Jamie Callan - Talk About Sex - An Orientation

The answer is no. I do nothing more than sit on your bed and talk, and I am not going to tell you why I do what I do or if I have any plans to do more. But of course you might not care one iota whether I tell you what I do when I'm not here sitting on your bed. You may be the type who wants to tell me about what you do when I'm not sitting on your bed, you may be the type who wants to sit there for forty-five minutes and tell me all about your fantasies, how you really like the idea of you and two women together and how you like to imagine that I have a sister named Candy, who's still in high school even though she's nineteen and a half because she's been held back two years in a row as a result of an undiagnosed learning disability and a penchant for playing hooky. You may want to tell me how Candy's morals are skewed because she hasn't had much parental guidance and her father abused her, and that at fourteen she fell in love with Mr. Swann, her geometry teacher, and he began to explain an especially difficult proof one afternoon in the back of his eighth-grade classroom, and as it got to be about four o'clock and the room grew dimmer and dimmer, he noticed how Candy's delicate white ankles led up to a shapely calf, which led to a girlish knobby knee with a little flesh-colored Band-Aid pointing upward to Candy's supple thigh, which she crossed and uncrossed, and crossed and uncrossed, pressing her wool plaid skirt, the green and blue and yellow lines crisscrossing over and over again, creating a kind of geometrical pattern that rises and falls according to her breathing and the movement of her hands across her lap, and her hands across her lap, yes, resting right there, on top of her pubis, so soft and furry, you imagine that you-because you are now Mr. Swann, the geometry teacher, don't deny it-cannot help but lean forward and put your hand on top of Candy's and press it down, comforting her, saying, "There, there, now the Pythagorean theorem is not so very hard to grasp." And in that moment, your eyes meet and she leans forward, slowly closing her eyes, almost as if she has fallen asleep-suddenly decided to take a nap in the middle of your classroom, in the middle of the afternoon, because geometry is just so wearisome, and she falls into your arms, kissing you full on the mouth, and you, supporting her slender frame, kiss her back, and back, and back, and then her father walks into the room and says, "What the hell are you doing to my daughter?"

Hah! You didn't expect that, did you? I apologize, but I just couldn't help myself. Rule number seven-I have every right to start off telling a story about a menage a trois and then suddenly switch gears and tell a story about a geometry teacher getting brought up on sexual harassment charges and losing his job and being sent to prison, where all sorts of dreadful things happen, and if you'd like I'd be glad to tell you all about them in lurid detail. No extra charge for that.

Did I mention what rule number six is?

No? Oh, that's too bad.

Rule number six, then-you must never criticize anything I say or do. I think this bears repeating. You must never criticize anything I say or do. I know what I'm doing, and even if it seems like I've lost all control and I really should not be out talking about sex to strange men in hotel rooms, rather that I should be home in bed watching soap operas with all the doors and windows locked and a thick blanket wrapped around my body, and my psychotherapist's telephone number poised on redial, you must not say a word about it. You must behave as if everything is as it should be. Even if I were to suddenly begin sobbing in the middle of a story and tell you that someone in my family died this morning, someone quite close to me-my mother for instance. Even if I were to suddenly begin discussing how much I loved her and how I am completely lost without her, and how I am really psychopathically sad, and this whole sex-talk business is simply a reaction to a repressed childhood and an overbearing mother, and now that my mother has died I no longer feel the urgent need to rebel and I don't know why the hell I'm in your hotel room because it all seems so futile and idiotic, and just plain bad.

The main reason you are not allowed to criticize me is because I am extremely sensitive. I know I might not seem it, but the truth is, I am. It might seem unlikely to you that I go home and think about you and all my other clients, the millions of men I've seen in my many years of business, but in fact I do. I think about each and every one of you. I keep a file on you. I carry this file wherever I go. You probably want to know what I have in this file, but I'm not going to tell you. That would be breaking the rules. That's rule number nine, perhaps. I'm not sure. I'm losing track. But I will tell you a few of the things I keep on file about you. For instance, if you prefer domineering women, if you loved your mother too much, if you think all women are whores and that only your mother is truly good and pure and clean, and that if you keep yourself pure for her she will finally see your goodness and kiss you on your lips, take you to her bedroom-the one with all those pink woolen blankets and lace, and pictures of the children, the one with your father's ties hanging limply in the closet, smelling of the 9:07 p.m. train from Grand Central Station, the vanilla-scented bedroom where the secret of procreation is kept, the origins of your very own DNA, and there, there, finally knowing that you have been good, that you have saved that little corner of your brain, your heart, your soul for her alone, she will take you back to whence you came.

You see, I keep track of these things. Plus what's your favorite color, ice cream flavor. What your pet peeves are, whether you prefer blondes over brunettes, if you take cream in your coffee, if you've ever had a fantasy involving the laundromat and a millionaire businessman who walks in because he's lost, busy on his cell phone when he sees a young girl wearing only her underwear because that's all she's got and the rest of her clothes are in the dryer, and she lives in Santa Cruz, and you, movie mogul from Hollywood, think, wouldn't she be good in your next picture? So you eye her there, in the middle of the laundromat, sitting there on top of the vibrating Westinghouse Superspin in nothing but a pair of slightly tattered thong bikini underpants and a white lace bra that barely covers ample brown breasts straining to burst out of the thin latticework of fabric, and she smiles at you, whispering, "Hi, my name is Cherise. Would you like to know the ins and outs of doing your laundry here at the Suds and Gossip? Believe me, I know the ins and outs because I've been doing my laundry here since I was a little girl about seven years old, with my mom. She used to be this exotic dancer in San Francisco until she moved me and my three brothers and two sisters here to Santa Cruz. She said we'd have a healthier lifestyle, but now she's cut her hair, dyed it green, pierced her navel, and joined some weird religious cult."

You, movie mogul that you are, all the way from Hollywood, are not thinking about the Westinghouse or the spin cycles or the Fab with Fresh Lemon-Scented Borax, but instead you are concentrating on her thighs, so brown and firm, and her ass, perched there-just perched there-and how dry your mouth feels and her blond ponytail, all sun-bleached, and the tension growing in your belly, and how you could get her to Paramount Pictures, talk to her about a career, about how she would be beautiful on the screen, but what's the point really? It would be too much of an effort, and after all, here you are in the Suds and Gossip, and the universe is demanding that you seize the day, so you move to the table, lean against the folded, freshly washed shirts and faded work pants, jeans, and towels that belong to someone else who has gone across the street to the 7-Eleven to buy a pack of Camels and a Bud while the rest of his wash tumbles in the dryer. You lean against the table and suddenly find yourself in front of her, the brown girl with the ponytail, worshipping at the shrine between her legs, licking up the last juices of a ceremony you don't quite understand, while she pats your head and says, good boy, that's a good boy, although you are not sure whether she is saying good boy or good dog.

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