Michael and I deal with anxiety differently. Michael is an extrovert. He had a hip-hop group at Columbia; he was MC WebMD and he rapped about his neuroses, rhyming thyroid, typhoid, and infinite void, and occasionally spasming into a performative coughing fit.
I remember my first attack in his presence. We had just returned from dinner, Indian, our third date. We were in my dorm room illegally downloading MP3s and drinking wine from coffee mugs I’d stolen from the dining hall. This was as close as I’d come to nurturing a rebellious streak. I was nervous. Dinner had upset my stomach, and Michael’s eyes on my objects and meager hangings made me feel exposed.
I wanted to be one of those girls with a record player and a stack of LPs. One of those girls with a vintage fur displayed on a sewing form. I was not that girl, too timid and self-conscious, too conflicted between my fear of and desire for attention.
In high school, the lacrosse team made a website where they ranked and analyzed the females in our class. I was given points for my looks, but demerits for my supposed inability to smile. Verdict: frigid bitch. People mistook my shyness for coldness, my stilted manner for arrogance. And though I’d tried to make myself over in college by wearing costumes to theme parties and laughing at unfunny jokes, I knew that these adjustments were cosmetic.
I sensed Michael was about to make his move. He’d been giving his take on “The Real Slim Shady,” misquoting Frederic Jameson and explaining the song’s postmodern assault on the illusion of objectivity. My stomach rumbled. What Michael was saying was pretentious and half-baked, but I appreciated his spirit. Here was the college experience I’d imagined before the disillusion of matriculation: discourse with flirtation. It was surprisingly hard to come by. The gender theorists had rejected me for precociously shopping at Ann Taylor Loft. Besides, they were averse to hegemonic concepts of courtship even when the courtship rituals included avowals to lay waste to the hegemony. Everyone else was only interested in real estate. Even the other writing students discussed it ad nauseam, debating which neighborhoods still inspired enough dread to keep gentrifiers from spoiling their storefronts with juice bars and yoga studios.
I’ve heard people say that during sexual encounters they’ve felt outside of their bodies, distant observers. My experience has been the opposite. I am only a body, a sensation machine. Michael kissed me and I kissed back. His tongue felt mealy in my mouth, like a chunk of soggy apple. He scooched closer on the bed. He wrapped an arm around my waist and placed his palm beneath my sweater, just above my beltline. He traced a path from my navel to my hip.
I pulled away. I thought I might vomit. I had trouble breathing. I hyperventilated. I thought I might have spontaneous diarrhea. I assumed that Michael would flee. I felt like the night’s failure was indicative of all my future failings, indicative of the hopelessness of any such endeavor.
Music continued to play. I imagined Michael staring at my body and assessing what I considered its flaws. We’d fooled around on our first date, but we were in a dark car, and I’d kept my clothes on. Now, in the privacy of my bedroom, further exploration was expected.
I was, and still am, by most accounts, attractive: tall and relatively thin with red hair that falls in tight spirals below my shoulders. I have expressive lips and turquoise eyes. I have my maternal grandmother’s upturned, Irish nose, which nicely offsets my other, Ashkenazic features. I’m not a size zero, but I dress to accentuate my strengths.
Still, during all of my pre-Michael sexual experiences, I’d arrived against disappointment. I’ll never forget Gabriel Simm’s face upon the unveiling of my breasts, my flat and ovular nipples reflected in his lenses. Gabriel did a double take. He could only blame his vision. Then: a cringe of acceptance, a closing of eyes, tongue diving toward areola as if, with enough torque, he might bypass reality and land on fantasy’s shore.
The first thing Michael did was turn off the music. He knew not to touch me. He pulled over my desk chair and sat facing me. He spoke very slowly. He said my name. He told me to take deep breaths. He said everything would be okay. He said he understood, that he had felt like this before. His voice was steady. He said there was no rush, that he liked me, and that he could wait. He told me there was time. He asked if there was anything I took to calm down when I felt this way. I told him where I kept the Ativan. He took one too, “to be on the same wavelength.” I thought this was funny. We watched a video on the computer. My breathing regulated. The video was a clip of a monkey fainting from sniffing its own feces. Michael said he’d watched it hundreds of times. He made me laugh.
We fell asleep fully clothed. I woke with Michael in my arms. He lay drooling in the fetal position. He looked vulnerable, sweetly sleepy.
When I got home from Lillian’s on Sunday night, I was surprised to find Michael in the apartment. It was ten o’clock. He had been going out after work. He usually arrived home past midnight. I’d be in bed, alert, awaiting the sound of his keys. Eventually he’d stumble in and clomp across the loft. I’d pretend to be asleep.
I told myself that Michael’s behavior was an appropriate response to the stress of the crash. The truth is that it had been a problem for some time. After our daughter’s death, I found myself reticent around Michael.
He’d suggested we begin to try again. I wasn’t ready. I was still in mourning. I think that Michael saw, in Nina’s death, the loss of a future, whereas I felt the loss of a person I’d known. For nine months she’d been my roommate, a tiny human sharing my body’s resources. Michael only knew her as a nebulous mass. A mass that occasionally kicked.
I worked long hours, and when I got home I took long baths. I didn’t want to talk or to be physically intimate. I told myself I was protecting Michael. Nina had come from my body, been destroyed by my body. Who could caress this killing thing? I felt I didn’t deserve to be loved.
A part of me was relieved when Michael began to go out after work. The other part was lonely.
That night, he seemed happy to see me. He may have been buzzed, but I couldn’t smell anything on him. I was tipsy myself. He asked about my evening. I recounted Lillian’s position that oral sex might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
It was warm in our apartment. Michael took off his clothes and got on the air mattress in his underwear. His bites had faded more than mine because he was better at leaving them alone. I changed into a nightgown and got in beside him. He’d stopped at Bed Bath & Beyond and bought a new set of sheets. They were stiff but clean.
Michael had his laptop open and I watched as his cursor hovered, for an instant, over the shortcut to our E*Trade account. I didn’t think anything of it. He clicked on the CNN shortcut instead. The Florida neo-Nazis had occupied a Hillel at FSU, and were holding a rabbi and four students hostage. Michael scrolled down past articles on Hurricane Marie, sexual assault on an HBO set, and Shamerican protest art. He clicked into a piece on the proposed sale of C&S to Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. We silently read. The gist was that the deal was stalled but not dead. Michael hovered over E*Trade again. He didn’t click. He closed his laptop.
“This world,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Our world,” he said.
He pressed into his temples with his index fingers. He stared at the wall.
I was feeling fondly toward Michael. I was thinking of the previous week, when he’d cleaned and cooked, and rubbed my feet. The wine had made me tired and I’d fallen asleep. Now I was awake. I slipped a hand inside his boxer briefs and rested it there.
When he was ready, I rolled onto my stomach and raised the hem of my nightgown. Michael preferred being face to face. He liked to look into my eyes. I liked this too, but not always. Sometimes it felt like too much pressure, like being under observation. Michael leaned over and kissed the nape of my neck. He nibbled my shoulders. He ran his hands along my spine and held my hips. He asked if it felt good. I said that it did.
The sex was accompanied by word-like noises coming from Michael’s mouth. I’d never heard him make these noises before. It sounded like an infant’s strangled attempts to articulate beyond her linguistic capacity. I didn’t like the way my face felt against the pillow. The sheets were rough. They needed three or four wash cycles to be softened to my satisfaction. I imagined other couples testing the sheets in the store, tainting the fabric. I knew this was not possible. The sheets had come sealed in plastic casing. I tried to feel pleasure. I tried to will the convergence of our bodies into something ecstatic. I could feel the shrimp suspended in the aspic of my intestines.
Michael asked if I wanted to vibrate. This is something we did. He’d thrust from the rear while I ran a vibrator over my hood. Michael had said that my contractions, when I was on the cusp of orgasm, set off his own climb. I said I didn’t want to vibrate. It seemed unlikely I’d be able to climax.
When I began to get dry, Michael added lube to the outside of his condom. He wore condoms because I react adversely to birth control pills. The condoms, coupled with the side effects of his antidepressants, prolonged the plateau phase of intercourse. I often spent long minutes lying in wait.
Michael thrusted and made his noises. He kissed my hair. My phone buzzed. My phone had a special buzz for emails from Lillian. The buzz was accompanied by a bird’s chirp.
Michael said, “Leave it.”
I said, “Mike.”
Michael continued to thrust. The bird continued to chirp. I smelled cat pee. Michael grabbed tightly to my hips. His fingernails dug into my skin. I imagined them making small abrasions. I imaged the dirt from under Michael’s nails entering my bloodstream. I imagined the shrimp squirming back to life and swimming up my esophagus.
I tried to extract myself, but it must have felt, to him, as if I were erotically bucking. He increased the speed of his thrusts. He clutched me closer. I was able to unplug my phone from its charger. I managed to get the phone to my face. Michael whispered what sounded like “I love you.” He bit my ear. He ejaculated as I read Lillian’s email.