—I knew, River said, that the man wanted me. I knew I was the one he really wanted. And I’ve been living with that for all of these years.
Despicably, that story was like foreplay for me. I needed to have him; just as I needed to see all the sides of a new town, I needed to feel wanted by a good-looking man. To feel good, to feel as pretty as Alice, to feel potent enough to be near her.
By the time we left, the whole bar knew we were going to fuck. We parked in the driveway of our compound and were about to get out of my car when a long black car drove up. Down! I hissed. And we both shrank beneath the windows.
—It’s probably just Lenny, River whispered.
—Yeah, I said.
—Why are we hiding? he asked.
—I don’t know, I said. I stayed down there until the car took Lenny away.
River led me down the rough terrain from our driveway to his yurt, holding my hand as my heels scraped the rocks. I knew they were getting ruined but I didn’t care; I hadn’t paid for them. I followed him into his yurt and recalled all the times I’d been fucked in creepy places. It was a circus pavilion. Thin balsa beams held the structure up. The beams were in diamond shapes, an accordion; then they straightened and met at the top like the spokes of an umbrella. There was a pellet stove in the center like the one in my home. On the floor were many mismatched carpets. There were Aztec pillows and bright burlap blankets covering arabesque floor couches. His bed was in the back and center, the focal point. Right above it a skylight, a hexagon of navy sky.
He undressed me the way young boys undress a woman. Tentatively they undo one button or tug a corner of the shirt off your shoulder, then they lean back, smile, and wait for you to do the rest. If you never moved, neither would they.
I slipped the jumpsuit off and left my heels on. I wasn’t wearing a bra, so I stood there in just my black thong and those delicious green shoes.
—Do you know what happens, he asked me, when you pour hot aluminum into anthills?
I laughed and said I had no idea what happened when you did that.
—It travels into all the passageways and hardens there, and then you dig it up, and you have this castle, this aluminum castle, with all these doors and intricate hallways. It’s amazing. It’s insane.
—What about the ants, I said.
—Yeah, he replied solemnly.
We began fucking standing up. His body hard and warm. Touching his rear made me self-conscious. After several perfect minutes he laid me down atop his shitty mattress and plunged in and out so rhythmically that it seemed choreographed to go with the Penguin Café Orchestra tinkling from his laptop speaker.
He rolled us over so that I was on top, and I performed the required spectacle. I held my hair above my neck, making triangles of my arms. I swiveled my hips and did not mash myself the way I have done with some men when I just wanted to get myself off. I did everything that I figured he would want. I sucked my stomach in, though I was mostly bones and tendons. I even turned around, reverse cowgirl. I felt the oldest then, the most ridiculous. I decided reverse cowgirl had its expiration at thirty-seven, at least with a new and younger man.
Oh man, he said a few times, but otherwise he wasn’t a grunter. He held my hips firmly but tenderly. Nothing about him was gruesome or untoward. You’d be surprised at how few men you can say that about. Vic held me more gently and timidly than anyone, but it was insidious. His fingers like a Venus flytrap, closing in imperceptibly, wary of offending its prey.
I wasn’t able to relax that night, but there’s nothing better than fucking a beautiful man who is also kind and elusive. I faked an orgasm forty minutes in. I liked that he brought his mouth between my legs after we’d already started fucking. I liked the messiness. I looked up through the skylight at the wolf-gray stars and cried out like I was calling up to someone in the galaxy. I looked down to see the proud look on his shining face. The dog, Kurt, lay near the door, his chin resting on his paws, watching sex the way that dogs do, like they are confused as to why you’re making more of it than it is.
* * *
IN THE MORNING I WOKE before he did. I didn’t know how anyone could sleep past dawn in a yurt. The sun made me feel like a slut. River lay there, lightly snoring and handsome in a way that I found offensive.
I rose and gathered my jumpsuit and my heels. He woke up and looked at me and didn’t offer water.
The previous night, after he’d come, he almost immediately began talking of his life plans. I was dismayed when the hemp curtains parted to reveal his boyish ambition. He was the same as Jack. They wanted you to think they didn’t need technology and meanwhile they were furiously mining bitcoin.
I’d looked up Jack around that time. He wasn’t the Internet entrepreneur he’d planned to be; in fact, his online presence was slight and bland, with one exception. Photographs of him were featured on the blog of a young woman named Kylie who was studying in Ireland for a master’s program in something esoteric and unexciting. Jack had gone to visit her in a small town in County Clare where she lived with a bunch of other skinny girls in jean jackets. During Jack’s visit they milked goats and burned peat moss. They went on hikes to well-known cliffs. They drank beer or wine in every shot. There were several still lifes of bouquets. Jack buys me flowers any time he sees them, the accompanying caption read. And if they aren’t available for purchase, he makes his own bouquets.
At the top of the blog was the customary Kerouac quote, though I was sure a girl like Kylie knew no mad ones. I was a mad one who had held her new love’s scrotum in my palms and kneaded it like dough.
Women have the upper hand. It’s taken me half a lifetime to realize it. We don’t actually care about the man who is bringing flowers to another woman. River was a stand-in for Jack. All present men are stand-ins for former men. And all men are stand-ins for our fathers. And even our fathers mean less than our own self-preservation. May you not go around the world looking to fill what you fear you lack with the flesh of another human being. That’s part of what this story is for.
On a practical level, both young men, Jack and River, were proxies for Massi, my first kiss, at ten, following the figs soaked in grappa. When I saw boys in the streets with their low-slung backpacks, I thought of the girls they liked, the girls who got to be eleven and twelve and thirteen, with unicorn stickers and slap bracelets. I did not get to be any of those ages. I was ten and then I was thirty, and then I was thirty-seven.
That’s the best reason I can give for why I lingered near the door until River called out to me.
—Hey, he said. A muscular arm reached from the bed and made the shape of a hug. Come back, he said. You can’t leave without cuddling.
We fucked again, short but intense. We were on our sides and every thrust was deep and thoughtful. Kurt was circling near the door. His scruffy ears twitched at the sounds of squirrels and birds outside. Mid-fuck, River told the dog they’d be going soon. He asked me if I wanted to accompany them on their morning hike. Did you want to come, were the words he used.
I said no and River told me to stay for a bit, under the covers. They left without me. I walked around the yurt. On the “walls” were pictures of his father, many of them, stuck to the wood beams. There was a tray of crystals and rocks, each of them labeled. Fancy jasper, stone of relaxation. Golden sheen obsidian, stone of personal power. Titanium aura quartz, stone of high energy. There was a collection of homemade walking canes. There was a pair of panties on the floor next to the stove. Brown silk. I picked them up and smelled them.