Want

Look, the pretty girls are out in force. The round ones, the thin ones, the tall and short ones. Black hair, red hair, blonde. Which makes me think too, of course, of breasts. Heavy and hanging like bags of milk or buoyed up somehow as if filled with air or solid muscle. Small ones curving gently outward. Sharp or dull points. And looking up suddenly at faces again: pale or tanned, exotic or home grown. All of it something I want to see and taste and touch. At times like this, even the air we breath is a pain of choices: the smell of food, the salt and fish of the ocean, the warm, brown dampness of leaves. I only want all of it, and at once, and in both hands and forever. How can a man be truly happy in a world such as this? So is it any wonder that after 5 years of marriage to even a beautiful woman a man might stray? (And she was not beautiful, my wife. Her eyes were two far apart, he nose slightly bent, and when she smiled the pink of her gums showed at the top.)

So of course I strayed. There was a woman at the circular desk in the lobby of the office building where I worked. She was the first. Her name was Moira. She had reddish brown hair and bluish white flesh. Her nose, unlike my wife’s, was small and turned up. Her lips, which were full and red (of course) relaxed into an open position, so that her mouth often showed the delicate pink tip of her tongue, sometimes laying still in its bed, sometimes playing against the sharp white edges of her front teeth.

She had always been friendly toward me, more so than to the other men who worked in the building, I think. I am not a bad looking fellow, I have to say now, since I am being so honest, but not the sort of devastatingly handsome guy you would imagine to lure the office receptionist. That is the sort of ability you would expect from Bill in Human Resources, who had the chiseled features of a model and an even bronze tan that mades you think, whenever he entered a room, that the world he was coming out of was a world of a permanent sun in and unbroken blue sky and somewhere in his shoes there must be still have been the white grains of some vast and perfect beach.

But she went for me, not Bill. Or at least, she went for me enough that I saw the potential and I went for her as well. And Bill, where are you now anyway? Are you still married? Are you still happy with that? Has your tan faded with the season?

Hoary clich� that it may be, I asked Moira to join me for a drink after a particularly stressful day at work. I had no particular intentions, at least, not that I was aware of, except to have a drink and for there to be someone pleasant to look at while I drank it. She agreed without hesitation. I could not recall if I had ever mentioned to her that I was married, but she wasn’t asking now and instinct told me not to offer the information.

There was a bar just down the street from the building and we went there, sat in a dimly lit booth in the corner and within a couple hours and a few drinks, her hand stopped in the middle of a gesture and fell lightly (like a leaf, really) onto mine.

What is a hand? I thought. What is the harm in touching a hand? An half hour later I was asking the same question about a foot: her shoeless foot resting along the top of my brown loafers, her toes playing with the leather fringe.

"Would you like to go somewhere?" she asked and I suppose she did all the difficult work that night.

"Sure," I said. "Where?"

"Do you have to be home at anytime?"

She must have known I was married. Of course--she had to know.

"No particular time," I told her.

We went to her apartment.

I remember when I was young—15 or so—I had gone with my father to a woman’s apartment to help move a couch from her living room to the curb, and a somewhat newer couch from another apartment to hers.

The woman had been someone my dad had worked with once but she had changed jobs some years before. I remember sometimes, when my mother found reason to say her name (Miss Onkian) in conversation there was a certain hint of bitterness in her voice. Then I had thought my mother just had not liked her for the reasons she sometimes said under her breath; words like "pushy" and "snooty". The sort of words my mother used back then, when she was alive.

But hauling this beaten couch from her apartment to the curb and then hauling the slightly less beaten one from an apartment one flight up to Miss Onkian’s apartment, I began to sense something else. I cannot say that my dad and her exchanged looks or anything, or that I had surprised them in any act of physical tenderness. But sitting on the newer couch, drinking the orange soda (warm) that she had given me, I looked around the place she called home and began to form certain ideas. It was a nice, neat, homey enough place, with a motif of strawberries running through it. Strawberry wallpaper decorated the small, immaculate bathroom. Strawberry dishtowels hung from two wooden pegs on the kitchen wall. There was a clock shaped like a strawberry and on top of the TV there was a tiny ceramic figure of a girl in a bonnet holding a basket of strawberries. I looked at all this, and somehow knew—through some process that I cannot fully explain now—that my father had found something in this woman, at least once , probably a dozen times—that he had not found in my mother.

So all this is to say that from this youthful experience I had certain expectations, or did not have other, more clich� ones, about the sort of apartment I was entering. (Oh yes, I knew by now what sort of crime I was up to.) I did not expect beaded curtains or incense, or a small dingy place with yellowed, immoral walls and exposed plumbing. I expected a used couch and a strawberry theme.

But Moira’s apartment had none of these things. It was Spartan, reasonably spacious (for a receptionist) well maintained and completely impersonal place. Nothing in any of the rooms—and I eventually saw all of them—gave any clue to this woman’s inner life. Even her outer life was meagerly represented. There were no dishes in the sink, or clothes in the laundry basket. The coffee table was clear of everything save two coasters. The kitchen table held neither stains nor objects. There were no bookshelves or family pictures on the walls. No theme tied one room to another except for the theme of blankness.

I sat down on her new couch and turned on the TV while she uncorked a bottle of wine she had in the fridge. White wine. I hate white wine. It tastes sour to me and gives me a headache, but I took it gratefully enough and drank it in large sips as she sat next to me on the couch and asked if there was anything good on TV. I told her there wasn’t.

"Let’s turn it off then," she said.

I turned it off.

She kicked off her shoes and curled her feet up underneath herself. She leaned against me and I could smell her perfume. Or was it the shampoo in her hair? Everything about her seemed to be a charged atmosphere of smell and warmth. Since the TV was off, I knew I had to turn and face her. I turned and faced her and saw her brown eyes, her red lips, her bluish white face.

There are times in your life (or at least mine) when you are confronted with an irresistible force. A thing that glows and draws you toward it. It is not as common as all that. It is not the root of ever kiss and fuck but a rare an undeniable draw that comes along only now and then. You may answer it and give in, or you may not, but either way it is a fleeting power that yanks your heart and soul from its cage of bones and how can you not follow them, these vital bits of yourself, to the thing that has pulled them in? Some men do, I suppose, but even they must live with the scars of regret when the force fades and another of life’s hungers has faded away unsatisfied.

I leaned toward her and kissed her, opened her mouth wider with my tongue, crushed my body against hers. Or did I pull her toward me? Some details are not clear to me now, but I do recall the need for her, the draw of her that made vows turn to nonsensical words inside me. And even now. Vows? What words could hold blood or hold me back? So kisses then, and flesh and the slipping and pushing and holding that is all so tiresome to talk about and all so real for those minutes before the cloud of blood again lifts from your brain.

I adored her more or less completely for all of two months, and got away with the most ridiculous excuses to my wife for being late from work every Friday night, and once even of smelling of perfume when I came home at some time past 2 in the morning. A perfumed shirt at 2am, for God’s sake. What could I have said to that? I cannot remember now, but the human mind is an amazing and evil organ that can coil and strike with a fresh lie from any corner it is backed into. Mine must have coiled and struck successfully. I got away with it.

The spell of Moira wore off, but it had done it’s more permanent damage, it had destroyed the spell of fidelity. Once you have strayed, and come back unbowed , you know that no laws bind you. You are free.

By unspoken agreement, Moira and I saw each other less and less. She had become for me like the object you shuffle across thick carpeting to touch and spark. It is a trick that works only one time and then the spark was gone. You must shuffle back across the room and touch something else now.

I was grateful when she was offered a better position in another office. And even more grateful that she did not love me and showed no sadness when she left. Some people I know want to be loved, and loved by everyone. They appease and lie and trouble themselves to no end to keep their holy place in a multitude of hearts, but I am not one of these . I do not want to be loved. It is better be hated, and better yet to be dully forgotten by the people you touch than to have the burden of their hearts crowding your own chest. I married once for love, I am sure, and was glad that she loved me in return but a kind of relief came when that love faded. Thank God my wife and I did not have kids, because kids love completely and permanently . How unbearable a pain would that have been to watch those small cartoon-like eyes falling away in disappointment? I imagine the look of an actress in a movie when her hand slips from the heroes grip and she plunges downward, her eyes still looking upward at the camera as she disappears into the vapors or the distance, falls to her death among jagged rocks or molten lava. Blood curdling screams. Children would have been like that.

Who came after Moira? Another woman who worked in the building. I am essentially a lazy man. When I do stray, I never stray far. So let me grab the beauties that lay around the yard or pass close by me on the sidewalk. I gladly leave for you the angels of whatever city my business does not take me too, the countries to my north and south, Europe and all of the eastern hemisphere.

Her name was Karen and she worked in Customer Service. And what can I say about Karen that will not sound cruel and superficial? Oh, but you already do not like me, I know. I can sense it.

She was pretty, in her way, but her way was sickly. Her eyes were large and colorless and seemed to blend into her pale, hollow face. Her hair too was pale and the color of her skin. Only shadows seemed to distinguish he features from each other. She took a lot of sick days and something about the way she carried herself, the way she sniffed and blew her nose in all seasons, the way she walked carefully from one place to another as if bones might break, made one think that all of her days off were due to the same mysterious illness. A personal, and chronic condition, I feel certain. A little known and little understood malady that would not kill her directly but would shorten her life in some nebulous way.

We came together through work (good old work) . There was a project that I had been assigned that I needed to consult with her department on. We worked late hours, she sat close to me in front of a computer, our arms touched. Things led to other things. I think sometimes that I acted more out of a sense of duty with Karen then any lust on my part. She wanted me, I had already committed adultery, it would be pointless and cruel to deny her.

It was just one night with her, in a hotel, and she cried afterwards, though softly. She claimed it was not from sadness, which terrified me. I finished the project, without the help of her department. She took an extended sick leave, and was back from it for nearly a month before I saw her again, in the hallway leading out of the cafeteria. She glanced at me and then glanced away. I would have probably made the same move myself, but because she looked away, I kept looking as she walked slowly, carefully down the hallway.

There were a few others between Karen and the last one I will tell you about, but it seems proper somehow only to tell you about three. Three is the magical number. The three bears, the three stooges, three wishes. The traveling salesman and the farmer’s three daughters. So Moira, Karen and Mary. Mary of the golden hair, caramel colored skin, fine features, nice body, etc. etc. She did not work in the office building, but I met her in connection to that. She knew a guy I worked with named Mike—or maybe she knew his wife. Mike and his wife threw a party in honor of no particular occasion and of course my wife and I were invited. We were always invited. We were a fairly charming, presentable and good-natured couple. Several of the fellows I worked with had told me on more than one occasion that my wife was a catch, and I was a lucky man. I always smiled politely when they told me this and sometimes even tried to believe them.

My wife and I fought the night of the party. About what, I cannot precisely remember. Had I parked my car too far over in the driveway for her car to fit beside it? Had I left less than a glassful of milk in the carton? It could have been anything, but the point is, we fought, and argued half of the drive over and were silent the rest of the way. When we got to the party, most of the other guests were there, so we turned on the smiles and charm at the door and plunged forward into the mix. I plunged forward all the way to the kitchen to fix a gin and tonic. I drank it without leaving the kitchen, then fixed another one to take with me into the jungle of people.

I made my jokes and paid my compliments and everything seemed to be going smoothly enough. It was a big enough crowd that it was not too hard to leave my wife in some remote part of it and only see her now and then through a field of shifting heads and shoulders.

Someone introduced me to Mary.

"You’ll like Mary," this blessed someone said. "She’s an artist."

I didn’t know what this meant exactly, as I am not an artist nor have I have been known for my interests in the arts. But I said "Oh yes?" and smiled, because Mary was pretty, had golden hair, caramel skin, fine features, body, etc.

"Are you an artist," she asked, as the person who had introduced us dissolved politely into the background.

"No," I said. "Just an art appreciater ."

She smiled. Warm smile. And again the beginning pull, the attraction, the force of nature.

Picture me now as moon being pulled down into a planet suddenly grown too large to resist. Down I slip until I am singed by the outer atmosphere (her perfume) farther down until the air is thick and scalding flame around me (her breath) down down down until I am shattering against her mountains and oceans (need I say it?) and then I am dust and a strange, small, shriveled, smoldering rock where I once had been a moon.

Which is to say, of course, that I met Mary again some days after the party, and we talked and kissed and fucked. The details are the same as the details always are. There is no point in my telling you what we ate or she wore. Or what we said before or during or afterwards. It was a lovely experience and I do not regret it, even knowing what comes after.

And what came after was this: my wife found out. Some person she knew must have seen me with Mary. Some friend of a friend who was my enemy. My wife did not reveal her sources. She only shouted: "It doesn’t matter how I know! The point is that it happened and I know!"

And it was a point well taken. I could not argue, I could only plead and for some reason felt compelled to do so. I told her I had been foolish, and that I did not love anyone but her. I told her that the things I had done were mistakes that I had not intended to happen and regretted with all my heart. I even told her, weeping (oh, I was shameless) that it was because of my father, because he had been unfaithful to my mother and I didn’t know better but now I did, oh, now I did. I meant it all too. I was remembering the time that I loved her, when I met her and fell in love. All the days we had shared together were flooding through me and emptying out through my eyes. She seemed at that moment a vital part of me that I could not imagine facing the world without.

And dear God, she took me back. We both cried that night and pledged our love. We kissed our wet faces and undressed each other in the dark and made love (she did not like the word "fuck") and did it tenderly, intensely, and desperately.

But the scenes that seem s significant and final when we live them--or when we see them in movies and on TV—fade in importance with time. She took me back, but not to keep. The trust was broken and whenever we fought from then on (about me parking too far over in the driveway, about leaving too little milk in the carton) we would always end up fighting about that. About Mary. I began to look at other women again and knew it was only a matter of time.

She left me, then came back a few days later, deciding it was me who should leave. I left. I found and apartment and enjoyed the sympathies of my coworkers as the divorce process began, became messy and reached its logical and necessary conclusion.

I was alone now and found that I liked to be alone. A great weight had been lifted from my heart. The parts of the days that I thought would be an un-fillable void where filled with the peace of myself. The part of my heart that I thought would be broken was only the tip. I dated the new secretary in the lobby for awhile, then stopped and dated someone else, and someone else after that. I am seeing a woman now who works for a company my company does business with. She is a lovely girl, with firm flesh and soft hair and after her there will be other lovely girls with firm flesh (or maybe soft) and always soft hair.

And what is the lesson of this guilty little tale? What moral do I have to impart to you who have sat through it all so patiently?

Shhhh….Listen to me, gentlemen, I will tell you once and in secret: leave your wives. The apostles left theirs. Run wild in the streets. The streets are calling your name (just yours) in a pretty chorus of sing-song voices. There is no absolution to make or restitution to pay. The only price is the dull sadness you will feel beneath all of it from knowing that you cannot really achieve that which you are striving for, which is everything, which is all at once, which is in both hands, which is forever.