Pete Hamill - Loving Women

I stood against the wall while another tune played, and Sal and Max exchanged girls; I wondered if this was the way people lived all over America, meeting in these places where nobody smoked or drank, where they all danced to corny music and drove home later or walked, where after a month or two they kissed and worked their way up to feels in parked cars before they got married and lived happily ever after. Maybe that was the way the whole goddamned American thing really worked. The scene made me feel sad, knowing that I should want it, like all good red-blooded Americans did, but also knowing that somehow I might never be a part of it, or even truly want it. I could spend my life the way I was on that night: standing there watching the women, with their excited eyes and their soft and succulent asses and tits, full of mystery and power, able to put out, as we said, or to withhold, while I tried so desperately to find the words or the moves that would unlock the mysteries between their thighs. And if that was my fate (I used such words then), I might end up as I was at that moment: alone.

Then, for the first time, I noticed the men. Maybe the same thoughts were moving through them; maybe they too were in thrall to the power of cunt and had no defense except to surrender to the power of God. If you had a fever in the blood, you could console yourself with life after death by postponing your life; heaven or hell might cool the flood. Gazing at them, I started drawing them in my head. They would be easy to draw, with their bony angular faces, no fat to disguise cheekbones or blur the jaws. Their mouths were mostly slits, turned down in resentment — of me and Sal and Max, maybe, or the Communists who were subverting America, or of women: women who’d gone off, women who’d said no, women who’d taken their money or their hearts: and if not women, maybe the resentment came from life itself. Drawing their eyes would be harder. Most of them were squinty, but the eyes themselves were hidden behind the squint, and I’d read somewhere that eyes were the windows of the soul; how could I draw them right? But as I looked closer I did find eyes buried in the squints, and saw coldness, anger, above all certainty , as if something had given them a faith I’d never found in New York; and that would be harder to get right. I watched them until they looked at me and then I shifted my eyes to the door, where more people were still arriving. The older ticket seller was now dancing with Sal. And then I saw a young woman across the hall and I wanted her.

She was standing alone, wearing a yellow dress, her hands entwined in front of her. Her hair was dark brown, her oval face very white and she seemed lonelier than anyone else in the hall. Except possibly me. I moved toward her, edging my way around the side of the hall. I tried to look casual, didn’t want her to see my interest, didn’t want to give her the power to say no. I wanted her to think I was as cool, say, as Clifford Brown, without the shades (knowing that she had never heard of Clifford Brown or his golden trumpet, but not knowing who she thought was cool). I would be — what was the word? — aloof . Hell, I was a man from the biggest city in America. And she was from Pensacola, Florida.

As I drew closer, I saw that she was one of the few women at the dance who was wearing makeup and the reason was obvious: beneath the powder, her skin was pitted with acne scars. The band rose into a Western swing groove, and she shifted her eyes to look at the musicians. And then turned back directly to me. Her eyes seemed to say: Please ask me to dance. Please. You’ve come across the room and if you see my skin and walk away, I’ll be humiliated. Dance with me. Please .

“Dance?” I said.

“Sure.”

Aloof.

I started doing a Lindy, but she was awkward, not knowing what to do with her hands, trying to keep up, watching my feet. But then the music changed again, this time to a ballad: “I Can’t Help It If I’m Still in Love with You.” The girl’s hands were damp and she used them to keep me at a distance, not pushing me off, but holding me back from her. I glanced down and saw that she had full round breasts.

“Sure was a shame about Hank Williams,” I said.

“That’s the truth,” she said. “He just didn’t live right, I reckon.”

“I reckon not,” I said.

“Hope he got himse’f straight with the Lord.”

“Yeah.”

I told her my name was Michael (and glanced again at her breasts) and she said her name was Sue Ellen. I tried to press closer, just to feel the edge of those tits against my chest, and failed, and she looked up at me in a doubtful way. When I returned her look (thinking: her face, not her tits, look at her face) she averted her eyes. When I tried again to move her closer to me, she gave a few inches until I could feel the warmth of her flesh; she said nothing, but her hands were wet. I couldn’t see Sal or Max now on the crowded floor. The piano player was trying hard to sing like Hank Williams.

“This is some sad song,” I said.

“Yeah, it is. ’Course old Buddy Jackson up there, he ain’t no Hank Williams.”

“No, but he’s doin’ his best,” I said, trying to get into a southern rhythm. What did I call her? Sue? Ellen? Swellen? “You live around here?”

“Up the road a piece,” she said. She took a deep breath, as if trying to get up courage. “You in the Navy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Navy man, that’s me.”

“My daddy’d kill me, he knew I was dancin’ with a sailor.”

“That so?”

“Same with all the other girls here,” she said. “Sailors ain’t too popular in these parts. Hope I don’t hurt your feelin’s, but I reckon you know that anyways.”

“No,” I said, “I guess sailors aren’t ever too popular. Except when they’re dying in some war.”

It was shameless bullshit. But she looked at me and frowned.

“I’m not sayin’ I feel that way, Michael. I’m saying’ some folks, well, they—”

“I’m not just a sailor, Sue Ellen. I was a regular human being until I joined up.”

“Yeah, well, I guess people should keep an open mind.”

“And I won’t be a sailor all my life either,” I said. Thinking: Come on, man, be cooler than that. Leave it alone. Go for the pussy. Don’t lay this Navy crap on too thick. The tips of her tits are brushing your chest .

“No, I reckon that’s the truth, Michael. Still, you’re a sailor right now and if my daddy walked in this minute he’d have me whupped.”

“No!”

“He sure would.”

“Can’t believe he’d whup someone pretty as you,” I said. “A grown-up woman.”

She paused, then her eyes examined me, a puzzled furrow on her brow. Maybe grown-up woman was the password. She was about five four, and when I glanced down at her, I could see her breasts heave anxiously as she hit me with the big question.

“You a Christian?”

I smiled. Cool. The man from New York. Experienced. A traveler. Aloof. “Well, not really,” I said. “I mean, I was raised as a Catholic, but—”

“You were raised as a Catholic?”

Fucked.

She backed up, as if I’d told her I had the mange. “Yeah,” I said, “anything wrong with that?”

“Uh, well, I don’t know . Yeah. I mean, uh — I never did meet a Catholic before.”

I’d fumbled, then tried to recover. The band played harder now. I heard nothing, saw nothing; I needed words.

“Well,” I started to say, “I was raised one, but I don’t think I’m one anymore. You a Baptist?”

“Methodist.”

“See, I can’t tell the difference,” I said. “Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, First Reformed, Second Reformed …” I suppose I was trying to give the impression that none of these distinctions mattered to me, and the only distinction being made was by her. “It’s all a little nutty to me …”