The Late Bloomer (19 page)

The sexist blather at the bureau is really starting to bug me, though. I think I'll puke if I have to watch another producer call the busty news desk assistant Eileen into the control room just so they can look at her boobs. I swear I will also barf if I have to witness another slime-ball producer (who is probably married) rush up to his office with the makeup girl to do whatever it is that they do that causes their hair to turn frizzy while they are away. When Peter Jennings came down from New York for the presidential election coverage, and I had to see him
flirt with every be-skirted little assistant within his eyesight, I almost popped my button-down collar with disgust. One of the female desk assistants was so unnerved by his heavy flirting that she refused to ride alone in an elevator with him.

At least guys like Fred keep me from feeling like a complete male mutant. Fred is an avid golfer, and since the biomechanics of hitting a golf ball aren't all that different from shooting a hockey puck, Fred convinces me that I will be pretty proficient at the sport. Turns out, he's right.

Whenever I'm working the late shift, or on my days off, which are usually in the middle of the week, Fred picks me up in the morning at my Dupont Circle apartment and we drive over to DC's public course just south of the Jefferson Memorial. He knows I'm not the richest guy in the world, so he usually insists on paying my greens fee (and a soda afterward). I haven't had this much fun just hanging out with an older guy since Dad and I would pal around at the ice rink, before I left for college, before his diabetes starting killing him slowly.

Because I'm fond of Fred, I think nothing of taking him up on his offer to go swimming in the rooftop pool of his apartment building after a particularly muggy day on the links.

“Here, try these on,” he says, tossing me a pair of swim trunks from his dresser drawer.

I step into the bathroom and slip them on.

“They're a little baggy, but they'll do,” I shout out to him.

When I return, Fred is sitting naked on his bed, sliding his socks off his hairy legs. Having grown up in locker rooms all my life, I've seen plenty of naked guys; as such, I'm unfazed by his nudity. Yet, as I fold my clothes into a pile next to his bed I notice out of the corner of my eye that Fred is not putting clothes on.

I glance over and see that his dick looks—doh!—hardening. He smiles at me.

Oh, I get it. Fred must be gay. That picture on his dresser of him and that guy—“a friend,” he said—is of him and a lover. Oh, shit.

I pretend not to notice his dick and leave the room. “See you up at the pool,” I say, my heart racing.

Does he think I'm a homo? Why the fuck else would he do something like that? Do I emit gayness or something? Just because I'm not into checking out girls and devoting all my spare time to try to get laid, this guy thinks I am a fairy? This is not good. . . . What if I am gay? What then? Oh . . . my . . . fucking . . . god. Maybe this explains why I can't get hard when I'm with girls! I could be gay. Maybe that's why I feel overly sensitive when the boss criticizes me or when my friends leave me behind when they go out at night. Maybe that's why girls have always described me as a “different” kind of guy.

As I'm about to head up to the pool, I turn around and walk back toward his bedroom. Luckily, Fred has put a pair of shorts on, albeit Speedos.

“Hey, man,” I stammer. “I forgot that I have to go into work early this afternoon, so, uh, so I can't go swimming today.” I step halfway out the door. “Sorry, Fred. But you can go ahead without me. I gotta get going.”

And as I do, I'm angry. Not with Fred. I am mad at myself. For being so frustrated about not relating to women sexually while spending most of my free time with a man who is attracted to me. I'm ashamed. I'm embarrassed too. Embarrassed that I am emitting such a non-heterosexual vibe that even a homosexual man can't detect my sexual orientation. Still, I haven't a clue that my behavior may have something to do with a hormonal imbalance, that my gender identity is in some way being shaped by a malfunctioning pituitary gland.

It doesn't even occur to me that I am sick when that fall, somewhere amid the twenty-six miles of the Marine Corps marathon, my nipples start aching. Pulsing, actually. They feel like pink balloons designed to hold an ounce of water but that are filled with ten gallons. They literally feel like they are going to . . . fucking explode. I press my palms against the swollen tips, trying to push back in whatever's trying to get out. After a few more miles—at around Mile 20—my body is so numb I don't even care anymore, and so I just keep running.

Nearly four and a half hours after I started running amid the thousands of other bodies, I limp across the finish line, where I'm met by a volunteer who places a bronze medal around my neck. I stumble to a patch of grass nearby. I take off my sweat-soaked T-shirt and fall back to the ground. My nipples, again, start killing me. . . . I glance down and see blood dripping from them. Looking closer, I see a whitish fluid oozing out as well. I pinch my right nipple, sending close to a teaspoon of the milky stuff seeping out through the center of my nipple.
My breasts are leaking milk.
I wipe my sticky hand on the grass and hope no one notices.

Like that incident with Fred, like all the times when my penis has failed me, like all my insecurities about not being macho enough, I know I will never tell anyone about this.

As a teenager, the path to manhood seemed straightforward. As I interpreted the man-making process, since I had a girlfriend in high school, became a hotshot hockey goalie and finally got laid, I thought I had become a man. I was wrong.

While in DC I go on my first date as a post-collegiate man. Her name is Claudia. I'm determined to use her as proof of my virility.

My roommate Steve introduces me to her at a party at a friend's Dupont Circle apartment. I learn that she, too, has recently left college life behind. She, too, has brown eyes. She, too, is single. We begin talking, about everything from merits of George Bush versus Bill Clinton to the racial segregation in Washington's neighborhoods. My sexual mojo may be lacking, but at least I'm a good conversationalist.

As I have witnessed the frat boys and hockey meatheads do for the last four years, I smile and nod and inject funny little comments at the right moments. I also walk to the keg and pour Claudia beer after beer all night long.
If I get her drunk, then maybe I won't feel so nervous. I will be in control.

I boast that I ran a marathon (
girls like strong men
) and that I'm a TV journalist (
girls like ambitious guys with high earning potential
), although I modestly call myself “a boy from Buffalo” (
girls like the vague
image of machismo that Buffalo evokes
). With this kind of rap, Darwin might have deemed me worthy of propagating my genes.

“Can I be blunt?” Claudia asks me while wiping Budweiser foam from her pink-lipsticked upper lip.

“Please do.”

“You aren't like most guys, Ken.”

“I'll take that as being a good thing.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely.” She gently taps my arm and locks on to my eyes. “It is a
really
good thing. Most men I meet act so cheesy and hit on me so blatantly. It's a real turnoff. It's so annoying. It's refreshing to just have a nice conversation with a guy for a change. Most guys just want to get in my pants.”

Wait. I thought I
was
hitting on her, doing all the flirtatious things a man does in order to lure a woman into his domain. Shake it off, hockey boy. Just keep being funny.

“But you're not wearing pants,” I reply.

“Touché,” Claudia says, before excusing herself for a bathroom break.

Admiring her high-heel gait across the hardwood floor, I notice that extending from her knee-length black cotton dress are long, muscular, runway-model legs that she is using not only to locomote but to arouse every man in the crowded hallway. Claudia continues her cat walk past a line of men waiting in line for the bathroom and makes them twist their necks so far sideways you'd think they were dogs being jerked by choke collars.

It's getting late, and, although I'm eager to embark on my post-college love life, I'm not quite ready to take the penile plunge so suddenly. Frankly, I am scared. I'm not ready to deal with my failure tonight. So when she returns from the potty, I inform her that I—
yaaaawn
—have to get up in four hours for work.

Before we leave, Steve and I get Claudia and the girl he's met to agree to go on a double movie-date the next day.

—

All day long at work, in between answering phones, running scripts, recording video of Bosnian carnage and making copies, I can't stop thinking about my date, about Claudia's olive-skinned loveliness, about how within a matter of hours I may—
gulp
—have sexual intercourse. My coworker Neki, one of ABC's only African-American desk assistants and my best female friend, senses something's up.

“Hey, Baker,” she says. “Why you so smiley today?”

“I'm going to the movies tonight,” I say smugly.

“With who?”

“A girl.”

“Oh-heee-heee,” she explodes. “Call the AP! Now, that's news if I ever heard it. It's about time, honey. You could use a little lovin'.”

I'm always talking about girls with Neki, mainly about how I don't understand them. She is my enemy informant, my intelligence source from the “other” side who can make sense out of the seemingly senseless behavior of young women. When I lament how most women my age don't appreciate nice guys like me, Neki says not to worry, that in a couple years the same girls who are chasing hardbodied and hard-drinking fools will start lusting for the kind of guys who will make a good father to their kids, and before I know it I will be surrounded by a harem of female admirers. Neki's assurances make me feel like less of a freak, as if I am the normal one and everyone else is a hormonally driven lunatic. She gives me the kind of advice I imagine I would receive from a sister, if I had one. Neki browses the
Washington Post
movie listings and advises me to take Claudia to a “chick flick.” Professor Neki then suggests
Singles,
a film about a group of twentysomething yuppies looking for love on the streets of ultra-hip Seattle. Matt Dillon and Winona Ryder star.
That's us! Me and Claudia, who, come to think of it, looks an awful lot like Winona.

On the way to the theater, I set a goal: I will hold her hand during the movie. But that's it. No sex just yet. I need to ease into this.

The movie is just what Dr. Neki ordered. Lots of kissing scenes, lots of young, attractive white people and plenty of hip grunge music on the soundtrack: Pearl Jam. Smashing Pumpkins. Alice in Chains. At one particularly romantic moment, the Paul Westerberg song “Dyslexic Heart” bursts over the Dolby, and I place my hand on Claudia's thigh. She opens her legs. I'm so tense you could stick a piece of coal up my ass and I'd shit out a diamond. I'm twenty-two, but this is the first time I've ever made such a bold advance. Forget about the Associated Press; I should have Neki call
The Guinness Book of World Records.

After the movie, we drive back to my apartment, where Claudia and I make out on my front stoop, oblivious to the pedestrians strolling up and down P Street. She's wearing a short skirt, but I leave the mysterious anatomy hidden beneath for another night, although I know that if we keep seeing each other, if we keep falling in love like this, if I don't let my fear of failure win out over my desire to prove that I am normal, I soon won't be able to put off the inevitable sexual collision that nature has in store for us.

—

Romeo and Juliet
is a tragedy. A lot of people forget that.

People like to focus on the part of the play dealing with two star-crossed lovers so attracted to each other that they risk death to be together. People like to focus on lines such as the ones uttered by Romeo when he spots Juliet standing on her balcony from the courtyard of the Capulet mansion and intones, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

Looking down from the window of my third-floor apartment, I spot Claudia walking up my steps on this, my only day off from work. My Juliet inspires not an eloquent monologue but rather an abiding sense of dread that I am about to confront the most beautiful yet the most dangerous creature on Earth. My reaction to the sight of her is felt not so much as a flutter in the heart as a knot in my stomach.
She's so sexy.

Entering the living room, Claudia greets my dry mouth with a wet kiss.

Relax, man, relax. You can do this.

It's a warm summer day. “Rather than be all cooped up in here,” I say, “why don't we go for a walk to Georgetown.”

“I've got a better idea,” she says, latching her hands around the small of my back. “Let's fuck.”

We start kissing. Out of the corner of my eye I notice that the row of panel windows behind Claudia is wide open, exposing us to full view of the Tunisian Embassy directly across the street. It's the perfect excuse for me to pull away from her without seeming frigid.

“We're gonna get the Tunisians all riled up over there,” I say, peeling her hands off my body and fussing with the curtains.

Before I close the last curtain, though, Claudia is sitting on the couch topless and wiggling out of her shorts.
A perfect body. A perfect woman. A perfect chance.

More dutiful than lustful, I kneel in front of her and kiss her body all over. With my lower body out of her reach, the couch serves as a barrier between her and my penis, which, despite this most lovely display of naked femininity, remains as soft as sushi roll.

She gropes for my zipper.

Uh-oh. Now what do I do?

“No,” I protest with a whisper.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Just keep your eyes shut.”

I know I can get hard. At least once a week I masturbate, just to make sure I'm still able to get it up. It sometimes takes a few minutes to stimulate blood flow, but it usually works—with enough help from the manual cavalry, that is. I will do whatever it takes to not blow this chance. I will use my hand.

Still kneeling before the couch, as I unzip my pants and start rubbing myself, I guide her hand down to her swollen clitoris.

“What are you doing?” she asks, smiling. “Why can't I look?”

I start kissing her down below, one aspect of sexual relations I gained experience in during college while avoiding doing the real thing. “Just keep touching yourself,” I instruct her, placing her T-shirt around her head like a blindfold.

No pressure. Her eyes aren't on me. Just keep yanking like I do when I'm alone.

“I've never done anything like this before,” she coos. A minute later, she cuts off her orgiastic moaning and asks, “Do you have a rubber?”

There is NO WAY in hell I can get hard wearing a rubber. Fucking impossible. My bare shaft is dead enough to the world without a condom enveloping it like a sensory deprivation glove.

“Don't worry,” I whisper. “I'll pull out in time.”

My hand doesn't exactly make my dick rock hard, but it gets rigid enough. I slide it into Claudia—who, meanwhile, has digitally worked herself into a frenzy—before it gets any softer.

Now that I'm in, the pressure of getting hard abated, I tear the blindfold from her and let her watch as I rapidly pump in and out of her. Not even two minutes later, I am done—and relieved that I have passed my first test of post-college manhood.
I can do it. I can have sex!

Although the bondage behavior is a far cry from sweet kisses and longing glances in
Romeo and Juliet,
our fledgling sexual relationship does have one thing in common with the Shakespearean play: It soon will become a tragedy.

—

“ABC News, this is Ken.”

“I'm laying in bed naked, watching you.”

“Oh,
reeeally.
”

It's Claudia and it's almost the end of the Sunday evening news. I'm in the ABC newsroom, sitting at a computer terminal located about twenty feet behind the anchor, Carole Simpson. I'm pretending to be busily working as the credits roll on TV screens across the
country. My girlfriend is getting off on the idea of millions of people seeing me, all cute and professional in my shirt and tie while she plays with herself.

“I want you to come over here right now,” kinky Claudia says. “I have some ropes.”

“Okay, settle down, Monster. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Monster. I have given her the nickname Monster. I should have identified that as an omen. I don't remember exactly when or why I started calling her Monster, but it seems to fit her perfectly. The nickname may have as much to do with how I regard women in general as it does with our relationship, which is about as sexually dysfunctional as they get (anytime someone needs ropes, blindfolds and their right hand to have sex, that's a firm sign of dysfunctional sexuality). Too busy trying hide my insecurity, I never think that maybe a girl whose behavior toward you earns her the name Monster (because she often scares you) is not a good girl to date. But, then again, my attitude toward women, as well as life, is about fighting.
Fight, fight fight!
I must constantly fight against my own self in order to be the man I want to be.

My sexual self-esteem is so low, I'm convinced I'll never find another woman who will put up with my disabled penis and the odd things—the refusing to have sex nine out of every ten times she asks, the bondage, the clunky preintercourse masturbation, my saggy breasts that I have to pinch the milk out of before she comes over—that I have to do because the useless piece of meat that is my penis otherwise will not rise to the occasion.

Perhaps what also obfuscates a more objective view of Claudia is that she can be such an exciting, sexy woman. First of all, she's a scientist with the federal government who got a nearly perfect score on the SAT. She can quote Einstein, the Torah and Stephen Hawking in one breath. Furthermore, when she wants to be she is sweeter than pie, making me sushi rolls, bringing me takeout Chinese when I am stuck
at the bureau late at night. But our relationship has more ups and downs than Sam Donaldson's moods on show night.

Though an intellectual giant, she sometimes can act like an eight-year-old girl. She recently has started threatening at least once a week to break up with me and “see other people.” One day she's convinced I'm cheating on her with Neki (although I've never had a single sexual thought about her); the next day she's telling me how sweet and kind and devoted and “special” I am and insists she never wants to ever lose me.

Whenever I'm in her doghouse, though, I beg her not to leave me—I grovel, actually. I tell her how I have never loved anyone as much as I do her (she doesn't know that she is only the second girl I've ever had sex with). I promise I will love her forever. After a few months, I get the impression she enjoys my pleading.

Of course, I'm not thinking about how awful this all is when I hang up from her come-fuck-me-right-now phone call. Instead, I'm focusing on the positive, trying to be Zen about it, going with the flow.