(Feedback appreciated)
*
There have been so many airports this year.
First Tacoma, then London, then Glasgow—and finally, Boston. Travel like I'm running away from something, or like I'm finally free. Or maybe it's the same thing.
Tonight is a bad night though, and the voices in my head won't shut up. I can't sleep, so instead, I'll sit here at this computer and write.
My father died holding a gun to his head. My mother is a writer. I'll try her method first.
***
Boston. It is a place where modern buildings line cobblestone streets, and graveyards skulk between skyscrapers. Everywhere, there is the memory, the smell, the idea of the ocean.
I can see why she loves it there. Every guy has that one she, doesn't he? The one girl who doesn't, necessarily, need to be named.
I have perfect recall of her at the airport; I can still see the expression on her face as we made eye contact the single time I flew out to visit.
She pulled up to the curb in her red Cherokee and got out to hug me. She's tall, maybe 5'11", and kissing her has always felt different than kissing other girls—I don't have to bend down, and when we step back, we're looking eye to eye.
I won't describe her more than that. You don't need to know. She was still married then, and she's still married now, I think. You can judge me if you want; but there are things you don't know. Circumstances that blur the lines.
It had been her husband's idea, after all.
At least that first time.
I won't write her name here. Even her first name. I'm not ready to write about us yet, so I'll write about other things, until enough time has passed that I can write about her.
Does this seem strange? That I'd start writing about her and then skip to something else? It would only be strange if the stories weren't true.
There's so much that's happened, and every part connects to every other part—and it all comes down to where I want to start. So, of course, sitting here at the computer, I started with her, my girl in Boston. And on some sleepless night when I'm again weighing the benefits of my parents' respective forms of panacea, I'll probably end with her.
Tonight though, I'm going to write about the night Ron introduced me to Lisa.
***
Ron met her on his trash route. That's all he'd say at first as we drove through the rain to meet her. It was a wet night, a few degrees below freezing, and the heat in his old Chevy wasn't working. The windshield wipers beat the slush away while I rubbed my hands to keep warm.
Ron is my oldest friend. We came up together, as close to brothers as two friends can be. We'd taken different paths for a while after high school—he'd spent a few years in Texas, and I'd gone away to college—but now that we'd settled into our early thirties, we hung out pretty regularly.
"You're not going to believe this chick," he said.
"You saying she's that good-looking?" I asked.
"No, it's not that."
I looked at him.
"I mean, she's cute," he said. "She's got a face, but that's not what I'm talking about."
"Then what are you talking about?"
"You'll just have to see."
I studied him in the green dashboard light. Like me, he has dark hair and blue eyes. Some people assume we're related because we've got the same coloring, and we're about the same height. But I've got a bigger nose, a bigger jaw—a bigger, more rectangular face. I'm a blockier version of him. Growing up, I'd never had his shock-and-awe looks, but we still seemed to do about the same with girls. I was the brilliant one. The crazy one.
"You fucked her, didn't you?" I said.
There was a pause, the tiniest pause. "No, of course not," he said. "This is just business."
I cocked an eyebrow but questioned no further. Ron had called me a half hour ago. He'd gotten me out of bed. Ron was a garbage man who used to be a business man—and who now wanted to be a business man again.
He'd worn three-piece suits to work when he first got married. He'd run an office for a cell phone company. Then came the lay-offs. Now his wife watched him got to work with a name tag sewn onto his shirt. For some kind of women, that wouldn't have mattered. The best kind, I think. Hey, a job's a job. But Ron's wife wasn't the best kind. And he knew it, even if he'd never admit it. Ron loved his wife, and in a fucked-up way, he was doing this for her.
"Porn," he'd told me a dozen times. "Is a billion dollar-a-year industry."
I had a good video camera. As his oldest friend, that made me his partner. Ron had talked about it before, but we'd never actually tried it. Ron had never been able to find a girl willing to fuck on camera.
We pulled up in front of a little duplex that sat just off the main square of Pierce, Illinois. You could see the clock tower of the courthouse from the front yard. It's the kind of duplex that's wedged between shops and restaurants and probably will end up being an antique store at some point, once downtown has a few more years of sprawl under its belt.
"Her name is Lisa," Ron said. "But don't mention I gave her real name, okay?"
"Sure," I said.
"Sorry I got you out of bed so late, but she's married and can only do this at certain times."
We walked up the stairs to the second floor and knocked.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but Lisa wasn't it.
She answered the door with a huge smile, looking for all the world like some conservative doctor's office receptionist.
"I thought you guys would never get here," she said and ushered us inside. Ron did the introductions.
She was smiley and bubbly, mid-thirties, with dark hair and a pleasant, oval face. She was a little heavy in that curvy, sexy kind of way that makes a little heavy look good. She looked like somebody's wife, or somebody's mother. Not the kind of fake-sexy you'd see on TV, but the more lived-in kind you might come across in a grocery store.
The small front room was cramped. The furniture was dingy and worn. A poster of a huge body builder armed one wall. It looked like the home of a frat boy, not the home of a married couple.
I gestured to the posters. "So you're husband likes working out?"
"Brian? No." She smiled. "Oh, you mean the posters. This isn't my house. Lord, no. I wouldn't live here for anything. This is my boyfriend's place."
"I thought you two were married."
"I am. Do you boys want something to drink?"
"Sure," I said. Ron declined.
"So when is the guy supposed to be here?" Ron asked.
Lisa looked at her watch. "Any minute."
"So we're going to be shooting you and your boyfriend?" I asked, quick on my feet.
She looked at Ron. Ron gave me an apologetic look. She turned back to me. "No, honey, my boyfriend would kill me if he knew I was doing this. He's an old-fashioned guy. We're only using Kevin's apartment because your friend," she hooked a thumb in Ron's direction, "is too cheap to spring for a hotel room."
"Oh."
"I can't do it at my house," she continued. "Because my husband is home with the kids...but I had a key to this place, so I figured, what the heck."
"Where's your boyfriend now?"
"Work. He's a night foreman. Doesn't get off till six in the morning, so we're safe till then."
I looked at Ron. "We'll be out of here before that," he said.
"So who's the guy then?" I asked.
"I met him over the internet," she said. "Well, I haven't actually met him, met him."
***
Ron and I sat on one of couches while Lisa went to the kitchen to get my drink.
"Is Miller, okay?" she asked, handing me the bottle.
"That's fine." I took a sip. It was nice and cold.
Lisa sat down next to Ron and draped a hand over his thigh. She leaned into him and smiled, "So what have you told your friend about me?"
Ron glanced at me. "Not much. I didn't think you wanted me to."
She looked me up and down. The smile widened. She turned to Ron. "He looks pretty trustworthy to me." Her hand drifted to my leg and caressed my thigh. "So tell me, why are you here?"
"I'm going to be taking the stills while Ron handles the video."
"Is that the only reason you're here?"
"And moral support, I guess."
"Is that it?"
I looked at her. "And because I'm curious." It was the truth. "Why are you here?"
"That's easy," she said. "Because I always wanted to be a porn star."
***
Married women don't film pornos in their boyfriends' apartments because they can help themselves. Or because they're careful. Lisa fascinated me. Everything about her fascinated me. We made small talk while she took her clothes off.
She'd been married for eleven years. She worked for a bank.
She dropped her blouse to the floor and unclasped her bra.
She was a member of the Parent Teachers Association at her daughter's school. She drove a BMW S series.
She kicked her skirt off and stepped out of her panties.
She was a charter member of The Meals on Wheels program, an organization that brought food to local shut-ins. She talked about herself while she stripped.
She sat down, naked, next to Ron and draped a thigh over his legs while she leaned back against the cushions.
She was a real person with a real job and a real family. And she was also, by her own admission, from her very earliest recollection, a freak.
"When I played with Barbies as a kid," she said, an evil smile spreading across her face. "Barbie loved taking her clothes off in front of Ken."
"So you were always into this?" I asked.
"It started in High School," she said. One hand drifted down between her legs. She spread them wide apart, revealing an open, glistening slit. She was shaved completely bare. She had no embarrassment at all. Her fingers began working circles.
"By the time I graduated, I needed to come three times a day. Needed it." She closed her eyes now, letting her fingers work.
When she spoke again, her voice was softer, almost a whisper. "I had boyfriends. I tried to be faithful in college, but there were parties, and alcohol, and guys hitting on me; and I found even when I told myself I wouldn't do anything, I still ended up fucking other guys. I'd get drunk and then some guy at a party would drag me into a dark room, and I just couldn't say no. When other guys heard about it, I got invited to a lot of parties."
