Lauren Holmes - Barbara the Slut and Other People

The Swiss guy came to my neighborhood and Pearl and I met him on a street where the sidewalks were wide and where not a lot of people would walk by. I told him to stay far away until I gave him instructions. He started to look kind of pale.

“I’m quite afraid of dogs,” he said.

“It’s too late now,” I said.

I threw him a bag of treats and told him to toss them to Pearl from a distance. He looked at the treats through the bag. He clearly didn’t want to touch them. He hesitantly threw one. Pearl gobbled it up and looked at him. She was making progress. She wasn’t barking or lunging. She was getting better at identifying men who threw treats as friends, but I was tired of having to do the introductions and was starting to dream about going to live with her on some kind of feminist or lesbian all-women commune.

I told the Swiss guy to keep throwing treats. Pearl was getting closer and closer to him, wagging her tail, but he kept jumping back.

“You’re doing fine,” I said. “Give her some of the cheese.”

“I don’t like to touch it,” he said.

“That’s what will really make her like you,” I said. “And you’re already touching dehydrated lamb lung.”

“What?”

“Just keep throwing the treats.”

Now Pearl was sitting at his feet, thumping her tail, and the Swiss guy was trying to stay calm but not doing a good job. When I was sure that Pearl wasn’t going to change her mind and eat him, we started walking. Pearl was excited about the Swiss guy until we got to the park, and then she switched her attention to the squirrels.

After the walk we dropped Pearl off at my apartment and got a quick dinner. I told the Swiss guy to speak to me in Swiss-German. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his voice was sexier — deeper and more sure.

He left to go to his party, and a couple of hours later he texted me to ask if I wanted him to stop by again. I said sure, and when he got there Pearl and I went outside to meet him. Pearl recognized him immediately and started jumping and twisting in the air. The Swiss guy shrieked a little shriek.

“It’s okay,” I said. “She’s just excited to see you.”

We went inside and into the living room. I sat on the couch and the Swiss guy sat on the floor with Pearl. At first she tried to get in his face and lick him, but then she lay down next to him and let him rub her belly. We sat like that and talked for several hours, and he rubbed her the whole time. Then he got up and washed his hands and his arms and we went into the bedroom.

“Is Pearl going to be in the room?” he said.

“Is that okay?” I said. “She’ll cry and cry if I shut her out. She won’t bother us.”

“Maybe she can stay on the floor.”

I didn’t think that was going to happen, and it didn’t. But as soon as we lay down she went to the bottom of the bed and stayed very still until we were done.

When the Swiss guy sat up he said, “Is Pearl sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“Is she angry with us?”

“No. How could she be angry? She’s asleep.”

She woke up when we got up. The Swiss guy asked if he could sleep on the couch. He was afraid that Pearl was going to kill him when he was asleep and defenseless. I got him a blanket and a pillow and escorted him out to the living room. Back in my bed, I spooned with Pearl.

In the morning the Swiss guy had to leave to meet a friend. I made him some coffee and told him to smell the milk in the fridge before he poured it. He didn’t like the way it smelled, so he drank the coffee black. I also made him some muesli and yogurt, but he didn’t want it even though he was Swiss.

It was the last time I was going to see him before he left for California. He had a few more days before he left, but he had to move out of his apartment and put his stuff in storage. He said he was going to try to find a cheap room when he got back to New York. He seemed stressed out.

“How much stuff do you have?” I said.

“About two large bags,” he said.

“I know this sounds crazy, but you could stay here when you get back,” I said. “You could leave your bags here.”

“That’s very kind of you, but I have only known you for four days.”

“I know,” I said. “Okay.”

“But we will see each other when I return.”

“Okay,” I said.

He kissed me. I put my hand on his arm, but he pulled his arm away.

“What’s wrong?”

“You touched Pearl and then you touched me.”

“Uh,” I said. “She’s not really that dirty.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

I washed my hands and he kissed me again.

“Okay,” he said. “Good-bye. Good-bye, Pearl.” He waved at her. She wagged her tail.

• • •

I waited to hear from the Swiss guy. I wondered if I even was going to hear from him, and if it was possible to fall in love in four days and two weeks. I wondered if wanting to talk to him plus wanting to listen to him plus being satisfied with his man parts equaled love.

I couldn’t text the Swiss guy myself, because that was against the rules as laid out by my younger brother. A couple of years earlier he had explained that a girl should never initiate contact with a guy. If a guy contacts you first you can write back, but you should never make the first move. My brother said it was basic human psychology — the less you contact a guy, the more he wonders about you, and the more he wonders about you, the more he thinks he likes you. I had been following my brother’s instructions and they seemed to be working fine. I liked avoiding guys not writing me back by not writing them in the first place.

School started and the Swiss guy finally wrote to say he had met another nice dog on his travels. He sent me a picture of it. He asked if I wanted to hang out that week when he was back. Then he said he was getting in the next morning and didn’t have anywhere to go. I did the math and figured that he was already at the airport in California. I said I agreed that he shouldn’t stay with me, but if he wanted he could come over in the morning and stay for a night or two while he looked for a room. He said we could talk about it when he got there, and I felt embarrassed for offering again.

I went to bed late, and I could hardly sleep with the promise of sex running through my body. Finally the Swiss guy called to say he was downstairs, and Pearl and I went down to meet him. Pearl recognized him through the front door and went bananas.

Back upstairs the Swiss guy and I had sex, he went to sleep on the couch, we woke up and had sex again, he left to go do research at the library, and when he came back we had sex again.

On Monday he was scared to be home alone with Pearl so he went to a coffee shop when I went to school. That evening I met up with him and we went to a Mexican restaurant in my neighborhood. The Swiss guy balked at the health department rating of B, but I told him that all the restaurants in the neighborhood had Bs, and that the only difference between a B restaurant and an A restaurant was that the A restaurant got lucky during their inspection. He told me all about his trip to California and then he started talking about how he was leaving forever. I said I really wished he had told me before we met, or at least when we met. He said he was sorry and told me about a successful fling he had when he was traveling in Asia. The girl was German and he said they traveled around together and had a nice time. Now she was married and had a baby.

“So you do this a lot?” I said.

“No, not a lot,” he said. “That was the first time and this is the second time.”

“Great.”

I waited for him to explain how this was different from the first time, but he moved on to telling me what research he still needed to do before he left. He was eating and drinking very slowly, and eventually we were the last people in the restaurant.