Middle Men by Jim Gavin

out.
    â€œI haven’t taken a biology class since high school,” she said. “I clean up cat poop for a living. I might as well try and become an astronaut.”
    All she knew how to do was play piano, and she was only good enough to teach it to rich kids.
    â€œI love listening to you play,” I said. “The stuff you play sounds like what it’s supposed to sound like.”
    â€œI know,” she said. “That’s why I’m so fucked.”
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    Karen came to Los Angeles thinking she would get her own place near the beach. She ended up on the east side, in a shabby but not entirely murderous neighborhood. She hated being there and she also hated going out. She had always felt uncomfortable in bars, the expression on her face too hostile to attract friendly people, but not hostile enough, apparently, to repel lunatics. Her first week here she went to see a show by herself at Al’s Bar. Before the first band went on, a man with an Ace bandage wrapped around his head asked if she could drive him to Fresno. “ASAP,” he said, tapping her shoulder. She declined and waited to see who he would ask next, but instead he walked straight out of the bar. She said this type of thing happened all the time. She imagined that whenever she left the house, an all-points bulletin was sent to every freak in the city, who went screaming after her with single-minded purpose. She hadn’t gone out since. She worried that she had come three thousand miles just to become a recluse, again.
    We started going to the beach every day. I always took the freeway to LAX and then drove down an empty road that curled around the back edges of the runways. There were sand dunes and wildflowers and silver jets roaring over ourheads and when we got to the end we could see the ocean. It was nice arriving at the beach around four o’clock, with people clearing out and the evening swell rolling in. Karen was a strong swimmer and never got cold in the water. She didn’t own a women’s bathing suit. She wore a dark T-shirt and a pair of board shorts that I had lent her. Under the board shorts, she wore men’s briefs. She always wore men’s briefs, because she considered women’s underwear to be frilly and absurd.
    â€œDon’t worry,” she said, snapping the elastic band against her salty skin, “I don’t have a cock.”
    Sometime in late July, after we had bodysurfed for a couple hours, I came in, exhausted, and waited for her on the strand. It was almost dark when she ran out of the water. She sat down beside me, shivering, and for a long time we watched seagulls poking around the lifeguard tower. Farther up the coast I could see lights crowning the palisades and I thought, now, now is the time to kiss this cockless woman.
    â€œCan I kiss you?”
    â€œYes,” she said, with a look of resignation that, for the next two months, would never quite leave her face.
    Later, at Del Taco, we had the conversation wherein the two parties recount their version of the courtship. She had wanted me to kiss her the whole time. For some reason, this knowledge was more satisfying than the kiss itself.
    â€œThis isn’t going to work,” she said, dipping her quesadilla in Del Scorcho sauce. “I hope you understand that.”
    A few nights later we had seedy proletarian sex in the back of my delivery van. We were parked behind a Kragen Auto Parts. In a gesture toward civility and romance, I brought condoms and a clean blanket. I spent a long timetracing the scars on her knees and elbows, while we detailed our sexual history. My drab list of monogamies held no interest for either us.
    When it was her turn, she said, “What do you want to hear about first—rapes or abortions?”
    She was my angel! In reality there was nothing that harrowing, but she considered herself the chief of sinners. She had been a skater in her youth, a