Long Hair

8

 

Then he told her and she started crying uncontrollably and an hour or so later, in the dark eucalyptus grove, they were standing in their oval rut in the knee-high grass. And just as before, when she had leaned against him and he had recognized a cue to embrace her, now she turned her face up to his and he recognized a cue to kiss her. Exhausted and hungry, he leaned down and did it. Anything to keep her from crying.

The rest of the night he was on automatic pilot. She drove them to his studio apartment and he invited her to stay for dinner.

“Oh shit!” he said looking into the small near-empty refrigerator. “That’s right… I was going to go to the grocery store. How about breakfast cereal?”

After the cereal dinner, she sat in the stuffed chair, he on the bed. He was afraid to make his moves because he wasn’t yet convinced she would accept his touch, so he started an empty chatter.

“Yeah, didn’t I tell you about that? I got out of the hospital and got this place and everything I needed was already here. Furniture, dishes, utensils, even sheets. And it’s not a furnished apartment. There was an old lady living here before and she died. Her family took her clothes and a few other things but they left all this. Even a jar of coins… Yeah, this is a weird place… There’re these Russian Orthodox priests living here and I see them in the halls all the time with these long beards and long black cassocks down to their shoes… And across the hall is this creep who listens to records of Ku Klux Klan meetings. Swear-to-god! … Yeah, it’s really disgusting. And whenever he leaves, a friend of his comes around and the wife greets him at the door with a kiss…”

Which brought him around to sex. It occurred to him that he didn’t really care if she turned him down. At least then she would leave and he could go to sleep. So he got up and knelt beside her chair and kissed her. She not only didn’t stop him but tilted her head and ground her mouth against his. O.k., but she had already done that much in the park. His hand went straight to a breast. After the shock wore off, he waited, and she didn’t remove it. So he slid it under her sweater and bra. Still no resistance.

“Let’s sit on the bed,” he said and stood and sat on the bed.

She got up uncertainly and sat next to him.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said cringing with embarrassment. “I’m a virgin.”

“O.k.,” he said, surprised, but not turned on or off by it. “You weren’t much of a groupie, were you?”

She laughed and said, “No, I wasn’t.”

She was now just another one night stand that he knew wouldn’t go anywhere. Better than masturbation though. So they started kissing again. He slid his hand under her sweater and then into her pants. Courteously, dispassionately, he explored her desanctified body.

He noticed that he had forgotten to turn out the harsh overhead light. He reached to the switch. Then in the dimness of the porch light through the window shade, he unzipped his fly and put her hand in it. So far she hadn’t shown even reluctance at any point.

“You want to get undressed?” he asked.

She pulled her hand out and thought.

“I dunno… “she said. “I… I…”

“Forget it… It’s o.k… No big deal,” he said then zipped his fly.

He realized from her relieved smile that she had mistaken his indifference for kindness. She kissed him.

Then she announced she had to go and he walked her to the head of the stairs that lead to the street door. They pressed their bodies and lips hard against each other then parted with a few light pecks. Already they were exchanging the small affections of a couple.

“Wanna get together tomorrow?” she asked. It would be the first time they were together on a Saturday.

“Sure,” he said.

“O.k., I’ll come around . . . how’s eleven?”

“How ‘bout one?”

“O.k.”

They kissed again and parted, her face radiant with the quiet joy of someone in love and loved. She slowly started down the stairs, releasing his hand reluctantly from the third step. Then she turned and ran, boots clomping, hair flairing. He had never seen her so happy. When she was outside, she turned and gave him a quick, playful little wave through the glass in the street door, then disappeared.

He turned and walked back to his apartment. The cereal had revived him somewhat, but now he was depressed. True, he was no longer pinned under crushing frustration, but he had conclusively missed, yet again, the Big Bliss.

As he went inside, he remembered that he hadn’t answered her question in the eucalyptus grove, “Do you think you could love me again?”

Six weeks later, they got an apartment together, and he didn’t answer the question in those six weeks, in the three years they lived together, or in the two years it took them to break up.