began to kiss, mouths open, tongues, he was intrigued how quickly they went from economics to tongues and he was fondling her naked body on her Yves Saint Laurent sheets. He was going to focus on her, take time to explore with his fingertips and tongue the light fuzz on her body and the moistness inside her. Time stops, Reynolds stops, the column stops, the tuition stops, Susan’s share of the expenses stops. This must be what it’s like to be on drugs. He was concentrating on nothing but her body. He lasted longer than he usually did and then he entered her again after a while, no complexity, no particular tenderness from her or from him, just physical sex and finally he dozed off next to her. “Hey, tiger.” She was poking him on the shoulder. “I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow. You better go.” He dressed, jotted down her number from the phone and she gave him a perfunctory kiss on the forehead, much as a working girl might give to the butcher for having saved her a nice chicken. “Call me sometime,” she said. Not “Call me tomorrow.” “Sometime.” He did call her a couple of days later. Her secretary took a message. She did not call back. After several days he called again and she spoke to him.
“Hi, how are you? Look, I’m in a relationship. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll get in touch with you.”
In a relationship? Since him? Before him? This was his best shot. He had set aside everything else in his mind to focus on her body. He couldn’t screw any better than that. Did she get laid like that all the time? When he was in his 20s the younger kids seemed to be having more sex than he ever had when he was a kid. They were a sexual revolution ahead of him. And now this. You miss one sexual revolution and you never catch up.
One of the first survey guidelines from Houston indicated a high percentage of people interested in reading about Pete Rose. Doug had no objection to doing a piece on Rose even though the world could live without another one. Rather than interview Rose on himself—Doug thought that might be number 4,000 on the subject—he called Rose in Cincinnati and asked how he regarded some of the new hitters in the league. Doug did a follow-up column after talking to the hitters about Rose’s comments. The columns were not technically about Rose, but Doug felt they were close enough and that he was covered in Houston for a while.
Jeannie offered Doug the phone number of a woman she had met in her exercise class. Phone numbers were not uncommon for him, Jeannie was a source, Sarah Kleinman met people at various discussion groups she attended and Sarah, too, was a source. He wondered if it was better simply to be a sex object with someone like Cathy Vindell than the matrimonial object he often was with “the hysterics.” These were the never-married middle-aged morose, or the formerly married middle-aged morose he encountered on the singles circuit. Their passivity was painful, the hysterical eagerness to please, the listening so hard to the dumbest, most banal things he had to say. Throw out twenty years of women’s liberation and all the back copies of Ms. magazine. Men are wonderful. And he used Scope, his clothes were clean, he was clean, straight, he had a job, he wasn’t on drugs or booze. This was Eligible.
The woman Jeannie suggested, Vicki Moss, owned an American crafts shop in SoHo. He called for her at the store, a small, bright place with handcrafted objects. He liked the store. He thought he was going to like her, a brunette in her early 40s, a bit overweight, with luminous brown eyes and long black hair. They went to dinner at a nearby restaurant and he was off. One of those nights. You can’t buy a base hit. If he tried to be witty the remark came up empty. He talked about work, far too much about work, falling into a monologue about Reynolds. Boring. An 0 for 5 night, go home and try again another time, and yet she sat there for it, her eyes wide with the wonder of
“Hi, how are you? Look, I’m in a relationship. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll get in touch with you.”
In a relationship? Since him? Before him? This was his best shot. He had set aside everything else in his mind to focus on her body. He couldn’t screw any better than that. Did she get laid like that all the time? When he was in his 20s the younger kids seemed to be having more sex than he ever had when he was a kid. They were a sexual revolution ahead of him. And now this. You miss one sexual revolution and you never catch up.
One of the first survey guidelines from Houston indicated a high percentage of people interested in reading about Pete Rose. Doug had no objection to doing a piece on Rose even though the world could live without another one. Rather than interview Rose on himself—Doug thought that might be number 4,000 on the subject—he called Rose in Cincinnati and asked how he regarded some of the new hitters in the league. Doug did a follow-up column after talking to the hitters about Rose’s comments. The columns were not technically about Rose, but Doug felt they were close enough and that he was covered in Houston for a while.
Jeannie offered Doug the phone number of a woman she had met in her exercise class. Phone numbers were not uncommon for him, Jeannie was a source, Sarah Kleinman met people at various discussion groups she attended and Sarah, too, was a source. He wondered if it was better simply to be a sex object with someone like Cathy Vindell than the matrimonial object he often was with “the hysterics.” These were the never-married middle-aged morose, or the formerly married middle-aged morose he encountered on the singles circuit. Their passivity was painful, the hysterical eagerness to please, the listening so hard to the dumbest, most banal things he had to say. Throw out twenty years of women’s liberation and all the back copies of Ms. magazine. Men are wonderful. And he used Scope, his clothes were clean, he was clean, straight, he had a job, he wasn’t on drugs or booze. This was Eligible.
The woman Jeannie suggested, Vicki Moss, owned an American crafts shop in SoHo. He called for her at the store, a small, bright place with handcrafted objects. He liked the store. He thought he was going to like her, a brunette in her early 40s, a bit overweight, with luminous brown eyes and long black hair. They went to dinner at a nearby restaurant and he was off. One of those nights. You can’t buy a base hit. If he tried to be witty the remark came up empty. He talked about work, far too much about work, falling into a monologue about Reynolds. Boring. An 0 for 5 night, go home and try again another time, and yet she sat there for it, her eyes wide with the wonder of
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