vaguest notion of his home island floating in a romantic glittering sea. From the age of fourteen on, he told me, he’d gone to boarding school in Paris. The Eiffel Tower! Baguettes! The Sorbonne! All promising. And his name!
“A man made of honey,” he’d translated. Could it be any more appealing? Add the man made of honey to the homemade croissants I envisioned every time the word “Paris” was spoken, and I was ready to dine with Baler forever.
I envisioned French men—or really, any man not from the U.S.—as uber-romantic, evolved to the point of near-sainthood. Again, I was denying certain parts of worldliterature. Jean Genet, anyone? Not exactly known for his love stories. But never mind him.
Baler was a competitive bicyclist, so he was in terrific shape. He had black hair, and sea green eyes, and enough charisma to induce me to leave my grocery shopping behind and follow him to a coffee shop. Which was saying something. I’d been scavenging for lunch. The only food in my apartment was the remains of a roasted chicken belonging to Zak. Every few weeks, he’d come home with a couple of grocery bags and a smug look on his face. He’d spend the next several hours chortling to himself as he wedged a lemon into the chicken’s nether regions and inserted herbs beneath its skin.
“My chicken,” he’d sigh, blissed out. Vic preferred her chicken fried. I preferred my chicken inviolate.
Baler was giving me a questioning look. Well, whatever. A favor, to me, meant something minor.
“Of course I can,” I said, and then leaned in to see what I’d agreed to. Maybe it would be something wonderful, like, “Would you please sunbathe upon the deck of my boat, as we sail to Cyprus?” Or “Would you wear a black bikini and movie-star sunglasses, would you drink ouzo and eat olives, would you be embraced by my loving and nondysfunctional family?” Yes, I was ready to say. Yes, yes, yes! Yes, I’d ramble with the goats on picturesque hillsides. Yes, I’d dance on the tables, jingling my tambourine, and YES, I’d embrace the Mediterranean ancestry I didn’t have. I was ready to go.
These things, however, were not what Baler wanted. At all.
“DO YOU THINK that you could bite my penis?” Baler asked.
My vision of rambling with the goats short-circuited and became something not so appealing: bedding down with a satyr. I suddenly remembered other examples of the proclivities of foreign guys. Roman Polanski and his much-reviled film, Bitter Moon, for example. There’d been a notorious sex scene in that movie, involving a gorgeous French actress hopping around in a pig mask for the titillation of Peter Coyote. And what about Last Tango in Paris ? Why had I thought that Americans had a monopoly on perversity? Bite his penis?
“I don’t think that I could, actually,” I said.
“You mean you won’t.”
“That, too.”
What kind of man wanted a woman to bite his penis on a first date? What kind of man wanted a woman to bite his penis ever ?
Zak had a high-school horror story involving his girlfriend Rayna’s grandmother coming to the bedroom door to offer Zak and Rayna an after-school snack. She’d been a little late, considering that Rayna had already been engaged in giving Zak his very first experience with fellatio, on a set of bunk beds. When the door had opened, Zak, in terror, had lost his balance and fallen backward off the top bunk. Later, Rayna had told him he was lucky. When he, bruised and blue-balled, had asked why, she’d told him that her first impulse had been to hold on. With her teeth. Even years later, the retelling of this story still turned Zak green.
Baler was intelligent, no doubt about it. In the short time I’d known him, we’d had a conversation that had touched on Thomas Pynchon, Shakespeare, and string theory. I was bewildered. He’d seemed much too erudite for this kind of uber-visceral request. Not that there was any class of population known for their custom of
“A man made of honey,” he’d translated. Could it be any more appealing? Add the man made of honey to the homemade croissants I envisioned every time the word “Paris” was spoken, and I was ready to dine with Baler forever.
I envisioned French men—or really, any man not from the U.S.—as uber-romantic, evolved to the point of near-sainthood. Again, I was denying certain parts of worldliterature. Jean Genet, anyone? Not exactly known for his love stories. But never mind him.
Baler was a competitive bicyclist, so he was in terrific shape. He had black hair, and sea green eyes, and enough charisma to induce me to leave my grocery shopping behind and follow him to a coffee shop. Which was saying something. I’d been scavenging for lunch. The only food in my apartment was the remains of a roasted chicken belonging to Zak. Every few weeks, he’d come home with a couple of grocery bags and a smug look on his face. He’d spend the next several hours chortling to himself as he wedged a lemon into the chicken’s nether regions and inserted herbs beneath its skin.
“My chicken,” he’d sigh, blissed out. Vic preferred her chicken fried. I preferred my chicken inviolate.
Baler was giving me a questioning look. Well, whatever. A favor, to me, meant something minor.
“Of course I can,” I said, and then leaned in to see what I’d agreed to. Maybe it would be something wonderful, like, “Would you please sunbathe upon the deck of my boat, as we sail to Cyprus?” Or “Would you wear a black bikini and movie-star sunglasses, would you drink ouzo and eat olives, would you be embraced by my loving and nondysfunctional family?” Yes, I was ready to say. Yes, yes, yes! Yes, I’d ramble with the goats on picturesque hillsides. Yes, I’d dance on the tables, jingling my tambourine, and YES, I’d embrace the Mediterranean ancestry I didn’t have. I was ready to go.
These things, however, were not what Baler wanted. At all.
“DO YOU THINK that you could bite my penis?” Baler asked.
My vision of rambling with the goats short-circuited and became something not so appealing: bedding down with a satyr. I suddenly remembered other examples of the proclivities of foreign guys. Roman Polanski and his much-reviled film, Bitter Moon, for example. There’d been a notorious sex scene in that movie, involving a gorgeous French actress hopping around in a pig mask for the titillation of Peter Coyote. And what about Last Tango in Paris ? Why had I thought that Americans had a monopoly on perversity? Bite his penis?
“I don’t think that I could, actually,” I said.
“You mean you won’t.”
“That, too.”
What kind of man wanted a woman to bite his penis on a first date? What kind of man wanted a woman to bite his penis ever ?
Zak had a high-school horror story involving his girlfriend Rayna’s grandmother coming to the bedroom door to offer Zak and Rayna an after-school snack. She’d been a little late, considering that Rayna had already been engaged in giving Zak his very first experience with fellatio, on a set of bunk beds. When the door had opened, Zak, in terror, had lost his balance and fallen backward off the top bunk. Later, Rayna had told him he was lucky. When he, bruised and blue-balled, had asked why, she’d told him that her first impulse had been to hold on. With her teeth. Even years later, the retelling of this story still turned Zak green.
Baler was intelligent, no doubt about it. In the short time I’d known him, we’d had a conversation that had touched on Thomas Pynchon, Shakespeare, and string theory. I was bewildered. He’d seemed much too erudite for this kind of uber-visceral request. Not that there was any class of population known for their custom of
Similar Books
