Stephen Dixon - Fall and Rise

“Granted.”

He taps my shoulder. “We’re here. Got a spot in front. Everything’s working for us. Not a mugger in sight. Even the moon can be seen and a number of meteorites knocking about in the wrong half of the hemisphere for the night. You’re not too sleepy?”

“Why, do you want me to be?”

“You harp back on that so much I think it’s you who wants me to be immediately asleep.”

“I don’t, so let’s get it over with. No, that isn’t nice or what I mean, so let’s put it this way: we’re kind of using one another tonight, but that also has to be the way it is sometimes if nothing better is around. No, that’s not nice or right either. How can I say what I have in mind to without irritating you and gumming up the goal?”

“I never heard you talk like that before.”

“You have so. Selective forgetting. Let’s go up.”

The doorman has to unlock the door to let us in. “Hey there, Helene.”

“Russell? Hi — It’s been so long I didn’t recognize you. You lost weight but it looks good.”

“Couldn’t feel better. Have a good night? Good.” He holds the elevator door open till we get in, presses the button for Peter’s floor. “Goodnight.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are having such wonderful doormen.”

“He had a bypass in his thigh this year that nearly finished him. Did I set the Chapman lock in the car?”

“You pushed something in under the dashboard.”

“That’s it. He even took last rites.”

“Then what’s he doing working this shift?”

“He sleeps, rests. We might be the last tenants in. If you had no wife, kids, education or skills, you’d be fighting for his job.”

He holds my hand and whistles something from a familiar aria as he watches the floor indicator flash the floors, kisses me when the door opens. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m not excited anymore. He’s not attractive to me anymore. His breath stinks from alcohol and some egg dish when it didn’t before. Mine probably does too but from another food. He’s handsome and slim and a good lover and I’m almost sure I’ll be able to lose myself making love with him, but everything I said before except my wanting to have a baby with someone I care for and who’s a permanent live-in was all wrong. False and fairly high and fagged-out champagne talk, if I wasn’t feeling so sharp and sober, so don’t fall for those excuses. But I do want to make love and after it’s over he’s a quiet guy to sleep with and he’ll let me leave with no big scenes at the door, no fake promises for more, just both of us appreciative of having some of our immediate needs met, and maybe after some late-morning love-making if I want and even if he doesn’t, because that’s what he was also good for. For not once would he admit he couldn’t or didn’t want to get an erection, and what a struggle sometimes when I’d have to say “It’s okay, we’ll try in the morning or another day or some other time tonight — I’ll wake you if I get the urge,” and he’d say “No trouble, lady,” and play with himself or me or whatever he’d do till he got one that stayed. But go through with it, since it’s been a few months and lately I’ve been feeling something very important and explicable has been missing from my life which no amount of masturbating or work can make up for.

First thing in he turns on the lights and record player. “Your eighteenth-century German flute, plus or minus a century and nationality, which I was listening to before I left — I wasn’t expecting you here. Sure no wine or beer?” No, so he goes. I look at the primitive sculptures and masks he’s acquired or has on loan since I was last here. All to some extent phallic or oral-anal-vaginal phallic-receptive. Though a few do have procreative or foreplay subjects and one’s of a bearded naked woman standing on a stool — what’s that mean? — and another is of a clothed young man strumming what looks like a lute, plus a five-foot high mask of an insane shaman with his mouth closed but two tongues coming out of his nose. I bet he’s had thirty different women here since my last visit. He used to keep a spermicide in his medicine chest for sudden conquests. Condoms too if he had to, which he ordered through a coupon in Playboy: specially ribbed. He comes back, says “Sit over here,” I sit on the couch, be sits beside me, I drink the club soda, he some wine, he kisses my neck. Good, it’s begun. “Why don’t we take off our clothes and go to bed,” I say.

“Sure, we should, but here. It’d be too unshipshape, undies all over the bed and floor.” He takes off his tie and starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Actually, want me to take off your clothes?”

“That’d be nice. No, let’s take off our own clothes, wash up and go to bed.” I stand.

“I’ve washed. Did you come with anything?”

“I’m like you, or as I remember you. I always keep one in my medicine chest,” holding up my bag.

“Interesting. You must be getting laid a lot these days. What do you know — said the wrong thing again.”

“Truth is, I’m not, and I don’t have anything with me — that was just a tease. I thought you, much as I hate the smell of those things, could use an ordinary condom at the last moment.”

“At the last moment I can’t.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve been feeling my period coming on for two days.”

“Is it absolutely safe-positive-sure?”

“Always has been. I already got a few blood drops in my underpants. One go at sex and it should begin to flow.”

“Should I put a rubber mat under the sheet?”

“I’ll give you plenty of warning.”

“You have a tampon with you?”

“That I’m prepared for,” shaking the bag.

The phone rings. “Who the hell could that be so late? Maybe I shouldn’t answer it.”

“Don’t look at me.”

“I have to answer it. It could be bad family news and sometimes has been this late. I’ll tell you after about my sister. Excuse me.”

He runs to the bedroom, shuts the door. I go into the bathroom, undress, open his medicine chest to look for a box of Q-Tips to clean my ears. It’s an awful habit, never buying a box for myself but only using Q-Tips I find in other people’s bathrooms. But it’s only two to four Q-Tips a person and I try not to hit the same medicine chest twice. It’s just something I do — some intentionally aberrational part of me I don’t question or want to change and perhaps my last link to a mediumly renegade life. I’ll probably do it even after I’m married, unless my husband already buys Q-Tips for himself, but not after I have a baby, since I suppose it’s necessary for a number of reasons to have them around for a child. And so far every time I’ve wanted to clean out my ears, which is about every second week, I’ve found a box of them or one of its inferior equivalents in other people’s bathrooms.

I take two Q-Tips out of the box and start to clean. Door’s locked, so he can’t walk in. Lots of wax, some of it quite hard and dark, so it could be three to four weeks since I did this. Most times two are enough. Now, after five — maybe a record number for me — the cotton nib comes out clean from both ears without digging too far in, and I flush the used Q-Tips down.

I wash my crotch with his washrag. I bet it’s a woman on the phone, wanting to come over or Peter to come by. So be it if that’s what he wants, but don’t be silly: he can be with me tonight and tomorrow with her. Though I’m still not sure why I’m here. Sex, yes, and the only reason, but by now I don’t even know if I can get into it in any way. Sure I can. Lights out, blinds down and shut to keep out the street light, close my eyes, open my legs, feel around with my hands, and it’ll be easy and easier still if I can work my way to the top. The pressure of my weight usually slowed him down by half and my control up there speeds me up considerably, making us about even. Then sleep, morning, coffee, goodbye. I wash under my arms with the same rag, wash my face, rinse the rag, brush my teeth with his brush, brush my hair, fold up my clothes, run warm water in the sink and one at a time stick my feet under the tap, pushing out any recalcitrant lint between the toes, dry them and put on his bathrobe. Soft and so long on me that I feel like a girl in her father’s coat. I leave the bathroom, set my things on a chair. Forgot to look for the spermicide. I did see a box of condoms. No hiding them under the T-shirts in the dresser for him. Bedroom door’s shut. I knock.