Men Seeking Women Page 5

  Still, I want to live with you. Yes, you. I don’t like going to bed alone, and the mornings are even worse. On the weekends, I will sometimes go to a store just to hear someone speak. Do you ever get lonesome for a voice? I don’t mean lonely, which has always seemed to be an inner state, possibly even normal, but I’m talking about flat-out lonesome for another living being in the house, not counting plants and animals. I don’t understand people who have pets instead of friends, but don’t get me wrong—animal lovers are welcome in my life.

  This whole electronic deal makes me as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I’m afraid my neighbors will somehow learn it was me who wrote this. I’m afraid of coming off utterly pathetic, like a wacked-out loner, or a psycho rural type. One thing I should mention is that I am not a gun owner. I’m not against them, but I don’t see the need to have one. It’s easier to buy meat at the grocery store than to hunt. I don’t own a pickup truck either. I don’t smoke or do drugs. I will upon occasion drink wine, but only at night and never alone—which means I’ve been sober lately. I’m not a fanatic gym guy with muscles so swelled that my head seems small by comparison, but I do walk a mile a day. I have a steady income and a certain amount of savings. I’m not the handsomest man who ever came down the pike, but not the ugliest either.

  It is easier to tell you what I am not, rather than what I am. Maybe this is why I don’t know what kind of woman I want. I’m open-minded. What’s best for me is to describe what I don’t want, so if the shoe fits, you can nix yourself right out of the mix.

  Say for example your back has been out for three weeks. You refuse to take care of it—or take care of yourself. I have been doing the cooking, the cleaning, and the laundry. I get medicine for you, arrange appointments with chiropractors and massage therapists. I don’t mind doing this. I enjoy it, in fact. Taking care of you is part of loving you. I enjoy being someone you can depend on.

  Are you Internet women with me so far? Because I’m going to go on a little bit. I’m not some nut who needs to be needed, and will only be happy with an incontinent woman in a wheelchair with her hair falling out and her fingers rotting off. That’s not what I want. I want someone who doesn’t mind being loved on a little bit.

  Let’s say I know your back hurts like a migraine. You don’t sleep well. You can barely walk, and when you do, your posture is crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Getting in and out of the car is hard, and backing up is nearly impossible because you can’t quite turn your head to see safely behind you. I will drive you if you ask, but you don’t ask for anything. After three weeks that started getting to me.

  When you run out of overnight back medicine with a sleep inducer, you don’t replace it. You don’t see a doctor or exercise. You don’t pour hot baths and sprinkle in the special powder I got in town. You don’t accept help from your women friends. You don’t rest. You won’t admit that your body is off its feed.

  When I brought this up, you got mad as a wet hornet. It was like your marrow turned molten and was burning inside each bone. You turned red-faced and began yelling. Strands of drool hung between your lips, and drops went flying out of your mouth. Your ankles and hands twitched like you were on trucker pills. You aged right in front of me as if from the inside out, your lovely face pulling into deep furrows. Dark hammocks appeared beneath each eye socket. All this happened while you were screaming your head off at me. I treated you like a queen and you acted like I was filling your royal goblet with poison.

  You became furious that I stayed calm. You said I was mad at you for being sick. You said I resented taking care of you.

  I said that’s not true. I said you were mad at yourself for being sick. I said you were mad at me for saying you needed to take better care of yourself.

  Whew, doggies, that last part sparked you up big time. I thought steam was going to rise off your head. You yelled and yelled and I had to look at your ear, which is beautiful by the way, because I couldn’t bear seeing any more flying saliva. I kept telling myself it wasn’t personal, that your back hurt like an impacted wisdom tooth. After two hours, I left for work and when I returned, you erupted again and continued until after midnight. You wore me out but I could not sleep. The worst of it was you pushed me away then accused me of being distant.

  I have to stop and say that if any of this holds any truth for any of you women reading this, do me a favor and just skip to the next name on the list. Please leave me alone. I’ve had my turn with you. My dad yelled at me the whole time I was a kid and I admit I am sensitive to it. I understand that some couples blow off steam by fighting, then make up with sex. Those people need to find each other. I’m just not built that way. I am not a hippie but I like peace and love.

  You accuse me of being contemptuous and scornful and selfish. It is never my actual words you get upset with, but how you interpret my tone, which leaves me without any level ground. I can’t contradict you because you are quick to claim that your interpretation is valid. Somebody’s feelings are always real. You cannot judge feelings. Invariably you say something mean over your shoulder as you are walking out of the room, then go lie on your side of the bed and wait for me to come and make you feel better. Sometimes I’m just not up to the chore. If I don’t take you in my arms and forgive you on the spot, you get mad and we’re back to spit city again.

  Pretty soon you’re back to red-faced yelling with that saliva acting like it’s got a life of its own. Finally you exhaust yourself. You approach me but stop at arm’s length, and say in a monotone, “I love you. I’m sorry.” Often you will say it again in the same dull, flat voice. It’s not an apology or a declaration of love. The only time you say you love me is when you feel bad for mistreating me.

  Anyhow, you got up from bed while I was making you lunch. You sat at the table. You didn’t come into the kitchen to say hi, or give me a hug or a kiss. You sat and waited for food. Your posture was excellent because of your back, perhaps the only good thing to come of your malady. Your hair had golden highlights from the morning sun that washed in the window. I’d just completed vacuuming the dining room and living room because I know it hurts your back to run the sweeper. I was making you soup and a sandwich. You sat at the drop-leaf maple table I gave you a month ago and began to yell at me.

  You said all my effort made you feel beholden to me, and you resented feeling vulnerable. You called me a few names. Your face was red and the spit was on your chin. I served your lunch. You gobbled it up and didn’t say thanks.

  The saddest part is that none of this upset me. I’ve become numb, plus I know it’s because your back hurts like a dog bite. What made me mad came later. You were willing to let me leave for work without making any effort to smooth things out. I pointed this out and you followed me to the door. I thought maybe you’d give me a kiss, but you said you couldn’t talk to me because my anger made you uncomfortable.

  I drove to work with those words ringing in my head. I wanted to write them down so I wouldn’t forget them, but there was no need—I’ll remember them a long time. You can yell at me but I’m not supposed to respond because it might make you uncomfortable. Halfway to work, I called in sick, and kept on going. I just boogied on down the road. That was six months ago.

  So if any of this sounds like the kind of woman you are, you can just mouse-click me out of your life. I am fed up with your type. I don’t want love, I want a friend.

  I rented a small place on the edge of the nearest college town. Young kids live all around me. They are a dazzling bunch, their skin covered with pictures and their faces full of metal. The other day in a diner, I saw a girl remove a stud from the space below her lower lip and squirt milk from the hole. I have to admit, it tickled me no end.

  I’ve tried to tell you what I’m not, but what I am is anybody’s guess. I know some of you might think only a big jerk would leave a woman with a bad back, but I did my best. Besides, I called her and she was better. She said as soon as I went out, her back went in. So it wa
s all my fault after all.

  I have to admit I feel like a moron in this cyber café. I am the oldest person by fifteen years, and no one looks at me like I’m a cool older guy. Beside me are two guys with ragged goatees playing a video game with two shaved-head guys across the room. They are laughing and having fun, and I can’t remember when I did either. I have entered a new world. Living here makes me feel young, and I have been thinking of getting a tattoo. It will say “No Yellers.” I will casually roll my sleeves up when I am around women who interest me.

  A man is never too old to change, I say. I’m not running off to the piercing parlor, but I know how to monkey around with the Internet. I kind of like having a secret username. I don’t know how to get these words onto the magazine page for you to see. I’ll ask the woman who runs this place. She has so much metal hanging off her face, it would be like kissing a tackle box, but I like her anyhow. She’s nice to me. She said she’s rooting for me to find you. She said you’re out there. She said I was a good catch.

  So I’ll check back tomorrow. I promise to write to all and sundry.

  MINESWEEPER

  David Liss

  To Warren’s mind, Sandra Quint carried a good twenty pounds more than she ought to have if she were looking to appeal to the average guy—who did she think she was kidding with those big arms?—but Warren, who had his own body issues, was not the average guy. He found himself drawn to women who weighed a little extra—not necessarily because he found them attractive, but because he convinced himself that he would have better luck with women who might be self-conscious about their looks. While a perfectly sound idea, it had so far failed to yield much in the way of results.

  Other than being a bit on the chunky side, Sandra Quint was distractingly pretty. She had a perfect heart-shaped face, piercing blue eyes, and black-rooted bleached hair pulled back in a short ponytail. She liked to display her enormous breasts in low-cut tank tops.

  He had seen her around the department for the past few months, but hadn’t found a chance to talk to her before now, so this, he knew, was his big chance.

  “I guess you like Henry James,” he said, his eyes pointed somewhere between her breasts and her face.

  “I just need the course distribution requirements form,” she explained. She looked at her Swatch.

  “You know,” he pressed. “Peter Quint from ‘The Turn of the Screw.’ ”

  “That’s interesting,” said Sandra Quint, who was a medievalist and very possibly did not know Henry James from a hole in her ass. She had a dry, surprisingly deep voice. Warren liked women with high, squeaky voices, since they were invariably nicer to him. Still, he liked Sandra’s voice too.

  “I don’t really like to read Henry James, but there have been a bunch of movies; all of them kind of suck, but the Lynn Redgrave one is probably best. Then there’s The Nightcomers, with Marlon Brando—I guess a prehistory of Quint. You’re not likely to come across it by accident, but if you like obscure Marlon Brando movies, it’s worth looking for. If you’re stupid enough to go to those shitty chain video places, you won’t find it. But Lost Reel on Federal Highway has it.”

  “Hey, that’s interesting,” the uninterested Sandra Quint told him as she grabbed her course distribution requirements sheet and fled.

  Warren paused for a moment before looking up to see if Edgardo had witnessed the exchange, but Edgardo typed away furiously, trying to get the department chair’s letters perfect before the big meeting with the provost. That idiot had been working in the department for six months, and he still killed himself trying to get every little thing done.

  Warren took a moment to decide whether he wanted to lean back to look at the clock on the wall or play a game of Minesweeper on the computer. The clock won: it said 11:30. “I’m going to lunch,” he announced.

  “Have fun,” Edgardo answered wearily, while Warren walked toward the kitchen area. Edgardo knew perfectly well that no one would see Warren again before 1:30 or 2:00.

  The office’s little kitchen area smelled of burned coffee, spoiled cheese, and regular, nondescript garbage. Warren held his breath, as if he were diving into a pool, before heading into the tiny room to retrieve his bagged lunch from the departmental fridge. He always stuck his stuff in the back, lodging it behind the two containers of key lime yogurt he’d bought and partially opened last year. No one would go near the food back there in the refrigerator’s fuzziest section. Tucker, the department chair, kept getting on his case about cleaning out the refrigerator. But Jesus Christ—was he the maid?

  Once in the hallway outside the English department, Warren took a moment to figure out where it would be best to pass his lunch break. Braver Hall, in which the English department resided on the sixth floor, was the oldest of the South Florida State buildings. It had that industrial look about it, with narrow hallways carpeted in the most institutional beige yet invented, cork bulletin boards announcing student productions of Shakespeare, and broken desks and chairs that had been piled outside classrooms, awaiting some bureaucratic procedure that would banish them to a mysterious basement. Still, it was better than Krieger Hall, Warren’s least-favorite building on campus, which was a converted parking garage where every floor slanted at a twenty-five-degree angle.

  In the hallway, near grad-student mail cubbyholes, Warren saw Sandra Quint talking with a couple of other students whose names he could not be bothered to summon. He knew them from around the office, and they had repeatedly pissed Warren off by just being their cocky selves. What the hell kind of grad student worked out and wore tight T-shirts showing off muscles like some kind of moron? They ought to be too busy with their reading to find time to pump iron like a bunch of idiots.

  Warren walked over to Sandra, who was listening to one of the other students talk about some article he had sent off to a major journal.

  “I still think Excalibur is the best King Arthur movie out there,” Warren said to Sandra while one of her friends was in midsentence, “even if it is a little weird. But you’re a medievalist and all. You probably like it.”

  All three of them stared. Warren had long ago learned that if he simply started a conversation with someone, even if that person had been talking to someone else, he could usually take control of things. The trick was to keep eye contact, act as if the others were simply not there. Most people would be too surprised to resist him.

  It worked reasonably well in this case. Sandra’s two companions clammed up. She said, her voice strangely quiet, “I’ve never seen it.” She looked at her friends and then the floor.

  “You’ve never seen it? I really think you ought to. I think you ought to see it tonight.”

  Having said his piece, and not wanting to talk to the weight lifters, Warren pushed on, moving past the elevator bank and around the corner to the hallway with the professors’ offices. There, under the fluorescent lights, he pressed his memory into service to recall the day of the week. Wednesday. Of course. Rick never came in on Wednesdays. Warren walked to the end of the hall, last door on the right, and opened it with his departmental passkey. He knew who came in and who didn’t on what days, when they had classes and when they had meetings. On any given day he found the best office to hole up in, and he could get in and out without anyone ever knowing he’d been there. As long as he cleaned up after lunch it would all be fine.

  Warren especially liked using Rick’s office. Rick had brought in a comfortable couch perfect for napping, though who knew what else Rick might use it for. He was just the sort to slip one in with wide-eyed and unsuspecting undergraduates. He probably liked girls in tight tank tops, like Sandra Quint wore.

  Warren set down his lunch bag and began to peek at the correspondence lying on Rick’s desk. He knew what all the professors were up to, and he knew Rick’s business best of all—what journals had rejected his articles, what conferences he planned to attend. Warren particularly enjoyed going through Rick’s things, taking his paper clips and rubber bands, leafing through his books, exa
mining the quality of the spare shirts and underwear he kept tucked away, checking out the copies of Men’s Health and Maxim he hid behind the filing cabinet. Rick was a fucking asshole.

  He took a moment to fantasize about Sandra Quint, wearing nothing but panties and a camisole, watching one of the movies he had suggested to her. Then he logged on to Rick’s computer—the idiot used his birthday for a password and therefore deserved to have his system hacked—and went to his personals account. One message from Kimmy in South Dakota wondering why her last three e-mails had gone unanswered. The reason, Warren thought, is because you’re repulsive. Did she really think that pic she’d sent would keep the letters coming? Maybe the men she knew in South Dakota liked bony women with gaunt, haggard faces, overbleached hair, and stupidly tight jeans, but Warren knew white trash when he saw it. The comparisons Kimmy had made between herself and Faith Hill had failed to come through. Of course Warren, or Jake, as he called himself in his ads, had told Kimmy that he liked country girls just fine, but he lived in Florida—he didn’t need to send e-mails halfway across the world for this trailer-park bullshit. Warren thought back to all the messages he’d traded with Kimmy—the misspellings, the grammatical errors, the stupid opinions, the love of romance novels. He should have noticed these things, but until you see the pic, you can always hope for the best.

  But better material lay ahead. Jake had received a message from Heather, who Warren had no doubt would remain in his favor for some time. She had sent a couple of photos in her latest message, and she looked just as she had described herself: pale skin, blue eyes, and medium-length dark hair. In one of the pics she wore a tight and low-cut T-shirt that showed off a medium-sized but nicely proportioned pair. In the other pic she sat at her desk in her office, and pictures of all the living presidents hung on the wall behind her. Heather worked as the secretary for a vice president at a rental car company located outside Milwaukee. He found that drearily delicious. The ones with boring jobs in boring places always got hooked. Warren didn’t want anything to do with anyone New York or L.A. or San Francisco. Wyoming and Idaho produced the women who lasted longest.