Venus Envy (24 page)

“I love girl talk—girls.” Kenny smiled. “Something
tells me if there were time travel we would have thoroughly disported ourselves in ancient Athens.”

“You would. Women bore the usual sexist burdens, as well as the children.”

“How sad.” Kenny meant it. Now that he had reconceived of himself as bisexual he was in favor of sex for everyone with everyone in every available combination. It was an endearing philosophy.

“You know, Frazier’s fixated on that painting of Mount Olympus, which, while painted much later—like the seventeenth century later—carries the flavor of the vases, you might say. Anyway, she’s convinced the painting is alive, sort of, and I say she’s under a lot of stress so this is … a kind of relief.”

“Mandy, dammit, Kenny doesn’t care about the Mount Olympus painting. And I never said it was alive. I just think there are some things about it that are peculiar.”

“Such as?” Kenny asked, his dark, glossy eyebrows curving upward.

“Oh, nothing really.”

“In the middle of a bright day we heard thunder. Jupiter’s laughter.” Mandy supplied an answer.

“I didn’t say that exactly. But there wasn’t a cloud. I called the power company to find out if a transformer blew—”

“Got obsessed and then she called the police to find out if a bomb had gone off.”

“Mandy, come on, I was curious. It was so unusual. Anyway, I’d rather have the thunder be Jupiter’s laughter than a bomb. Everything’s so upside down right now, someone better be laughing. I’d hate for this muffled misery to be for nothing.”

“Yeah, everyone is overpoweringly polite. What was it that Tennessee Williams said? ‘A faggot is a homosexual
gentleman who has just left the room.’ Applies to women, too, I guess.”

“It’s like an undertow. I can’t always see it but I can feel it.” Frazier slowed her pace. “I’d feel better if they came out of the closet, the people who sit in silent judgment.”

“I hardly think your mother sits in silent judgment.” Mandy snapped her fingers together.

“Mother is in a class by herself. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. I received the first detective’s report.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“What report?” Kenny smelled gossip and he was never one to pass up a delicious story.

“Mandy told me to put a detective on Laura.”

“Our Lady of Perfection?” Kenny was amazed.

“She’s not so perfect.” Mandy defended her instincts. “She hates her husband and she hates Frazier too.”

“Oooee.” Kenny sucked in his breath. “Blunt but true. You think she’s rolling in the hay with someone other than Carter, the original forty-balled tomcat?”

“No.” Frazier shook her head. “She visits different doctors. Apart from her various activities—aerobics, tennis lessons, bridge, the Garden Club—just the usual.”

“Maybe she sleeps with the doctors.” Kenny, a Southern gentleman, glided down the stairs before the ladies and walked in front of them, the reasoning being that if a lady should lose her footing the gentleman would be there to catch her. The reverse applied on climbing the stairs.

“I thought of that.” Frazier glared at Mandy. “You have just perverted my mind, Eisenhart. Anyway, she wasn’t in the offices long enough for that unless these guys are adept at speed-fucking.”

“Most doctors are,” Kenny drawled.

“Is this spoken from personal experience?” Mandy’s hand slid along the highly polished railing.

“It is.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“And why not?” He turned his head to look back at Frazier.

“You guys can dart in and out of one another’s, uh, nether regions faster than I can put on panty hose.”

“And you’re telling me a doctor can’t fast-forward into someone’s vagina?”

“Of course he can,” Mandy said, “but the lady of his momentary lust probably won’t get much out of it.”

“What if he arrives at the other orifice?” Kenny twirled his hand upward.

“My point stands.” Mandy sounded triumphant.

“Oh, dear. Does this mean that when I finally do achieve the desired intimacy with Courtney Wood that she isn’t going to enjoy oral sex?”

“How do you even know she’ll do it?” Frazier drew alongside Mandy as they stepped down the last step.

“You’re kidding?” Kenny was shocked.

“No. Some women won’t.” Mandy backed up Frazier.

“Not you two.” Kenny’s eyes twinkled.

“Depends on the man.” Mandy volunteered a bit of her sexual history. “If he’s not hot, never. If I like him, okay.”

“But do you like it?” Kenny adored sex talk.

“It’s not my fave” came the dry reply.

Now both sets of eyes fell upon Frazier.

“Hey, I’m the lesbian, remember?”

“Oh, bullshit, Mary,” Kenny shot back using the gay term “Mary.” “Didn’t I just hear you discussing the members of some fortunate gentlemen, fortunate enough to have enjoyed your favors.”

“You are courtly, Kenny. Why are you both looking at me? Do I like giving blow jobs? Is that the question?”

“It most certainly is.” Kenny nodded.

“Loved it. Loved every minute of it.”

Mandy’s eyes grew larger. She was surprised at this because since she didn’t like it, she couldn’t imagine Frazier, who was supposed to be gay, liking it at all. “Now wait a minute. Just wait a minute. I’m straight and I don’t like it. You’re gay and you do?”

“How straight are you, sugar?” Kenny, had he been a cat, would have curled his tail around himself at that very moment.

Now both sets of eyes were on Mandy. “You two are demented.”

“I hope so.” Kenny grinned.

“Let me put it this way …” Mandy began.

“Brace yourself, Kenny. I think we’re in for a bout of diplomacy.”

Mandy laughed. “Hey, you’re my boss, remember.”

“I remember only too well. So tell … the truth. Even if you think it will offend me.”

“I have never been to bed with a member of my own sex, but once when I was seventeen I did kiss Meredith Burns in the boathouse at the University of Pennsylvania.

“You had to go all the way to Philadelphia to kiss a girl?” Frazier couldn’t help but prolong Mandy’s agony.

“We were visiting colleges together.” She stopped. “Why am I telling you this?”

“Because we asked and because it’s fascinating and because apart from money, sex is the most wonderful, the most engaging, the most memorable subject on all the earth.” Kenny sighed.

“Been a long time, honey?” Frazier slipped her arm through his and Mandy did likewise on his right side.

“I consider two months an eternity. Billy and I usually had sex four or five times a week and not always alone.”

“Kinky.” Mandy noticed an Isidore Bonheur sculpture and thought of his sister Rosa, a painter of restrained passion, a passion focused more on animals than people.

“Very. I have had all my orifices stuffed simultaneously and been stuffing someone else’s, often unknown to me—the person, not the orifice. Billy’s lust exceeds even my own, but what I really want is to be close to someone. After a time, sex with him became gymnastics—or traffic control. I just wanted to be held, corny as that may sound.”

“Sounds pretty good to me,” Frazier admitted. “Oh, Mandy, you didn’t tell us if you enjoyed kissing Meredith Whoever.”

“If I tell, will Kenny tell about his perversions?”

“Deal.”

“Meredith Burns was one good kisser.”

“But you didn’t go further?” Kenny pressed.

“No. I didn’t think about it. Girls can do those sorts of things. Kissing, I mean, and it’s not a big deal. But if you’re asking if I am capable of making love to a woman—sure. Will I? How the hell do I know? I’m like a trapeze artist. I swing from boyfriend to boyfriend. Maybe if I sat down and thought about what I was doing I’d think about that too.”

“Serial monogamy.” Frazier’s voice sounded grave.

“It’s not a disease.”

“I know. It’s just what I observe. I wasn’t making a judgment. If anything, Mandy, I give you credit. You’re out there trying. On the other hand, you can sit home and conceive of the perfect relationship. You can reconstitute yourself, too, you know. Attack your own neurosis. Imagine how the next relationship will be. While you’re sitting home creating this perfection the world
goes on. And when you emerge from the cocoon to actually find someone, they aren’t perfect and neither are you. At least, if you’re out there having relationships and trying and loving and crying and whatever, you’re learning, which is a lot more than I ever did. I would have a furtive relationship here and there with someone usually as repressed as myself. Close personal friends, you bet—the byword for a lesbian couple, only I never even coupled. Fucked, yes; coupled, no. I qualify as a major coward.”

“You don’t know, sister, you don’t know,” Mandy said, and Kenny nodded in agreement. “And now, Mr. Singer, a perversion. Like what is the wildest thing you ever did?”

He sat on a bench in the middle of the room. The two women sat on either side of him, and as the room was empty, he spoke in a normal tone of voice. “Last year for my thirtieth birthday Billy flew me to Florida and we embarked on a Caribbean cruise on this stunning big cruiser, long as a city block. Two other couples joined us, all gay men, and the crew were all gay, too, or bisexual. I mean, when you’re fucking someone you don’t care a bit if he’s fucking women too. I never did, anyway. On the actual day of my birth we sat down to a white-tie dinner, and dessert was served in this fashion: the crew member with the biggest cock was carried in on a platter they had made, covered in grapes and fruits. We nibbled the fruits. Then we nibbled him. Then we carefully removed our clothes, as did the crew, except that they were ordered to keep on their white caps and navy blazers with the brass buttons. Oh, the sight of those big pecs, a trickle of sweat lazing between them! Billy stroked those crew members’ members who were not white. He delicately poured lines of cocaine on these erect penii which the white members of the party and
crew sniffed. Then the black crew members and guests—one couple was mixed—placed us on our stomachs while they formed lines of cocaine on our buttocks which they then sniffed. We applied more of this controlled substance to various anuses and entered at will. In order to sustain our erections we dabbed the powder on the heads of our own cocks, which does delay ejaculation, and we combined and recombined in every number and position imaginable. I couldn’t sit down the next day. One of the rules of the birthday party was that you must both pitch and catch. I’m not much of a catcher and believe me, I was glad for the cocaine on my poor little poop chute. Damn, did I hurt the next day. But I will never, ever forget my thirtieth birthday … and don’t worry, we practiced safe sex. I don’t want to die as a result of turning thirty.”

“Is this what Courtney Wood has to look forward to—snorting cocaine off your part?” Frazier asked while Mandy pulled up her jaw, which had dropped.

“Doesn’t look as good on a white cock.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

“Well, I’d prefer to have sex with Courtney without drink or drugs. I’m tired of all that, and as for the, uh, creative stuff, I don’t think women are as wild as men.”

“I beg your pardon.” Frazier was indignant. “Mandy, are you going to let that go unchallenged?”

“I sure as shit never did anything like that.”

“Did you?” Kenny asked Frazier.

“No.”

“So what’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done?”

“Kenny, I haven’t been very wild but not only because I am a woman, and yes, I agree, sadly, that women are repressed prisoners in their own bodies—”

Mandy jumped in. “When you’re the one who carries the unwanted pregnancy it pays to be a little repressed.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s dull. I don’t want to be repressed. I want life to be a cocktail of silver, sensual pleasures but I can’t do that by myself. If I ever find the right woman I intend to incinerate the sheets.”

“Mandy?” Kenny was relentless.

Her voice shrank and she whispered, “The wildest thing I ever did was sit on Sean’s face.” She blushed.

“God, wouldn’t that be absolutely, positively the best. To sit on someone’s face!” Kenny shouted just as a tour of elderly people stepped into the room.

R
OUTE 64, A FOUR-LANE INTERSTATE RUNNING EAST TO
west, filled with cars at rush hour. Like Easter eggs of bright and metallic colors, the vehicles moved along at speeds less than sixty-five miles an hour, but moved nonetheless. Frazier drove toward home.

Kenny invited both Frazier and Mandy to stay over and play in Richmond. Mandy declined because Duncan needed to be fed and let out. Frazier volunteered to pick up the Scottie and take him to her place, since Duncan, Curry, and Basil knew one another and got along fine. Mandy thrilled at the break from routine and then elected to stay, which delighted Kenny, as those two were discovering each other. Finding a friend was as exciting as finding a lover. Frazier thought of friends as family without the bullshit.

A thick mist enshrouded the city. As she passed the Hyatt she couldn’t see the buildings at all. She could
barely make out the exit sign for Broad Street, West. Traffic slowed even more as the translucent platinum clouds settled down farther toward earth, touching everything with a magical radiance, a sense of mystery and possibility. A sense of fender-benders was heightened also, since people often shot through the fog only to crunch into the car in front. By the time she reached the Parham Road exit the mists had lifted enough for her to see the cars coming in the opposite direction, but it was as though they carried the clouds on their rooftops. A light drizzle dotted her windshield. The dogwoods, white and pink, splashed the woods with color, and heavy-headed tulips, flaming orange, red, yellow, magenta, and white, beckoned with each sway. Life was calling. Calling to whom? Frazier felt more alone and confused than ever in her life. The only good thing she could determine from this was that in their own lopsided fashion she and Carter had drawn closer again.

“Every day I count my blessings and every day I’m a few short,” she thought to herself, but then thinking again that that wasn’t a hundred percent true. She had her health. She had a closer relationship with Mandy and Kenny, and Ruru had come through, but then Ruru always did. She had formed a separate peace with her father and accepted that he would never fight back against Libby. And that included not fighting back to protect her, but she had needed that from him when she was a child. Now perhaps he needed her, if Frank bothered to examine his emotional needs. So there were blessings. The nonblessings piled up like Pelion on Ossa. The only thing she could think of was something Auntie Ruru once said when Frazier was a teenager upset over losing a golf tournament. “You don’t grow up until you learn to thank God for your troubles as well as your blessings.”