On Friday I take off work early and get groomed in various ways, then I go to Dean & DeLuca and buy blueberries, and then I allow myself the indulgence of a MoMA visit. I pay twenty-five dollars and go up to the top floor and wend my way through the museum. Eventually I find myself lingering around their permanent collection. All that work those people made for decades, and here’s their greatest hits, one or two pieces plucked from storage. Better the one piece than none at all, I guess. I miss painting. Even the fumes I miss. I’ve spent the past thirteen years looking for a smell to replace it.
Hours later I’m smelling all of him, his fumes. A cocktail at the bar before our reservation. I am thirty-eight and he is forty-two. “I’m just starting over,” he tells me. “Sometimes I feel like I’m done,” I tell him. Dinner is fast, but I still try to enjoy myself, because I love food; at the weirdest, darkest, most stressful moments of my life, I always make sure to have a nice meal. I order a steak. “I want it rare,” I tell the waitress. “Like bloody red.” “Carnivore,” he says. “That’s me,” I say. We drink two glasses of wine each, and I say, “You know what we should have done?” and he says, “Gotten the bottle?” “I never plan that right,” I say, and he says, “Me neither,” and we smile at each other. Let’s just get along, I think. All we have to do is get along.
We walk to my apartment, not his, which he claims is a mess. He is wearing a hat and a chambray shirt and shorts and loafers and he has an easy stride. I am wearing a black dress, loose and summery, and I feel pretty and intellectually engaged after my day of art. Also, I feel drunk. At home there is bourbon, and I tell him that while we walk, and he tells me I’m a dream girl. Like he literally says, “I feel like you were sent to me as a present from the heavens above,” and I laugh so hard but I love it.
When we get to my studio he surveys it and nods—the art, the stacks of books, the pots and pans dangling dramatically from a ceiling rack—while I shakily, excitedly pour us two bourbons, neat. We clink glasses and then drink quickly. “This is so exciting,” he says. “I’m so excited.” I boldly take off my dress. I’m just standing there naked in front of him. “I love all the curves,” he says. “Hips. Yes.” He is nodding at me, approving of me. I realize I am desperate for his approval. This man who was married, this father of one, someone else’s, now mine.
He takes off his hat, and then his shirt, and then his pants. He is pale white and nearly hairless and I realize he has trimmed his pubic hair. “Did you—?” I point to his crotch. “I thought I was supposed to,” he says. “I read it in GQ.” “I really haven’t seen it before,” I say. “I think I went a little too far,” he says. “I waxed my chest, too. It hurt.” “I waxed too,” I say. “Just here, though.” I motion to my crotch. “It looks nice on you,” he says. “Normal.”
Our confessions done, we kiss, and then he’s on me and it’s fast, it’s happening, it’s on. He bends me over on my couch and, from behind, begins to pound me. There’s a mirror nearby and I can see that he’s watching himself, watching his facial expression. This moment has so little to do with me. After a while we try another position, and then another position, and then another position, and then another one. “Can we go back?” I say. “What? Huh?” he gasps, pushes his glasses up, looks at me. “I liked what we were doing before. Like ten minutes ago.” “Hold on,” he says, and he stops to clean his glasses with my nearby underpants.
Then we rearrange our bodies to the old position and we move very slowly and it’s fantastic but then he starts to speed up and he goes faster and harder and it feels like he’s trying to murder me with his dick and I say, “Slow down a little, baby,” and he says, “I can’t, I’m going to come, don’t make me stop,” so I don’t because this is his first time fucking a person other than his wife in twelve years and it’s with me, and I want him to remember it as great. I let him pound me for another minute and he orgasms, loud, certainly loud enough to be heard from the street below, and he’s just so proud of himself, and almost immediately I begin to hate him, but also desire him even more, too.
I get myself off with a little assistance from him, an orgasm in a minor key, and then we sit at my kitchen table, naked, and eat blueberries, which have ripened since I bought them and left them in the sun by the window. I talk happily while I shove blueberries in my mouth. I’m always such an idiot after sex. At some point I realize he’s stopped eating blueberries, and he’s watching me eat, and I’m still eating, and then I finish the entire bowl. I sit back. “What?” I say. “I’ve got to go, I’m sorry,” he says. He puts on all his clothes. I’m still naked. I’m just sitting there watching him make his exit. “Am I being weird?” he asks. “I don’t know,” I say. “Are you?” And then he’s gone, no evidence left behind, except the light blue imprint of his fingers on my upper arm, which was where he held me too tightly.
The next day he apologizes via text for fucking me and leaving and I forgive him. We banter a bit about the sex we had. There is an acknowledgment that he is hard on one side of the conversation, and I am wet on the other side. Then he has to go: his kid is coming.
“How’d it go,” asks Nina, Monday morning, first thing.
“He freaked out and left after sex,” I say.
“Oh well,” says Nina.
“How’d it go,” texts Deb.
“He’s really nice!” I text back.
“Do you like him?” she says.
I don’t reply.
Baron and I volley texts back and forth for a few days about seeing each other again. No specific plans are made. Just: Let’s hang out soon.
The next week I see him on the street. He’s walking with his daughter, holding her hand with one hand, and a plastic bag of groceries with the other, the green stems of carrots poking out the top of the bag. She is wearing a blue-flowered backpack. Her mother must be of Hispanic descent. She is a beautiful little girl. Baron sees me coming from a block away, waves, and then crosses to the other side of the street.
“How dare you,” I text him later.
“You told me you hate children,” he texts back.
We still have sex sometimes, can you believe it? I have grown to hate him more and more as time passes, and he, me. We are cruel to each other in bed sometimes. Nasty and forceful. I want him regardless, or because of it. Was there a moment we could have brought out the best in each other? Was that ever a possibility? Could we have taken another path? When I think about all the little intersections in our time together I wonder when we could have gone left or right instead of straight ahead, into the pile of mud we’re stuck in together.