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April 7, 2004
| PERSONAL ESSAYS |
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| One day in the mid-90s — I can't remember which year it was, what month, or even what season — when I lived in Chicago, I was riding the El home from work, or I could have just been coming back from lunch. I usually took the train during off-peak hours, so there were no businesspeople to get between the city's colorful characters and me. In that time of my life, I considered myself very sympathetic to the less fortunate. I showed my sympathy by listening. When it came to Chicago's leftovers, I cared. |
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Some bedraggled man was sitting next to me, telling me his troubles. I nodded understandingly, occasionally interjecting advice, assent, or commiseration. The world was a hard, cruel place, and we all struggled through it together. This was a common theme of my conversations back then. I often expressed my righteousness loudly; what was the point in being a champion of the wretched if other people didn't know?
That day on the El, my conversation caught a young woman's attention. And then I caught her eye.
She was sitting directly across from us. Her face was long and plain, but kind, her hair stringy. She wore a hooded Mexican serape of the type that was pretty common at the time, and colorful beads. As I talked to my new poor friend, I could see her face grow beatific with admiration for me. It was time to ratchet my empathy up a notch. I placed a hand on the man's shoulder.
"I know, buddy," I said. "I know."
The guy got off the train. But the young woman was still there, looking right at me. She seemed to blush.
"You're impressive," she said.
"Oh, it was nothing," I said.
"Not many people would take the time for him."
"It's just what I do."
We talked for a while; the train was slow, as always. One thing that came up: She was a volunteer at Facets Multimedia, an independent film society on Fullerton Avenue. She'd be working that night. There was a Hungarian movie playing that she really liked. Or maybe it was Finnish. I knew all about the movie. Back then I worked for an "alternative" newspaper and didn't have a TV, so I was more likely to hear about a Bresson retrospective at the Art Institute than, say, Tommy Boy.
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Julia brought her lips gently down on mine. They felt small, slightly off-putting and intriguing.
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"Yeah," I said. "I've been wanting to see that one for a while."
She had a shift tonight, she said. I should come by. She'd get me in for free. The way she looked at me, I sensed that wasn't all I'd get. But I kept that sense buried deep. This was about a free movie, and I never turned down a freebie.
I went to the 7 PM showing. She was there, taking tickets. Her face glowed when she saw me.
"You came!" she said.
"Of course," I said.
The movie was good. At least, I think I remember it being good. As I write this, I seem to recall a frozen tundra-scape and a struggle for survival between mortal enemies. Or a guy lost in the bowels of a bureaucratic nightmare. It's possible that the movie could have contained both. When I got out, her shift was over. We went for a beer.
After an hour or so, we took the bus to her apartment, the basement of a three-story building with yellow bricks on a side street in Wicker Park, just off North Avenue, or possibly Division. The place smelled like patchouli. She had a cat. There were herbal tea boxes and jars of grain in the kitchen. Her albums were of the Indigo Girls genre. Dark-colored paisley scarves draped around the living room.
"I like it," I said.
We sat on her futon and talked a little. Eventually, I moved to kiss her, opening my mouth wide, but she only drew hers into a tiny O. Her tongue barely flicked; her breath tasted sour and nutty. She looked at me with sad, loping eyes. I ran my hand through her dirty hair.
She took me into her bedroom and onto another futon, which was supported by a homemade wooden frame. Without saying a word, she lifted her shirt over her head. Her skin was pale and her breasts tiny. She sat there looking lost. Perhaps I'd felt the smallest flame of desire for her before, but it flickered out right then.
"What do you want me to do?" I said.
"I don't know," she said. "I've never done this before."
There's no way for me to write the dialogue that follows without sounding turgid, so I'll summarize. Five years earlier, she'd been raped. She got pregnant and had an abortion. She hadn't touched another man, until now.
"I should go," I said.
We didn't exchange another word. She was still sitting there, half-naked, when I left the room. I walked out into the night, and, I kid you not, it was misting.
If I walked past her on the street now, I probably wouldn't recognize her. I can't even remember her name. Who knows if she's found peace, or greater agony, or where she lives now, or if she's even alive at all? As far as my life is concerned, she's still in that room with that lost hangdog look, and she always will be.
Still, the night sticks. When I left her house, I waited an hour in the rain, for the bus that would take me to the train that would take me home. That hour, that night, and most of the next day I was dazed, as though walking in a particularly ugly dream. Even now, at the oddest moments, the memory comes back. But it's not like I did anything particularly wrong. I could have taken horrible advantage of an impossibly vulnerable person. I could have mocked her troubles, but that wasn't in me. At worst, I extricated myself from an uncomfortable situation without causing any permanent hurt.
At the same time, I used false, knee-jerk public altruism to gain the affections of an obviously damaged woman. From the beginning, I saw that her eyes contained deep sorrow, a look that warned me: Either be this person's friend, a true friend, or step away. Instead I ran all the way to second base before pulling myself out of the game. I guess that if this had been a unique incident, I could have written it off as a strange situation. But it wasn't.
All my single life, but particularly in my mid-20s, I made it a habit to hook up with women who I wasn't attracted to, who I didn't even particularly like, because I could, because they wanted to, because it was easy, because I don't really know why, but I did. Just out of college, while I was living in professional exile in a small Indiana town, I visited Bloomington for the night and ended up naked on a futon with an extremely unpleasant, overweight, mustachioed grad student who my friend called "The Horse." When I was 14, I took a girl to the movies. I knew she was hopelessly in love with me, so I allowed her the privilege of jacking me off into a bucket of popcorn. At 16, while my Jewish youth group chapter was hosting a regional conference, I procured a van in the parking lot and dry-humped a cute little blond girl from Las Vegas within an inch of our mutual explosion. We then exchanged letters for six months (hers were full of lipstick smudges and misspellings) before I called, breaking her poor heart for no reason.
By the time my near-hookup with the woman on the El happened, I was an adult, if not grown-up. I should have been more discriminating, should have had more pride in myself, and respect for her. The incident illuminated the original sin of my existence. Was I really born predatory, manipulative, but ultimately a moral and emotional coward? As the Magic 8 Ball might say: Signs point to yes. I believe that we can will our life toward goodness, improve our basic behavior, and become tender lovers and responsible spouses, but our essential selves remain unchanged.
At the time, I was so ashamed of myself that I went to a psychic in whose powers several friends of mine swore, and told her of my bad habit.
"There's nothing you can do," she said. "It's in your nature."
Who we were at our worst moment is who we are forever.
And with that cheery thought, I bid you good day. n°
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: | |
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Neal Pollack is the author of The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature, Beneath The Axis Of Evil, and Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel. For a daily dose of his satirical brilliance, visit his website, www.nealpollack.com. He lives in Austin, Texas. |
Commentarium (14 Comments)
"Who we were at our worst moment is who we are forever.
And with that cheery thought, I bid you good day."
I'm sure I'm not the first, but I wholly disagree with this easy, fatalistic kiss off of an ending. It's simply not true.
"It is a sin to not sleep with a woman when she calls you to her bed" - Zorba the Greek
"At worst, I extricated myself from an uncomfortable situation without causing any permanent hurt." WRONG! For whatever reason, she bared herself to you both literally and figuratively and your response was to leave?? She didn't even get the level of sympathy you gave the guy on the bus. "ultimately a moral and emotional coward' says it better than I could.
"In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was japanning. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."
Slut:
I agree that this piece was pretty frivolous, but the guy who wrote it also does a lot of political satire. Not exactly someone you'd accuse of fiddling while Rome burned....
Wow...the lack of self-knowledge and self-reflection in this piece is astonishing. A missed opportunity to talk about fear of shame--other people's. That's what makes shame so interesting. I thought this was where it was heading, but no. Another shrugging cad who equates confession with revelation. Learned more about her bravery than his cowardice.
Blech.
"Who we were at our worst moment is who we are forever." True - but not the whole truth. Who we were at our worst moment(s) is only a piece of who we were then, now, tomorrow. Nothing in life is static - not the emotions in the train bedroom bus present, not the manwoman who experienced any of them, not even the memory of the experience when compared nowthentomorrow. Could he have shown more compassion, less self-interest, some sense of responsibility towards the events he'd set in motion? Of course. Can YOU think of a moment when YOU couldn't have done been, been more, taken less?
i don't get the hypercriticism here. consider that all the pieces in this special issue approach shame in a different way. this one, as far as i can tell, is from start to finish about shame of all kinds. try not to judge it for a minute. try to see that, whether the narrator knows it or not, whether he's got an ounce of insight, he's bringing you scenes that - i imagine - make you shrink back and away from the piece. that's how i know it's about shame; it seems to be the broad theme of it throughout: he should be ashamed (of the initial encounter with her), he tries to tell us about his unease with it later, her nakedness (too bad we never get her head... but this isn't her view.... ) just screams out shame she has. she feels compelled to undress. the awkwardness, right or wrong, is shame-making for both. okay so he has a lousy response; something else to feel ashamed about later. i like the piece for the layers involved. you can feel shame when you do something wrong (or even not quite the right thing that needed to be done) at the time and you can feel shame about it later. and you can change your mind, too, about how it all went.
i couldn't possibly fill this space with anything interesting i just wanted to write to say i just about sent your story to all of my friends and still don't know what to think, but that just comes from me being slightly neurotic. guess i just felt the need to say, i can't shake the story from my memory banks. thanks.
This article displays the consciensciousness and sensitivity that most men operate under. A chick or couple on the prowl together probably would have gone for it, anyway.
OK. I vented. Now I'll tell you why I think the writer is honorable. I am 41, and have had a wide range of sexual experiences. I started into group sex 12 years ago, when even some of my guy friends made fun of me, and female friends said I could never marry a "real" girl since she would find out what I've done. Contrast this to last year, when a girl I adore asked me if I was into group sex because, as I later found out, she won't date anyone who isn't. I have slept with a lot of women, and at one point my motto was that, after the act, I never regretted any of it. Not to brag, but I date and sleep with very fine women, usually little more than half my age, last night being a 26 YO ex-stripper. I am not bragging, just showing my credentials.
Over time, though, I have come to appreciate how a single sexual encounter can be so damaging to a girl. Had he slept with her, the writer, who apparently was way out of the league of the girl, would have raised her expectations, at least for a certain period of time, about who she could find for a serious mate. Women I have known, including those that I have had sex and "relationships" with, have wasted years of their life searching and holding out for what they never can realistically find in a guy. Each casual encounter with a ballplayer or lead singer in a band leaves them with the impression that one day, they'll permanently land a guy like that. In the meantime, the serious courters at their level are shunned, and what could be something special between the two never occurs. Whether it be the late-night booty call with what she views as am "ex" but who the "ex" views as someone who was just sex, or the one-nighter with the hot guy, expectations are affected, and at this point in my life, wanting to settle down with someone special but increasingly frustrated being able to find that someone, I think a lot of the reason is this type of thing and the access I have been denied to those women I truly adored. I was closing in a true romantic interest 3 years ago or so, when Bo Jackson decided he wanted some booty from her. Of course, she disappeared from my radar screen for a year. I've hung out, dated if you will, a girl who can't connect to me since her "boyfriend" that she really hadn't seen inn a conventional sense for a year by the time we met over a year ago still booty calls her every other week at 4 AM, and throws her out by 9 AM, when she comes crying back into my arms and bed, but she's so bonded to him from the sex with him, and I have so little chance due to the amount she limits me to, that our relatoinship will never go anywhere soon.
So, he did the right thing. She'll understand her market value better. She was raped once - she doesn't need to go to bed with a guy who has one foot out the door before they even start, and have her life turned upside down, and her expectations hopelessly raised, even if for only a matter of weeks when a sincere, potentially-loving suitor might come along.
This is not really an issue of men being different than women - but we just don't get nearly as many opportunities for sex with partners so desirable they would not want to date us for real, at least not without paying.
So, the writer did the right thing. Maybe the next night, she will meet a guy who would worship the ground she walks on and eat her pussy for an hour. She probably wouldn't have given such a guy the chance if she had stud sex with the writer.
I think you have it all wrong. This stranger needed you and you turned away from her. Even just one night, if you really meant it, would have meant the world to her. People look at the world in black and white while it is really gray. It isn't often what you do but why. You could have at least stayed and held this poor hurting soul.
You are the male equivalent of a woman who "accidentally" drops something so she has to bend over to pick it up or a woman who says implicitly "Come here, bad boy" and then says out-right "You dirty bastard, all you want is sex."
Except here, your weapon is not sex, but your sensitivity.
I think you played a very harsh game with the young woman you depicted. And the "cute little blonde girl from Las Vegas". You need to stop attracting people and rejecting them. I know, buddy. I know.
Amazing essay! I rarely read all the way through a Nerve essay but this one was intriguing, inspiring, and rejuvenated (ever so slightly) my belief that man has, at his core, a will to do what is right and good.
Thanks.
Now you say something