The Secret World of Women
[I]t does please us to believe there is a secret world of women. Uncloistered contact deforms the image in men’s eyes. This is why we love each other best when we do not know each other. Engaging women, helpful ones, aggressive ones impress us sooner and then fall away. The retiring ones remain.
William T. Vollman, “The Green Dress”
Desire is a question-mark, not so much a thirst for sensation as for knowledge. What secret expression does she save for her lovers? How does she touch them? What’s her natural scent, the kind you can only smell with your nose pressed against her? What does her quim look like? How does it taste? What sounds does she make when she feels her orgasm washing over her? You want to know. The passage of time rarely dulls this curiosity. Desire is particular. It doesn’t make any sense. What’s so interesting to you must seem hopelessly mundane to someone else.
Listen: Last week, Wednesday, Leslie invited Emma downtown for drinks. I spent the night out with friends. Emma’s emotional conflicts surrounding us, surrounding me, were brought to the fore, Les told me later on. I never thought it had been a matter of relative degrees of attraction, but the accursed pendulum had struck us down again, it seemed. Even more vexing to me was that I had allowed myself to feel desire rather than suppress it until the moment that it would, inevitably, be satisfied. I had allowed someone to grow on me. “Fuck this,” I said at that moment. This was not The Way To Go About Things.
The next day was Leslie’s birthday. We spent the evening relaxing at her family’s restaurant. I smoked a hookah with her stepfather and planned her upcoming bash, discussing furniture, music, lighting, and the beer and wine selection. Babs had invited us to some party, so we headed downtown to Bar-M, an overbright but nonetheless comfortable West Village watering hole. We said our hellos to Babs and settled on two bar stools by the wall. The previous night’s revelations still weighed on me a bit. The party was subdued—I was bored, in a lecherous mood. A couple of guys began flirting with Les and to amuse myself I hung back, trying to determine if either of them had any technique. One of them, a tall black man, bought each of us a shot of tequila. Accepting this shot, I would later realize, was a mistake—tequila never sits well with me. I soon grew tired of the male mating antics and took to scanning the room endlessly.
My blank gaze passed over a woman who was making eye contact with me sort of insistently. I gave her another look and realized she was familiar. It was Nicole, the cock-in-mouth girl who had hosted a party at her penthouse apartment a couple of months back. She looked better than I had remembered. She asked if I wanted to step outside and smoke a cigarette and I accepted her invitation. We talked small for a while; she told me about her job, the details of which she insisted must be boring to me. “No. Not at all,” I said. We talked about the NLP briefly and I held back, wondering if she had read about the cock-in-mouth bit. There’d be time to get into that later. Or perhaps not. The cold chased us inside and just as I was getting around to talking to her about her dating life two guys sidled up to her as if marking their territory. The one with the ugly nose soon buggered off but the other one, a short guy, affixed himself to Nicole’s ear and proceeded to talk it off. I decided I wasn’t going to play the cock-blocker’s game and went to find Les, who handed me another shot of tequila. Accepting this shot was my second mistake of the night.
Emma and Derek arrived with a female friend in tow. No sooner had I heard the friend’s name than I forgot it—all that Dale Carnegie training went to waste, it seems. I settled on the bank of seats next to Emma and struck up a conversation. “Leslie told me what happened last night,” I said.
“I know she did. You guys tell each other everything,” Emma responded, as if this were the most obvious fact in the world.
“You could have just told me you weren’t into me. I don’t want to be with someone who isn’t thrilled to be with me.”
“It’s not that; I think you’re attractive. It just takes a lot of chemistry to get into it with someone. Trust me; it’s a rare thing for me.”
“But you do have it with Les. You know how sometimes you meet someone and think they’re cute and then you get to know them and start to find them much more attractive?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” She took my hand in hers and squeezed it for emphasis, her dark eyes peering into mine. “Look, I think you’re great. I mean it. It’s just that I felt this instant chemistry with Leslie. But it takes time with almost anyone. I’m not trying to mess with you—I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“We have too. In the past it was such a blur. We’d meet someone and then it was just happening.” I scanned the room again, annoyed at the lights. I was full of inappropriate questions but I didn’t care. The tequila was taking hold, amplifying my mood. “Do you like sex?” I was genuinely curious.
“I enjoy sex, and I guess I could get it. It’s just that I’m not into hooking up with some random guy.”
“It’s not as satisfying anyway. You want to be with someone you can trust on a certain level.”
She nodded and we sat in silence for a while, hip-to-hip. Her friend was having an animated discussion with Derek. I studied the girl’s face and decided she was pretty. At some point I went out for a smoke. Someone handed me a joint, I think. When I returned I sat on the other side of Emma and started chatting with her pretty friend. Pretty pretty pretty was all I could think.
“You know, you remind me of a very pretty girl I know,” I said to the pretty thing. “You talk the same way. You have the same smile—there, you just did it. There’s something about your face, those alluring eyes, that delicate nose, your full lips, your straight teeth—and that long hair. Well, you’re not blonde, but still… both of you look like a certain porn star.” What I didn’t mention was this other girl, a friend of mine, is a dominatrix who at one time had a penchant for licking Leslie’s ass clean after I came all over it.
The girl was amused. “Is that a good thing?”
“Oh yeah, this particular porn star is absolutely gorgeous. Can’t remember her name at the moment but consider it a compliment.” I glanced to my right and noticed that Les had locked lips with Emma. My conversation with the pretty girl continued and somehow we ended up on the subject of her ex-boyfriend.
“My ex had a nine-inch cock,” the girl told me, flashing me that pretty smile. Pretty pretty pretty. I love it when a woman talks explicitly about sex. It’s not even that her talk has to involve me directly. I just want to hear the dirty words, know the dirty thoughts. Forgive me Aleks, for I have sinned. I could sit there all night and listen to her talk about how she wants to stuff her juicy cunt with cock. That would be fulfilling enough.
“How do you know, exactly?”
“Oh, I measured it.”
“So what was it about his nine-inch cock? Did you like feeling like you were being filled up by that thing? Was it visual? Did he ruin you for other men?”
“Being filled up was nice, I guess. But it’s not a big deal, honestly. I prefer the man behind it.”
I flashed a wry smile. “I was just making sure mine’s not too big for you.” I reached under the table and stroked the pretty girl’s leg, practically knocking my drink off the table as I strained to reach her. I was perfectly ridiculous. Emma had concluded her snogging session with Les, who had scampered off somewhere in her cat-like way. I turned to Emma and announced that the pretty friend was, indeed, pretty. We returned to our previous topic of conversation.
“Another thing I’ve been worried about,” Emma said, “is that Leslie is so much more experienced with women than I am. I don’t want her to be disappointed. I don’t know if I really know what I’m doing down there.”
I thought this was the dearest thing I’d heard anyone say in a long time, and an empathic frown settled on my forehead. “Don’t be silly,” I chided. “It’s not about how the parts move. The most important thing to both of us is enthusiasm—being with someone who’s really into it. That’s what makes sex great. If you’re excited then we’re excited. It only gets better with time, anyway.”
Emma said she was cold so I put my arm around her small frame. I asked her some sex questions and then we ended up talking about the NLP, as we often do. “You know, I don’t have to write about you if this all freaks you out. It’s all a little surreal to me, at least,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, it’s not a problem.”
“It’s just that I enjoy writing about you. So, do you think it makes you more or less likely to want to fuck me?”
Emma’s laughter came out in short girly bursts, “I’d say more. Definitely more. I told you I like your writing.” It occurred to me that it matters, on some level, what she thinks of me. Usually I don’t give a damn.
I found Leslie on a bench outside, sitting in the cold with her head between her hands. She was feeling ill. “Christ, are you okay?” I asked, my eyes bulging. “I wanted to get you good and fucked up tonight, but I didn’t expect to send you home in a stretcher til at least midnight.”
“Just let me rest out here a minute, okay?”
“I think they’re going to the Hole. I don’t think you’re going to be okay for that. We can just go home if you want.” I went in and grabbed our shit. Derek, Emma and the cute friend were getting ready to leave. Emma was worried about Les.
“I want you to go with them,” Leslie said.
“I don’t want to go if you don’t.”
“Go. I’ll be fine. You’re not coming home with me.” She walked up to Derek and Emma, “Make sure he goes with you, please. Consider it my birthday present to myself.”
Confusion reigned. I was saying goodbye to the cute friend. “Oh, I definitely want to see you again,” I said, putting my arm around her. Leslie had bought some earrings from Babs, so I paid Babs and gave her a big hug goodbye, feeling her big tits against my chest. I tried to get into the cab with Leslie but she pushed me back, insisting that I go to the Hole. “Fine,” I said reluctantly. “I’ll see you later.”
I stuffed myself into a cab with Emma and Derek and immediately realized I wasn’t as nearly as sober as I had let myself believe. In fact, I was pretty fucked up. “This is Captain Fucked Up speaking,” I used to say to a friend of mine, mocking that blase intonation that every pilot on earth seems to have. “We’ve reached our cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet. I’m gonna go ahead and turn off the fasten seatbelt sign. Feel free to move about the cabin.” Yeah, I was fucked up. Fuckedupfuckedupfuckedup.
The Hole was a blur, and a sausage-fest to boot. Someone handed me a joint, perhaps it was Adam Smith’s invisible hand. I collapsed onto the seats. Everything beyond like 4 feet in front of me was all hazy. I struggled mightily with the ciliary muscles around my lenses, but simply couldn’t get them to obey. Emma wound up on Derek’s lap and Derek’s hand wound up on my leg. My brain, a dying bulb, struggled to process this information. I wondered whether they were somehow trying to take advantage of me.
Derek was bitching about Emma’s out-of-town guy. “He’s so arrogant and domineering,” he said.
“That’s what I like about him,” Emma responded. At least she was being honest. Emma’s submissive in romantic situations. She’s not a chaser. You have to lead her by the hand.
“How do people like ‘Emma’?” she was asking me. I told her people have sent me some nice fan-mail for her, that everyone wanted to know how it would turn out. So did I, for that matter.
It’s a point of pride that I’ve never had to be carried out of a bar. I was sitting there, hot, overtired. The tequila and smoke had caught up to me. I wanted to go to the bathroom, splash some cold water on my face but it felt as if my limbs were going to quit on me. Okay just focus not quite seeing double yet yer okay not stoned very much anymore. Get ahold of yourself. Getup. Get. Up. Somehow I managed to launch myself from the couch, staggering around on weak legs like a newborn calf. I made like I was in physical therapy: Steady now, one foot in front of the other. That’s right. Attaboy. I bounced off the other partygoers like a billiard ball, following an approximate trajectory that, I hoped, would lead to the bathroom.
Amazingly, the cold water seemed to work. I felt hours younger, slightly less like the contents of a crap sandwich. On the way back to my seat I bumped, quite literally, into Jorge and invited him to come join us. “You seem withdrawn,” he said. “No shit, I’m wasted,” I told him. I settled into my seat and tried to look inconspicuous.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so messed up about the whole thing,” Emma was telling me. “I know the two of you are sweet; I just have a lot of conflicting feelings so I’m not consistent about wanting it. If Leslie hadn’t felt ill tonight I probably would have…”
I can’t remember how I responded. I’m not sure I had anything to say at that point, and I wasn’t sure she actually believed what she was saying. I was sure, however, that I wanted to go home.
That weekend, a blizzard came and went. Leslie and I trekked through the ghost-white streets of Manhattan laughing at the world and hurling snowballs. For some reason I thought of the siege of Leningrad.
Emma invited us out on Sunday to a private party at Serena. If it weren’t two blocks from us I might not have gone. We hadn’t been there since the night we met her. Emma, dressed in tight jeans and a striped top with a zipper down the front, her hair done up in pigtails, looked like an innocent schoolgirl. I don’t know what it is about the shy ones, the innocent ones, the retiring ones—they remain in my memory. The others quickly fade away.
I sat next to Emma and we talked about movies and books. She surveyed the room. Hip-hop was blasting through the speakers and people undulated on the dance floor. “Are you going to dance?” she asked.
“At some point, yeah. What about you?”
“Honestly I’m kind of intimidated by all this. A lot of the people my friend knows are like professional dancers. I don’t know how good I’ll be next to them.”
“You know, you reach a certain age… and you have to stop giving a damn what other people think. You have to live your own life and not let these things bother you.”
Emma’s eyes lit up a bit. “You just reminded me of that scene from Lost in Translation—they had a similar exchange.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to remember the details. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Well anyway, I’m sure Leslie will be happy to lead you.” I smiled.
Emma’s friend Katie showed up, a petite, pretty black girl. Emma reminded me I had spoken to her on the phone one night some weeks ago. Ah yes, the girl who had been curious about the SKIN parties. Katie and Les sat on a stool together, talking.
Time passed and Emma rose to dance. By herself. With Leslie. Watching her move I wondered what she had been so afraid of. I joined Leslie on the dance floor, burying my face in her hair, feeling her curves; she’s the only woman I touch with complete abandon. I got behind Emma and held her waist as she undulated. She got hot and zipped her top down halfway. I blew on her breasts and she thanked me. The two girls went out to smoke and I stood around chatting with Derek and his friend Miles, a handsome black guy with sharp features and a laid-back approach to everything. We shared a few pulls from a one-hitter.
The women came back and appeared to be in the midst of a dispute of some sort. I put an arm around each of them. Leslie looked at me imploringly with her big brown smoky eyes. “What’s wrong ladies?” I asked, trying to affect a breezy manner but bracing for the worst.
“You know what we’re talking about. If you guys can’t deal with me going back and forth then maybe you should look elsewhere. I’m not the girl you’re looking for.” Emma was in the early stages of a cold. Her voice was shrill, straining over the thumping music.
My frustration was growing, one of those animated snowballs rolling downhill and gaining mass, consuming everything in its path. The green tickled my brain, logic synapses firing, my mouth struggling to keep up with a million thoughts. This was getting out of hand. “Well I don’t want to be that guy who always has an agenda, but you’re turning me into that guy. You give me just enough to go on and I keep approaching. You get close to someone, you think something is building and, yes, you want to act on it. I won’t apologize for that.”
Emma frowned. “I don’t want to be that flaky girl either, but if you ask me I don’t know if I can say yes. If I feel pressured I’m going to say no.”
“It’s just—what you told me before. I thought there was… Just tell me then, since I honestly don’t know anymore. Do you want us to approach you or not?”
“I have to say no, then. I can’t deal with it.”
“Fine then,” I said firmly. “We won’t.” I walked off to find my drink. Emma sought out the safety of her friends. I didn’t know what to think. Perhaps I’d blown it somehow—I’d wanted to avoid turning this into a debate but I’d fucked that up good and proper. Then again, some things were begging to be said. If you don’t get angry sometimes how can you say you’re alive? I must’ve looked cross because Leslie stared at me with puppy dog eyes, melting me. I held her and told her she’s my one and only true love, now and forever. Les and I were on the verge of leaving when Miles came up to me and said they were all going to APT—he insisted we join them. I still don’t know why I agreed.
We meandered around the meatpacking district. Leslie was walking with Emma, huddling with her against the cold. Eventually we found the club, on 13th, and hustled downstairs. The narrow downstairs lounge was full of models, metrosexuals, drag queens, gay boys, all of them dancing or throwing back cocktails. Emma took a seat on a stool by the bar and Leslie stood next to her. I stood around jabbering at some people and after a while saw that Leslie’s hands were all over Emma’s body.
I walked over to Les, a bit perplexed. “So, um, what’s going on here?” said I.
“Nothing at all,” Les responded playfully. I watched her hand trace lazy circles over the small of Emma’s back. Her other hand was on Emma’s inner thigh.
I played along. “You know, you should touch her like this, too.” I ran my right hand along Emma’s back and then massaged her tiny shoulders.
“Do you want to take over?”
“Sure, why not.” I stood next to Emma for a while, listening to her conversation with Derek. I made nary a peep as I ran a hand over her back, touched the side of her right breast and reached down to caress her ass. All while, of course, holding my drink in the other hand. I slipped a couple of fingers down the back of her jeans and teased the delicate skin above her ass. I finally broke my silence, leaning in to speak softly into her ear. “Do you remember what this is?”
“A thong?”
I laughed. “No. The skin—it’s my favorite skin. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” she smiled. “There must be a name for it.” We both puzzled over this thought for a minute.
Later on Leslie and Emma slipped into the bathroom and I found myself in a conversation with a strikingly tall, rather masculine looking drag queen. The two girls came back and Leslie walked over to me. She said, “Get your coat on, we’re leaving.” I must have looked stupefied because she gazed into my eyes and added, for emphasis, “Now.” I glanced over at Emma and saw that she was pulling on her coat and saying goodbye to Derek. I wasn’t thinking anything anymore; I stopped asking questions.
In the cab Emma told us she didn’t want to give us her cold. I told her not to worry about it. I was willing to take the risk.
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