The Safety of Objects: Stories (12 page)

Ben just stood there. He thought Sally was being stupid and Sally knew it.

“Okay,” she said. “But don’t touch me.”

Sally lay down, lifted her nightgown, and pulled her underwear down to her knees.

Ben moved in closer. “Where’s the hair?” he said, shining the light on her.

Sally raised her head and looked down at herself, tripling her chin. It was there before but now she couldn’t find it.

“You don’t have one.”

“I do so.”

“Maybe it’s inside,” he said.

Ben pulled her underwear the rest of the way down. Sally was surprised but didn’t say anything.

“Move your legs apart,” Ben said.

Sally turned her head away from Ben and spread her legs. She looked at the furnace room door and imagined that the man with one arm was in there looking at her through the slats. She tried to stare at him.

Sally spread her legs and Ben stood at the end of the bed—his shirt down but caught on his erection—looking carefully at the inside of Sally.

“I don’t see one,” he said.

“Well, it was there before,” Sally said.

Ben shrugged and moved in a little closer. “It looks like a peach pit in there.”

Sally tried to remember what a peach pit looked like. She looked at Ben’s face to see if he was making fun of her. His expression was serious and intent. He had the flashlight in one hand and was bent over her, almost into her, with his other hand pressed into the mattress between her legs, keeping him propped up. He examined her carefully, as though he was looking for something in particular that he just hadn’t found yet.

She started to pull her nightgown down but Ben caught her arms and stopped her.

“I’m not done yet,” Ben said. And he held Sally’s arms until she relaxed and lay back on the bed with her nightgown gathered around her belly button and her underwear on the linoleum floor.

“Let’s see your boobs,” Ben said.

“I don’t have any yet,” Sally said in an annoyed tone. She was not happy with Ben.

“Let me see.” Ben started to yank her nightgown up but Sally stopped him and did it herself.

Her breasts stuck out from her body just enough to look like a fat boy’s chest; there was nothing female or sexy about them. The nipples were puffy soft spots that looked slanted like Chinese eyes and sometimes felt like bruises.

She lay naked with Ben standing over her, and in their nakedness whatever they knew about how to move, how to walk or talk, completely disappeared.

The recreation room was spread out underneath the whole house. They could hear footsteps, muffled TV voices, water running, and Sally’s father locking the front door.

“Let’s do it,” Ben said, softly.

Sally knew what he was getting at but thought it was one of those things like reading the newspaper that you just didn’t do until you were grown up. She wasn’t as big on taking chances as she liked to think she was. Sally shook her head.

Ben pulled his nightshirt off. Sally looked at his nipples, small and flat like dimes.

“Oh, come on,” Ben said. “You’re no fun.”

And they were stuck there, silent, waiting, staring at each other’s nakedness until finally Sally said, “All right.”

“All right,” she said, and rolled over onto her stomach and poked her butt up into the air.

“What are you doing?” Ben asked.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“That’s not how you do it,” Ben said.

“Yes it is,” Sally said and she stayed like that for about five minutes with Ben just watching her and both of them feeling more confused than they were willing to admit.

Suddenly they both saw something outside. It was a strange kind of something; a flicker of light, not white light like the flashlight, but red-orange light like a fire.

“Let’s go outside,” Ben said just as Sally was thinking they should go upstairs and beg to be allowed to sleep up there.

Sally shook her head.

“Come on,” Ben said. “We have to.” And even though Sally couldn’t imagine why they should go outside in the middle of the night, especially when they had just seen something out there, she was glad to be able to move.

There was something strange about the way Ben said “we have to,” as though whatever they had seen out there had something to do with them and they had to go outside and face it.

She started to put on her nightgown but Ben grabbed it and pulled it off her.

“No,” he said. “Naked.”

“I don’t want to,” Sally said.

Ben took her arms and pulled her to the sliding glass door that led outside. It was dark out. Sally didn’t like the dark.

“Are you scared?” Ben asked. Sally shook her head.

“I just don’t want to.”

“We have to,” Ben said.

Sally believed him. He took her hand and they walked toward the door.

*  *  *

Ben and Sally stood naked in the night, in the grass just beyond the back patio of Sally’s house. They stood five feet apart, facing out into the woods. The woods behind Sally’s house were part of the same stretch of woods that spread out behind all the houses on the street. They were a piece of the same woods that Ben and Sally had set on fire.

They stood, without realizing it, directly under Sally’s parents’ bedroom windows, which were open to the night air. They were silent, hypnotized by the sensation of the air on their naked bodies.

Ben’s erection stuck out in front of him like a compass or a divining stick. In the breeze it seemed alternately to shrink slightly and then get bigger than before, beating like a pulse. Ben touched himself. He couldn’t resist. He put his fingers around the head and rubbed a little bit. Sally saw him, watched him, and it was as though by touching himself—or maybe by not asking her to do it for him—he’d somehow broken the bond between them and had betrayed her. She didn’t say anything, but when Ben noticed her watching he stopped and let his hands fall to his sides.

The woods beyond the patio were pitch-dark, and so were the backyards to the left and right. Through the darkness and the leaves on the trees they could see lights on in houses far away. The breeze blew the leaves and the lights seemed to flicker like fires.

There was a small noise, heavier than a breeze but still very light, nothing to be afraid of. Ben and Sally looked at each other but were not scared—or were already too scared to be any more scared. The noise got louder, leaves moving, maybe an animal walking, and then they heard voices.

Ben and Sally stood tranquilized by their bath in the night. Neither had the power or desire to move. Two tall figures stepped out from the darkness, stepped out from behind the brick wall that separated the patio from the rest of the backyard. Sally immediately recognized the two figures as someone’s older brothers, but couldn’t remember whose. Ben knew them and kind of let one of his knees relax as if trying to assume a casual pose. In a way he was proud to be out there naked with Sally. His hard-on stood apart from him, independent, as though it had a life and a mind of its own; he tried to ignore it.

The two young men were carrying things, a television set, a large radio, a big bag, and other things that weren’t clear in the darkness. They stood directly in front of Ben and Sally, facing them each one-on-one. With the two boys there, somehow Ben and Sally were no longer together but stood alone. The four of them stood wordless in the backyard.

One of the boys put down the TV he was carrying, pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and lit it. They all breathed deeply, inhaling the smell. The cigarette glowed, flaring as the boy inhaled. He took a couple of drags and then handed the cigarette to Ben—whose erection, Sally noticed, seemed to be sinking. Ben smoked the cigarette.

“Honey, do you smell something burning?” Sally’s mother said.

Through the house and the night her voice sounded distant and far away.

Ben dropped the cigarette on the ground in front of him. The boy in front of him reached his sneakered foot out and crushed the cigarette into the grass. The four of them stood, completely motionless and breathless, waiting to be caught.

But there were no sounds other than the wind in the trees and no lights came on anywhere and after a minute they all started breathing again and thought they were safe.

The boy facing Sally put down the TV and the bag he was carrying. He reached out to Sally, his fingers sort of pinching together in the air. He reached for her breast, or the start of what would later be her breast, but changed his mind. The backs of his fingers brushed against her nipple for a second and Sally felt strange.

He lowered his hand, extended his index finger, and gently pushed into the break between Sally’s legs. He left his finger there, not inside, not outside, but held in the flesh of the slit.

Sally looked at Ben and saw that he had his erection back. Sally felt the finger there, felt the rest of the fingers and the hand outside her. It was as though someone had asked her to do a magic trick, to hold a pencil in her crotch for a minute or more.

In time the boy pulled his finger out and as he did, Sally could feel his fingernail lightly scraping her insides.

After the boy pulled his finger out, he picked up the TV and the bag, looked at the other boy, and they both walked into the darkness.

Ben and Sally turned and went inside. Sally could still feel the imprint of the finger when she sat back down on the trundle bed. She felt the feeling of the finger and rocked back and forth on the sensation of the finger having been there.

“You can’t say anything” was all Ben said to her. “There’s no way to explain, so you can’t say anything.”

They sat naked for a minute in their beds and then it seemed too dark, too cold, and too late to be that way and so they put their clothing on again.

“Where’s my underpants?” Sally said.

Ben shrugged. He was tired and overwhelmed.

“I need them,” Sally said.

She made Ben move the beds so they could look under them and behind them and she started to get a little hysterical and Ben got mad and told her to “calm the fuck down.” Sally got in bed and tried to sleep, but the sensation of being naked under the nightgown with the fingerprint was too much and at a certain point, in the middle of the night, after Ben had fallen asleep, she had to go upstairs for underwear.

From the end of the dark hall she heard the steady rumble of her father snoring; his deep ragged inhalations worked like a magnet, pulling her down the hall toward her room.

Before entering her room, Sally reached in and turned the light on. Her underwear drawer opened with a loud wooden squeak which woke her mother.

“What are you doing?” her mother asked in a sleepy voice from the next room.

“Getting something,” Sally said.

“Go to sleep,” her mother said in as much of an angry voice as a sleeping mother could manage.

Sally stood in the center of her well-lit room and pulled on her underpants. She felt better, protected in the light, in her room, with the elastic around her waist and legs, the thicker cotton crotch pressed against her, covering her and the fingerprint like a blanket.

Sally stood, a child in her room, safe with her parents in the room next door. All she wanted to do was stay there, crawl into her bed, pull her Huggy Bear close, and sleep until her mother came in the next morning and kissed her forehead again and again until she was awake.

“Go back downstairs,” her mother said.

Sally left the underwear drawer half open and went out of her room, only remembering to turn out her light when her mother mumbled, “Turn out the light.”

The hall seemed darker than ever and Sally couldn’t see anything. She pressed her hands against the wall and just stood there for a minute. Ben was asleep downstairs and as much as she wanted him to be awake she didn’t want to wake him up. She wondered if they’d remembered to lock the back door, and thought that the boy from outside or someone worse, the man in the furnace room, would be waiting for her on the steps, or down there in the basement, and would do something to her, she didn’t think what.

On her way downstairs, she passed the bay window in the living room. Sally stopped and looked outside. The streetlight at the end of the driveway lit the road like part of a movie set. Outside there was something red and glowing. Sally pressed against the glass and saw red lights silently flashing in front of the house that she and Ben had hidden behind to light their fires. The flashing red lights were mounted on top of a police car and Sally thought she and Ben hadn’t put out the fires well enough; they were still burning in the backyard, the woods glowing red embers like a barbecue. Sally thought the people in the house had seen them either setting fires or maybe out there naked in the night and were turning them in.

She stood fixed in the bay window, looking out. Another police car drove slowly down the block, scanning the houses with a white searchlight mounted on the hood. The searchlight, like a flashlight, carefully examined the fronts of all the houses and then turned itself on the other police car. Sally saw policemen and two tall figures leaning against the car and a TV and a bag on the ground, along with other stuff that wasn’t clear against the night.

The searchlight rotated around again and she felt it sweep over her. Sally felt the light over her nightgown. She could feel the finger in her crotch and the light finding it there. Sally felt the light catching her in the dark living room. The light swept over again and Sally dodged it, running downstairs ahead of it. Her feet landed hard on every step, causing the people in the house to roll over in their sleep and try to get comfortable again.

The I of It

I am sitting naked on a kitchen chair, staring at it. My jeans and underwear are bunched up at my ankles. I walked from the bathroom to here, shuffling one foot in front of the other as though in shackles.

This has been a terrible week. I have been to the doctor. It is evening and I am sitting at my table staring down. I half wish that it had done what was threatened most in cases of severe abuse and fallen off. If I had found it lying loose under the sheets or pushed down to the bottom of the bed, rubbing up against my ankle, I could have picked it up lovingly, longingly. I could have brought it to eye level and given it the kind of inspection it truly deserved; I would have admired it from every angle, and then kept it in my dresser drawer.

I have an early memory of discovering this part of myself, discovering it as something neither my mother or sisters had. I played with it, knowing mine was the only one in the house, admiring its strength, enjoying how its presence seemed to mean so much to everyone. They were always in one way or another commenting on its existence from the manner in which they avoided it when they dried me from the tub to the way they looked out the car window when we stopped on long road trips and I stood by the highway releasing a thin yellow stream that danced in the wind.

This stub of maleness was what set me apart in a house of women; it was what comforted me most in that same house, knowing that I would never be like them.

From the time I first noticed that it filled me with warmth as I twirled my fingers over its top, I felt I had a friend. I walked to and from school and noisily up and down the stairs in our house, carrying it with me, slightly ahead of me, sharing its confidence.

I was a beautiful boy, or so they said. If I stood in my school clothes in front of the mirror I did not see anything special. My haircut was awful, my ears stuck out like telephone receivers, my eyes, while blue, seemed to disappear entirely when I smiled. And yet when I stood in front of the same mirror naked, I danced at the sight of myself, incredibly and inexcusably male.

I had no desire to be beautiful or good. Somehow, I suspect because it did not come naturally, I longed to be bad. I wanted to misbehave, to prove to myself that I could stand the sudden loss of my family’s affection. I wanted to do terrible, horrible things and then be excused simply because I was a boy and that’s what boys do, especially boys without fathers. I had the secret desire to frighten others. But I was forever a pink-skinned child, with straight blond hair, new khaki pants, white socks, and brown shoes.

My only true fear was of men. Having grown up without fathers, brothers, or uncles, men were completely unfamiliar to me, their naked selves only accidently seen in bathhouses or public restrooms. They lived behind extra-long zippers, hidden, like something in a freak show you’d pay to see once and only once. Their ungraceful parts hung deeply down, buried in a weave of hair that wound itself denser as it got closer as if to protect the world from the sight of such a monster. As I grew older, I taught myself to enjoy what was frightening.

I never wore underwear. Inside my jeans, it lay naked, rubbing the blue denim white. I went out in the evenings to roam among men, to display myself, to parade, to hunt. I was what everyone wanted, white, clean, forever a boy. They wanted to ruin me as a kind of revenge. It was part of my image to look unavailable, but the truth was anyone could have me. I liked ugly men. Grab your partner and do-si-do. Change partners. I kissed a million of them. I opened myself to them, and them to me. I walked down the street nearly naked with it in the lead. It was pure love in the sense of loving oneself and loving the sensation.

I was alive, incredibly, joyously. Even in the grocery store or the Laundromat, every time someone’s eyes passed over me, holding me for a second, I felt a boost that sent me forward and made me capable of doing anything. Every hour held a sensuous moment, a romantic possibility. Each person who looked at me and smiled, cared for me. To be treasured by those who weren’t related, to whom I meant nothing, was the highest form of a compliment.

Men, whose faces I didn’t recognize, bent down to kiss me as I sat eating lunch in sidewalk cafés. I kissed them back and whispered, It was good seeing you. And when my lunch dates asked who that was, I simply smiled.

I felt celebrated. Every dream was a possibility. It was as though I would never be afraid again. I remember being happy.

I look down on it and begin to weep. I do not understand what has happened or why. I am sickened by myself, and yet cannot stand the sensation of being so revolted. It is me, I tell myself. It is me, as though familiarity should be a comfort.

I remember when the men I met were truly strangers; our private parts went off in search of each other like dogs on a leash sniffing each other while the owners look away. I remember still, after that, meeting a man, and looking at him, looking at him days and months in a row and each time loving him.

I feel like I should wear rubber gloves for fear of touching myself or someone else. I have never felt so dangerous. I am weeping and it frightens me.

*  *  *

A friend told me about a group of men who make each other feel better, more hopeful, good about their bodies.

I picture a room full of men, sitting on folding chairs. They begin as any sort of meeting that welcomes strangers; they go around the room, first names only. They talk a little bit, and then finally, as though the talking is the obligatory introductory prayer, the warning of what is to follow, the cue to begin the incantation, they slowly take off their clothing, sweaters and shoes first. They silently stand up and drop their pants to the floor. The sight of a circle of naked men and folding chairs is exciting. Those who can, rise to the occasion and fire their poison jets into the air. It is wonderful. A great relief. They are saying something. They are angry. Men shuffle around in a circle doing it until they collapse. I imagine that one time someone died at a meeting. He came and he died. When he fell, the group used it as inspiration. They did it again, over him, and it was all so much better then.

I can no longer love. I cannot possess myself as I did before. I can never again possess it, as it possessed me.

I am in my apartment screaming at nothing. This is the most horrible thing that ever happened. I am furious. I deserve better than this. I am a good boy. Truly I am. I am sorry. I am so sorry.

I look down on it and it seems to look up at me. I want it to apologize for wanting the world, literally. I have the strongest desire to punish it, to whack it until it screams, beat it until it is bloody and runs off to hide, shaking in a corner, but I can’t. I cannot turn my back so quickly, and besides it is already lying there pale and weak, as if it is dead.

I see sick men, friends that have shriveled into strangers, unwelcome in hospitals and at home. They can’t think or breathe, and still as they go rattling toward death, it never loses an ounce, it lies fattened, untouched in the darkness between their legs. It is strikingly an ornament, a reminder of the past.

Should I ask for a divorce? A separation from myself on the grounds that this part of me that is more male than I alone could ever be has betrayed me. We no longer have anything in common except profound depression and disbelief. I have lost my best friend, my playmate from childhood, myself. I have lost what I loved most deeply. I wish to be compensated.

I let a napkin from the table fall across it and then quickly whisk it away,
voilà
, like I am doing a magic trick. I look down upon my lap as if expecting to see a bunch of flowers or a white rabbit in its place.

I remember the first man who unzipped my pants while I stood motionless, eyes turned down. I allowed myself to peek, to see it in his hand.

“It is a beautiful thing,” he said, lifting it like a treasure and touching it gently.

I kick off my jeans and run from room to room. I look out onto the city that once seemed so big and has now shrunken so that it is no more than a garden surrounding my apartment. I stand naked in the window, my hands flat against the glass. My reflection is clear. There is no escaping myself. My lips press against the window. I am a beautiful boy. I feel the familiar warmth that rises when I am being taken in. In the apartment directly across from mine I see a man watching me, his hand upon himself. He seems wonderful through the glass, someone I could be with forever. He smiles. I slide the window open and lean toward the air. I am no longer safe. I step up onto the sill and spring forward into the night.