Chapter 12A

Some events are like dreams. Their cause, their meaning, their place in one's history remain forever unexplained. They occur once in time, surprising us sometimes, but always making a mockery of our expectations. In memory they are recurring, timeless, with vague borders and an always jumbled, inexact sequence. In the aftermath all one can say is that they occurred, and defiant memory recalls only the pieces, never their source or their reason.

In the yellow-white sun Martha and Ronnie slipped into their swimsuits and I pulled on my shorts. We strolled through a small forest to a nearby village. We drank iced tea with lime and munched chicken salad sandwiches. Ronnie and Martha chatted and debated and I gawked at the parade of Fire Islanders drifting from the city and lounging about the pier. The teenagers passed by, the freaks in their outlandish costumes and body markings passed by, and so did the New Jersey families and the Manhattan executives and the yacht owners and working girls and average guys. In my mind, while the rest of the world churned around us, I had the sense that the three of us -- hairbleached me, sunny faced Martha, dark eyed Ronnie -- were somehow an insular, absolute group of our own. Looking back on the whole day, we seemed to be moving in a different direction from everyone else, at a different pace.

After a long lunch we strolled across a wide, open plain of sand dune and low brush, and then through yet another secluded wood, and then to yet another village, speaking among ourselves while no one spoke to us, no one deflected our conversation or our thoughts. Martha and Ronnie gabbed away, I gaped away, and the rest of the world left us to our business. We watched the beginning of the sunset in the early evening, boarding the ferry just as the sun painted the world red and sank into a black sea, and during the ferry ride we watched the day end. The stars came out. Distant lights on shore glowed languidly. This magical scene from the ferry at sea lent an air of fantasy to the day's end and the night's beginning. The ferry docked at a pier lit like a Disney movie with thousands of small colored light bulbs strung along our path to the taxi area, where we piled into a car that barely made it in time to the train station. Then we were on a half empty train going in the opposite direction from everyone else, headed for Manhattan.

On the train I sat in a seat facing Martha and Ronnie. Martha bargained with Ronnie for the space by the window, and Ronnie finally gave up, sitting in the aisle position at a diagonal to my spot at the window, teasing me, "Well, I'll take the aisle seat so I won't be sitting directly across from Steven. He'll think I'm staring at him on purpose." All the way into Manhattan I gazed out the window at mile after mile of sprawling suburb. It reminded me of the dreaded Memphis to which I'd be forced to return in what seemed a short, inadequate time. The landscape didn't change until we approached Queens, which began to look more like a big city. Along the way, the two women chatted on and on, constantly changing the subject, sometimes arguing mildly. But it was clear from their manner that they were good, close friends. And I wondered what it would be like to have such a friend, male or female; and then it occurred to me that even with Martha I wasn't that open, wasn't that trusting. To what friend would I give myself so freely? And I was thinking about that when I turned to see the two women talking more confidentially, their voices almost a whisper too low to be heard over the steady roll and clack of wheels. As I watched and listened to try to pick up what they were saying, Ronnie eyed me from the corners of her dark blue eyes and teased me, "We're talking about you," and I asked, "Could any of it possibly be bad?" and she stuck out her chin at me and pursed her lips and said, "Juicy!" I blushed and Ronnie said, "Martha. he's blushing again," and Martha said, "Oh, he always does that," and Ronnie gave me a pat on the knee and said seriously, "It's all good. Really. All the trouble you used to get into in Memphis." I gazed back out the window and thought: Memphis, why the hell do I have to go back to Memphis?

They continued, both looking progressively more serious and absorbed, each listening carefully to the other. They frowned now and then, or nodded seriously, so I figured they had roamed into another, more important subject. Now and then they glanced at me as they talked and gestured, and Ronnie or Martha would give me a fleeting, affectionate smile. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I knew I was envious of their easy rapport. Then they stopped talking and I drifted off to sleep for a short interlude. When I opened my eyes I saw Martha leaning on the window, napping placidly, and Ronnie was reading a copy of the New York Times Fashion Supplement magazine. I thought to myself that I was glad at least that I was with these two reasonable, giving women who were so much unlike my frightful, hysterical aunts. Martha looked so innocent and delicious I wanted to hug her and then lick her in gratitude for simply being who she was and tolerating my presence in her little pad.

And Ronnie -- well, I hadn't sorted my feelings for her. It was true, though, and odd, that when I first met her I didn't think of her as being particularly enticing. Yet there was something about her that grew on me, something offbeat in those eyes, something enticing in her long legs and arms that I hadn't seen when I first met her. But her eyes: they were not as striking as Martha's, but in time I found them compelling, replete with subtle, hidden messages. Her voice and manner were easy, even lax at times, but her eyes always seemed to carry on a more active, intimate conversation. Did I see something seductive there? Or was I just reading it in, the more she grew on me? And just as I was watching her and thinking about her she glanced up from her reading and her eyes found mine, and her eyelids lowered bashfully and she smiled accusingly and said, "I saw you," and she returned to her magazine, and I said after a yawn, "Saw me what?" She said, drawing a circle around something in the magazine, "Staring at me." I didn't say anything, her playful tone seeming like little more than the usual, innocuous banter, and after a moment she turned a page and with her eyes still on the magazine she said, "That's okay. I was staring at you, too. While you were asleep." She kept reading and looking, circling and marking, ignoring me, and I said, "I didn't talk in my sleep or do anything atrocious, did I?" and she said in a ho-hum tone, still not looking up, "No, I was just looking. Just looking," and I asked, "At what?" She paused and looked up at me and said, teasing, "At you." And she was quiet for a moment as she looked at me and there was that mystery in her eyes, that direct but gently probing look, and then she said cryptically, "You're different, that's all."

Then she went back to her magazine and I watched her for a moment. Then Martha stirred in her sleep and turned onto her side a little more toward the window, and her angel lips and pug nose looked girllish, seeming nothing like she looked when we had sex. I began to wonder about Ronnie's words, hearing her say You're Different several times in my head, and somehow the words stayed in my head and the dark eyes persisted, and her eyes had seemed to say more than her words said. She stopped her reading and got a cigarette from her bag on her lap and lit up and began reading again, all without so much as looking up, and I thought about the feel of Martha under me and the feel of her flesh deep inside her and then, strangely, I wondered what Ronnie saw in me and I realized that I felt she would never get close to me again if she knew I was more than a playful young boy. The thing that would keep me from being with people like Ronnie was my being Different. As the train skimmed along the rails I wondered: How had I arrived here with these two, among all the millions of people in two cities and hundreds of relatives, how was it that there were only these two women, only two, whose minds and chemistry and words were combinable with mine? Yet being naked with them had shut doors rather than open them, had revealed the locks and shackles on the doors leading in and out of me.

When I looked at them a little later Martha was awake, leaning on her arm against the window and gazing at me with a mild frown. I asked her, "What's the matter?" and she answered, "You're thinking again." I just looked at her and wondered how she knew, and Ronnie glanced up at me from her magazine and then back down again, and I knew I wouldn't talk to Martha about it, so I gazed back out the window and said nothing. In my silence I heard Ronnie saying "You're Different." And I wanted to get closer to both of them, get my mind into them and merge my soul with both of them, and I didn't want being Different to keep me from either of them anymore.

That need made me feel lonely. The kid from Memphis felt compelled to defend against all need. I needed to be careful that I never threaten Martha by extracting promises and plans from her, and I must never threaten Ronnie's friendship with desire for her, must never let them know that my hard cock on the beach wanted to merge with them, with both of them, to plunge through and burst open the limits of my age and my narrow life in Memphis and the limits of relationship itself. As the train approached Manhattan I closed myself off again, fearing everything, knowing that my fear of being seen naked by these two was akin to being emotionally naked as well, my every fault and weakness exposed.

For the rest of the trip to Manhattan, from Jamaica through Kew Gardens and Forest Hills and then Rego Park, I said nothing. Fire Island receded farther away, far behind the growing congestion of Queens as we neared Manhattan. Through Woodhaven and Sunnyside and Woodside and crowded Long Island City, I didn't look at either of them. Once I closed my shell around me, the events and details of the day no longer made sense, no longer had purpose, and were all a formless jumble. I was not on a train on a planned route, I was a stranger in a maze and everything was random. In the maze I was somehow only loosely connected with passionate Martha and enigmatic Ronnie; I didn't know what the rules were, or why we were there, or why they stayed with me, or what they wanted. The whole day, the whole city, the whole world had seemed bizarre from the moment I opened my eyes that morning.

We decided to walk home from Penn Station, the three of us joined as Martha grabbed my hand and pulled me between her and Ronnie, and then Ronnie took my hand as well. All three of us strolled and looked in the same windows together, and commented on the same sights together, and we were all tired together from the trip, and all three of us trudged upstairs to Martha's place. We made berry tea and sat on the floor on the rug in front of the sofa. We talked and drank tea and ate cheese and crackers. It was Ronnie who suggested the lights were too bright, so she turned off all but the small table lamp, and all three of us continued as before. Then it was Martha who lit the first cigarette and Ronnie followed, and she gave me a cigarette. Ronnie watched me light up and said guiltily, "Martha, you and I do not qualify for jobs as ideal role models for Steven." Martha said, "Well, I know he smokes anyway. I prefer that he didn't sneak around to do it. We already learn too many sneaky tricks in our society." Ronnie kidded her, "Now we know why you're not the head of the Special Education Project."

The room was getting smoky in the still July air, so Martha told me to open the window a little wider and I placed the small Hunter fan on the sill and turned on the big window fan in the kitchen window. Ronnie was too uncomfortable with her swimsuit under her clothes, so she removed her jeans and shirt. Martha followed suit, and I got down to my cutoffs, and Martha said, exhaling a stream of smoke into the room, that we were all getting to be smoke fiends. Ronnie talked about Michigan and bad parents. Martha lit two candles, one on each side of the room, and she turned off the table lamp. "Nice, Martha!" Ronnie cooed, as the candle glow draped an almost palpable cocoon of dim, lazily flickering light around us. Martha sat in the middle of the circle we made around the small rug on the floor where we placed the tea and the cheese, and the women rested on their sides in their swimsuits.

Ronnie told Martha, "You haven't burned candles in a long time."

Martha said, "No, not since our all nighter. When was it? Months ago, I guess."

"Yeah, right after gorgeous George," Ronnie lamented. "How did I ever end up with him? Steven, you'd love this guy. Testosterone city. Talk about nuclear overkill."

Martha gave a muffled laugh as she spread cheese on a cracker. "You keep dating the same guy over and over, Ronnie. Only the names change."

"They're all alike anyway, aren't they? I mean, the whole idea is to get, right? It's getting. Giving has nothing to do with it."

Martha protested, "No!"

"Sure it is. Steven, you're a guy, right? You know other guys, right? It's biology, isn't it? Getting sex is the whole idea."

I thought that might be a trick question. I said, "You mean you just want non-physical relationships?"

Ronnie said, "Oh, no, no, I'm talking about relationships that happen to involve sex. That's the whole idea as a guy sees it: How much they can get?"

I shook my head no. "I don't know about other guys, but the whole idea is to give your partner the same as you get. More, if necessary."

Martha smiled and nodded.

Ronnie said, "Well, okay. So you're different."

Martha said, "Steven's different."

Ronnie leaned toward Martha and said, "Martha, my god, talk about giving, his back rub was something else. Steven, you oughtta start your own business. I never felt such hands. Are your hands always that warm?"

Martha grinned, lying face down, her eyes secretly teasing me. "They're not just warm, they're intuitive."

"Lemme see," Ronnie said, reaching for my left hand. "Gimme your hand. Martha, I can't believe this, feel how warm this guy is! You have fever, sweetheart? C'mere. God, his arms are warm, too." She gave me a small laugh. "Must be that hot Italian blood."

I blushed and said, "Well, I don't know about hot-blooded. Warmhearted, maybe." I pulled my hand away to get another cracker.

"Aww," Ronnie said, "look at him blush. Aww, look."

Martha said, "Ronnie, you already embarrassed him once today."

"Really? Steven, was it really that bad? I'm sorry. I thought it was pretty funny, myself. And perfectly natural."

Martha said, "Ronnie, there's a difference between hot-blooded and warmhearted. They don't necessarily go together."

"Ain't that the truth!" Ronnie said. "I've had some very hotblooded, cold-hearted experiences."

"You deserve better, Ron," Martha said.

"Steven," Ronnie said, taking a puff and tilting a finger toward me, "I like your attitude. Martha, why can't I find somebody with an attitude like his?"

Martha sighed and said, "Because you grew up with a lot of aggressive people who didn't like you and you're still trying to -- "

"I know, I know," Ronnie said, ruffled. "Martha, I told you not to start that again or I'd wash your mouth with soap."

Martha gave her a small, pestering smile.

Ronnie said petulantly, crushing out her cigarette in the ashtray on the floor at her side, "Why can't I find somebody nice? I always seem to have the same problem."

Martha said, biting a cracker, "So does Steven. Anyway, Steven has his own problems. He's too shy."

Ronnie said, "Shy? So what, everybody's shy. My problem is, I always end up with these very un-shy heavyweights who come on like gangbusters, sweet talking and smooth, and they turn out to be thugs who just... get some kinda kick out of tormenting people."

Martha said, mildly reproving, "Maybe you don't pay that much attention to people who are good to you. It's easy to take them for granted, because they don't usually come on that strong."

"I pay attention to you, don't I? And you're nice to me."

"Maybe you have a problem accepting niceness in men, not in women."

"Steven's nice, isn't he? I like Steven. And you have trouble finding nice people, too, Martha. But you're so picky."

"I was spoiled early," Martha said. "My first lover was... very, very good to me."

I bristled at Martha's words, turning my eyes to the ceiling. She smiled at me furtively.

"Steven," Ronnie said, reaching for a cracker, "I bet you don't have any problem finding somebody who's nice to you."

I said, "Sure I do."

"Really? But you're so interesting and sensitive." She beamed at me playfully. "Great with a bottle of Coppertone." She narrowed her eyes skeptically. "I can't believe you have a problem finding someone."

I said, "Only happened once. So far."

Ronnie didn't say anything right away. She frowned, pondering, and absently spread cheese on a cracker. "What's it like," she asked wistfully, "to be with someone who's really good to you?"

I said, "Wonderful." I stuffed a cracker into my mouth.

"No, Steven, I mean, seriously, what's it like? How does it happen? How do you make it happen?" Ronnie bit the last of a cracker and rubbed her hands together, shaking off crumbs. "And then there are those who'd like to give, but are too scared."

Martha interjected, "You don't 'make' it happen, Ronnie. It just happens. And not that often."

I said, "You can't make somebody be good to you if they don't want to. I've been raised by people who weren't very nice to me. Not nice in the way one needs, I mean. Relatives bought me things. My parents gave me a place to live. But I wouldn't say they were nice to me. And it's not something you 'do' to somebody else. It's mutual; it's not something you do, it's something that's done by two people."

"Mutual," Ronnie mused slowly. "Mutual. No, I never had that." She looked down at the cracker in her hand and murmured, a bitter edge to her voice, "That's something I sure as hell didn't have much experience with in Michigan. Or New York, either."

There was brief silence in the little room. Martha rose on her arms and stood up quickly. "Are we finished with this cheese and stuff?"

"Yeah, I'm stuffed," Ronnie said, popping one more cracker into her mouth. "Come on, get it away from me. Look at me... I can't even stop eating long enough to talk. I'll never leave it alone while it's right in front of me."

Martha gathered the leftovers. "Come on, Steven, help me get this into the kitchen."

In the kitchen as she re-wrapped the cheese and I helped her put things away, she whispered, "Steven, I have to get her off this subject. Don't let her get into her 'mood'." She glanced at me. "Do you like her?"

"Sure," I said.

"I mean... as a friend. Really. I don't just mean 'like', I mean are you... emotionally comfortable with her? You know? A real friend."

I whispered reassuringly, "I feel very comfortable with her. No pressure at all, if that's what you mean. Not like people I know in Memphis. And she's -- you know, nice to look at."

"Yes," Martha said absently as she arranged things in the little refrigerator. "Yes, she's very nice to look at. She just doesn't think so. She has the same problem you have."