A Carousel of Women
His Freudian slip surprises us both. Before either of us can address it, a woman interrupts to compliment my cowboy boots. She asks where I bought them. I got them secondhand, but they are from a popular European brand, I explain. He orders four slices of cheese pizza while I talk to her. The employees hand him three styrofoam containers in a plastic bag. We don’t continue our conversation outside the restaurant. I mull over the possibility of teasing him as a way of asking him to explain if he was serious, but I am worried that I will embarrass myself or him. It’s possible it was a mistake. If I press him on it, I might betray my own subconscious desire and make this encounter awkward and inescapable.
I show him my new library card instead. I am a bad leftist because I never use the library. I prefer to own my books. I wonder why I feel this need to possess and accumulate. Ruby recommended I read Sophie Calle’s “Exquisite Pain.” Calle wrote the book 15 years after the end of a relationship. She was supposed to meet her lover in New Delhi after a three-month residency in Japan. Except he never arrived. She finally reached him on the hotel phone. He broke off their relationship. There was another woman. Calle told the story of her breakup to friends and strangers in exchange for them to describe the most painful moments of their lives. After three months, she became tired of the story. She was no longer suffering. She recorded these conversations and presented them in “Exquisite Pain.” The only copy I could find was $200 online. Hence the library card that I flash to him. This is my roundabout way of asking him if it’s normal to feel this way after heartbreak—oscillating between agony and boredom. Yes, he says.
I journaled before we were supposed to meet. I wrote about watching him sing “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass during karaoke the night prior. I was overcome by a fantasy of us making out. I set my beer down on the table and picked it back up. I swayed back and forth and tried to avoid making eye contact with him. I was flushed. I felt like a curtainless window at night, every passerby able to peer inside my interior and judge my design sensibilities. I ordered another beer. After transcribing this memory, I wrote a blunt statement: I think we will have sex today. I never write like that in my journal. Predictively. My journal is a place to gather material. The writing is apathetic and entirely functional. So this sentence feels factual.
We eat our pizza on opposite ends of his couch while watching music videos. He admits that he has a complicated relationship with women. A lover recently accused him of having a “carousel of women that he uses and then discards before moving onto the next.” Ah, so you are a fuckboy, I laugh. I am trying to find my equivalent this summer, I tell him. I want a carousel of men, and I’m making good progress. But ultimately, I enjoy being in a relationship, I admit. Maybe you’ll grab your brass ring, he suggests. I am confused. What do you mean? I ask and unrelatedly add, There’s a pole dancing studio in Humboldt Park called The Brass Ring. He explains, Carousels used to have a brass ring that people would try to grab as it spun and you won a prize if you caught it. It’s a saying about reaching an elusive goal, the highest prize. We are both silent. The most common prize for catching the brass ring: another ride on the carousel.
He tells me the story of how his father and mother met. They worked at the same department store. His mom worked in the shoe department and his father in the lamp department. His father visited her everyday to ask her on a date. She refused. So he stole shoes from her department and brought them back to his. At the end of each day, she had to visit his department to retrieve them. Eventually, she conceded. I find the story endearing. Is this evidence of my debilitating heterosexuality? Anyway, I hope he is his father’s son.
He asks me to smell his cologne. I do. He smells like a cutting board after chopping herbs. Metallic. Earthy. Masculine. Domestic. The crown of my head brushes against his cheek. I hear him smell my hair. Neither of us acknowledges the intimacy of this moment. I do not ask him to smell my perfume. My neck is an erogenous zone. And I am trying to appear nonchalant. But I ask him if he wants to judge my Tinder profile. It is an excuse to show him the photo of my moisturized midriff. He gasps. He tries to decide what makes the photo standout. It’s my stomach tattoo, I suggest. He pauses and lists the features that caught his eye—your legs, your hands, your boobs, your expression. Oh, so everything? I tease.
I speculate about changing my name while he massages my feet. My legs are straddled on either side of him. He asks me if this feels okay. Yes, I say. He thinks for a moment and then declares, Your name suits you. This is always the outcome whenever I bring the idea up to anyone. No one wants this authority to bestow me with a new identity. Maybe that is what I want from love, a rechristening. He confesses that sometimes he goes by another name. It reminds me of a corny movie from childhood about zoo animals that escape and end up in the jungle completely unequipped for life in the wild. I start to explain and then stop. I don’t want to spoil his nickname. He demands that I tell him. I do. We both laugh uncontrollably. He pulls me up into a sitting position. I am fully straddling him now. My ass is in his lap. He is hard. We become serious. We are dark, quivering clouds the moment before they burst. I want to kiss you, he says. You can, I whisper. So we do.
Image: Kyle Dunn, Long Hours, 2018.
Current obsession: Jules Gill-Peterson’s A Short History of Trans Misogyny. This book is phenomenal. As my friend’s partner joked when describing it, “History is back, baby.” There is a line in the conclusion that I’ve been mulling over for the past week: “What if trans feminism meant saying yes to being too much, not because everyone should become more feminine, or more sexual, but because a safer world is one in which there is nothing wrong with being extra? Abundance might be a powerful concept in a world organized by a false sense of security.” Also, everyone should read Andrea Long Chu’s “Freedom of Sex”!