It’s no fun when people tell you their dreams. But sexual fantasies are a different story. Even writing the words “sexual fantasies” sort of puts me in a “sexy” mood. With that in mind, I’ve decided to share a few of mine. Here goes!
It’s summertime and I’m caddying again, carrying bags for Mrs. Thomas, a blonde, and Mrs. Bunch, a redhead. We’re in the woods along the eighth hole, and we’re looking for a lost ball. We’re far from the civilizing influence of the clubhouse (oh, this is going to be good) and the air is crackling with heat.
“Do you see it? Do you see my ball?”
“Not yet, Mrs. Bunch.”
“Call me Carolyn. I don’t like losing these things, you know. They cost a dollar-fifty apiece.”
I see something in the leaves—but it’s a 100-compression Titleist with a black number 3. A man’s ball. Mrs. Bunch is using a womanly Maxfli.
“Now, where is that damn ball?” she says.
(Let’s not waste too much time looking for the ball. It’s—what the hell time is it?—it’s one-thirteen, and you’ve got to be up at seven for that thing.)
Now Mrs. Thomas, in yellow culottes with little green turtles on them, is coming toward Mrs. Bunch and me. I can hear the spiked undersides of her golf shoes on the leaves as she gets closer.
“Can I just take the five-wood from my bag?” she says—and gives me a little smirk.
(The smirk is nice, but Mrs. Thomas should be hot with lust by now. It’s one-sixteen. If we hit one-thirty, that means five and a half hours of sleep, and you know how you are when you don’t get your six.)
The sunlight is slanting through the branches. (Not a bad touch: helps set the scene, makes it real.) A crow sails into my line of vision and lands on a branch. (The crow’s a bit much.) The crow caws: “Caw! Caw!” (Lose crow.) The crow flies off. Now Mrs. Thomas is standing right beside me—I feel the heat of her body—and she slips the five-wood out of its knit cover.
“I can’t hit the irons for some reason. I’m all right on the practice range, but I’m a basket case on the course. Why do you think that is?”
“Probably mental,” I say.
“Is that so?”
(Do we really need this? Let’s get it on already.)
Swat!
“Damn bugs!” Mrs. Bunch says. “Some gnat got me on the upper thigh.”
(Yeah, right, like she would be so specific in describing where it had bitten her.)
“Let me see it,” says Mrs. Thomas.
(As if Mrs. Thomas would care. This is ludicrous—a gnat bite as a sexual catalyst? You can do better than this. What time is it now? One-twenty-four. Shit!)
“It’s right here,” says Mrs. Bunch, lifting her pink skirt a little.
Mrs. Thomas kneels down on the ground, her bare kneecaps hitting the leaves. (What’s she going to do—scratch it? This is not good. Think, think! You’ve got yourself into a sexual-fantasy corner!) She takes the hem of Mrs. Bunch’s skirt between her fingers. (I don’t know where you’re going with this, counselor, but I’ll allow it.)
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! (The hell?) It’s the greenskeeper, riding a lawn tractor nearby. (He does not need to be here.) The tractor speeds off toward the horizon. I look over at the ladies again and see what I’ve been hoping to see for so long. The Maxfli.
“Mrs. Bunch—Carolyn—I got it. I found your ball!” I say (unaware that I have fallen asleep).
I’m an explorer. (Yeah, good, something different.) It’s 1510 (good, 1510, long time ago), and I’m coming upon a new part of the world. (Well, new to me. To the people who’ve lived here for thousands of years, it’s old hat.) There she is, and she’s not even dressed, at least not by my European standards of habillement. She’s drinking from a pond, like an animal. (Wait a minute. Does this scenario show me to be some kind of sexual imperialist, intent on exploiting a girl from an indigenous culture?) I walk closer to the pond’s edge. Our eyes meet.
I give chase, following the nymph through the woods. She’s laughing delightfully—actually, it sounds like a scream. Yes, it’s a native cry for help. Here come the males, with spears. Back to the ship! Run! (This really isn’t going to work at all. Try something a little less … outdoorsy.)
The year is 1924, and we find ourselves in a grand Park Avenue dining room. I see her across the table, my sexual quarry—a saucy flapper with short black hair and possible sapphic tendencies. Her bare arm is even with the bare arm of the flapper seated next to her. The girls are buttering bread in tandem. I take a piece of bread from the silver dish and I, too, begin buttering. And so here we are, buttering and buttering in 1924.
“I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance,” the first flapper says, still buttering. “Are you new to New York?”
Light from the chandelier catches their painted lips. The flappers’ mouths shine as they … continue to butter their pieces of bread.
I, too, continue buttering and buttering with gusto until I (fall dead asleep).
“Awwww-chie! C’meeeya!”
(No, no, please, not the Edith Bunker one.)
“Awww-chie! I got ya bee-ya for ya just like ya like it!”
(No, God in Heaven, please, no.)
“Hello, dingbat. You’re my good dingbat.”
“Aww, Aw-chie.”
(Why? Why? Why this?)
“Edith, you’re my little goyle.”
(No! No! Cut! Make them sing on the piano bench.)
“Didn’t need no welfare state.”
“Everybody pulled his weight.”
“Gee, our old La Salle ran great.”
“Those were the days.”
Archie puts the stogie back in his mouth. Edith gazes up at him lovingly. (Now get to sleep, God damn it.)
Miss Lupree was a gym teacher at my school. She had curly black hair and wore a whistle around her neck. Her legs were tan and strong between black gym shorts and white high-tops. Today, it’s just the two of us in the gymnasium after school. The lights are out and I’ve come by to … (quick, a pretext, why would I be with her after school?) … to see if she’ll … donate money for the walkathon. (Oh, Jesus.)
“Hey, Miss Lupree.”
(What age am I? If it’s the present day, with me being almost forty, Miss Lupree would be about … sixty. Imagine that. Time is rolling over everybody. It is relentless. And to think of the bad stuff I’ve been through in that time—what if it was worse for her? Her parents are probably dead by now, some of her friends, too. So just be young. It’s high school again, and you’re seventeen and Miss Lupree is in her thirties. Simpler that way.)
“What do you need?” Miss Lupree says.
(“I need you”—tell her that!) Instead I say, “I’m in this walkathon on Saturday, and I need people to pledge money. Most people are giving a dollar a mile.”
“A dollar a mile? You obviously have no idea what they pay us around here.”
“If it’s too much you could—you could pledge, like, a penny.”
“I’m just joshing you. You want me to sign something?”
“Yeah, just sign here.”
“You got a pen?”
“Uh, no.”
“Walking around with a signup sheet and you don’t have a pen?” (Oh, Freud would have a field day with this one. God, I hate it when people talk about Freud having afield day. As if Freud ever had afield day. What the hell is afield day, anyway? I think Marshall Crenshaw had an album called Field Day. Christ. Marshall Crenshaw. I think he was in Beatlemania. That’s the last play I remember being at the Winter Garden Theatre before Cats showed up. Now Cats has closed, after, like, eighteen years. Come on, back to Miss Lupree.) “Come to the office. I think I have a pen in my handbag.”
We cross the gleaming hardwood floor. The movable bleachers are stacked against the wall. (Must we dwell on the movable bleachers just now?) Now we’re going into her office. (Where “it” will happen, no doubt!) At the desk … damn, it’s Coach Robb. Mustache, clipboard, whistle. He’s the man who benched me for a full season of junior-varsity basketball because of my (read, “his”) “attitude problem.”
“Well, if it isn’t Dr. J.,” Coach Robb says, using his very own derisive nickname for me.
“Hey, Coach.”
“Just let me get a pen,” Miss Lupree says. “I know I have one around here somewhere.”
(Oh, Christ, at least let her find a pen!)
“What’s this guy up to, Donna?” Coach Robb asks.
“I’m sponsoring him for the walkathon.”
“Character like you involved in a charitable event?” he says. “What’s the catch, bud?”
“You know, it’s, like, a walkathon thing,” I say.
Miss Lupree signs my sheet of paper. I can smell her perfume—or is it soap? Does she shower in the girls’ locker room during the school day? (God almighty.)
“There you go.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Now get the hell outta here, mister, and don’t come back,” Coach Robb says, using his “rough” humor on me.
I leave the office and end up wandering around in my old school, alone. It’s late in the school year, and there’s no air-conditioning. I can feel a heavy warmth in the hallways, and it’s dark and shady and strange. I get a whiff of methanol by the science lab and the smell of glue and paper near the yearbook room and the smell of cigarette smoke as I approach the faculty lounge, and I keep walking until I (just lie awake in bed, wondering if Miss Lupree really is old, or maybe even dead, and thinking of funerals I’ve gone to, and wondering when I will die, or if I’ll have to watch everyone else die, everyone I love, or almost everyone, one by one, before I go. What the hell is the point? No, no, don’t see it that way. Haven’t we been through this a million times? We live for a while and then we’re in the ground, and that should be enough. You would have to be ungrateful, or arrogant, or spoiled, or have no appreciation for life itself, to want more).
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