Listen to a podcast of Sara Lippmann’s “Spring.”
G.
I had my first orgasm dry-fucking you on the couch of your parents’ living room. The couch was a sectional, plush beige; the coming like biting into a Chewel’s. After all, we were still dressed and I was the class prude. But you had those swollen lips I liked to hang on and soon you unzipped my Winter Wonderland Dance dress and switched on the indoor hot tub, jets sputtering, your boxer shorts ballooned like a flotation device, and afterward, our mouths puffy and red in the front seat of your brand-new Chrysler Le Baron, chlorine trapped in my tights, I believed we were soul kissers, gum swirling and the whole deal, we could go on like that forever.
B.
I was drunk and stoned so it was time. Mostly I knew you from your picture, those crazy girlish eyelashes, the number of your lacrosse jersey I’d memorized like everyone else, the color of your stick, but it was New Year’s Eve and I was a late bloomer and all the girls I arrived with were already naked, besides. So I sucked you off in your little brother’s room. You sat on his bed. It was shaped like a Corvette. We didn’t get too far. I kept retching and you were like, “Everything cool, down there?” leaning back all proud but then someone knocked fast and sloppy on the door and hollered out, cops.
My sister was waiting up for me. She was the babysitter high on mushrooms and I’d caught twigs in my hair so we sat close watching Fantasia and eating Cool Whip together, straight from the white plastic tub.
M.
You’d had your jaws wired which made the kissing a trick. But you were a junior with surfer hair and an off-campus apartment and you spoke Russian and played bass guitar; the kissing, I reasoned, would have to do. Lamb you ordered at some dark-lit table far from the mess hall, rosemary-crusted and paired with quinoa, and I swear you would have cut it all up into kid-sized chunks and fed it to me, drunk your shit from a straw. But I was meatless, then, and then there was the matter of roommates, mine arm-deep in her tin of orange popcorn and yours vexed by my freshman status. When it came to my virginity, however, I was something else. A snake in restless molt, abrading roughness, good riddance to all that dead skin. The night you left for Moscow you tossed a scarf over your lamp and nearly lit up the futon, pecking at me with those birdie lips until, through, I went for a cigarette, you bequeathed me a copy of Anna Karenina and said wait for me, babushka.
It was really the world’s smallest mouth.
I waited, like, a minute.
F.
It snowed that night you took me to your buddy’s place in Massachusetts. You had a million buddies so I stared out the window as you debriefed on this lot and your tires lost traction, which sent the couple in the back bouncing and swerving over their mirror and rolled-up bill. It was tense for a minute, but soon a joint came around and Dave Matthews sang and we all called you Gulliver for the goofy way your head grazed the top of that rental. You had one hand in me and one on the steering wheel. Everything was normal.
What did I know from boarding school reunions? The cars on lawns, silk club ties and ironed bangs tucked in grosgrain ribbons. It was like the goddamn movies. The host shook out cocktails and his girlfriend tittered around with a tray. Neil Diamond cheered through surround sound, “Sweet Caroline,” and you lifted me in your apelike arms and spun me, Ann Darrow to your Kong. Sweat gathered in your brow, streamed down your socially acceptable sideburns, caused your golden locks to clump. During poker you wore a cowboy hat and I stood behind you, I held your hat while you reached for cash, a fat wad, I held your drink as cards were dealt and you bounced me on your thigh like a ventriloquist’s dummy, introducing me to the table as your waitress: your Jewess. It was some watch on your wrist. That night, I learned of your oil refinery, your thing for cornichons, and as your shirt grew wet, revealing man breasts, I learned you’d once nearly been cut from the rugby team. Your buddy told me this as he nudged my undies aside. Money went down and your slick, boozy flesh fell on me heavy as an x-ray vest. That night I puked in the downstairs powder room. It was all very grown-up. There were mirrors on the walls and everything. The faucets were pewter fish.
Next morning I rode in the back with that other girl, your buddy’s, wool blazers muffling our knees.
T.
I hadn’t expected you in Dublin but there you were: vinyl pack, stitched Maple leaf, on break from your studies and whatnot. My lips parted but before there were words there were pints at Temple Bar, shoulders pressed, our Guinness perfectly pulled. You dug the clover and splash of currant so I wiped the froth from your lip and suggested a road trip. Exploration was your beat; this time, I would be your personal tour guide. On the bus you tucked a curl behind my ear and couldn’t get enough of the sheep. The grass, lush and green, so I figured the landscape had begun to permeate. On Galway cobblestone you hummed “Shakedown Street;” I swear there was a jig. Five pounds blown on a tin whistle. Then the rain came and slid down your collar and left you drenched through your shoes. At the youth hostel you crashed on the bottom bunk. Later we took the ferry to the Aran Islands. The whole time you complained of the rain. I gave up explaining: that’s the thing, here.
K.
Inevitably, there’s an obsession.
It was no contest: you were Slavic, a model, an artist, you fashioned your entire senior thesis out of veal: caged, dead, raw. Ground into heaps of corkscrew streamers. Under the nails and up to the elbows and stinking you up for months.
I know. You can’t make this shit up.
By the time we met you’d already been through the entire student body, male and female and post-doc. Outside the library in a wash of moonlight and shadows and safety blue posts I stood with bone white skin, stood out but only briefly.
It went like this: You called me “Woman” and I followed your bloody shoes.
To a filthy alcove, a hole, really, cut from your fraternity’s wall, that reeked of beer and metal and piss and splooge. We were not alone. Bodies filled the cave: arching, intertwined, making their sex sounds; beneath us, the mattresses felt damp as inner thighs and I spread my fingers for grip, in the darkness who knew, it was a child’s guessing game, eyeballs of peeled grapes, intestines of spent latex, that kind of thing. I touched a hairy toe and convinced myself we were inside that Bosch triptych. I could feel the party upstairs. Wait right here, you whispered, then something in Czech, vanishing through the same portal we crawled through, leaving me like the sucker of a teenage horror flick; one by one bodies slithered out until I was alone, there would be others, you were on a beer run, you were fucking your real girlfriend, another, a fraternity brother, who knows, I stayed, you promised you’d return, so when you did, a week before graduation, staring down your pool cue, nodding once, twice, twist of blue chalk, such was the nature of your cruelty, that meat stench still ripe, I threw myself right back in.
S.
Mountain man, your visit to New York presented a strange juxtaposition of worlds not entirely welcome, but I never thought you’d ditch your loamy beard in my bathroom sink.
H & Z.
The chop shop you worked for hooked up the swanky digs and steady flow of top-shelf. It went down as planned: you made the call and I snapped to it, what’s a girl to do, the cat busied herself with the legs of a roach so I rode the train down to Rector Street and navigated the land of after-hours suits. None of it would last. The elevator had a chandelier and gilded trimmings, which cast me in bronze, I pushed for the penthouse, dazzling in flattering light, expecting you, and then there were two. It was quite the mirage. Who knew a girl could get such attention? Five shots and all that and the next day, Z, you brought me a cannoli.
R.
At the tattoo parlor in Forked River, dismal shingle, you insisted on a naval anchor entwined with an ornate quill pen. It felt like you were choosing your obit. The artist pumped his pedal, impatient, as you tightened your grizzled ponytail, rolled up your sleeve, proffered your liver-spotted arm. “Sure you don’t want one?” you asked, sucking a butterscotch as the needle whirred and your eyes filled, squinted down your nose through the pain. “My treat,” you said. The ink bubbled with blood as the homage to your sunset life slowly emerged; yours was a vision of Hemingway at Key West, six-toed cats and all, only this was New Jersey and it was off-season.
“I’m good,” I told you.
The place smelled of your old-man candies.
Still I held your hand and still you scratched for sex into my dry wintry palm.
N.
Dinner and you couldn’t wait to get me home. Dinner, you’d pay, the taxi, we’d split, and then it would be my turn to shell out. This is how it went with boys: You would tap and I would chip away, nothing more to report, only later, plucking cold string beans from a can, feeling soft-boiled, it would be tough to stomach another re-run of Friends.
There was one: drug charges, statutory rape, back in college, but still I had to question the fix-up. What did that say about me? Unruffled, as it were, when night became one tireless bar hop, dinner having effectively left the picture. Deemed unworthy. Irrelevant. Night’s end and I’d be waterlogged, waiting for my ears to pop.
There was no pleasure in it.
Of course there was always the question of performance. A kind of tallying up: What would be noted, what overlooked. Check your boxes, please. Stirrups, hot wax and approximation of self at age seven: all an easy sell. Who doesn’t want a gold star?
Maintenance was important but there were other things.
I tried to keep a sense of humor. I didn’t want to be one of those, right, checking their reflections for flyaways in storefront windows, some kind of nervous, you know.
J.
The whole time you thought I was my sister.
A.
Christmas, 1997. Do you remember? That ridiculous office party with the Playboy bunnies a strut in red vinyl, their six-inch heels towering over everyone like a bunch of trannies instead of as hired arm candy. The wretched hierarchy, how it went, with the top-tier (B-list celebrities, A-list writers) jammed into the editor-in-chief’s office, slurping cold shrimp and asparagus wrapped in fancy ham and chewing on the uncut ends of Cubans, while the overeager editors hovered outside, vying to worm their way into the VIP room, spilling their martinis as they sucked up and surveyed the crowd for rumored appearances by Tyra or Gay Talese. Moving along the masthead, the in-house writers squeezed into someone’s windowless office, an exclusive fraternity with their own brand of swagger, scotch and Nina Simone, feigning indifference to the hullabaloo as they gave Proust a metaphorical blowjob. Maybe there was a lucky girl in the mix. At least the art department had their own digs from which to blast Moby and tune out the blatant, editorial desperation. Last, of course, were the assistants: young, nubile things lined up along the wall for the picking, looking smoky-eyed and mildly slutty and trying not to lose their balance as they fished the olives from their drinks. Occasionally, they would laugh out loud for the sake of it, to remind themselves of their lowly existence, so they wouldn’t simply disappear. These were the dregs, strung out along the bottom of the proverbial totem pole.
This is where you found me.
I didn’t know much from copy, I knew you pored over layout boards without much recognition, but then I’d only been working for a couple months and still couldn’t change the toner without staining my thumbs. There you were. Devoid of glamour, a pariah in your own right, you were now next to me, all awkward and shy and lovely with those watery eyes that exuded the most heart-wrenching sadness. You said your name and I could picture your byline but little else. I was unfamiliar with your writing. But then you were talking, your voice hushed and intimate, it was charming and bashful and it was, I imagine it still is, an act, your signature, but I was taken, I was leaning in, nodding and trying not to let on that I couldn’t quite follow it all, deaf in one ear, a constant flunky of high school auditory tests, I was missing beats but you were on a roll, swallowing syllables, your loneliness was palpable; in an instant, I saw me inside you save for one main difference, you possessed this fuck-all hope, you shimmered with the boundless belief in possibility, you once dove off the Brooklyn Bridge right into the East River, you’d tell me, and I was struck, you were a little crazy, there was a dimple in your cheek, and I wanted to nestle right there. This was not your first office party so you knew the drill; immediately, you were wise, I was drunk, you were so wise, worldly, I was six months out of college but you’d grown up in Nairobi or some such so I pinned you for Robert Redford in that Meryl Streep flick. While I’d been sitting in a classroom struggling with exegesis you were living life like Henry David Thoreau, romancing the solitude of New England winters, your references whizzed over my head (you had ten years on me); truth is, I didn’t know half of what you were saying but when you mentioned some cozy little French place in the Village I’d never heard of (what did I know?) it took little convincing.
I would have gone anywhere with you.
A cab (a company car, this was the nineties) later and there we were, velvety and snug in a corner with a plate of oysters and bottle of wine and my drugstore lipstick askew. Even here you smelled outdoorsy. The crème brulee is sublime (as good as mine?), you whispered, cracking the crust with your spoon. The consistency turned my stomach; nevertheless, when you slid over the ramekin I dipped in. Savoring that glop on your tongue you grew silent and brooding and when you looked at me with those eyes you had me read so what did I do? I worried a pimple right beneath the skin and I filled the air just to fill it. Maybe you hushed me up then or maybe you let me go on, I was drunk, it’d been a party, Christmas, the whole thing, which meant surely my hand was on your thigh in the cab – such a gentleman, that night, you returned the gesture; after all, it was only polite. You took me crosstown and left me at the door before continuing on to Brooklyn, where you lived, at thirty-two, an unfathomable age of unfathomable maturity, at home in an unfathomable land.
That night I started to love you.
Work resumed. The same as before, as if we had not met, only your silence, your veritable absence I took for mystery. Then those Hrabel novels popped up on my ergonomic swivel chair, Too Loud a Solitude, go figure, and something else, all stacked and neat and smooth to the touch and done up in a bow. There was no note. I’d been on a coffee run and you were gone in a flash so I spun around and interrogated assistants’ row until one girl smacked her gum and said, “Must have been A,” and I grew all hot and special feeling as the thought of you thinking of me spread through me like a happy-hour wine. I mean, you had me with those books like you could have had others only after a seriously nice pair of Blahniks. I devoured them, reading them fast and then slow, searching the texts for some hint or code, the legend to your mind. This is how I loved you: tucked under my pillow. When my officemate deadpanned you’d once given her the same set, I took her for a girl being mean.
Anyone could tell we were different.
We saw that documentary at the Film Forum. You’d already seen it, Grey Gardens, what, a thousand times. Me, I’d never even been to that theater. We met in line below the marquee. Everyone else had a notebook and a messenger bag and creatively placed piercings. You tickled the curve of my ribs. Afterward we split a crepe, lemon sugar.
Reticence was part of your charm, I assured myself throughout the weeks, a month of nothing but a nod, our bodies awkwardly mashed in the elevator from the morning crunch, mere circumstance, your finger already fussing with the collar of your button-down. You always looked wilted in office wear; your frame, too rugged to be constricted by cuffs, longed to be free: to toss a disc, swim with a retriever, fly fish. Occasionally you’d shoot a cryptic email, “think of the magic of that foot,” but it would flop so you’d grant me a cubicle swing-by, breathe down my screen while you waited for my boss, coyly making excuses; a stray cat’s illness, an inherent flakiness, et cetera, and I’d picture you in Brooklyn with friends and bike paths and smart weeklies, twirling pasta around tables with operatic waiters, and try to carve out a place in it all for me. Of course part of my loving was the puzzle of you; you, I imagined, you with this whole other life.
When I did see you, you’d look at me like that and reinforce our silent understanding.
Of what, I was never quite sure.
It was innocent. We were office colleagues. No matter that the industry was predicated on fucking, there was no fucking. I mean, zero. You vetted a couple reviews I wrote before I fired them off. You’d say I did a good job or tweak this line, watch for dangling participles, and that’s it, you’re ready.
We met on a Sunday for a Woody Allen picture. He told the same old story. We didn’t touch or anything. You and me. Movies, a ready escape. Only there was no escaping it. Barely exchanged a word.
We’d do things like this.
It wasn’t natural for me to hold my tongue but otherwise around you I’d become this silly, garrulous girl.
To think I once considered myself impervious. I mean, seriously. Ha-ha.
Then we had that day. Please say you remember. You picked me up, something Japanese, no matter, you picked me up and you drove out the Belt Parkway, we were listening to folk rock, for sure, if you smile at me I will understand, and the windows were rolled and the veins in your forearm all ropey, sunlight glinting in the fuzz, you smelled of boysenberries and used books and even though your hairline was creeping up your forehead that day I knew that I loved you. When you pulled into Robert Moses State Park a pair of deer crossed our path and I thought it couldn’t get any better. And then we were walking out past the dunes and I’m not sure it was summer, it had to have been spring, not quite beach weather but you had your pants rolled and maybe you’d brought along a Frisbee and then you were saying, you were lilting all quiet, how, now, brown cow? and I was looking at you blank but there they went, your words, what would Jesus do? (can you play the kazoo?) always oblique and vaguely elegiac and lost on me, who’s never without a quip, you told me I made you feel like you were talking to the moon so I focused on smiling pretty.
You walked on.
Swinging my shoes, I mentioned the weather, the shape of the clouds, didn’t they resemble the hind legs of rabbits, I said, (you said nothing) cupping my skirt to keep it from billowing over my face as I trailed after you, the wind whipping my hair into salt-crusted strands, I called, where to, buckaroo, as you walked on and I tried to keep pace, what are you thinking, I said and you did not answer, you were caught up, talk to me, I said, I am right here but you were elsewhere, distracted, so utterly consumed you were I grew jealous, I worried if sometimes, alone, you remembered to eat, the tide went out and my feet sank in and I found the perfect spot to tug you down in the sand.
But that wasn’t on your agenda.
On the drive back I was quiet, defeated, but you looked renewed. Exuberant about all the places you’d take me: Odessa by the Sea and Greenwood Cemetery and Coney Island for the pitchforks and mermaid parade, an orgiastic display of satin fins and turquoise pasties, there were the Gardens, still, the carousel, a classic, we’d ride it some time, next time, you said and then you took my hand. Who are you? I wanted to shout but then you looked at me all strange and open and it was all I could do not to cry. There was some circus, you said, some wacky clan of local misfits you wanted me to meet, thought I’d get a real thrill, and then how did I feel about a fish fry. You knew of some waterfront bar where they were having a Sunday fry and how would I like to be shown it.
It was a dive by the harbor stale with tobacco and maritime décor. A couple of patrons wore waders. We had beers and boilermakers and you were all lightness and laughter. Our asses stuck to the stools. You were happy; I know it. I guess we had fish, too, though I can’t imagine. Maybe it was a bouillabaisse or simple spaghetti and clams, nothing too strong, because afterward you took me to your brownstone flat and the game was certainly on. You had a shower while I combed the stacks surrounding your fireplace, crunching breath mints from a chalky metal tin. In a towel you offered pie, scooped a cat off your counter. I stood there silently willing you to undress me as you saddled me with volumes by Graham Greene, Ken Kesey, some Stanley Elkin shit about a man fucking a bear. Real tender, you called it. But I was twenty-two and tired of clues, so I sprung onto your bed; come here, I said, beery and fish greased, red sauce dotting my chin, and you did, finally, you came to me and you were warm and freckled and fungal and lithe, yours was a chest cut from midnight runs and river kayaking and not from a temperature-controlled gym, you came to me and I loved you (how I loved you, I really loved you) and then you said: “Look. My girlfriend’s coming home.”
So there was that.
Then it went like this with boys. And so on. Et cetera.
We continued to work at the same place but never quite together. There were a few lunches on Ninth Avenue, too much wine, a glance by the jukebox at some book party, the fanning of crow’s feet, a touch that had me lit in a taxi.
Years pass. Things change. Right. I mean, look at the current state of magazines.
I haven’t seen you in a while. I heard you work at that bar. There’s that girl, still.
Only now I’m in Brooklyn, too. Married. Kids.
The magnolias are already in bloom.
Cherries are next.
Spring.
About the author:
Sara Lippmann received her MFA from the New School. Her work has appeared in Slice, Raleigh Quarterly, Fourth Genre, Illness & Grace (Wising Up Press), LIT, Carve and the Beacon StreetReview; it is forthcoming from Fiction Circus. She lives in Brooklyn.
