CHAPTER NINE: BOSTON REDUX
As the fool returns to his vomit, so the dog returns to his folly.
Thirty hours after leaving Australia, I land in Boston, USA. Home. My pillow-top mattress. Ricki.
Ever since that last night in Keezerbeezer, I’ve been thinking about her nonstop. Grooved abs, wingy shoulder blades, intense, a little insane, maybe a lot insane, speaks English without an accent. It took twelve grand to figure out that my perfect woman, my outlier, was in Boston the whole time. No need to settle or die alone.
It’s Friday at midnight and Logan looks like any of the fifteen airports I’ve seen in the last four months with a few exceptions: the falling snow, the Timberland boots, the winter coats the size of iron lungs. The terminal building seems smaller than I remember.
I shuffle into the arrival area, scan the sniffling masses, and imagine Ricki here, holding a cardboard sign with my name. Instead, a middle-aged guy on the periphery is waving at me. There’s something familiar about him. The gray goatee, the groomed eyebrows, and the mink earmuffs. Uncle Heshie.
I wave back cautiously. The last time I saw Uncle Heshie was three years ago at a family function. I brought Ricki. He brought a woman named Natalie. Ricki wore a blue jean jacket, a peasant dress, and ears shot full of studs, loops, and feathers—the Cambridge-poet look. Natalie wore a red leather jacket, a miniskirt, and hooped earrings the size of a diaphragm—the Upper West Side bimbo look. They took an instant dislike to each other, and Heshie and I spent the party keeping our dates in separate corners.
“Hey, Buster Brown!” Uncle Heshie is shouting from five feet away. People turn to look. He clamps his arm around me and shakes my shoulder several times as if checking my range of motion. I can smell his leathery aftershave.
“You look great,” he says. “Like you’re finally filling out. How was the flight?”
“Painless. Watched some movies, drank some beer.” Before I can ask what he means by “filling out,” he reaches for my bag and I notice the bling on his wrist: the world’s biggest watch. I think of Manrico, the middle-aged guys in Cambodia, and that putz with the two women in Australia. For the first time in my life, I feel embarrassed by my little, black Timex.
“I followed your blog,” he says. “Looks like you had a crazy time.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Loved your pad.” Heshie combs his goatee with manicured nails. “I can’t believe how close you are to decent skiing. I was just at Killington with a friend. The trees were out of control.”
My mind catches on the phrases “a friend” and “out of control.” I try not to imagine what might have gone on in my apartment: Shower curtains covered in vegetable oil, gerbils covered in vegetable oil, and my recently painted ceiling covered in vegetable oil.
In the airport garage, Heshie opens the hatch to his black Land Rover. “This backpack smells like rat piss. How did you get it through customs?”
Thirty hours of in-flight movies weighs on me. I can’t come up with a response.
Twenty minutes later we pull up in front of my building. Uncle Heshie drags my bag out of the back and hands it over. “Randall, my boy, for your own good, I made a few upgrades to your digs. As your uncle, it’s my duty to see that you get laid as much as possible, which means you got to get out of Boston. The women in this town are beat; they dress like they just came from an audition for The Beverly Hillbillies. Come visit me in New York. I’ll hook you up.”
I don’t bother explaining that he doesn’t need to worry about me, that I’m done with the singles’ scene, and that I already have a woman. Or at least, I will soon. He steps closer and lays a fat, wet one on my cheek. “Good to have you back. I won’t come up. Gotta run. Here’s the key.”
It’s not until the next morning, as I sink into my six-inch pillow-top, that I begin to take inventory. Stacked on the nightstand, my Physicians’ Desk Reference and Field Guide to Intestinal Fauna sit where I left them last fall. The wall opposite my bed is oddly blank: The Crane Beach painting is gone.
In the bathroom, there are a few additions:
• A textured Marimekko shower drape instead of my mildewed, Three Stooges shower curtain.
• A fuzzy, turquoise toilet-seat cover and matching bathmat.
• A roll of plush toilet paper, the expensive stuff I never buy.
This will get me laid?
In my double-wide medicine cabinet, there’s a bottle of almond-scented massage oil and, next to my Vicodin, an unfamiliar vial with a bow and a note: “Kiddo: Vicodin is for pussies. Real men take Percocet.” The label indicates that the prescription is refillable and came from a Heshie Moscowitz, MD. These might get me laid.
In the kitchen, more additions: My E. J. Korvette toaster oven has been replaced by a Viking convection microwave. On the refrigerator, my cork bulletin board has unfamiliar business cards for: home liquor delivery, Chinese takeout, a mobile dry cleaner, a Brazilian food truck, and Monique’s Fitness—“We put the purr in personal training.”
In the pantry: a wine rack with unopened bottles of pinot grigio, Green Chartreuse, and black sambuca. My collection of rubber bands, old grocery bags, and empty Poland Spring bottles, which I refill with tap water, is gone. The Crane Beach seascape is stuffed in my recycle bin. Ricki will approve.
In the refrigerator, a jar of pickled herring sports another bow and a note: “Welcome back to civilization. Use care when opening the freezer. Enjoy with a special lady.” I slowly open it and frost drifts to the floor. Wedged between two frozen porterhouse steaks I didn’t buy is a bottle of Grey Goose vodka the size of an Alaskan salmon. Ricki will definitely approve.
On my fortieth birthday, my mother pulled me aside: “If you don’t stop being so picky, you’ll end up like your Uncle Heshie,” she said.
“You mean European vacations, European clothes, and European girlfriends half my age?”
“Randall, he has no family, no responsibilities, no one to take care of.”
I look around my apartment now: thoughtful gifts, party supplies, and plush towels. This doesn’t look like a place recently inhabited by an unhappy guy.
But I don’t plan to end up like Heshie. Time to set up a date with Ricki. How about tonight? Or better yet, now, for brunch?
I call her home phone. Voice mail. I don’t leave a message. Call her cell. More voice mail. I don’t leave a message. Can’t leave a message. What if she doesn’t get it? What if she hasn’t paid her phone bill? What if she had to pawn her phone? Fucking Verizon, fucking AT&T, fucking Apple. I call both her numbers again. Nothing.
She reads my blog and knows I got home last night. Where is she?
I’ll go to her place, leave flowers, chocolates, or tequila, her favorite.
Maybe not. Flowers are kind of effeminate and expensive and presumptuous. She never ate chocolate. “Not good for the girlish figure,” she always said. Tequila implies shots, too frat-like.
Maybe she’s working. But on a Saturday? Knowing Ricki, she’s sneaking in some freelance work and using the company’s color printer. Always working the angles. That’s my girl.
Or maybe she’s at the gym. That’s it. Her phone must be in her locker.
Or maybe she’s in the hospital, complications from the recent surgery she wouldn’t discuss over e-mail. What if she has a huge infected, disfiguring scar?
My computer dings; an e-mail from her.
Saw that you called. Getting my hair done. You free Thursday night? I owe you an apology.
—RRRRRR
Of course. She wants to look her best for me. Oxytocin flushes through my system.
We’ll have drinks Thursday night. Then I’ll invite her over for a Saturday night of Grey Goose and porterhouse steak. Maybe every Saturday after that will be our martini and steak night. And Sundays will be brunch and Patriots at the Minuteman. No, not the Minuteman. She hates the Minuteman. And Abe. And Lenny. That’s OK. Ricki and I will find another club, our own club.
I pick up my phone, then put it down. I need to calm down, can’t appear desperate. I haven’t seen her in two years. I take several deep, slow breaths, and decide to wait an hour before e-mailing her back.
I e-mail Abe who shoots back, “You home already?” He agrees to arrange dinner and Monday-night football with the gang at the Minuteman.
Things are looking up until I take a close look at my face in the bathroom mirror. Heshie is right, I am filling out. I get on the scale: 164 pounds, nine pounds more than I weighed before the trip. Ricki likes skinny guys. I put myself to bed with no dinner.
I awake at three A.M., stomach and thoughts churning. I’m hungry. I’m fat. A month ago, I had sex with two Cambodian hookers. What if Ricki finds out?
I fetch a pad of paper left over from the Royal Paradise hotel and address the weight issue:
Goal: Lose three pounds a week for three weeks.
Key to success:
• Remember: Eating is not entertainment.
Action Items:
• Breakfast: ½ cup of bran cereal, splash of soy milk.
• Lunch: raw garlic, raw onions, kale, canned sardines; sprinkle with parmesan, douse with Tabasco sauce, finish with more raw garlic. Ricki loves garlic.
• Snack: repeat breakfast.
• Dinner: repeat lunch.
• Go to bed hungry and nauseous.
Back in bed, I imagine sipping whisky-whisky with Ricki on the back of a Greek ferry, where she brushes against me and brushes against me again. I picture her emerging from my bathroom wearing only a white cotton towel.
What about the hookers?
Maybe it would turn her on. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Eventually I find myself in my bathroom, in front of the double-wide.
Monday, twenty-four hours into the diet, I pull into the Minuteman parking lot feeling jet-lagged, queasy, and foggy from Percocet. Thursday can’t come soon enough.
The bar looks dingier than I remember. And so does the crowd: down vests over chamois shirts, ski hats with pompoms, running shoes with little toes, ears with buds, a floor covered with grimy backpacks.
For the first time in four months, I’m dressed like an adult: brown wide-wale corduroys, black wool pullover, cordovan shoes. No matter what I wear or what country I’m in, I’m out of sync. I’m not sure I care anymore.
The TVs are tuned to Monday Night Football and the still-undefeated Patriots are playing the hapless Jets. Some things are not meant to change. The club has the same oak bar, high stools, and pendant lights, but it seems smaller than I remember. This could be any yuppie pub in South Africa, Asia, or Australia.
Abe and Lenny are seated at the bar, watching the game. Abe is the first to notice me. “Look, it’s the Jewish Marco Polo, the world’s most interesting Heeb.” He’s wearing a fleece pullover in a soft hue of purple that only a wife would buy. He looks jowlier than ever.
Lenny glances down from the TV and points my way. “My hero, the world traveler. Just don’t sit next to me. I don’t want to catch anything.” He’s overdressed for a change: houndstooth sport coat, cuffed pants, and tasseled loafers without socks, even though it’s thirty degrees outside. His eyes flit from me to an anorexic waitress.
I give Abe and Lenny a European kiss on each cheek.
“Where’s Rachel? What’s the score?” I ask.
“In the can. Zip-zip.” Abe looks me up and down. “You look like you’re still in one piece.” He sounds disappointed. “Cop a squat and tell us about your adventures.” He turns back to the overhead TV as Brady completes a ten-yard pass.
I take an open stool that’s been reserved for me with Rachel’s suit jacket. I motion for the bartender, and then look up at the TV. “Well, the high point of the trip was probably the bungee jumping in South Africa, pun intended.” I expect a groan from Abe. No response.
“Welcome home!” Rachel says, as she sits down next to me. “We were all betting you’d come home with a wife. Where is she?” Rachel pats me on the back.
I grin but don’t mention Ricki.
“You know how life can be,” I say. “Sometimes the dog and his vomit go their separate ways. And then, sometimes they don’t.”
The bartender comes over, pad in hand. Abe, Lenny, and Rachel each order steak and fries, and a Guinness. I order a soda water with a chicken Caesar salad, dressing on the side.
“Burns, are you dieting again?” Abe looks down from the TV and pokes my stomach.
“Need to keep my boyish figure,” I say.
“If you didn’t bring anyone home, did you at least break a few hearts?” Lenny asks.
“Do you know the story about the fool and his folly? Anyway, I saw the temples of Angkor Wat. You know the ones that were covered by jungle for . . .”
I am drowned out by cheers as Brady completes a touchdown pass on the first drive. “It’s going to be a short game,” Abe shouts.
“So in Australia I was surfing this 200-foot wave when I was attacked by a hammer-headed platypus, and had to get a liver transplant.”
“Poor bubbe,” Abe says, glancing at his cell phone.
I offer a smile that could mean many things: “OK, so what’s going on with you guys?”
They respond remaining glued to the TV.
Abe: “I’m going to be a life-support system for a baby and wife, and I’ll probably never get laid again.”
Lenny: “The whole dating scene is drying up and the prostitution ring was a bust, no pun intended. I’m going back on Match, going to start lying about my age. My mother’s in the hospital for a change. I’m going to die alone.”
Rachel: “Arturo and I . . .”
I immediately stop listening and look up at the TV.
“What are you going to do now that you’re back?” Rachel asks.
“Not sure,” I say. “I once read that life’s journey is not about finding any one thing; it’s about finding your place on a beach with kind eyes.”
“Interesting philosophy,” Rachel says.
“Did you get that from a bathroom wall in Angkor Wat?” asks Abe.
“It was inscribed on the toenail of the giant Reclining Buddha,” I say, watching Lenny as he watches the anorexic waitress bend to pick up a fork.
“Anyone hear from Josh?” I ask.
“He’s still with Ruby Rubenesque,” Lenny says.
Abe cuts in. “You and Burns aren’t happy unless a woman is wasting away on an IV drip.”
Just like old times, I think, feeling a warm trickle of oxytocin.
“Karen wasn’t that thin,” I say.
“And neither was Calista Flockhart,” Abe says.
Rachel asks: “By the way, did Ricki end up writing you?”
“As a matter of fact she wrote all the time.” I pause for effect. “Unlike you schmucks.”
Abe is the first to comment: “Didn’t I write a couple of times? I read your blog almost every day. You’re the writer, I’m not.”
“I heard it offered lots of useful travel information,” Rachel says.
“My home computer only gets TeenTwat.com,” Lenny says.
Before I can analyze their responses for traces of malice or remorse, Lenny says: “You go all the way around the world, don’t meet anyone, but your long-lost girlfriend comes back to haunt you?”
Abe says, “‘Lost’ is the operative word. I’d also add ‘broken.’”
Rachel says, “I think it’s kind of romantic. The hero’s journey.”
I decide not to mention that I am seeing Ricki in three days.
After the Patriots crush the Jets, Lenny stands up, dons his camel-hair topcoat, and turns to me. “Calista Flockhart is a porker,” he says.
“A fat whale,” I say.
He pats my shoulder. “Good to have you back, my brother.”
Rachel kisses me on the cheek. “Welcome home, Randy. We missed you. Sorry I got to leave early. Have to get back to Arturo.”
Once we’re alone, Abe and I order dirty martinis.
“Cone of silence?” I ask.
“Cone activated. What’s up?”
“I’m bullshit. Really, how come you didn’t write? This was a huge event for me; this would be like me ignoring your wedding or your funeral.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry and I got no excuses. But you wouldn’t believe the fucked-up thing that happened while you were gone.”
He tells me about a mutual friend, Eli, whose wife of ten years caught him in bed with another guy. Since Eli’s little coming-out event, none of our female friends will talk to him, and our male friends are afraid his gayness might rub off.
“I don’t give a shit,” Abe says. “I’ve known him for twenty years. He’s staying with us till he figures out what to do. Amy can bitch all she wants.”
Maybe the measure of loyalty is more than a few e-mails.
“That definitely qualifies as fucked-up,” I say. “How is everyone else doing?”
“Soon after you left, the shit hit the turbine. Lenny’s been having a tough time. His mother is his only close relative left and she’s on her way out. And the miserable game is getting more miserable: Women can smell the desperation on him.”
I sniff my wool pullover: It’s either desperation, rat piss, or raw garlic.
Abe continues: “As for me, sometimes I think Amy and I are just one fight away from Match.com. But for better or worse, I’m going to stick it out. And now Rachel’s got Arturo. We’re all drifting apart. You said you were getting tired of Boston. Maybe you should make a move before you end up like Lenny.”
I say nothing, but think: I already made a move.
After we finish our martinis, Abe puts on a pink ski hat and swats the pom-poms out of his face. “By the way, congrats on pulling off the trip. You made us all look like chicken shits. I mean that in a good way.”
Out in the parking lot, I watch Abe zip off in his new Acura, “the Jap Jew-canoe.” In six months, my Civic will be old enough to drink and buy cigarettes.
I sit on the hood; the sheet-metal winces and the cold seeps through my pants. A subfreezing breath flares in my nostrils. The air is dry, odorless, and clean. Winter in Boston. This is the time of year when smells hibernate, insomniacs sleep, and, according to DATES.XLS, I have the best luck with women. I feel my gloved thumb and forefinger settle into a little OK sign.
I haven’t seen Ricki in two years, since our visit to Moody. I recall the fight that led to our brief foray into therapy.
It was a Sunday morning in bed. I was giving her a massage and working her glutes, when a cheddary, slaughterhouse odor slipped out.
“Ooops,” she said. “Let me go wash up.”
A toilet flush, a shower spray.
She hopped back in bed, “I’m ready, Doctor Feel Good.”
From a fetal position I said, “The doctor isn’t feeling so good.”
“Because of, what, a little body odor?”
“I think I had some bad scrod for dinner last night.”
“You know you’ve got some issues, bucko.”
“I thought you liked me because of my issues.”
“Not this one. You’re the only guy I ever dated who never farts or poops.”
“Babies and puppies poop. Cows and people shit.”
“Thank you, Marlin Perkins. When do you take a shit? Do you wait till you go home? Is this why we never go away on vacation?”
At her place, I always evacuated everything that needed evacuating before my bedtime shower, the water running for maximum privacy.
“You’re right,” I say. “I never fart or shit. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t either.”
“What? You think little angels come down and carry my farts away?”
“Can we change the subject?”
“Why? It’s a natural bodily function like eating or sex.”
“Did you ever touch your poops when you were little?”
“What kind of weird question is that?”
“Never mind. How about if I fix you a nice bowl of bran, then leave, and you can blast out a nice shit the size of an anaconda, something worthy of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”
A week later, we saw Moody. A week after that, we were done.
Over the years, I’ve parsed the fight for keywords and subtext and identified the following: never vacation, inflexible, germaphobe.
But I’ve just returned from a sixteen-week trip, drank wine made of snake piss, and wiped my ass with my fingers. She said she’s going to apologize. Major surgery can humble a person. Maybe she’s finally out of debt. Maybe her new medication has mellowed her. People change.
As for me, I’ll be less critical and stop with the ambivalence, teasing, and obsessing about her body.
Ricki could be my antidote to the Dark Place. I won’t have to move to New York.
We’ll grow old together, pick each other up after colonoscopies. I’ll be her next of kin, her safe room, and she’ll be mine. Instead of unreliable friends and family, Ricki and I will have each other. If she wants, we can get married. She’ll move in, split the mortgage, save me 7K a year. We can even have separate bedrooms or separate apartments like celebrities. Life with Ricki will never be dull.
We meet for drinks at her favorite spot, the Pinko Lounge in Harvard Square. When I arrive, she’s at the bar. Her dark hair is now shoulder length. She’s wearing a butter-colored blazer, maybe to hide a few pounds. So what? At least it’s not a black blazer.
I sneak up behind her, kiss her on the cheek, and sit down.
“Hey,” she says.
The space between her front teeth is gone. Instead of the usual shrapnel in each ear, she’s wearing a large hoop the size of a diaphragm. For the first time, I notice her earlobes, tiny grapes. She seems softer, sharp edges smoothed.
I think of a story she used to tell about her brothers who would come home from football practice, yell “gas attack,” pin nine-year-old Ricki to the shag carpet, and hold their sweaty jock straps over her face. I think of Harriet and Myrna. Something else we share.
Ricki checks me out: black dress shoes, black jeans, Bengal-striped shirt, silvery chest hair peeking out of my opened collar, the Guillaume of Paris look.
“So, you’re looking decent enough,” she says. “Maybe a little filled out. Don’t people usually lose weight when they travel? How was the trip?”
“Decent enough. Saw some weird stuff. Ate some weird stuff.”
She does a double-take on my left wrist. “That watch is kind of big.”
“This old thing? Got it on a Bangkok street corner. It’s a Pad Thai Philippe.”
“Let me see that.” She grabs my forearm, holds it close to her face. I feel her breath warm on my hand. “Patek Philippe,” she says. “Must have cost five grand. You know what they say: Big watch, big . . .”
“Big safety-deposit box. My Uncle Heshie gave it to me.”
“The Jappy New York doctor with the hooker girlfriend? Please give him my disregards.”
Ricki squeezes my hand and laughs. I laugh with her and squeeze back.
Across the bar, a guy with gray-coiffed hair is sitting by himself. He’s wearing an open-collared shirt with silvery chest hair peeking out. The bartender is chatting with him.
“You still doing graphic design and teaching pilates?” I ask Ricki.
“Yup, and I cleaned up my credit card debt and hired a financial planner. I’m a big girl now.”
I feel a stirring where my money belt used to be. She moves a set of salt-and-pepper shakers around on the bar like chess pieces.
“So you made it around the world intact. Tell the truth: Were you offended by my e-mails?” Ricki asks.
“Well, your note about counterphobia was on the money. You know how I’m afraid of heights? In South Africa, I went bungee jumping off a bridge three times as high as the Empire State Building. One guy who jumped crapped in his trousers.” “I know, I read your blog. I believe I wrote that you are insane. Or if I didn’t, let me confirm that now.”
“Flatterer. I bet you say that to all the guys.”
“Only the cute nut jobs.”
I glance over at the gray-coiffed guy sitting alone. Tonight, I’m not that guy.
Ricki moves the salt-and-pepper shakers side by side.
“By the way, I was sorry to hear about Wiener the dachshund,” I say. “And what about your surgery? Are you OK?”
She chooses this moment to take off her jacket.
“I think the surgery went well. What do you think?”
My eyes take a few seconds to adjust. The room seems dimmer and then brighter. My deprived stomach rumbles. I hear a loud clang; someone must have given the bartender an impressive tip.
“I went up two cup sizes,” she says.
Her breasts are high and tight. Cleavage slices into her black T-shirt. I imagine unhooking her and being consumed airbag-style.
I’m not sure of the etiquette in this situation. Am I supposed to look? Comment? Squeeze the merchandise?
My Score Like a Pro book advises never to make a big deal of a woman’s appearance.
“You look great,” I say in a benign tone appropriate for complimenting a new hairstyle.
“I don’t know. I think I should have gotten a smaller size. I feel like Betty Boop.”
She adjusts the right one with two hands. “They still kind of hurt.”
There is an awkward silence. We both drink. Then I say, “What did you want to apologize for?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she says.
“Your e-mail said you wanted to apologize for something.”
“You must have me confused with one of your sluts.”
I know I should just let the comment pass, show I’ve changed, but I can’t. I take out my phone to search for Ricki’s message.
She sighs.
Just like old times.
The guy in the gray coif discusses the winter weather with the bartender in a voice loud enough for us to hear. Ricki leans over and cuts into their conversation: “All you people who whine about the cold should move out. This is fucking New England.”
“So I hear,” says the guy.
The bartender looks at Ricki, at me, says nothing, and hands us our check.
“Can you get this one, Burns? The financial planner put me on an austerity budget and I have to pee.”
I glance at the gray-coiffed guy sitting by himself sipping a snifter with a few coffee beans adrift in it. He looks content. Heshie looked content. I recall one of Moody’s droppings of wisdom: If you want to be content, stay single. If you don’t want to be lonely, get married.
When Ricki returns, I look deep into her eyes for some clue as to how to proceed. I sense a disturbance, an electrical storm, and imagine her brain cells flashing and twitching and jumping like herring being chased by a large predator. I want to be that predator. My thoughts are interrupted when she stands up abruptly.
“Good to see you, Burns. Let’s do this again.”
Without thinking, I say: “Let’s have dinner at my place Saturday night. I’ll make a Cambodian dish, Moon Bong, Prawn Long.”
“Only if you promise not to mix your food together like a four-year-old.”
“It’s a stir fry, already mixed.”
We hug. I feel them against me intent, urgent. I don’t think about the past or the future.
As we put on our coats to leave, I glance down at the bar: The salt-and-pepper shakers are gone.
For Saturday’s dinner, I defrost one of Heshie’s porterhouse steaks, cube and marinate it, and open the Grey Goose.
Ricki shows up thirty minutes late. She stomps the snow off her boots onto my newly refinished hardwood floor and hands me a box of chocolates. I flinch.
“For dessert,” she says. “Relax, a little chocolate never killed anybody. Hey, did you see the weather report? Snow, heavy at times, blizzard conditions, a real nor’easter.”
“And if you don’t like winter, get the fuck out of New England,” I say.
We high-five.
I take her shearling coat. Underneath she’s wearing skinny jeans and a low-necked shirt with exposed lacy straps stretched to their wits’ end. Her lips are wet with balm. She’s smirking as if she has something to tell me. I imagine her hands on the back of my head steering my mouth to hers.
I make us each a huge martini, dip a pinky in my drink, and dab behind my ears. Ricki is busy looking around my apartment.
“Burns, you finally got rid of that seascape painting. Good move.”
She laughs. I don’t.
“Nice toilet-seat covers. You didn’t get a sex change in Bangkok, did you?”
I let her comment drift by.
After dinner, a drink on the couch, where we first made love on our third date, after the escapade in the theater bathroom. There’s a long silence, a good silence. We are content.
She moves her martini glass around the coffee table like a chess piece. I look into her eyes again. They’re calm, no disturbances. Maybe she’s finally forgiven me, ready to move on. I recall what she once said about wanting one guy, forever, ashes in the same urn.
Forever suddenly sounds like a long time. I imagine a sperm whale, a giant squid around its neck, being dragged to the sea floor. A breath lodges in my chest. My hands are not shaking but they feel like they could be.
Ricki reaches for a chocolate, her shirt rises, a swell of skin, a little pooch belly. She bites into something dark and cream-filled. Not good for the girlish figure.
There’s a tingling behind my eyes, in my stomach, caffeine overload but I don’t drink coffee. The sea floor is coming up fast.
I observe my feelings of ambivalence and claustrophobia and try to imagine them floating by like dead leaves, tampon applicators, and six-pack rings.
No such luck.
A prickly, crawling sensation begins on my arms, spreads to my legs, my feet, synapses firing nonstop.
“Are you OK?” Ricki is looking into my eyes.
“A little jet-lagged.”
“Let me test drive the new toilet-seat cover,” she says. “Maybe it’s time to bust out an anaconda.” She laughs. I try to laugh. While she’s in the bathroom, I finish my martini and make another batch for us. My hands are now shaking.
A toilet flushes, a sink runs.
Back at the couch, I’m seated and she stands before me, my face is inches from the new breasts. I picture them pink, slick, and frisky, like newborn piglets. On her lips, a fresh coat of balm, a smirk, anticipation, invitation. I pull her to me and burrow nose-deep, earthy and woody, soft and warm. Her hands cup my ears. Then I feel a sharp yank.
“Burns! What the fuck are you doing?”
Lodged breaths and no words. My mind doubles over. I gasp for air.
“After all the bullshit you put me through, did you really think I’d sleep with you again, ever? Do you think I’m insane? Some kind of psycho masochist?”
I’m searching for a response when something detonates deep inside me. I bear down, grimace, but a silent garlic fart still manages to escape.
“Ooops,” is all I can say.
A week later, I’m sitting in Moody’s waiting room looking out the window. The snow is gone and the ground is gray and muddy. Bare trees scratch a low sky. My stomach is idling, a slow rumble. I’m tired, twitchy, and foggy from the diet or last night’s Percocet.
Moody greets me with a handshake and I follow him down the hall to his office. I’ve been walking this same route for ten years. But today, a room is cordoned off, plastic sheets hang from the ceiling, and a crew of paint-spattered men paces, drinks coffee, and thinks big thoughts. I imagine a plaque: “This addition paid for by Randall Burns.”
In his office, Moody sits. I sit. He pulls out my file.
“I saw Ricki for the first time in two years and she kicked me in the balls,” I say.
“Literally?”
“Figuratively. She was the only friend who wrote me while I was gone. She said she started on antidepressants and wanted to apologize. She said she wanted to see me when I got home. Here I take a trip around the world looking for the woman of my dreams and by the time I get to Australia I think, wow, she’s been in Boston the whole time. So when I get back, we meet for drinks, and were having a nice flirty time. Then she shows me her new boob job. I think: My welcome-back present? Two nights later, she comes over for dinner, low-cut everything, tits hanging out. We drink. We eat. And then I make a move. She claims she’s shocked, says no fucking way in hell, like I’m the one who’s insane. I thought she had changed. I thought I had changed. Maybe I am insane.”
Moody reaches for his yellow pad
My thoughts come to a mental fork: I could reach for my little notepad and get into it with Moody, or I could keep talking and avoid a pissing match.
“Anyway I’m over it now and I’m thinking of calling Karen, the cheerful, stable one I dated awhile back. Remember her? Every week I’d come in wanting to break up with her and you’d say, ‘Just give it another week.’ She wasn’t edgy, but she was OK. The sex was OK. She was nice enough.”
I anticipate an encouraging Buddhist-like response about embracing life’s possibilities and sitting with boredom and discomfort.
Moody stops scribbling and looks up at me. “You always find this type of woman dull and never connect with them. Why is this time going to be different?”
I lean forward in my seat and look him in the eye. “Doctor Moody, I just spent four months traveling the world, met some women, and had weird, short, depressing encounters with them. I realized all my relationships have been weird, short, and depressing. This trip has changed me. I’m ready for something different. To settle.
“I’ve had time to think. My intimacy issues? I get it. Life is about connecting with other people. Real connections, real relationships that deepen over time.
“My commitment issues? I can commit. I had the same job, same friends, and same car for fifteen years. That’s longer than most marriages.
“My issues with women? Maybe I don’t need a woman to be crazy and exciting all the time. I’m done with the fish theory and that stupid spreadsheet.
“For a chance at a real relationship, maybe with Karen, I’ll change. I’ll be on time. I’ll buy her flowers. I’ll call her every day. I’ll remember her birthday, her friends’ birthdays, her friends’ names. I’ll listen, really listen when she whines. I’ll stay overnight after sex. I’ll give her a corner of my closet.
“I’m tired of being chronically single. I’m sick of online dating. My friend Abe just got married and Rachel is on her way.
“Maybe I’ll get married, do the whole fucking deal: six-figure wedding, six-figure honeymoon, six-figure divorce.
“Ha, ha. Just joking. But seriously, Doctor Moody, I’m going to need your help. There has to be some treatment that can help me settle for a boring, stable woman like Karen.” Moody taps my file with an index finger. “Randall, you’re almost fifty years old. All the drugs and therapy in the world won’t change who you’re attracted to. These kooky, angry women get you going. We can’t ‘shrink’ you into someone you’re not.”
I look out the window. Somewhere a lost balloon drifts.
“So are you saying I’m going to die alone?”
“Everyone dies alone. All I’m saying is relationships are difficult for you. Relationships are difficult, period. You have your health, you have friends, and your car still runs. Maybe you should get on with your life and quit waiting around for the right woman.”
“So my life is going to be one long romantic drought with some hookers and rocky, three-month relationships thrown in?”
“Maybe.”
“Would that be OK?”
“That would be OK.”
The Chronic Single’s Handbook
Chapter Seven
Obtaining Your Minimum Daily Requirements of Oxytocin
The medical staff at The Chronic Single’s Handbook has found that individuals who do not receive adequate oxytocin risk prolonged visits to the Dark Place.
For a chronic single, the recommended dose of oxytocin is five units a day, about half the amount required by the general population. Note: During good times, excess oxytocin can be stored like fat for later use.
Oxytocin Benefits from Common Activities: (for a 155-pound man)
•Flirting with personal trainer with the sparkly navel: 1 unit
•Watching thirty minutes of sports with a stranger at a bar: 2 units
•Drinks with an old friend: 3 units
•Drinks with the personal trainer with the sparkly navel: 4 units • Sex with a long-time partner: 5 units*
•Naughty massage: 6 units**
•Sex with the personal trainer with the sparkly navel: 7 units
*Generally, anyone in a relationship has access to an endless supply of oxytocin. However, as a relationship ages and rots, the human body produces stress hormones that negate any health benefits of oxytocin. Also, following a disagreement, a significant other may choose to withhold oxytocin for several months. (See footnote** below.)
**In times of prolonged oxytocin deprivation, it is wise to consider the advice of former NFL lineman Conrad Dobler: “If it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it.”