Stephen Dixon: Frog

Anyway, twenty-eight years ago was it? He took her in his arms. She took him in hers. They took, they took. She was on top, he was on top. They held each other all night. That’s the way he remembers it. Most of the night, then. Part of — what’s the difference? They held, held. Exactly three weeks after they first met. Saturday, Saturday. They said “I love you, I love you,” many times. She can’t deny that, any of that, now, but so what and why would she? All in the past for her. He kissed her whole body. Tell it. He said “I don’t want any part of your body to feel left out.” She said “I like that line, I like it a lot.” She kissed most of his body soon after. Slowly: here, there. Not just pecks either. Some of them big kisses, long. He turned over: here, there. She did what he’d done, he did what she’d done. Remembers it, so much of it, as if it were happening. Next morning she said her vagina still hurt. He said he just had a tough time peeing too. “No, my vagina,” she said, “not the hole where I pee. It’s sore. Hurts something terrible. I think I need an aspirin. Two.” That first night on her big bed in the dark room her hair hung long and loose when she was on top of him. Hung all around his face, covered his head and neck completely. Looking through its thin vertical slats, just a little light filtering in from he can’t remember where — street? bathroom right outside her bedroom? — it seemed as if he was looking out of what? Tent, he thinks he thought then. Tent with thin vertical slats? Hair like thin vertical slats? Filtering in? Trickling in? He looked out of hair, that’s all, long fine loose hair that covered his head. He kissed her breast when she was on top of him. Kissed and then grasped it with his lips till she said “Please, that’s not the spot now; stop.” She was on top the first time, he the second time, they were side by side, she with her back to him, the third. “Only way I can possibly do it,” she said. “No energy to get on top again, and you get on top again and I’ll burst.” He kept slipping out that third time and kept putting it back in. He just wanted to do it three times with her that first night. Adolescent, he knows, he didn’t think then, but so what? He wasn’t excited anymore. Erection, yes, but didn’t get excited till the end, and even then not so much. But it was as if with three she was his, or something. One was normal, two could be accidental but wasn’t atypical, but three was difficult, intentional and maybe memorable. Three clinched it. After a brief sleep he thought of trying for four but felt he might fail at it, and that might somehow undo the ones they’d done and the memorableness of their number. Four would be pushing it, would be pushy. He might have been physically able to do it if she’d got down on all fours and he got behind her. That had usually been the most exciting way for him and usually still is, but it would have been too much to ask of her, it seemed. Maybe too early too. Though doing it that way the first night for either that second or third time might have done something toward clinching it too. But she was tired, she’d said, and sore, and keeping herself in that position for the time it would have had to take to do it wouldn’t have been easy. “What are you trying to prove?” she might have asked him. “Once can say it all,” she once said to him a year, maybe two later. They did it seventeen straight nights. Just once and sometimes twice each night. The eighteenth night, when they were in bed and he started to kiss and rub her, she said “What are we trying to prove by doing it every night? It’s getting silly. Let’s prove we can go to sleep once without screwing.” He’s never done it five times in one night with anyone. Four, just with Denise once, and once with some woman he forgets now. He was probably never physically able to do it that often or knew a woman who let or wanted him to. Both. All three. Six. That would be something. What would it feel like after? Would he feel anything but pain or irritation during? Would six be physically damaging? He might be able to do it five or six times — might have been, rather — in one night if he’d had two or more women to do it with. Seven would probably have been impossible no matter how many women he’d had to do it with. Eight, impossible, period. So he called it quits that night with three. It’s not something he’d do now or even be physically able to do in one night with one woman: three. Certainly not something he has the chance to do now. Maybe in a whorehouse, if he knew where there was one and he had the money for it and the woman let him. But he hasn’t been to one since a few months before he met Denise and wouldn’t go to one now for a number of reasons. Anyway—

Anyway. Anyway. He wishes he were young. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Around the age he was when he first met Denise. That she were young. Around the age she was then too. That he could meet her for the first time. That they had no children, had never been married. Married, what’s the difference? But no children. That they were at a dinner party. Any kind of party. That she was sitting in the living room or standing there or in the foyer when he first got to the party. Or that he was sitting or standing in one of those rooms or the kitchen when she walked in soon after she got to the party or the public hallway right outside the crowded foyer when she was coming upstairs. That they’d look at each other for the first time. Speak, all of that, a first time. Ask the other to pass something at the dinner table or across the bar. Salt, pepper. A bottle of wine, plate of canapés. Smile, say thank you, you’re welcome, not know each other’s last names yet. Know nothing about the other’s family and very little what each has done educationally or does professionally or wants to do in either or both. That the scene would suddenly jump to three Saturdays later. Sundays. Fridays. Two weeks later. It didn’t have to take so much time. He was hedging then. Didn’t know, though he knew he was very attracted to her and she seemed to be attracted to him, whether he wanted to see her again. Knew he’d get involved. Didn’t know if he wanted to. Thought he might want to play around with several women at one time. They’re in bed. Hers, his. She had actually called him after he didn’t call for a week and said “I thought you were going to call. Anything wrong? Tell me and I won’t bother you again.” Just remembered that. They’d met for coffee a few days after the party, took a long walk, had a good time together, laughing, joking, telling each other deep and personal things about themselves, and a week after that was when she called. Blanket, sheet over them. Nothing over them, no clothes. She’s on top of him first, he’s on top of her first, later holding each other through some to most of the night. Outside, a thunderstorm. Lightning. Went on for a long time. She asked if he was frightened—“I am.” Storm had wakened them. He said “No, but it’s wonderful having thunder, lightning, rain batting the windows and you with me all at the same time for our first night. Sort of enshrines it, or something.” Just remembered that. The electric storm and almost exactly what he’d said. He’s thought of it before but not for years. She said that was sweet. They probably then kissed, covers must have been back over them, and maybe it was then when they started to make love a third time. He started to. She just turned onto her right side and let him put it in. Now on a single bed. One small room with a kitchenette. Had a large studio then, much better furnished. She had two rooms with a full-sized kitchen and a backyard. She was making lots of money, for more than a year she was one of the leads in a very successful play. It’s been a bad year for him. Several bad years in a number of ways. He doesn’t have a phone. Called her from a booth that last time. From his phone in his previous apartment a year ago. She can’t call him even if she wanted to. Why would she want to, except maybe to say one of their children is sick. She could send him a letter. A telegram, if it was an emergency, though she’d have to get his address from one of the children. It wouldn’t be the same thing, a letter. Remembers hers. The good ones, ardent ones, ones that said — only one did—“So bus the 450 miles to see me, but see me, for I need and want you now.” Not like the letters after they split up. “Please don’t call— don’t call, that’s all — or ring my downstairs buzzer, wait for me at work, send me anymore gifts, telegrams or letters, bother me in any kind of way again.” Anyway—