Things You Should Know before We Make Love

Abstract

I. My body is a tenement. I am told by others in housing worse than mine that restoration is unnecessary. They accuse me of exaggeration, of creative license, of fishing for compliments on the state of my home. It's different when you live here, I tell them. I have good reason to keep the lights in my hallways dim: (1) I am five feet, two and one half inches tall and weigh one hundred and thirteen pounds on the doctor's scale, one hundred and nine in the mornings at home. I have never starved myself, never been bulimic, never used slimming tablets, laxatives, or diuretics, or altered my diet in any way; I do not jog, I rarely exercise, I have never attended a health club or gym. All this I consider a failure of will. (2) I pluck white hairs from my scalp when I find them, and keep them in a plastic box by the sink. Whenever I travel the box comes with me. I have been collecting these hairs for six years now. Sometimes I spend hours searching them out. (3) There is no true symmetry in the animal kingdom: eyes are regularly placed off parallel, left and right hands often do not match, one half of the head and body may sprout more follicles than the other - everywhere there is disagreement. I know this as surely as I know that photographs can be airbrushed, that catwalk models tape their thighs, that there are few opinions more subjective than those we hold of beauty, and yet still the fact that my left breast hangs below the other can cause me anguish. This is but one of the imperfections I conceal. (4) Roughly every three months I purchase the following: a face cream, a beauty bar, two body lotions, talcum powder, sun block, disposable razors, a multivitamin, deodorant, mouthwash, dental floss, a loofa, a pumice stone, toothpaste and brushes, contact lens fluids, shampoo and conditioners, a temporary colorant, cream bleach, astringent, assorted cosmetics, cotton balls, Q-tips, and feminine protection. Despite these precautions I have been unable to prevent depletions and blemishes, or suppress my urge to search out new evidence that after years of comforting underestimates I am beginning to look my age. (5) I tear easily and I can't always take it. (6) At a gathering I attended recently the conversation came to this: If you could have a third eye, where would you put it? My third eye would be colposcopic and I'd have it installed on the palm of my hand. I've heard what they say but it isn't true. It's been what I don't know that's hurt me most. (7) Each time I approach a new relationship, my past stands up like a wall in front of me, plastered with notices of previous misdeeds: infidelities mostly, diseases acquired, injuries self-inflicted and received. In this way every intimacy is recorded, and I cannot forget where I was when, or with whom. (8) I've been making love for eleven years now, through eight partners, an abortion, and two STDS. At the moment of greatest intimacy I am often most absent. I have experienced a genuine orgasm once. I'm as soft as an inner arm this year, and getting softer. II. He calls me sweet things like Honey and Sugar, whispers You are so beautiful, and tells me not to shake my head. Otherwise, he says little. I'm coming, he says with the same inflection as Turn left at the corner or Wait for me here. Because I have seen a climax pull out of a chest with its heartstrings dangling, because I have spent hours in bed with a lover for whom talk is as dear as the most inventive foreplay, because I myself find tenderness unbearable in silence, I cannot imagine a form of ecstasy that's indifferent to words. Yet when I remove from this relationship all talk of temperature and consumption (Are you hungry? Thirsty? Feeling cold?), what remains intimate between us but sex? That's nice, he'll say, when I confess I've been thinking of him. After three months of vigorous conversation he claimed he was crazy about me. …