The Myth of Sisypha

FICTION BY

It all started on the day I had lunch with Lucy Car-michael at the Petit Pain Cafe on Amsterdam near 80th Street. Lucy wanted to show me her portfolio because she hoped that I could get her connected with Brad Mettleman, an art-gallery agent who loved to take advantage of straw-haired, blue-eyed young women. She had just come back from Darfur, where she had taken photographs of suffering children.

Her blue eyes were severe and her face was stern, which, on a beautiful girl like her, gave the impression of passionate intensity.

"Politics and art are inseparable." the young woman was saying as I thumbed my way through the pages of death.

"It's powerful work," I remember saying. "I'm sure Brad would be very excited about it."

"Do you think so?" Lucy asked, putting a hand on my bare wrist.

I looked down at the almost porcelain-white fingertips pressing against my brown skin.

My breathing became shallow, but my heart was thumping hard. I leaned forward three inches. Lucy did not retreat. I had the definite feeling that she wouldn't have turned away from a kiss right then.

I was twice her age, minus a year, but she didn't move her hand or her face. She kept smiling and staring.

I exhaled through my nostrils, quite loudly it seemed to my ears, and all sorts of serious thoughts entered my mind. And then there was Joelle, my girlfriend—hell, we might as well have been married. I stayed at her place every weekend, and we'd been together eight years-longer by far than both my marriages put together.

I had already strained my agreement with her by tell­ing her I was going to Philadelphia that noon, when really my train didn't leave until five. Actually my reservation had been for noon, but I'd asked my travel agent to get

me a first-class ticket and she couldn't get first-class before the five o'clock train. By the time I realized I was leaving later I'd already told Jo that I was slated to leave at midday. It was after that that Lucy called, fol­lowing up on my promise to connect her with Brad.

Lucy's hand remained on my wrist through that long train of thought. Her smile had not dimmed.

I pulled my hand back and poured another glass full of sparkling water. I drank it down in one thirsty swig.

The blue eyes across from me shone brightly, and Lucy's shoulder came forward an inch or so. Too bad, the gesture said. Maybe next time.

After lunch I walked her down to the street and put her in a taxi. Just before she got in I promised to call Brad. She kissed me on the lips quickly and then gave me a brilliant smile. I stood there on the corner of 80th and Amsterdam, watching Lucy's taxi wend its way eastward through heavy traffic. I remember thinking that I could keep up with the cab on foot. I had to stop myself from following her.

When she was finally gone I realized I had to go to the bathroom, all that mineral water I downed while watching the curve of Lucy's violet blouse with lime-green buttons. I had the key to Jo's apartment. The doormen knew me by sight. She was across the river, meeting with a boutique-jeans distributor from Newark. I'd go upstairs, do my business and then call her phone and ask her to guess where I was. That would assuage my guilt by letting her know I was still in town.

Robert, the day man, wasn't at his post at her build­ing on 91st and Central Park West. I loped down the hallway toward the third bank of elevators and took car number 16 to the 23rd floor.

Jo had inherited this apartment from her grandmother who'd died 12 years before, when Jo was just 20. It was a big place. The entrance area led to a hall that came upon a sunken living room that had large windows that looked out over the park. I loved staying at her place.

I was happy I hadn't made a move on Lucy.

They were so silent that I almost walked in on them. Jo was sitting on the top part of the back of the couch. Her black blouse was pulled up to her armpits, above her breasts, and her black pants were almost off—except for a bottom leg that somehow clung to her left ankle. John Fry wore only a gray silk T-shirt. He was standing there between her legs, teasing her sex with his erection.

She was staring into his eyes, her copper-brown hands gripping his pale white chest and left shoul­der. He looked as if he were concentrating on some­thing inside him. Maybe he was holding back. Maybe he was playing with her.

They kept at that game for some time.

I noticed that he was wearing a condom, a red one. For some reason the color made me angry. At times he'd enter her deeply. These were the only moments that she made any sound. A kind of moan that came out as "oh" and now and then a "please, don't."

I wondered, almost idly, if she would tell me later she had tried to stop him, that she'd told him no.

After a while I turned away because I couldn't seem to think while watching them.

Looking down the hall toward the door, I knew that I should go. There was no benefit in confronting them. John Fry was twice my size (in every way), and I had no weapon with which to hurt him. And, after all, Joelle was not my wife.

I decided to leave.

As I was walking out of the building, I was think­ing that by now Jo was probably shouting upstairs, and I realized with a mild shock that I had not closed the door to her apartment. Would she and Johnny Fry laugh at the open door? Would they imagine her neigh­bors stopping to listen to her moans of ecstasy?

I headed south on Central Park West and kept going, down past Columbus Circle, down Eighth Avenue with its delis, electronics shops, hotels and tourist stores.

Somewhere between 50th Street and 42nd I passed an adult-video store. I walked past the door and then turned back. I went in and strolled up and down the aisles of DVD pornography. There was black, interracial, amateur, Asian, BDSM, anal, come shots, bi, chicks with dicks, ani­mal, gay, lesbian, and then there was a broad area of straight, nonviolent, generally white sex. Just beyond the vanilla I found a DVD in a small section titled features.

I'd never bought a film like that before. It's not that I didn't want to, but I was always too ashamed to bring something like that up to the cashier. But I wasn't afraid that day, not at all.

I came out of the door into the bright light of the sun. I looked around furtively to see if anyone had marked my exit from the sex store. But no one was looking at me: not the housewives or the kids out from school, not the homeless man pandering for change or the French tourists reading their map of the city.

No one saw me with the triply wrapped Myth ofSisy-pha dangling from my left hand, the same hand that held my briefcase filled with the photographs of dying African children.

It was a long walk to my apartment in Tribeca. When I crossed Canal at Washington I remembered how Jo had told me that we lived the perfect distance from each other. "This way we can never take each other for granted," she'd said, a wisp of her straightened hair bisecting her gray-brown eye. "We have to work to get to each other."

Maybe she was seeing Johnny Fry way back then. But no. Fry came later. She met him for the first time at a party given by Brad Mettleman at his place in Brooklyn Heights. I'd done some translation work for Brad—a series of letters that he'd received from Spain and Paris over the years. I brought Jo to the party because I brought her everywhere. I remembered that she complained of a headache and wanted to go home alone. Was that (continued on page 88)

SISYPHA

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when it began? How long ago? Six months, no more. Did he bring her red condoms that first night?

Thinking about those questions was enough to make me swing my fist into a brick wall to my left. An elderly woman walking a boxer that was too big for her to control said, "Oh my."

The dog started barking at me, but the pain in my fingers was louder. I grabbed my fist and went down to my knees while the elderly woman, clad in a cranberry housedress, struggled and pleaded with her dog.

"Axel! Stop!" she shouted. "Heel! Axel!"

I finally got to my feet and jogged the last two blocks home. It was just a door in another brick wall. I hun­kered down against it, and for the next five minutes I concentrated on opening my injured fist. The middle fingers were beginning to swell, and the pain radiated up to the middle of my forearm. Every fraction of an inch hurt more than the last. When I finally got the hand open I was afraid to close it again. But I did it. After 10 minutes I had opened and closed my fist three times.

Nothing was broken—I was pretty sure of that. But my hand would be useless for a while.

I laughed at myself as I tried with my left hand to get the keys out of my right side pants pocket.

I took three ibuprofen tablets, chok­ing them down with three two-finger shots of cognac. I was sweating and cold and my hand ached, but if you asked me I would have said I was feeling no pain.

My one indulgence is my televi­sion. It's a 63-inch plasma screen with DVD, TiVo, full cable, CD player and computer and satellite-radio connections. It's set up against the windowless wall of my living room, and more nights than not I fall asleep on my futon couch watch­ing a movie or late-night cartoons meant for adult audiences.

After the painkillers began to kick in I closed the drapes and put The Myth of Sisypha into the DVD player.

I hadn't seen many pornos. The only time I'd ever sat through one was at the rare stag party I attended. What I remembered was lots of genitalia, gar­ish makeup and disinterested men and

women going through the motions. But this one seemed different.

In this film a bronze-hued black woman, Sisypha, and her husband, Mel, a rather paunchy white man, started out sitting at a dinner table. The meal had been served, and they were eating. There were no opening credits, no soundtrack other than noises that people make. The effect was that you felt the cameras were spying upon actual people just living their lives.

The couple talked about their day and seemed very close. At one point Mel asked Sisypha if she was unhappy because they hadn't been able to con­ceive. Her response was that they loved each other and that was the most important thing.

Later on, lying in bed, they kissed good night and embraced as if they were about to make love, but then the scene was switched to morning.

At this point I began to wonder whether or not a mistake had been made at the sex shop. Maybe they gave me the wrong disc. Maybe there were R-rated versions of their XXX-rated movies. Maybe I had gotten one of these by mistake. I thought I'd have to bring it back. But the story was still interesting to me. It was a lot like my story with Joelle. She always said that she loved me, that she was satisfied with our situation. She was still young enough to have children but said that she wasn't interested.

The next morning Mel left for work and Sisypha went about her day. Sometime in the afternoon, a work­man knocked at the front door. He was young and Mediterranean, mus­cular in his overalls and T-shirt. His aquiline nose and perpetual sneer gave the impression of an ugly nature, but Sisypha seemed to like him.

"Hi, Ari," she said. "Have you come about the pipes?"

"Yes, miss," he said in a definite Greek accent.

By now I knew what would happen. They'd kiss once or twice, the scene would flip away and then come back to find them lying naked under the blankets. I was about to turn it off when the worker tore off her skirt, got down on his knees and began teasing her clitoris with the tip of his very large and pointed tongue.

Sisypha's breathing was laced with her orgasm. The way her legs

twitched and her eyes gorged them­selves on the vision of Ari's tongue proved that she was either a consum­mate actor or that she really loved having sex with this man. Her pas­sion was at least as convincing as Jo's when Johnny Fry teased her.

The sex between Sisypha and Ari escalated over the minutes. His erec­tion was long, hard and crooked. It bent downward and then turned upward toward the head. She rode him almost carelessly, rubbed his cock between her well-formed, light-brown breasts, took half of his enor­mous member down her throat. All the while Sisypha moaned and Ari grunted like a big dog warning off an intruder.

In all this time there wasn't the obligatory come shot: the man ejacu­lating on the woman's breasts or ass. But Ari was getting more and more excited. His hands were shaking, his eyes were pleading for something. Sisypha began smiling at him.

"Do you want me to make you come?" she asked.

"Yes." The word tore from his throat.

She grabbed his erection, sneered and then slapped it hard. He screamed in pain.

"Still?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied in a subdued tone.

She slapped the erection again, this time with even more force.

"Still?"

I unzipped my pants with my left hand and the thick, squat erection sprang forth.

"Please," Ari begged.

"Sisypha, what is this?" someone said.

For a moment I believed that it was Ari trying to reassert his domi­nance. But the camera shifted and I could see Mel standing at the door, carrying his briefcase, wearing his wrinkled suit.

Mel was a stocky guy with a reced­ing hairline and a slightly protruding belly. He was white with gray ears. We looked nothing alike, but certainly I saw him filling my role in this fiction.

Mel began yelling and gesticulat­ing wildly. He kept saying that he was going to call the police, which of course made very little sense since no crime had been committed. Sisypha tried to stop him, but he pushed her down and picked up the phone. At that point Ari slapped Mel, knocking him to the floor. And, with his penis still more than half erect, he used a conveniently placed roll of electrical tape to lash Mel to a chair. Before Mel was aware enough to scream, Ari used the tape to cover his mouth.

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SISYPHA

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Sisypha tried to calm Mel, but he just struggled against his bonds, making muffled screams.

Then Ari placed a stool before the chair Mel was tied to and sat, pulling Sisypha onto his lap. He positioned her so that she was facing her husband and entered her with his enormous erection.

I decided now that Sisypha was indeed an exceptional actor. Every time that Ari thrust into her she gasped and responded with a groan of pleasure. But at the same time she would look into her husband's eyes with shame just as convincing. Finally Ari lost control and fucked her with abandon. She couldn't keep from hav­ing a powerful, uncontrolled orgasm. When Ari was ready to come he made her get down on her knees to lick the

thick white fluid as it flowed down the hard snakelike veins on his erection.

I tried to stroke my own erection, but my hand hurt too much, and so I couldn't bring myself to orgasm even though I wanted to in the worst way. My breath was coming fast, and when I looked into Mel's pleading eyes I wanted to cry along with him. Alter all, wasn't I in the same position as he? Forced as I was to see my lover groaning and writh­ing in the embrace of another man?

When Ari had experienced his last spasm of ecstasy Sisypha fell away from him and begged Mel to forgive her. She hadn't meant to hurt him—she would never have exposed him to her wanton nature on purpose.

But Ari got between them and sneered at her entreaties.

"He likes it. Sissy." Ari said. "Here, look." And with that he ripped the but­tons oil Mel's pants.

A stubby erection poked out.

"See," Ari said. "He likes it. He's excited to see you get fucked by my big cock. He wants you to gel down on your knees and do to him what you did to me."

Sisypha gazed into Mel's eyes. His stare was frightened and unsure. Ten­tatively Sisypha got down on her knees before him. As she began sucking and stroking his stubby erection he stared at her with a tender gaze and bucked his hips to show how good it felt.

I poured myself another glass of cognac, drank it down and poured another. I was Mel. 1 was Mel. Impotent, restrained, submissive.

But at least he was loved by her. At least she had come back to him.

Then Ari got down on his knees behind Sisypha. When he entered her she let out a passionate groan that made me try, even with my injured hand, to stroke my erection. The pain was too great, though. I couldn't plea­sure myself, and so 1 watched helplessly

while the big Greek stud hammered away at Sisypha. She twisted and pressed back toward him. Now and then she'd raise her lips from her cap­tive husband's erection and yell, "Fuck me! Fuck me harder!"

Tears were streaming from my eyes. My erection strained so hard that the tight skin shone brightly in the plasma glow, like dark glass.

Then the big Greek stood up from behind the dark-haired girl. His erection was so hard that it tilted upward despite its crookedness, great length and girth. It was literally dripping with the juices of his lover. Ari stood over the woman, dangling the erection in Mel's face.

"You smell her pussy on my cock?" he asked the man.

"Does that get you excited?"

Mel tried to move his head away, but at the same time Sisypha started whimpering and working her hand and tongue very fast. Mel couldn't help himself; he had to come while Ari waved his erection in front of his face. And even though there were tears in his eyes I could tell that Mel was having a very powerful sex­ual experience.

In that moment 1 imagined his life. He woke up every day and took a bus to work. He came home and laughed at the same stories, watched the same TV shows, had sex once a week in the same position, con­gratulated himself tor being liberal and liberated, when actu­ally he wasn't any different from any

anchovy sealed with a dozen others just like him into a flat tin. His wife loved him the way she'd love a six-year-old boy, smiling at his innocence while he pretended to be a man.

Ari was still laughing at Mel's weak­ness when Sisypha jumped up and pushed him away. Her anger was pal­pable and a little scary. The big man knew that he'd crossed a line and so he put his clothes on.

"You know my number when you need a real man." he said, buttoning his shirt and going out the door.

I was so relieved to see him go that 1 actually sighed. 1 poured another shot and drank it down in one gagging swallow.

My erection was waning.

I expected to see Sisypha untie her husband, for them to realize they loved each other and then to make love.

Or maybe, I thought, the camera would now follow Ari to some other hot­bed of sex at his home or some club.

I wasn't concerned because even though I had been unable to have an orgasm, I felt spent, as if I had had some kind of transcendental experi­ence. I had seen many brilliant movies in my time, but nothing ever moved me as much as that first sex scene of The Myth of Sisypha. Not The Bicycle Thief or The World ofApu or Tokyo Story. No movie had ever talked directly to me before. No movie had ever pulled

the heart out of my chest and laid it beating at my feet.

I was finished with this film. Mere sex could not move me as much as Mel's demolition at the hands of his wife and her lover.

But the next scene had nothing to do with sex. Sisypha pulled the stool even closer so that she was sitting only inches from her husband. For a long time she stared into his eyes. I noticed that the right side of Mel's face was red and slightly raised, as if Ari had really struck him.

"If I take the tape from your mouth, will you scream?" she asked him.

He nodded, and I wondered if he understood the question.

"You will scream?" she asked again to make sure.

He nodded again.

"If 1 untie you, will you try to hurt me?" she asked then.

After a moment's hesitation he nod­ded, a bit sadly.

"Do you love me, Melvin?"

Nod.'

"Do you hate me, too?"

Nod.

"What can we do?"

Melvin hung his head and shook it slowly. Whereupon Sisypha got up and walked from the room. Mel looked after her, and for a long time there was no action at all, just Mel looking at the doorway through which his wife

had gone.

And then Sisy-pha appeared at the door, carrying a small baby-blue suit­case. She knelt down in front of him and closed up his pants, a loving gesture.

"I'll call Yvette and tell her to come untie you," she said. "I'll get in touch in a few days to see what you're thinking."

That was it for me. I started crying and couldn't stop. I fell from the futon onto the floor and sobbed. Mel's impotence struck a chord at my center. He didn't want to hurt his wife, but he would hurt her. He didn't want to scream, but he had no choice. The choice was not his to make. Sisypha was the one in charge, the one making deci­sions. Through her passion, through her clear eyes, she made her choices and fol­lowed them.

I punched the am. kk button on my uni­versal remote. The room went black, and I stayed down on the floor. Somewhere in between bleats I drifted oH to sleep.

I meant to get up early and take a taxi to Penn Station, but I didn"t set an alarm or anything, and I was pretty drunk. When I woke up it was still dark and I thought I had made it in time, but it was just that the shades blocked out the midday sun. It was 11:30 in the morning. 1 had already missed my meeting.

When I went into the living room I realized that one of the pillows from the

futon had fallen on the phone; when it rang earlier in the morning the ringer had been muffled and I hadn't heard it from my bedroom.

There were four messages on the answer­ing machine. All of them were from Jerry Singleton, my main translation agent.

"Cordell,' the first message started. "I got a call from Norberto down in Philly. He says you're late for the meeting. What's going on?"

By the fourth message he was threat­ening to cut me off, saying that I wasn't the best or the cheapest translator he could find. He told me to call him before the end of the day or he'd make sure that I never worked for anyone in New York or anywhere else again.

He was so angry that it made sense in an odd way that my hand had swollen to almost twice its normal size. The knuck­les were spread painfully apart, and that reminded me of Jo and Johnny Fry, him spreading her with his wide erection.

I erased everything. It felt good to have a clean slate.

I logged on to AOL and went into my bank accounts.

I had saved $51,000 in the past two decades, $2,500 a year. There were also two $10,000 T-bills and $8,600 in my checking account.

My rent was $1,350. and my expenses were no more than a thousand a month, probably less. I didn't buy clothes often, nor did I take many vacations or own a car. I could live for at least two years with­out making a dime. That felt very good.

I left my house at three and went to my favorite little Italian bistro on Avenue of

the Americas near Houston. I sat outside in the hot sun, eating fresh mozzarella, eggplant, avocado and fried calamari. I had hours to kill.

I was in no hurry. I realized at some point during the day that my relationship with Jo was over. I wasn't upset about it. I didn't even plan to tell her that I knew about her and Johnny Fry.

Everything was new. I would quit my job—I had at least two years in which I didn't have to earn a dime.

I laughed out loud. Johnny Fry's big red dick had set me free.

I didn't feel a thing for Joelle any­more. I didn't even want to see her, but I figured that I should go to her house and tell her so. I'd tell her the truth: I just don't love you anymore. That's all I had to say.

"A glass of red wine, please," I said to the waiter.

He smiled at me, and I smiled back. It was a new life. I was free for the first time that I could remember. I sat there watching women go by dressed in the scanty clothing they put on for the summer heat. I was think­ing about Sisypha. She could be any woman walking down the street, and no one would ever guess what she was like or what she was doing at home. You'd look at her and think. There goes a nice-looking woman. Wedding ring. Probably has two kids and no orgasms.

I decided that one day I'd meet Sisy­pha and ask her something that would catch her attention.

THEY WERE SO SILENT THAT I ALMOST WALKED IN ON THEM. SHE WAS STARING INTO HIS EYES. HE WAS STANDING THERE BETWEEN HER LEGS, TEASING HER.

All the while Sisypha moaned and Ari grunted like a big dog warning off an intruder.

She hadn't meant to hurt him—she would never have exposed him to her wantoyi nature on purpose.