A Receptacle
On the wide screen, an overweight, older woman sits with her cold, blotchy legs spread eagle. She is wearing a silky, spaghetti-strapped top and her vagina is covered in painful looking razor bumps. She touches herself in a circular motion. I turn up my nose.
“Nathan, why am I watching this?”
“Just watch, just watch.”
She pulls her top up to reveal a doughy boob and blue veins drawn across her large, fleshy nipple. Turning her hand faster and faster, she licks her lips and closes her eyes tightly. Her greasy, ash-blonde hair shakes around her face and the folds on her stomach convulse. She reaches her climax. She smiles looking down. She smiles into the camera.
“The fuck?”
“Right?” He proudly nods his head in slow motion. “This is that one chick I was telling you about.”
“Mm, which one?”
“I guess she’s not a chick, she’s like 37. She’s the one that just left her husband because he didn’t want her to go back to school or some shit, I don’t know.”
“Looks like she’s doing well for herself.”
“Whatever. This is obviously an expression. She’s been trapped for years in an unhappy marriage, unsatisfied, sexually unsatisfied, she’s experimenting. Think of it like art.”
“Yeah, I’m having a hard time thinking this is art. She wants attention, it’s sad, she’s desperate, sending out videos of herself to strangers on the internet.”
“Stranger, not plural, just me. She’s obsessed with me.”
“Not everyone is obsessed with you, Nathan. And you’re being stupid if you think you’re the only one she sent this to.”
“Ha! Don’t be a cunt. You’re just jealous.”
His eyes are lifeless and darker than usual tonight, they’re nearly black. He’s checked out. His lashes are straight and translucent, but it’s all so remarkably pretty to look at when he isn’t looking directly back at you.
I tug at his shirt sleeve. “Let me see it?”
“Why do you give a shit?”
He manages to scowl at me with a slight curve from the corner of his mouth, a generous little smile. He lifts up the back of his shirt and reveals an opiate patch, a large, square, Band-Aid looking thing smacked on his bony shoulder. The more water he drinks, the more he talks, the more energy he spends, the more the patch releases. He’s high.
“Ya happy?”
“Always.”
“That’s because you’re stupid.”
I raise an eyebrow but lack the courage to prolong the expression.
“Actually, it’s kind of nice to be dating someone I don’t have to hide these things from.”
“Listen, Nathan, I’m not jealous you’re trying to fuck older women. Maybe it would be good for you. Maybe you’d speak to your mother again.”
“If you think you’re bringing me closer to you by trying to call out my shit, you’re wrong. You get one chance at this, that’s it.”
“One chance at what?”
He stands over me and points to his face. “Me, baby.”
I laugh uncomfortably because he’s a dick and I know he means it.
“Are you in love with me?” He asks with a straight face.
“I love some things about you.”
“Do you want to be my girlfriend?”
“That’s not what I’m here for. That’s not what I think you need from me.”
“What if I told you I hate your guts? Would you love me then?”
“No.”
“I think you would.”
“No, because you don’t.”
“You’re right. I like your guts.”
My mother told me never to take stock in what a handsome man says, but I blush regardless. I wrap my arms around his ribs, I grab my own wrist behind his back, and I press my cheek against his chest. Like every hug we have shared, it’s calculated and unnatural. He uses it to push me out of the room and down the empty hallway. He sways back and forth, mocking my sentiment. His touch lacks tenderness as he guides and moves me. He’s stoned and his bedroom door is open.
“I have to use the bathroom.”
He places his hands on my shoulders. “Do you want some whiskey?”
“Of course. But I can’t. Sorry. I can’t stay tonight, I didn’t bring any clothes and I have to work in the morning.”
“Your loss.” He drops his arms to his side. He yawns like he’s been waiting for me to leave all along.
The bathroom is cold and white. I check my face in the mirror and I look better than I expected. I feel haggard, but I look young. The toilet seat is cold, but I take my time regardless. Whenever I use the restroom in this house I always need some extra time. I stare at the bathroom rug and wonder how many people have placed their wet feet there, how many women, specifically. I soundlessly peel back the shower curtain and reveal not a goddamn thing.Not a goddamn thing. Nothing. Not a shampoo bottle, not a bar of soap, not even a ring in the corner of the tub indicating that anything had ever been there. I make my way over to the sink and for the first time notice there’s no toothbrush, no toothpaste, no mouthwash, and no aftershave. I open the cabinet behind the mirror and find nothing. I open the cabinet under the sink, nothing but a pipe. I wash my hands in nothing but water and dry them on a dark blue robe that hangs in the loneliest fashion.
Nathan has relocated to his office where two flat screens glow in the corner of the room. I stand in the doorway and watch him swivel his black leather chair away from me and to the screens and back again. He slinks down and folds his pale arms across his chest. There are naked bodies on the screen before him.
“Um, Nathan?”
“Mhmm?”
“Do you have a bathroom in the basement?”
He tilts his head back and irritably protrudes his jaw. “There’s nothing in my basement.”
“Then where are all of your things? Like your toothbrush? Or your deodorant?”
He sighs loudly out of his nostrils, slowly turns his face and confronts my eyes. “I put all of those things away. I don’t think they should be out.”
“Where do you keep them?”
“Under the sink.”
I sit down on a loveseat and pull my knees up to my chest. He shuts off the computer monitor, but porn continues to air through the speakers. We sit in the dark room and listen to two women moan and coo. We listen to sloppy and slushy sounds, and we smirk at the occasional grunt exerted from their male playmate.
“So today at work, this kid that-”
“-where do you work again?”
“Seriously, Nathan? The coffee shop two fucking blocks from your house.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Anyway, this kid, he’s only like 16, he doesn’t know what kind of music he likes. I asked him what he listens to and he said he doesn’t know. Sixteen years old and doesn’t listen to music. Can you believe that? He said that it all sounds the same to him.”
“Show him how a real woman fucks.”
“…what?”
“I guess it was only me who learned about music from an older woman who simultaneously ushered in my sexual awakening.”
“How old was she? How old were you?”
“She was forty. I was sixteen. It was my mom.”
No, God, no.
“She liked popping pills, folk music and fucking her son. Why the fuck else would someone stop talking to their mom?”
I recall an old photo of him that he had once used as a Facebook profile picture. He is smiling, he is two years old. He’s a happy baby in a red and blue striped onesie. The picture seems to have been snapped mid-laugh. But the baby toothed grin foreshadows and I gravely fill in the events of his childhood. I construct images unbearable and debauched.
“I want you to have good memories.”
“Don’t dwell on that shit. This isn’t your story, it’s mine.”
I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I want to say something meaningful. I lie down on my back, and interlock my fingers across my stomach. I stare at the dull, white ceiling, waiting for the right words, waiting for Nathan to kick me out, waiting for the silence to break. I watch him from the corner of my eye as he stands up and stretches, and does so rather lackadaisically. He walks over to the end of the loveseat and sits down. He repositions my body and picks up my feet, resting them on his lap.
“You hate feet.”
“Yours don’t bother me, they’re really small.” His smile is genuine and unloaded.
He moves his hand up my leg and slips his fingers up the inner side of my denim shorts and into my panties. Without breaking eye contact, he doesn’t ask. He moves toward me and looks directly into my face, challenging me. I feel my blood pressure rising, he has a lot of nerve and it turns me on. He leans on his right forearm and pushes two fingers of his left hand all the way inside of me. He massages my clitoris with the palm of his hand while using his fingers to wander about my insides. I wonder if his mother taught him how to do this and I’m disgusted with myself. I start to unbutton his pants.
He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good. I’m too drugged, I can’t do anything. I just want to feel around on you.”
“Then what’s the point?”
Without protest, he lies down on his side, between me and the inside of the sofa. He curls into me and lays his head in the small space between my right breast and neck. His heavy breaths and soft moans would normally lead me to believe I’m about to be groped, but I feel him trembling. I wrap my right arm around his back and shoulders, and I cradle the side of his head and neck with my left arm. I hold him. I hold him while he sweats out the opiates onto my shirt and neck. I squeeze him tighter and kiss the top of his head. And we lie like this, drifting in and out of sleep throughout the night.
I open my eyes and I am fully clothed, alone, on the loveseat. I look over and Nathan is at work, entirely engaged in the computer screens before him. He is wearing a soft, hunter-green sweater that looks like it’s from a 1996 L.L.Bean catalogue, and mustard yellow corduroys. I like everything about him. I sit up and put my feet on the wood floor, but Nathan is wearing headphones and doesn’t hear a sound that I make. I get up and walk past him, down the hallway and to the bathroom. Again, I’m surprised by my face in the mirror, but this time it’s because I’m smiling. I shake out my hair. I use the tips of my fingers to wipe old mascara out from underneath my eyes. I rinse out my mouth with cold water. The bathroom is still empty of his personal belongings and I try to remember if there were ever a time I heard him shower. Nothing comes to mind.
When I step back into his office, he finally notices me and rips off his headphones, smiling kindly. “Morning, pretty.”
“Hey. What did you say?”
“I said, good morning, pretty.”
“Oh, hey, yeah. Good morning.” I try to show my appreciation with a smile, but he has already turned his attention back to his work.
I feel anxious as I put on my shoes and reach for my backpack. I assess my thoughts, trying to decide which of them is appropriate. I rummage through my belongings, stalling, pretending to look for something. I feel awkward and hyper-aware of my body and presence in the room.
He spins around. “Thank you for not having sex with me last night.”
“Nathan, you don’t have to thank me for that. We’re friends.”
“Was it difficult for you?”
“Oh, come on.”
He cocks his head to the side and bats his lashes. “Are you not attracted to me anymore?”
I feel heavy and I laugh too loudly. I clumsily plop down on the loveseat, still warm from my sleep. “I still think you’re attractive. Of course, you’re very, very attractive.”
He turns his back to me, “Good.”
“Nathan, I can’t stop thinking about last night.”
Without pause, without looking away from the screens, he says flatly, “If you ever bring up any of that shit I told you I will never talk to you again.”
“I’m sorry. I, listen, I know you don’t need me. But I want you around, I want to be around you.”
“I thought you had to work this morning.”
Hearing the stress in my own voice, I say, “I can go in whenever.”
“For one fucking day, can you ever just tell the truth?”
“Just, I just need you to help me out here. Tell me what you want from me. Please? Nathan?”
“It’s not difficult for me to disappear,” he says, still clicking away at his work, “don’t make that easier.”
“You can’t expect me to just forget it. I care about you. How do people normally respond when you tell them?”
He switches his attention from work to Facebook. “They don’t. I don’t tell people.”
“Then why did you tell me? If I’m not even allowed to bring it up, if I can’t understand you better, then why did you even tell me?”
He rotates his chair halfway and shows me his handsome profile. He folds his hands between his legs and looks at the wall in front of him. “Because you’re a receptacle.”
“I don’t know what that means, Nathan.”
“People can put anything they want into you, dispose of the things they hate and just put them in you and you just accept it.”
“So, like a sponge? Like, I absorb the world around me?”
“Ha!” He shoves his face into his hands and shakes his head. “You’re definitely malleable. But no, I’d say you’re more like a jizz rag.”
I nearly swallow my tongue. I feel embarrassed. Like the ass of a cruel joke.
“And you’re still fucking sitting there.” He laughs again. “I just called you a jizz rag and you’re still sitting on my fucking couch. You think I’m fucked up? You’re the one that is fucked up. You are so fucked up.”
With a drubbing heat, my face flushes. I stand up and pick my backpack up from the floor. I involuntarily flash a mortified, half smile and I walk out of his office, down his stairs and out the front door. I picture him stopping me, apologizing, explaining what he really meant. That it was just a goof. I fall into my car and look over at the vacant sidewalk. I don’t feel like a receptacle, but I don’t feel empty either.
