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  This Is Not For You

  “Now imagine if she was lying your bed,” Mark asks me excitedly, holding up his cell phone, which displays an image of a woman posing in a uniform. “What would you do to her?”

  The image is a typical one. She’s a blonde haired woman in her early 30’s, dressed in a sultry black and white maid’s uniform, the kind reserved only for strippers and saucy housewives, not for actual women in the cleaning industry. Bent at the waist at a 90 degree angle, her skirt allows just enough room to reveal that fine line between where the legs end and the buttocks begin. She’s looking back at the camera lens, a pink feather-duster in one hand, the other hand covering her opened mouth, as if the photographer had walked in unexpectedly. “Oh!” she seemed to say with her eyes, “Mr. DeMille! I didn’t expect to see you back so soon! Did you…forget something?”

  “C’mon,” Mark begins again, placing her back into my imaginary bed. “She’s sitting there. Ready for you. Would you?”

  My hesitation causes him to shake the phone back and forth teasingly, and now the girl seems to be titillated and shocked by the earthquake. But still, she keeps her pose steady. “Oh! Mr. DeMille! The ground is…shaking!”

  “I don’t know, Mark,” I say to him, moving my head back and forth with the girl, keeping eye contact with her, biting my lip and carefully deciding. “What’s she like?”

  “What?!” Mark asks incredulously, taking the phone back and staring at the girl. “What do you mean ‘What’s she like?’ She’s hot as shit! You won’t fuck her?”

  Mark’s real name is Mariusz (pronounced Mah-Ree-Oosh). He’s been my co-worker ever since he emigrated with his family from their village farm in Poland at the age of 18. We’re the same age, same height, only Mark outweighs me with more than 40 pounds of muscle. His English has improved considerably since he first came over, and he has taken a great liking to the obnoxious eloquence that is sarcasm, a vocal trait and attitude I like to think I helped him develop through our years working together. I’m trying to lead him to the wonderful, powerful strength of the Pun, but he isn’t very receptive yet.

  “Oh, yeah,” He says sarcastically, “I can see why you wouldn’t fuck her. You’re much more better-looking than she is.”

  This is the point in the conversation where I try to explain the rationale for my response, and it’s the same routine every time.

  “What is she doing in my room,” I ask Mark, referring to the girl. “What are the parameters of her visit?”

  “The what?”

  “Is she drunk? Depressed? Trying to get her ex-boyfriend jealous? Does she think I’m rich?”

  Mark spreads his arms wide in frustration. “She’s want to fuck!”

  There’s something else you should know about Mark. He doesn’t dream. I’ve told him that everyone dreams, but he says he just doesn’t. At the end of the night, he blinks and wakes up feeling refreshed hours later, ready to come into work and talk about what girls are worth doing, his cell phone usually being the means of conveyance for random snapshots taken by people he’s never met. I once tried to mention baseball as a conversational piece with him, a little respite from the usual verbal sexual savagery, and Mark kept it together for a few sentences, talking about the Phillies’ chances for a World Series run. He proposed the notion that the second-baseman really needed to boost his batting average if they stood a chance. And the moment after I agreed he said, “You ever see his wife? Hot as shit!”

  Shit does get pretty hot sometimes, I suppose.

  I don’t hate the occasional conversation about sex, but I do like to delve a little bit deeper than a simple “yea or nay” approach to physical attraction. It was facile for Mark to place any random woman on his bed and let his mind wander, easily replacing one woman with a simple shake of the head, moving the mental slideshow on to the next contestant until he was satisfied. But an insecure man like me needs at least a tinge of reality. I never met the woman in Mark’s photo. I would know if I had. There are things I need to be aware of before I can have her in my bed. Has she read any good books lately? Does she prefer chunky peanut butter or smooth? Who scares her more, Freddy or Jason? It’s not that the answer themselves will determine her value; it’s the gathering of knowledge behind the opinions that I am looking for. The woman and I need to share at least one laugh together, a light-hearted argument, perhaps some banter. To put it simply, in order to be sexually activated, I need to at least have the illusion of reality. I am not above pornography, but I personally cannot place myself into a situation involving frivolous, nearly anonymous sex. I could never be the pizza-delivery guy who knocks on a lonely woman’s door.

  I saw an inadvertent boob once. It’s true! I was walking into work when a Filipino woman bent over to tie her shoe. Her red shirt was loose and low-cut, and as I shuffled to the left to get to the time-clock, I saw her full-fledged boob through the slit of her V-neck. I paused for nary a moment to absorb the scene and found it surprisingly unfulfilling. Since she was unaware that I could see her exposed body part, her boob was nothing more to me than a soft mound of flesh that could have been placed anywhere on her body. It was as nonsexual as a dollop of fat on an ankle or an elbow. If she had caught my glance and winked at me, well, that would be another story entirely, but she didn’t. My face felt flushed, and I looked away quickly, saying in my head, “Michael, this boob…this boob is not for you.”

  A similar, more physical altercation occurred during one of my summers working at the golf course, back when the beverage cart was operated by a 20 year old woman named Julie. A former drug addict picking up the pieces of her young life, Julie would cruise the golf course and sell beverages and snacks to the customers. She was a pretty girl; light blonde hair that reached her middle back, long straight-lined legs, fair skin, a winning smile. However, there was one thing about her—a constant reminder, if you will—concerning her previous life of addiction: a missing thumb. According to Julie herself, she had gotten so high one night that she passed out with her thumb on a live curling iron. She also stated that she was so high that she smelled the singed flesh before she could feel it. When she came to, it was too late. The thumb was gone; welded to the curling iron and carpet, I imagine, its texture similar to the burnt Chucky Doll from the movie Child’s Play.

  Potentially, it was a wonderful conversation starter, that molten thumb of hers. There were so many questions I wanted to ask. I wanted to hear her policy on handshakes, hi-fives, or simply catching an orange tossed from the kitchen. My questions would have been asked innocently, without insult, only I didn’t know her well enough (I heard the thumb story second hand from other employees). But come on, it was a thumb! It’s what separates us from the animals.

  Instead, though, whenever I saw her I kept the conversation light and shallow by talking about the weather, the job, or the contents of the beverage cart.

  “Hey, you’re selling cheddar cheese crackers now! Very interesting…”

  She was cordial in return, and I figured that our relationship was as it should be: polite. Professional. There was no need to exchange tales of our checkered pasts, drug uses, or how one might turn a doorknob or cut into a steak.

  On a random Tuesday, however, Julie approached me as I was parking golf carts in the rear of the barn. I made my simple small talk as she parked the big green beverage cart, asking about her day, and her answer to my question of how the customers were tipping that day was, “You’re cute, ya know.”

  With one sentence, Julie had changed the whole dynamic of our relationship from professional to flirtatious. I didn’t know how to verbally respond, but my body did all the talking as I blushed and looked away. Mistakenly taking my coyness as flirtatious reciprocity, she stepped out of the cart and began to approach me as I backed up against the wall. My mind raced as she closed the distance between us. Oh, no. What’s happening? Sweat rushed down to my hands as she came within three feet of me. Who is this girl, really? How many times has she done this? With how many other guys? I don’t even know her name. Julie what? Julie: drug addict. She tilted her head slightly and parted her lips to contact mine. What’s the worst thing she ever did for a fix? What, by God, has previously been in that mouth? Issues. Dependency problems. Heroin. Bent spoon. STDs. Needles. Melted thumb!

  I pushed her shoulders away with the backs of my hands before her lips landed on mine. Why a push? For one, she was inside my personal bubble (you do not get inside of my personal bubble without express written consent.) Second, a push--a polite push--was all I could manage since my mouth had decided to cease all verbal communication. It was accidental body language that got me into the situation with the blushing, and it was forceful physical execution that got me out. And third, I used the back of my hands for the push because my palms were much too sweaty. I am, after all, a gentleman.

  Feeling terribly insulted, Julie jumped back on the beverage cart and yelled, “If you fucking tell anyone, I fucking swear to God, I will fucking kill you!” She slammed on the gas pedal and peeled off toward the 16th tee box.

  When she was out of sight I said aloud, “Don’t worry, it’s not my intention to tell anyone.” My voice had finally returned. A little late, but at least it was back.

  I didn’t want to tell anyone about what had happened, anyway. She didn’t need to threaten me with my life, for crying out loud. I didn’t want to tell people what happened because I didn’t want to have to explain my position on why I had pushed her. Yes, I tried to mentally communicate to Julie, let’s keep this hush-hush. And it was a peaceful 30 seconds that we kept it a secret, before Julie had blabbered to all the other co-workers what had happened. She was so angry, so offended that I didn’t have sex with her outside the barn that she told the next person she saw a
ll about it. It actually had to be brought to her attention that, believe it or not, there are many perverts like me out there who were not keen on random sexual encounters. Julie, in her 20 years on this planet, had never heard of such an idea. Julie and Mark would have been a perfect match for each other.

  “Mark, let me ask you something,” I begin, pointing at the photo of the faux French maid. “What do you think her name is?”

  “And why do I care,” Mark asks back sarcastically.

  Mark is a very straightforward person. He sees the world in simple right and wrong, black and white, while I focus on extenuating circumstances and flounder around in the gray areas of life. Puns are difficult for Mark, because to him all you need is one word to describe something, and homonyms add nothing but confusion to what could simply be sound reasoning.

  “Just try to imagine who this woman is,” I say to him. “Her name, her marital status, her job, the sound of her laugh, things like that. Put a few ‘ifs’ in there, you know what I mean? A few contingencies.”

  Mark glares at me, but reluctantly looks hard at the photo. I can practically see the squeaky wheels of his unused Right Brain churning along, and it looks like a real internal struggle: The world of right angles and perpendicular lines embattling a small fleet of weak but determined meandering spirals and serpentine threads. His nose wrinkles, his cheeks contort, but after a minute, his eyes light up and he smiles at the photo, ready to speak.

  “Ok, Ok,” he says, “I got it. Now, would you do her…if…she had a dick?”

  I hope it’s not too late for him to enjoy puns.

  Contents

  An Anecdote in “F” Major