Let's Make a Deal Pt. 02

He paused again. Neither woman said anything, or looked as though she wanted to. "So. There are more things we should discuss, but none that I think are conditions as such. But I don't mean to rule out anyone's right to back out as we go on. I just mean that, as far as I'm concerned, I don't foresee any more room for deal-killers, just practical questions. As far as you two are concerned, each of you, do we have a tentative deal?"

They sat, apparently thinking it over, for several minutes. Martha finally said, "I'm fine unless something does come up I haven't thought of." Lynda sighed, but said, "Me too. I think."

6. How to Do Things With Words

Scott said, "OK. This isn't a condition, but I have a feeling that it may get Lynda's back up a bit, maybe Martha's too. I'm headed for something important, so please bear with me a little anyway. Martha knows well, going back quite a while, that I don't have much patience for playing verbal games, including trying to use labels that will be inoffensive. And I had to remind her earlier today. So. There's a word, actually several words but one in particular, for a woman who gives a man sex or sexual favors of some kind in return for something she wants, usually money but not always. Do I need to say what word I mean?"

Lynda's face had gone a bit rigid and flushed again. Martha said, "I assume that the word you mean is 'prostitute'. You're right, there are others, but it seems likely that that's the one. Are you just pointing out that technically this is prostitution?"

Scott said, "I am pointing that out, but not just pointing that out. But first. Lynda, how do you feel about my saying that?"

"You're right, I guess, yes, I feel offended. I can probably live with it, depending on your point, but it feels a lot like you're going out of your way to beat me up, and I don't like it much."

"I'm not saying it to be offensive. A couple of points. First is that what we're going for is a business relationship, not a romantic one. You came to me offering sex, not offering to fall in love with me, dump Martha, and be my girlfriend, or something like that. You did it, both of you, to get something you wanted from me, another chance at the job for Martha. I'm not trying to break you two up, or to make you fall for me, or anything like that. I'm assuming this is OK with both of you so far.

"And it's not at all as though you're professional prostitutes. You offered yourselves to one man, me, for a specific exchange, not to anyone who will pay you, the more the better. Notice that I'm not saying that more loaded words, like whore or slut, apply to you. I'm very sure they don't! I won't call you names like that, ever. Unless you do something to make them appropriate, and neither of you would, I think and hope. Lynda, do you see why I insisted on bringing all that up now?" She nodded. "I hope it helps you feel less beaten up on." She nodded again. He thought she still wasn't happy with him over it.

"Along with that, though, comes this. Your offers were to do whatever I wanted, anything I wanted. If I ask you to do something, you're free to ask what I mean, or why I want that, or to suggest some reason that might be a bad idea, or to suggest something else instead, or to suggest a modification, or anything like that. But a challenge that implies that I need to convince you—even a simple 'why?' that's just asked to stall or to make me change my mind—that's out. So if I were to say something I can't ever imagine saying this way—if I were to say, 'Lynda, take off your clothes right now and lie down on the floor with your legs apart!', if you say, 'The floor's awfully cold, may I get that floor mat first?', that's fine. And of course you could ask, 'Which way up?', or anything like that, if you've got an actual question. But don't stand there and cross your arms and glare at me and say, 'why?' as in 'why should I?'. If you don't have any real questions or counter-suggestions, then get busy doing it. If you feel you have to say something, you can say 'Yes, Scott.'"

Lynda was glaring at him, her face very red and very stony. "Maybe you'd rather have 'Yes, sir!' instead?"

"If you say it as if you mean it, not sarcastically or something, fine. I'd rather have my name. But I did say, 'If you feel you have to say something.' Really, all I'm saying is that if your anything means what it says, then I shouldn't be having to keep on and on pushing you or justifying myself. But real questions are fine, and real, serious counter-suggestions as well."

He paused for a moment. "Anyway, I've remembered a couple more conditions I should have raised. I'm sorry! I should have made a list! One I think and hope will be no problem for you. While this deal is in effect, we don't have sex with anyone else, outside of you two with each other and me. I'm talking about avoiding STD's. We need to talk about our pasts more for a bunch of reasons, but I'll say up front that I've only had sex with one woman, ever, and she never had sex with anyone but me. My wife was killed by a drunk driver when we'd been married about eight years, and that was before I was thirty. I've never had any reason to think I had any STD, and I give blood every couple of months, usually, and they test for HIV and other things, so you shouldn't be risking catching anything worse than a cold or the flu from me. Without asking for details now, can I count on the same from you? If you like, we can all get tested, but I'd prefer not to bother and not to have to wait for results unless there's a good reason."

Martha laughed. "It sounds like I'm the most widely experienced one of us all, then, ridiculous as that is. No, I actually got tested to make sure, before Lynda and I took up, and I insisted that she be tested too—because of that history you mentioned. Unless she's been seeing someone else on the side—and I know she hasn't!—we're both clean."

"So are you both all right with that condition?"

Both of them said yes, pretty forcefully. Martha added, "In fact, thank you for bringing it up. I don't think I'd ever have thought to ask you, but it's really important to me."

7. "Then you should say what you mean." "I do; at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know."

Scott said, "OK, but the other condition I remembered may be hard for you, and it's non-negotiable for me. From the way you said things earlier, Martha, I think you're ready to accept it, and I hope you can, but I don't feel so sure about Lynda. And I'm really not sure how to express it, so that it'll be clear enough, so please bear with me. This does kind of go with what I said a minute ago, but it goes beyond it.

"I need your active cooperation. 'Active' is the best word I can come up with, but I don't really like it. So I'll try to explain. Sometime in the next couple of days or so, I'm going to ask you to kiss me. I could say I want you to kiss me back enthusiastically, or wholeheartedly, or something like that, but that suggests feelings, and I don't demand that you feel enthusiastic, or to not have any feelings of reluctance. That's not something you can just decide to turn on or off.

"What I mean is something like this. At one extreme, there's the kind of kiss I've seen some people give on greeting relatives, say their grandmothers. I'm not sure exactly what ethnic groups these folks were from, but in those families, obviously, a normal greeting to your grandmother or parent or aunt or uncle is a peck on the lips. Affectionate, but with no passion, pretty much a formality. For what it's worth, Chris and I tried to pretty much always kiss goodbye when one of us left home without the other, and very often it was like that, just a formality, but it did say 'I love you and want you to come back.' At the other extreme is the kiss a young newlywed woman might give her husband when he's returned from a weeklong business trip, and she's been missing him every day, and she feels that she just can't wait until bedtime comes around. I can't and won't demand that you feel like that, and I don't ask that you ever act like that with me. But that doesn't mean it's OK for you to hang back and just go through the motions. The only other way I can think of to say what I want from you is this: I need you to kiss me like you mean it.

"And the same when we get to sex, I mean actual intercourse. A woman can lie there and be totally passive, letting a man do things to her, but, well, think of a life-size inflatable doll. That's not going to be acceptable. If it's not something we do together, where you do whatever you can to make me enjoy it—and to enjoy it yourself, as much as you can!—then there's no deal. I'm sorry, I know that may be the hardest part of it all, but anything less is a complete deal-killer for me. Oh. For my part, obviously I won't be passive in that kind of way, but at least most of the time I'll be trying to make it as enjoyable for you as I can, when it comes to actual sex.

"So. Comments? Questions?"

After a moment, Lynda said, "How does that fit with what you said earlier about total honesty?"

Scott said, "I see what you mean, and in fact I wondered whether you might see it that way. I don't know whether I can make clear how this is different, but I'll try. I'm not asking, or wanting, you to try to make me think you're in love with me, or to make me think you're enjoying sex with me if you're not. In fact, one thing I hear that some women do is to fake orgasms, to please men or to manipulate them, and I ask and in fact demand that you not do that! If I ask you whether you enjoyed something we do, and you didn't much, I expect you to answer truthfully and say so. You can volunteer things like that, good or bad, without my asking, too, as long as you're truthful. Well, and not doing it hurtfully, I guess. OK so far?

"But maybe I can put it this way. Here's this guy who's agreed to do something you really wanted, in this case to give Martha back her job. You know he didn't have to, but he agreed to do it anyway, even though it's something he has doubts about. You really want him to know how grateful you feel for that. Or how grateful you know you should feel, if your feelings haven't caught up to reality yet, maybe. So you've offered to let him enjoy your body, and you really do want to make it good for him, because you really are grateful, or know you should be. And while you're at it, you think you might as well make the best of it—even though men aren't really your kind of thing—and enjoy the physical sensations involved, and move in ways to maximize those sensations, for your own sake as well as his. You're not trying to pretend to something you don't feel, but maybe trying to act as if you feel it, maybe even trying to feel it, because you know it's appropriate, because you do want him to enjoy it, even if it's gratitude or something like that not love or lust that you feel.

"If that doesn't help, I don't know what else I can say."

Lynda said, "I think I understand. I don't know how well I can do it, but I'll try."

Continue to Part 3