A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

At nine-thirty the referees announce a five-minute break, to be followed by a round of strip tag — every time you’re hit you have to take something off. Whoopee!

I head for the bar, stopping en route to peek into the private rooms. It’s a lot of what we used to call dry humping — but would I do it in a mini-mall with people from the “neighborhood”?

I hug the bar, drinking more than usual. Topless women with laser packs make themselves wine spritzers while men run around with semi-stiffies — and I can’t tell what’s got them more jazzed, the naked girls or the thrill of the game.

“May I?” I overhear a woman ask Cheryl.

“I guess,” Cheryl says.

I look away — even in this place, people are entitled to their privacy. Out of the corner of my eye, like slow motion, I see the woman’s hand, her long thin fingers, the glint of her wedding ring as it extends towards Cheryl’s breast. The woman brushes Cheryl with her fingers, lightly, almost as if dusting the breast — touching without touching. And then she leans forward and kisses her. Cheryl kisses back. And then the woman is gone — vaporized by the experience.

“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I have to go to the city tomorrow morning and want to be home at a decent hour,” I say to Cheryl.

“I let a woman touch me,” she says, apparently unaware that I was standing right next to her when it happened.

“Was it your first time?”

“Yes.” She pauses. “She touched me so lightly — it tickled.”

“It sounds like maybe you liked it.”

“I didn’t not like it.”

“That’s what you call a double negative — do you mean that you liked it?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’ve felt a woman’s hands before — but always, like, in a doctor’s office — like, raise your arm, and they take your breast and smoosh it into the mammo machine — but I never had someone touch me just for fun. I had no idea a woman’s lips felt that soft. What about you? Any action?”

“Yeah, a guy rubbed against me,” I say. “But I think he was just trying to get by. He rubbed me, then said sorry. It was the ‘sorry’ that made me uncomfortable. The rub was kind of interesting, but when he apologized I felt like a creep because I actually liked it.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it,” she says.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I say. “I’ve got to go,” I say, “it’s getting late.”

“Do you have time for a coffee?” she asks. “We could debrief?”

She laughs at her own joke. As we’re crossing the parking lot she says: “Can you believe such a place exists, right here, right next to the drugstore, the hospital supply, and the card shop? I buy cards for my mother-in-law in there.”

Stinking of sweat, some of it other people’s, we go to Friendly’s.

“I don’t think you were very into it,” she says as we’re sitting down.

“Frankly, I was surprised by how depressing it was.”

“Me too,” she says.

“What can I get you?” the waitress asks.

“Coffee,” I say.

“Is that all?”

“Coffee and apple pie?”

“À la mode?” she asks.

“Yes, please.”

“Coffee and apple pie,” Cheryl says. “That’s what Grandfather used to order.”

“Fine,” I say. “Eighty-six the apple pie, and I’ll have a clown sundae — with chocolate ice cream.”

When the waitress leaves, I lean forward. “Why did you want to do this?” I ask Cheryl, who looks tearful.

“I’m just really curious,” she says. “I would think you already know that about me. I want something different, something more.”

My ice cream arrives, and she digs in.

“You need a job,” I suggest, “maybe get a real-estate license, or go back to school and become a social worker.”

“I got the real-estate license,” she says. “It just means you fuck strangers in other people’s houses.” Impromptu, she belches; the scents of white wine and chocolate ice cream blast across the table. “Apologies,” she says. “I don’t think I’m supposed to drink while I’m on this new medication.”

“I didn’t know you were on new medication,” I say, sobering up.

“Yeah — a whole new regimen.”

“Do you think maybe the new medication prompted this whole thing tonight? How do you know it’s what you actually want to do and not some strange side effect?”

“I don’t think the desire to explore a swingers’ club is listed under side effects. Like I said, I’m curious; is that a bad thing? And, honestly, I like the idea of having sex with some guy and not having to do his laundry and make his lunch and shop for his socks. …”

“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress asks.

“Just the check,” I say, noticing that now several other “couples” from the party have come into Friendly’s, pink-cheeked and laughing too loud.

I dress for my last class, solemnly. I wear a suit and tie; there is a seriousness of purpose, like for a funeral, I suppose. I enter with my head held high, having checked my underlying grief and sense of betrayal, carrying only an old oversized cassette recorder. “Today’s class marks the closing of a chapter of my life,” I say as I’m setting up. “In honor and memory of Richard Milhous Nixon, I am going to record my comments.” I set the recorder down on the hollow lectern, thumping it several times to get their attention. The thumping on the hollow wood is amplified, thump, thump, like the pounding of a gavel — hear ye, hear ye. I press “play” and “record” simultaneously and clear my throat. “Testing, one, two, three … testing, testing.” I hit “stop,” then “rewind.” I play back the test; the tone is as expected — classically metallic.

“I come before you on this, our final meeting together, with the power of history foremost in my mind, the awareness that if we live only in the present, without consciousness of the past, we will have no future. Imagine, if you will, an America without Richard Nixon, a country without a past, a world in which it is truly every man for himself and there is no building of trusts, alliances between men and countries. Think of your own moment in time. Your history — your culture, your behavior — is perhaps more documented, scrutinized, than any previous generation. Your image is captured dozens if not hundreds of times per day, and the line you are expected to walk is thin and unforgiving. Consider for a moment the Internet posting that doesn’t go away — remains perpetually present, doesn’t allow for a kind of growth, progression, or forgiveness.”

I pause for breath.

“Today’s class marks a passage in my life: my last performance on the academic stage, a curtain call of sorts. I thought I’d take the opportunity to simply share my thoughts with you.

“But first I am going to ask you to turn off all your electronic equipment and imagine a morning meeting in the Nixon White House — the President, his Chief of Staff, Haldeman, Haig, Henry Kissinger, and a select handful of others — and imagine each of them holding in one hand a cup of Starbucks coffee with his name and the contents annotated on the side and in the other hand brandishing some kind of electronic device on which he is e-mailing, tweeting away, texting, whatever. Would Nixon think they weren’t listening? And instead of writing his thoughts, his middle of the night musings, in ink on legal pads, would Dick Nixon break out his smartphone and tweet away or text himself volumes of digression on the devolving state of the union?

“Think about it as you power down your devices — this is my last stand, and I want your full attention.”

I pause for an extended moment; assorted electronic goodbyes chirp around the room. “This is the nineteenth time I have stood before you — in a place that has been a center of learning for so many years, shaping minds and lives for generations. In all of my decisions, in the materials that I presented to you, I have tried to do what is best. I felt it was my duty to make every effort to introduce you to your history and the history of this country and to make every effort to educate you as to the relevance, the value of both knowing and questioning the past. Today is in some ways a resignation. In order to teach, one must have students, eager learners. I am aware that many of you took this class to fulfill a requirement that you take a history class. I know, via scuttlebutt, that this class is rumored to be “a fluff.” I am equally aware that many of you are the first in your family to even go to college, and that, instead of taking that privilege as a mandate to educate yourselves, you use it as time to hang out with friends and party. I have always thought of myself as a professor, a teacher, a mentor to the young. With no children of my own, I have perhaps wrongly allowed my students to act as surrogates. I have rallied for you, shown up for your football games, cheered you on. I believed in you. And despite shifts in the winds of academia, in the tides of the study of history, despite waning interest, I have always felt it was my duty to persevere. And let me make this perfectly clear … I would have preferred to carry on despite the personal hardship, the fact that a teaching obligation cuts into my hours of research and writing as a historian. I have never been a quitter, but, given the direction this institution feels the study of history is moving in, it would seem my effectiveness is coming to its conclusion. My own view of things is a long one. Here I note the contrast of the Nixon White House to that of Bush Senior and Dick Cheney, who makes Richard Nixon seem simplistic by contrast.