Stephen Dixon: Gould

The first was when he was seventeen and just a freshman in college and she was a couple of years older. She originally told him she was eighteen because she didn’t think he’d want to go out with someone almost two and a half years older than he. But he looked through her wallet and found out her real age and later told her “I’m sorry, I went into your wallet, I won’t pretend I was looking for anything but to find out how old you are, because I didn’t think you were eighteen — you don’t act it and that you’re almost a junior and your looks and clothes. And I found one of your IDs with your age on it, and so what? — for what’s wrong with you being that much older than me? We seem suited together, don’t we? — no big deal like where you experienced World War Two and knew what be-bop was and I didn’t. And it’s not that you act younger than you are but maybe I act older and if that seems like bragging then just that two and a half years isn’t much difference at our age, or at least not between us.” Later he thought, Maybe her being almost twenty and so far along in college is the reason she let him go so far with her so quickly or let him get in her at all: third date, her folks not home, first one they kissed, second she let him rub her behind through her skirt, they’d intended to see a movie but she said while he stood by the door waiting for her to get her coat “I don’t really feel like going out, it isn’t that I’m feeling unwell or my period or anything like that, would it be all right if we just watched something on TV and maybe later go out for a snack?” and he said he hates TV, it’s for idiots, and Saturday night? — nothing’s on but dopey comedy shows; he would never own one if he had his own place, he never watches it, his father insists they do at dinner — the news; the news is important, his father says; it’s the world, it’s what’s around us, you learn things; you’re a smart boy but afraid to learn things or think the world today is unimportant? — and it always leads to arguments like that and sometimes him leaving the table before dinner’s finished. I Love Lucy —oh wonderful; Arthur Godfrey, Sid Caesar, George whatever-his-name-is, with the crewcut and checkered jacket and overstuffed shoulder pads and always a bow tie and horselaugh — what morons, and she said “Fine, we won’t watch TV, but why do you have to get so virulent about it? Maybe we should go to a movie after all, though I looked in the paper and there’s nothing in walking distance that I want to see and I really don’t want to take a subway or bus back and forth.” “We can stay here and talk,” and she said “All right, hang up your talk and let’s coat,” and he said “Did you mean that?” and she said “What?” and he said “You reversed a couple of words; it was pretty clever,” and she said “I can’t take credit for it. I have a brain problem, nothing fatal, and sometimes do that and also with my reading. But what do you want to talk about?” and he said “Can’t we discuss this in a more comfortable spot?”—already maneuvering her, not so much to score but to kiss again, this time with the tongue, feel her breasts, maybe get his finger in her cunt, but that’ll probably come the next date or one or two after that—“You have a living room with chairs and a couch here, don’t you?” and she said “Nope, we read, talk and play chess on the floor. Well, chess I sometimes do play with my father there, but you’re so smart, Mr. Thinkpants,” and they went into the living room, and she said “Would you like something to drink? My father has a liquor cabinet stuffed with things, and they won’t be home till past midnight, so I’ll have plenty of time to wash your glass out and put water in whatever bottle you choose so it doesn’t seem poured from,” and he said “Boy, did I once say we were suited? — even down to our fathers. Mine’s also a cheapskate with his booze,” and she said “It’s not that; he doesn’t like the boys dating me getting tipsy on his whiskey and then getting frisky with me — it’s like giving them a gun to shoot me, he’s said, Freud not intended,” and he said “I know Freud but not what he says, except for that double-meaning thing. But sure, I’ll have something hard — what’s he got?” and she said “He likes scotch, so probably lots of scotches,” and he said “That’s for old men, not that your father’s old, but you know do you have anything else? Canadian Club, that Royal something. a good rye?” and she looked and he drank two highballs and she had one but hardly touched it and they talked about their parents and people they’d dated and where they both were on several historical occasions to see if their paths had ever crossed — he was walking to school on D-Day when he’d heard about it, her parents told her about it at breakfast and “then went into almost like a history lesson as to what it meant”; he was in summer camp in New Jersey when World War Two ended; she was lying in a hammock at a friend’s summer cottage near Peekskill when she first learned of it, “Peekskill,” he said, “my folks took a bungalow there for a month when I was four or five,” and she said “That was the only time I was near there — her family felt sorry I had to spend the summer in the city”; Roosevelt’s death: they both walked into their apartments to find people crying and the radio blaring, but in different boroughs; Stalin’s: he found out from newspaper headlines on a newsstand in the Garment Center (“Corner of 36th or 37th and Eighth Avenue to be exact”) when he was delivering belts for a belt company, she was a block or two away between Seventh and Eighth and maybe around the same hour — it was after school — applying for a showroom modeling job with a coat and suit house — and he touched her hand, said “This little piggy — ah, that’s silly, isn’t it?” and felt himself getting high and said “Drink all yours down, catch up with me — or as you might say: ‘Drink all yours down and catch down with me,’ though that makes no sense, and no sense is good sense — nah, that makes no sense too. But I’m about twice your weight or a little less, so two of mine is one of yours, and you gotta be equal and fair,” and she finished her drink and said “I believe you’re trying to compromise me through the use of my father’s booze, just as he said,” and he said “That’s right, I’d never lie to you,” and she said “That’s a lie, the last part,” and he said “Oh, so what,” and smiled and she did and squeezed his hand and he moved closer and said “Now I’m going to be piggy,” and she said “We’ll see — better than wolf, I guess, but that’s a bad pun,” and he thought “Pun”? What’s she mean? and she moved closer — he let her; he could have moved even closer than he was when he first started to but wanted to see if he moved a little closer whether she would too — and she put her head on his shoulder and shut her eyes and looked so satisfied and peaceful that for a moment he thought he should leave her like that — they were sitting on the couch — but he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and said in a fake European accent he’d heard in a few movies “Mine darlink,” and kissed her and she kissed back and they kissed and while they were kissing with their eyes closed he touched her breast through her blouse and she pulled her head away and said “I don’t know if I want you touching me there,” and he said “Then where can I?” and she said “I don’t think anywhere,” and he said “You let me touch your tushie last time and now you’re sitting on it so I can’t,” and she said “If you did touch my behind then I didn’t feel it so I wasn’t aware you were touching it,” and he said “Come off it, you don’t lie, I don’t lie,” and she said “So maybe I did feel it but I thought that was a love tap you were doing,” and he said “No, a sex tap,” and she said