Charming Company

After the final scores were tallied and the game was over the other couples left two by two until only I was left standing in the entrance hall. I was shrugging on my jacket and trying not to be too obvious about looking at Fran's breasts as she helped me into it. Vince could be heard in the den watching the post-game show.

"I really wish I could help you clean up," I said. "I hate to think of you doing my dirty dishes."

"Oh, some time we'll all come over to your place and you'll have to clean up after all of us. That's how it works."

She smiled as she tucked the tag of my jacket into the collar at the back of my neck.

"You will come and see us again, won't you, Roger? We're going to try and make this a monthly thing, you know. We all get together and talk about the trials and tribulations of being Manhattan couples."

I stared at her.

"Or, I guess I should say that the husbands will drink beer and watch the game while the wives talk about the trials and tribulations of being Manhattan couples."

"I don't much care for sports."

"Well, you'll be allowed to join us girls then, won't you?"

"And play Boggle™?"

"Or Pictionary™."

We both chuckled.

"I'm really sorry Joanne couldn't make it."

"Oh, I'm secretly glad. She sounds like she'd have been a bit of a bore. I hate business people."

"Harry is 'business people.'"

"Yes, and you saw how well he managed to do. Six whole words!"

We stood silent for a moment before I squeezed her hand and left.

My apartment is very big and I don't like it. Big equates empty to the nth degree when you're single. Even when the lights are on there are too many shadows. Not enough sounds other than the odious rumble of the furnace.

Maybe I should get a smaller place? But, still it's good for entertaining. Cocktail parties, cast parties, social masturbation where I make sure all the right people get laid. Those who can't do teach, right?

I walk over to the coat closet and put away my jacket. Then in the kitchen I put the little paper plate wrapped in tin-foil on the top shelf of the refrigerator.

"Music."

The stereo sputters a bit and then starts to play Mahler's 5th symphony in C sharp minor. A very prolific piece; Imagine Hell and Heaven playing a game of war with the whole thing set to very sad music.

The depression is setting in. It's a side-affect of the medication.

Just a shower and then you'll have to go to bed.

I want to sleep but I don't want to go to bed. The barbeque was nice, the people were nice, and the night was overall a good one. Now it would turn into something ugly as all nights do these days.

I walk to the bathroom and strip. In the mirror I shave away some tension and try not to notice the movement behind me. I know it isn't real. It never has been. I must have torn my place apart a dozen times looking for the little rodents and make-believe things I see scurrying into cabinets and under couches.

I'm half-done with my face when the buzzer rings.

"Who is it?"

"Roger, it's Fran."

I let my finger hover over the button on the call box a moment before I pressed it. "How did you know where I live?"

"Phonebook, goofy."

"Oh," that was logical. "Come on up. I was just about to step into the shower, but I'll be decent by the time you make it up. I'm on 27."

I decide on gray slacks and a black silk shirt. No shoes. Very unassuming but sexy, I think.

"Wine?"

"I'm sorry to burst in on you."

"Did I forget something at your place?"

"No."

I pour two glasses of some decent red stuff.

"I just..." She stopped and tilted her head slightly to the right. "I felt like I wanted to talk to you some more."

"Really? I'm flattered."

"I know it's late..."

"I got nothing I'd rather do than keep from going to sleep."

I turn to find her standing right in front of me, her lips close enough to kiss. Then I feel the shooting pain and I fall to the floor. I scream in pain as she pulls the trigger on the taser gun again so another shock runs through me.

"You're not married, are you!"

It is not a question, but a statement. She's figured it out.

"What are you talking about?"

"You're buzzer downstairs says Roger Angell. It doesn't mention your wife at all."

"I..."

"And also, tonight, I noticed you talked about your wife's name being Josephine and then why you left you said you were sorry Joanne hadn't come..."

After this final jolt of pain I nearly pass out. When I come to my senses I look down to see that I've wet myself. I open my shirt to see the red burns from where the clamps caught me.

"He has cancer, you know."

I look up at her. "Huh?"

"Vince. He has Leukemia; he's had it since a year after I met him. That's why we came to New York, so he could be near a specialist."

"What?"

I try to get up but she pulls the trigger agains and my arms and legs jump back to the painful rigidity of the fetal position. She leaves. Out the door before I finish the spasms.

I eventually regain my composure, though there are still burn marks on my chest where the electrodes sunk in. There are two small holes charred in the shirt -- it is ruined.

I lurch to the bathroom and strip. In the mirror I examine the damages before taking stock of myself. Maybe the ring thing is a bad idea?

I look down at it -- the little silver glint feeling almost natural on my finger after only a couple of weeks. Then I think back over the dinner. Harry and Evelyn, the other two, what where there names? And finally Fran and her sick and dying husband. He'd been very polite actually.

As I turn on the shower and strip out of my trousers I can't help but think the whole thing was rather eventful and fun, to say the least. The cold water causes the burns to flare up a bit with pain but then the pain turns dull and tingles through my chest.

Men go through several emotional phases after a traumatic experience with the opposite sex. Whether he has been dumped, or stood up, or tasered, he moves into a sort of recovery ritual. The length of the phases may very depending on the man. But generally there is a phase of denial and non-acceptance, a phase during which the woman in question receives several unwanted telephone messages riddled with promises of change and maturity if only she will come back. This phase can last anywhere from a mater of days to a mater of months. Granted, after a few months of changed phone numbers, restraining orders, threats from her new boyfriend... This phase passes or (in some cases) results in violence.

The violence is the turning point into the phase of anger. The level of anger and its focuses are variable. One man may chose to hate himself, another may choose to hate his girlfriend, the most intelligent men develop a raw festering passionate dislike for all humanity and spurn the very concepts of human contact and congenial interaction.

Such intellectuals are overloaded nuclear reactors of anger causing lesions and radiation sickness in others. Their friends avoid them for fear of psychological maledictions.

This period lasts anywhere from a mater of days to a matter of decades; depending on the length and depth of the emotional abyss that needs to be filled by pain and loathing. Such anger has lead to mass genocide, homicide, suicide, and has been known to cause the odd industrial "accident."

Eventually the anger abates with the onset of the addictive phase. Men take up unhealthy pastimes or vises in order to numb themselves against the pain. Some men drink, others gamble. A great many of them go out on a quest to find as many women in the world who look exactly like their now ex-girlfriend and they fuck and suck themselves silly out of vengeance and pride (secretly crying in the darkness of the seedy motel rooms all the dirty dirty while).

Close to the end comes the analytical phase, where a man begins to think harsh utilitarian thoughts about his own sexuality and emotive processes.

For example he begins to ponder his sex's inferiority to the fairer. To him everything seems deficient when held up to the female. Her form is better, her judgments less often questionable.

Even her orgasm...

Not just physically but emotionally, the female orgasm is better and he knows it, because he has seen it and heard it and smelled it and tasted it. He knows that for her, the orgasm is rapture, a gift. Like receiving flowers and jewelry from a lover, or in the instance of self-service a vision sent from God on high as if in answer to prayer conducted with soft gasps and half closed eyelids.

In the shower, on a bicycle, in the bedroom with the aid of a small electrical talisman, she asks for and receives her gift from heaven with sighs and a smile and then she rolls onto her side, a wave of calm overtaking her, warmth and comfort enveloping her, the sheets seem to take on an extra softness and the light of the room shines at odd angles so that things that were not important beforehand are now transformed into significant ingredients to a perfect universe. There is a thank you, usually unspoken, and then a slow subtle glide into relaxing sleep.

Men are much less smiled upon.

The masculine orgasm comes from labor and suffering, it is a regulated thing—regulated so that it is timed to perfection because to come too soon is to mar the miraculous event that is the female counter part. If it comes too late, it is a sign of a sort of retardation, of uselessness. You are on the first hand too young and unseasoned for the battle and on the last hand too old and weak to be of aid to the cause. The actual ejaculation itself is like a wound. It comes quick and then after a flash it is gone, taking with it all sense of space and time. The victim is sucked into a black hole, a kind of dark underworld with nothing but sound waves carrying cruel laughter and tears of anguish. Light cannot escape it and fades to darkness and sound muffles. Nothing slows down, in an instant it is all gone and it is as if death has passed through the room reminding you of the time.

Women, when they think about it, will probably realize how quiet their men are during the mechanics of love. When your man makes a noise of pleasure is it very far off from a cry of pain?

Thus is male masturbation ultimately pathetic and sad. Instead of being a gift from heaven it is more or less a self-inflicted wound; a cut made as an assurance that one is still capable of feeling anything—even if it is fear and pain. It is like riding a roller coaster or base jumping from a bridge.

Afterward there is no slow drift into sleep. There is a blackout, from which a man awakes feeling dirty and drained of his life's fluid. He is weak and no one mourns him, just like a soldier on a silent battlefield left to rot in the sunshine like bitter fruit.

One thing is certain, of all the phases men enter and go through, acceptance is never an option. Old men die in their beds, surrounded by loving family members—each child and grandchild and great grandchild a testament to the success and beauty of a life well lived—and secretly, deep down inside, under years of age and time, there are still scars that sting when the wind blows just right. Scars that remind them, unto their last breath, that life and love can be ten times more evil than good in some spots.

I stepped out of the shower feeling very much alone. At nearly one o'clock in the morning I wished there was someone to call.

Hugo lives in what is referred to as a baronial mansion. He's one of those people who married a lot of money and then, fortunately, never did much after that. If you ask him though, he'll tell you he's an unpublished writer.

Unpublishable, if you want to know the dire reality of the matter.

Hugo chokes on his drink, he's laughing so hard. Other people don't pay him any mind. He's a kept man, not the really person important to laugh with.

"You mean like a stun gun?"

"Yes."

"Open your shirt. I got to see this."

"This is not the time or the place."

"God sakes, Roger. You tell me a story like this and you expect me to believe it without proof."

"You can't make this shit up."

I see her coming before he does.

"What has he got you laughing at now, dear?" Jackie is pretty in that I-wore-my-hair-in-a-ponytail-until-I-was-thirty-to-feel-closer-to- the-animals-I-love-so-much kind of way. She's cropped it shorter in the four years I've known her, but she still looks odd without $15,000 of horse underneath her.

"Roger was tasered last night."

"What?"

"He's been pretending to be married and this woman... What was her name?"

"Fran."

"She figured out that he was a low down lying dog and she electrocuted him."

"Pretending to be married?"

I hold up my left ring-finger for her to see. "Eleven bucks at a pawn shop."

"That's sick, Roger!"

"I know," I said. "If it makes you feel better it wasn't my idea."

"Oh no," Hugo ditched his drink on a passing try of champagne. "I never told you to buy a wedding ring and engage in fraud. What I said was that once a guy gets married women talk to him."

Jackie's eyes went quizzical. "Are you saying you think your wedding ring helps you get girls?"

"No, honey. I'm just saying I get approached, talked to..."

"You're a moron," she turned her focus back to me. "And you should know better."

"It was a nice theory. I thought it deserved a field test. So far I'm one and one."

"You mean you actually slept with a woman under the false pretense that you were married? You're a pig."

"I'm a desperate man. Desperate men make the best pigs. You see, dear, I know that Hugo got the last good woman there was and now I'm an empty shell with nothing but work to do from nine to five and time to kill."

Jacqueline swished her jaw around a bit, a sign that she was digesting what I'd said. She was a woman who liked to tear things apart and analyze them before responding.

"First, I have to say I'm flattered that you think I'm the last good woman, however, I know you, Roger. Compliments are your medium of artistic expression. What is really the issue here is that you feel you have to dawn a persona and play pretend to get into a woman's pants. That is what makes you the ultimate evil in the eyes of a woman."

"Evil?"

"Yes, evil. Why can't you just be yourself?"

"I am myself, Jacqueline. "I just make it apparent that there is someone out there who thought the real me was worth more than just a first glance."

"I..."

"Spare me the home woven recycled psychology from your first semester in college. I know what I am..."

"Don't get snippy."

"Don't put me on the couch."

"Why are you doing this, Roger?"

"Doing what?"

"Playing women like were some kind of game?"

"Women are not a game. They're much too hard on the heart to be a game. Men kill themselves and others over women. Wars have been fought over women."

"What war was ever fought over a woman?"

"Ever read The Iliad?"

She made a face that could launch a thousand ships.

Jacqueline hated when I unsheathed the sword of literature. For a writers wife she was quite unnerved by high-minded talk about bundles of words written by dead white men thousands of years before her birth. "I still say it's wrong."

"I don't disagree."

Hugo had spent the whole time with a stupid grin on his face. I'm sure this was the reason I was his friend. I had arguments with his wife he was much too careful to have. I think secretly he loved watching his wife explode, if not entirely in a sadistic way. He waved down the nearest tray of champagne and plucked up three glasses. "Honey, just because something is morally reprehensible does not mean it is entirely wrong."

"He's causing harm!"

"And he got tasered, honey. It's eye for an eye."

She looked at me again, vicious. "You deserve worse."

"I go home every night to an empty apartment. Believe me—I'm punished beyond all articles of the Geneva Convention."

Hugo lifted his glass in a mock cheer, "To the tortures of the bachelor, he never knows how good he had it 'til he's married."

Jacqueline surprisingly lifted her glass to this toast, but added her own addendum, "And to the stupid husband who will be staying in one of the guest rooms tonight."

Four years and you can tell they still love each other deeply.

The late night movie is on the television. It's a thriller tonight, I don't really care though. I like the noise.

Just as Grace Kelley answers the phone and the man jumps out from behind the curtain and tightens the stocking around her neck the buzzer sounds.

My watch reads 2:45 a.m.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Roger, can I come up?" It's Fran.

I pause a moment and look at the speaker in dismay. Should I ask what she wants? I shake my head and press the button unlatching the door far below.

I don't change. I just wait in the open door for the sound of the elevator arriving and her footsteps on the carpet of the hallway. She's in pajama bottoms and a too-large sweatshirt under her over-coat. Her face is blotched, red under the eyes.

"Hi," I say.

"I'm not going to taser you again," every word seems like a sniffle.

"I deserve it."

"I came to..." the sentence fades and she fidgets.

I stand aside inviting her in. She walks tentatively, taking off her coat and dropping it over the counter. The sweatshirt is baggy, a dirty grey; it's a man's size and without asking I can guess what's happened.

"What about the others?"

"They were all his friends, not mine." She walks over to the couch and sits, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of his shirt. "I don't have many friends."

I sit beside her, taking care to stay distant.

"You're afraid of me?" Already the tears are welling faster in her eyes. In movies the man always tells the woman she's beautiful when she cries. I just couldn't say so with Fran. She looked pathetic. "I shouldn't have..."

"You like Alfred Hitchcock?"

Her face does a strange thing that reminds me of a person having a minor stroke. It's only a moment before I realize how random my question must seem. I point to the television. "There's an all night marathon. I was just going to sit and watch it I'm being weird aren't I? I'm sorry, I don't know how to deal with grief. I'm such an asshole. You really shou..."

She leans in and kisses me. Not romantically, or sexually. In fact, I can't describe the manor of the kiss. It tastes like tears and is very brief. When she leans back it is into the sitting position. Her eye's focus on the screen, on Grace Kelly swaying half dazed toward the bedroom after killing her would-be killer. I take the remote and take the film off of mute. The music is post violent crescendo, and as the scene dissolves into the next. I see a sense of calm come over her face. The tears are drying and she is snuggling up in the corner of the couch, her feet tucked up under her backside.

"We can talk if you want," I say.

She looks over at me and shakes her head then looks back to the film. I'm at a loss until she turns back, her lips parted to say something.

"Do you have any popcorn?"