Friends Without Benefits

Please.

I needed her to relax. She moaned. I moved.

Please.

I needed her to enjoy this. Her breath hitched.

Please.

I needed her to let me touch her again when this was over.

Part 2: Meet thirty-two year-old Nico

When I walk on a stage or in front of a camera it’s easy to become The Face. People make it easy. They want arrogance and dirty jokes and I love acting conceited and telling dirty jokes.

Win-win.

In fact, when I fly first class, when I walk down the street, when I stop by a drug store to buy detergent and gum—it’s effortless. I am who people expect me to be. I know so many punch lines, I don’t even bother with the jokes anymore.

When I’m interviewed about the show—or, more recently, my movies—it’s usually by some spray tan female with fake tits. She always asks about objectification. It makes me laugh. Now there is a joke.

Some bimbo, three chromosomes away from a blowup doll, is asking me about objectifying women. Meanwhile she’s slipping me her number, her hand is rubbing do me circles on my thigh, and she’s shoving her silicon sweater puppets in my face.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not complaining, not even a little. I love my job most of the time. I love what I do. Making people laugh gets me high every time. Every. Single. Time. My life is filled with moments of pure ecstasy; moments when I can get a crowd laughing so hard, every individual audience member has their eyes closed and they’re fighting to breathe.

Nothing matters; everything that came before and all worries about the future cease to have relevance. They fade away.

A perfect moment. . . and then it’s over.

It’s a feeling almost impossible to duplicate or eclipse.

I’ve only felt something that surpassed it three times in my life. All three times were with the same girl and, during all three of those times, the moment crested over days and weeks, if not months. Obviously, I’m in love with her. But, she’s not just the girl I love. She’s the girl I’ve hungered for, the girl I’ve worshipped for the majority of my life.

This is the girl.

The first time was almost exactly sixteen years ago, after our best friend died. I climbed in her window, found her staring at the ceiling. She’d just showered and her hair was so wet it soaked through the feathers of her pillow.

She looked at me as I approached; I saw that she wasn’t crying, not anymore, but she had been crying recently. She was devastated, near despair; sorrow that’s impossible to escape. She was drowning in it.

And I remember thinking that she was beautiful. Even in her grief she was beyond lovely to me.

I didn’t pause to consider my actions; I just lay next to her, gathered her small body in my arms, and held her to my chest. That’s how I discovered her hair and pillow were wet.

I don’t know how long we lay like that, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour. I shifted because my arm was asleep and she reached out for me.

She grabbed my shirt in both of her fists, like a person does when they’re startled or afraid.

She said, “Stay with me.” When I didn’t immediately respond she added, “I need you to stay with me.”

It knocked the wind from my lungs. It was like I was flying and falling at the same time. I’m sure she had no idea. But, for me, it was a perfect moment. I felt ten feet tall.

For years afterward I would think about it and the days that followed; about how, during those weeks, she needed me. For a long time it was the best and the worst period of my life. I used it as fuel for my early standup routines and learned quickly that bitterness in comedy is rarely funny—and funny only if it’s also sincerely self-deprecating.

The second time occurred just before we got married. She surprised me while I was taping my show in front of a studio audience of hundreds in New York City. I was undressing—as I always do—at the end, preparing to Jell-O wrestle with two closet lesbians who got a huge kick out of elbowing me in the face and other essential body parts.

I heard her. Of course, at first, I thought it was feedback from my earpiece or my mind playing tricks on me. But it wasn’t. It was her.

I didn’t comprehend everything she said, but I did comprehend that she was in a black bra and underwear. Well, at least everything below my waist comprehended her lack of clothing because it immediately reacted to her, to her body. I loved her body. Thoughts of it kept me up at night; what I wanted to do to it, how I wanted to touch and taste it.

She was standing on the dancer’s stage, looking at me. Despite the distance between us, she was really looking at me. One of her hands was holding a microphone, the other was palm out and toward me, beseeching.

Then I heard her say, “But the thing is, Nico. . . I need you.”

It didn’t really matter what she said next, what she asked. I would have said yes to anything. I would have given her anything. Not to get too Italian and melodramatic about it, but if she’d asked me to cut out my heart I would have. But she wouldn’t want that.

I trust her. I know she wants my heart in one piece and she always has.

I am of the opinion that women don’t really understand men. Most men, real men would do anything for the woman they love. When a man loves a woman enough to marry her, he loves her to the point of obsession. It’s the devotion of a male for his mate.

He watches her sleep. He smells her clothes searching for her scent. He craves her admiration like a drug. He lives for her smile, for her laugh, and especially for her touch.

Being needed—by his woman—is ecstasy for a man.

Which leads me to the third time Elizabeth surprised me. It happened just recently and made me think that maybe I have many more of these moments in my future. Maybe I’m one of those blessed bastards whose life will be a series of perfect moments.

We’re at a really good point in our relationship and still live in the Windy City. I’d moved the show once we were married and most of the cast moved with me. Over the summers I was filming movies and Elizabeth would come along. She never had any trouble finding a visiting clinician program.

Publicity died down fairly soon after the wedding. The ass**le photographers basically disappeared or, when they did pop up, kept their distance.

I guess people are less interesting once they get married.

Regardless, the citizens of Chicago never seemed to make a big deal about us. I was hardly ever approached. And, when I was, it was usually by a tourist.

On this particular day we were in the park, specifically the concrete benches next to Crown Fountain; although, most of the locals just call it The Faces. I was sitting and she was lying on her side, her head was in my lap, watching people as they watched the interactive artwork.

My hand wound around her long braid and I moved my thumb over the silk of her hair. I loved it when she wore her hair like this. Call me sick and twisted, but I loved tugging on her braid or ponytail to get her attention. Maybe it was a holdover from when we were kids, but I didn’t think so because—in retaliation, but only rarely—she’d grab a handful of my hair and pull a lot harder than necessary.

This always made me want to rip her clothes off.

Elizabeth seemed to expect and accept that teasing was going to be a constant in our relationship. Getting a rise out of her wasn’t as easy as it used to be, with her love came patience. But I didn’t mind, because truly flustering her was a lot easier now that I was allowed to touch her whenever I wanted.

And I wanted. I wanted a lot.

Elizabeth shifted on my lap. “I spoke to Angelica this morning.”

“Really? Is something wrong? I just talked to her two days ago.”

“No, she’s great. She’s doing really great. We talked about her friends. The homeschool group your mom has her in seems to really be working out well and she’s started ballet class.”

I nodded though I felt uneasy about the dance classes. “I knew about the homeschool group; I didn’t know that mom had decided on the ballet.”

“It’s a small class and I talked to the teacher about arranging a special cleaning of the studio. I think it’ll be really good for her.”

“You talked to the teacher?”

She shrugged, her eyes focused on something in the distance. “Yes. I thought we could drive down there next weekend and visit.”

“Definitely. I want to meet the teacher, make sure she understands the situation.”

“Nico, the exercise will be good for improving her lung function.”

I grunted my response.

“See that lady over there?” Elizabeth, perhaps trying to change the subject, indicated with her chin toward a woman about thirty or so feet from where we were.

I glanced at a woman, maybe in her mid-fifties, hard to tell. “Yeah.”

“Every time one of the faces smiles she also smiles.”

I returned my attention to Elizabeth. “How long have you been watching her?”

“About five minutes. Wait—just watch—she’s about to do it.” I didn’t watch the woman. Instead, I watched Elizabeth, full of expectation. I knew the moment the other woman smiled because Elizabeth’s grin was immense.

“See? Did you see that?” She sighed, looked happy. “She has a great smile.”

I responded without thinking about it, “You have a great smile.”