Nude Men Read online

  Nothing you can say.

  We just are.

  We stand in the street, Laura and I, at a corner, without moving, without touching each other. We just are, together. The pleasure of being together is so intense that it is painful to bear. We must slow it down. We must slow down our existence and our heartbeats.

  When we are together, we get very excited about touching people without their noticing it. It is almost a contest between us: Who can touch people most. The best is when we both touch someone at the same time. The most convenient place to do this is in line.

  We never speak to each other about this behavior of ours. It isn’t some sort of game that we consciously set out to play. It started so gradually and imperceptibly that I couldn’t tell you on what day I touched my first person, or even what week. Touching clothing is good, it counts, but touching the person is much better, though it is of course more difficult to avoid being caught. Touching people without being noticed is exciting, daring, dangerous, yet warm, loving, and close. Even bumping or brushing against someone in the street is wonderful. And it does not matter if they feel it, because they’ll just think it’s an accident and won’t know it was planned, that we did it on purpose.

  When Laura and I touch each other, the pleasure is so intense that it is painful. That is why we are able to enjoy this pleasure much more fully when it is diluted by an intermediary. The pleasure we get from touching someone at the same time is so exquisite and perfect in its subtle sensuality that the person in question need not be unaware of our touch. When we receive a visitor, we often stand on either side of him, holding his arms, patting him, bumping against his sides playfully, whispering in his ear (because even our breath against the side of his face adds to our pleasure), ruffling his hair (justifying our behavior by saying we like his haircut), and feeling his clothes (justifying our behavior by saying we like them). We do this rather expertly, so our guest attributes our behavior to deep affection.

  This is not to say that we don’t make love. We do, but not as often as people who are less in love. For us, making love is a dangerous pleasure that we must, should, and do try to resist, because it leaves us feeling sick and stunned afterward.

  I observe Laura carefully whenever I’m with her, to try and catch her doing some of her real magic. I often wonder if I might have been wrong about that coin trick. Perhaps she can’t do real magic. Perhaps the quarter did not truly disappear from her palm as I thought it did. Maybe I hallucinated, though I’m convinced I didn’t.

  How strong is her magic, I wonder. What other tricks can she do? Can she make a chair disappear, or only small things? Can she make things appear, or only disappear? Can she make people love her?

  Can she make people love her? Am I under her spell?

  I sometimes ask her to show me more of her real magic, and she tries to ridicule me, to make me stop pestering her. She’ll say things like: “I can’t believe you, Jeremy. You’re such a baby! You still believe in magic. How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a fairy?”

  You would think that since she’s so eager for me to drop my fixation, she’d simply reveal to me how she performed her coin trick. But she doesn’t, which I’m convinced means that there’s nothing to reveal, no solution, no secret; it’s just pure, undiluted magic.

  I keep going to her shows, and I sometimes fall asleep halfway through. One evening I wake up suddenly from my doze because I hear clapping. What? What? What are they clapping at? The show’s not over yet. So what are they clapping at? I sit forward in my seat and squint at the bright lights stinging my sleepy eyes. I don’t notice anything strange or different. Did she do her real magic? Could that be it? No, I doubt it, because if she had made things really disappear onstage, in front of their very eyes, using no sleight of hand, they wouldn’t be clapping; they’d be fainting, or getting the police, or running out, or screaming madly, or kissing her feet and worshiping her like a god. Perhaps I’m getting carried away. But at the very least, they’d be staring at her with complete astonishment, like me when she made the coin disappear. They would be too stunned to clap.

  I did not notice what she did to deserve the clapping. I missed it. Oh well, I’ll have to ask her about it later. But suddenly there is clapping again, and my eyes are not closed, and I can tell yyou that she did nothing to deserve it. It’s her same old marble-out-of-mouth trick. For the rest of the show, there are two tables of people who clap at every lousy rotten trick she does, and I stare at them with disbelief and then look at Laura to see if she is troubled, or pleased. She does look a little stunned. She has trouble concentrating, I can tell, takes longer than usual to accomplish every trick and every interlude of dance. Sometimes she glances at the clapping tables and then quickly looks away. But she does not look displeased. Her eyes are brighter than usual, and her lips are blushing and smiling in a lovely soft manner.

  The clappers look like students. Some are older, and wiser-looking, as if they might be graduate students. They have beards.

  After her show, I tell her I don’t understand. She says, “Maybe it’s you, Jeremy. Maybe you bring me good luck.”

  At her next show, three nights later, there are five clapping tables.

  The waiters have to bring in more tables, and they eliminate the open dancing area. Her show goes from ten minutes to twenty to half an hour, but not more. She doesn’t want to overdo it. She wants to leave them unsatisfied, dying for more. And then we realize that she is an overnight sensation.

  But don’t think it’s her same old dumb tricks that are attracting so much attention. No. It’s her new tricks, which are even more moronic. Laura has great instinct and intuition about people. After her first successful evening, she was able to sense which tricks people were clapping at particularly loudly, and she went in that direction. Her most admired tricks are the ones that are barely perceptible as tricks, the most subtle ones, like when she takes off her brown jacket and reveals that the inside is red.

  Her tricks get progressively more idiotic, and the clapping and the number of clappers increase. Laura unwraps a candy and smells it, and people clap. Such tricks cannot even be called magic anymore, yet people call them that with delight, and calling them that contains a message about modern life and society, which goes something like this: In our times, routine, habit, drudgery, and repetition are so ingrained, so inescapable, that it seems as though nothing short of magic can break the pattern of eating the candy. Breaking that pattern, by doing the unexpected, even ever so slightly, like smelling the candy, is so unusual and extraordinary that it is certainly worth being called magic and certainly worth clapping for.

  When Laura takes a Kleenex out of her pocket and wipes her forehead with it, everyone roars with clapter because the primary function of a Kleenex is to receive a nose’s wind. By wiping her forehead (a less common, secondary function), Laura is fighting drudgery and expectation.

  The most refined people are those who can detect the subtlest tricks, and they clap. If someone claps wrongly, at one of Laura’s “trick tricks,” like when she looks at the time on her watch, well, she’ll shake her head ever so slightly, and the person is horribly humiliated, given crushingly subtle looks of disdain and contemptuous clucks of the tongue by the other members of the audience. If, on the other hand, someone claps alone in the right place, Laura’s lips twitch into a slight smile, and everyone join8 in on the clapping and bestows on the first lucky clapper looks of endless respect and admiration.

  A typical evening consists of the following repertoire of basic tricks:

  Laura winds her watch. One courageous clapper dares a few claps. She smiles slightly. They all roar, with clapter, and reward the fortunate first clapper with smiles and “Ah!”s of awe. The primary function of a watch is to indicate the time, which is worth no respect because it only contributes to the monotony of modern life. To be wound is a watch’s secondary, less common, function and is worth great respect.

  Laura takes a comb and brush out of her bo
x of objects and starts combing the hair out of the brush. One clapper claps, she twitches her lips, the entire room claps.

  She takes off her pearl necklace and puts it on the table on the stage. Someone claps, she turns her head one inch to the side, which everyone knows is a negative response, and people cluck, snort, and snicker to the now ruined first clapper. People have become bold. Sometimes they even allow their disdain to be expressed verbally. You’ll hear “God,” “Really!” and “He’s out of it.”

  One of the reasons her show is so beloved is that there’s a lot at stake for the audience. People can build or destroy their reputation with a single clap. It’s the quick way to success. Or failure.

  After her show, people talk to one another enthusiastically, saying things like: “She’s a genius; her choice of tricks is superb, exquisite. The vocabulary is rich, and the language, my goodness, the language is sublime. When she revealed the red inside of her jacket, I thought I would die!” The ultimately chic thing to say is: “How did she do that?” and to ask her directly, “Is there any chance you might ever reveal how you did that jacket trick?” And she wisely answers, “I’m sorry, I never reveal my magic tricks. I’d be out on the street without a job. You understand.”

  “Of course; how thoughtless of me.” And the person walks away, saying, “Ah! The deceptive simplicity of it! I love the way she magics.”

  How real is her magic, I wonder. How big are her powers? Can she make people love her? Are they under her spell?

  Tables are reserved weeks in advance. People order a meal, but many of them barely touch their food, they are so moved and affected by the show.

  People send their kids to her for lessons. She has so many students that she has to divide her class into three levels of difficulty. The lowest is for traditional magic, where ordinary tricks are taught, such as pulling rabbits out of seemingly empty hats. These basic tricks provide a good foundation and background. In the second and slightly more difficult class, students learn how to take flowers and wands out of their boots, and marbles out of their mouths. The last and most difficult class focuses on tricks like taking off jackets whose insides are of a different color than their outsides.

  It feeds into the system, the fact that the beginning classes are more difficult than the advanced classes, the fact that students progress from learning sleight of hand to smelling candies to winding watches to wiping their foreheads with Kleenexes. They love it that way, the parents and the public, but the children have trouble understanding this system and are told they are too young to understand; it’s experimental, abstract, avant-garde, intellectual, an acquired taste.

  After I broke up with Charlotte, I got a few short letters from her, which I didn’t mention because she is too unimportant in my life right now. They all said pretty much the same thing: “I do not need you. Thanks for breaking it off.” Or: “I do not need you. I’m dating other people.” And then I didn’t hear from her anymore. And still haven’t. And I don’t care. She was almost a stranger, even though I had been with her for a year.

  Don’t think my mother’s agents have stopped coming up to me. Certainly not. But I’ve learned how to deal with them. Actually, I’m quite proud of myself, because I don’t merely deal with them, I fluster them. It’s quite fun: the same sort of fun children have when they set insects on fire.

  One of these annoying little bugs reveals himself to me one evening at Défense d’y Voir, during Laura’s show. He’s an elegant man, with white hair, sitting at a nearby table. He leans back in his chair and asks me if I have a match. Even though neither Laura nor I smoke, I do happen to have a lighter on me, for reasons too complicated to get into right now. Actually, if you must know, I saw a scary movie recently in which a man got buried alive in a coffin, and I decided a lighter could come in handy in a life-or-death situation. The buried man had a lighter and was therefore able to see where he was and to understand what he was going to die of. And then he died.

  The elegant man lights his cigarette with my lighter and says, forgot mine at home, because I left the house in a rush, very upset. My eleven-year-old granddaughter drives me mad. She—”

  “Really, she’s eleven?” I interrupt him.

  “Yes. She—”

  “That’s such a wonderful age. They still love their parents at that age. And they make lots of friends,” I ramble. “They start throwing parties, becoming conscious of fashion—”

  “Yes, actually that’s part of the problem,” he interrupts. “They start becoming attracted to the opposite sex, and unfortunately, the opposite sex becomes attracted to them. Even older members of the opposite sex, if you catch my meaning.”

  “Oh, exactly. And then they start fighting with their parents, and the parents become unreasonable, and the problems don’t quit, you know, even as the years pass. And then sometimes the parents send agents to pester their children.”

  The insect is on fire. The elegant man is flustered. He takes a long drag on his cigarette, nodding and frowning, probably racking his brain for something to say or do.

  “Yes, exactly,” he says, and turns his back to me.

  I put my hand on his shoulder and add, “But what the parents don’t realize is that the children love it when the agents come to them. It’s so much fun. Someone should let the parents know that.”

  The agent clears his throat and says, “I’ll keep that in mind.” He gets up and leaves the restaurant.

  Another time, I’m in a video store, picking out a movie for Laura and me to watch that evening, cuddled up cozily in her bed. A middle-aged woman is standing next to me, also looking through the movie boxes. She pulls one off the shelf, turns to me, and asks, “Have you seen this movie?”

  The movie she’s holding in my face is Lolita. How unsubtle can one get? I almost burst out laughing.

  “I think I did, a few years ago,” I reply.

  “What did you think of it?”

  I try to come up with the best possible answer to this delicious question. I could tell her, “I think you should tell my mother to stop pestering me.”

  Or I could turn to her and say, “I thought it was the most romantic movie I’ve ever seen.” (Which, in case you’re interested, isn’t true; it actually left me quite indifferent.)

  Or I could tell her she’s ugly, that she has no sense of fashion, that one should not wear one’s collar up, the way she wears hers. I could tell her anything in the whole world. Because one can take liberties with fake strangers. One can be delirious, unrespectable, ridiculous. My answer must be outrageous.

  I puff out my chest and say, “It’s a monstrosity! It should be banned. I was so shocked I don’t think I ever recovered.”

  “I see,” she says. “I have a daughter—”

  “Eleven?”

  “Yes. She—”

  “Absolutely. Eleven-year-old daughters definitely have a tendency to sleep with dirty old twenty-nine-year-old men who constantly try to seduce them. I myself start drooling when I see one of those eleven-year-old nymphs. Exactly like the big bad wolf. I want to tweak their fannies.”

  “That’s not good. You should—”

  “Well, I’m not only interested in your daughter; I also find you very attractive. I love the way you wear your collar up. Raised collars excite me.” I slide my hand behind her neck and start stroking the back of her collar. “Would you like to come to my apartment? We could watch Lolita together. You could describe your daughter to me. Is she well developed? They should not be too developed, or it defeats the whole point, you see, and then one might as well settle for a big girl like yourself,” I say, looking at her chest.

  She blinks at me and says, “I was warned that you’d be a tough one. Tom was very upset. He’s a gentle and sensitive man, and he still talks about how obnoxious you were to him, when all he did was ask you for a light. And then you touched him on the shoulder. And now you’re touching my neck. You have a tendency to touch. You take liberties. We don’t like that. You should be kin
der to strangers.”

  The following day I call my mother, because I haven’t spoken to her in quite some time, ever since I changed my phone number. I want to try once more to convince her to stop sending me her insects.

  The first thing she says after I say hello is: “You are pestering my agents. I want you to stop pestering my agents. They cost a lot of money to hire, and you are ruining their work.”

  “But they are so charming, I can’t help myself.”

  “It’s not gonna work.”

  “What’s not?”

  “Telling me you’re enjoying it, telling my agents to tell me this. It’s not gonna make me stop.”

  “Good, because I really am enjoying it. Please don’t stop. If you stop, I’ll hire my own agents to come and talk to me in the street.”

  She hangs up.

  My relationship with Laura continues to develop and deepen. I think she is as in love with me as I am with her. Not only is she so normal, within her strangeness, but she’s good-natured, natural, and cheerful. Very compassionate. She often gives money to beggars.

  About a month has passed since I “quit” my job, and I haven’t yet started looking for another one. I’m enjoying life so much right now that it seems a shame to change it in any way. My savings are not being depleted very quickly, since Laura insists on paying for things whenever we’re together, “Because I’m rich,” she says, “and you’re not, and I love you, so it’s only normal.” If my savings do run out, she says she’ll support me until I feel like going back to work.

  One day I tell her what happened at Disney World. She says she knows about it; Lady Henrietta told her. She says it does not change her feelings toward me, and that although she does not think it was a wonderful thing, I am not completely to blame, considering the circumstances, and Sara is obviously mature for her age. What Laura disapproves of is the way Lady Henrietta and Sara manipulated me into it, without explaining anything to me beforehand.