Authors: Nate Allen
A Change of Needs (6 page)
She stood there in his kitchen, her head tilted to the side as she pulled the barrettes from her hair and placed them on the counter, surprisingly clear eyed and focused for someone who claimed to be unable to drive only an hour earlier. They stood there in the surreality of the moment looking at each other, reflecting on what had so naturally just taken place, both recognizing the absurdity of it like some stereotypical midlife movie trailer playing in their collective mind’s eye. To guys her age she was a late night booty call, a young woman with a questionable reputation, but to him she represented the innocence and glory of youth, and in the dim fluorescent light …a flickering reminder of his.
Make no mistake about it, this was the exception to the rule, and he was more than a bit self-conscious of it. He was always flirting with younger women reflexively, in the bars, the cashier at the grocery store, the store clerk at the mall, etc., and while they often played along in amusing fashion, he had the expectation of success and futility of a greyhound chasing the elusive
mechanical rabbit
, it just didn’t happen. He saw this occasion for what it was, it couldn’t exist outside the bubble they were cohabitating at the moment for countless reasons. He was aided by the fact that she had known him, been a witness to the warmth that existed between the father and his young child, and she was in need of some tenderness for a change, to feel like the prize, and not the consolation, and the obvious desire was written all over Jake’s face.
He felt characteristically nervous, she was as cool as the other side of the pillow, “Dear God please forgive me for I am about to be a bad man,” he thought to himself. She put her finger to his mouth to shush him as if she had heard something he hadn’t even said, and then she simultaneously unbuttoned the top of her blouse with her left hand while unbuttoning his jeans and sliding her right around his waist and down the back of his pants until pinching his ass and pulling him toward her with a smile. “
Bet’cha didn’t see this coming when you left the house tonight,
” she said, “
No ma’am, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t danced across my mind,
” he replied, in barely more than a whisper.
She took him by the hand and led him through the hallways of his house to the bedroom as though he were the guest. The last time she had been there she had put his son to bed. He watched as she continued to undress, slowly revealing a large, tasteful tattoo of a vine, ivy of course, which grew out of the crease of her pelvis, twisting and turning up the right side of her body until arriving at, and half encircling her breast, the image unforgettable and ridiculously beautiful, recognizing he belonged in the picture about as much as a velvet Elvis among Rembrandts and Rubens, but not about to forfeit the opportunity.
He had found in his life there were those rare moments that you don’t forget, the smell, the taste, the emotion, …the sensation of which all come flooding back to you as vivid as the moment in which they were lived, years, even decades later. Even rarer he had found was the awareness of such a moment when you were still in the midst of it, and he recognized this as such. He stalled, propped in the doorway committing every detail to memory, “
I’m in need of some affection.”
she said,
“come to bed …and leave that light on.
” He thought of what the woman he had met at Leon’s, Rae Anne, had written in her email, of gifts and moral dilemma, of affirmation, and while he would later want to print up t-shirts commemorating the experience on some juvenile “reptilian part of the brain” level, he would keep the details of the evening largely to himself, carefully tucked away in that lockbox in his mind that each of us has where we keep such things, and take the memory out on those occasions when perhaps he didn’t feel quite so good about his condition, because they were sure to arise. It was an experience that would have some significance for a number of reasons, none more important than the fact it would serve as a springboard for what was to follow, and the confidence it gave him would be very attractive and necessary.
Chunk, having been the first to bed, was the first to wake. “
What the hell happened here last night Snake?
” “
Did you clean up the house after we got home?
” Not knowing what he meant, Jake got up to see what he was talking about. Ivey had gone, but before doing so had cleaned up the kitchen and dining room. She had taken his phone, called her cell and saved her number in his, then sent him a text message which simply read
“Thanks for the ride ;) …Give me a call if I can return the favor :))
”
A yellow barrette lay next to it on the table as an intentional souvenir. “
Chunk, you’d have been proud of your boy last night,
” he muttered with a grin, “
I
” for Ivey. “
Huh,
” replied Harvey, “
have you seen my glasses?
”
.
It had now been almost two weeks since she had met him on her evening out with the ladies, and it had been her hectic life as usual, in short, busy as a cat covering up shit. A plethora of children’s activities, homework, art classes, piano lessons, gymnastics and the boys’ athletic practices/games, the balance of mental and physical stimulation she sought for them …and herself, and yet she still fulfilled her domestic obligations and had time for her pet projects, i.e., social and charitable outlets which satisfied the altruist in her upbringing.
She was amazingly organized. But her curiosity of him was front and center in her mind’s spare time as she multi-tasked during that period. She was simply pragmatic, responsibilities came before pleasure, children’s needs before hers, but that familiar primal itch so to speak was flaring up, and she had hopes, high hopes that this fellow Jake might be able to offer some help, and their meeting had been arranged.
She was not new to this, it was not her first drive-in movie so to speak, and she had been in the proverbial backseat before. It had only been a couple of times, but Rae had stepped outside her marriage to Glen in the past. Unlike this, they were not premeditated, but random hook-ups often with alcohol involved, those sinful grapes whispering in her ear “It’s okay…nobody will know…you deserve this.” While he offered much to her as a friend, husband, partner, even when he chose to as a lover, she was now a woman in her mid-thirties and sexually smoldering, hungering for oxygen and fuel to feed the fire, and for the life of him he could not see the smoke, or was deliberately looking the other way like a man who knows his roof needs tending, but lacks what it takes to remedy it.
She told herself that his ignorance or apathy of it gave her an out, a
reason
,
though truth be told, it was more of an
excuse
,
the difference being a reason is based in fact and an excuse is something we merely present as a reason when one doesn’t exist, a lie of convenience we tell ourselves to disable the regret or remorse. How does one justify infidelity anyway? Perhaps we deny the promise of fidelity existed in the first place, or simply tell ourselves that the
intimate
details of the contract had been rendered “null and void” by “nonperformance.” Who can say for certain, but she made it work for her, largely guilt-free, like “diet” adultery.
The human mind has a way of collaborating in such matters anyway, cataloging behaviors that make the wrong seem right, filed away in just the right category; one man’s act of “murder” is another’s “justifiable homicide;” one teenager’s graffiti = “art,” another’s seen as unsightly “vandalism;” one spouse’s “calculated act of betrayal” is another’s “justifiable adultery,” …get it? The mind colors these acts in a way that makes them defensible and safe, so that we can get up in the morning and look at ourselves in the mirror without self-loathing …and establishes the precedent necessary to any good defense, so that we may do them again if we want.
Semantics, perspective, or just plain old “puh-TAY-toe/puh-TAH-toe” nonsense that gives one permission to do the unacceptable and inappropriate in a selfish pursuit of happiness and help “mark time” as we serve our sentence, prisoner to our circumstances, without trying to escape them. And do so without the associated shame that a Baptist preacher’s daughter might be inclined, predisposed, or obliged to feel. Call it the moral equivalent of the “Security System” sticker on the household window when there isn’t one …it’s really just empty bullshit offering protection against ill feelings we might ought to have, a psychological self-defense mechanism which keeps us functioning.
Whatever you call it, she was good at it, her compartments had compartments like a Russian matryoshka doll. She would not have a simple dichotomy or duality to her personality, she would have a plurality of guises, like Sybil, only it wasn’t a disorder but a gift, available on-demand and each was recognizably an aspect of her. Like the K-cars of the 80’s the basic frame remained intact, only the details adapted and arranged to the performance she had planned or what the situation demanded of her, mother, daughter, friend, wife, MILF, surreptitious amateur porn-star, and while we all have them, and most of them are socially acceptable, she manipulated them with the coolness and skill of a serial killer …or a D.C. politician. Always in control of it, like that careful
southern twang
of hers, she would be better at it than anyone Jake had ever met, except for himself of course.
On those occasions she had scratched her itch she had quelled it for a time, but it had always been done with a bit of trepidation and unavoidable stress about all in her life that was endangered in doing so, and consequently it had almost always been done less than satisfactorily, leaving something more to be desired, but done nonetheless. Perhaps because of the business with Frank, some trace of doubt and suspicion in her partner was always present which prohibited her from truly being comfortable, surrendering to the moment, and taking what she wanted from it.
Undoubtedly, because of Frank, she came to consider it a viable option to her predicament. To bridge the gaps in what her encounters had lacked, what she had conceptualized and sought was an ongoing relationship without expectations other than that of “no expectations.” With passion but without emotion, “no-strings” except of the “tie me up” variety, and the all-important communication and familiarity lending itself to a mutually satisfying, and gratifying experience. Where each party would get something they couldn’t get elsewhere, or were afraid to ask for. It seemed unrealistic, but she thought it tenable and sensed perhaps she had found a coconspirator in the form of this brown-eyed middle-aged single father. She would present it to him in a surprisingly frank and businesslike manner, and much like the interview it in fact was, in typical Rae Anne Johnston fashion, maintaining the final say over what if anything would happen, discerning whether or not Jake had the necessary credentials, was desirous of the “benefit package,” and wanted the job. Her assessment of all these things would determine whether or not she would extend the actual offer.
Jake had been diagnosed with something akin to a heart-murmur or irregular heartbeat as a child, it was not of the life-threatening variety but was best explained as having too much adrenaline
per se
, or a faulty adrenaline switch, the result was that he always had what felt like a degree of constant “
static
” on the line like an overseas phone call, or an AM radio station, a metaphoric “ringing in the ears” which he became immune to over time. But under those circumstances that naturally create stress in each of us and the physiological response of “fight or flight” sets in, his body would overreact unnecessarily to inane situations and stimuli, as if Pavlov’s dogs once conditioned to salivate at a bell began to salivate uncontrollably at a whisper, similarly he frequently felt nervous when there was no reason to be nervous. And it had made for a difficult life.
When you combine the physiological aspects of his reverberation with the self-consciousness that comes from an adolescent and pubescent period defined by isolation and hardship, it was a wonder he wasn’t a virgin. It created for a terrible intersection of conflicting emotions when confronted with females he was attracted to, the excitement flipping the hair-trigger adrenaline switch and the exaggerated physical response telling him to run away from the thing his heart and mind told him to run toward. So when it was said he was nervous when he met Rae Anne that first evening, and that it was rare for him as an adult, it has to be understood in the context of his life, that the nervousness itself was not rare, but the degree of it most certainly was. And “yes,” as strange as it may sound, he welcomed it, because it meant something extraordinary was at hand that would test and draw upon all of the aspects of his manhood to stand his ground.
Psychasthenia
is a $10 word he learned in his Psychology studies which he understood to be associated with unwanted aspects of introversion. Encompassing various elements of neurotic behavior …phobias, anxiety, compulsions, the beholder of which knows are irrational, but still can’t help themselves. Now antiquated and seldom used, it has since been broken down into more specific and familiar diagnoses such as OCD, etc… But then again, this was his understanding of it and Psychology is an interpretive, abstract science, otherwise there would only be one theory, which wouldn’t be a theory …it would be a law. And he liked the sound of the word and interpreted it for his own purposes to explain his compulsive obsession with punctuality, and the stress not being on time created for him. Being allergic to stress he tried to avoid it as much as possible. He could tolerate tardiness in others, but being late intensified that ever-present
static
in him, and consequently he arrived at the park before her, or so he thought. At this point not entirely remembering what she looked like, and hoping he would recognize her and not be disappointed …and vice versa.
He walked from the parking lot toward the opposing park benches, “chin up, chest out, eyes forward” as his father had taught him, with a slow measured gate of well earned natural swagger enhanced by the confidence his encounter with Ivey had left him with. He had the understanding that this was an audition, and he dressed in a casual fashion for which he was best suited, and what he thought she had found attractive in their initial meeting. Boot-cut jeans, a white button-down dress shirt, two buttons undone, sleeves slightly rolled, and the hem not tucked, wheat colored nubuck work boots. A day’s worth of whiskers in addition to the groomed hair on his face, and a bit of gel in his thinning salt-and-peppered hair, because “the occasional wind was not his friend.” He was unpretentiously vain, and hoped to give the impression that he was extremely interested, but not desperate, as if he was doing the sizing up like he had another interview later in the day.