John Kenney - Talk to Me

Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table . Let us go through certain Uber-crowded streets, the constant tweets, our headphones made by Beats. In the room the men and women come and go talking of Google and Apple and Facebook.

A guy named Matt had texted earlier.

Hey.

That was it. Just… hey .

They’d met on Tinder, gone out a few times, hooked up a few times. He was in finance. Or insurance. She wasn’t sure. He was cute. He was sweet and fake and needy and vacuous and knew the right things to say, a soap actor who could memorize lines, a guy who would marry a pretty woman and be unhappy in ten years, divorced in fifteen. He wasn’t a man. He wasn’t a grown-up. He never would be. He was a guy who would always think about “great tits.”

Hey.

In previous generations, young men stood below your balcony, looked up with wonder, spoke poetry.

Or hey .

Hey spoke volumes, a language unto itself, a worldview. Hey told you everything about a guy. Hey said he didn’t really respect you. Hey said he wanted to dispense with thousands of years of courtship and mating rituals, of decorum and chivalry. It said, instead, that he wanted to meet you at your apartment—or his place, if you thought you might be in Midtown later—with boozy breath, begin making out before the door was closed, hands fumbling for clothing and breasts, for ass, moving awkwardly to the bed.

And it begins.

Him, sucking a nipple too hard, you pretending it felt good.

You holding his semi-erect penis, thinking “penis” is just a stupid-sounding word.

Him, squeeze my balls (Shakespeare!).

You, slow .

Him, stopping, looking at you, the look men gave, the wide-eyed lust at your body, the lines and curves, the flair of hips and contour of thighs, hair splayed out on a pillow.

You, a desperate sadness that the look was only lust, no love, never love, why am I doing this?

Him, reaching for the condom, the moment changing, like a doctor’s office now, the smell of latex, the foil wrapper tossed to the floor, his eagerness and hopes for a non-fading erection.

You, eyes closed, finding a place as he enters you, that moment unlike any other physical sensation, like surprise, like a gasp of air, the best moment.

Him, single-minded, laser focus, a series of calisthenics soon to follow: hands under ass, hump; flip, ride him; half turn, half screw; facedown, from behind. On your back again, him close, telling you to touch yourself.

You, why not, you’re here. Eyes closed tight now. How strange the images that drift across your mind in that moment of deepest lust, hungry desire. Vivid, ethereal, physical, sensatory, until your head, thrown back, the small sound escaping.

Him, gone. The sound alone enough.

You, watching his contorted face.

Him, pulling back, rolling off, falling on his back.

You, the moment gone, the lust gone, the fleeting, false connection long gone in the seconds since it ended. Strangers now. What are his parents’ names? Where did he go to grade school? How did he get that small scar on his chin? Who was this person you just had sex with?

She texted back, Hey .

Because Hey , in response to his Hey , was I’m just as powerful as you . I can have casual sex just like a guy. I can care just as little as a guy. Hey , in response, was victory. Freedom. So why, to Franny, did it feel like surrender?

They met at his place, so she could leave, come home, and pretend it never happened.

When she got home she showered and got into her pajamas. She didn’t feel like cooking and ordered in Thai. She sat down, unsure where to start. She poured a glass of wine and opened her laptop and reflexively checked CNN and HuffPo and WaPo and nypost.com and Vox and TMZ. There was a message from her mother that she needed to return but didn’t want to right now.

She put on music. She sipped her wine. She decided not to write it. She’d email Henke and tell him. She wasn’t the right person. No. That was wrong. She didn’t want to. She didn’t know where to start. Too much history. She paced. Fuck it. She wasn’t going to do this.

She wrote.

He hit her once. She was home from college. She was late for dinner. She’d lost track of time, got stoned with some friends. It was a beautiful early spring evening and they were in a cemetery in Bedford dating back to the Revolutionary War and they were lying on the grass and staring at the sky and it was so peaceful. She might have dozed for a bit and somehow it was late and she rushed home. And he hit her. She tried to explain. He slapped her across the face and her mother screamed.

He became a stranger to her, walking past her, not saying a thing. True, she was the same way. True, she knew they feared her at times. But still. Couldn’t he try? They forced her to go to boarding school. Fine. Technically her father was against the idea. But he let her go. And that winter. The storm. The time in the hospital. Where was he then? When she’d overdosed. Maybe don’t mention overdose. It’s not necessary to the story. It’s her story and she gets to tell it the way she wants, revealing what she wants. The point is she was hospitalized with an illness and he didn’t show. Who does that?

She wrote until almost 2:00 a.m. She wrote and rewrote; sometimes it flowed and sometimes she sat and stared out the window. She wrote in bursts, whole paragraphs, whole pages. It poured out of her like a good therapy session. Her sense of being wronged in full flow. Why hadn’t he… why hadn’t he… why hadn’t they…

She was sure she knew the whole story.

It was late when she finished, hints of lights in the eastern sky. She felt very tired and sat for a time looking at the file on her screen. “Ted Grayson.” The words that had defined her life, defined who she was. She went to the window and stared out. The city was quiet, a few birds beginning their morning song. It felt cleansing to have written it. To have told it all. Almost all. She was tempted to call him. To read it to him. Could they ever start again? She asked herself this sometimes, a deep, fearful hope. But she couldn’t see it happening.

The real question, the question right now, the one that she had stored away since Henke had asked her to do it, was whether she could actually hit send.

She emailed the piece to herself, a habit. Then she dragged the piece to the trash, heard the sound of it landing there. She sat and stared at the icon of the old trash can. Go ahead, delete it. I dare you. Then she dragged it out of the trash, saved it to the scheisse cloud. Henke would be waiting for it. She knew. But she couldn’t send it. She couldn’t print it. She texted him. “Can’t run story. Talk tomorrow.” She took an Ambien, got into bed, and did something she hadn’t done in many years. She turned off her phone.

Claire had spoken with her lawyer earlier and confirmed the meeting with Ted’s team to finalize papers and ownership. But she couldn’t quite manage to call him. Instead, she had done errands; bought plants, ordered new bathroom tile, gone food shopping at the A&P in town, called Franny and left a message. Franny had texted back seconds later. TTYL. She had also made an attempt to pack up Ted’s things, an exercise she found to be less satisfying than she’d initially imagined. Shirts she had washed and folded hundreds of times. Khakis and sweaters and old baseball caps and belts and ties. A Dopp kit full of toiletries. She abandoned the effort halfway through in favor of some vigorous digging in the garden, the smell of the dirt rejuvenating, followed by a late-afternoon bath.