Sex in the Title (12 page)

“What are you doing?”

“Only what feels pure and natural to me.”

“This is too much. You mustn’t do this.”

“I realize that this may require a vocational change for you, but that’s why I asked if you play any other instruments. I know of a few pubs that are looking to hire some musicians. And there’s always room for a good guitarist in Madrid…I can introduce you to my Flamenco teacher too. He may also be able to use a guitarist.”

“Carolina…Please…Don’t…” he began. The young virgin priest became dizzy from their exchange, as he recognized his own weakness and the overwhelming power of temptation – a temptation that he had managed, with substantial effort, to evade or resist for his entire life.

“Fernando, I’m sorry for being so brazen and forward. I just had to be true to my feelings. I’ve made my confession to you and now I can go. I have been honest with myself and with you. If you can’t love me, then I will leave Madrid and never see you again…But please move this curtain aside and let me see you one last time. One last time, and then I will leave you forever.”

There was a heavy silence, as Fernando tried to absorb the full meaning of the stark options suddenly laid out before him.

Carolina faced the curtain separating her from Fernando and moved closer to it, eagerly waiting for it to be pushed aside.

Another quiet moment of solemn reflection passed.

Fernando finally drew the curtain open in an impulsive flash, where he saw Carolina’s luscious lips waiting for him.

He kissed the priesthood goodbye.

*****

“That certainly is confronting your guilt about sex head on, at its source!” Carlos noted in amusement. “And where is Fernando now?”

“I don’t know. He’s probably still in Spain somewhere, making his living as a Flamenco guitarist…I haven’t spoken to him in almost three years, mi amor, so there’s no need to be jealous…He was too attached to Spain to follow me to New Haven, where I had to start college about four months after that first kiss…Sometimes I wonder what became of him…”

Carlos replied facetiously, “Well, I can see why you wonder…Most career counselors like to follow up with the people they advise.”

Carolina laughed – mostly in relief at how tolerantly Carlos had received her confession about confession.

In reality, however, the story somewhat offended Carlos’s vestigial Catholic sensibilities and, to his surprise, made him rather jealous. The enthusiasm and longing with which Carolina recounted the story of her first truly passionate love – a love for another Latin virgin whom Carlos resembled – and the idea that she and Fernando had united under circumstances that were equally charming and magical (sacrilege aside), all made Carlos feel unexceptional and replaceable, at least in theory.

This festering jealousy soon made Carlos more aware of details that he had overlooked or that Carolina had concealed during their dating honeymoon. Lately, her breath revealed that she had been surreptitiously smoking a few cigarettes per day. He recalled how she had recently ordered a veal dish, despite the lengthy ethical and environmental explanation for his vegetarianism that he had shared with her just a few days earlier. These minor disappointments conspired with the jealousy ignited by the Fernando story to make Carlos irrationally demanding. Carlos needed to test her love for him and see if Carolina was prepared to fulfill exacting requests just to prove to him that he still meant more to her than anything else did.

Two days after the Fernando story, Carlos finished showing a potential buyer an apartment downtown, and then walked over to Spring Street to meet Carolina for a Sunday SoHo stroll. Carlos greeted her with a kiss and immediately frowned upon realizing that her breath was nine parts mouthwash, one part ashtray. “I told myself that I would never date a smoker,” Carlos began, noticeably irritated. “I thought you were going to quit.”

“Carlos, I’ve been smoking since I was twelve. It’s going to take time. And it’s not like I’ve been smoking in your presence.”

“Not yet. But in another month or two, I’m sure that’ll be next. I mean, our first month together I couldn’t tell that you even smoke. But by the second month, I could tell that you’re a smoker with a great mouthwash. So what does the third month hold?”

“Why are you being so harsh on me? Don’t you realize how hard it is to quit?”

“Don’t you realize what a big turn off it is for me?”

“Turn off? And what if I asked you to get over your mysophobia in just a few months?”

Carolina’s tone had just enough punch and sting to make her rejoinder feel painfully personal.

They began their eastbound stroll in an awkward silence.

Early in their relationship, Carlos had explained to Carolina all about his mild anxiety disorder involving an abnormal and irrational fear of contamination or defilement – particularly from publicly handled objects. Initially, she humored his bizarre quirk, but over time found it strange – especially when he would put gloves on before boarding any public transportation or opening the doors of public establishments. In the late summer, shortly after their dating honeymoon had expired, the two were returning from a business lunch in midtown when Carolina mischievously tried to loosen him up on the issue while also indulging the sudden impulse to kiss him. As she held his right hand with her left hand, she pretended to notice something strange in the phone booth to her right, making Carlos lean towards it for a better view, and then she playfully pulled him off balance into the booth with her. She laughed hysterically at how silly Carlos looked trying (unsuccessfully) to avoid hand contact with any part of the phone booth. To indulge her romantic impulse, she then tried to kiss him in the booth, but he was clearly too uncomfortable there and just wanted to find some water with which to clean himself. Later, when he remained sour over the incident, she began to question their compatibility a little.

Carlos’s mysophobia also affected his sensuality. There was always a moment of hesitation before he would make his lips or body accessible to Carolina, who had always been accustomed to fending off oversexed men (other than Fernando). Carlos’s tentative physicality usually had the effect of teasing Carolina and making her even more aroused, but she sometimes wished that he could be the first to make a move. She knew from their searching talks, his fervidly held views, and his emotionally profound reaction to art and poetry that he was a man with tremendous passion and soul. She knew that – while Carlos had little sexual experience – he had all of the potential to be the best lover she had ever had, after some training and the elimination of his paranoia about germs. But she also knew that it would take time. On one occasion, she even suggested that he go to therapy to resolve the issue more quickly, but he grew angrily defensive at the idea.

With Carolina’s simple question (“What if I asked you to get over your mysophobia in just a few months?”), all of these issues were instantly conjured in a way that alienated Carlos and suddenly made him feel insecure. He finally broke their strained silence.

“That’s not a fair comparison. My mysophobia doesn’t affect your health like your smoking affects mine. It doesn’t taste bad in your mouth. It doesn’t expose you to impurities…On the contrary, it encourages you to avoid them.”

“Carlos, your mysophobia does affect my health. I feel freer – more alive, more vivacious and, ironically enough, healthier – if I’m not constantly made to worry about germs and unhealthy choices. Whether it’s for a moment of spontaneous kissing in a phone booth or eating an occasional hamburger…Obsessing about your health doesn’t actually make you healthier. The fact of the matter is, Carlos, our bodies are decaying at every moment, regardless of what we do. Living is bad for your health.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Maybe if you live in an antiseptic bubble specially designed by the CDC it doesn’t. But in a place like New York City, you’re fighting a pointless battle. You can either embrace the dirt and the germs as part of the risky joy of living in an exciting, overpopulated metropolis, or you can spend lots of mental real estate obsessing over whether you touched a few extra microbes when you got on the subway.”

They walked in silence for a few more minutes. The powerful logic behind Carolina’s arguments only aggravated the mix of embarrassment and insecurity that he felt. These emotions were in addition to the very jealousy that spawned the whole exchange. Now that Carlos felt self-conscious about his mysophobia and theoretically replaceable by someone like Fernando, it became all the more crucial to assert his dominance in the relationship. He had to test her devotion to him. And he had to prove that he was above all of these issues – that he could just walk away from the whole thing if she wasn’t willing to accede to his demands, no matter how unreasonable they were.

Carlos finally broke their silent walk, after mustering the courage to state his ultimatum. “I can’t date a smoker, Carolina.”

“What are you trying to say, Carlos?”

“I…I…It’s…It’s really important to me…”

“This is because of Fernando isn’t it?”

“No! It has nothing to do with that!” Carlos angrily denied. “Before I ever met you, before I ever knew about your trysts with the church, I always knew that I would never be with a smoker. Period. Don’t try to complicate this….Because….Because it’s really simple….It’s me or the cigarettes.”

“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

“Carolina, I’ll give you a month to quit…But that’s it.”

She stopped walking. He stopped after her.

She looked him in the eye. “Are you serious?”

“As serious as lung cancer,” he replied.

Carolina’s brow became crinkled in a torrent of confused emotions.

“Well in that case I don’t need a month,” she began. “I’ll quit right now.” A tear rolled down one of her cheeks and she turned around and ran.

For a few minutes, Carlos’s wounded pride prevented him from running after her, and he just continued walking stubbornly in the same direction at the same pace, watching Carolina get farther away by the minute.

Suddenly, his memory of the tear on her face jolted him into an apologetic sprint.

By the time he got within earshot of her, her fluttering summer dress was rapidly descending the entrance stairs of the Spring Street subway station. As he ran towards the stairs, he pulled out his anti-germ gloves and put them on just before he reached the handrail. As luck would have it, when Carlos bolted down to the bottom of the stairs, the train was already there and Carolina was boarding it. His only hope of getting on and catching her was to accelerate and jump over the turnstile rather than stop long enough to get his metro card out and swipe it through one of the potentially uncooperative turnstiles.

Praying that there were no police around, he opted for the risky route and flew over the turnstile, with all of the grace of a cheetah on the hunt.

“Get away from me!” she cried in tears, as the subway train’s slamming doors barely missed Carlos’s back. As he approached her, out of breath, she began walking from train to train, figuring that the germ-filled passage between cars and the dirty tunnel air would surely deter Carlos from following her.

But Carlos was too focused on her to think any more about germs and dirt.

“I’m sorry, Carolina,” he said, following behind her, still catching his breath. “I was wrong.”

The passengers turned their attention to the unfolding drama of a lover’s quarrel.

“Go away!” she replied, crying even more and dodging some passengers, until she got to the door and moved to the next train.

This chase continued until Carolina had exhausted all of the train cars and was in the first car of the uptown six train. By now, Carlos had caught his breath and was about ten steps from cornering Carolina.

“Leave me alone!” she said, still crying. “Go look for your fucking non-smoking, perfect girl somewhere else.”

“I’m sorry, Carolina. Really, I am…I’m so sorry,” he said, getting within just a few steps of her. “It was about Fernando. I got really jealous. In a totally idiotic and irrational kind of way. Please forgive me.”

And with that, Carolina gushed a fresh set of tears, and Carlos went up to her and cradled her in his arms. “I’m so sorry, mi amor.”

He sat her down on the subway seat, and she cried some more on his large, built chest, with his strong, tan arms around her graceful, feminine figure. When she finally looked up at Carlos, she could tell from the embarrassed look on his face that they had an audience.

Eager to add some levity to the situation, Carlos addressed everyone looking at him with heartfelt, sappy smiles. “Go ahead. I know you want to clap. You might as well,” he said as the passengers around them erupted into self-conscious laughter.

“Let’s just turn this into that cheesy, tear-jerking, Hollywood mush scene that it already looks like,” he added.

By now, Carolina was laughing too. “Come on. Put your hands together. I’ll help you out.”

Carlos began clapping, and soon everyone – including Carolina – was clapping with him.

When the clapping finally stopped, a seventy-year-old man sitting next to his wife across from the reconciled lovers launched his directorial debut of the Hollywood sap scene. “Sunny, that was great, but you’ve got to kiss her now. You know, Casablanca style.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Carlos said, as he and Carolina shared another laugh and then kissed to some more applause.

*****

The distress of nearly losing Carolina made their reconciliation almost more blissful than their initial honeymoon. Carlos and Carolina remained lip-locked for the next six subway stations, by which point they had an entirely new audience on the train with them.

After the sixth station, none of the people riding the train with them had witnessed any of the drama leading up to the passionate kissing that Carlos and Carolina were still indulging. So when the two finally came up for air, they became acutely aware of the many people in the world who are enviously, sadly, or bitterly not in love. They suddenly felt enveloped by some warm and mystical energy that protected them from the cold faces of the alienated passengers surrounding them. Yet they were still aware of these passengers who seemed to resent a couple that was so happily together in the presence of individuals so miserably alone.