Weird Date: The Creepist

His demeanor snapped back to awkwardly appreciative. "It’s really cool of you to let me crash here," he said. "What can I do for you? Can I rub your shoulders?"

And . . . okay. I knew at this point that the "too late for the train" excuse was a ploy, that his showing me the porn site was not just an awkward gaffe, that he was trying to get into my pants via my shoulders. But the joint was kicking in, and my back did hurt. It always hurts. But more than that, I suddenly felt like my personality was on trial. Why did I have to be such a ball-busting bitch all the time? He was trying to get into my pants, but he was also trying to be nice, so I should try to be nice, and let him be nice to me. I didn’t have to be a bitch about this. A little niceness could be nice. And I wasn’t consenting to anything but a backrub — I could say yes to this and still say no later. "All right."

He sat behind me on the couch, and I rested my joint in the ashtray, already missing its comforting weight between my index and middle fingers. He smoothed my hair gently off my neck, placed his thumbs at the base. "Relax," he instructed.

He started massaging. "Wow, Janice, you’re so tense."

"I know." I sighed, and his hands moved downwards towards my shoulders, thumbs digging between the blades. "Uuuuuhh," I groaned.

"Is that all right?" he asked softly, his breath warm against my ear.

"Feels good," I said, trying to sound as if I were addressing a professional in a clinic setting. "Thanks."

He continued to rub my shoulders, and I groaned some more, started to let go, unclenched my jaw from its fake smile, let my head sag from its crane. Let out all the loneliness, disappointment, frustration of the past few months. Uuuuuuuuuhh. For all the shit I said about my ex-boyfriend on stage, I missed him, missed the comfort of hands on my back.

"I can’t really get enough leverage this way," the comedian said. "Why don’t you lie down?" I laid down on the couch and let him straddle my back. He lifted my T-shirt, put his hands on my skin. "There," he murmured, soothing. "That feels good, doesn’t it?"

"Mmph," I said into the couch cushion. It did feel good. He had strong hands, which he pushed hard into me, and the pain was a release, a relief. He started rocking a little, sitting on my ass and grinding into it, his hands moving ever southward. I thought I should stop him, but I didn’t know how to say so politely, without telling him that he’d gone too far and was starting to creep me out. I held my breath and clamped my lips shut, hoping he’d figure it out for himself.

He didn’t. His hands moved over my ass cheeks, and I felt him getting erect against me, his breath starting to come hard.

"Well, that was nice," I told him, sitting up abruptly, pulling my T-shirt down over my back. "Thanks."

He tried pushing me back down. "We could do more," he purred. "I could keep it up all night."

"Thanks," I said. "That’s all right."

"Come on," he insisted. "Doesn’t it feel good?" He traced his fingers lightly over my arm, and the hairs rose without my permission.

"It does," I admitted. I’d consented to letting him rub my shoulders, I’d let him make me feel good. "But I don’t want to do anything else."

"Why not?"

"I just don’t."

"Are you . . . not attracted to me?" His voice was crestfallen. I felt a pang on his behalf. I’d been rejected enough lately. I wasn’t trying to be mean to someone else.

"It’s not that you’re not attractive," I said. "I just don’t have those feelings for you."

"But that was nice, right? You were enjoying it?"

Why was this argument lasting so long? It was five a.m., I was tired and high. All I wanted to do was go to sleep. I didn’t want to sit there looking at his pinched, wounded expression and explaining why I didn’t want to have sex with him.

"We don’t have to go out or anything," he said. "We can just have a good time." He tickled my arm again, and it felt heavy, like the time I got hypnotized in a failed attempt to quit smoking pot. I started to feel resigned, like I was going to lose the debate anyway. Maybe I should just give him a handjob, I thought. Maybe that will shut him up.

But he wouldn’t stop arguing the point. I’d raise an objection — "I just don’t feel like it right now" — and he’d counter with logic — "But you liked what I was doing, didn’t you?"

"Yes, but . . . " I didn’t want to give him a handjob. I didn’t want him in my apartment at all, at this point; fuck the subway and its hypothetical muggers. I was trying to be nice. I was trying not to be the woman I am on stage, the character who hates men, the comedian who works in an industry that feels like a boys’ club. I turned away from him and melodramatically shielded my eyes with my hand. "I just don’t want to fool around, all right?"

"Well . . . " Now he was weighing it, deciding whether it was all right for me to not want to fool around. He sounded aggrieved, and I winced under my hand. Just let me off the hook, I pleaded silently. Leave me alone and let me get some fucking sleep.

"What if I jerk off?" he proposed, finally, like, that’s fair, right?

I kept my hand over my eyes, squeezed them shut. "Do whatever you want to do," I said.

I sat there with my eyes closed for the next minute and a half, or however long it took him — not long — to jerk off next to me. The sound of his breathing, the wet smack of skin on skin, his shudder — I felt complicit in all of it, accused. This was something. I was giving up something by allowing him to jerk off next to me. Now he’d gotten this from me, and he could smirk at me the way he smirked at my girlfriends at comedy shows, that smirk that said, you gave it up.

I’d given up. And now he was finished. He sighed, and heaved, and it was over. He sat there, waiting for me to look at him. "Fine," he finally muttered, and went to my bathroom to clean up.

I reached into the ashtray and relit my joint.

He came out of the bathroom, petulant look on his face. "I guess I’ll just sleep on your couch for an hour or two," he said, injured. "If it’s not too much trouble."

I said his name, which I won’t say here.

"No, it’s fine. I appreciate your hospitality." He threw himself on the far end of the couch and closed his eyes.

I said his name again, and he ignored me. I went into my room and fell asleep.

The next morning, he was gone. No note, not that I wanted one. I saw him a few days later at a show, and he smirked at me. I felt like running away. I didn’t tell any of my girlfriends what had happened between us. I stayed brassy, smiled my fake stage smile, the one with the clenched teeth.

It was a few months later that I stood on a sidewalk on the Lower East Side and watched him with an underage drunk girl, put one hand on the back of her neck, and steer her out of a party, away from her friends, who were telling her not to go. Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . her expression said as he pushed her into a cab. And I knew he’d get what he wanted. Because it was easier than putting up a fight, and he’d bought her some drinks and paid for the cab, and — did she find him unattractive? She wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings.

He saw me watching from the sidewalk as he stuffed her in the taxi, and he paused for a second before he joined her. That smirk, a reminder of my complicity, the shoulders I’d let drop. Then he got in and slammed the door behind him, and they were gone.  n°