An Eye(lash) for an Eye(lash)

Posted on April 19, 2015 by thegruntledwriter

When I was in Junior High and High School, I would sit on the sofa in my mother’s winter porch, raise my right hand to my right eye, and quietly pull out my eyelashes, one by one. A good, quick pinprick of pain accompanied each follicle as I slipped its root gently out of its socket. After I had pulled an eyelash out, I would hold it between the tips of my fingers, rolling it between my fingertips — twirling it, spinning it — feeling the firm, narrow slenderness, the fine, hard darkness of the lash, and the small, rich bulge of proteins at the root, which — up until the moment I had plucked it out — had attached the lash to the lid of my eye. Then, I would drop the eyelash to my mother’s couch; raise my right hand to my right eye again; and quietly pull another lash from its socket.

*     *     *

[As with all] human hair, [eyelashes] are fed by follicles, located below the skin. In eyelashes, those follicles have also three phases of growth: the “growing phase” lasts about 45 days, and is followed by a “declination phase” in which the growth stops, for about three weeks, and a last phase of two weeks, a span of rest, the “sheading phase”, when the hair falls out. After this period, a new cycle begins and the hair is regenerated.

—eyelashesinhistory.com

*     *    *

As I sat on my mother’s couch quietly pulling out my eyelashes, I was quite conscious of my actions; that is, it was not an absent-minded habit. I was there — on my mother’s couch — raising my hand to my eye and deliberately pulling out my eyelashes.

As I say, the pain was good. I liked the pain. It was pleasant. It was tangible. It was irrefutable. I could determine when the pain occurred — I was in control of it: I could cause it to start, and I could cause it to end.  If I tugged on the lash just softly enough, I could feel the root pulling my eyelid forward, just on the cusp…just about to slip out of its socket but not escaping just yet.

It was me: I was in control.

*     *     *

When an eyelash is pulled out or drops out, it needs about two months to be regenerated.

—eyelashesinhistory.com

*     *     *

Immediately after pulling out my eyelashes, my eyelid would be tender and raw. A hot moisture lined the flesh where my eyelashes had been. But, the next day, the regeneration would have already started.

*     *     *

Sometimes, when I was in a public place such as a classroom, instead of pulling my eyelashes out, I would rub the tip of my forefinger along the warm, black stubs of the follicles that had started regeneration. A hard, fine itch — a tingle, let’s say — blossomed across my eyelid as I ran my forefinger along the new generation of lashes.

This was a joyful pain. Tender. Reassuring.

*     *     *

I did not think I was hurting myself when I picked my eyelashes — neither by causing myself pain nor by explicitly mutilating myself. Pain did not equate to hurt — but rather to the here-and-now; to actuality; to existence. Only with pain could I feel existence.

*     *     *

Eyelashes on the upper eyelid are longer than those of the lower eyelid. The upper eyelashes can reach a length of an average of 8 mm., and tend to curve upwards. The upper eyelid has more eyelashes: around seventy to one-hundred-fifty lashes, and the lower eyelid has generally a row of sixty to eighty eyelashes, smaller, and they curve downwards. This curved shape of both rows of eyelashes helps to slip sweat and foreign particles out of the eyes.

—eyelashesinhistory.com

*     *     *

I never explicitly planned a picking session in advance; I never awoke in the morning and proactively thought through my schedule for that entire day to see when I could fit in a session of picking. But I could sit on my mother’s couch fifteen or twenty minutes, say, taking out my eyelashes, without my sister, or my brother, or my parents ever knowing.

It was always the upper lid of my right eye, as I recall; only occasionally did I work my left eye. It started one day with a simple irritation: I was rubbing my eye vigorously, and my eyelid turned red and swelled up, and the irritation caused me to rub the corner of my eyelid at the flesh, where the eyelashes attach to the lid. Perhaps I felt an irritation right at the root of my eyelashes: I can’t recall. But somehow I must have pulled out that very first eyelash as a result of my discomfort. And after I had pulled out one eyelash and felt the good, quick pinprick of pain, I pulled out the next eyelash. And the next. And the next.

After a few days of picking, perhaps a quarter of my eyelashes would be gone; occasionally more — up to sixty percent, let’s say. Only on one or two occasions, I think, did anyone other than my mother notice. I was conscious my classmates could notice — and perhaps they did notice it. But I don’t recall them ever saying anything about it.

*     *     *

Like all the hair in the human body, eyelashes are a biological polymer, made up of about 10 per cent of water and 90 per cent of proteins, such as keratins, and melanins, the substances that give hair its color.

—eyelashesinhistory.com

*     *     *

My lash pulling — which today would be recognized as a behavioral disorder (or a form of self-mutilation) known as trichotillomania — was perhaps a variation of a custom I had as a small child. When I was lying in bed after my mother had said good night and closed the door to my bedroom, I would turn onto my stomach, bunch up the corner of my bed sheet, and graze the sharp, narrow corner against my lip. Like scratching an itch, the grazing reassured me.  I suppose I might have thought of it as my companion. It was not painful; but there was still a gratifying sharpness; an act of careful, deliberate scratching to which my eyelash pulling seems to correspond: an act of bringing sentience, comfort, and reassurance to a small, distinct spot on my face.

I suppose I have never quite outgrown the gentle trichotillomania of my mother’s couch. To this day I pick at scabs. I pluck cuticles. I tickle small cuts and re-open old wounds. Perhaps it still provides some undefinable comfort; perhaps it provides some drop of reassurance—some reminder that in spite of the uncertainties my life comprises, I can always fall back on those warm, reliable pinpricks of pain.

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Other People’s Money (or, Me and Reverend Ike)

Posted on February 12, 2015 by thegruntledwriter

[Clarification added 2/14/15: Before I took the temporary work assignment described below, I had never heard of Reverend Ike.]

After I moved back to Boston in March of 1987, I worked very briefly for Reverend Ike. The Reverend — if that was what you wanted to call him — had his offices — if that was what you wanted to call them — at 910 Commonwealth Avenue. I worked for that sly, dastardly meshuganah for three days. And if I am ever to meet my Maker at the bright, angel-infused gates of heaven with my heart unburdened and my conscience entirely in the clear, I will first have to atone for the transgressions I committed in the Reverend’s  flinty offices.

*              *             *

The Reverend’s offices sat on a lower floor of a nondescript building just west of Boston University. The building was maybe six or seven stories tall, with a plain, banal facade. To get to the building from my basement apartment on Beacon Hill, I walked up the shadow-soaked slopes of the twisting streets, up Joy Street, across to Beacon Street, and then past the glinting dome of the State House. Finally, I passed down the busy plain of Boston Commons to the Park Street entrance of the T.

I had been assigned the simple job of opening the Reverend’s mail. This was during the 18 months that I worked for one of Boston’s many staffing agencies. I lived in the apartment on Beacon Hill with Miles, my clever, dangerous cat whom the lady upstairs had slyly given me one day when I let my guard down. So it must have been sometime between March 1987 and September 1988 that I worked for Reverend Ike.

Why did I take the job with Reverend Ike? Why had I taken any job I had ever taken up to that point in my life? The question answers itself: I have never known what I’ve wanted to do with my life. The summer before I graduated M.I.T., I took a job at the school’s Physical Plant. I sat in a grey, windowless, sub-basement office, filling out work orders: Fix a broken air conditioner on the roof of Building 6. Open a window painted shut in the Student Center. A computer screen sat in front of me, displaying the current temperature on the streets of Kendall Square, which bustled just outside the building. When work was slow and the minutes passed like paint drying in a coat closet, I would watch the graph of temperature being drawn on the computer screen: the temperature rose quickly during the morning hours and fell very slowly during the late afternoon. I watched the temperature’s sly parabola with patience and fascination. I had no purpose; I had no sense of direction. In fact, M.I.T. was the start of my life-long problem of figuring out Who I Am and What I Want To Do with Myself. Which perhaps explains, in part, why I ended up at Reverend Ike’s dim, vexatious offices.

*         *          *

It was an enormous room I worked in. Windows high up. Floors covered with drab, artificial carpet. The only furnishings were long rows of linoleum tables: the kind of lax, chintzy fixtures you might purchase if you wanted to deplete your handsome, ill-gotten gains by the absolute minimum amount possible. As I have said, the room I worked in was enormous — but there were only a few of us pale, lily-livered whippersnappers working there: four or five, I would say. It was all very beguiling . . . trés mysterious. . . . We were spread out across the room, one person per table, as I remember. Our instructions were immutable: Here’s a stack of envelopes. The envelopes have been sent to the Reverend by his congregants.  The envelopes have been opened and searched once. Your task is: search the envelopes again.

Have I said it was a large room? There were only a very few of us! I remember the quiet rustlings of our efforts as we opened the notes and letters and cards that lay silently inside the envelopes, and carefully unfolded them.

Most of the envelopes came from the south, as I remember. Poor, forgotten villages and towns, I imagined: Dilapidated schools! Meats spoiling in corner markets! Leaky pipes in basements! Places where good, hard folk owned little more then four walls and a roof — and a leaking ballpoint pen, or a simple, trusted pencil, or a good, thick, crumbly crayon.

Dear Reverend Ike (one of the cards might say) —

My Mother has sickly. I will prey for Her. Can you help us? Hear are Twenty Dollars. –Sister Clareen Bell

Dear Most Honorable Reverend Isaac (another card might say) —

Thank you for your kindly note. I am humbled to learn you dreamed of me last nite. No one has ever dreamed of me before! And yes, you are rite. For many days now I have been wandering in the desert. At last, with yur note, I am found! And now I know what to do. It is as you wish! I am enclosing $10 to help your church. I prey for you evry day. –Beatrice Hardaway

Dear Rev. Ike (another card might say) —

My wyfe left Me. My onlee son dying. A meerakall you dreamed of me like u say. At just such a tyme. You are my Savyur. Just like you say in yur note.  Thank u for comforting me with Yur prays. It is a syn from God U are His grate helper. Will you take $3? It is all I have. — Brother Jerome Smith

ps My brother Wilyum is riting this letter. I am ill iterate.

*             *            *

I searched through, say, fifty envelopes a day. Scrawled, humbling notes, the intimate confessions of good, humane people. But Reverend Ike — that sly, genial mollycoddle; that suave and handsome  muttonchop — had already extracted the donations his adherents had extended to him. But on the second morning (as I remember the circumstances), after opening several cards, letters, and notes, and piling them up on the table, and watching the odds of my ever attaining the bright, angel-infused gates of heaven recede into the distance, out fell a $5 bill. This object — this neat, simple catastrophe — fluttered from the envelope, drifting through the air, landing softly on the dry, nettlesome surface of my tabletop.

*               *              *

Dear Sister Deborah: I have wonderful news. Last night Reverend Ike dreamed of you — a most wonderful, terrifying dream! The Reverend was lost in the desert. Yes, Sister Deborah — Reverend Ike was lost! He was wandering all lonesome, under a hellish sun. His body was wracked, the Reverend’s soul was exhausted. Soon, he came across a stream. He slaked his thirst, drinking mightily. When his strength was regained and he felt Our Maker’s warmth return to the muscles throughout his wracked and withered body, he crossed the river without a struggle. Immediately,  a rainbow appeared. It was a symbol of Our Maker’s hope, full of all the colors of His creation: gold and red…yellow and orange…purple and blue! Reverend Ike stared long at the rainbow, disbelieving his eyes. For at the base of the rainbow stood a mighty, old oak. And from behind the oak, even as Reverend Ike stared, you stepped out, Sister Deborah. Yes, you, Sister Deborah! Your hair was shining in the blaze of the sun — and you reached out, and you touched Reverend Ike’s silken robes. Reverend Ike turned to you and nodded, knowing you instantly. Suddenly, as you still were touching him, he turned into a bright, golden bird. And Reverend Ike flew off, high above you, up into the heavens. A thousand gold coins rained down at your feet. They rained and rained, until you fell asleep, a high pile of gold in your arms, and more gold on your pillow, and more gold inside the deep, warm folds of your blankets. Sister Deborah, this dream is true! It is true. But for it to be real you must pray for Reverend Ike. You must pray for Reverend Ike to have wisdom — to have the courage to cross that high, rushing stream in the desert and bring the riches of the Promised Land to his congregation. Reverend Ike needs your strength, Sister Deborah! He needs your faith to focus his power in overcoming the tyranny of Satan and fulfilling the promise of his congregation. People like yourself, Sister Deborah, whose dreams and fortunes await fulfillment: Reverend Ike needs you — and, his church needs you. Whatever amount you can spare for his vision will bring you closer to salvation, and Reverend Ike will be assured of fulfilling the dream and winning his battle against evil. Remember! The gold and riches of the Reverend’s dream are already on their way, as long as you help him!

*         *         *

Yes! Sister Barbara, Sister Roseanne, Brother Hubert, Sister Mary — they all received the same letter from Reverend Ike; sometimes they returned it in the envelope with the money they gave to his church…I reckoned the Reverend must have been a sleepy and soporific man — because he dreamed of them all. Fourteen or fifteen hours a day, I reckoned, the Reverend must have mustered enough energy to remain perfectly prostrate on his large, warm mattress and dream of his faithful congregants: Brother Isaac, Brother Robert, Sister Rachel, Brother William…Thankless, burdensome work, lying in bed for so many hours! Sister Anne, Sister Josephine, Brother Paul — Reverend Ike must have tired out his broad, strong wings, flapping around them so ferociously in his dreams, high above the desert, arms loaded with riches, dropping all that gorgeous, hard-won gold….

*        *         *

That $5 bill lay on the table before me. I can see it before me now — clean and venal, innocent and complicated.

And what did I do? Did I slyly pocket the money to return it to its rightful owner? Did I grab the $5 bill and bolt from out of the room?

No.

Instead, I signalled one of Reverend Ike’s handsome blokes who paced the enormous room, and turned the money over to him.

*       *        *

Nor was the five dollars the end of it. Several times that day and the next I found hard, clean cash in those envelopes. Five dollars. Two dollars. Ten dollars. Twenty dollars….I had been raised an educated and responsible man. I had enjoyed the privileges of a good education. I was attending M.I.T. I had loving parents. My health was strong; my mind was clear. But each time I found the money, I signalled the Reverend’s clever henchmen, and handed over the money.

*          *          *

Eventually, I called my staffing agency. “Do you know what they have me doing?” I asked.

Perhaps I was thinking of those bright, angel-infused gates I would eventually be trying to bust my way into when I made the phone call. I had worked three days for Reverend Ike. Twice (as I remember the circumstances) I had handed $20 bills to the henchmen. What shame did I feel? Each day I took the T home, walking up the plain of Boston Common, then down the narrow, gas lamp slopes of Beacon Hill, to my apartment. And there I sat, every day, just my lonesome, small self, and my dangerous cat, Miles. No shame, no gall, no embarrassment. Just an uneasy sense that somewhere between the devil’s basement and the delicious, angel-infused gates of heaven,  I would one day need to atone for my actions at 910 Commonwealth Avenue.

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(Don’t) Kiss and Tell

Posted on March 2, 2011 by thegruntledwriter

I have never been very comfortable in my role as a man.

Once, when I was living on 79th Avenue in Flushing, I walked down to Cunningham Park to play in a one-day tennis tournament. Only, I had come on the wrong day. The tournament had been the day before. No one was in the park except a young woman my age: she stood in the broad July sunlight in a loose T-shirt and pale shorts. Her skin was freckled — not just her face, but her whole skin — and she wore her hair long, parted in the middle. We said hello, and as I stood in the quiet, summer heat and she stood in the shy, nimble sunlight alongside the tennis courts, I could see everything that was about to happen.

The freckled woman held her tennis racket down by her legs and laughed.

“I guess we got the wrong day,” she said.

We chatted for a while, I guess — it’s hard to remember now: this was twenty-five years ago, during the 4th of July weekend, 1986 or 1987.

I said: “Well, it’s too nice a weekend to waste doing nothing. Do you want to do something else?”

Neither of us had brought tennis balls to the park. Otherwise, we might have rallied a bit on the courts. So instead, the woman told me her name — Lorraine — and together we walked out of the park.

*          *          *

That same year — or possibly the year before — I was sent to Park City, Utah, for my job. At the time I was working as an editorial assistant at Academy Professional Information Services, near Herald Square in New York. APIS published thin, chintzy newspapers covering various fields in the medical industry. These newspapers had snappy titles like Oncology Today, Cardiology Times, Pediatric Journal. I was assigned to Rheumatology News, which was published eleven or twelve times a year and distributed to medical offices across the country.

APIS had sent me to Park City in the dead of winter to cover a rheumatology conference. But it was really just an excuse for the droll, rheumy rheumatologists to ski: poster and plenary sessions were scheduled until noon, and then the afternoon was free for everybody to play and romp in the snow.

As I’ve said, it’s hard to remember exactly now, but one night I was either walking in town looking for a restaurant to eat in, or walking back to my hotel after having eaten, and I found a mitten or a glove on the sidewalk. I had the feeling that the mitten had only recently been dropped there — only two or three minutes before I found it, say. So I picked it up, thinking I might be able to find its owner. I kept walking — it was the middle of winter, as I have said, and the town seemed very dark.

Soon I found myself in a bar of some hotel (perhaps I was indeed returning to my own hotel?). I was holding the glove I had found. And shortly, a young woman in jeans and a sweater came up and said, “You found my glove!” I remember her now (if my memory is to be trusted) as having long, bright hair and a quiet smile.

We talked for a while. Then either she or I asked, “Would you like to have a beer?” We sat down at a dark, wood table and our beers came — in bottles, I remember — and again, I could see everything that was about to happen.

*          *          *

Also there was this: in 1992 I traveled to Rome. I was a freelancer then. I had just finished a long proofreading or data entry job for some “temp” company in Boston. I had no plans ahead of me. So one afternoon I got on the phone and called the airlines to book a flight.

A week or two later, I was in the air.

In Rome I stayed in an inexpensive pensione in the old quarter. I remember it was up a dark flight of stairs. It was a bit rundown, but overall quite tolerable: I remember there was a common area — converted to a dining room for breakfast — with a meek, brown carpet and drab curtains over high windows.

I guess I spent some time in that room, because I remember an older Italian woman becoming attracted to me the more she sat and talked and smiled. I was 30 at the time. So when I say “older” I probably mean middle-aged: I have it in my mind that this woman was, say, 50. Her skin was aging, in any case, with wrinkles and maybe even a stray, single mole, but she had a warm, European smile and a mild and outgoing attitude. We caught each other’s eye; this woman had a shy, inviting look.

That night, we walked about the old quarter together. It was my first time in Rome, and this is what I remember: She had a husky voice. She smoked. She told me her astrological sign was Taurus. I remember this, because one of the first things I asked her was, “What is your name?”

She spoke a little broken English, and she said, “Aurora. You know what it means?”

I nodded.

She said, “It means — the dawn.” And shortly after, she added: “I am a Taurus, the bull. What are you?”

My birthday is in December, so I told her I was a Sagittarius. Immediately, she smiled — that sly, Italian smile —and I think it was then that she must have taken my hand in hers.

I said:

“What does that mean? That I’m a Sagittarius and you’re a bull?”

But she remained quiet, smiling her clever, European smile and walking through the eternal city, holding my hand in hers.

*          *          *

That one was unpredictable; it could have gone either way. But Lorraine in her pale, tight shorts by the tennis courts in Flushing, and the quiet, willing woman in the dark bar in Park City were doomed.

We continued walking, Lorraine and I, out of the park and up the grey concrete streets of Queens. . . . Someone suggested we go to the movies. . . . Was it me, or Lorraine? We bought a newspaper from a pharmacy or a vending box on the street and searched the movie schedule.

This is what I remember. The movie was “About Last Night.” We took a bus to the theater. Lorraine smiled and asked if I’d like popcorn. We sat in the dark theater together, eating popcorn and watching the movie. I think it must have been very hot outside — that was probably why we decided to go to the movies — and the theater was air conditioned. Afterward, it was late afternoon. We came out of the cinema, into the humid, grey air. I don’t think we spoke much. But we each had to take the same bus back to our apartments. We rode the bus quietly. As the bus approached my street, I asked Lorraine if she’d like to get together sometime again. We exchanged phone numbers. But as I stood to get off the bus, Lorraine said, “Really? This is my stop, too.”

Together, we got off the bus. We stood at the bus stop as the bus pulled away. (Again I could see what was about to happen!) There was an awkward moment — just a moment — and then I shrugged and said, “My apartment is just a block away. Do you want to come up?”

*          *          *

It was exactly the same — only very different — with the woman whose glove I had picked up on the sidewalk in Park City. We were chatting, she directed the conversation with ease and nonchalance: an implicit willingness to welcome a certain kind of stranger into her life — and, naturally, into her bed. No doubt I came across as shy: harmless. (. . . I always come across as shy, harmless!) I must have been talking animatedly with my hands, because I recall knocking over her bottle of beer. I apologized, but she remained calm — stoic. She smiled and wiped the beer from her sweater. I felt like that was it — that whatever chance there had been of hooking up with this woman was lost. But still she wore that sincere smile, that calm, inviting stoicism. “Don’t worry,” she said — or something to that effect. “But I should probably go up to my room to change out of my sweater.” She was a young, pretty, sweet, empathetic woman: knowing what she wanted on a winter’s night in Utah. She smiled at me and said, “Do you want to come up with me?”

*         *          *

These were not the only three, of course. When I was a freelancer in Newton, Massachusetts, an insurance agent came up to my apartment. It was a hot day in the middle of the summer, my apartment was on the second floor, and I was wearing a T shirt and tennis shorts. I needed to purchase my own health insurance because, as I have said, I was freelancing. So I called this insurance company and the agent came over to my apartment.

She was not attractive. She was older — fifty at least, certainly — and her body had begun to sag. She sat on the couch with me and went over her literature — her banal pamphlets and lousy brochures. In the middle of the discussion she looked at me.

“Do you play basketball?” she said.

“No,” I told her. “Just tennis and soccer.”

She seemed to nod. And then she said, “Yes, you have long legs. . . .”

I did not think much of it at the time. But like Lorraine, and like Aurora, and like the stoic, inviting woman in Park City, Utah, as she closed the door to her hotel room and quietly took off her sweater, I think of her a lot, now, twenty-five years later.

*          *          *

Yes, and there were young women sitting next to me on trains, remaining perfectly quiet and then finding another seat when I did not start conversations! Women sitting next to me at Fenway Park, turning their heads to watch me! A friend of a friend who I invited over for lunch and whom I was going to seduce —or rather, who was willing to allow me to seduce her. . . . And what for? Who remembers! I was shy; eager (yes: too shy, too eager!) I was always at odds with myself, wanting to act but not having the nerve: having grown up in affluence and privilege, feeling I could not presume the privileges of a woman. I was like a small boy who wakes up on a sunny winter’s morning and pulls back the curtains to discover a deep snow has unexpectedly fallen overnight: I wanted to romp through the white fields — run my hands rampant through the quiet softness — bend over and taste the fresh purity with my tongue. But at the same time, I did not want to disturb the virgin allure and grace. . . .

*          *          *

Once I was in my apartment with Lorraine, we went back to my bedroom. It is twenty-five years ago now, as I have said, and I can still see everything clearly, there on 79th Avenue. My white linoleum desk along the back wall! My tidy platform bed! The droll carpet skittering to the walls! I was a writer — or attempting to be one, anyway. I had a stack of manuscripts piled on my desk. Lorraine walked over to the desk — a pretext to slough off the nervousness and invite me to join her.

“What are these?” she asked, and skimmed quietly through the manuscripts.

It was the weekend of the 4th of July, as I have said. My roommate was in Boston visiting her boyfriend. The apartment was empty — other than Lorraine and me — and the night seemed ours alone.

I came to Lorraine and stood beside her. I leafed staidly through the stories.

“Stories I wrote,” I said.

“You wrote these?”

“Yes.”

Lorraine stood watching me. I stood beside her, leafing through the stories.

Lorraine waited. I was conscious of myself, then: conscious of myself thinking about myself. . . . What was I waiting for? Could I not presume to act on the assumption that Lorraine desired? What had brought us to this point? Which was the greater frustration — the future guilt I foresaw having half an hour from now, when the act had been completed, or the knowledge that I had the desire to take this woman but the inability to, actually, take her?

The stories, the pages, the papers in my hands: everything grew heavy. Though Lorraine stood beside me I could feel the distance between us growing. But then — who acted? Lorraine moved to the bed, and lay down on the covers. I lay gently atop her (not roughly: gently!), and looked her in the eyes.

And, I noticed something.

I should not have told Lorraine that I noticed something. It was a curious physical quirk in her face. One set of her eyelashes was a different color than the other. That is, the eyelashes on her left eye were brown, and the eyelashes on her right eye were a quiet and blondish red.

And that is what I told Lorraine. Lying atop her, clothed, only a few hours after meeting her.

“The eyelashes of your left eye are a different color than the eyelashes on your right eye,” I said.

I stared at her eyelashes.

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone notices that. . . .”

Seconds ticked by. Lorraine waited. Patiently, quietly, warmly. She waited! I was still looking at her eyelashes, my hand running through her hair. (I looked — I looked!) Then — not meanly, not angrily — Lorraine slipped from off of the bed.

“This is weird,” she said: “Don’t you think?”

*          *         *

And how similar was it in Park City? The inviting woman had taken off her sweater. The details are hard to remember now: one of her earrings had gotten caught in the sweater as she had taken it off. And now she was fingering the earring, making sure it had not been damaged. “My sister gave these to me,” she said. I stepped close beside her. I looked at the earring (. . . again I looked, yes: I looked!).

And that is why I say what I say: I have never been comfortable in my role as a man. I seem unable to permit my seminal instincts to run rampant, lion-like, through the Colisseum of desire and maraude the baser instincts I am slave to. I seem  to possess too romantic a notion: the grace of a woman, the aura of a woman’s warmth — which I fear I can only mar should I physically touch. No: I must first establish some more human, intellectual connection.

*          *         *

Lorraine allowed me to accompany her to the bus; in Rome, Aurora let me kiss her on the cheek (I believe) when we returned to the pensione . . . but I cannot remember even that moment! We agreed to meet for coffee the next evening: that was that. In Park City, the inviting woman realized that I was unable to pursue the course of action she had expected: she saw that I was different. Not dangerous — just different.

We went back down to the hotel bar and shared another beer.

Then, I suppose, we said good night. And, unlike Lorraine, I never saw her again.

NEXT: Other People’s Money (or, Me and Reverend Ike)

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