Most of the people at the Wake seemed to be Violet’s friends from AA – which was where she had met Brian (where else, right?) — and marginal nut cases out of the halfway house she had been in for awhile before mother let her move back home AGAIN. After all, who else would come to a dog’s wake?
Everyone was talking too loudly to each other or, in a couple of cases, to no one at all.
Scott had parked himself with a large Coke on my mom’s oversized and ancient maple stereo cabinet. I made a few obligatory rounds with the snack tray being introduced to people by Brian or my mom, people I hoped I would never have to see again. After about an hour of this Scott followed me into the kitchen, “Do you want to come see some of my work?”
I looked at him from under my expertly mascara’d lashes saying nothing.
“I thought” he continued, “We could go to the Internet café on University Avenue. You know the one by the florist. Have you been there?”
I shook my head.
“They have great coffee, and I could show you some of my stuff.”
It only took me a heartbeat’s hesitation before I said, “The dog is on his own. Lets take your car.”
We sat down at one of the internet consoles, he with a cappuccino, me holding a double espresso straight up over my ice, the moisture beading the sides of the glass. The place was all progressive metal aesthetic with a few touches of Danish Modern. (Danish modern is very popular in the Bay Area.) The walls a creamy yellow, prints of old Russian propaganda posters on the wall matted in clear plastic. Big glass windows looked onto University Avenue, a popular thoroughfare of restaurants, cafes, interior boutiques and the odd Persian Carpet store.
“Show me,” I said, pushing the mouse in his direction.
It was good work, very definitely. “I’m impressed,” I said truthfully. “I like the economy of click throughs you have on the websites. Everyone hates those ones with some stupid opening theme or image scroll or movie.”
He nodded, “I know, I know. I hate those too. I refuse to do them.”
“My way or the highway!”
“Absolutely.”
We laughed.
“I have my own pages of course,” he added. “I am also a performance artist.”
“On line? What do you perform.”
“Well they are kind of still life slide shows.”
“With or without fruit bowl? If it’s ‘with’ I don’t want to know where you put the fruit.”
He had been taking a sip through the foam of his cappuccino as I said this and steamed milk and cinnamon sprayed out onto the screen as the laugh caught him. We both grabbed at the napkins, unbleached brown ones of course, and dabbed at the screen.
“I see, you are a disgusting still life performance artist.”
Still laughing he said, “Dangerously close to the truth.”
“Do you have a homepage?”
Shaking my head I said, “No. I write about the internet and technology but it is more a business than a personal passion.”
“What is your passion?” He was looking me in the eye when he said this.
Reaching up I wiped off a little steamed milk foam from the side of his mouth, “Men.”
“You like men?”
Nodding I said, “I like men very much indeed.”
His glance wavered and his eyes slipped down to stare into his cup, “Are you married? You have a ring and all.”
“Yes I’m married,” I took a long sip of espresso feeling it fill the back of my mouth and throat with bitterness. “I like men. I like men a lot. I just don’t like husbands. Not anymore.”
His glance flicked back up to mine, his face a little flushed. He had a very nice mouth, the lips with just a hint of fullness.
I turned away from him to look out the double glazed windows. The sky had begun glowing a faint orange and pink through the blue. People passed by on the sidewalk, their features becoming more indistinct as the evening slid closer on the horizon.
Scott stood, walking over to the counter. He returned a few moments later with a plate of what looked like almond croissants. I love almond croissants. He set the plate on the table between us, sitting back in his chair, legs open in front of him. He looked out the window then at me, leaned forward moving the croissants aside and put one hand on my forearm.
“Sacha,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Sacha,” he took a deep breath. “What do you say we get as close to exchanging body fluids as a layer of latex will allow?”
I felt myself go hot. “I love it when tech men talk dirty,”I said and I kissed him hard right in front of everybody in the café, my arms round his neck, my tongue in his mouth.
Sex seems so banal on the big and small screen, in countless porn magazines; the mechanism clichéd into parody.
Unless it is you.
Then that perfect synchronicity of movement is anything but banal. When it’s you and him, your nails digging into his buttocks, pulling him deeper you know, right then, without a doubt there has to be a god. Not Jehovah but a nice generous god who when he set the universe in motion said, “They are really, really going to enjoy this.”
Much later we lay together across the bed, damp and limp. I was on my stomach, my chin on the pillow, absently pulling tangles out of the back of my hair. Scott lay with his head on the small of my back, tracing and retracing the lines of my bottom.
Scott had reminded me what a wonderful thing a cock was. I hadn’t forgotten, just sort of put it out of my mind. Think about it. A cock –
I’m sorry I just cannot call it a penis, not in a sexual context. A penis is what a little boy or a sexless man has.
A cock is perfectly constructed for pleasure. Form and function in true harmony. The full tip, the velvet soft skin over steel when he wants you, the way it slips over your lips and along your tongue a preview of that more perfect penetration. Cocks are why women understand gay men and gay love stories, after all, we reason who WOULDN’T want one of those things inside you?
“Are you going back?” He asked.
I shrugged, “All my stuff is there.”
He snorted, “It’s just stuff. Don’t you want to stay here?”
I propped myself up on my elbows, “Honestly I don’t know right now. If I stay here I might have to interact with my family, plus my specialty is business in Asia.”
Scott sat up, slipping his hands under my stomach, turning me onto my side. He lay down next to me, one leg draped over my hip in that definitive male posture of possession, however transitory.
“I’m scared,” I said quietly. “Scared of the changes, scared of failing.”
“It’s good to be scared, you know.” He said equally quiet. “Being scared means you’re doing something different. I’m scared every time I start a new web project. I spend the day before the presentation usually in the bathroom swallowing Imodium and Pepto Bismal with equal desperation, my mind a total creative blank.”
I laughed.
We said nothing for awhile, then he tipped me onto my back, moving to press his belly against mine, “I’m scared, but I’m happy,” he said in my ear. “What do you want to be?”
So the dog did not die in vain.
I took Scott’s advice and decided I’d rather be scared with a chance of happiness than complacent and miserable. Though some time passed I eventually made the break from my husband.
Cynthia’s advice to stop being a Smile Slut has been more difficult to internalize.
But at least now I really have something to smile about.
