Don’t Let Impotence Ruin Your Sex Life

by Robb Todd

This guy was scowling at me on the subway. There was a black dog under his seat with its head on its paws, and it was staring at me, too.

I’d been looking out the window over his shoulder as I watched a woman’s high heels and the hem of her red dress disappear up the platform stairs in quick, short steps. He probably thought I was eyeing him.

I looked away, but when I turned back he was still staring. I sized him up from his bright white sneakers, pressed khakis, black leather jacket, to his cornrows. He had big, dark brown eyes and I couldn’t see his pupils. I stared back, but it was like staring down a deep well.

I was on my way home after my first date in months. I took her to dinner in the Village, we had a couple drinks, and swapped abbreviated life stories. She was the first woman I’d kissed since my divorce.

I looked away from the guy again, and scanned the ads in the subway car, but, like before, he was still glaring at me when I looked back. He was frozen in his seat, hands on his knees, forehead tense like he was ready to throw a punch.

I’ve been getting a lot of unwanted attention on the subway lately. A few years back, when my wife was an aspiring photographer, I posed for her so she could fill out her portfolio. After she left me for a French photographer she assisted (apparently in more ways than I realized), she sold the images to a stock photo agency. Unfortunately for me, one of them resurfaced in a subway ad.

In the photo, I’m lying on my stomach, shirtless, in bed with a good looking woman who had a dubious look on her face, like I was some kind of chump. It seemed like a joke at the time but I guess I was a chump. The ad read: “Don’t let impotence ruin your sex life.” My hair was longer in the picture, but there was no mistaking my face.

Since the ad hit the subway a few weeks ago, I’ve endured stares, snickers, and whispers on the train. I tried to laugh it off. Tried. I told myself that it could’ve been worse, it could have been on a billboard in Times Square. Then I’d never get laid again, not that it’s so easy now.

During dinner, my claim to subway fame elicited a loud laugh and, best of all, a snort from Ann. I consider a snort the highest comedic compliment. Women can fake a lot of things, but a snort isn’t one of them.

“I thought you looked familiar,” Ann said. She smiled and stared into my eyes as she slid her finger around the rim of her wine glass.

The waiter cleared what little was left of my lasagna and her eggplant parmigiana, then scraped the crumbs off the linen. We passed on dessert and ordered coffee.

“I promise all of my most important parts are working,” I said, “except the part of my brain that’s in charge of putting the toilet seat down.”

“Well, George, that’s the most important part. Please have that fixed.” She smiled again and leaned back in her chair. “I guess your ex got the last word in a big way. My ex is an asshole, too. I’m sorry she did that to you.”

“She can have the last word, as long as I get the last laugh … or the last snort.”

Ann laughed. “Well, it’s clearly her loss.”

The waiter set the coffee on the table. Ann emptied four sugars into hers and poured the cream until the coffee turned from black to beige. She took a sip of the candy she’d concocted, then took my hand into hers. Her soft skin was an unexpected pleasure, and it was only then I realized how much I missed being touched by a woman.

“Finally, a decent smile out of you,” she said.

“Wasn’t I smiling before?”

“Sort of. But this one you have now is the real deal. Nice teeth. You should smile more often.”

She turned my hand over and examined it. “I’m going to read your palm. No reason we shouldn’t just cut to the chase and see if there’s any hope for us. After all, I’d hate to be a rebound.”

“I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“You don’t believe in rebounds?”

“Well, every basketball team needs to be able to hit the boards if they want to win, but I have my doubts about palm reading.”

“You’ve got jokes and jokes and jokes.” She winked at me and I smiled again. “See, that what’s I’m talking about. It takes more muscles to–”

“Frown, yeah, I’ve heard that before,” I said. “That’s good advice.”

She smiled and stared at my hand, bringing it into the light of the candle on the table. She leaned in and I could feel her breath on my palm as she rubbed her thumb on the callous below my pinky.

“What’s this from?” she said.

“Digging ditches.”

“I wondered how you disposed of the bodies,” Ann said. “What no smile? That’s good material.”

I gave her an over-done toothy grin.

“Nice,” she said. “I’d buy Crest from you any day.”

She slid her finger across several lines on my hand, and massaged my palm.

“So, good news or bad news first?” she said.

“Bad, of course.”

“Your life line is really short, George. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you don’t have much longer. Days. Maybe hours.”

“Aw, and we only just met,” I said. “Just my luck.”

“Since this could be your last date, we’ll just have to make it special,” Ann said.

“You’re just making this up.”

She shook her head.

“I wish that were the case, George. For your sake. However, I’m an expert. I read all about this stuff on Wikipedia while I was at work today.” She winked. “My memory is photographic, man. Pho. Tow. Graph. Ick.”

“Well, everything on the Internet is true, so I’m sorry I doubted your credentials.” I smiled. “What’s the good news?”

Without looking away from my eyes, she slowly traced the longest line on my hand with her finger.

“Your love line is strong. Really, really strong.”

I raised my eyebrows and scoffed. “Too bad I won’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

“It makes me sad, too,” Ann said with a mock frown and a shrug of her shoulders.

“Well, since I can’t take what little money I have with me to the grave, allow me to pick up the tab.”

“That’s very kind of you, George. In that case, I’ll let you walk me to my train. It’s the least I could do.”

“Yes, it is the least. What’s the most you could do?”

On the walk to the subway, we caught a glimpse of the Empire State Building, lit up in red and blue, but we both agreed that the Chrysler Building is better. Ann leaned into me to keep warm and, perhaps, to get a little closer. I put my arm over her shoulder and watched the waves in her hair rise and fall in the wind. She fit well next to me, and it felt good to hold her. I knew then that we’d see each other again.

Underground on the platform, she promised to find a subway car with my ad so she would have some company during her trip home. I leaned in and kissed her, and my blood rushed like the train hurtling into the station.

The subtle, wet mechanics of a kiss are neglected in many marriages. For years during my marriage, a kiss had become little more than a handshake or a pat on the back. This was not that.

The conductor called out, “Stand clear of the closing doors!” and Ann pulled away just in time to step onto the train as the doors slid shut. She waved goodbye as she was pulled into the darkness of a tunnel, sparks from the track lighting up the disappearing train like a flash of lighting.

I walked to my train and when it arrived I took the first seat I saw, directly across from the man with the dog. But the doors didn’t close.

“Sorry, folks,” the conductor said through the crackling static of a speaker with the volume turned way too high. “We are being held in the station momentarily due to track work ahead. Please be patient.”

I plugged in my iPod earbuds, turned on some music, and looked around the nearly-empty car. Next to a woman who was studying the subway map I saw an ad for my mp3 player. Someone had scribbled “isolationPod” across it.

Two young women stumbled onto the train laughing. One was wearing a red dress and the other was in jeans, sneakers, and a cut up blue T-shirt. I could smell the booze as they sat down not far from me.

I caught one of them staring and thought she was checking me out. I pressed pause on my iPod as she leaned into to her friend’s ear, covering her mouth while she whispered. Her friend looked at me, then looked at something above me, and they both erupted in laughter.

“Again, passengers,” the conductor blared, “we are still being held in the station due to track work. Thank you for your patience.”

“Fuck this, let’s get a cab,” the woman in the red dress said. They ran off the train giggling and she shouted over her shoulder, “Good luck fixing that dick, mister!”

My jaw clenched and blood rushed to my face. I tried to pretended I didn’t hear it as I watched her red dress disappear up the steps. Once the girls were out of sight, I stood up and looked at the ad I had been sitting under. I stared at my face in the photo and thought maybe my ex really did get the last laugh.

In an instant, I replayed the day she left: sunny, a breeze, a day for Central Park or the Boat Basin, laying on the grass and watching the clouds drift by. In the movies it’s always raining.

In the months after she left, I spent every day sifting every memory for clues. That mysterious bruise on her arm, about the size and shape of a thumb, as if someone had pinned her arm down in bed. I asked about it and she said she banged it on a hand rail walking down the stairs. A hand rail shaped like a thumb, I guess. I let it slide. It’s just a bruise, don’t be so paranoid, I told myself.

The random things that slipped from her lips. We were at brunch, sitting in a long silence, her staring out the window while her eggs Benedict got cold. Without looking at me, she said, “If anything ever happens to me, you should get a dog. You could meet women that way.” And she just kept staring out the window, as if she didn’t realize her thought had escaped from her brain, slipped past her lips, finding freedom in the air where I could hear it. I thought she was contemplating her mortality, but now that moment seems so illuminated, not random at all, just the truth struggling to breath.

Oh, and the cliches I fell victim to. So unoriginal. She lost weight, started working late, and I even remarked, “You know, I just read that those are the two leading indicators that your spouse is cheating on you.” She laughed and so did I.

When she left me, she said, “I know you haven’t changed … but I have.” She started crying and walked toward the door. She turned around, sobbing, and said, “I’m sorry,” then called a friend. “Hey … Yeah … Uh-huh … Okay … bye,” was all she had to say because this was a well-planned escape.

I felt like she took everything with her when she left, not things like the TV or books, but things from inside of me that I thought could never be returned. What I was left with was a past I would have to learn to let go of, along with a future that had seemed so certain, so in focus, so within our grasp, gone in an instant, like turning off a light.

I thought about the man she left me for. I shook his hand once at a party. I know now that he had already fucked her.

And somehow I was being robbed of the pleasure of my first date after all these months alone. With barely a chance to savor it, strangers were mocking me, and staring at me thanks to her stock photography. I decided I wasn’t going to change seats, and I sat back down under the ad. I looked around the car and the woman was still studying the map as if she hadn’t heard the girl wish me luck with the dick repair.

I looked down at my palm, at what I thought Ann said was my loveline. It didn’t cross half my hand. Or maybe that was my lifeline, I couldn’t tell. And that’s when I felt the man’s stare and I looked up. I had tried diffuse the situation, I looked away more than once, but I’d had enough.

It had been many years since the last time I was in a fight. It was in a Jack-in-the-Box at 3 a.m. with my ex and all of life’s other winners, because that’s where all the winners go to celebrate the evening’s triumphs.

This fat, drunk guy with a pony tail got smart with her, she said something back, and then he called her a cunt. I couldn’t let that slide. He swung first and missed, I swung and missed, and the next thing I know, he slammed me against the soda fountain, Fanta Orange and Coca-Cola spraying all over the place, ice rumbling onto my back and all over the floor.

I grabbed and yanked his ponytail and he grabbed my left nut. And he squeezes. Hard. Like he was juicing a lemon. I screamed and started reaching for whatever I could get my hands on. I found something metal and hard, and I slammed it into his head. The napkin dispenser exploded in a shower of white paper. Then we saw red and blue lights flashing outside, and ran out separate doors.

Almost every man thinks he’s bad-ass grizzly bear but most aren’t any better than a fat-ass Yogi Bear. Me included.

I couldn’t believe I let things get that out of hand, and I couldn’t believe I was about to let things get out of hand with this guy on the subway, but I was.

A voice in my head kept telling me not to say anything, but I could feel my mouth forming some ripe words. I pulled the headphones out of my ears, let them hit the floor for effect, and said, “Hey, man, what the fuc–”

But before I could finish, my voice was drowned out by the conductor. “Stand clear of the closing doors!” A bell rang and the doors rattled shut. The woman by the map walked over and sat next him. He didn’t acknowledge her, he just kept staring at me. The train jerked forward and she touched his hands. He turned toward her as if nothing had just happened. Like I wasn’t even there.

She took his hands into hers and rested them on his lap. He smiled and she started using sign language, but the man didn’t look down at her hands, he felt them with an open hand. He raised the other hand and gently touched her lips, reading them as she shaped silent sentences without pushing them into the air.

I looked at his dog and noticed the squared-off leash. My face warmed as blood rushed through it again. I had wanted to punch out a blind and deaf guy, although maybe that’s a fight I could actually win.

I looked back at the man, who never saw my eyes and never heard a word I said. Alone in darkness, in silence. The scowls and the glowering I thought I saw were just reflections of myself in the depths of his dark eyes.

Red and blue construction lights streaked past the window behind him and now I was the one who was staring. The woman glanced at me, then above me, but I was transfixed by their conversation, which he could only feel, not hear or see.

I wondered if it’s easier to lie to someone who can only communicate with his skin. Or can he feel nervousness in her lips or quivering in her hands as she tries to suffocate the truth?

I watched as her touch changed him, released him, as Ann’s touch had done to me. His smile stretched wide like his lips were made of taffy.

At my stop I didn’t see or hear the train doors open and close. I sat still, staring at the shapes of the woman’s hands as they danced in his palm, her lips fluttering against his fingertips like the wings of a moth.

A secret combination of gestures unlocked an even wider smile from him, like she was telling him a joke, and at what must have been the punchline, he let loose a long, warped laugh that was punctuated with a snort.

I smiled. Maybe she told him about the ad hanging over my head.
 

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~ This piece was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 and was filed under Writing, Short Story. You can make comments on it below. ~