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I was nineteen years old and a virgin and at first I read Rachel's journal because I needed to know what to do next and what she liked to hear. Every little gesture, every minor movement I made she passionately described and wholeheartedly admired. When we were kissing or swimming or walking down the street, I could hardly wait to rush back to her room to find out what phrase or what twist of my body had been lauded in her journal. I loved her impatient handwriting, her purple ink, the melodrama of the whole thing. It was such a surprising and addictive respite, seeing every aspect of my being celebrated by someone else rather than excoriated by myself. She wrote, "I've never truly loved anyone the way I love David and it's never been so total and complete, yet so unpossessing and pure, and sometimes I want to drink him in like golden water." You try to concentrate on your Milton mid-term after reading that about yourself.
Sometimes, wearing her bathrobe, she'd knock on my door in order to return a book or get my reaction to a paragraph she'd written or read. She'd say, "Good night," turn away from me, and begin walking back to her room. I'd call to her, and we'd embrace first in the hallway outside our doors, then soon enough in my room, her room, on our beds. I hadn't kissed a girl since I was twelve, so I tried to make up for lost time by eating Rachel alive: biting her lips, licking her face, chewing on her ears, holding her up in the air and squeezing her until she screamed.
In her journal, she wrote that she had never been kissed like this in her life and that she inevitably had trouble going to sleep after seeing me. I'd yank the belt to her bathrobe and urge her under the covers, but she refused. She actually said she was afraid she'd go blind when I entered her. Where did she learn these lines, anyway?
Shortly before the weather turned permanently cold, we went hiking in the mountains. The first night, she put her backpack at the foot of her sleeping bag we kissed softly for a few minutes, then she fell asleep but on the second night she put her backpack under her head as a pillow. Staring into the blankly black sky, I dug my fingers into the dirt behind Rachel's head and, the first time and the second time and the third time and the fourth time and probably the twenty-fourth time, came nearly immediately.
From then on, I couldn't bring myself to read what she had written. I had read the results of a survey in which forty percent of Italian women acknowledged that they usually faked orgasms. Rachel wasn't Italian she was that interesting anomaly, a southern Jew but she thrashed around a lot and moaned and screamed and if she was pretending, I didn't want to hear about it.
Every night she'd wrap her legs around me and scream something that I thought was German until I realized she was saying, "Oh, my son." My son? She had her own issues, too, I suppose. We turned up the Jupiter Symphony all the way and attempted to pace ourselves so we'd correspond to the crashing crescendo. I was in a chair and in her mouth, staring at her blue wall, and I thought, My whole body is turning electric blue. She was on top of me, rotating her hips and crying, and she said, "Stop." I said, "Stop?" and stopped. She grabbed the back of my hair and said, "Stop? Are you kidding? Don't stop!"
By the end of the semester, packing to fly home to spend the Christmas vacation with my family, I suddenly started to feel guilty about having read Rachel's journal. Every time I kissed her, I closed my eyes and saw myself sitting at her desk and turning the pages of her little book. I regretted having done it and yet I couldn't tell her about it.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I'll miss you," I said. "I don't want to leave."
On the plane I wrote her a long letter in which I told her everything I couldn't bring myself to tell her in person: that I had read her journal, that I was very sorry and hoped she'd understand, that I thought we could and should go on together, that our love was still pure but that I'd understand if she never spoke to me again.
She wrote back that I should never have depended on her journal to give me strength, that she would throw it away and never write in it again, and that she wanted to absolve me, but that she wasn't God, although she loved me better than God could. She said she had known and loved me all her life but had just now found me. Our love, in her view, transcended time and place.
2. Change
Rachel, awake for hours, played music, walking around the room, hanging up clothes. She lifted up the covers, pinched my ass, and whispered: "Got change?" She never had change. She hated to break a dollar. She hated to be late for work. With all the walking around the room she did, she could have walked up and back to work twice.
"Close the shade," I said.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and said, "I need bus fare."
My pants were in a heap on the floor next to the bed. She turned the pants pockets inside out, spilling coins on the rug.
"Don't be a whore about it," I said. "Don't just take money."
"Oh, pretty-pretty-please, Father, mightn't I borrow a pittance, pretty-pretty-please?" This happened some time ago, shortly after college, when we occasionally still talked like that when we occasionally still talked.
"Flip a coin. Double or nothing."
"What do you mean?" she said. Rachel wasn't a gambler.
"Money, no money; sex, no sex."
"I'm late."
"Flip a coin," I said.
"Call it."
"Heads."
She caught the coin in mid-air, jammed it into her pocket, snapped the shade open, kissed me on the forehead, and said, "Open your eyes. Get up." Then she pulled the blankets off me, jingling coins.
"You denigrate the act," I said.
"What act?" she said, shutting the door softly behind her.
3. Postcard
The peso was very low and your dollar went quite far, but you could nevertheless wake up at night to lizards dancing on the ceiling fan. You could go down to the lobby for lunch and a cow would be tied to the balustrade. You could do that. You could walk into town and for fifty yards every child you'd see would be crippled, hopping along the sidewalk with wooden braces belted to his legs, splayed toes, elephantiasis of the arms and legs. Dead dogs, scrawny cats, babies on bamboo in the dirt, taxis circling endlessly. Even the birds seemed drunk.
On the other hand, the ocean was so close that when the hotel room shades were open, the picture windows framed boats like a TV screen. You could look out the window, and oil tankers coming into port would look like toy boats. Then, one day, I read about a tanker leaking oil and suddenly the toy boats seemed a lot more like real boats.
We had just gotten engaged and this trip to Manzanillo, Mexico, was the pre-nuptial honeymoon to a marriage we never consummated. We swam in the pool and got ear infections, which were treated by a doctor who only wanted to hear about my escapades with prostitutes in Barcelona that never happened. For waterless recreation Rachel lay, like a virgin sacrifice, across the white kitchen counter and confessed that the only fantasy she'd ever had was to open her legs as wide as she could and, under virtually gynecological scrutiny, be admired. Just that. So female. Be admired. She leaned back. Her bikini bottom flapped about her ankles.
find out what phrase or what twist of my body had been lauded in her journal. I loved her impatient handwriting, her purple ink, the melodrama of the whole thing. It was such a surprising and addictive respite, seeing every aspect of my being celebrated by someone else rather than excoriated by myself. She wrote, "I've never truly loved anyone the way I love David and it's never been so total and complete, yet so unpossessing and pure, and sometimes I want to drink him in like golden water." You try to concentrate on your Milton mid-term after reading that about yourself.
a pillow. Staring into the blankly black sky, I dug my fingers into the dirt behind Rachel's head and, the first time and the second time and the third time and the fourth time and probably the twenty-fourth time, came nearly immediately.
She never had change. She hated to break a dollar. She hated to be late for work. With all the walking around the room she did, she could have walked up and back to work twice.
wooden braces belted to his legs, splayed toes, elephantiasis of the arms and legs. Dead dogs, scrawny cats, babies on bamboo in the dirt, taxis circling endlessly. Even the birds seemed drunk.
