Miranda July: The First Bad Man

THE REST OF THE WEEKglided by. Everything was fantastic and I forgave everyone, even Clee, not to her face. She was young! Over a standing-up lunch in the staff kitchen Jim assured me that young people these days were a lot more physically demonstrative than we had been; his niece, for example: very physical girl.

“They’re rough,” I said.

“They aren’t afraid to show their feelings,” he said.

“Which is maybe not such a good thing?” I suggested.

“Which is very healthy,” he said.

“In the long run, yes,” I said. “Perhaps.”

“They hug more,” he said. “More than we did.”

“Hug,” I said.

“Boys and girls hug, unromantically.”

The conclusion I came to — and it was important to come to a conclusion because you didn’t want these kinds of thoughts to just go on and on with no category and no conclusion — was that girls these days, when they weren’t hugging boys unromantically, were busy being generally aggressive. Whereas girls in my youth felt angry but directed it inward and cut themselves and became depressed, girls nowadays just went arrrrgh and pushed someone into a wall. Who could say which way was better? In the past the girl herself got hurt; now another unsuspecting, innocent person was hurt and the girl herself seemed to feel just fine. In terms of fairness maybe the past was a better time.

On Friday night I put on the pin-striped dress shirt again and a very small amount of taupe eye shadow. My hair looked great — a little Julie Andrews, a little Geraldine Ferraro. When Phillip honked I scooted through the living room, hoping to bypass Clee.

“C’mere,” she said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, eating a piece of white toast.

I pointed at the door.

“Come here.”

I went to her.

“What’s that noise?”

“My bracelets?” I said, shaking my wrist. I had put on a pair of clangy bracelets in case the men’s shirt made me look unfeminine. Her big hand closed around my arm and she slowly began squeezing it.

“You’re dressed up,” she said. “You wanted to look good and this”—she squeezed harder—“is what you came up with.”

He honked again, twice.

She took another bite of toast. “Who is it?”

“His name’s Phillip.”

“Is it a date?”

“No.”

I focused on the ceiling. Maybe she did this all the time and so she knew something about skin, like that it could withstand a certain amount of pressure before breaking. Hopefully she would keep that amount in mind and not go over it. Phillip knocked on the front door. She finished her toast and used her free hand to gently lower my chin so that my eyes were forced to meet hers.

“I’d appreciate it if you told me when you have a problem with me, not my parents.”

“I don’t have a problem with you,” I said quickly.

“That’s what I told them.” And we stayed like that. And Phillip knocked again. And we stayed like that. And Phillip knocked again. And we stayed like that. And then she let me go.

I opened the door just wide enough to slip out.

When we were safely out of the neighborhood I asked him to pull over and we looked at my wrist; there was nothing there. He turned on the interior lights; nothing. I described how big she was and the way she had grabbed me and he said he could imagine she might squeeze a person thinking it was a normal amount of squeezing, but to someone delicate like me, it might hurt.

“I’m not really delicate.”

“Well, compared to her you are.”

“Have you seen her recently?”

“Not for a few years.”

“She’s big-boned,” I said. “A lot of men think that’s attractive.”

“Sure, a woman with that kind of body has a fat store that allows her to make milk for her young even if her husband isn’t able to bring meat home. I feel confident about my ability to bring meat home.”

The words milk and fat store and meat had fogged up the windows faster than leaner words would have. We were in a sort of creamy cloud.

“What if, instead of going to a restaurant,” Phillip said, “what if we ate dinner at my house?”

He drove like he lived, with entitlement, not using the blinker, just gliding very quickly between lanes in his Land Rover. At first I kept looking over my shoulder to check if the lane was actually clear or if we were going to die, but after a while I threw caution to the wind and sank back into the heated leather seat. Fear was for poor people. Maybe this was the happiest I’d ever been.

Everything in his penthouse was white or gray or black. The floor was one vast smooth white surface. There were no personal items — no books or stacks of bills, no stupid windup toy that a friend had given him as a gift. The dish soap was in a black stone dispenser; someone had transferred it from its plastic container to this serious one. Phillip put his keys down and touched my arm. “Want to know something crazy?”

“Yes.”

“Our shirts.”

I made a shocked face that was too extreme and quickly ratcheted it down to baffled surprise.

“You’re the female me.”

My heart started swooping around, like it was hanging on a long rope. He said he hoped I liked sushi. I asked if he could point me toward the restroom.

Everything in the bathroom was white. I sat on the toilet and looked at my thighs nostalgically. Soon they would be perpetually entwined in his thighs, never alone, not even when they wanted to be. But it couldn’t be helped. We had a good run, me and me. I imagined shooting an old dog, an old faithful dog, because that’s what I was to myself. Go on, boy, get. I watched myself dutifully trot ahead. Then I lowered my rifle and what actually happened was I began to have a bowel movement. It was unplanned, but once begun it was best to finish. I flushed and washed my hands and only by luck did I happen to glance back at the toilet. It was still there. One had to suppose it was the dog, shot, but refusing to die. This could get out of hand, I could flush and flush and Phillip would wonder what was going on and I’d have to say The dog won’t die gracefully .

Is the dog yourself, as you’ve known yourself until now?

Yes.

No need to kill it, my sweet girl , he’d say, reaching into the toilet bowl with a slotted spoon. We need a dog.

But it’s old and has strange, unchangeable habits.

So do I, my dear. So do we all.

I flushed again and it went down. I could tell him about it later.

We ate without talking and then I saw his hand shaking a little and I knew it was time. He was about to confess. I must have sat across from him at a hundred meetings of the board, but I had never let myself really study his face. It was like knowing what the moon looks like without ever stopping to find the man in it. He had wrinkles that carved down from his eyes into his cheeks. His hair was dense and curly on the sides, thinner on the top. Full beard, messy eyebrows. We smiled at each other like the old friends we on some level were. He exhaled a long breath and we both laughed a little.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk with you about,” he began.

“Yes.”

He laughed again. “Yes, you have probably gathered that by now. I’ve made a big deal out of something that is probably not such a big deal.”

“It is and it isn’t,” I said.

“That’s exactly right, it is and it isn’t. It is for other people, but it isn’t for me. I mean, not that it isn’t a big deal — it’s huge, just not—” He stopped himself and exhaled with a long schooooo sound. Then he lowered his head and became very still. “I… have fallen in love… with a woman who is my equal in every way, who challenges me, who makes me feel, who humbles me. She is sixteen. Her name is Kirsten.”