Read I Think You're Totally Wrong Online
Authors: David Shields
I Think You're Totally Wrong (23 page)
DAVID:
But these threads are never really woven into a singleâ
CALEB:
I think to write this as fiction is a greater challenge.
DAVID:
No it's not, but either way, you need to show more of the narrator's Puritanism. I think the story has to be “Beast in the Jungle” or
The Good Soldier
, in which the protagonist is far more repressed than he realizes. It should be interesting when he says, “Eliza has erotic qualities, but I can't go into it.” Red flag!
CALEB:
There's noâ
DAVID:
Wait. Let me finish. You can have the narrator always protesting too much, and the reader may find him interestingly repressed; that could be a very powerful story, a little like Glenway Wescott's novella
Pilgrim Hawk
. Or you could flip it into an essay or essaylike story in which the author-narrator really investigates these ideas and, under the pressure of Maugham and Wilde and Madonna, thinks that if I'm going to be a person of the world I'm going to embrace the full range of possible sexual experiences.
He stupidly convinces himself he must do it. That could work.
CALEB:
You think so?
DAVID:
But the endingâthat's a startling gesture that I just don't buy.
CALEB:
You don't buy it?
DAVID:
Because I wouldn't do that.
CALEB:
You wouldn't?
DAVID:
NoâI'm very self-protective. But I want to be convinced that another human being could do it even if I wouldn't. Is the narrator secretly bisexual? Is he self-annihilating? Or is he under the strong influence of a PC pan-globalism? He thinks, “I must experience everything.” To me, that's you.
CALEB:
What really happened is quite different. Eliza combines elements of a few girls I've known, including Marcy Lezcano.
DAVID:
Marcy Lezcano?!
CALEB:
Yes.
DAVID:
She's part of all this?
CALEB:
Indirectly. I took two novel classes with you, and Marcy was in both. I found her attractive, didn't you?
DAVID
: Sureâthat dark hair, her cigarettes, her husky voice, her fallen-angelness.
CALEB:
I asked her out after the last day of the fall quarter. She gave me her number. When I called, her roommate told me Marcy was in the shower, took my name and number. Marcy didn't call back.
DAVID:
Ouch.
CALEB:
I take another class with you spring quarter; first day I come a few minutes early, and there's Marcy.
DAVID:
Hello â¦
CALEB:
We exchanged awkwardities, and as class goes on we're pleasant. The phone call is never mentioned. Then, later, she invites me to this party.
DAVID:
She invited me, too. I didn't go.
CALEB:
You? She's inviting her teacher? Cool, but jeez. The party was at a bar downtown.
DAVID:
Yep.
CALEB:
I went. It was a big setup, and I thought I might chat with Marcy, but I ended up meeting this girl. Marcy exits the story at this point.
DAVID:
What did this other girl look like?
CALEB:
The one in the story, the Samoan, was gorgeous; this one, not so much. We dance, even make out on the floor. She asked if I wanted to go to her place, we took a cab to this apartment on Capitol Hill, and then I found out it was a guy.
DAVID:
How did you find out?
CALEB:
By grabbing his hard penis.
DAVID:
Yikes.
CALEB:
I said, “I thought you were a girl. I was looking forward to having heterosexual sex.” And I let him touch me, and I kept touching him, even kissing, but we just stopped. I said, “I'm too drunk.” I didn't want to hurt his feelingsâit
sounds corny, but that's how I felt. I rolled over and passed out.
DAVID:
I understand: you didn't want to be an asshole about it.
CALEB:
I even had breakfast with him the next day.
DAVID:
You slept in the same bed?
CALEB:
On the floor. He spread blankets on the floor.
DAVID:
But you didn't have sex?
CALEB:
He starts to go down on me, but my cock's flaccid. It's, well, it's not Oedipus, but it's like I just found out the girl I'm fucking is my mother.
DAVID:
Were his feelings hurt?
CALEB:
I think he thought I was really too drunk. He's asking me if this is my first “experience” and I'm telling him I thought he was really a girl. He asks, “Then why are you here?” He wants to talk about it, get to know me.
DAVID:
So that was the genesis of your story. There wasn't any Polynesian, or was there?
CALEB:
Three years later, winter of 1994, I fly to Apia in Western Samoa (Maugham set “Rain” in Pago Pago, American Samoa). I get off the plane, and my story describes it exactly, right down to the sign in the airport: “Keep Our Country AIDS Free.”
I get a room, drop off my bags, walk around town, and this very beautiful woman hits on me. We make a date for late afternoon, and I go back to the hostel to get ready. At the hostel there's a group of travelers, a Maori couple, an Australian gal, a German guy, a Norwegian, and his temporary Samoan girlfriend, Noella. Noella is key.
DAVID:
Is she a transvestite, too?
CALEB:
No. Six peopleâtoo many names to keep track of, but whenever I remember this story, I think of them. The Maori guy was called Lucky. Carol the Australian, Bernhard the German, and Vagard the Norwegian with Noella. We're all talking and sharing stories, and they're going out that night and ask me to come. I say, great, but I'm meeting this girl. So we all end up going out: these six people, me, and my date.
DAVID:
Does everyone know she's a transvestite?
CALEB:
The point is I don't. She's really hot. I can't take my eyes off her. I mean supermodel hot. I'm thinking I've got the hottest woman in this dance club.
DAVID:
And she's Polynesian?
CALEB:
Samoan. I don't even suspect, even though I've been fooled before.
DAVID:
By Marcy Lezcano.
CALEB:
By her friend.
DAVID:
Right.
CALEB:
She's telling me I'm gorgeous. At this time I had long hair; she loves my long hair.
DAVID:
Right.
CALEB:
I'm just a mimbo.
DAVID:
What's a mimboâa man bimbo?
CALEB:
A Seinfeldism. We're dancing on the floor, and whenever my date goes to the bathroom, all my new friends compliment me. The Maori couple, especially. Lucky and his girlfriend kept saying, “You're such a beautiful couple. You really go well together.” They bought us a couple rounds of drinks. And all of us are dancing.
DAVID:
Four couples.
CALEB:
Yep. Then everyone leaves, and it's just me and this transvestite. We go off in a corner of the dance club and have a drink. It's dark and secluded, and she goes under the table and starts giving me a blow job. I come. And we set up a date for the next day.
DAVID:
When she gave you a blow job, wasn't there any “Turnabout is fair play; now I'll please you”?
CALEB:
I tried. Not going down but to touch. She pulled my hand away, wouldn't let me touch her, not even her breasts. She didn't let me put my hands underneath her clothes, and I did think, This is really weird.
DAVID:
She said she just liked to give pleasure.
CALEB:
She said it was fun. I paid for everythingâdrinks, dinner, her cab home. I even suggested coming back to the room, but she wanted to go home, meet the next day. At the time, I didn't know the hostel had a policy and wouldn't have let her in, and that's why she didn't want to come. The next day I'm hanging out with the gang at the hostel, and they ask me about my girlfriend, and I say, “We're going out tonight, too.” And then Noella asks me if I know it's a guy.
DAVID:
Out of nowhere.
CALEB:
Out of nowhere. I'm like, “Blaaaaaaaaahggg!” I ask Noella, “Are you joking?”
DAVID:
How could she tell it was a guy?
CALEB:
Duh. She was Samoan. It turns out they all knew.
DAVID:
How old were you?
CALEB:
Twenty-five.
DAVID:
Pretty young.
CALEB:
Old enough to know better. I ask Noella, “Why
didn't you tell me earlier?” She shrugs. I'd planned to meet this transvestite by the hostel, she's due any second, and I say, “Well, she's coming here, so let's get out of here before she arrives.” We leave, and the transvestite is outside. She's waving and hollers, “Yoo-hoo! Caleb!”
I start shaking my head, and I say, “Forget it. No. Go home. No.”
She just starts laughing. “Oh, you found out I'm a fag!” The only thing I'm thinking is how glad I am I'm overseas and no one will ever know this story.
DAVID:
And everyone knew?
CALEB:
Everyone. Later, Bernhard, the German, hits on me: “In my home country I drive BMW. Sex with guy, sex with girl, vat's the difference? If you vant to have sex with me, why not? I zee no problem.” Vagard, Bernhard, Noella, and I go eat at this Chinese dive; Vagard tells me the same thing happened to him.
DAVID:
What?
CALEB:
Before he met Noella, the same transvestite had tried to pick up Vagard. He said, “She wanted to go to a bar, and we get a couple drinks and head toward the back, where she starts giving me a blow job. I try to touch her, but she won't let me. I'm thinking, What woman doesn't want to be touched? I say, âYou're a guy, aren't you?'Â ”
Vagard had traveled through Southeast Asia, and transvestites were all over the place: they tuck themselves, get implants, fake boobs, and they still have Adam's apples and big hands. He put two and two together. When I tried to add two and two, I came up with around nineteen.
David laughs
.
CALEB:
Not only Vagard and Noella but everyone knew, and the transvestite knew everyone knew, and everyone knew that the transvestite knew they knew. There was probably a lot of weird energy going on, and I was just oblivious. The transvestite probably was wondering, How does this Caleb guy still not know?
DAVID:
And she's not doing it for money?
CALEB:
At the end, she asked for cab fare. I said how much? And she said ten dollars. Seemed reasonable.
Finally, everyone flies off to wherever, and now it's just me and Noella. It's afternoon and we go out, have a bite, and I tell Noella everything, including the fact that I got a blow job. She tells me about how they trick foreigners all the time. Some get paid; sometimes the foreigners know and don't care. Even locals get blow jobs.
Noella and I hang out all day, and in one afternoon she tells me her entire life story, as much life story as you can tell in one afternoon. She went to college in Australia on a scholarship, had a boyfriend, fell in love, got pregnant, but the boyfriend didn't want to marry. Her visa expired, so she came back to Samoa and gave birth.
I tell her I'm thinking of switching to a different hostel and I ask if she wants to come with me. She asks me, “So you want to have fun tonight?” Now, she's been sleeping with this Norwegian guy all week, and she knows I had been with the Samoan transvestite.
DAVID
: Wasn't she worried about getting AIDS?
CALEB:
Evidently not. She has this sad life.
DAVID:
Did she have any ulterior motive for wanting to have this brief affair with you?
CALEB:
Of course she might have been fishing for more. Who knows? She claimed that local guys weren't interested in her because of her situation. She was matter-of-fact:
nothing I can do
. She radiated benevolence, or so it seemed at the time, especially in my memory.
There I am, just happy she doesn't see me as a long-haired idiot who's been dancing with a transvestite. I'm thinking she's got low standards: “I wouldn't want to be in a club that would have me as a member.”
Making love to her was an incredibly beautiful experienceâa release, a way to move on, but I was moving on. I was definitely the more selfish between the two of us. She went with me to the airport, and rather than change my
talas
I gave them to her. The equivalent of seventy dollars. I never got an AIDS test until I worked in the United Arab Emirates.
