Safe Sex

She couldn't stop thinking about it--John Wayne Bobbitt's penis lying in a field. It haunted her. She wondered what the weather had been like that day. Had it rained? Was the field muddy? Did they have to brush dirt off of it? Pick out stubborn pieces of gravel that had become embedded in the soft flesh? And how soft was it? If it was flaccid when Lorena cut it off, did it get more so as the blood drained out of it?

She preferred to think of it as hard, even though she knew that was physically impossible. But she enjoyed changing the events in her mind--some of them, anyway. She liked to imagine a woman walking along and finding it--an erect penis, with no man attached to it, just lying there, waiting for someone to take it home.

"Oh, how great!" she imagined the woman saying. "I've been looking for one of these. Dildos are so synthetic, and real penises always come with a man attached."

Tamara thought about Lorena once in a while, too, though not as often as she thought about John Wayne's penis. For one thing, she liked Lorena's name and would have traded with her in a second. Tamara's name was the result, according to her mother, of an acid trip her mother took before she became pregnant. But in 1968, it was perfectly logical to see your future mapped out in detail during an acid trip. And that, said her mother, was what happened. She knew she'd soon get pregnant and have a golden-haired daughter, and that her name would be Tamara.

Aside from the name thing, though, Tamara thought about Lorena driving her car after she had cut off John's penis. Did she have to put it in her lap to pull out of the garage or to flick on her turn signal? And if she didn't--if she just kept it in her hand--did she worry about passing drivers? That maybe they'd glance over and then say, "I could swear I just saw a woman driving by with a penis in her hand."

From the time Tamara was a child, her mother told her how beautiful she was. "I knew you would be, too," her mother would say, not explaining about the acid trip until Tamara was older. Then she added, "Don't ever do drugs. They're not like they were in the old days. But I certainly had an accurate vision of you." Tamara knew she was attractive. Even on her bad days she could turn heads. She had thick, wavy blonde hair that fell down her back and a perfectly proportioned body that looked like she exercised religiously. In fact, she was rather lazy. Maybe that was a part of this penis fixation. Because of her looks, she'd been forced to think about penises a lot. Men were always offering her theirs.

She worked in a high-priced jewelry store, with an armed guard and a buzzer on the door. Men came in to buy expensive pieces for their wives, or more likely for their mistresses. The store manager always wanted Tamara to wait on them and once said to her--it would have been sexual harassment if the manager weren't a woman--that Tamara should show some cleavage. "You'll sell more jewelry," she said.

Which was true. As much as she resented it, Tamara knew that a sale had already been made as soon as she leaned over the counter to tell some man what a great deal the $20,000 diamond necklace was. She knew the guy would fuck her if he could and send her diamonds as a payoff.

From an analytical perspective, Tamara thought all of this factored into her obsession with John Wayne Bobbitt's penis. Generally, she didn't like the men who came attached to penises, though she did like sex. One of her friends suggested a vibrator, so she bought one and tried it. But the noise distracted her (continued on page 154)Safe Sex(continued from page 134) and she realized she was spending a lot of money on batteries.

She wasn't dating anyone during the vibrator phase, but now she was, and that posed another problem. She started to look at her boyfriend's penis and imagine it on its own, marching to its own drummer, as it were. It wasn't that she didn't like Derek or that she was angry at him. She just couldn't stop her mind from thinking that way. There were, however, times when he annoyed her. Now that they'd been together for a few months, his lovemaking was a bit on the selfish side. There were times--too many times--when he came and didn't wait for her, didn't even seem to notice that she had a ways to go. Wasn't that one of Lorena's complaints--that John never waited for her? Women across America were nodding along with that, understanding perfectly that after a few years of that selfishness, with abuse thrown in on top of it, kitchen knives could start looking very attractive.

"What are you thinking about?" Derek asked her one night after he'd rolled off her and they were lying side by side. He seemed not to have noticed that she hadn't been anywhere close to coming.

"I was thinking about your cock--about what it would be like on its own."

Derek took her hand and put it there. "He'd still be glad to see you even on his own," he said, clearly not grasping her meaning and slipping into the vernacular that seems so common to men. They frequently, Tamara had noticed, refer to their penises as he--as if a penis were a person, a Siamese twin of sorts. Which brought up another question. Did John Wayne Bobbitt feel like he'd lost his twin? His best buddy? His soul mate? She decided not to pursue the conversation with Derek right then. He was falling asleep anyway.

"I need to find a good therapist," she said just as he was dozing off.

"I think you're perfect," he mumbled.

If you only knew, she thought.

•

She made an appointment with the psychologist that one of her friends used to see. Her only requirement was that the doctor be a woman, because how could she sit across from a man and say, "Well, I keep having these fantasies about detached penises"? A woman could handle this information more gracefully, Tamara thought.

"When did these fantasies start?" Dr. Berman asked, keeping her professional demeanor and giving the impression that she heard this all the time.

"About the time the Bobbitt case became the top news story."

"Uh-huh. And would you say these thoughts have been increasing?"

"Oh, definitely," Tamara told her. "I can't look at a man now without thinking of removing his penis and seeing what it would be like on its own. It just seems that it would be much more convenient if penises had snaps on them, or Velcro. You know, you could take it off of your date at the end of the evening, send the rest home, keep his penis overnight and then send it back to him by messenger the following morning. If you think about it, it's sort of another version of safe sex. I mean, you wouldn't be exposed to all the emotional germs that might otherwise be a factor."

Dr. Berman blinked at her over the top of her reading glasses. She had blonde hair made dull by a frosting of gray, and while she probably needed the reading glasses to see what she was writing, she was apparently too distracted to write. At the moment, she was just staring and blinking.

"Tell me," the doctor said, "is the appeal of this fantasy the idea of getting to know a man without the pressure of sex? In other words, would it feel less threatening to get acquainted with a man who had no genitals?"

"Oh, no, no, no. It's the other way around. I'm not really interested in the man. I'm interested in the penis."

Dr. Berman looked confused for a second, then regained her composure. "What is it you think you want?" she asked.

Tamara took a deep breath. "I want a chair with a dildo in the center of it."

"Excuse me?"

"They have them at the Pleasure Chest. At least I think they do. Someone told me about them. See, the chair has a button that you press and a dildo comes up through the center of the seat. That way, I could have sex whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted--and sitting down might be nice. But I wouldn't have to talk with a man and worry about his moods or if he was going to stop before I wanted him to. I think this could be the answer to my problem. Now we're really talking about safe sex."

"Can you come in twice a week?" the doctor asked.

•

Tamara thought that maybe she'd found the solution for herself. After all, how could costly conversations with a therapist compare with a sex chair that would be there whenever she wanted it?

She left Dr. Berman's office, drove straight to the Pleasure Chest and walked in exuding a confidence she didn't really feel.

"I want one of those chairs with a dildo in it," she said to the leather-clad man behind the counter. He had a tiny gold nose ring and four holes pierced in one earlobe. Tamara wondered what other body parts had been pierced.

"For yourself?" he asked, looking her up and down. She was suddenly self-conscious about her conservative black blazer and straight skirt.

"Well ... yes."

She hadn't thought about it before--the chair being gender specific. Maybe it hadn't been designed with women in mind. She noticed another man staring at her from over in the corner. His arms were completely tattooed, and his neck, above his T-shirt, blazed with color and wild designs. Was everything tattooed? She had to stop thinking like this.

"Is there a problem with my buying the chair?" Tamara asked indignantly, trying to act like an attorney who was seriously considering a discrimination suit.

"No, not at all," the man said, shrugging and smiling a secretive smile, which pissed her off. But she decided to remain calm. "I think we have a couple in the back," he offered. "Did you want only one, or were you planning to have a party?"

"One will be fine," Tamara answered, wishing she had begun this whole thing with a British accent. It would have made her feel that much more haughty and upper-crusty.

The man moved away from the counter and opened a door behind him.

"One more thing," she said, stopping him in his tracks. "Do you deliver?"

"For a fee."

"Fine, fine. I don't care about the cost. But do you have a plain truck? I mean, it doesn't have Pleasure Chest painted across the side, does it?"

"Actually, it's wrapped in brown paper," the man said, and ducked through the doorway.

The man with the tattoos chuckled behind her and she thought--just to get back at him--If your cock is tattooed, I wouldn't want it even if it did come off.

•

There was a small attic room in the house she rented. Her landlord called it a meditation room, and Tamara had attempted to use it as that. She'd even bought some books on meditation so that she would know what she was doing. It just seemed that she shouldn't break the chain in terms of what the room had been used for. But she had no other place to put the chair. She didn't want Derek to know about it, and there were nights when he stayed over. She also had to consider her cleaning lady, as well as the occasional repairman. She could just imagine, if the chair were in the living room, Roy the plumber sitting down on it to write out her bill and accidentally pushing the button. Either his life would be changed forever, or she'd be looking for a new plumber.

A week went by and Tamara had to admit that her outlook was improving. The chair was her secret. The nights she didn't see Derek, she lit candles, poured a glass of wine and explored a variety of new positions with her partner who never got into a snit, never turned moody, existed solely for her pleasure and never talked back. She got off on the silence, broken only by her own moans. The quiet, and the eternal erection that she now owned, had cost her a lot of money, but she didn't care.

When Derek was there and she had to readjust to a human partner, she found it easier just knowing the chair was upstairs, locked away in a world that belonged only to the two of them.

"You're very passionate these days," Derek said to her one night, as if he didn't quite know what to do with all that heat. As if it scared him.

"I am?"

But actually, once she thought about it, she knew he was right. She had climbed on top of him, taken command, used every trick she knew to keep him just on the edge of coming, until he was pleading with her. Judging by the fact that he was already sound asleep, she must have worn him out.

Tamara noticed that at work she no longer looked at each male customer with the fantasy of dismantling him. She didn't immediately think of liberating his penis, setting it free to live an unencumbered life. She was able--finally--to relate to a whole man, as God made him, without thinking of altering the design.

•

Then a strange thing happened. Tamara was sitting on her chair one night. Having mounted it backward, she was facing the leather back, her hands gripping the sides, when she began talking to it. At first, it was just lost-in-fantasy sex talk, like telling the chair how good it felt, telling it that she was about to come, whispering "yes" a lot.

But a couple of nights later, Tamara curled up against its leather back--after she was finished, after she'd pushed the button, turning it back into an ordinary chair--and started telling it about her day at work. She told it about the woman who almost bought an outrageously expensive pair of earrings, which would have provided Tamara with an outrageously exciting commission. But after taking up nearly an hour of Tamara's time, the woman said, "Oh, I don't know. This isn't a good day to make a decision. I felt it when I left home this morning."

"Probably read it in her horoscope," Tamara complained to the chair.

And then she twisted around and sat on it backward--a position she'd come to like, though this time it wasn't for sex--and put her arms as far around its leather back as they would go. She pressed her chest against the leather.

"When I was a little girl," she told the chair, "I used to lie on my stomach in bed at night and feel my heart beat against the mattress. But if I thought about it long enough, I could convince myself that it wasn't my heartbeat, it was the heartbeat of a man who lived under my bed. I pictured him lying on his back with the mattress springs touching his chest. I knew he wouldn't hurt me. He just wanted me to feel his heartbeat and know he was there--in case I felt lonely and wanted company."

She shut her eyes and tried to pretend that the chair had a heartbeat. But it didn't work. There was only the beating of her own heart, like some lonely drummer playing out the sadness against a backdrop of black leather.

She climbed off the chair and stood in front of it, listening to the silence around her. Candlelight flickered across her bare legs. This was what she'd wanted--sex in a world of silence, with an inanimate partner, where all the emotional messiness that comes with humans could be left outside the door like the neighbor's cat. She'd shopped for this, put down money for it. But the thing about silence is, after a while you start to disappear inside of it. It yawns around you and then you start to fill it up with your own voice. Then it becomes the sound of loneliness--one voice bouncing off the walls, one heart thumping along to its own rhythm. One breath that could stop suddenly, in the middle of the night, and who would notice? She'd heard about things like that--people dying in the night and rotting away for weeks before anyone thought to knock on the door. There was a man she had heard about on the news, in Brooklyn or the Bronx, she couldn't remember which, but by the time they'd found him he was almost a skeleton.

"You wouldn't help me, would you?" she asked the chair. The movement of her breath in the tiny attic made one of the candle flames jump.

Then she thought about Derek. So he had some flaws. That was part of the package, part of the emotional messiness that she'd been leaving outside the door and that was now scratching to get in.

She looked around the attic and then back to the chair. No heartbeat, no breath, no voice. OK, it did have a great erection, but Derek's wasn't bad, just a little inconsistent. Maybe she had to work with that, be more encouraging.

She whispered his phone number, testing herself to make sure she still had it memorized. Of course, he might not answer, she thought as she pulled on her robe. Derek was one of those people who thought phone machines were God's way of protecting selective individuals from the nastiness of incoming calls. Sort of an electronic moat. But maybe she'd get lucky this time.

"Hello?"

"Derek, it's me."

"Me who?"

She hesitated and saw herself at the crossroads. I might as well plunge ahead, she thought. The road I've been on is too quiet and full of burned-down candles. "Can you come over?" she asked.

•

Their lovemaking felt like a dark rumor--something Tamara had known before but had locked away where the light couldn't reach it.

"I knew you a long time ago," she whispered to Derek. "You used to live under my bed. I'd lie there and listen to your heartbeat. I like you in my bed much better."

He took her hand and rested it on his heart.