Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel (30 page)

"Well, I had to go back to work," he said. "That wasn't
really my job. I was just traveling, hanging out, working
illegally before my real job started. I know people at that restaurant. The tips are great even if you don't get to work the
private room. But that night, though-well, it turned out they
really needed me that night. One guy was sick and another
one was in a major crisis with his girlfriend. He was so grateful that I could take his shift. Anyhow, I work in Paris now.
Research. Cognitive science. Neural networks."

Cognitive science and neural networks, I thought. And in
his spare time, he seems to have worked out quite a fair understanding of my basic sexual modus operandi. Smart. No, not
just smart. Really smart. I looked at him for a while. Except
for Stuart, of course, he was the first person I'd really looked
at since I'd left Mr. Constant's. Cute enough, I guessed, if you
were willing to stretch your judgment a little-if you liked
him, as I seemed to. Your basic okay male shoulders, hips and
thighs in black jeans, white T-shirt, and a leather jacket. The
jacket looked familiar. Not bad, I thought, but a little sloppy in
the shoulder seams. And the zippers are too shiny, the whole
thing a little too stiff and new looking. I realized it was sort of a knockoff of the one I was wearing. Well, after all, he hadn't
been paid as well as I'd been this last year. Still, I was touched
by its stiff, new look, thinking of him buying it to look tough
in, for me. Anyhow, under the jacket everything seemed to
be more or less in place and okay. Nothing special, though,
except I liked the gap between his teeth.

We were pulling into Lyon now. I guessed I wasn't getting off the train. So I told him...well, I didn't have time to
tell him everything, but I told him a lot. About my year, and
about Jonathan. He nodded seriously from time to time. At
first I was relieved that he wasn't horrified, but as my story
continued, his lack of response began to trouble me a little.
I mean, even Stuart had looked a little green around the
gills when I'd told him some of the heavier stuff. Daniel just
didn't look surprised enough, and he didn't ask any questions
either. Of course, now I know that he was afraid to say anything that might give away that he'd hacked the association's
online system. He'd been a little ashamed of it (though pleased
that he'd figured out how to-he'd never hacked anything
before, it's not something he's interested in). And afraid of
what I might think of him for knowing so much about my
body-the association maintains amazing statistics, including closely calibrated measurements of how much pain and
penetration you can tolerate. And he couldn't imagine how
to tell me about some rather obsessive viewing of a sevensecond clip of me crossing the finish line at the Hudson River
Rainbow Races-he watched it something like four hundred
times the night he broke in. Which he thought I might find
a little weird (as though anything could have been weirder
than actually running that race). And he worried about having
violated my privacy, too, even if he'd intended the break-in as a labor of love, and an act of derring-do. So he just kept quiet
until I finished what I had to tell him.

"So," he said, finally, "you're gonna go back to him, uh,
Jonathan, huh?"

"Yeah," I said. "Well, I think so. One way, I guess, or
another."

He was quiet.

"I don't know," I said.

"I have to see," I told him then, as it seemed I'd been
telling everybody I'd spoken to for the last two weeks. "I'll
know when ...I know"

"Research," I finished, weakly.

"Look," he stammered a bit on it, "I know we don't really
know each other or anything, but, uh, if it doesn't work out
with him... well, here, take my address in Paris. But I'm going
back to where I really work in a few weeks. Well, to where I
go to school. You could come back with me though-I mean,
if you wanted to."

"Back where?" I asked.

"Urbana, Illinois," he said, getting defensive when he
saw the expression on my face. "They do really important
research on cognition there. I mean, I got offered almost as
much money by..."

He stopped himself, embarrassed that he'd felt the need
to boast. "And, mostly really, I wanted to do this particular
kind of research, and it included the year at the Institut in
Paris, and it's not so bad to be away from the East Coast for
a while-I mean, I grew up in New York...." (he shrugged,
realizing that I'd probably already figured that out).

I nodded. Urbana's not the greatest place, but at least
it's far enough from New York so that he could beg off from
coming home for Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, Christmaswell, Hanukkah, I supposed, in his case-is okay, but
Thanksgiving ...I don't know, you just want to give it a rest
for a few years. Even if your parents are really quite okay, like
mine are.

Which was why, in my case, Urbana wasn't so good.
"Well, see, I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana," I said.

So there'd be Thanksgiving. And Midwestern wintersI remembered how much I hated that first one, back home
after the year in Montpellier. And it wasn't just the weather,
it was the wholesomeness, the lack of edge. I'd come back to
high school in Indiana and sworn to myself that this was not
my life, even as I took my place with the rest of the faculty
kids, hurrying off to swim teams and drama camp and flute
competitions, Mom and Dad thoughtfully signing you up for
summer college extension courses so that you could get a leg
up in calculus or Italian. But I'd get out, I promised myselfif not back to France, than at least to California. Well, and I
did, too, didn't I? Well beyond California, I thought, remembering my whitewashed room in the cliff rising from the sea.
Far enough that maybe I could even stand a Thanksgiving
dinner or two enfamille.

"What would I do there, in Urbana?" I asked.

"Use my library card," he said, matter-of-factly. "Read,
while you figure out how you get back into books and the
stuff you're really interested in. Apply to schools, I guess."

He made it sound simple. Maybe it was, I thought. The
stuff I was really interested in-hmm.

Read all the books. Write the big dissertation about
sex and women and romance and pornography. I'd have
to make it all sound a little more academic than it really
was, of course. Tell my stories by retelling all those other
profoundly erotic stories that somehow have passed into
"literature." Disguise it all as disinterested scholarly discourse. Of course, I surprised myself by thinking, the vogue
for that sort of thing might have passed by the time I finished the book (and I wondered where I'd kept that canny,
careerist part of myself hidden these past years). Still, it
would be fun to try to pull it all together. I even let myself
fantasize a jacket blurb from Arthur Geist. And then get into
line with all the other silly, book-crazed fools to apply for
the elusive job.

And Daniel? Well, it was clear that we could talk to each
other. And I knew that we shared some important spaces in
the sexual imagination. He would be stunningly inexperienced, compared to the types I'd been hanging around with
these past few years, but somehow I was confident that he'd
turn out to be original, adventurous, on a day-to-day basis.
And perhaps a little more than that, on the rare weekend when
one of us didn't have a big paper due. Nerds' night out. And
then I became amazed that I was having these thoughts at all.
After all, I was going to see Jonathan. In less than an hour.

"Well," I said, "thanks for the offer." The train was nearing
Avignon.

"I mean, this is all a little theoretical, isn't it?" I continued.
"Talking about being together, I mean."

He was looking out the window, scowling at the gathering outskirts of the city. "Well," he muttered, "I guess so.
I mean, `theory' doesn't really cover it all that well, though I guess you're used to using it the way they do in English
departments."

"Oh, right," I said angrily, "yeah, like you pocket protector types never use any buzzwords or jargon or anything.
Great move, Daniel, correcting my language-that'll get me
into bed for sure."

(And I wish I could say he never did any of that dumb
humanities baiting again, but he still sometimes does it, when
some of his friends from the lab start up. I think he does it
less than he used to, though.)

"Sorry," he said, smiling a little as he opened his jacket
to show me his perfectly normal, unprotected shirt pocket.

"But you're not going to bed with me anyway," he
pointed out. "At least not today, and maybe not ever. And you
can see how I'd be pretty depressed about that. I mean, I love
to talk to you-to hear the lights and darks of your voice
and to watch you bend your face out of shape when you talk
about literature. But you know, tonight, this afternoon, when
I turn around and take the return train to Paris, I'm going
to wonder-I'm wondering right now-whether, long-term,
what I should have done instead was take you up on your
offer of fucking in the WC.

"I guess," he added sadly, "I'm really the first amateur
you've run into in a long time."

Which was what, deep down, probably decided things
for me, though I didn't know it at that moment. I mean, at
that moment, I must have been thinking about half a dozen
things. It's possible to do that, you know. When computers do
it, it's called massively parallel processing, and it's what Daniel
says is going to enable them to do real cognition one of these
days. (Well, he says that on days when his work is going well, anyway.) Right now, of course, computers can't do mindtrips
nearly as complicated as the ones people do, like when they
meet somebody they like on the TGV from Paris to Avignon.

Anyway, at that moment, obviously, a lot of me was
wondering what was going to happen with Jonathan. As well
as wondering exactly how bent out of shape my face actually gets when I talk about literature. I was probably also still
mulling over parts of Clarissa. And of Justine. I was deep into
massively parallel mode-wondering and thinking all that
stuff to myself at the same time. But I didn't say any of that
stuff, because I said something else-which I was also thinking at that moment.

And what I said was, "You know, that's one of my favorite words in English. `Amateur,' I mean."

I repeated it softly, giving it a French pronunciation, my
tongue hitting the top of my front teeth and wanting to be in
that little space between his.

"Amateur," I said again. I wasn't kidding either. It was
one of my favorite words. Perhaps it was even a safe word.
Or perhaps a dangerous one-because I wasn't sure exactly
where it led.

"I mean, you know, people think it means beginner or
something," I said. "And it does. But beginner, in the sense of
being excited about something new. About having the guts to
keep at it, because you love it, not because it's your profession
or you have a license or something. It means enthusiastpassionate enthusiast. It means... well, think about it, its root.
Amateur. Because, well, what it really means is lover."

Amateur.