Gabriel Roth - The Unknowns

We make a kind of prelapsarian small talk.

“Do you do this kind of thing a lot?” she asks me.

“What kind of thing are you referring to?” I have my teasing face on.

“Oh, going home with strange girls and taking Ecstasy,” she says.

“Are you a strange girl, then?” It’s almost too easy.

“I’ve done it three times,” she says. “And the first time I only took half, so it doesn’t count.”

“So tonight you’ll have to take two to make up for it.”

She laughs, like that’s preposterous. “No, to make up for it I’d only have to take one and a half.”

“You’re not adjusting for inflation.”

I’d be more anxious if we were about to have sex. It’s certain that the next few hours, at least, will be very pleasant. I’m greedy for it already, smiling hard and getting an anticipatory buzz, even though it’s only been five minutes and the drug has barely made it to my stomach lining. But I’m impatient, and I don’t want to be sitting in this wooden chair anymore. The apartment is tiny; I leave the kitchen and I’m in the bedroom. Sometimes you just have to accept these things.

In the cab I had worried about her CD collection, and a close examination bears out my fears. It’s frustrating, because I’ve got my iPod right here, and if I had a Y-cable I could hook it into her little bookshelf stereo. (Then I’d have to reposition the speakers to achieve a proper left-right spread.) For the fiftieth time I consider carrying a Y-cable around with me, and for the fiftieth time I realize how lame that would be, and I am momentarily paralyzed, stretched across the gulf between my life’s twin goals: experiencing uncompromised happiness and not being a loser. I sneeze.

At some point I have become aware of my heart beating and my blood pumping, and I feel a twinge of admiration for my body, which somehow keeps functioning through everything, although I so rarely stop to enjoy it. And I realize I’m really glad the evening is going this way: I can’t think of a better outcome than making a new friend, a really nice girl, and getting to hang out with her and do Ecstasy.

“You know what we should do?” I tell her. “We should take our shoes off.”

“My shoes aren’t bothering me at all,” she says.

“And yet once you take them off you will be astonished at how much comfort is available simply by removing your shoes.” I am sitting on the bed, hungrily removing my shoes.

She is playing. “What if I’m more comfortable with my shoes on?”

“I suppose there is the remote possibility that you are more comfortable with your shoes on,” I say, “although I don’t believe it for a second. But I seem to have acquired some kind of neurotic fixation on you experiencing the state of shoelessness right now, and so it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that your shoes are making me uncomfortable.”

“What a terrible situation!” she says, and for a moment it looks as if she really does think it’s a terrible situation. “Incompatible desires! What should we do?”

“I will propose a solution,” I tell her. “It requires that you do me a small favor. You remove your shoes — no, you don’t even have to put in the legwork— legwork , ha! Anyway: I will remove your shoes for you. You will spend thirty seconds assessing the resultant sensation. If at the end of that trial period you wish to return to your previous shoe-clad state, I will gently replace the shoes, and my mind will rest easy in the knowledge that you are enjoying your personal optimum comfort state as regards footwear. If, on the other hand, you decide that you prefer to go without shoes, I will do a little dance of vindication.”

“That could work,” she says, sitting down next to me on the bed.

“This way, neither of us will have to sacrifice comfort, physical or psychogenic, for more than an instant.”

“That’s a great plan,” she says.

I get up off the bed (just standing is extremely enjoyable, and I sit back down and stand up again so I can experience it for a second time) and crouch at her feet. She’s wearing some kind of black dress shoe. I cradle her foot by the ankle, fiddle with the buckle, slip the shoe off. I repeat the process with the other shoe. I place the shoes carefully next to the bed, side by side, then stand up.

“Oh wow,” she says. “That’s really comfortable.”

Lauren reclines, moving all of her limbs at once as if swimming through some viscous medium. Something is happening. She opens her eyes and sees me smiling down at her and she smiles back. She looks lovely. I lie down next to her and start stroking her neck. It’s awesome to be stroking her neck. I’m seeing her hair with a kind of hyperclarity that reminds me of something I can’t place. I look at her face, and suddenly the Ecstasy is doing what we pay it to do. We kiss for a while, gently, like deer. The part of my brain that compares whatever’s going on in real life to whatever might simultaneously be going on in some parallel universe has shut up. And now we’re naked, and there’s these breasts right in front of me, these things that have no purpose but human comfort, and the skin of her neck is so soft, and her pubic hair grazes my leg. Thanks to the Ecstasy my penis is resolutely flaccid, but I know she understands this. She gives it a tender look, as though it’s her newborn baby. It feels like we’re both bouncing now, like we’re moving up and down in giant arcs, like we’re floating in space. We lie there awhile.

“God, it’s been such a long time since I’ve felt close to anyone,” she says.

“I know,” I say. “I’m so glad you were up for this.”

“I almost didn’t, you know. I was like, Who is this guy, I’ve never met him, Justin hardly knows him, I shouldn’t go and do drugs with him .”

“You were just being sensible.”

“I was being scared. I go around being scared all the time. I’m usually scared to be naked with boys.”

“Everybody is.”

“Really?” She seems surprised by this, as though it’s never occurred to her before.

“Absolutely. Everybody is.” This seems true as I say it. “We spend all this energy hiding ourselves, and then when we’re having sex or whatever, we’re supposed to be naked with each other, but we get so scared, and then we’re more wrapped up and guarded and closed off than ever.”

“I’m so scared that I make it like I’m not even there at all,” she says. “I just remove myself, mentally. But that’s what sex should be about. It’s about being close to each other.” She’s running her fingers through my hair.

“It’s not about having an orgasm,” I say.

“Orgasms are nice, though.”

“They certainly are. But it’s — do you want to have an orgasm right now?”

“No.” She’s beaming.

“Can I tell you something about having orgasms?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never told anyone this in my entire life.” It’s true. I haven’t. Why not?

“Tell me.” She nods rhythmically. She really wants to know.

“Every time I have an orgasm with another person, every time, it doesn’t matter who she is, right before I come I hear these words in my head.”

“What are the words?”

“ I love you, Mom . Every time, just like that. I love you, Mom .”

She looks like she’s just been given a Christmas present. “Really?”

“I spend my whole life being ashamed of that.”

“There’s no reason to be ashamed!”

“I know! I know!”

“Because it’s a good thing in you! It’s a good feeling!”

“It’s love!” I tell her, and I’ve figured it out for the first time. “It’s just love! It’s all the same thing!” And I get up and start dancing, naked, while she stares at me, her pupils wide as saucers.