Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

What a bunch of shit, he thought.

He was drinking with some guys at the Winner’s Circle, a rough pick-up bar, when suddenly Patty walked up to him, really drunk.

“John,” she gasped. “John, John, John.” She lurched at him and attached her nail-bitten little claws to his jacket. “John, this guy over there really wants to fuck me, and I was going to go with him, but I don’t want him, I want you, I want you.” Her voice wrinkled into a squeak, her face looked like you could smear it with your hand.

“Patty,” he mumbled, “you’re drunk.”

“That’s not why, I always feel like this.” Her nose and eyelashes and lips touched his cheek in an alcoholic caress. “Just let me kiss you. Just hold me.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “C’mon, stop it.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything. You don’t have to love me. I love you enough for both of us.”

He felt the presence of his smirking friends. “Patty, these guys are laughing at you. I’ll see you later.” He tried to push her away.

“I don’t care. I love you, John. I mean it.” She pressed her taut body against his, one sweaty hand under his shirt, and arched her neck until he could see the small veins and bones. “Please. Just be with me. Please.” Her hand stroked him, groped between his legs. He took her shoulders and shoved her harder than he meant to. She staggered back, fell against a table, knocked down a chair and almost fell again. She straightened and looked at him like she’d known him and hated him all her life.

He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, an overweight, prematurely balding salesman getting drunk on an airplane.

“Look at the clouds,” said the girl next to him. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Lorraine.”

“I’m John.” He extended his hand and she took it, her eyes unreadable, her hand exuding sweet feminine sweat.

“Why do you want to talk about your alcoholism publicly? I mean, if nobody asks or anything?”

Her eyes were steadfast, but her body was hesitant. “Well, I didn’t have to just now. It’s just the first thing I thought of when you asked me about Thorold. In general, it’s to remind me. It’s easy to bullshit yourself that you don’t have a problem.”

He thought of the rows and rows of people in swivel chairs on talk-show stages, admitting their problems. Wife beaters, child abusers, dominatrixes, porn stars. In the past it probably was a humbling experience to stand up and tell people you were an alcoholic. Now it was just something else to talk about. He remembered Patty tottering through a crowded party on smudged red high heels, bragging about what great blow jobs she gave. Some girl rolled her eyes and said, “Oh no, not again.” Patty disappeared into a bedroom with a bottle of vodka and Jack Spannos.

He remembered a conversation with his wife before he married her, a conversation about his bachelor party. “It was no women allowed,” he’d told her. “Unless they wanted to give blow jobs.”

“Couldn’t they just jump naked out of a cake?” she asked.

“Nope. Blow jobs for everybody.”

They were at a festive restaurant drinking margaritas. Nervously, she touched her tiny straws. “Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? In front of each other? I can’t imagine Henry doing that in front of you all.”

He smiled at the mention of his shy friend in this context. “Yeah,” he said. “It probably would be embarrassing. Group sex is for teenagers.”

Her face rose away from her glass in a kind of excited alarm, her lips parted. “You had group sex when you were a teenager?”

“Oh. Not really. Just a gangbang once.”

She looked like an antelope testing the wind with its nose in the air, ready to fly. “It wasn’t rape,” she said.

“Oh, no, no.” Her body relaxed and released a warm, sensual curiosity, like a cat against his leg. “The girl liked it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. She liked having sex with a lot of guys. We all knew her, she knew us.”

He felt her shiver inwardly, shocked and fascinated by this dangerous pack-animal aspect of his masculinity.

“What was it like?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It was a good time with the guys. It was a bunch of guys standing around in their socks and underwear.”

Some kid he didn’t know walked up and put his arm around him while he was talking to a girl named Chrissie. The kid’s eyes were boyish and drunkenly enthusiastic, his face heavy and porous. He whispered something about Patty in John’s ear and said, “C’mon.”

The girl’s expression subtly withdrew.

“What?” said John.

“Come on,” said the kid.

“Bye bye,” said Chrissie, with a gingerly wag of her fingers.

He followed the guy through the room, seizing glimpses of hips and tits sheathed in bright, cheap cloth, girls doing wiggly dances with guys who jogged helplessly from foot to foot, holding their chests proudly aloof from their lower bodies. The music made his organs want to leap in and out of his body in time. His friends were all around him.

A door opened and closed behind him, muffling the music. The kid who’d brought him in sat in an armchair, smiling. Patty lay on a bed with her skirt pulled up to her waist and a guy with his pants down straddling her face. Without knowing why, he laughed. Patty twisted her legs about and bucked slightly. For a moment he felt frightened that this was against her will — but no, she would have screamed. He recognized the boy on her as Pete Kopiekin, who was thrusting his flat hairy butt in the same dogged, earnest, woeful manner with which he played football.

Kopiekin got off her and the other guy got on; between them he saw her chin sticking up from her sprawled body, pivoting to and fro on her neck while she muttered and groped blindly up and down her body. Kopiekin opened the door to leave and a fist of music punched the room. His body jumped in shocked response and the door shut. The guy on top of Patty was talking to her; to John’s amazement he seemed to be using love words. “You’re so beautiful, baby.” He saw Patty’s hips moving. She wasn’t being raped, he thought. When the guy finished he stood and poured the rest of his beer in her face.

“Hey,” said John lamely, “hey.”

“Oh man, don’t tell me that, I’ve known her a long time.”

When the guy left, he thought of wiping her face, but he didn’t. His thoughts spiraled inward and he let them be chopped up by muffled guitar chords. He sat awhile, watching guys swarm over Patty and talking to the ones waiting. Music sliced in and out of the room. Then some guy wanted to pour maple syrup on her and he said, “No, I didn’t go yet.” He sat on the bed and, for the first time, looked at her, expecting to see the sheepish bitter look he knew. He didn’t recognize her. Her rigid face was weirdly slack, her eyes fluttered open, rolled and closed, a strange mix of half-formed expressions flew across her face like swarming ghosts. “Patty,” he said, “hey.” He shook her shoulder. Her eyes opened, her gaze raked his face. He saw tenderness, he thought. He lay on her and tried to embrace her. Her body was leaden and floppy. She muttered and moved, but in ways he didn’t understand. He massaged her breasts; they felt like they could come off and she wouldn’t notice.

He lay there, supporting himself on his elbows, and felt the deep breath in her lower body meeting his own breath. Subtly, he felt her come to life. She lifted her head and said something; he heard his name. He kissed her on the lips. Her tongue touched his, gently, her sleeping hands woke. He held her and stroked her pale, beautiful face.

He got up in such a good mood that he slapped the guy coming in with the maple syrup a high five, something he thought was stupid and usually never did.