“Listen to yourself,” I said. “Forget your classmates at Princeton
the snob.”
“There’s nothing wrong with separating the wheat from the chaff, and I’m not saying on an economic basis. That’s the Ivy League mentality—did your daddy join such-and-such eating club, was your grandma a DAR? Those are just labels. But surely you don’t deny that some people are quality and some aren’t.”
“I have no idea what you even mean by that.” I think I might have turned against him in that moment, at least a little and maybe more, but he furrowed his brow, grinned, and said, “Yeah, neither do I.”
He took a bite of his burger. Unlike me, he had not cut it in half but held the bun with both hands, and he was plowing through it with alacrity. “I suppose I’m a hypocrite like anyone else,” he said. “But to give a guy a split personality, nothing compares to having your dad become governor when you’re in eighth grade. I’m not complaining, mind you. I couldn’t be prouder of him. But you’re royalty at public events, you’re a bull’s-eye target in the locker room, then you go away to boarding school, and when people hear you’re from Wisconsin, they think you were raised in a barn. My first week at Exeter, I had a fellow ask me, I kid you not, if I’d grown up with electricity. Now, the prejudice I faced ultimately bolstered my pride in where I come from and who I am, but that said, am I about to join a bowling team with Bob the mechanic? Probably not.” He leered. “At least not until I’ve officially declared my candidacy and a photographer from
is there to document it. Really, though—” He leaned forward. “I’m not an elitist. You believe me, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what to believe.”
A look of sincere worry crossed his face, and his sincerity won me back. I was pretty sure Charlie’s views were not unlike those of the other men who’d been at the Hickens’ barbecue. The difference was that Charlie was so open about his. I said, “I bet that when you were a tormented eighth-grade boy, you were awfully cute.”
His grin reappeared immediately. “Damn straight I was. How’s that burger working out for you?”
“It’s delicious.” He’d polished his off, and I wasn’t yet through my first half.
“I have an idea,” Charlie said. “It just occurred to me. You want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll go settle the tab. Then we head back to Madison—I’m happy to drive. We go to your apartment, we take off all our clothes, we get in bed, and I show you that Republicans do know a little something about a little something.” He paused. “After you’re finished eating, of course.”
Had I expressed shock or distaste, it would have been disingenuous—enough had happened in my life already that was far more shocking and distasteful than a sexual proposition. And besides, he’d sounded so boyish, so sweet, even. Then, too, I suppose I might have feigned offense not because I really was offended but because I wanted him to think I was, for propriety’s sake. But this seemed silly. I was thirty-one. To hell with my concerns about leapfrogging over the stages of acquaintanceship, to hell with making an argument—the argument against dating Charlie—that I didn’t want to win. No, I wasn’t completely certain about him, and yes, this would strain my friendship with Dena. But the responsibility and caution that I’d tried to employ for so long—since the accident, though in some ways even before that—hadn’t served me well, especially lately. Plus, Charlie was an incredibly handsome man. I
to take off all my clothes and climb in bed with him.
I set down my cheeseburger. “I’m finished eating.”
BACK AT MY
apartment, Pierre and Mr. Sneeze were reclining on my bed, and crouching near them was the baby rabbit from
whom I’d outfitted in fish garb. (The mother rabbit was in the living room, awaiting her fishing rod and waders.) I carefully set the figures on the floor by the wall, and when I turned around, Charlie was shirtless and unfastening his pants. “What?” he said. “Did you think I was kidding?”
“Let me at least put on a record.” As I walked past him, I swatted at the side of his head without making contact, though I did note (subtly, I hoped) that his bare chest was muscular, tan, and had some but not too much light brown hair. In the living room, I first reached for a John Denver album, then remembered Denver had supported President Carter. I imagined Charlie might think I was trying to make a point and instead put on Stevie Wonder.
A short hall led from the living room to my bedroom, and as I headed back down it, Charlie stood completely naked in the bedroom doorway, his arms folded across his chest, his grin huge. As I approached, he unfolded his arms, opened them, and took me in, he rubbed my back and kissed the top of my head, and in return, I kissed his bare shoulder—it was dotted with beige freckles—and we found each other’s mouths, then each other’s tongues, and his penis flicked toward me a few times before hardening into an erection. It is a pleasantly uneven thing to embrace a man while he is naked and you are clothed, and I could smell his skin, I could taste the beer from dinner, and I was the one who lifted my shirt above my head and let it drop on the floor. He leaned forward and buried his face in my breasts; he didn’t unfasten my bra but simply pushed down the cups.
Soon all my clothes were off, too, we were rolling on the bed, I’d wrapped my legs around him, and I took his erection in my hand and guided him into me, and it felt so elemental, so necessary, for us to be joined like this and then it was like awakening abruptly, and I gripped his arms and said, “Wait, my diaphragm is in the—”
“No, I have protection. We’re fine.” It was in his wallet, which was inside his pants on the floor, and as I watched him retrieve the condom, I was already too dazed to feel self-conscious about staring. His butt was small in the way that I always forgot a lot of men’s were; how could he possibly be an unscrupulous politician with such a cute little butt? Back in bed, he knelt on the mattress—I was lying flat, and he was above me—and perhaps it sounds crude to say that this was the moment I knew I could love him, when I saw his penis. With men in my past, the penis had seemed to me an odd creature, both comic and forlorn. But I felt a great devotion to Charlie when I first got a look at his, the ruddy-hued upward-pointing shaft, its swollen veins and cap-like tip. All of it was so
