Slut Lullabies (9 page)

But when the Rebel Sister (now the Band Sister) was eighteen, and the Mother and the Father sold their pretty house to move to Long Island and live among the Jews, the Sisters could not believe the Mother had won. The new condo had only one extra bedroom, utilized as an exercise room. In Madison and Minneapolis respectively, the Sisters cried for days.

After the Boyfriend dumped her and she became Unstable, the Beautiful Woman acquired a reputation among off-campus Jewish Frat Boys as a Blow Job Queen. For months her Girlfriends, including the Intelligent Woman, strove to keep this hurtful gossip from her, but when news inevitably trickled her way (actually, one of the five guys who lived above Taco Bell on State Street, all of whom she'd blown, told her in an effort to make her leave his apartment so he could study), the Beautiful Woman was secretly proud.

In the fluorescent lights of the cruise ship bathroom, amid giddy tales of simultaneous copulation, the Intelligent Woman glimpses old acne scars embedded along the sides of her own face, like somebody took a smooth, clean picture of the Beautiful Woman and crumpled it up tight then left it there, ravaged under the glare.

And some things—like hearing that a woman who does not receive roses has no right to an opinion in this world—are things you never get over. Even when you receive your own roses, along with diamond earrings and a Victorian house and a Baby From China and everybody seems to respect you more than the person who made that Statement to begin with. You still don't.

The Intelligent Woman's Husband turns to her and says, Aren't you going to take your top off? You're always dying to take off your top. She looks at him, so pale in the sun, his laboratory-hidden body nearly transparent, the way it looks when he's working naked in the morning after his shower, bathed in computer-glow. He has been with her on many a foreign beach—they met in France, for God's sake!—and in addition has fucked her enough times in enough ways to know that, though she is not Beautiful and knows it, she is nonetheless an exhibitionist. She cannot fool him. He stares, waiting.

(It has not occurred to the Intelligent Man that his Wife may realize he has a hankering to see the Beautiful Woman's juicy C—maybe D?—cuppers. He is too consumed by calculating that the Beautiful Woman, by far a more timid woman than his bold Wife, will only disrobe if his Wife does so first.)

The Intelligent Woman watches her Husband's eager, glowing body. Once, when she had to get an MRI for her bladder and found herself unexpectedly claustrophobic, the Intelligent Man sat in a folding chair at her feet and held her toes comfortingly until the procedure was over. Every night in their shared bed he spoons her body and breathes into her hair, and she knows her curls tickle his nose but he stays in this position anyway until she falls asleep, and neither of them call it un-Feminist. She finds that she does not want to disappoint him—hasn't he, in a sense, earned this stupid pleasure?

Men: they are like children. What can you do?

There was a period of time during which the Intelligent Woman lived in a rural college town out East, and the Beautiful Woman lived in Texas. This was shortly after college; both had relocated in order to be with men. The Intelligent Woman's Intelligent Boyfriend (now Husband) was pursuing his Ph.D., and the Intelligent Woman made ends meet by waitressing, and for fun answered calls on a battered women's hotline. The Beautiful Woman, meanwhile, lived with a Former Drug Dealer who was a college drop-out, worked at a gay bar, and liked to Rollerblade through the city. The Former Drug Dealer had given the Beautiful Woman her first orgasm, so naturally she was putty in his hands. At night she waited up for him at his mother's house (where they both lived) and when he returned, keyed up from all the Hot Men who wanted to convert him, they had the most amazing sex she would ever experience. By day, the Former Drug Dealer still would not go back to college, would not seek a proper job, and dropped acid before Rollerblading between speeding cars—all of which became subjects of many fights.

A Mutual College Friend who also lived in Texas (but had been born there so it was less her fault), wrote to the Intelligent Woman up East: I think that druggie is smacking her around. The Intelligent Woman was shocked. Here her friend, the Beautiful Woman whom all the Frat Boys had so pursued (the Blowjob Queen phenomenon temporarily skipped her mind), was letting herself be beaten by some Rollerblading, non-Jewish Texan! One evening when the hotline was slow, the Intelligent Woman drafted a six-page letter to the Beautiful Woman. It read, in part: You have always suffered from low self-esteem—look at how you let that ugly little Guido kiss you in Ft. Lauderdale even though you knew he was gross—but you have to get out of this relationship and learn to love yourself, because batterers never change and no woman deserves to be hit even if you
have
totally given over all your power to this loser. You are a Beautiful Woman; is that how you want your life to be? That night, the Intelligent Woman went home and made love with her Intelligent Non-Abusive Boyfriend and fantasized about being tied up (at this time, the Intelligent Man had not yet worked up the nerve to actually act out such things), and felt smug that she had done a good deed.

In Texas, the Beautiful Woman read the letter and was embarrassed, not only because the Former Drug Dealer did in fact hit her on occasion but because she knew she
did
deserve it—she had once made such a scene at the bar that he'd had to have the bouncer remove her, all because she was convinced he was seeing another girl. He didn't even know any other girls! All he did was Rollerblade and work in a gay bar! Once, too, she had ripped his shirt, just as she had done to the Boyfriend on Bascom Hill back in college, only the Former Drug Dealer struggled right out of his shirt and ran away from her, and she chased him down the street screaming, I blow other guys all the time! Even though it wasn't true. The Beautiful Woman read the letter from the Intelligent Woman and thought how fortunate it must be to be so certain of one's own opinions and ethics and what one will tolerate and not tolerate and exactly what to say and do to draw the line. But when she thought about the Intelligent Woman's Intelligent Boyfriend, she knew she would never date him (though she might kiss him if he tried), because he was too
nice
and would want her to be her own person and do her own thing, and men like that made her tired, too tired to even contemplate, and not at all aroused.

So for the second time in the friendship between the Intelligent Woman and the Beautiful Woman, a silence ensued. This one lasted for six months, after which the Former Drug Dealer did actually cheat on her with a woman (go figure), and the Beautiful Woman allowed herself to be stolen away by an Australian Conservative, and she and her swell Aussie met up with the Intelligent Woman and her new Intelligent Husband to see the Miró exhibition in Manhattan, which the Intelligent Woman thought was miraculous and the Beautiful Woman thought was fine, but really not all that.

Speaking of battered women's agencies (which tend to be staffed by Lesbians, do they not?), at the same time as the Beautiful Woman and the Intelligent Woman were writing or not writing to one another from the Southwest and the East respectively, back in the Midwest the Fat Counselor was trying diligently to date chicks. The sex was OK, maybe even a little better than with men; it was the romance that posed a problem. Like sometimes, she and her Partner would be dressed in their loose black slacks and eating by candlelight at a Vegetarian Restaurant, and she would feel strangely as though she were at a dress rehearsal and things were going well enough, but the audience had not yet arrived.

Of course, the Fat Counselor had always been a little in love with the Intelligent Woman, but later, when she abandoned girls and began dating the Heavyset Man she would eventually marry, she readjusted that love to the sisterly kind, which is easier for women to do than men can possibly imagine.

The Heavyset Man may also be referred to as: the Theater Major, Grisly Adams, Nature Boy, the Heavy Drinker, the Red-Faced Man, Sensitive Man, and Man-Suffering-from-Impotence-in-Times-of-Stress.

The Aggressive Woman lives in Bogotá, Colombia, kidnapping capital of the world. Though South America is resplendent with men who physically resemble North American Guidos, she is still unmarried. Her Friends back home joke that if she were to be kidnapped, the Guerillas would pay a ransom just to have America take her back, and the Mormons she works with (Mormons in Colombia? Don't ask!) refer to her abrasive manners as Urban Humor in order to be kind.

Sometime after the cruise, let us say a year, the Intelligent Woman says to her Husband, Do you often get hard-ons for other women? And he says, No not at all. And she says, Even when we're on the beach and you see other women's bodies right there laid out in front of you? And he says, You mean like when (and says the Beautiful Woman's name) took off her top in Greece? And she, feigning shock, says, No I didn't mean
her—
you
better
not have had a hard-on then. And he says, Well I didn't. And she knows that is true because she checked, back on the beach, watched his azure trunks from behind her sunglasses, but so what? That's the lucky thing about being in one's thirties: the dick doesn't give as much away. Eroticism is in the mind anyway, she thinks, believing thirty-two is a wise age. The dick just has to calm down a little bit before men find out.

I always have a hard-on for you, the Intelligent Man adds (see, I told you he was Intelligent), and the Intelligent Woman, still playing dumb but enjoying it suddenly, says, Oooh. And they are both happy, though they do not have sex at that very moment because they are watching a documentary on A&E about Mao.

Remember those assumptions about Academics and sex? OK, so some of them are true.

In Rhodes, four Travelers lie on straw mats on rocky sand. Three are dark-skinned and blend in fairly well; the fourth, a man, is very light. One of the women sits up abruptly and looks around, then flicks off her bikini top and chucks it in the sand. She says to the darker-skinned man, Pass me some sunscreen, and he looks, registers no shock at seeing her tiny, baby-pink breasts staring back at him, and does as she commands. The pale man continues to lie on his back, sweaty T-shirt on to keep his Presbyterian skin from burning, eyes closed against the sun's glare.

Two mats away, on the other side of the darker man, the other woman sits up. Indeed, she might easily pass for Greek. She, too, pulls off her bikini top (hers must go over her head; it's a tank and somewhat awkward) and folds it neatly to lay it over her purse. She reclines again before requesting the lotion be passed to her, too.

The Intelligent Woman glances at the Beautiful Woman's breasts, which she has actually seen many times before. Yep, they are Something.

Within half an hour, the Macho Man wants to rent mopeds and tour the island, and the Intelligent Man, responding to his cue to follow as the Macho Man does when they are playing chess, says, Cool.

The women put their tops back on and off they go to sit on the backs of mopeds, arms around the solid trunks of their Husbands, hair flying in the wind. Envisioning the image each Couple will create riding, the Beautiful Woman, whose Husband is an avid Motorcyclist, is glad for the first time on the cruise to have the Husband she has.

Or maybe the Intelligent Woman only believes this.

Things to do on Twenty-Seventh Birthday:

1) Hit Louis Vuitton to get replacement foot for one that fell off tote

“Mmm, your skin's soft as silk.”

2) If I leave straight from here I can afford a cab
. . .

“Tell me what it feels like in there.”

3) But if I don't go home first, it'll be hours before I can check the mail

“Come on, baby, talk to me.”

4) Shit, say something
: “Mmm, yeah. Feels . . . full . . . good . . .”

Brent's climax hits abrupt and silent. Over his shoulder, through his bedroom window, Annette watches the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier inching its jerky rotation to nowhere. Brent's body rests upon hers, restraining the movement of her neck, blocking her view of the kitschy, touristy merriment, only for a moment. Then he is up, shaking his skin free of her, heading for the shower.

5) There are
some
phones in Ghana. Go home first, check mail and answering machine
. . .

Mid-step, Brent's eyes trail to the window and back to her breasts, which, in repose, have perhaps already started to roll a bit more toward her armpits than they did at twenty-six. His eyebrows gather. “Well, now I know how necrophilia feels. Thanks. Look, I'm leaving straight from work tonight, so . . .”

“Can't wait for another trip to the morgue?” Annette turns onto her side.

“Yeah, well, I hate to leave when I've got a stiff body right here at home . . .” He half-laughs. Then: “She's making me go, you know. I don't care how damned hot it is outside, the water will be freezing. You can't swim in March—what's the point?”

Annette sighs.

“Look, why don't you go to the gym today, get your nails done or something?” He turns back toward the bathroom. “Get a good night's rest. Cheer yourself up.”

As if she has another option. “Thanks for the advice.”

“This ain't no charity service, lady,” he growls with false jocularity, disappearing behind the door. “I expect to get what I'm paying for.”

Morning mimosas could be the answer. She should have told Brent it was her birthday—then there would be the two of them here, maybe a blue Tiffany's box tied with a billowy white bow, two plane tickets under her coffee saucer, roses on the breakfast table. Instead, there is only Annette lingering naked in Brent's bed chiding herself for being a bad lay, and worse, pathetic. She rises, hoping the champagne from last night isn't too flat to ruin the vibe she's striving for. Sometimes, something like this—an image of herself in her mind as a nude, sexy, mimosa-drinking woman on a rich man's leather sofa during business hours—is enough to replace whatever other ugly image has been dominant. She wishes Brent's city apartment had fresh-cut orchids or a grand piano or something romantic, but those touches are no doubt reserved for the real home he shares with his wife in Lake Forest. Still, this clubby, masculine atmosphere might work, too, in a different, more torrid way. She pirouettes toward the fridge.