He’s down there doing his usual, which is a mix of entering her with his tongue and vaguely kissing her pussetta stone, and she’s up there doing her yoozh: moaning with head back and eyes closed, really trying, but they both know where this is headed: nowheresville.
Wes gives up before losing all feeling in his jaw. “Did you?” he says while swiping at his cheeks with a fist, a moment he’s always found awkward.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She places her palms flat on her forehead, elbows to the slowly spinning ceiling fan.
Tonight’s sex-kerplunk caps off only two weeks of anticlimax, but they’ve already established it’s her fault. He’s got a suspicion, though, that Anna’s just protecting his feelings of inadequacy. He’s gotten her off before, and, on the flip side, even her worst, seemingly obligatory trips down have eventually finished him off. It’s mysterious.
“I want ice cream,” she says, sitting up in sudden determination.
Wes hears: I want to scream, but quickly realizes sex is no longer on her front burner. “I’ll get it,” he says, buttoning his shirt. “Just wait. You stay.”
Then, Wes is reaching for the keys and feeling Anna’s eyes on him as he walks out the door.
Beholding the colorful array of ice cream brands and flavors, Wes drifts.
If she really wants babies, it’s not very persuasive to suddenly go frigid like this. One day, they’re twentysomethings having a roll in the hay, the next she’s talking about growing old together, teaching Junior how to throw a curve. He wasn’t expecting that.
Plus, there’s nothing less sexy than babies. He’s not ready. And “babies” makes him think of his and Anna’s bodies as biological things, things that are for procreation. He shudders at a lightning-quick Miracle of Life flashback. High school Growth Education class. Placenta?
She mentioned the B-word in bed of all places, too. Maybe it wouldn’t bother him so much if, right after she brought the whole thing up, he didn’t thoughtlessly blurt out, “I want kids, too.” He’s always erred on the side of being a liar rather than admitting he’s a jerk. But maybe it isn’t jerky to have a fear. Something will go wrong, if he is a father. If only he had some patience, some nerve. If only he thought about the ideas, expressed concerns. If only he were honest with her. This lie, this crime of nonpassion, it’s crawled into bed, gotten between them, interrupted lust like a child.
At the register, Wes discovers he’s got Rocky Road.
Apart from Anna’s not getting off anymore, there are other new features in Wes’s world. For one, the new girl at work has an ass like an onion, making him cry each time she picks up an errant pencil off the newsroom floor. His eyes have increasingly lingered on the escort classifieds that he lists for the Weekly and started seeing an encoded message in their breast sizes: “DD,” “E,” and, once, impossibly, “DDD.” Anna’s emails now contain links to Most Popular Baby Name sites.
Joe, the copy editor, takes cigarette breaks every 30 minutes, and Wes starts bumming. One day, Joe waxes expert on oral.
“You spell out the alphabet,” he says, pulling a Newport from his lips.
“Out loud?” Wes asks.
“No. No.” Laughing. “You just trace the letters while you’re going down on her.”
“And that works?”
“Yeah, and it keeps up the variety.”
“Genius.”
“G-E-N-I-U-S.” Joe speaks each letter while licking his knuckle. “I copyedit, bro: I know letters.”
“What’s with the menthols, Joe? You been institutionalized or something?”
“I’m a reliable source, dude.” “Word.”
Wes runs through his ABCs ten times without so much as a yelp from Anna. Then, he wonders if it should be in lowercase. When Anna’s still not screaming that certain scream that Wes needs to hear, that sweet release that he is beginning to forget the sound and feel of, he traces the letters in NOW-I-KNOW-MY-ABCs-WON’T-YOU-COME.
Anna lifts his head and looks at him.
“Nothing?” he asks, but he knows the answer.
“Come here.” Anna pulls Wes up to her and places his face on her collarbone. He swipes at his exposed cheek. “I just can’t focus on that right now. It’ll pass.”
Wes is thinking that Joe is an idiot. “Sorry, I was trying something new.”
“Wesley, baby,” she begins, and Wes knows that this is going to be something not about sex, but about love, and he’s just going to wait it out, seeing as how it’s all a coverup for his stupid alphabet fiasco. “The most important thing to me is that you love me and that …” And Wes is right, and he stares at the door. What was it before? How was he able to do it? He reaches under his tongue, massaging the tender tether of muscle that holds his tongue back: it’s tighter, sore. His tongue wants to retreat. He hits a tiny tear on the tether, and his tongue shoots back. “Be honest,” Anna says. “Do you want what I want?”
“Of course, baby.” He tastes blood; it hurts to form the words.
Anna’s waving at a toddler at the coffee shop while Wes wonders why he’s never been able to picture having a kid of his own. It’s natural. People start asking if a baby’s on the way. Wes’s mom is too curious. Anna’s older sister’s got a bundle of joy for her mom to spoil.
“That is the cutest thing.” Anna sips her chai tea and indicates the goofy little kid with the sippy cup. “When we have babies, I’m going to fill bottles with milk and tell them to wander around the house and bump into things for Mommy.” Wes looks at the kid, and the kid cries.
“Fucking adorable.”
“Wesley!”
“What?”
He shrugs and pulls out a pack of Newports.
“You’re smoking again?”
He’s not getting into it with her. He lights up.
There are self-fulfilling prophecies. His friend, Earl, always said that if he were to have a kid and the kid turned out to be special, he would give it up for adoption, arguing, “I’m not going to dedicate my life to something like that.” Anna was there when Earl said this, so, of course, Wes told Earl that he was heartless and that all children are blessings. They were still courting. But then, Earl’s kid was special.
Thing is, though, Wes really can’t envision a child. Not anything about the idea. Is he sterile? All the pot smoking in high school, all the Mountain Dew consumption in college? He forces his creative mind to imagine himself in the hospital room, wearing the green scrubs, the nurse handing him his own swaddled infant. Wes watches himself tug on the soft blanket to see his newborn. But he can’t reveal his child’s entire face. In glimpses, he catches fangs. Yellow eyes. He hears a growl.
“What if I can’t have children?” Wes asks.
“I doubt it, lover,” she says and glides her foot up his calf. “But, we’d adopt.”
“What? And get some monster!” Wes gets a slap on the shoulder, but he’s serious. He can’t picture being a father to his own son or daughter, let alone someone else’s.
He’s convinced himself it’s not cheating: it’s a test. He lied to Anna, saying that he had to meet up with Earl for cards. He actually said the word, “cards,” which he’s never met Earl for, but it worked. She believed him, or maybe honesty is going undetectable. He’s at a club. A meat market.
Coming to places like this, to pick up, years ago, used to be a constant struggle with how to act. Wes had tried it all: buying drinks, pretending to throw around money; playing it cool, as if he didn’t want to get any; lines; all of it, but he notices that entering a club, armed with only the thought of servicing a willing woman is working like fly tape. He regrets, for a second, not having this state of mind when he was screwing around.
“You’re sexy,” says a girl with gigantic yellow hoop earrings.
“You should see me dance,” Wes agrees.
“I’m a cheerleader at BC,” she proclaims, possibly her pickup line for older men with assumable fantasies.
“Let’s see if you can keep up, then.”
It’s freeing. Wes does the robot, which he can’t do, but Hoop Earrings loves it, because she’s wasted.
Poof. They’re at her apartment.
Smooch. They’re on her couch.
Grope. Her shirt’s off.
Finger. They’re in her bed.
“Now, Shelly,” Wes starts to explain his test.
“Rebecca.”
“Whatever.” He pushes her pom-poms onto the floor. “I am going to go down on you, then I’m going to leave. That’s all this is.”
She sits up, suddenly sober. “What is this? Are you a lesbian?”
“Yeah. No. What? Listen: Will you just let me do this for you? Will you tell me how I am? I want you to have an orgasm. Not that I think you would, but will you just not fake anything? Is this simple enough?”
Rebecca considers this long enough for Wes to start thinking she’s a police officer. “Okay,” she says, finally, falling back, laughing, suddenly smashed again.
The cheerleader’s sexual routine is confusing to Wes, with all the clapping and chanting for Eagles’ touchdowns. Wes traces out the alphabet, at first, but then begins licking out words that run through his mind. True words. Real things. Brutal honesty. I-AM-CHEATING. I-WA NT-NOTHING-TO-DO-WITH-YOU. YOU-ARE-NOTHING-TO-ME-SHELLY. SORRY-I-MEAN-REBECCA. YOU-ARE-A-TEST. And when he’s finished spelling out how tired he is and how he’s disappointed in himself for smoking again, he hears her yell: “GIVE ME AN O! O! O!”
So, it isn’t all his fault.
Wes tells her to stay in school, then he splits.
One night, Anna’s got her shirt off, holding her breasts, inspecting them. Wes watches this with mild curiosity over his laptop.
“They say that your boobs get bigger when you have a baby,” Anna declares.
Anna’s a C cup, which Wes likes. He’s dealt with A’s, and once a DD. Usually boobs are a pair, but he can only recall the larger set as two entirely glorious but separate entities. “I love your breasts, babe.”
Anna puts on a T-shirt and says, “What are you reading?”
“The Weekly’s listings.”
“Checking out your work?”
“It’s so fucking weird: the whole world is in the classifieds. There’s everything from ‘Alex and Sarah Peterson married’ to ‘$6 hubcaps for sale.’ I look at the whole world every day until I’m typing someone’s holy matrimony with the same enthusiasm as some scam run out of Seattle for telemarketers or mystery shoppers—I look at the stuff that makes life worth living right next to the bullshit that makes life inane and absurd. Real love and con artists.”
“Wesley? Are you okay? You love the listings, I thought.”
“I don’t know. I just get confused sometimes about what matters, what’s honest and good and what’s just some more junk.”
Wes catches himself and tosses the laptop onto the couch. He leans over and pulls Anna to him. He clicks off the light. They stay quiet for a time. In the dark, in their bed, in their apartment, in their little life, he traces words on her back, like they used to.
“See if you can tell what I’m spelling.”
“I love this game.” Anna yawns.
Wes feels tender for a moment and traces S-O-R-R-Y on her back.
“I love your hands. That feels nice.”
“What did I spell?”
But Anna’s asleep already.
“Do you know?” Wes stares at the door until he slips into dreams.
After staring at yet another day’s emails of things to list: marriages, real estate for sale, medical studies, Fantasy Fulfillments, bartenders needed, apartment rentals, drummers needed, psychic readings, pot legalizing rallies, cuddle parties, I Saw You On The Subway love connections, used cars for sale, lectures at Harvard and MIT, and babies’ births; after smoking menthols and seeing Joe, the copy editor, each time; after asking him if he actually does any work at the paper at all; after listening to the BC Eagles beat the BU Terriers 21–10; after thinking about Shelly or Rebecca or whoever sleeping with someone new; after talking to Earl about how he’s never had a poker night and maybe would like to have one; after telling his mom that there’s no baby on the way; after, finally, clicking on the Most Popular Baby Names website and checking how far down the list the name Gun is; after reading the week’s paper and seeing word after word after word and not knowing what anything means anymore; after tracing TONIGHT-IS-THE-NIGHT on the roof of his mouth so that only he could feel it; Wes heads to the adult shop.
It’s arresting, the sheer onslaught of colors coated on the paraphernalia of sex. The fat brushstrokes Wes sees in the purple, red, and neon green dildos, vibrators, pocket pussies, on the packaging of lubricant, the sticks and blocks of incense. It’s new and tempting, the caresses of feathers, tails of whips. And the names on the videos and magazines: GONZO, HARDCORE, KINK, and ORAL. There are red light bulbs for sale in this blue store. He sees rainbow arches of condoms. Wes sniffs the edible panties. Everything under the sun. Anything to get that certain scream from Anna.
He carries a mess of color and sex to the register, pays, and marches out, not at all self-conscious.
When Anna returns, Wes has transformed their apartment into a sex cave. He’s on the bed, naked, under the glow of a rouge light bulb, in a haze of perfumed smoke, with the porn scenes flashing on the walls, surrounded by sex toys, waving her into the room.
Anna melts into bed, and Wes slips her clothes off, flinging her panties onto a blade of the slowly spinning ceiling fan. There’s no talking. No words. Before anything starts, Anna’s already breathing heavily and flipping her hair around on the bed.
Wes is made of pleasure from his loins out to the tip of his tongue. He kisses Anna from her chin down to her breasts, to the ridge of her hipbone. He gathers himself for a moment and begins with his usual down there.
She’s up there doing her yoozh: moaning, head back, eyes closed. But it’s still not happening. Wes will not stop, though. He will not fail. He goes through the alphabet, for variety. He traces I-LOVE-YOU. Anna touches his ears, tugging a little; she wants him to stop. She just wants sex. But Wes spells out: N-O. She lets go and moans again. Wes licks out the words. He lets go, too, finally, and traces it all on her pussetta stone. The letters, the words, the truth: I-DON’T-WANT-WHAT-YOU-WANT. Anna thrashes. I’M-NOT-THE-MAN-FOR-YOU. Her breath quickens. I-CHEATED. Anna grasps the sheets, twisting the fabric into nipples. I’M-LEAVING-YOU-ANNA-I’M-LEAVING-YOU. And Wes hears, at last, what he’s needed—that certain scream, that sweet release.