Misunderestimation
A lifelong nebbish copes with a world too happy to humiliate him.
The first time I met Demian, he went nuts. I mean, the kind where you’re not sure how it’s going to end. Maybe with me running and cowering behind a trash can. Perhaps with bite marks on my scrotum.
I didn’t want to show I was scared, because one of his owners is the woman I’m in love with. And the other one, her current husband Elwood, might snicker if I cowered. So, nonchalantly as possible, I reached down and patted Demian’s furry head. He could have plausibly bitten my wrist then, but he detected a smell on my hand, probably the cheese doodles I’d had for lunch.
He licked my fingers, and ever since then he sniffs and licks them, our little ritual it seems. Before leaving for a visit, I prep my hand by eating some doodles, or maybe Fritos or Lay’s if I’ve run out of my usual staple. Oh yeah, and sometimes peanut butter. I’ll just plunge my hand in, lick a while, and then it’s ready for Demian!
So I found my way into his heart. Then I cut him off, just to see what he’d do. It just made him love me more. He’d stay glued to me, and Paola would sit and beam at us like the sweetheart she is. How I lived for her.
Not so much for Elwood, who I think is my friend. He’s older, more bombastic, unsteady yet somehow unreasonably kind to my girlfriend, his wife. Unless he drinks, which is daily.
So, I had an affair with Paola. You get that, right?
It began innocently enough, when one night, texting on my cellular phone, I asked her what she was wearing. Wait, there’s more. I asked her what she was wearing to the birthday party we were both attending. “Sort of a cardigan with a sash,” she quickly replied.
Sort of a cardigan with a sash; the words reverberated in my head, haunting and taunting me. What’s a cardigan, I thought, and why does it require a sash? Without the sash, would the cardigan open and reveal parts of her I’d long dreamt of seeing? What happens when a silly old friend playfully pulls at the knot of the sash?
As you can imagine, the thought sent my head reeling. Of course, I did no such thing at the birthday party at the O’Luneys’. I waited until we got to her car afterwards. In the smoggy darkness, she turned and slapped me, but the slap felt just a little playful. So I slapped her back, harder, and there we went.
Off to the races? Well, not exactly. It took me a week before I had the nerve to contact her on Instagram Messenger. “I miss you and want to pull your sash again,” I typed.
“Who is this? Corbert?” came the response.
“Uh, yeah?”
“Why did you say such a thing to me?”
I looked down and saw it was not Paola, but Paula, my duduk teacher. At 78 years old, she’s still got a pretty feisty temper. At least I assume so, because I quickly ghosted her I haven’t been present for a single lesson since. I imagine that feisty temper presented itself each time she realized I wasn’t going to show up. I hope she gets some help for that.
When I finally got the name right and contacted the actual Paola, she was glad to hear from me. (If only she taught the duduk, right?) “Hey Corby, whatcha doin?”
I thought of the sash/cardigan incident and froze up a little.
“Just looking out the window.” I wasn’t.
“Oh? And what do you see?”
“Just, you know, a stick or two. Some grass.” It seemed suddenly difficult to make up things that are in nature.
“Sounds lovely. Want me to come watch with you?”
I panicked. I live in a small brick house, and in the back, where I currently sat, the only windows there look out at the parking lot and a Flubby gas station. Not a single stick to be seen.
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” I said, thinking fast. “I was just leaving to get some….”
“Some what?” I paused. “What are you getting?”
“Cheese doodles!” I blurted.
“Oh, that’s so nice. Demian will love that.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her the doodles were for me. The residue on my fingers from them were for Demian.
“He’ll really love that,” she repeated after a while.
I decided to act as though we’d been disconnected. To my surprise, she stayed on the line. Eventually she burped.
“Excuse you,” she said, and giggled.
I think that was when I fell truly in love with Paola Pudmire.
I then did what I do, which is to pour my heart into a mixture of songs and present the resulting compact disc, complete with track list, to the object of my desire.
It’s a great playlist, I think, the sort that makes a woman want to leap into your arms for your musical curatorial skills. Yeah, most women really find mix cds with obscure songs really sexy. Except that Paola, I think, actually does.
When she first played the songs, probably in her car or bathroom (I now know that’s where she keeps a boom box) she must have been titillated, and puzzled over which ones were referring to her. I decided to let her ponder that a while. She called me later that night.
“So which songs were referring to me?” she said.
“Tracks 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 22, and 23.”
“Thought so. But not track 13? The Doodletown Pipers?”
“No, that’s about my uncle Harry.”
“You must really admire him.”
“I do. I really do.” Did I? Which one was Harry? The one who kept calling me a dimwit? Or the one who gained 300 pounds after Aunt Mae left him?
Something in our relationship shifted that day, perhaps when she realized what a family man I am. When I next came to see her while Elwood was at work, driving a fork lift or something, she opened her door, and there it was: the cardigan; the sash. Her smile seemed different. I think it was because it was more a leer than her usual smile. It made a sweet little U-shape on her porcelain face. Some red curls growing out of her scalp cascaded down, one of them sticking into her mouth as she smiled. I didn’t think she was aware of it. Or, if she was, she hid it well.
I had to do it: I pulled on her sash again, and her cardigan fell open, exposing a whitish grey brassiere and the tops of her boobs.
She gave a little shriek, turned, and with a giggle took off running into the house. I ran to my car, licking my fingers, and sped home.
“Why’d you leave?” she texted me. I was too scared to reply.
“You big tease,” she continued. “You just don’t want to give it up, do you?”
“No,” I almost whispered.
“What would it take?”
“Take for what?”
“For you to give it up?” Her voice was sounding weird, almost as if she had some peanut butter caught in her throat.
“Oh, you know,” I said coyly.
“Oh, you bad, bad, bad boy.”
“I’ll be a good little boy if you want me to.”
“Um, what?”
“Be a good lit —”
“Um, see, women don’t find that attractive.”
“They don’t find good boys attractive?”
“Ever heard of James Dean?”
“The pork sausage guy?”
Paola sighed. “Look, next time, let’s do this bad-boy good-girl thing. Okay? It gets my motors revving.”
“Okay,” I consented, and began wondering what act would signify a badness in a person. Michael Jackson messed around with little boys, then had the audacity to name his next album “Bad.” Its sales, if I remember right, broke records.
“Elwood’s gone another hour.”
So, I drove back towards her house, their house, thinking bad things. Like not only pulling her sash, but ripping the fucking cardigan right off her tits. And the grey bra. Whispering smut into her ear. And then, who knows?
We might become lovers, thought, driving. She could unleash on me a version of herself she hadn’t known existed. We could have fun, for a while. And I could take credit for that, and she wouldn’t leave me, ever, at least not without a really good reason. Even if there was one. Probably my autism.
What if Elwood came home unexpectedly early, and sees me in my underwear? I’d never hear the end of that. “Hey fellas,” he’d say at the pool hall, “get a load of this.” Then he’d show the photo he took that day, this day, of me coming out of his bathroom, forearms crossed in front of the crotch of my underwear.
They’d all laugh. At the hapless interloper in his house, making time, probably, with his wife. He’d humiliate me forever.
I toughened myself up by donning a leather motorcyclist’s cap, and hoped no one I knew would see me. Some tough guy might mistake me for a tough guy and propose a contest to see who is tougher. That was all I needed.
These were my thoughts as I returned to his wife’s back doorstep and gave a shaky knock. I heard Demian’s tortured, raspy barking from somewhere deep in the house, if such a thing is possible in a double-wide.
Out from the darkness came the curls, the smile, the cardigan. There was no sash. “Where’s the fucking sash, bitch?” I asked badly.
The little U on Paola’s face turned briefly into a kind of W, then came back to U in full force. Her smile almost made me laugh, but I feared that might be interpreted as “good,” so I suppressed it.
“I ain’t puttin’ out unless I see that fuckin’ sash.”
Again, she turned and giggled and ran into the house. After some audible fumbling of what sounded like bells, coins and silverware, she came running back.
“That’s fuckin’ better,” I said, and yanked her sash. Hard. Away the cardigan fell. This time there was no brassiere to hide the “merchandise.”
“Like what you see, tough guy?”
“Yeah, it’ll do.”
“Well, how about this?” She removed her knit slacks, which fell to the floor. With a finger, she beckoned me in. As I followed her into her and Elwood’s bedroom, I studied her derriere, covered only by underwear. Demian followed me expectantly, but I turned and gave his snout a sharp slap, causing him to yipe, then whimper. I continued on. Once we were inside, she closed the door and said, “You’re definitely keeping that hat on.”
“What if I goddamn don’t?” I challenged. I didn’t really want to take it off for fear she’d notice my bald spot during our sexual acrobatics; there was no telling what angles she’d see me from.
“Then I’ll have to take it off you,” she answered, leering. “With my boobs.” She shook them, causing me to shake in response.
“Those boobs? They couldn’t take candy from a baby.”
Momentarily hurt, she recovered and said, pointing to her panties, “Can you take this from me, baby?”
“If you’re okay with me ripping them in two and setting them on fire.”
Playfully, I supposed, she took them off, slipped them under the covers, and dove in to join them.
I disrobed as she watched, which caused my partial erection to wane just a bit. Which was fine with me; when I’m erect it resembles a yellow squash that doesn’t know which way to grow. I fought off the shame, fully disrobed, and slipped under the covers with Paola. We lay on our backs for a while, she nervously stroking my thigh and I letting her. Finally, knowing a bad boy doesn’t just wait for things to happen, I turned to my side. So did she, so we were facing each other. I began to support and squeeze her sagging breasts, getting my face real close. I did this for about five minutes, and she said, “Hey, my vagina’s down there.”
“I know, bitch,” I retorted, and squeezed a little harder, making her suppress a shriek. Thinking that a bit mean, I walked it back by saying, “Man, these breasts are soft and spongey.”
“That’s right. And so is my woo.”
“Woo?”
“Woo who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Woo hoo!”
We both laughed for a while, and I planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek. Its hideousness now concealed, my squash was steadily growing, suddenly knowing which way to, and she checked its progress with a firm grip. “Mmmm,” she mmmmed.
“Mmmm?” I asked, trying to maintain the tough persona that had gotten me here in the first place.
“Yes,” she said, way too loudly. “You should listen more carefully when someone talks.”
“Um, what are you doing?” I whispered.
“No need to whisper,” she said.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because it’s better El hears two people just having a normal conversation rather than what we’re doing.” She said the last few words lo sotto.
I suddenly got it. If we were all quiet save for the random grunt or snort of sex, an unexpected Elwood would just barge right in, beat the living shit out of me, and throw some things around, like me. Probably Paola too. Elwood means “the wood” in Spanish, after all.
I am too embarrassed to say what happened next. Let’s just say Paola had a climactic experience, supposedly, and I didn’t, or at least I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell sometimes with my ol’ squash.
I was sitting on the bed, putting my shoes on, when I heard the back screen door slam and footsteps coming my way. Petrified, I sat where I was, knowing Elwood well enough that panic would invite his wrath. Calmly, and with shaking hands, I tied and failed, then retied my laces. To my left, Elwood’s head popped through the doorway. “Stealing my shoes again, fool?” And then that ballistic laugh.
I shook my head. “No, just tying mine.”
“Why were they off in the first place?” Elwood’s face was suddenly unfriendly.
“They felt too tight.”
Elwood smiled viciously. “Oh yeah, you got that too tight too loose thing goin’ on. Where’s Pao?”
“In the bathroom.”
“Shittin’ probably.”
“Yeah.” It seemed best to agree with him.
“Pao-Pao!” he bellowed, like he was in a Tennessee Williams play. But Elwood had no idea whom Tennessee Williams was.
A muffled “Whaaat.”
“When’s dinner? Got anything started?”
“Didn’t get a chance to.”
“She was tidying up around the house,” I added helpfully.
We both noticed my leather cap, top down on the vinyl flooring. “Looks like she missed a spot,” he said, then burst into way-too-long laughter. “Come on fuckhead, let’s get a beer.” On the way out I heard the toilet flush, and felt bad.
“So, when we going to get your pipe drained?” was the first question Elwood asked me at Get Down Here, a basement bar known for hosting soul bands in the seventies. But now, blaring from the speakers, was a country song about a man who can’t find the right tires for his truck, which seemed to be a metaphor for his inability to find the right size shoes for his girlfriend.
From past experience, I realized Elwood was also using a metaphor. The “pipe” to which he was referring was the squash — also a metaphor — between my legs, the same one I’d just, only a half hour ago, thrust into his wife’s wondrous valley, which, again, is a….
Well, you know.
“Maybe this weekend,” I said, hoping that with my false promise we could put to rest the subject of sex.
“I ain’t gonna drop it,” said Elwood. “I’m a make it happen.”
“Okay, good. Mmm, this beer tastes good.”
“I don’t know how you drink that flowery shit. ‘India Pale Ale,’ my ass. They didn’t make that swill in India.”
“No, probably not.” I could have explained to him that, in this case, ‘India’ refers to the heavy hopping of beer shipped from England to colonists in India. Hops are a preservative.
“Maybe the beer you’re drinkin’ is getting in the way of love.” He drew the word out so long it almost made me want to throw up. Nothing was getting in the way of my “luuuuuuving” his wife.
“I mean,” Elwood continued, “I drink Bud Light, and I’m keepin’ my dick wet.”
“So, if I may ask, do you and Paola make love, like, every day?”
“What the fuck you think?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
“Well, take a guess then.”
I thought of my previous relationship, a sweet old lady named Sparta. “I don’t know, once every couple of weeks?”
Elwood pretended to do a “spit take,” which entails a burst of laughter or surprise that projects the contents of one’s in-mouth beverage out of his mouth, sometimes right in the face of the very one who surprised or caused the spitter to laugh.
Then he swallowed too fast and launched into a coughing fit, which aroused the interest of the other guy at the bar, an old man with a hunting cap and a grizzled face that resembled the bark of a tree. “He’s okay,” I assured him.
“Who fuckin’ cares?” said the old man, and downed an entire tumbler’s worth of liquor, after which he slammed the glass against the bar and toddled to the exit.
“Every couple of weeks,” Elwood sneered.
“Every couple of weeks what?”
“That’s what you said. Paola and I are doin’ it before the sun’s up, and after it goes down she goes down on me. Get it?”
I did. He was referring to oral sex. “Oh good,” I said. “Glad for you. Truly.”
“‘Truly,’ he spat, and I thought of a boy in middle school who often mimicked everything I said, for everyone in the cafeteria to enjoy. And then I had to use the bathroom, as I did now.
Sitting in there, thankfully away from the country music, I checked my phone for messages.
“I hate Elwood,” Paola had texted twelve minutes ago. “That’s why we haven’t had sex in ten years.
“He’s such a duck.
“Why are you his fiend anyway?”
I thought about that.
“He thinks you’re a stupid nebish you know.
“Has no respect for you.
“Or anoyne.”
I had to admit I had noticed many of those same things. What was the attraction? What was I getting from the “friendship?” He was the kind of guy my dad hated because they were so much alike. Light beer drinking bullies.
I had to respond to that barrage of texts. “Well, it’s good he has me. Otherwise the rest of the world would have to take the brunt.”
I finished up in the bathroom and made my way back to Elwood and my flowery beer. Two women, probably in their forties, had sat close to him and Elwood had just finished laughing at his own joke. When I rejoined him, he turned to me and said, “Thought you fell in.”
The women giggled.
“Know the last time this guy had his sad little weeny attended to?” he was now asking the ladies. “Tell ’em. Wasn’t it during one of the moon landings?”
That cracked everyone up, even the bartender, a little, snarling, red-faced cherub with a limp.
I had a good comeback, however. “That was 51 years ago. So I would have been five. I wasn’t having sex with anyone to my knowledge. If I had, it would have been a scarring experience.”
The women, as well as Elwood, looked at me like dogs shown a card trick.
Finally Elwood said, “And he wonders why no one tugs on his tap root.”
That started up the laughter again, especially the bartender, who had planted his elbows on the bar right between the two women, evidently figuring out one of them was up for grabs.
“Well, thanks for the beer, Elwood.”
“‘Thanks for the beer.’ Like you could call that beer.” He turned to the bartender and said, “Get him a real one. On me.”
“No really, I….”
“Look, fool,” he intoned in my ear. “Two bitches. Two guys. You’re staying.”
I understood then he was wanting me to “run interference” or act as his “wingman” or some other made-up term for helping a “friend” “get laid.”
“I have this….”
“You have this little dangler lure that needs chomping.”
I stopped protesting. “Well, let me see if I can change my appointment.”
“Appointment for what,” the bartender chimed in. “A waxing?”
That sent the two ladies guffawing. Elwood, now perceiving the bartender as competition, wasn’t quite as amused. I pretended to be fixated on my phone, postponing my “appointment.” There was another message from Paola. “He says you haven’t had sex since the last moon landing. If only he knew!” And then a winking “emoji.” She meant that, in truth, I was having more sex than Elwood.
That helped me cope better with the current situation. The jokes at my expense had continued like a spring downpour, but I had a kind of umbrella, my new lover, and was staying dry. (Sorry about all the metaphors.) The barbs deflected off my like paper airplanes off King Kong, a fictional monster who climbed tall buildings and terrorized a city.
“Drink up, boy,” Elwood was now telling me. “Get a little courage in ya.”
I took a sip, nearly did a “spit take,” and swallowed. I wondered if Paola had ever had to do that after oral sex with Elwood, back when they did such things.
“Get them more drinks, wouldja?” said Elwood, suddenly turning to the lingering barkeep. “Make yourself useful.
The bartender glared at him for a second, then turned and got together the ingredients for two “sex on the beach” drinks.
“So,” began Elwood, done for now with humiliating his best friend and belittling the bartender, “ladies, what’s after this for ya?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Corbert here happens to live alone, doncha Corby?”
“I have a parakeet.”
Elwood stared at me blankly for a few seconds, as if at another card trick. “Uh huh. And he gets all the channels.” He winked at the women, who giggled again.
I started to explain to him that I don’t watch pornography, because usually I can tell they’re not having real sex, which entails two (or more) people attracted to each other wanting to please each other, not earn a salary with no benefits. Also, I don’t like fake breasts, or men for some reason pulling their penises out of their partners’ vaginas only to ejaculate somewhere on their bodies. It’s weird.
Interpreting the women’s vapid yammering as affirmatives, Elwood said, “Drink up, buddy, we’re bolting out of this place.”
“But I just finished making these sexes on the beaches,” said the bartender.
“We’ll get ’em to go,” said Elwood, rising from his stool.
“I can’t…” said the bartender, who watched Elwood grab the glasses and tell me, “Pay the man, Corb.”
Reluctant and annoyed, I paid with my Wells Fargo card, which I hadn’t used yet and wasn’t going to use except in the case of emergencies. Which this was, maybe, but not really the kind for which I’d gotten the card.
By the time I’d loaded the take-out drinks and made my way to my house, Elwood and his prey were idling in the driveway. I could tell by the pose of silhouettes Elwood was mansplaining something about which he knew nothing, and the women were nodding their heads as if they he did. I felt just a little compassion for them; they were acting the way their upbringing taught them to.
Careful not to block them in case I could convince them to leave me alone, I got out and raced to the front door before Elwood could stop me with some withering insult. Once inside, I checked in with Wayne, my parakeet. He seemed to be looking at me with some suspicion. “It’s okay, buddy,” I assured him. “They’ll be done soon enough.”
“Sorry,” uttered Wayne. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”
After I checked on my laundry, which was still in its hamper, I heard the sound of someone struggling to turn the front doorknob. I heard a man yell derisively, and two women giggling. Somehow I had locked the door. By the time I got there, Elwood was peering in through a window and looking at me with bewilderment.
Our guests entered, and immediately began milling about perusingly, assessing my possessions as if at an estate sale. Wayne looked absolutely flummoxed and stayed mute. But when Elwood entered, all bluster and testosterone, he bellowed, “Ladies, you gotta check out the bird.”
They came to the cage, looked mutely at Wayne’s dwelling. One of them said, “Bird.”
“Over here.” Elwood’s face was pressed to the cage. The women joined him there, pressing their own faces and watching Wayne as if witnessing at an execution. It broke my heart.
“Lasts longer,” said Wayne, and I knew Elwood, not to mention the women, would not understand. If Elwood had, he would have found a way to hurt Wayne. And then I would have to kill Elwood.
“What’s he saying?” screeched the uglier woman.
“Sounds like ‘last longer,’” whispered the other one, who was getting a bit more attractive.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them Wayne was sarcastically urging them to take a picture of him rather than gawping at him like someone getting a heart transplant at a medical college.
“Well, let’s get at them drinks,” announced Elwood. When I told them I’d left them in the car, they all turned to me expectantly, like a dog waiting for the next card trick. I’m sorry I keep using that metaphor, but it’s all I can compare their blank expressions to.
I went to get the drinks, and after only six seconds uproarious laughter boomed and tittered from the house. Elwood had told an impromptu joke about me, probably something about the clue I didn’t have.
“Go!” screamed Wayne. My poor little birdy.
The night progressed like a swing dance at a dementia center ballroom. The women got drunk off my stash of sherry, and Elwood drank the last of my Bell’s Two Hearted ale by 11:00.
“How drank is he at this point?” asked Paola via text.
“Pretty drink,” I responded, sitting on the toilet lid. “He shouldn’t drive home; can you come and get him?”
She agreed to, arriving only ten minutes later. Elwood was in the middle of a joke about midgets or something, and seemed to be losing his train of thought. Paola looked at the women, sizing them up, and said to her husband, “Had enough of this?”
He cast his eyes down. “Yeah,” he muttered.
“Was it fun?”
“No.” He seemed utterly defeated, and the women suppressed some laughter that made Elwood seem even more pathetic.
Before leaving, Paola looked at me meaningfully, almost beseechingly. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. They left, and I began ignoring her numerous texts.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t surprised I’d never before engaged in a threesome. But that night, a banner night, was a first. I’ve done it a few times since, and I think I may have found my sexual niche. I don’t want closeness with a woman; I’m too undeveloped to be capable of such a thing. There are parts missing within me. But if I can keep it up, perhaps with multiple partners, maybe I can find them one day.
