Zen and Sex (17 page)

“Okay.”

“Take off your shirt and lie on the bed. I’ll get the brushes.”

So I take off my shirt and lie on her bed and although part of me is thinking that this is a bit weird, another part of me is telling me to relax, that this is where she does business with her clients and I shouldn’t be so uptight and should instead consider it as getting to know my girlfriend’s daughter, if she still is my girlfriend and to play by her rules, even if they are a little loosey-goosey for my liking. Maybe I am too controlled and conservative, just like the man.

“I’ve had people’s personalities change after getting one of these,” Janice says as she starts painting on my chest. I was not prepared for how intimate and sensual this whole tattoo thing was to become. It’s hot in here and now that she’s so close, I can feel her breath on my chest and, please god, stop my eyes from gravitating to her half-naked chest, even if she does have perfectly shaped breasts that are so pert and firm, they almost point upward. The soft and delicate brush strokes on my chest are so sensually arousing, I’m starting to get a hard on.

“The feel of the paint on the skin can be very erotic,” Janice says, as if she’s reading my mind. “Happens all the time, don’t worry about it.”

I’m not sure what exactly she’s referring to but there’s no way that I’m asking her to clarify. Can she tell I’m getting a boner? “How long does this usually take?” I ask, forcing my gaze onto some minor discoloration on the ceiling.

“I bet your fantasy is to have me and my mom at the same time.”

“Excuse me?” I ask, as shocked, insulted and as astounded as I can possibly make myself sound without making it appear like I am faking it.

“Oh, come on. Sex is all you guys think about, admit it.”

“I’m not…”

“A guy thinks about sex every seven seconds. That’s a proven fact.”

“Not this guy, trust me.”

“You haven’t once considered a threesome with you, me and my mom?”

“No. That’s disgusting.”

“How about with just you and me, then? You haven’t considered that, either?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why are you getting a boner?”

“Guys get boners all the time. It’s out of our control. I hitched a ride from an old bearded trucker once and after a few miles of driving I got a boner. The guy looked like he escaped from ZZ Top and, no, I didn’t want to sleep with him, either.”

“What’s ZZ Top?” Janice asks and casually takes off her shirt, exposing her very insufficient, delicately embroidered, lacy bra. I have a hard time telling the puzzle center of my brain to shift its focus away from trying to figure out if we can really see her nipples through the embroidery or if indeed, those darker areas are extra lace or simply the design of the bra itself.

“I should get going,” I say and expect her to clear a way for me.

“If you didn’t come here to have sex with me, then why did you come?”

“I came to return the DVD.”

“Why didn’t you mail it? Or give it to my mom? You didn’t even call first. Afraid I would have turned you down?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“You’re such a guy, Martin. You’re all a bunch of phonies.”

Janice finally gets up and puts back on her shirt. I jump up off the bed and wrestle with my shirt to get the sleeves both going the right way.

“You know how many guys have fucked over my mom? I’ve lost count and you know what? She deserves better.” As Janice slams the door on her way out, I take a look at the tattoo on my chest. Turns out that it’s not a Celtic knot, after all, and it certainly doesn’t look cool or masculine. In very crude calligraphy it says but two words: Hello mom.

“Oh, shit,” I say out loud.

14. What Infinity Feels Like

As I take a slow meandering stroll on the beach, I have this nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right with me. I don’t know what it is but there’s something inside me that’s not very healthy, almost as if there’s some part of me that doesn’t want me to be happy and when I get even a sniff of possible happiness, whatever it is wants no part of it and does its best to sabotage the whole deal.

Why did I drive down here to visit Frances’ daughter? Janice is right, it wasn’t about the DVD, I could have mailed it or given it to her mom. What was I thinking? Thinking back to that moment in the car, when I made the decision, I guess I was in kind of a weird place. I was feeling angry and maybe a bit rejected: did I want to strike back at Frances or get even with her in some way? If Janice wasn’t so amazingly hot, would I have even wanted to drive down here? Did I want Janice to like me or think me cute? If so, would I have ditched Frances for her daughter?

Sometimes I hate being a guy and I hate to admit it but a lot of times guys do think with their penises and not with their heads. Jeez, would I have slept with Janice if she came on to me and seduced me? As nasty as it sounds, I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility. I would have been sorry afterwards, maybe even devastated and it would probably be something that I would never be able to forgive myself for, but I could see myself doing it, if the circumstances went that way, which thankfully, they did not.

I think that maybe, Janice is my fantasy woman that I’ve always wanted to date. She’s young, gorgeous, a perfect 10 body and her intelligence level is not too dull to be a bore and not so bright that I can’t easily handle her. She might have that angry feminist thing going on, but most likely that’s a phase she’s going through and I could just agree with everything she says until she left college and grew up a little.

Frances is so friggin’ complicated and unpredictable that I really don’t know if I’m up to the task. She talks and acts like she’s wise and in control but then she does or says something that’s utterly ridiculous and she comes across as some immature, wounded scaredy cat. I don’t get her at all. I mean if she really has all her shit together, why is she alone at her age, married twice and her whole past such a screw up?

Then again, in some strange way, I do get her. She’s like no one I’ve never met before, exotic, yet familiar, all at the same time. I feel so comfortable with her and so understood, like I’ve never felt with any other woman before, as if, on some level, we’re great friends and compatriots that have known each other through many, many lifetimes. Or maybe I’ve just described how I feel about my mom. Do I have a mommy complex?

Ughhh, it’s mind-numbingly complicated and maybe I should just go back to being alone where I’m not struggling with all this relationship stuff that I’m never, ever going to figure out or successfully get my head around.

I should go back to her place and break it off, face to face. It shouldn’t come as any huge shock to her and considering whatever shit she was talking about when I told her that I loved her, it will probably be a massive relief to her too. At least I’ll give her the decency of telling her in person and not in an email or text like I’ve heard this younger generation is known to do. Besides, Janice has probably been on the phone to her, telling her that I suggested we all have a threesome and that she should dump my sorry ass. It’s a mess.

On the drive over, I mentally rehearse what I’m going to say: Frances, we’re not right for each other. You need someone that’s into Zen and yoga and I’m better off with someone a bit more naïve that drinks beer like a guy, swears and eats red meat. Someone a bit more like your daughter, maybe.

I shouldn’t mention her daughter, that’s just, euw.

Frances, it’s been a wild ride and we had some fun times together but let’s get off this crazy merry-go-round relationship thing before someone gets hurt. I think we could be good friends, no, I think we could be great friends, so what do you say, partner? That sounds like how Spencer Tracy broke it off with Katherine Hepburn in a few of their comedies. I should rewatch some of those, they were funny.

Frances, you’re too old for me. I’ve learnt some great things from you and I’ll be forever grateful but you’ve been around the block one too many times and at this point have too many miles on the clock for me to realistically consider any kind of future together. Eek, do I really think like this or am I channeling Mike? She wants…no, she
deserves
honest communication.

Frances, I’m too young for you. I’ve only had one serious relationship in my life where I can honestly say that I was in love, whereas, you have had many, so maybe we’re just not evenly matched and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what you’re talking about most of the time. Okay, that’s the one. I’ll lead with this and see where it takes us.

By the time I drive over there, eventually find parking and walk the six blocks to her place, I’m totally over it. In my head I’ve made peace with being alone and I’m already looking forward to getting back into my single life and my familiar routine of work, walks in the park, a few beers now and then with Mike and Gloria and maybe post newer stuff on my FaceBook page, which I’ve been seriously neglecting.

When Frances opens her door, the look of relief and total joy on her face takes me completely by surprise. She instantly hugs me and squeezes me so tightly that I have a hard time breathing. Without releasing her embrace, she shuts the door with her foot and somehow lets me know that she wants us to hug a little while longer without either of us breaking off or even speaking.

She’s so warm and soft and smells of flowers that I’m lulled into a mental state of repose and all I want to do is close my eyes and stay exactly where I am. When I do close my eyes, I get the weirdest feeling. I could so totally fool my body into thinking that instead of standing upright, I’m actually stretched out, relaxing in a nice hot bath. Because that’s exactly what hugging Frances feels like. It’s trippy.

By the time her grip relaxes, I’m feeling relaxed and I’m aware that this is one of the most amazing hugs I’ve ever experienced. Before Frances, I’ve never thought much about the hug, probably because I haven’t met anyone that was so into it the way that she is. But lately, I’ve grown to really like hugging and appreciate more its place in the pantheon of meaningful touch between two people.

When I hug Frances, or rather, when Frances hugs me and I hug her back, it’s as if all the worries of the day and of the mind simply float away and return to the ethers from whence they came. Nothing else seems to matter except holding her tightly, right here and right now and sometimes it’s actually hard to break off and feel that separation again. Holding her like this is so comforting and satisfying that it’s like I’ve come home…it just feels like home.

“I’m so glad you came back,” she says sweetly, without loosening her hold.

“Me too,” I say and as if I’ve just experienced some kind of ninja mind-wipe, all the stuff that I’ve been thinking and rehearsing just evaporates from my brain and leaves a sense of peace and calm in its place.

“I love you too,” she says and I’m so caught off guard and so unprepared, that a tear forms in my left eye and runs itchily down my cheek.

When she does break away from our hug, she does so very slowly and runs her hand down my arm to take hold of my hand. She looks into my eyes, which are now unashamedly teary and, with the most soulful look I’ve ever seen in anyone else’s eyes, she says, “Come lie down and hold me.”

Leading me to her bedroom, still without breaking contact, she moves her body into mine on the bed so that I’m spooning her and, as if our bodies had no weight, it is like we float on the bed and merge into each other, her into me and me into her, so much so that I didn’t know where I end and she begins or where she ends and I begin.

It is the most surreal and most sublime feeling that I’ve ever had in my life and maybe similar to that one night where Mike and I smoked too much pot and in one brief flash of a moment, I experienced what infinity must feel like.

Then we both fall asleep.

When I wake back up, the room is in semi-darkness and Frances’s face is lying against her pillow, facing me. As my eyes adjust, I can see that, if she was awake already, she has been watching me sleep. “Have you been watching me sleep?” I ask with a smile. No one has ever watched me sleep before.

“You’re so well-behaved when you sleep,” she says, playfully. She kisses me tenderly and I hold her face with my free hand and then softly stroke her cheek. One by one, she slowly and sexily opens the buttons on my shirt, which totally arouses me.

“What’s that?” she asks as she peels back the left side of my shirt.

“What’s what?” I ask, before I suddenly and shockingly remember.

“It looks like you have some kind of rash on your chest,” she says, squinting in the half light to get a better look.

“Oh, that, no, it’s not a rash, I was going to tell you…”

“Tell me what?”

“I dropped by Janice’s place on my way home.”

“Janice lives in Venice? That’s not on your way home.”

“I wanted to return her DVD which was in my bag all the time and I…she told me to take care of it for her, that night, and I forgot and I figured she needed it and I was going to Venice anyway, to take some photos for a project I’m working on and anyway…”

Looking more than a little alarmed, Frances gets out of bed, zips up her jeans, buttons up her blouse and acts like she doesn’t want to hear any more. It’s as if her mind is made up, even though I haven’t told her what happened and she wants me out of there, pronto.

“Nothing happened,” I say, not knowing what to say. “She said that she does these tattoos and she insisted that she give me one, so I…”

Frances leaves the bedroom and I honestly feel like a turd, whatever that feels like and I really just want to bolt out the front door and run away at full speed down the street rather than have the conversation that I need to have with Frances if this relationship has any chance of survival.

Frances is in the kitchen making coffee when I sheepishly approach. “I don’t want to hear any more,” she says. “You should leave.”

“I don’t want to leave,” I say, summoning all my bravery, “I want to talk this out.”

“There is really nothing to talk about, Martin. Please go.”