When Stanley and I arrive at Buster’s, we’re the only people in the restaurant, aside from an elderly couple sitting in a corner booth. A five-foot-tall sculpture of the restaurant’s mascot—a winking beaver in a chef’s hat, holding a stack of syrup-covered pancakes on a tray—stands next to the door.
I order Swedish pancakes and Stanley orders eggs Benedict. The waitress fills our coffee cups.
“If we’re going to do this,” I say, “I have a few conditions.”
“Conditions?”
I take a swig of my coffee. “First, I don’t like to be touched.”
“But then, how can we . . .”
I clarify: “When another person touches me, I find it very uncomfortable. But as long as I’m the one doing it, I’m generally fine. So I’ll have to be in control the entire time. Is that all right with you.”
His brows knit together. “Why don’t you like to be touched?”
I study the red-and-white-checkered tabletop. There’s a smear of dried, hardened ketchup on the wooden edge of the table. “No reason. I’ve always been this way.”
He doesn’t reply, but I can feel his eyes on me.
The food arrives. I take a bite of my Swedish pancakes. As I chew, I watch him. The fact that we’re talking about this indicates that he is, at the very least, seriously considering my proposition. My head buzzes oddly. Sights and sounds are all faintly distorted, as if I’m surrounded by a ball of water. I focus on breathing and chewing.
Finally he speaks: “If that’s what you’re comfortable with, then that’s okay with me.”
The muscles in my chest loosen, letting me breathe again. I nod. “Thank you.”
He sips his coffee, and I notice a slight tremor in his hand. The fingers of his other hand drum rapidly against the table. He picks up his knife and fork and starts cutting his eggs Benedict.
“Also,” I say through a mouthful of pancakes, “I want to know about your kinks.”
His posture snaps upright. His fork stops halfway to his open mouth, and a piece of egg falls off. “My what?”
I swallow, washing the pancakes down with another swig of coffee. “Kinks.” I speak as distinctly as possible. “Turn-ons.”
Color floods his face. “You want me to tell you about my sexual fantasies?” he asks, the volume of his voice rising.
At the other end of the restaurant, the elderly couple turns their heads toward us, frowning and peering over the rims of their spectacles.
He glances at them, winces, and lowers his voice. “Do you always ask about this stuff on the first date?”
I can’t answer that, because this is the only date I’ve ever been on. But I see no need to tell him that. “Aren’t you supposed to ask questions during a date.”
“Questions like ‘What’s your favorite song?’ or ‘Are you a cat or a dog person?’ yeah.”
“If we’re going to have sex, I need to know what does and doesn’t arouse you. I don’t like going into any situation blind.”
“It’s just . . . I’m really not used to talking about stuff like this with, well, anyone.” He swallows. I notice that he hasn’t actually eaten any of his eggs; he just keeps cutting them into smaller and smaller pieces. They’re practically liquid on his plate. “We’re just going to do the usual thing, right?”
“If by ‘the usual thing’ you mean intercourse, then yes.”
On the other side of the restaurant, the plump silver-haired woman shakes her head and whispers something to her husband. Stanley glances at them again, then rests his elbows on the table, covers his face with his hands, and peers out at me between his splayed fingers. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I can’t talk about this. Not here.” He stops and takes a slow, deep breath. “I don’t think you really grasp how much this is messing with my head. I mean . . . look at me.”
I look. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see.
He continues, the words spilling out in a stream: “Maybe in the back of my mind there was this tiny little hope that, if today went well, you might decide to see me again. And then if we kept seeing each other, maybe someday we could become more than friends. But I thought that even if you were willing to give me a chance, a lot of other things would happen before we even started talking about sex.”
I study my pancakes, but suddenly I don’t feel hungry. The fork hurts my hand, and I realize I am gripping it too tightly.
“Hey . . .” His voice softens, and his brows draw together. He starts to reach out, then stops. “May I?”
I hesitate, then nod. He lays a hand over mine and squeezes. An electric current ripples through me, a thousand tiny painless pins pricking my skin, but after the initial shock, the sensation mellows into something . . . almost pleasant. Warm. I look at his long, pale fingers resting against mine.
I wonder how I can contemplate having sex with him when the slightest touch is overwhelmingly intense. Maybe I’m deluding myself to think that this is possible.
“Alvie? Breathe.”
My lungs are aching. I exhale the breath of stale air in my lungs and draw in a fresh one. “Yes or no.”
He doesn’t ask what I’m talking about. He doesn’t need to.
He takes his hand off mine and bites his lip again. “I want to do this right.”
The bubbles swirl slowly on the surface of my coffee, forming tiny galaxies. “What do you mean.”
He squares his shoulders. “I want to court you.”
Court. The word feels quaint and old-fashioned. It conjures an image of ladies in bonnets and white dresses, holding umbrellas, while men in suits bow to them and help them into horse-drawn carriages. Somehow I don’t think that’s what he has in mind. “Be more specific.”
“Just stuff like this. Talking. Spending time together. Going out for dinner or movies or mini-golfing. Anything.”
For a moment I find myself considering it. Except I know better. “That’s not possible.”
“Why?”
I lower my head. “I can’t explain.” I’m only going to do this once; I’ve decided as much. This isn’t about having a relationship. I just want to try it, to prove to myself that I can, and doing it with Stanley makes more sense than propositioning some random stranger on Craigslist. He’s young and male, so statistically speaking, he’s probably interested in sex. Last night, when I analyzed all the facts, it seemed like a win-win.
“Look at me,” he says.
I raise my head, and his eyes search mine. My scalp tingles, and a tiny chill trickles down my spine. He looks at me so intently. I don’t know what he sees there or what he expects to see. But I let him look.
“Please . . . tell me the truth,” he says very softly. “Is this really what you want?”
I don’t understand why he seems so unsure about that. It should be obvious, shouldn’t it? I’m the one who asked. “This is what I want.”
For a long moment, he says nothing. I don’t know what he’s thinking. He closes his eyes and breathes in slowly. “Then . . . yes.”
Vertigo swims over me. Yes. He said yes. I’m going to have sex with Stanley Finkel. Tonight.
“Do you still want to know about my turn-ons?” he asks.
“I would appreciate the information, yes.” Remembering his reaction, I add, “But you don’t have to tell me.”
He chews his lower lip. He keeps doing that. He’s going to make himself bleed if he’s not careful. “How about I answer one question?”
I consider. “All right. Tell me one thing you like, then. One thing you find attractive.”
“About you, or . . .”
“Anything.”
“I guess . . .” He fiddles with his silverware. “Ilikethosestockingsyou’rewearing.”
The words come out in a rush. I have to pause to untangle them. “My stockings.” I frown and glance down at them—black-and-white striped and a bit too large so they bunch in folds around my ankles. There’s a hole in the left knee. I never thought of them as sexy. “Really.”
“I just think they’re cute.”
I nod. “I’ll keep them on, in that case.”
He’s blushing again. He crosses his arms over his chest, and his fingers press into his biceps hard enough to whiten the skin around his nails. “The thing is . . . I’m . . .”
I wait.
“Never mind.” He smiles, a quick tightening of his facial muscles. “Is this the part where I say ‘my place or yours?’”
I haven’t actually considered where we’re going to do this.
I think about my apartment: the piles of clothes on the floor, the naked walls and balding carpet, the barren refrigerator with the moldy lump in the corner that was once a ham sandwich and which I haven’t thrown out yet because I’m afraid to touch it. I decide I don’t want him to see my apartment. But the idea of being in someone else’s place is even more overwhelming, like being in a foreign land where I don’t know the laws or the language. “Neither.”
“Where, then?”
“There’s a motel nearby. I can drive us there.”
“We’re doing this like a real one-night stand, huh?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know how one-night stands usually happen. But I think a motel would work better.”
He lowers his gaze. His smile has faded. “If you say so.”
I wonder what he was about to say earlier, before he stopped. It must have been something. I think about asking. But then, if he didn’t bother to finish his sentence, it can’t have been that important.