Read Online Playland by John Gregory Dunne - Free Book Online Page B

grips. The question an indication of the quirkiness of her mind. Most people want to know what you like best, what kinkiness, what equipment, what multiple of participants, what obscure position, what melding of what member or aid to what orifice or protuberance, primary or secondary. Dislike? What is there todislike? Lots, she said. The bad breath in the morning. Agreed. The curly strand of pubic hair on the tongue. Absolutely. The dab of shit on the rubber. Definitely. The acrid smell of postcoital micturition. Ah, yes. She was a tenured professor of fucking’s downside. Your turn, she had said. All the above, I said. No, no, something just yours. Ah. Okay. Taking off my clothes, I said finally. No one looks good taking off his clothes. It was too humiliating to elucidate, but she insisted. Well. Does your stomach fall out over the elastic band of your shorts? A concern at my suck-it-up-suck-it-in age. Is there a small embarrassing streak on your underwear? Sit down to take off your shoes and socks, stand up to take off pants and underwear. Leave your pants on the floor or hang them over a chair. One way a slob, the other a priss. Rip off your shirt the way they do it in the movies and you can’t put it on again afterward. There is no rakish way to undress.
    Why is that fucking child staring at me?
    “Were you hurting the man, Mama, when you were biting him?”
    Something else to dislike about sex. A precocious child catching you in the act.
    “No, Fern.” Lily could not seem to find her robe. Nor her slippers. Her shoes were under a chair. She put them on, using Fern’s shoulder for support. I tried not to laugh. A naked woman with black high-heel Charles Jourdan pumps. “See, Fern, he’s laughing. I didn’t hurt him. How’s Terence?”
    “Terence never wakes up. When he sleeps, his peepee sometimes sticks up like the man’s.”
    I thought, Terence’s peepee probably had more resonance than mine right now.
    “Let’s go back to bed.” She took her daughter by the hand, a naked woman in black pumps. “School day tomorrow.”
    She came back a few moments later, carrying a terrycloth bathrobe. She—why do I have such trouble calling her Lily?—said she must have left it in Fern’s room earlier. Now she rearranged the robe on the foot of the bed, then got in under thesheets. Her hand found me again. No answer. She said, “I guess we can forget about that.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Listen. A seven-year-old who strolls in wondering why Mommy is biting the man’s peepee is not one of the greatest turn-ons in the world.” She ran her hands through her hair. “You think she’ll be telling that to some shrink when she’s the same age as I am now, and wondering why she’s so fucked up?”
    I made a noise in my throat signifying yes, no, or maybe.
    “You don’t even like to think of your mother going down on someone. My mother’s sixty-two now. I can’t imagine her giving head to some guy, carries a return ticket in his pocket.”
    “Oh.” Guilty as charged. Sexual harassment, one-night-stand subsection.
    “I looked at it. It’s on the desk. Next to your money clip and your Hertz rental agreement and a dollar ninety-seven in coins.” Bed talk. It seemed nonjudgmental. But rarely, of course, does postcoital tristesse not find fault. “You’re a divorced woman with two small children, thirty-three years old, no alimony, chancey child support, you notice things about men. Like a return ticket. If I ever write my autobiography, I think I’ll call it
Open Return
.”
    “Mmmmmmmm.” Or no comment.
    “I’ve been divorced three years in July, and I haven’t had a single relationship with a man since.” Why do women feel this compulsion to talk to me? This human sponge soaking up confidences I would prefer not to hear. “The perils of living in Detroit. Oh, I get laid. Getting laid is never the problem. Not for a socially responsible single.” Lizzie used to say I was not giving. If this was giving