The Encyclopedia of Exes Read online

  I sat taller in my chair and folded my arms. “How do you talk to her if there’s plastic between you?”

  “On the phone,” he said.

  “On the phone? There’s a phone in there?”

  “Yup. But if you’re on the phone, it’s tough to . . . you know, do your thing.”

  I watched the motion of his hand, a little like preparing to throw dice. And then I nodded again. “Right.”

  My closest friend’s funeral was the day I decided to leave the East for the Northwest. I left before sunrise without quitting, without packing or knowing exactly where Seattle was. When I arrived I slept for weeks in a windowless studio in Capitol Hill. I had some savings so I let my hair grow and smoked cigarettes and wrote these rantlike journal entries in various hole-in-the-wall coffee shops that were everywhere at the time. It was 1991 and throngs of disenchanted transplanters were flocking to the city where Kurt Cobain would lose his head. Friends would call weekly to see if I was still alive.

  “Yes,” I’d say. “Still here.”

  “But doesn’t it rain all the time?”

  “They tell you that so you won’t move here.”

  “But it rains a lot, right?”

  “It’s really more of a mist.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When do you think?”

  “Maybe . . . when I’m done.”

  “Done? Done what?”

  “Done . . . ya know . . . done.”

  9/6/91—Tios coffee shop. Start line—Done what?

  Met a girl at the Screaming Trees show. Tats galore. Lower back, ass, calves. No untainted skin to be found from her elbows to her tiny wrists. But she’s not scary. She’s actually very feminine and easy to be with and fun and I really like the way she smells and feels up against me, fits in my arms. I mean it. I miss her right now. How do you miss someone you don’t know? Fuck this gloom. Feel ready to lose the gloom.

  Within a month we were seeing each other every night. I learned she liked frozen pizza for breakfast and fancied a pair of talking Grover slippers. She learned that I sometimes hummed when I ate ice cream and that a certain Danny Kaye album terrified me as a child. She told me she felt comfortable around me and that no one she knew listened to her the way I did. So I began to ask her things and she began to answer them. She said she was hooked on everything you could name but quit it all except for booze, which she designates for Saturdays. She told me her father was the man who taught her how to snort coke and drop acid and that her eleven-year-old brother would join them until he bought a handgun off a guy they called Rhino and fired a bullet into the back of their fridge. She told me her mother was forever envious of her relationship with her father. She told me her mother left them when they were young for a minister with no leg and came back for a year and took off again. She told me she was tired and didn’t want to talk anymore. She told me to hold her. And I did. She told me not to let go. So we got an apartment and a cat.

  11/1/91—No Name Coffee House. Start Line—Apartment and a cat.

  I think I may. I think I may love this one. I think. I think she may love me. But she’s secretive. Won’t talk about her work and I know where she works and what happens at work I . . . think. I mean I ask about her day and what went on and she either gets moody and distant or just won’t say a word. Okay. We won’t talk about it then. But I think loving a woman who gets up in the morning to press her vagina against a smeared piece of Plexiglas so a scumbag can jackhammer his turtle-headed pecker . . . may be . . . challenging. Maybe I need to stop by her work. Maybe if she sees that I’m there and I don’t care that she’s nude and shimmying and probing herself for the masses, that, all is good and cool and . . . fine. Maybe.

  The new job was simple. Find host families to give room and board to Japanese teenage girls who will arrive in Seattle to study English for the month of August. It was cold calling at first and if there was a nibble of interest I’d head off to the person’s home to see if they were actually eligible or just psychos looking to be bathed by Asian teenagers. The office was three blocks from Pike Street Market, the famous Seattle food court where tourists videotape dead fish soaring through the air. And it was there, during my lunch break, that I saw her. My girl, my girlfriend, my love—walking with another man. That’s her, I thought, with a mouth full of chicken salad, moving to a spot I couldn’t be seen. My pale-skinned lover with her long blue-black hair and strands of reddish green dreadlocks that droop to her waist. That’s her. My fantastic mope with terrible posture and supermodel legs that were covered that day with torn fishnet stockings and a kiltlike, schoolgirl miniskirt. Her kneecaps look slightly purple, I thought, and her smile forced. The man looked like a junior high science teacher. Shorter than her with a failing comb-over and a tan corduroy suit with elbow patches. She had her arm wrapped around his and they were walking in the market and stopping to admire the produce and handmade jewelry. He held a necklace up to her chest and nodded as if it was perfect. I just stood there with my sandwich, staring and stewing in the furious nausea that rose within me, not wanting to approach, not wanting to become what I knew I could become. So I followed them. I followed them until they crossed the street. And then watched her disappear.

  She got home before I did that day. My dancer was still in the kilt but now had the Grover slippers on and rubber yellow gloves up to her elbows. She was scouring the toilet on her knees. I walked up behind her. She heard me and removed her screeching headphones.

  “Hi!” she said. “Your mom called, just to say hi, I think . . . and I picked up your ugly suit at the dry cleaners. If you don’t want eggs for dinner you have to go out and get something better. I’d do pizza if you’re up for it but no meat this time and not from Giorgio’s. Look, I’m cleaning the toilet. Aren’t you proud of me? I told you I’d do it. How was your day?”

  She waited for me to answer and brushed a dreadlock from her face with her shoulder.

  “I saw you today.”

  She blinked at me and her smile faded. “You saw me . . . where?”

  “At the market. I saw you at Pike Street Market.”

  She kept her eyes on me for a second and turned away, looking down into the toilet. “Oh. I didn’t see you.”

  “With a guy,” I said.

  She stood and walked quickly out of the room. I followed her as she removed the gloves and bent to get a frying pan out from under the cabinet, rattling every pan she could touch.

  “I’m making eggs,” she said over the racket. “Do you want some?”

  I grabbed a beer from the fridge and jumped up on the counter. I stared down at her back as she continued to rummage through the pans. “Who is he?”

  She quickly swiveled to face me, as if the motion had made others retreat in the past.

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about work.”

  “He works with you?”

  “He’s just some guy,” she said. “So please drop it. Okay?”

  “No. No, it’s not okay, so just tell me who he is and we’ll move on.”

  “He’s no one. So fuck off.”

  I jumped off the counter and got in her face. “I ask you if the guy I saw you with is someone you work with and you tell me to fuck off? To fuck off?”

  She softened for a moment and looked down at the floor. She then lifted a small frying pan from the cabinet and placed it on the stove. “Will you get me the butter, please?” she said. We stood there in silence before she turned her back and ignited the flame. I stepped toward her and placed my hands on her shoulders. I lifted her hair and bent to kiss the tiny blue cross that rested in the concave of her neck. “Thank you for getting my suit,” I said. “I don’t want to fight. I just want . . . to be let in. I just want to be let in.”

  She turned around to face me. Her eyes were dry and a part of me wished they weren’t. She took my chin in her hand and pressed the tip of her nose against mine. “You want me to let you in?” she asked.r />
  “I do. I think I deserve it.”

  She turned the stove off, and then kissed my bottom lip. “You shoulda said so,” she said, and slid the kilt down over her hips.

  12 /5/91—Tios coffee shop. Start line—Shoulda said so.

  Jealous: 1. Fearful of losing affection or position. 2. Resentful or bitter in rivalry; envious. 3. Vigilant in guarding something. Guarding something. What is she doing over there? Shimmying, right? No big deal. Wiggling, gyrating, thrusting, pressing her tits together, sticking her butt out, flickering her tongue. Masturbating? Probably. For the RIGHT amount of quarters of course. I can’t do this. I can’t love this woman. But why not? Who cares? She’s beautiful and men see this so they pay to see her and why not. She loves you. Not them. And there’s a plastic wall between her body and those foul people with their trousers at their ankles and cocks in their hands. Loving a woman who is bright and irreverent and gentle and sensual and sweet under all the ink and hair and meticulous hiding is rare and you should feel lucky that you’ve even found someone you care about and who cares about you. But what rips at me is not that the job is sexual and involves other men. It’s that the secret is sexual and involves other men. So go and tell her that. Go now! Tell her what you just told me. Walk in there, pay for a private booth, pick up the phone and speak to her. Communication is the key to every successful relationship. Even if it’s done through Plexiglas!

  There were Polaroids of all the girls working that day on the wall behind the front desk. I could pick one, I was told, and tell the bald guy working there and he’d go find her and have her meet me in a private room in the back. So I pointed at the photo of my girlfriend who, by the way, was winking and wearing duct tape over her nipples. I was then escorted to the room by an entirely different bald guy who unlocked the door and said “enjoy,” with surprising sincerity. After he left, I relocked it and stared at a velvet curtain that hid the area she’d be performing in. My stomach was tight and I began to sweat a little, thinking how she’d feel when she pulled the curtain back. The phone was there, yuck, next to a metal box of tissues attached to the wall. I decided I’d rather scream through the Plexiglas than have that phone anywhere near my mouth and ear. A light flickered behind the curtain and I sat far back on the bench provided and took a deep breath. The room was almost too clean. It smelled like they’d thrown a bucket of ammonia or some industrial cleanser in there before I arrived. When the curtain began to ripple I sat even farther back and to the side and tried my best to hide my face from the view she’d have. And then there she was, kneeling on a mattress a few feet from the glass between us. She made no eye contact with me, just gestured for me to pick up the phone. I looked at it for a second before lifting it. I then inched it toward my face with my breath held.

  “Hello,” she said in a deeper voice than her own. “What’s your name?”

  “By dame?” I nearly whispered. “By dame is John.”

  “Hi, John. Have you been here before?”

  I cleared my throat and took a quick whiff of the phone. It was okay. “No,” I said.

  She pointed to the top right corner of the glass. “There’s a slot here to feed your cash right where I’m pointing. The more you put in, the more time we have together and the more I’m willing to do with you today, John. For example if you put a fifty-dollar bill in the slot, there is no request that I will not honor. If you put a twenty in, we’ll have ten minutes together and I’ll use one of these.” She moved her arm the way the Price Is Right ladies used to but instead of an RV, it was a suitcase filled with dildos of various girths and textures and colors. “Ten gets you five minutes and I’ll touch myself with my hand. Five gets you two minutes and I’ll talk dirty to you until our time is up. You’re free to touch yourself and there are tissues for when you’ve finished. So, John, now is the time to decide how long and how interesting our time together will be today. I’ll wait for you to decide.”

  As I reached for my wallet, she walked on her knees on the mattress and took a sip from a Snapple iced tea. She was a salesperson. That’s all this was. She memorized her pitch, talked pricing, and even gave you some time before you made your purchase. And she didn’t even look at these people, they meant nothing to her. I was so relieved. I had a ten and a five and about eight singles in my wallet. I decided to put the five in and see how things went. She saw it come through and walked on her knees again to get it.

  “Okay, John. Two minutes and then you’ll have the option to put more money in. Would you like me to remove my shirt?”

  It was a Hello Kitty tank top that I’d washed and folded the day before. “Sure,” I said, and she pulled it over her head.

  There they were. Those breasts. My breasts. Yup, those are the ones. Being offered up to some guy named John with cash in his pocket.

  “What do you think?” she asked, moving her hands up her hips and toward her chest.

  “You’re beautiful,” I told her.

  “Why thank you, John. Would you like me to remove my skirt?”

  I’d never seen it before. It looked like rubber and was skintight. The color of a fire engine. I decided to stand, the phone still close to my face. “No. No, I would not.”

  “Okay,” she said, with a tinge of disappointment. “I’ll just keep it on then.”

  She lay on the mattress and parted her knees with her hands. I sat back down. And watched my girlfriend seduce this man.

  “Do you know what I’m thinking, John?”

  “No.”

  “I’m thinking of all the things we could do together . . . if you put some more money in the slot.”

  “Oh.”

  She sat up and looked for me but couldn’t find my face, my eyes, as if from her side the window was mirrored.

  “Do you want to know what I’m thinking?” I asked her.

  “I do. I do, John.”

  “I’m wondering . . . if you have someone in your life when you’re not here. Someone you love.”

  I watched her eyes blink twice as a defensive smirk formed on her lips. “Yes. I do have someone, John.”

  A tiny red bulb turned on above the money slot. “And who would that be?” I asked.

  She moved closer to the glass and slowly took her right breast in her hand. She then dipped her head to kiss herself, just above her nipple. “His name is John. John is the special man in my life. You,” she said. “Do you think you want to put some more money in the slot now? Your time is almost up.”

  I stared at her from my corner, wanting so much to hear the right answer to my question. But as I hung up the phone and made my way to the door, I realized I had. John was the answer. And I was out of change.

  KISS

  Anthony Schneider

  (kĭs) v. tr. 1: to touch or caress with the lips as an expression of affection, greeting, respect, or amorousness 2: to touch lightly or gently: skin that was kissed by the wind 3: to strike lightly; brush against: barely kissed the other man 4: first step toward bliss or complete ruination: thus with a kiss, I die

  It was the way Nick looked—or rather didn’t look. It was the way he averted his eyes. No groans of pleasure—instead, a twitchy shiftiness. The question tumbled out while they were still screwing, the words bubbling out even as she thought them. You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you? A half thrust before he stopped, pulled out. And said, Yes. Get off me.

  Laura, listen. Laura. Her palms punched against his shoulders.

  You fuck. You unfaithful fuck.

  The maze of alleys seemed to swirl around her, choppy voices echoing up and down the pedestrian bazaar, dusty little shops pressed tight upon one another, the sound of Zulu children playing under the awnings, the buzz of electric clippers from the barber shop. Smells of paraffin smoke, hessian, pap cooking. Jars of powders, herbs, and roots crammed the shelves of muthi stores. A stout matron in a broad isixolo headdress held out woven mats, smiled a toothless smile. There were no other whites in Mai Mai market.

  Clarissa, an old sch
ool friend of Laura’s had phoned with the offer. A free trip to London and a place to stay if she would buy and deliver certain Zulu and Ndebele crafts for Clarissa’s store. Mats, bowls, salad servers, London needs it all. It was Nick who had convinced her to do it. Yebo, indwangu yetafula, he’d said, showing off his high school Zulu. Yes, tablecloth. Damn him, she thought now, as she thanked the toothless woman for nothing in particular. The narrow alley was lazily aswarm, shopkeepers calling out to passersby, boys hefting clay pots, women carrying wrinkled plastic bags and old cardboard boxes.

  Nick. He was a drunk, an angry overgrown child. But clever. And handsome in a professorial way. And he had a sense of humor. She was right to have kicked him out, but that didn’t stop her from missing him. At first she didn’t know how she would cope. Three years. She’d grown accustomed to having someone to come home to. Now her little house was emptier, nights longer, the sound of distant traffic lonelier. Sounds spooked her—the scrape of a dry branch against a windowpane, the rumble of the icemaker. Johannesburg was a dangerous place, and she was more vulnerable without a man in the house. That was just a fact.

  Other people were disappearing. Her brother had moved to Toronto. Half of her friends had long since settled in San Diego, London, Perth. A coworker at the magazine had been killed by muggers. Her parents had sold the house in Saxonwold and moved to Cape Town, where they rented movies and bickered about restaurants, the news, what film stars were in town. But Laura was coping. She shopped and ate and went to work and came home and watched TV or read a book. A dinner party at a friend’s house, the trip to London—these were her beacons.

  She found herself in a little shop at the edge of the market. A stretched fabric rustled in the doorway as she entered, splashing sunshine and shadow on the cement floor. It was dimmer than the day outside but not dark. A man sat behind an old glass counter. She smelled straw and mud and other unfamiliar smells. Old shelves were lined with wooden boxes, dusty glass jars, baskets.