Nude Men (14 page)

I
f her head were perched on the body of a child, her face would not seem particularly innocent. But perched on the body of a woman, it looks like the face of a newborn.

“I
f the word is ‘ugly,’ meaning that you are, or you think you are, ugly, the solution is
uh, glee,
meaning that you must try to be gleeful and you’ll seem more attractive to people. The
uh
just means that the solution is not obvious.”

I
feel comfortable with her, just as she feels comfortable with me, because we are both freaks. I’ve noticed, these past few weeks, that I depend heavily on her affection, for emotional support, when I’m depressed. When everything in my life seems to be going badly, I have one consoling thought: “At least Sara loves me.”

I
sense that in a way she is vulnerable, that she is uncomfortable and embarrassed about her body. I want to console and protect her.

T
onight, like last night, Mom goes to bed and Sara comes to my room and talks for two and a half hours. She makes me sing songs in French from the
Donkey Skin
movie, and in between the songs, sometimes even in the middle of the songs, she suddenly says, “I want you to like me, and I want you to love me.” We sing
Donkey Skin
some more, and then I go out on the balcony to get some air. When I come back in, she climbs up on my knees, for the hundredth time since I’ve known her. She kisses my cheek, lays her head on my shoulder, and whispers near my ear, “You are a little boy in the body of a man. I am a woman in the body of a little girl. We are perfect for each other.”

She got that wrong. She’s a little girl in the body of a woman. I swear to God. Her body is the body of a woman. In fact, so is her inside, I mean her soul. Her soul is a woman, not a little girl. She is a woman in the body of a woman.

She plops down on the bed and says, matter-of-factly, “My mother took me to the doctor a few weeks ago to get a vaccination and a checkup. I took off my clothes and put them on a chair. The doctor picked up my panties, which were lying on the chair with my other clothes, and brought them to my mom and said, ‘Her panties are soaking wet. She’s ready.’ ”

I look at her, open-mouthed, thinking: Huh, I didn’t know doctors did that. The world really isn’t as I had imagined. I got it all wrong.

Then Sara says, “I’m only kidding. That was just a dream I had. A really awful and embarrassing dream.”

She climbs back on my knees and whispers in my ear, “Eighteen to thirty-six, fifty to sixty-eight, seventy-two to ninety. Do you know what these numbers are?” And before I can answer, she says, “They are the difference in our ages. I calculated them all. There’s not such a big difference at all. Eleven to twenty-nine is the only one that seems big, but it’s only an illusion.”

I stare at her, paralyzed, not knowing what to do, not even able to wonder what to do. I feel like an object without the power of thought. Finally, a clear thought comes into my head, and I say, “You should get interested in boys your own age.”

“What I’m talking about is a little more than ‘interested,’ ” she says.

“Well, whatever, then, but do it with someone your own age.”

“I love boys my own age, but in a different way.”

“In what way?”

“Oh... I would like to kiss them.”

I don’t dare ask her how she loves
me,
so I ask, “Why don’t you, then?”

“I don’t have the guts.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You
don’t
?”

She catches my meaning, smiles, and tries to explain. “I admire them too much. They make me shy.”

“I’m sure you don’t mean all of them. You mean one, right?”

“I guess.”

A moment later, she says, “When I’m at home, in my room, I sometimes wish a man, a stranger, would come and make love to me. He is not you, but that doesn’t matter.”

“Is he one of your mother’s nude models?”

“He could be, or he could not be. In my mind I think he mostly comes from the outside.”

I am silent while I think this over.

Then she says, “I’m not in love with you. I don’t admire you. Do you mind?”

“No, I’m delighted.”

“But I love you like a best friend I don’t respect, a best friend I feel sorry for.”

Ow. Terribly insulted. Hurt feelings. She’s not very nice, but I don’t feel it would be proper for me to express my pain, under the circumstances. The circumstances being her advances toward me, most of the time. I’m surprised that such a young girl can play with my mind, and hurt me, as successfully as a woman three times her age.

She finally goes to her room. She calls me on the phone. “Can you please come to my room?” she says.

“Why?”

“I want you to show me how to turn on the TV.”

“It’s very simple.”

“No; I can’t figure it out.”

I sigh. “Okay.” I hang up and leave my room.

I am staring at my bare feet, which are pounding the carpeted hallway, and I think to myself: I will be immensely surprised if there isn’t a little plot simmering behind her request.

I open her door. She is standing in the middle of her room, kissing the hairy porter. She even has her arms around him. She’s kissing him on the mouth, looking at me.

My first instinct, when I see them, is to say, “Oh, excuse me,” back out of the room, and close the door. But I don’t. I just stand there. The porter pulls away from Sara, frowning, and rushes out.

I notice the TV is on.

“Your TV is on,” I tell her.

“He showed me,” she says.

I leave without saying anything.

I
n the morning we do the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. We pass a store that can put your picture on the cover of a magazine. We don’t really want to do it, but then I see that they have
Screen
magazine as one of the choices, and I decide we simply must do it. So we all three have our picture taken, and they put it on the cover. The picture is horribly ugly of me and not so good of my mom, but it’s great of Sara. She’s giving me a kiss on one cheek, and my mother is giving me a kiss on my other cheek. Next to our faces it says “Hot Stuff.” Mom wants me to tear up the picture, but Sara says she wants to keep it as a souvenir for her mother. To this I object energetically. I don’t want darling Lady Henrietta to see that monstrous picture of me. But Sara wins. We let her keep it.

I
f she did nothing, I would have no desire for her. But it’s her behavior. She’s so seductive. And I feel she loves me, with a strange and deep affection. She may say that she’s not in love with me, and I guess I believe her. It doesn’t make me feel good; not that I want her to be in love with me, but the fact that she says it hurts me. It reinforces my inferiority complex, the idea that no woman could be in love with me, no woman could find me attractive. I act too insecure, meek, cowardly, nerdy, effeminate, petty, mediocre intelligence, no sense of humor, immature, uptight. But I feel she loves me because she feels sooo comfortable with me and is sooo unintimidated by me, because she has sooo little admiration for me. Nevertheless, she loves me. I am her best friend. And I am grateful for her love. It’s something I have not had, and have missed.

M
y mother goes back to the hotel after lunch. She’s had enough of Disney World, and the lines, and the men, and Sara’s word games.

S
ara tells me she wants to go to a seed auction.

“What?” I ask her.

“Yes, I really want to do that.”

“But what is it, and where do they have one?”

“It
is
what it
sounds like.
And the closest thing to it they have here, I think, is a shop where they sell seeds and nuts and things. They have one in Wonders of Life.”

So we go to the seed shop. She buys some seeds. Then she says she wants to see the ducks.

“What ducks?” I ask her.

“I don’t know. Just ducks. I think I saw some on a pond somewhere.”

We wander around and come upon some ducks on a pond. Sara picks up a rock and throws it at the ducks. They fly away.

“That’s not nice!” I tell her. “Why did you do that?”

“I must see duck shun.”

She must see duck shun. I don’t even bother asking her why she must see it. She’s just being eccentric, trying to seem mysterious. Just let her be. She must see duck shun. And what else, may I ask? Really!

And then, of course, I get it.

And then I understand the other one as well, the seed auction.

On our way back to the hotel, she sucks on something endlessly and loudly, as though she wants me to ask her what she is sucking on.

“What are you sucking on?” I ask her.

“Seeds.” She sticks out her tongue. Two little sunflower seeds are lying on it.

“Why are you sucking them?”

“Figure it out yourself.”

She’s sucking seeds. I’m not getting anything.

Seeds are sucked. Make it simpler.

She sucks seeds.

Succeeds.

W
e have dinner with my mom at the Coral Reef restaurant in The Living Seas. There are four big glass panels on one side of the room, through which one can see sharks, a swordfish, stingrays, a jewfish (which is huge: it’s sort of a grouper), and many smaller fishes.

Mom is in a slightly better mood, but all we talk about are the fishes in the aquarium, and pet fishes in general, and my girlfriend Charlotte’s dead goldfish, the one I gave her, Al.

I
hope Sara will not come to my room tonight. I don’t want to see her. As I am thinking this, there is a knock on the door. Maybe it’s my mother. I have never been so happy at the thought that maybe a knock on my door is from my mother paying me a surprise visit.

“Who is it?” I ask softly, standing a few feet away from the door, because I don’t want to be near, or touching, something that Sara might be near, or touching.

“It’s me,” answers Sara in a singsong voice.

“What do you want?”

“Open the door.”

“I’m very tired. I was already falling asleep.”

“Aw, come on. I have a surprise.”

I bet I know what it is. I bet she bought me a pair of shorts and she’ll request that I try them on in front of her.

“I really don’t feel well right now,” I tell her.

“I don’t either. I can’t fall asleep, so I just want to chat for a few minutes, and then I’ll be sleepy.” She begs, just like my mother when she pays me surprise visits in the city.

“Are you sure you can’t just read or something?” I ask.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

I open the door with dread. She walks in, wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe.

“I was only joking,” she says. “I don’t have a surprise. I just wanted you to open the door.”

She takes off her bathrobe and drops it on the floor. She is naked.

I clutch the closet, to prevent myself from dropping to the floor like her bathrobe. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m hot. Don’t mind me.”

She lies down on my bed, turns on the radio, and starts flipping through the hotel Bible restlessly, to the beat of the music, like a metronome. It’s classical.

I pick up her bathrobe and throw it over her. “Please put this back on or get out of my room. You should not show yourself naked in front of me.”

She kicks off the robe. “Why? I’m only a little girl. Children are allowed to be naked. You look so funny when you try to be harsh.”

“You’re not going to put it back on?”

“No, I’m not. I’m hot.”

“And you’re not going to leave?”

“No. I want to chat. I can’t fall asleep.”

I suddenly get a very clever idea, which I am very proud of. I am gloating at how it will disappoint her, and there will be nothing she’ll be able to do about it. I open a drawer and take out one of my long black socks. I walk to the chair by the window, grinning, not looking at Sara, though I can see from the corner of my eye that she is following my movements, probably with curiosity. I sit on the chair and tie the sock around my head, over my eyes. I wonder if she will voice her disappointment or hide it.

“You’re very prudish, you know, Jeremy?” she says.

“That’s nice. Otherwise what’s new?”

“Nothing is new.”

“That’s too bad. So what did you want to chat about?”

I hear her slam the Bible down on the night table. Now that I am blindfolded, I remember the body that I saw, and I look at it in my mind. I cannot take my eyes off it. It is the most flawless and beautiful body I have ever seen.