Miranda July - The First Bad Man

Suzanne sighed. “She takes after Carl’s mother — not a ton up here.” She tapped her forehead. For an uncomfortable moment I felt almost protective of Clee.

“She’s more instinctual,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “But thank you. Carl and I are thinking of some way to repay you. Not — I don’t mean money.”

HER COWLIKE VACUOUSNESS DIDN’T REALLYbother me anymore. Or it didn’t matter — her personality was just a little piece of parsley decorating warm tawny haunches. Clee was bouncing up and down on Phillip’s stiff member every day, many times a day, and at first it seemed he would never get tired of creaming in her puss winged by the dark blond pubic hair. But now, ten days later, I had a problem. He wanted it just as much, even more, but it took longer and longer to get there — sometimes as many as thirty minutes. Sometimes never. I tried unusual positions, new locations. One fantasy involved Ruth-Anne observing the intercourse, admiring and applauding with clinical approval. It was so unlikely that it worked, for a short time. But the smallest thing could stymie Phillip’s release.

Clee’s foot smell. Before it was the least of my problems; now it was a real turnoff. Phillip sometimes put plastic bags on her feet, trapping in the smell with rubber bands just so he could become stiff.

Cream in my puss , she begged. In me! In me! her puss whined, through aching mushy lips.

Not until you get your feet taken care of , he barked. I know a chromotherapist who specializes in this, best on the west side. Tell him I sent you.

I waited for a neutral moment to bring it up, then I plopped down on the arm of the couch. She was slurping ramen from a cup.

“Good stuff?” She stopped eating and frowned distrustfully. We hadn’t exchanged unscripted dialogue since Kate’s visit. “First of all: peace. Okay?”

She furrowed her brow and looked at the V my fingers were making. I had no idea what I was doing.

“Okay,” I continued. “We live together, we are sometimes… physically close?” My voice rose to a question here; it was an insane thing to say given that I plowed her many times a day as Phillip. But I meant the fight scenarios. She nodded, putting her soup down. She was listening with an almost disconcerting level of attentiveness. I fingered the Post-it in my back pocket.

“Look, I don’t want to be too forward here, or say something that you’re going to take offense to.” Clee shook her head like No, no, I won’t be offended .

“I can speak candidly, then?”

She actually laughed, and her mouth broke into a smile, a real smile. I’d never seen that before. Her teeth were huge.

“I’ve been hoping that you would,” she said, now pressing her lips together as if there was an ocean of other smiles and more laughter on the other side and she was trying to hold it back for just a few more seconds. She nodded for me to go ahead, to say it.

My hand had been waiting for its cue and I watched with a distant horror as it came forward with the Post-it. She peeled it off my palm and studied Dr. Broyard’s address and the date of my appointment with soft, quizzical eyes. Thursday, June 19, tomorrow. There was nothing to do but continue with the plan.

“The situation with your feet — the odor, I mean—”

I’d never seen a face change shape like that. It dropped: every feature fell. I hurried on.

“My friend Phillip swears by Dr. Broyard for athlete’s foot. When you get there, tell the receptionist I sent you — I’m giving you my appointment.” I pointed at the paper.

Now her face was red, about to explode. Her eyes were watering. Then she took a breath and all at once she was perfectly calm. More than calm — blank.

THE LAST THING I EXPECTEDwas that she would go. But Friday morning there was a sundrop crystal hanging from the lock on the bathroom window and a tiny glass bottle next to her toothbrush. WHITE. Was that even a color? But I could see it just looking at the back of her blond head; she was subtly but utterly different. It was impossible to put a name on it. Not happier or sadder or less foul-smelling. Just whiter. Paler. I couldn’t wait for therapy; Ruth-Anne had actually seen her now. Which maybe was the whole point.

I leaned back in the leather couch. “So. What did you think of Clee?”

“She seemed young.”

I nodded encouragingly. Ideally she would say “shapely” or “curvaceous” in a clinically approving way. But Ruth-Anne seemed finished with her appraisal.

“Would you say she’s what you pictured?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Any man would become stiff looking at her, right?” I had hoped I would be brave enough to use one of Phillip’s words in front of Ruth-Anne, and I was. It was working; my groin felt warm and full of cream. As soon as I got home I would use the Ruth-Anne — watching fantasy.

Suddenly Ruth-Anne stood up.

“No,” she barked, slapping her hands together violently. “Stop immediately.”

My blood went cold. “What? What?”

She crossed her arms, walked once around her chair, then sat again.

“ Not okay. Not okay to do with me. Okay with Phillip, okay with a janitor, or a fireman or a waiter. Not okay with me.”

She was talking to me like I didn’t understand English. I felt like a gorilla. My finger went to my eye; maybe she had made me cry. No, she hadn’t.

“I don’t want to be a part of it.” Her voice was a little softer now; she gestured toward the window. “There’s a whole world of people you can use, but not me. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Sorry.”

MY EMBARRASSMENT SHADED THE RESTof the morning. I tried to involve a pair of her thong underwear but it only made things worse, my fingers became clumsy and pruned as Phillip pounded away. We gave up. I tried to work. I took a shower. Because of Clee’s long hairs the drain had gradually become clogged to the point that the water filled the stall like a tub and I had to hurry to finish before it overflowed. Clee came home and put on her labia-revealing boxer shorts. I was furious and the bathroom was a mess and I was always stiff but could no longer achieve cream.

I called the plumber. Hurry, I said. We are completely clogged up over here. He was a chubby Latino man with no chin and eyes that grew sluggish at the sight of the juggy woman on the couch. I couldn’t even wait; I gestured toward the shower as I hurried to my room. “Knock when you’re done.” It was better than Ruth-Anne; it was like the first time with Phillip. The plumber’s eyes were wide with amazement when she entered the bathroom with her shirt off. He wasn’t sure at first, he didn’t want to get in trouble. But she begged and tugged at the wide, matronly front of his pants. In the end he was not as polite as he seemed. No sirree. He had quite a bit of pent-up rage, possibly from racial injustice and immigration issues, and he worked through all of it. Then he fixed the drain and to test it they did mutual soaping. The repair was two hundred dollars. I showed Clee the mesh hair-catcher and how to empty it; she looked right past me. Was she still mad about the foot thing? I didn’t have time to wonder; there was suddenly so much to do.

A thin, nerdy lad I saw in Whole Foods: Clee followed him out to his car, begged him to let her hold his stiff member for one to two minutes. An Indian father who politely asked me directions with his shy wife in tow: Clee rubbed her puss all over his body and forced stiffness out of him, he was whining in ecstasy when his wife walked in. Too nervous to say anything, she waited silently until her husband creamed on Clee’s jugs. Old grandfathers who hadn’t had sex in years, virginal teenage boys named Colin, homeless men riddled with hepatitis. And then every man I had ever known. All my teachers K through twelve and college, my first landlord, all my male relatives, my dentist, my father, George Washington so hard his wig slipped off. I tried to work Phillip in here and there, for example, inviting him to enter her from behind while I was an old man in her mouth — but this was just out of guilt, it didn’t really add anything. Perhaps we were both sowing our wild oats. Or maybe Kirsten, being real, outweighed my hordes of imaginary men. Mostly I was too busy for guilt; there was almost no time that I wasn’t rubbing myself. The postman delivered a box and before I could open it Clee had to unzip his government-issued pants; I helped him push his little nub into her. The penises were getting more abstract and unlikely — I couldn’t rein them in. Some were slightly pronged, some pointed and willowy at the end like a wild yam, or serrated like a fleshy pinecone. I took the box into the kitchen and opened it with a butter knife. What could it be, what could it be? Right as I pushed my hand through the flaps I realized, with horror, what it was. Rick’s snails. One hundred of them, all with their butts high in the air. They crawled upon broken pieces of each other, watery yellow guts smeared on brown shells. The inside of the box was thickly encrusted with layers of snails moving over each other, hundreds of blindly reaching antennae, and the smell — a rotten tang. My phone was ringing.