Some Possible Solutions Read online

  “Let’s go out,” I said.

  Tem looked at me doubtfully.

  “It’s not like I’m sick or anything.” I threw the sheets aside, stood up, pulled on my old comfy jeans.

  The outside seemed more dangerous—there it could be a falling branch, a malfunctioning crane, a vehicle running a red light. But it could just as easily catch me at home—misplaced rat poison, a chunk of meat lodged in my throat, a slick bathtub.

  “Okay,” I said as I stepped out the door, Tem hesitant behind me.

  We walked, looking this way and that as we went, hyperaware of everything. Vigilant. I felt like a newborn person, passing so alertly through the world. It was such an anti-death day; the crocuses. Tem kept saying these beautiful, solemn one-liners that would work well if they happened to be the last words he ever said to me, but what I really wanted to hear was throwaway words (all those thousands of times Tem had said “What?” patiently or irritably or absentmindedly), so eventually I had to tell him to please stop.

  “You’re stressing me out,” I said.

  “I’m stressing you out?” Tem scoffed. But he did stop saying the solemn things. We strolled and got coffee, we strolled some more and got lunch, we sat in a park, each additional moment a small shock, we sat in another park, we got more coffee, we strolled and got dinner. Mirrors and windows reminded me that we were a balding shuffling guy hanging on to a grandmother in saggy jeans, but my senses felt bright and young, supremely sensitive to the taste of the coffee, the color of the rising grass, the sound of kids whispering on the playground. I felt carefree and at the same time the opposite of carefree, as though I could sense the seismic activity taking place beneath the bench where we sat, gazing up at kites. Is it strange to say that this day reminded me of the first day I’d ever spent with Tem, thirty-eight years ago?

  The afternoon gave way to a serene blue evening, the moon a sharp and perfect half, and we sat on our small front porch, watching cars glide down our street. At times the air buzzed with invisible threat, and at times it just felt like air. But the instant I noticed it just felt like air, it would begin to buzz with invisible threat once more.

  Come 11:45 p.m., we were inside, brushing our teeth, shaking. Tem dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. I grabbed it out for him. Would I simply collapse onto the floor, or would it be a burglar with a weapon?

  What if there had been an error? Remembering back to that humble machine, that thin scrap of paper, the cold buttons of the keypad, I indulged in the fantasy I’d avoided over the years. It suddenly seemed possible that I’d punched my social in wrong, one digit off. Or that there had been some kind of systemic mistake, some malfunction deep within the machine. Or perhaps I’d mixed up the digits—April 13, 2047. If I lived beyond April 17, 2043, where would the new boundaries of my life lie?

  Shakily, I rinsed Tem’s toothbrush in steaming hot water from the faucet; it wouldn’t be me lingering in the aisle of the drugstore, considering the potential replacements, the colors.

  We stood there staring at each other in the bathroom mirror. This time I didn’t fall into my own reflection—Tem, I was looking at Tem.

  Why had it never occurred to me that it might be something that would kill him too?

  In all of these years, truly, I had never once entertained that possibility. But it could be a meteorite, a bomb, an earthquake, a fire.

  I unlocked my eyes from Tem’s reflection and grabbed the real Tem. I clung to him as to a cliff, and he clung right back.

  I counted ten tense seconds. The pulse in his neck.

  “Should we—?” I said.

  “What?” Tem said quickly, almost hopefully, as though I was about to propose a solution.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Go to bed? It’s way past our bedtime.”

  “Bedtime!” Tem said as though I was hilarious.

  11:54 p.m. on April 17, 2043. We are both alive and well. Yet I mustn’t get ahead of myself. There are still six minutes remaining.

  SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

  The MyMan Solution

  I’m not one to hide MyMan away in the intimate parts of the house, the bedroom, the bathroom, the places where interactions are most likely to occur. I like it when MyMan sits at the kitchen counter. I like it when he lies on the white leather couch.

  People do judge you for it, though. If your MyMan is sitting there on the white leather couch when friends come over for nuts and martinis, they’ll say, Jesus Christ! Is that really necessary. Please, spare us.

  And even though you may stand up for yourself at first, even though you attribute their disgust at least in part to jealousy, after enough harassment (it’s true, it’s true, he’s not wearing a scrap of clothing) you dismiss him, and he rises with his permanent slight smile—a very mysterious smile, an odd wondrous smile, lips parted just enough to let in a woman’s tongue—and bumbles his way down the hallway behind his big ever-erect cock, his lean blue athletic form here and there bopping up against the walls (oh my, the length and strength of his legs!), because the ambulatory function hasn’t yet been perfected (not that I’m complaining).

  Then, after that, your friends can sit back and enjoy their martinis. Your loneliness doesn’t seem to bother them in the least.

  Well, ha to them! What I like about MyMan is his hard blue penis coupled with the outcropping above it that vibrates against my clit. I’ve never had this kind of experience before. He never goes soft, he never gets tired, boredom isn’t in his register. In the months since I acquired him we’ve been coupling three, four, five times a day. There are serious health benefits, you know, to this sort of behavior. Seriously, they’re visible. In my skin, primarily. You should see my face.

  But that’s not the only thing I’m talking about. Also I’m talking about his eyes. Twin mirrors reflecting me back at myself. What I’ve found extra beautiful these past months is when I can see myself in his eyes and then he blinks his lashless lids (every four seconds, programmed for verisimilitude) and I can’t see myself and then he opens his eyes and I can see myself again.

  And his arms. I’m talking about his arms. His hands. The sculpted plastic musculature, right down to the thick, visible veins running up his forearms. This plastic—it’s not plastic as I’ve ever known it—there’s something soft about it—so terrifically smooth—better than skin.

  Afterward he holds me from behind, my bum pressed against the cool washboard of his stomach, and then if it happens to me again I can simply slide right back onto his cock. Let me just say: They must have interviewed hundreds of focus groups. They must have had teams of biologists. They got it so, so, so right. Down to the conversation. There’s even something delightful about washing his penis with a sponge.

  “Do you love fucking me?” I might say.

  “I love fucking you,” he’s programmed to reply in his low, flat voice.

  “Do you want to come over here?” I’ll say.

  “I want to come over here,” he’ll reply.

  “I’m not tired,” I’ll say.

  “You are not tired?” he’ll ask.

  “Let me take a shower first,” I’ll say.

  “Let you take a shower first?” he’ll ask.

  MyMan is first generation (yes, I paid an arm and a leg, but I got two arms and two legs, as I like to say to my friends). Things will surely change, and improve, in later generations, and I can’t deny that I’ll probably be first in line to upgrade to a newer, better MyMan.

  However: there’s something about my MyMan. A few days ago, a malfunction surfaced; if I said “Do you love fucking me?” he’d reply, “You have to go to the bathroom?,” still reacting to my previous statement. After I recovered from the shock and the uncanniness, I was touched. I didn’t even pull out the owner’s manual.

  “I’m going to have breakfast now,” I might say, and he’d say, “Let’s go to sleep,” and then at night, when I told him, “I had such a tiring day at work,” he’d ask, “You are going to have breakfast now?”r />
  The result was that I began to perceive a sense of will pulsing through his statements. I went out to buy him some clothes, designer jeans and cashmere, but MyMan is not proportioned for human clothing—is decidedly not suited to wearing anything at all. The jeans ended short on his long legs, his biceps strained the cashmere sweater’s seams, not to mention certain insurmountable problems at the fly, which of course had to remain unzipped.

  I laughed at him.

  “This isn’t really working, is it?” I said.

  “You got me some clothes?” he said, stuck a few responses back.

  “You’re too handsome for clothes!” I told him, and it’s true. His head bald, perfect, above flawless features, Yul Brynner times a hundred.

  “I would like to try them on,” he said.

  “You crack me up, really you do,” I told him, already imagining the statements being reflected back at me sometime soon. I am too handsome for clothes? I crack you up, really I do?

  “The cashmere first?” he inquired.

  Sitting him down on the bed, yanking the jeans off him, I reminded myself that I don’t need what others need: I don’t need to stroll down a street or beach holding hands, making strangers envious of what a happy handsome well-matched couple I’m half of. I’ve done all that already, folks. Live with someone long enough and you’ll start to hate yourself. I loved every man I ever divorced. It’s just too hard to be good all the time, to keep up with someone else’s moods and dysfunctions.

  But you know what was easy, super easy? Giving MyMan a second or two of a blow job when he was lying there, naked again. He’d never grab the back of my head and shove it deeper onto his dick. He’d never groan when I stopped.

  You’re kind of … obsessed, my friends like to say, pressing their molars together in that ungenerous way, slurping flaxseed and pineapple smoothies, clutching their big maroon leather purses. You could do so much better, they tell me. You’re so skinny, your skin is practically golden, no one would ever guess you’re over forty, you make a shitload of money and everyone wants a piece of you, plus you look like a fucking million bucks in that neon bikini. You’re wasting your glamour years on that MyMan.

  Often when they think I’m laughing with them, I’m actually laughing at them. Someday maybe they’ll find their own solutions. Or, more likely, maybe not.

  What I need: a blue man, a white apartment, a row of palm trees, meditation in the morning and evening preceded and followed and preceded and followed by orgasm.

  But anyway. All of the above is just to say that right now I’m stuck in a preposterous moment: Some minutes ago I awoke from a sensual dream (the devil licked liquor from the impression between my breasts while on the sand slowly moving sphinxes circled a syringe), ready yet again for MyMan, reaching over to turn him on (pun intended), only to discover that his smooth plastic form was no longer there cupping me from behind. Worried, inordinately worried, about him, about my investment in him, I rushed out of bed, naked and panicking, ran down the long white hallway; there he was, sitting on one of the high white stools at the glossy white kitchen counter, emitting from somewhere deep inside the soft whir of malfunction, elbows on the counter, head drooping downward in this defeated way, looking for all the world like a tired husband.

  So here we are—but am I going, hey, where’s the box, can this MyMan be returned, where the hell did I put the receipt? Am I righteous with indignation that the verbal mishaps were indeed indicative of deeper problems with this particular MyMan? Do I feel as though I’ve been saddled with a lemon?

  Poor creature. He can’t deliver any line I haven’t fed him.

  “Are you sad?” I can’t resist saying, though I know how he’ll respond to that, just as I know how he’ll respond when I say, “Are you okay?,” “Is something wrong?,” “Don’t worry.”

  I should return him, I know I should, and I bet I will; I’ve always stood up for myself as a consumer.

  Yet here we are, side by side on sleek stools in the night. Slowly, wearily, he raises his head (most human of gestures, I’m suddenly realizing), and it strikes me that all along his slight mysterious smile has in fact been a grimace, and when I look at his eyes I’m surprised to see that (due, I suppose, to the darkness of the night) they no longer appear to be mirrors reflecting me; instead, they’re black walls blocking me from his interior.

  “I am coming,” he says eventually, “I am sad. I am okay.”

  Then he does something that’s outside of any setting I read about in the owner’s manual: he lets the lower part of his right arm fall down across the cool countertop, his palm upward and his fingers splayed.

  “Something is wrong,” he says. “Don’t worry?”

  And what I think to myself is: Sheesh. What I think to myself is: Here we go again. Even things with perfect cocks have terrible problems. Even nuns fall in love.

  The Courage Solution

  When my husband joins me in bed at two in the morning—after I’ve spent the evening alone, mashing potatoes, glazing carrots, flipping through books about how to improve chances of conception (avoid everything that helps you have fun in this life)—I pretend I’m still asleep as he tells the story of the beautiful young drunk woman who was sitting across from him on the subway, how she first complimented his shoelaces and second told him he was cute and third stood up and fourth pushed his head hard against the plastic wall and fifth kissed him on the mouth and sixth wrote something on the back of a receipt and seventh crumpled it up and eighth threw it at him: I love you. M. XXX-XXX-XXXX.

  I moan as though mostly asleep, yet here I am in knots beside him (his flesh still chilled from the rainstorm that caught him between the subway and home), crippled by jealousy: if only I were as courageous as that young woman who kissed my husband on the subway.

  The Wife Solution

  What we needed, we realized, was a wife. You for sexual purposes, me for housekeeping purposes. So, because it was finally legal, we arranged a three-way marriage with this woman Anna. The palindrome seemed somehow appropriate.

  Anna! What a wife she was.

  On the wedding day she was all smiles, as though she couldn’t have been happier. There’s a picture of the three of us in front of City Hall, Anna and I holding our small bouquets of Gerber daisies, we newlyweds grinning at the dandyness of it all.

  Anna, precious Anna. On the wedding night we stroked her. We wondered if our old double bed was too small, if we ought to get a queen, but Anna didn’t mind. She said she enjoyed being squeezed in between us. She said she enjoyed having my tits on one side and your cock on the other.

  That was the thing about Anna, she could talk so dirty but still seem so sweet.

  You couldn’t find a more generous wife than Anna. More than anything, she seemed so happy, as though spending the whole day cleaning the house and cooking dinner was some kind of divine meditation. There was this one line of organic cleaning products she totally loved, and even though the products were quite pricey we encouraged her to buy them, because we wanted Anna to have whatever she wanted, absolutely whatever she wanted; lavender was her favorite fragrance. She’d travel long distances on the subway to farmers’ markets to purchase strange, dazzling local vegetables; she’d roast these vegetables in bizarre but brilliant combinations of spices. By the time we returned home from work, the candles would be lit and the table laid with the yellow napkins she’d bought to give our tired gray placemats new life (in addition to everything else, Anna had excellent visual taste). Scooping steaming vegetables from the pan, she’d ask in her dear way about our days, our failures and frustrations, encouraging us to see the minor successes amid our general sense of professional inadequacy. When we tried to reciprocate, asking about her day, she gently evaded the question, simply replying that it had been a good day, like every day.

  All of which is not to mention what happened at night, in bed, where Anna was just as tidy, precise, fragrant, and eager to please as she was the rest of the time. Her breath smelled
like cinnamon and her body was reminiscent of a seal’s, sleek and shiny, with the perfect proportion of fat and muscle. Her face so symmetrical it would have made us feel bad about our own uneven faces if she hadn’t been running her fingers so tenderly down our cheeks. Yes, she could stroke both of us at once, and indeed was always on the verge of orgasm herself.

  Oh Anna. Our Lady of the Grocery List, Our Lady of the Linen Closet, Our Lady of Sorting Through the Junk Mail, Be Sure to Plug in Your Cell Phone, Don’t Forget Your Umbrella, Here’s the Lunch I Packed for You, Where Do You Want to Be Licked?

  Our drawers were always filled with clean laundry, even our underwear folded. We, the people who used to shove our socks into the sock drawer without matching them up! Every corner of our home contained exactly what one needed at the instant one needed it: scissors, tape, last year’s tax documentation. Whenever we misplaced something (The hat with the red pom-pom?), we simply had to ask Anna (Second box from the left at the top of the coat closet). Her mind was a library catalogue for our home. What a genius she was. How we adored her.

  Yet it was hard to adore Anna. For instance, it was hard to think of a good gift for her. What did she love? She loved flowers, but she always bought them herself, at the farmers’ markets, clutches of zinnias she put in the blue jug my cousin had given us for our wedding, arrangements that elevated our moods the moment we stepped in the door, and, on second thought, who knows whether Anna really loves flowers herself or if she just knew how we loved them? Yes, she loved organic cleaning products, but that’s not something anyone can love love, plus it’s not gift material. It upset her to think of us wasting our paychecks on clothing for her, on a fancy dinner for her, when she was so happy anyway, yet when her birthday came around we did give her a shiny blue dress and took her out, but she just sat there looking radiant and uncomfortable, moving her elbows on and off the black linen tablecloth of the fine, edgy restaurant we’d selected. She didn’t drink and she didn’t smoke and she got nervous riding the subway late at night. As soon as we returned home, she pulled out a lavender-scented SurfaceWipe and started to polish the bathroom floor, still wearing her new dress, and when we peeked in on her crouching there she looked up at us and smiled for the first time that night.