Eunuchs and Nymphomaniacs Page 5

  But if love was an addictive substance then women were the dealers. A bottle of booze or a drug had the decency to sit on a shelf and wait for you to use it. Not so with a woman. She got up and walked around, made decisions, went on vacation, interacted with other potential suitors. If a woman held the key to your stash then you were in deep shit. When your drug of choice can refuse to be imbibed that is a problem. Women, it seemed, had what I sought. They carried it around with them. I had thought it was their pussies but now I could see it was much more serious than that. It wasn’t sex I had been chasing all those years, it was approval.

  There was a lot of talk about fantasy.

  Not the sort of fantasy involving a convent full of lesbian nuns, but the romantic daydreaming that took place between dates. The cottage-building, rose-tinted, soft-focus longing that reality will always fall short of.

  I sat in a circle and listened as a reasonable-looking man shared that after having an affair with his best friend’s wife he had now become an outcast. He was blocked, unfriended, and very much unfollowed. The wife had been forgiven but he hadn’t. He was deeply annoyed by the sheer inconvenience of it all. Like he’d lost his wallet. He resented his best friend for not forgiving him. After all he had apologized. And to be fair he wasn’t the only man she’d had an affair with. There had been others. She was the one who had broken her marriage vows, not him.

  I could see his point.

  An older man shared that he fantasized about having sex with miners and while I imagined him being sodomized by soot-covered Welshmen, he spoke falteringly about how it was their innocence and lack of criticism that turned him on, and I suddenly realized why he looked like a child molester. Minors. And even more worrying was the fact that I had identified with his attraction to innocence and lack of criticism. I looked around the room searching for support. This guy was disgusting, right? I was impressed that no one took me up on it. This really was a safe place. There was no judgment. But didn’t they hear what he was saying? Shouldn’t someone be calling the police?

  This was when she walked in.

  She was twenty minutes late but her body language, or more accurately, her body, apologized for it. We shuffled sideways to make room and when her turn came she shared how she used to act out with complete strangers. Sexually explicit terms and phrases were discouraged since they could trigger bottom line behavior. In other words, someone might start wanking. One of her favorite places to engage her addiction was in elevators. She’d simply press the stop button and that was that. She loved the finality of it. That it all took place in a mirrored container and that when it was over she left the guy there.

  She had all the power.

  She was never refused and she never saw any of them again. It turned her on to do it.

  To think about it beforehand and replay the memory afterward. She’d keep a memento. A tie. A cufflink. A lighter. A glove. Like a serial killer. She was absolutely gorgeous. Upper-class and very well made. I would never have expected to find a girl of such quality in a place like this, saying things like that. I looked around the circle again. This time for sympathy. I couldn’t take this. I was so jealous of the guys (were there girls too?) fortunate enough to have been engaged with by her. I felt like she had to be prick-teasing us with the concept. Surely she was still active. Her face flushed at the memory. So did mine. I was shocked. I couldn’t explain it. I was jealous of her too. Her power. Her beauty. It was like meeting a real-life billionaire.

  I never went back because all I felt was rage that I had never had an encounter like that with a girl as beautiful as that and I suspected I never would. Far from discouraging me I simply got new ideas. Hearing that a girl like that was capable of such escapades only encouraged me to return to the fray. I was like the mild-mannered traffic offender mentored by murderers. I wanted to cry when I heard her say she hoped she’d never debase herself in that way again. When the meeting ended, all the men, myself included, waited for the elevator.

  She took the stairs.

  I DON’T GET LAID ENOUGH TO BE CALLED A SEX ADDICT

  #TheOxygenThiefDiaries

  I took Courtney’s suggestion to attend these meetings not because I thought they’d work but because they’d prove useful in my ongoing campaign to show Marian I was working on myself. And if attending them meant there was a good chance Courtney would continue sucking me off well then, all the better. But on exiting the elevator I got a text from her saying she’d met a Wall Street trader who seemed to be interested in a relationship. It had the potential to turn into something permanent so she was going to give it a try. Apparently he was more fucked-up than I was and consequently needed more help than I did. He had massive trust issues and she wanted to be able to assure him that he was the only one in her life.

  She was dumping me for not being fucked-up enough.

  By text.

  I walked straight into a Codependents Anonymous meeting that was just starting in a depressingly hot room on the ground floor of the same building as the SLAA meeting. The chairman was obsessed with allotting equal segments of time to each person to share. Dividing the overall amount of time (an hour) by the number of people in the room (nine) ended up being an exercise in futility because he had to start all over again when someone walked in late.

  It was Beckettian.

  The best part was at the end not just because it was the end but because he went around the room asking people what they were feeling at that precise moment. It was humbling to realize that what they announced was not at all what I thought I saw on their faces.

  “I’m tired and sad,” said one girl who looked anything but.

  “I’m confused,” said another who looked like she had her shit together.

  “Overwhelmed,” said the next guy who admittedly did look a little flustered but it was quite a revelation to understand the chasm between inner thought and outward appearance.

  Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.

  Apart from that it was the same stuff I heard in AA.

  “Don’t give away your power.” One guy was going through a separation and he said he was fine during the week but when he had his kid for the weekend he wanted his wife back. But overall, looking at it coldly he realized the cons significantly outweighed the pros.

  “Basically she was hot and the sex was great but apart from that she wasn’t a nice person. She wasn’t a companion. She didn’t treat me well.”

  There was a lot of talk of “having your needs met” and references to putting your life on hold to benefit someone else. Disappearing into another person’s personality so as to avoid having to develop your own. A joke was told.

  What does a codependent see when he’s drowning?

  Someone else’s life flash before his eyes.

  There were knowing nods and grunts of recognition but it was new to me. I saw a lot of Marian’s behavior in there. She liked to find out what was going on with me so she could get into the mix of it and hide from her own issues. And I welcomed it as long as I got what I wanted. Namely sex. And I began to see how controlling I could be. I’d be more than happy do something for her but I’d seethe if I didn’t receive payment.

  Sexual payment.

  I’d take long walks with her, visit museums, have lunch with her parents, whatever she wanted as long as she fucked me afterward. And when the sex eased off I’d suppress my rage since I was so ashamed of its origin. Getting angry about it would expose the fact that I only wanted her for sex. And then behind that there was a certain relief involved because I could harness the sexual rejection as a reason for not staying with her. See? She’s just a frigid cunt. I’ll have to dump her soon. Which meant there was no point in making any plans for our future. It was a stalemate.

  I was a stale mate.

  They talked about boundaries and trust issues and taking on other people’s feelings. I was thinking about inviting Marian to attend a meeting until I heard one of them say that fixing people was in it
self a symptom of codependence. We fix others to make ourselves more comfortable. Like families where one person took on all the work to keep the peace. They put their needs aside for the good of the whole. This was what I had done in advertising. Obsession, compulsion, and insecurity were great traits to have in the workplace because you’re always overprepared and at your desk early but those same characteristics were disastrous in a relationship. And yes workaholism might get you promoted but hiding in a job wasn’t living.

  They called it miming in the choir.

  I’d never been married or allowed myself to be in a real relationship because I was never going to trust anyone enough to let them in. My behavior with Marian was classic. Push her away. Hurt her. Whatever it took not to let her in, or better yet make her not want to get in.

  “I liked hurting girls …”

  Later, on the phone, I told her I had identified with some of the things I’d heard in the meeting and instead of saying Yes, me too, she said, “Well yeah, I’ve been trying to tell you that for ages.”

  At least we could agree on one thing.

  I was an asshole.

  * * *

  “You’re a misogynist.”

  The girl held my eyes making sure I understood it was an insult. At first I thought this might be the feminist who had emailed to say she might stop by my table at some point that afternoon, but leading with an attack didn’t seem like her style since her email had been quite flattering. She stood there waiting for me to leap to my own defense but I ignored her in favor of a homeless man who loomed up from behind.

  “Ahh, yessir, good afternoon, thank you for stopping.”

  She walked away shaking her head.

  The homeless loved to be sold to.

  So accustomed were they to being shooed away they only met your eyes to decide if you were mocking them. After exhausting my spiel I’d get thanked for going to the trouble of pretending to sell to them. They were like fat girls grateful for the attention. But they were less likely to be a nuisance if they were treated as potential customers. Otherwise, knowing they were a deterrent, they’d hang around waiting to be bribed. The truth is I had no way of ensuring they would stay away other than to give them no reason to come back. After more than one failed attempt at banning a multi-coated individual I realized I couldn’t dictate to a street dweller where in the street he could dwell.

  If anything I was the trespasser.

  This particularly grimy example of the genre declined to hold my book when I handed it to him. Not because he was demonstrating his taste in literature but because he didn’t want to soil it. The poor bastard stepped back to save me the horror of contact with him. He (I think it was a “he”) smelled so bad the dominant fumes of piss and feet brought tears to my eyes.

  “Thank yooooooo,” said a voice from somewhere inside the clump of matted hair and coats as it shuffled away.

  Minutes later a sixty-three-year-old, impeccably groomed, self-confessed feminist called Delaney presented herself at my table and appeared to be far too impressed. I was suspicious. Since she had referred to herself as a “hard-core feminist” in her initial email I was braced for some sort of intellectual assault, but as she spoke I felt my shoulders relax as I realized she was hinting at the possibility of having me as a guest on a podcast she hosted called The Seethesayer.

  Surely it was a trap.

  I’d be publicly roasted by bull dykes with overgrown vaginas and end up taxidermed in reception. But I couldn’t refuse the exposure. Or the potential for pussy. All those college students producing soup to the sound of my lilting Irish accent. And a radio interview was perfect because I’d still be anonymous. There was no harm in hearing her out.

  So later that night in Cafe Ost we had an excellent chat about media and gender and all things patriarchal. The usual stuff. Stuff I had became accustomed to speaking about in a convincing manner.

  “I’m surprised there aren’t cars on fire in the street,” I volunteered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, where’s the rage? Men have been treating women like retarded rabbits for centuries. Why are you not angry? Because the patriarchy is so effective, it’s trained you to police yourselves.”

  She was definitely well connected and not unintelligent, but she seemed to be just now discovering things that should have been old news to her. If anything she seemed too impressed by my observations. I wondered if she might be about to offer me a slot with my own show. Or at least confirm the time and date of my interview on hers. So when she stopped me outside the café just before parting, I was expectant.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Please do.”

  “Was this a date?”

  I wanted to laugh. She was over sixty years old. I wouldn’t have fucked her if she paid me; well, maybe if she paid me a lot. She had just spent three hours sitting there under the impression there was an outside chance of us having sex. She saw my eagerness to philosophize as a measure of how strongly I was attracted to her. In other words, I and everything I had talked about was reduced to a cosmetic she applied to her aging cheeks. And this from a radical feminist. It made me revise everything I’d said. One statement in particular.

  “I’m not a misogynist, I’m a misanthrope with a hard-on.”

  Now I could see why she’d beamed at this.

  I was thinking I had at last found someone capable of navigating the vertiginous canyons of my brilliance but in her mind this was the moment she became convinced she would get some dick.

  She sent an email the next morning.

  As I walked away last night I got the feeling that “he’s just not that into you.”

  If she walked past my table again she could read my response.

  HORMONES NOT SO MUCH RAGING NOW AS COMPLAINING

  #TheOxygenThiefDiaries

  Marian invited me to her workshop in Bushwick. It was thrilling to be shown around her inner sanctum and I was determined not to fuck up. She showed me how to make some simple metal designs from a sketch I drew of a skull. She was so sweet and caring as she explained the various techniques. Her hands touched mine as she positioned my fingers on the cutting tools. A tingle ran up my arm and splashed in my chest.

  “You should always make sure you cut away from the body.”

  How thoughtful.

  She obviously wanted me to see her in action.

  To show me a side of her I hadn’t seen before. She’d made it clear that she’d have to leave by six PM to be on time for a dinner party, and I nursed a barely acknowledged hope that, depending on how the afternoon went, I might be asked to join her. After making much of my skull-shaped aluminum key ring I felt I had passed whatever test she had set for me, because at 5:50 PM she announced she wouldn’t be going to the dinner party at all.

  Glee ran around inside me looking for an outlet.

  I could have gone home there and then and it would have been a momentous day but there was more to come. Without warning she held my shoulders, drugged me with her famous smile, leaned forward, and kissed me on the lips.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Was she mocking me? I felt so undeserving it was almost painful to receive it.

  Did she know this?

  “Oh,” I said, stupefied. “That seems … that was …”

  “Do you need more reassurance?” The smile was actually still there.

  “Hourly,” I said, beaming.

  I felt such a surge of joy it verged on religious. I didn’t dare jinx it with speech. It was too delicate a moment to support the weight of spoken words. When I first sat down in her workshop I was determined not to let her know how fucking gorgeous she looked. My idea was to reemploy the technique that won her three years earlier. Back then I made a point of being nice and witty and respectful and resisted any temptation to make a move. This eventually proved to be a successful strategy. Apparently it was going to work again.

  We crossed the street from her studio into a café.


  A rich French art dealer had hired her to install a collection of rare figurines in one of his coastal homes near San Francisco. She’d be flown out there in a private jet and met by personal assistants. I was jealous that she’d be brushing shoulders, and perhaps other parts of her lovely pale sleek body, with wealthy young men who were going to appear very attractive compared to me. She showed me pictures of the guesthouse and the taste level was worryingly astute. Expensive but not tacky; simple, laid-back, bohemian.

  And I couldn’t help but notice the double bed.

  She asked me to help her pronounce some artistic phrases like trompe l’oeil (trohm loo-aye), penchant (pong-shong), and fleur-de-lis (flure duh lee) so that she didn’t make a faux pas (foe-paw) at dinner. Ordinarily she’d dismiss such niceties as unworthy of discussion but now she blushed as she rehearsed them with me. Either she was out to impress her employers or she was chumming for ceauk (cock).

  To change the subject I produced some DVDs that we might watch that weekend. Inexplicably her arms began to flap like a flightless bird. I thought at first that she was excited by the titles until I saw the tear roll down her cheek. Leaning across the table she tilted her face up at me and kissed me first on the cheek and then after a moment’s consideration, micro-pecked my lips as if she was worried she might burn me. As if she understood the intensity of what she had dammed up inside her and didn’t want to hurt me with it. The lovely smile was just a memory now as she began to cry in earnest. I felt my stomach twist with self-disgust and suppressed rage. It was a reminder of why we were no longer together.

  What the fuck was I doing with this myopic girl?

  “They remind me of all those nice nights we spent watching movies,” she said.