(

…

—I’m working it out. Truly I am.

…

—In the meantime, it would be very helpful to me if you didn’t say anything to anyone about this.

I think about that for a minute. Then I type:

—it would be very helpful to me if you bought me a jaguar convertible

Nothing for a minute. Then:

—Color?

—red pls!

—I’ll have Fitzwilliam take care of it on Monday.

I put away my phone. Freddy pokes me. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Anything,” I say.

“Loan me five hundred dollars.”

“You need a quickie abortion or something?”

“I need my own room. Nicole is bugging the hell out of me.”

“What is it now?”

“Honestly, Lily?” Freddy finishes her drink and gestures to the bartender. “I’m sick of how she talks about you. She doesn’t approve of you, fine, that’s her right, although I don’t get why she considers herself your friend. Regardless, it doesn’t justify the constant stream of nasty, passive-aggressive bullshit. This afternoon? She actually used the s-word.”

“Socialist?” I say.

“No.”

“Super special?”

“No.”

“Seismically sexy?”

“Slut, Lily. She called you a slut.”

New drinks arrive. I raise mine. “To Nicole. Truth teller extraordinaire.”

“Oh, no,” Freddy warns me. “You know we don’t use the s-word in this house.”

“I thought it was the c-word we didn’t like.”

“That too,” she says. “And depending on context, the b-word. But we definitely,
definitely
don’t like the s-word.”

I shrug. “It’s just a word.”

Freddy holds up her hands. “Whoa there, Nellie. It is not
just
a word, okay? It’s a vicious little judgment and sentence, especially when one woman uses it to describe another.”

“Let Nicole judge,” I say. “Let them all judge. I couldn’t care less.”

“You should care,” Freddy insists. “It’s not right. She wouldn’t judge you if you were a man.”

“It has nothing to do with whether I’m a man, and everything to do with whether Nicole is an asshole.”

“It’s both,” she says. “If you were a man, Nicole wouldn’t have the vocabulary to judge you. All the words for women who like casual sex are negative. All the words for men who like casual sex are positive.”

“That can’t be completely true.”

“Slut. Whore. Ho. Skank. Tramp. What else?” Freddy pauses. “Floozy. Hussy. Now we have to get kind of old-timey. Trollop. Strumpet.

Harlot. Can you come up with any positive terms—or even any neutral ones?”

I think about it. “No,” I admit.

“But men who sleep around? They’re Casanovas. Don Juans.”

“Romeos,” I say. “Lotharios.”

“See?” Freddy says. “Talk about a double standard. Men get Shakespeare, and women get the gutter.”

That’s when someone taps my arm. I turn to him. He has dark hair. Blue eyes. Hot as hell. He leans toward me and smiles confidentially.

“I’ve always been fond of the term ‘tart,’” he says. “It’s a bit pejorative, but not extraordinarily so.”

He’s British.

I fall deeply in love.

He holds out a hand. “I’m Ian.”

I take it. “I’m yours.”

Freddy eyes him. “He’s not the same one from Saturday night, is he?” I take his face in my hands and kiss him on the mouth. “Nope,” I say, breaking away at last. “He’s new.”

He smiles at me, a little dazed. “You took your time sorting that out.”

“It doesn’t do to be hasty in these matters, Ian.” I pound my fist on the bar. “My good Lloyd! A jeroboam of your finest whiskey!”

The bartender looks up from his phone. “What now?”

“Give me a bourbon,” I say. “This absinthe stuff is disgusting.”

“Make that two,” Freddy says.

“Make that four,” I say. “We’ve got lots to talk about with our new friend here.”

“Five, then,” Freddy says. “Because what about him?”

“Five,” I tell the bartender. “No, six.”

“Six?” Freddy says.

“Well, if we each get two, and then he …” I pause. “Wait.”

Freddy shakes her head. “Math.”

Soon there’s a row of glasses lined up in front of us. We each raise one. “To true love,” I propose. We all laugh bitterly and drink.

“Do you agree with my friend Freddy?” I ask Ian. “Has the English language judged me and condemned me?”

“Absolutely,” he replies, setting down his empty glass. “Language is a key part of the conspiracy, isn’t it?”

“The conspiracy?”

Ian picks up another bourbon. He holds up the glass and gazes appreciatively at the amber liquid inside. He takes a sip. “The conspiracy,” he says, drawing out the word, savoring it. “The grand conspiracy by which we all use sex to make each other utterly miserable.”

Freddy and I exchange a look.

I say, “I was under the impression that we use sex to make each other happy.”

“That’s the great genius of the conspiracy,” Ian says. “It hooks us with its promises of outrageously satisfying short-term pleasure. Long term? It completely fucks us over.”

“I’m not trying to make anyone miserable,” Freddy objects.

“Of course you’re not
trying
to,” he agrees. “That’s the even greater genius of the conspiracy. We are all part of it, all victims and perpetrators, even as we are entirely unaware that it exists.”

He picks up another bourbon. Freddy and I put our heads together. “He’s completely insane,” I whisper.

“I know!” she whispers back.

“I really want to sleep with him.”

“Me too.”

“But you’re gay!”

She looks offended. “Only most of the time!”

“You just want him because he reminds you of my father.”

“Pots and kettles, Lillian,” she warns me. “Pots and kettles.”

“Whatever,” I say. “We need to resolve this—he’s drinking all our bourbon.”

“Let’s flip a coin.”

She takes one out of her purse. I call heads.

I win!

I buy her three pink squirrels. “No hard feelings?”

She pats my arm. “Go get him, killer.”

Our glasses are empty. I order another round and turn back to Ian. “Tell me how it works, this little conspiracy of yours.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Do I detect a hint of skepticism?”

“I’m not a fan of grand explanatory theories,” I tell him. “But go ahead. Persuade me.”

He gets right down to it. “There’s a message, right? And the message is everywhere. Sex is bad. Sex is wrong. Sex kills. We hear it at church, from our parents, in school, from our doctors, from the news. The message is simple, uniform, consistent and pervasive.” He picks up another bourbon. “So what happens? We internalize the message, and we hold ourselves accountable to it, and we condemn anyone who thinks or acts or believes differently.”

“Hold on,” I say. “A pervasive message that sex is wrong? We live in a world that’s saturated with sex. Television, movies, Internet porn, tween pop stars. Hell, look around you.” I point out the open doorway to the revelers staggering by on Duval. “You’re sitting in Sexy Sexville, USA.”

Ian drains his glass. “Of course we’re surrounded by it. The conspiracy needs opposition to flourish. Disagreement sharpens the message. Seeing sex everywhere and thinking that everyone else is doing it and loving it, while we believe it to be shameful and wrong—yet all the while secretly still wanting it ourselves? That makes us all the more conflicted and tormented about it.”

I glance over to see what Freddy thinks of this. She’s talking to the girl next to her again. “I guess I never got the memo,” I tell Ian.

“Beg pardon?”

“I don’t think sex is bad.”

“Of course you do,” he replies. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?”

I place my glass on the bar and gaze at him coolly. “You were doing so well, Ian. Don’t piss me off now.”

“Just listen,” he says. “Men don’t have it easy. We’re taught that sex is wrong, but also that we’re selfish pigs helplessly in thrall to our dicks. If we try to restrain our baser instincts, we’re self-castrated weaklings. If we give them free rein, we’re vile rapists. The result? Misery. But for women, it’s far worse.”

“How so?”

He picks up another bourbon. “You have to be made to feel worse about sex than men, because whatever pleasure you derive from it must always be secondary to ours.”

“You don’t want us to enjoy it because you’re afraid of being cuckolded,” I say.

“I’m thinking of something far more elementary. If men actually had to worry about pleasing women, we’d be doomed. It would be curtains for us as a gender. Our penises would permanently shrivel up and retire to a Buddhist monastery in California.”

I laugh.

“I’m quite serious,” he says. “Not about the monastery, of course, but about everything else. Having to take responsibility for sexually satisfying a woman? That’s a terrifying prospect for the vast majority of men. Our solution? To make sure that your desire for satisfaction is extremely limited. So you are taught from the earliest age—even more than men—that sex is dirty and disagreeable and something that good girls don’t do. You’ve been persuaded that you want intimacy, stable relationships, children. You want sex only insofar as it provides you with those things. If you accept the message, you don’t enjoy sex that much. Result: misery. If you don’t accept the message, you’re branded a filthy nympho. Result: misery.” He clinks his glass against mine and smiles at me cheerfully. “Diabolical, isn’t it?”

Freddy pokes her head back into the conversation. “Thanks. We’d forgotten about ‘nympho.’ But what about us gays? How do we fit in?”

“You have your own set of problems,” he replies. “But fear not: the conspiracy is working hard to initiate you into the realm of comprehensive sexual dissatisfaction.” He raises a glass to her. “For example: welcome to matrimony.”

“Hang on,” I say. “This isn’t the Dark Ages. There are plenty of women out there who enjoy sex.”

“Yes, and they aid and abet the conspiracy,” he says. “Women who freely explore their sexuality, and take pleasure for pleasure’s sake? They exist to be punished and judged. More importantly, they’ve been contained. Explained. They’re as enslaved to the conspiracy as the rest of us. I take it you’re one of them. Therefore, you’re a slut, and others—men and women, especially women—will shame you to make you an example to others. You’re an affront to everything they’ve been taught and a reminder of everything they secretly want but won’t let themselves have. Which takes us back to your original point. Why are there no positive
words for a woman who happily, unashamedly screws around? We don’t need those words. We don’t want those words. We don’t want that woman to exist.”

He stops talking and picks up another drink. I look around. The bar is emptying out.

Like I said, I don’t care much for grand theories. I think they’re bullshit, by and large. Ian pretty much lost me as soon as he started talking about capital-W Woman. What Woman is. What Woman wants. What Woman is taught, and what She thinks, and how She feels. She’s such a convenient reduction. Such definitive proof of the validity of every crackpot theory. Such a pervasive justification for the staggering amounts of unfairness in the world.

Whatever. It’s late. Time to move on.

He’s finishing another drink. I lean close and put my hand on his arm. “Ian?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Let’s go make each other miserable.”

I say good-bye to Freddy, who’s so absorbed in her new friend she barely notices. Ian and I leave the bar and walk up Duval. We happen to be staying at the same hotel. Serendipity! We get into the elevator and he pushes me against the far wall. The doors close. He immediately kneels in front of me and lifts my dress. He yanks down my panties and puts his mouth on me. I feel his tongue push into me, his hot breath, his lips. I can barely stay upright. I close my eyes and bury my hands in his hair. And yes, this is happening in a hotel where I know probably eighty of the other guests—one of them my fiancé. At this moment, I couldn’t give a damn.