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A Roll in the Hay is Worth Two in the Bush
By
D.E. Fredd, Feb. 7, 2007
“Are you ready?”
“I most certainly am.”
“This is for all the marbles, you know.”
“The intense pressure of obtaining or losing marbles doesn’t faze me.”
“Okay, in the 1960s TV series, F Troop, what popular comedian played an Indian?”
“That would be Don Rickles. It was an episode called ‘The Return of
Bald Eagle’. The exact date escapes me, but it was early on in the
first season.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Mark pounds the table and the markers
go flying not that it matters much at this point. We are playing a
salacious striptease form of Trivial Pursuit. I am fully clothed.
Everyone else is down to the bare essentials except Brenda who three
rounds ago lost everything, disrobed but has wrapped her ample self in
a bath towel.
The six of us are spending this October, homecoming weekend
at the exclusive Ardmore Inn overlooking Boothbay Harbor. Twelve years
ago we all graduated from Bowdoin College. We were housemates, Mark and
I plus the four girls: Brenda, Andréa (Andy), Kim and Lacy. For three
hectic years we lived together in relative harmony. Since graduation we
have gone our separate ways but each year we use homecoming as a way to
reconnect. Because of a medical emergency in Brenda’s family our last
get-together was two years ago when we stayed two nights at the local
Motel Six. This time the ante has been raised to a rather prestigious
inn which is over three hundred a night per person. We took the Edna St
Vincent Millay Suite which features a huge living area and two
bedrooms, each with a balcony that has a view of the harbor. The
gourmet dinner we had this evening was a prix fixe $95.00 without wine.
Mark treated us to the meal because he had a great year. I am overly
conscious of prices because I lost my job as an adjunct poetry
professor at the University of Maine’s School of General Studies. I
have not worked since June and funds are very low; in fact, I’m living
out my security deposit and have little idea where I shall be come
November.
Over time the dynamic of our meetings has slowly changed. As
students we weren’t concerned about status. I was the geek of the
group, a bearded, flannel-clad, comparative literature major with an
encyclopedic memory who proofread everyone’s paper. Mark concentrated
in business and was an elected official in several clubs. If you wanted
something done, you asked Mark, a born leader. I wrote poetry; he wrote
mission statements.
Back then Kim and Lacy were and still are very attractive.
Both married right after college. For a time Lacy bored us all with
pictures and anecdotes of her two kids. Four years ago there was a
messy divorce. She works as an event planner and does very well. Kim is
not divorced but revealed earlier in the day that she and her husband
have an understanding concerning their bed partners. She does not have
to work and drove to the inn Friday evening in a vintage Jaguar. She
has great legs and chooses outfits to show them off. Cleavage is also
on display.
Andrea is a middle school art teacher. Everything about her is straight
edged--her face, nose, and flat figure. I’ve always felt a close bond
with her. She illustrated my first poetry chapbook. We had some fine
times together touring Portland’s art scene and museums back when. For
several years she lived with an older gentleman. His age was never
mentioned, but I suspect he was pushing sixty. He got esophageal cancer
and stunned her by going back to a wife she never knew about to finish
out his days. She has never married and, to counter Lacy’s cute kid
stories, speaks fondly of her nieces and a nephew. Her job has become a
cross she must bear, at times to the yearly boredom of the rest of us.
If there were a pecking order Brenda would be at the bottom.
A mediocre student, I wrote many assignments for her because she took
to her bed in tears, claiming excessive stress. She was plagued by a
weight issue in college, and it has continued. This evening, when she
had to strip naked after missing a dozen questions in a row, we all
felt sorry for her. It wasn’t the shame of being nude as much as
displaying a body that had gone to seed. Her breasts are huge, almost
bovine. One looks upon them as one would a naked dwarf, with curiosity
rather than sensuality. She has evidently given up shaving her arms and
legs. Kim and Lacy, perhaps suspecting what sensuality the weekend
might lead to, are wearing Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Previous
reunions have taken on sexual overtones, late night skinny-dipping in a
motel pool and a hot tub bacchanal have been part of the reunion menu.
At dinner Mark brought up a nudist camp idea for our next venture.
Brenda is a social worker for the Maine Department of Social
Services based in Skowhegan. She is empathy incarnate. She was always
very nurturing when anyone one of us were sick. When she missed some
easy Trivial Pursuit questions, we winced as she had to divest an
article of clothing. It was like watching your mother disrobe. Andy
tried giving her hints but she screwed that up as well. So now she sits
on a couch, an Egyptian cotton bath towel covering most of her, close
to tears, but very relieved when Mark’s board banging inadvertently
ends the game.
***
It appears that over time our little housemate group has split
into two sectors. Mark, Kim and Lacy are the “haves.” Mark now lives in
Ohio and runs an insurance and financial advisory service. He drives a
BMW. As well as dinner he treated us to a very good wine, though it
took a fifteen minute discussion with the wine steward to select it. He
is a generous man, but I can’t help thinking that his generosity has a
debit and credit component. He has never tried to sell a policy to any
of us and was very helpful during Lacy’s divorce when she needed
financial advice. He is married to the daughter of a man whose
insurance agency he will one day run completely. He also has designs on
Lacy and Kim. I suspect that he has been intimate with one or both of
them before. My Trivial Pursuit victory may have thwarted his prurient
expectations of seeing those two Aphrodites stark naked side by side.
***
“How the hell do you know all that stupid stuff? You memorized the cards didn’t you?”
I feel like a Las Vegas winner being accused of card counting.
I have no excuse; perhaps I should have eaten lead paint chips as a
kid. Lacy tells Mark to cool it, “He has always been brilliant when it
comes to facts, and it was just a stupid game anyway.”
Mark glares at me. We are two bull elk facing off during
mating season, but I have no problem in backing down and forgoing
sexual pleasure for another year.
Mark claps his hands. He has a new slant, a better idea to
liven up our evening. “Why don’t we have an orgy? Screw the strip
games. Let’s get naked, roll around and do what consenting adults do.
It will be liberating, pure id.” He looks at Brenda for some reason,
perhaps thinking that she, as a social worker, is the only one who
knows what “pure id” is.
“Dave and I will select our women, like choosing sides in
softball. I’ll ask him a question, if he gets it right he can pick
first. What could be fairer?”
No one says anything. If you are going to have group sex,
people you’ve known for over a decade is the way to go. Besides, we owe
Mark for the wine and an expensive dinner.
Mark has a smirk on his face. He stands at gunfighter
distance clad in black silk boxers, the slight hint of an erection on
display. He winks at Lacy.
“This is an insurance question and given your disdain for all
things capitalistic, your worst nightmare is about to happen—When did
unemployment insurance begin in the United States?”
I put on my best poker face. At first I wonder if anyone
knows I have been unemployed and collecting since August, and, as is my
wont when something happens to me, I look its history up. I toy with
him, shake my head and shrug my shoulders feigning defeat then perk up.
“Wait a minute. Wasn’t one of FDR’s New Deal initiatives to
implement the Social Security Act of 1935, which formed the basis for
unemployment insurance? I think it was.”
He is stunned. The girls clap. He stares at Kim and Lacy
until they realize that one of their fates is to become my chosen
concubine and feel my prematurely graying beard on their bosoms. “Does
this mean I pick first, Mark?”
He sits back and waves his hand in disgust. I pause for dramatic effect then announce, “I select Brenda.”
It takes a moment for everyone to comprehend this. Mark looks
at me wondering what my angle is. Perhaps there is a trap. He
hesitates. Should he pick Kim or Lacy? Both are looking at the
expensive Oriental rug that nearly covers the pumpkin pine floor. He
picks Lacy and I see Kim is pissed for two reasons; first, she now
pictures herself as part of a ménage a trois with Brenda and me and,
second, she thought that she was Mark’s favorite.
I choose again. “I want Andy.”
Mark looks at me as if I’m nuts. What is wrong with me? Brenda
is a porker and Andréa is as plain as mashed potatoes. What male in his
right mind would pass up filet mignon for two items from the Wendy’s
Dollar menu?
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
I look at Brenda. “I’m positive.”
“Okay, the ground rules are nobody does anything they don’t
want to. We each take a bedroom and spend the night however we please.
Tomorrow we meet for the Sunday brunch at eight, my treat. Agreed?”
Brenda gets up and modestly backs her way into the bedroom.
Andréa and I follow her. When we are inside, Brenda heads for the
closet and slips on one of the complimentary fleece robes the inn
offers.
Andy, still in her underwear, plops down in the king-sized bed. “How the hell do you know about insurance history?”
There is a Queen Anne style chair next to a writing desk. I
sit in it. “I lost my job in August. I’ve been collecting $165 a week
since then. With my free time I look up things that come into my
despicable life.”
Brenda, ever the supportive one, comes over to my chair and
squats in front of me to hold one of my hands in both of hers. “But you
were on Maine Public Television a few years ago. I’ve got all your
poetry books. You had a blurb in Down East Magazine. What happened,
cutbacks?”
“During a summer poetry writing course at the Houlton campus,
a student, an older mother to be, wrote a poem about breasts and the
joy of pregnancy. She read her magnum opus to the class baring her tits
and gravid anatomy as she did so. The performance art happened so
quickly I didn’t know what to do. Afterwards, a man in the class broke
the stunned silence by saying, if he’d showed his cock to the group,
he’d be making furniture for the Prison Store on Route 1. Everyone
walked out. A head had to roll when the president’s phone started to
ring off the hook in Orono.”
“But how is anything your fault?” Andy says this in her self-righteous, indignant tone.
“I’m going to wait a few years and then maybe get back into
teaching poetry again, probably in a different part of the country. I
might be able to get a job waiting on tables, and I’ve already begun to
pare down my expenses, not that they were very extravagant to begin
with. I don’t feel much like an orgy tonight, if that’s okay with you
guys?”
There is a muffled squeal from next door. We can’t make out the words, but something is being chanted.
“That’s Lacy. She always says ‘Oh God’ during sex.”
Andy and I look at Brenda. “We went down to Williams College
for something and shared a room, one of the most embarrassing nights of
my life. She brought back a senior economics major, and they did it all
night in the bed next to me. She always encourages her guy, ‘It’s so
big, etc.’ and then, when he does well, she gives praise, like
reinforcing a puppy that’s being paper trained, ‘Good boy, nice job.’”
Andy chimes in. “With Kim it’s as if she were talking down an
airplane. She provides updates on the progress towards her big orgasm.
‘I’m almost there. Yes, yes, yes, don’t stop, to the left, LEFT!’”
“Is it just me or is Mark becoming a perv?” Brenda has
assumed a comfortable position on the bed, leaning back against the
headboard supported by goose down pillows.
“Technically everyone in that room but Lucy is cheating.”
Andy joins Brenda on the bed, sitting Indian fashion at the foot. “If I
were married I know I would be faithful.”
They look at me to cast a unanimous moral vote. “They seem to
have it all—money, looks, social standing—compared to us at least.”
Andy senses a debate, “But are they happy? There’s an aura of
desperation about them. They have to show off what they know about food
and wine, especially Mark with his seventy-inch TV and home theater
entertainment center.”
“But are we happy?” Andy and Brenda don’t have an answer for me.
***
The next few hours are spent as voyeurs. We don’t go as far as
putting a drinking glass to the wall, but it’s close to that. It is
speculated that Mark’s done it with Lacy twice and Kim once. Andy
offers up the idea that Lacy and Kim may be closet lesbians and the
periods of silence are due to Mark’s watching the women pleasure each
other.
During any carnal lulls we spread our personal unhappiness out like a
picnic blanket and each contribute nuggets of failure to the buffet.
Andy thinks I should turn my career loss into art, write a series of
poems to express how I feel. She admits that she hates teaching middle
school art. Everyone wants to draw Satan or design tattoos. If she
quits she’ll be out in the street. Brenda informs us that she has taken
a leave of absence from Social Services. Two years ago her parents
became ill, her father with Alzheimer’s. She cries when she tells us
that her mother couldn’t take it and put a pillow over his head then
tried to take her own life by flooding the house with gas. She is now a
vegetable in a nursing home, and Brenda can’t bear to visit her. She is
on anti-depressants and spends most of her days sleeping in different
rooms in the large family home she will inherit when the time comes. A
half dozen prescription bottles she has brought with her to keep up
appearances is spread before us as evidence.
Once we finish with our presenting our inadequacies, we move
on to the past. Andy says that she feels closer to us than anyone else
on earth. She recalls the time in her senior year when she first had
sex, came home late and I was the first person she told. “I tell you
guys all the things I could never tell my parents. It’s too bad we
couldn’t be raised by people our own age, going through the same things
we are going through.”
Brenda speaks highly of masturbation. “You can do it any time
you want, and, since I’m so depressed, I do it several times a day,
though it might be the pills that make me horny.” She admits that since
she’s had the run of the house without any parents it’s quite
liberating. She doesn’t have to worry about what she watches on TV
(admitting affection for Will and Grace reruns) and eating pints of Ben
and Jerry’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
By 4:00AM we are beginning to run out of cathartic steam. It
sounds as if the room next to us is in a dry spell literally as well as
physically. We don’t know whether to cuddle up together and sleep for a
few hours or just tough it out to breakfast.
“Does anyone even want to go down to brunch with them?”
Andy and I shake our heads an emphatic “no” in answer to Brenda.
Andy follows it up by saying, “Maybe the next reunion should be just us three?
Brenda, to no one in particular, says. “I’m for leaving right
now. When they wake up we’re totally gone. We’ll establish a new
tradition.”
Almost in unison Andy and I agree. “Enough with the fancy
cars, designer clothes and mutual fund stocks. Next time Mark will
probably bring cocaine for us to try.”
Brenda’s forehead puckers. Two parallel lines always emerge
when she is thinking, like muscles on a weightlifter, and her lower lip
puffs out. She looks at me. “If you don’t have a place to say, I have a
ten room mansion you could crash in. You could write poetry in
Skowhegan just as well as South Portland. I’d keep my hands to myself
if that’s a concern.”
Before I can say anything Andy pipes up. “You wouldn’t have
room for a burned out middle school teacher, would you? I’d have to
finish out the marking period. I’d pay. I could substitute teach every
now and then, but I really want to paint.”
Brenda cocks her head waiting for an answer from me. “It
might help until something comes along, but I am the worst handyman
ever. Trivia is my only skill; see where that gets you when the
lawnmower breaks.”
It takes us fifteen minutes to pack and no more than that to
settle up at the front desk. The sun is just starting to show itself
over the harbor, but three of us screech out of the parking lot in our
respective cars as it were an approaching hurricane. I head south but
with each mile I grow more uncomfortable. Do I want to be a part of
anyone’s life right now? Am I actually thinking of living in Skowhegan
with someone who needs six prescriptions? Instead of sitting alone in
the dark would they force me to sit in a circle and express my inner
child? I grab my cell to call Brenda and think better of it. I need a
story, a reasonable excuse why I can’t throw in with them. That will
take time; something I now have quite a bit of.
He
has been published in fifty-eight journals and reviews. He received the
Theodore Hoepfner Award given by the Southern Humanities Review for the
best short fiction of 2005, was a 2006 Ontario Award Finalist and
recently received a 2007 Pushcart Special Mention Award. A novel, Exiled to Moab, will debut in the Spring of 2007.
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