Mary Gaitskill - Because They Wanted To - Stories

Late that night, she was startled awake by sounds that she thought might’ve been made by someone coming in the window. The first thought that followed her fear was that the intruder was the dentist, but there wasn’t anyone there at all. She lay back in bed and breathed deeply to slow her heart. It occurred to her that her feelings about the dentist were like the feelings she’d had when she’d seen those cheap, poorly done cartoons, that they were the echo of something that was not fully visible to her. Except that while the cartoons had nothing to do with her molestation, she couldn’t believe that the dentist’s almost morbidly bland public self had nothing to do with the increasingly alarming image she had of him. She felt she was sensing some secret part of him, something that was hurting him as well as her.

She had a lull in writing assignments. She watched TV a lot, mostly shows about crazy middle-aged women who were trying to kill the husbands who had left them for younger women, or shows about crazy perverted men who were trying to kill teenage girls who wouldn’t have sex with them. After she was finished watching TV, she sometimes went to bars and drank. She woke in the afternoon with slow, heavy headaches that were almost sweet. She met Joshua for dinner and Doreen for coffee. She talked to Pamela on the phone. At night, the dentist wafted peacefully above her head, close enough to keep her company but too far away for her to beat off about. That was fine with her. When he came into her mind during the day, she regarded him as a friend. She felt they’d gone through a lot together.

It felt very natural for her to call him and leave a message on his answering machine, inviting him to come to her apartment and have a drink. It must’ve seemed natural for him too, because he called her back that night, sounding bright and enthusiastic, for him. He said he’d just enjoyed several martinis but that, as usual, “I don’t feel a thing.” She asked him if he’d like to come to her house the following evening and not feel a thing with her—that is, to have a glass of wine after work. He said yes, he’d like that.

When she described the evening to Alex, the magazine editor, she said that she’d grabbed the dentist and reached for his fly, but in truth that never happened; she was just trying to make a good story of it. Alex and she had just cautiously reconciled, after all, and she had wanted to feel close to him. He had started the conversation by telling a story about his unrequited passion for a beautiful young lap dancer, and her lie about the dentist seemed to follow naturally. “No!” said Alex. “You didn’t!”

“Well, why not?” she replied testily.

“My God, Jill, you probably frightened him to death. Couldn’t you have been more gentle?”

She was taken aback; she would’ve expected a comment like that from Joshua, but Alex was an outrageously self-confident and rather jaded fellow. “But I wanted him to know how much I liked him,” she said.

“In that case, hold his hand, don’t grab his dick.”

“Really? You think?”

“Yes! He probably felt totally unmanned. He sounds like the type who needs to feel in control, and you took that from him.”

It was a nice observation, and probably an apt one even though she’d exaggerated the events of the evening.

They had spent the first hour of their “drink” in stop-and-start conversation. They talked about Truman Capote and sexual harassment on the street. The dentist expressed outrage at the latter. Jill told him a story about a boy on the street who’d recently grabbed her breast, and how, although she’d turned around and kicked him in the butt, she actually had a certain perverse sympathy for the kid.

“Oh, Jill,” said the dentist, “you think you’re so perverted, but you’re really not.”

“I didn’t mean perverted, I meant perverse. It’s different.”

“Even so. I’ve seen things you’d never even think of.”

This remark so puzzled her that she disregarded it and raced ahead to describe how she could imagine that if she were a boy and she saw a pair of tits coming down the street, looming out of the dark in a skintight white shirt, she’d probably feel like grabbing one too.

“You mean that was okay with you? Somebody just grabbing your body?”

Under the propriety of the words she felt the other thing move. “George,” she said, “I’ve got to ask you something.”

The dentist stood. The expression on his face and his eyes sank inward until nothing showed. “What?”

She stood too. “Do you have sexual feelings for me?” she asked.

When she described what had followed to Joshua, she said it was as if they were from different cultures, or that each of them was so involved in projecting onto the other that they weren’t actually addressing each other. But it was worse than that.

He said he had never really thought about her sexually. He said he had to spend a lot of time getting to know a person before he had sex. He said this was all very unexpected and he needed to digest it. He asked if she would like to see a movie with him next week. She understood his words. She understood the sentiments that would seem, at least, to lie behind his words. But she felt something beneath those words that she didn’t understand. She said she didn’t want to see a movie. She said that if they got to know each other, they probably wouldn’t want to have sex. She told him that if she’d waited to get to know people before having sex, she’d probably still be a virgin. She didn’t understand what moved beneath her own words. It seemed too big to be chipped off in word form, but it didn’t matter; she kept talking until the dentist stepped forward and embraced her. She closed her eyes and extended her face upward, to kiss him. There was no sexual feeling in her body, and she didn’t feel any in his. That made her want to press against him all the more fiercely, as if she were pinching numb flesh to feel the dull satisfaction of force without effect. Then he bent his head and kissed her on the lips. She glimpsed his face; it was infused with tentative lewdness. A thin shock of sexual feeling flew up her center. It scared her as much as if it had been a tongue of flame shooting out of thin air, and she stepped away as quickly as he did. She almost said, “George, I’m scared, I’m so scared.” But she didn’t.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” she said. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down on the couch, except the pressure she exerted wasn’t enough to properly be called a push. Even so he sat, with a little affectation of imbalance; a sensualized shadow of benevolent goofiness passed over his face. It was familiar and dear, this shadow, and she couldn’t have it. In truth, she probably didn’t even want it, and he probably knew that. It occurred to her that he couldn’t have it, either, even though “it” was him. She sat down and curled her body against his. He put his arms around her.

“Do you think this is strange?” she asked.

“Am I supposed to think it’s strange?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s strange.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not my type at all.”

“Then why . . .?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was as false and cute as that of a ventriloquist’s dummy. But her real voice wouldn’t come out. She put her head against his chest. He stroked her hair. He said, “I have to go, Jill. I have to feed the dog. I’ll call you. I know I always say that, but I will this time.”

On his way out, he complimented her on her choice of wine.

She boiled some asparagus, poured salt on it, ate it, and watched TV She watched a show about a crazy middle-aged woman who seduced teenage boys and then made them kill people. About halfway through it, it occurred to her that the dentist was her type after all.