THREE

Last night I was at a movie, a German movie, or film, with an intellectual audience: lots of black clothing and designer glasses and shoes with exotic names. A blonde woman sat down next to me after the film had started. I looked at her. She looked at me. There were maybe twenty other people there in the dark. Do you want to fuck me she whispers as if she has just said excuse me but do you have the time. Same quizzical look as do I know what time it is.

I know, I couldn't believe it either. I'm not sure what to say, I mean, on the one hand, here she is, the woman I dream of saying fuck me in just the right tone, the answer to my prayers, no small talk, no seduction, no familiarity. She doesn't know that I am successful, sensitive, and civilized. She doesn't care.

But on the other hand, she could be crazy, all that disease out there right now, or perhaps pregnant and ready to claim paternity later, or even worse, a man dressed as a woman . . . I saw a movie like that. But then she slid from her seat onto the floor and spread out down there where you usually see old popcorn glowing in the dark and your feet stick a little. She unbuttons her blouse and exposes two luminous globes. She unzips her jeans and I smell gold like hay. I try to watch the movie and her at the same time but eyes were not made to look up and down simultaneously. And she pulls me by the eyeballs down onto her.

I'm thirty-five years old. I'm at this goddamn German movie alone because the woman who was supposed to meet me canceled. A young flip thing. Canceled dinner, canceled the movie, the talk, the wine, the sex. I have a headache in my pelvis. And now I am on the floor, not wondering about disease or paternity but will we be heard. I hold my breath, move in her using only the muscles of my belly. Something German speaks to us.

Suddenly she is on top. I am pinned. I hold my wrists over my head. I imagine the whole thing in a movie. Her hair hangs down in my face. I am still trying to figure out how she got on top and if I care when I realize she is sitting straight up now, riding me for all she is worth. My penis is screaming but my brain is terrified of being seen. I begin to fear an usher-police figure. I try to pull her by the hair back down, out of view, but she won't have it. Now she is arching, her neck and hair make a silhouette against the glow of light which is the film, the film, my god. I reach for her nipples but she slaps my hand away, fingers her own nipples. I wonder if she has drawn the audience away from the film.

I feel it welling up in my thighs. I feel it prickle the surface of my skin. I feel it being sucked out of my body. She wants it so bad, I'm going to give it to her. I close my eyes, dig my fingers into her ass, feel the shiver of the body overtaking the brain. It's coming . . . it's coming . . .

Then she stops. I almost yell goddamn it, don't stop, for Christ's sake don't stop, you can't stop now, but the Germans are yelling already, and she has turned to watch. I hear some kind of brawl accompanying my torment, slapping and screams and chairs being thrown. I hear it is a woman screaming, a man slapping. I tug at her hips because I think I may explode from the inside out if she doesn't move again soon. Just ten seconds more. Please, just ten more seconds. I shake her from the waist. Her wet wiggles a bit. I get that pain in my temple and throat I got when I tried not to cry as a kid, only worse. Please, I beg. I grab my own penis because I can't stand it anymore. I come like an ocean, a hydrant, a whale, ridiculous, I bite the inside of my cheek to keep quiet. When I open my eyes she is dressed, she is sitting in her seat, eyes forward, having slid off of me long ago. I am the sticky on the floor at her feet.

My rage is all whisper: how could you do that to me? Are you some kind of weirdo? Who the hell do you think you are? How could you do that? Are you a psycho? Some looney? She doesn't whisper, though she speaks in a low voice.

You actually think I did it for you? Why, I don't even know you. I must have seen over fifty foreign films that year.