Occasionally, as he scrutinized his body, Nar was reminded that he would have to die someday, and that all the labors invested in producing such gorgeous muscles would be lost without a trace, together with the muscles themselves. Recoiling in horror from this thought, Nar stuffed it into a dark corner of his consciousness and went on working out. When he walked down the street past display windows, he looked at his reflection and rejoiced that he was still young and had before him a long life with such a handsome and powerful body.
Once he happened to see an advertisement for lessons at a mime studio. Nar enrolled that very day and happily bought himself the mime’s uniform of black tights and leotard. During his first lesson he bent his arm too suddenly and tore his right sleeve along the seam. But one of the female students offered to mend it. When a few days later they wound up in bed, the girl communicated to him her fears of becoming pregnant, and flatly refused to take seriously the contraceptive that he was beginning to slip on with clumsy fingers. As a compromise the girl turned her back to him. At first Nar was shocked, as associations to homosexuality rose to his mind, but then desire got the upper hand and he rid himself of it by accepting her terms. Nar felt that the girl expected some kind of compromise from him, so she might receive that share of sensation which was due her by the laws of nature; but, now that he found himself in a state of contentment, he no longer wanted to think about her, and he fell to admiring his abdominal muscles. The girl gazed with tenderness at Nar’s body, which had served her as an art object, and whose purely aesthetic charm would suffice for just one more rendezvous.
When he had completed about a month’s study of the art of mime, Nar decided to give his friends a demonstration of his progress. He was not too lazy to prepare properly: he changed into his black leotard and announced the title of his act: “Bird of Prey.” Whatever he may have been attempting to portray – bending from the waist and jutting his arms out behind him – more than anything else it resembled an exercise for the oblique muscles of the spine. Several of the spectators expressed the opinion that if this was a bird it was certainly not predatory, but more likely domestic, of the genus “turkey.” And indeed, a certain resemblance to a bird could be observed in the way he strutted, but this came naturally to him without need of any lessons. Of this his gratified audience informed him plainly and without mincing words. After this debut Nar discontinued his lessons at the mime studio.
Nar’s ever-growing love for his own body continually provoked in his acquaintances a desire to tease him, and Nar accepted this stoically. But many people were simply exasperated by him, and when, as sometimes happened, they spoke to him rudely, he tried to “clear up any misunderstanding.” Instead of replying in kind or ceasing to associate with the man who had thus insulted him, he would cry out in honest astonishment: “Look, what have I done to you?” – at which they simply gave up on him and walked away.
On occasions when a fight was brewing from an already insupportable mass of insult, Nar would puff out his muscles and glint his eyes in the direction of the offender, by which means he would manage to frighten his adversary and induce him to make conciliatory gestures, which Nar always accepted eagerly.
Once, as he was walking along the street with a woman, a passerby shoved him. Nar grabbed him by the sleeve and demanded an apology. The man obediently paused, as if trying to decide whether or not to apologize, and then suddenly struck Nar in the face. Nar lost consciousness for a second, but remained in his feet. Returning to himself, he saw that the fellow was running, and rapidly getting away. Nar took off after him, but quickly realized that he would never catch him – Nar was a slow runner, and this character had already vanished from view. Since there was no blood, and the pain passed quickly, Nar gave up and returned to the girl, who was crying with fright. That evening the girl was extremely affectionate, and Nar loudly vituperated the “scoundrel” as he attentively studied his undamaged face in the tiny mirror of her compact.
When he went to a gym to “pump iron” Nar customarily brought along a liter of milk in a cardboard carton; he would place it beside the weight he was pressing and drink it up in the course of his workout. He had read in some magazine that by doing that he would sharply accelerate the growth of his muscles. On one of his workout days a women’s volleyball team was practicing in the gym, and in order to retrieve their flying ball the women frequently ran out to where Nar was devotedly lifting weights. One of them asked him, as she grabbed the ball, why he was drinking milk. Nar explained, and she giggled stupidly. Not long after this the volleyball team took a break, and they settled down not far from Nar. He tried to ignore them, since he felt certain that a large portion of the team was watching him. While pressing his weight, he started drinking his milk in very small, slow swallows, in the manner prescribed in the magazine. At the same time he turned, showing the women, as if by chance, the various sides of his body. The one who had run out after the ball asked him, from where she sat, how long he had been involved in body building. Nar answered her, raising his voice so that she, and the rest, would be able to hear it.
“And is it true that body builders shave their bodies?”
“Yes, you have to for competitions,” Nar confirmed, remembering that it was time for him to shave his chest and armpits.
“And how much milk do you drink?” asked a curious girl.
“One liter per workout,” Nar answered readily, and in order to prolong the conversation added, as he took his next swallow: “But, you know, the milk that they sell these days is just like water.”
Suddenly all the girls were rolling with laughter. It developed that, when Nar had left the room to use the toilet, the girls had drunk up almost all the milk and replaced it with water, and Nar, on his return, had continued to drink it, suspecting nothing. When the girls explained the joke to him, Nar indulgently joined their laughter, although in his soul he felt uncomfortable – it was the first time that so many women had laughed at him, and it had occurred precisely when he was fully armed – that is, when his body was nearly nude.
This incident contributed to his accumulating dissatisfaction with women. In general, what Nar liked best in a relationship was the beginning, which consisted of admiration for his body. But liaisons soon wearied Nar, because he had to indulge the women and force himself to admire them for some reason. Besides, his workouts and his studies took a lot of energy out of Nar; and the more sharply his muscles protruded and the deeper became his knowledge in the sciences, the more rarely the female body sparked any interest in him. For this reason he began to feel as an importunate reproach to himself the eternal readiness of the female body for intercourse, which some women had had the audacity to point out to him. The greatest pleasure he received was when a woman gave him a massage, since while she was doing this she was perforce admiring his body. But during an embrace it always seemed to him that it was all one to the woman whether he or another man held her; and the tighter the embrace, the less she could see of his body. Also, Nar was afraid that prolonged movement of the hips, which women so greedily demanded from him, would lead to disproportionate growth of the muscles encircling his waist, and so spoil the silhouette of his figure. He therefore preferred to have the woman sit on top of him, so that his body would be visible to her at all times, and besides in this position it was hardly necessary for him to move at all.
He saw one particular girl for about a year and even considered the possibility of marriage. But one day she mentioned that she had once suffered a uterine infection, and Nar pricked up his ears and began questioning her in detail: how long did it last, had she had to go to the hospital.
“What are you so upset about?” she said in amazement. “This was all a long time ago.”
“But I read that a woman can get sterile from that,” explained Nar. Sometimes he liked to imagine his future son gazing with admiration at his strong father. And the more he thought about it the more he realized that he didn’t want to throw away his life so lightly – if she couldn’t get pregnant it would be better to split up and break off the whole relationship. But he continued to see her; she very conveniently lived next door.
Her birthday arrived, and Nar gave her a very handsome card. He presented her with it in an envelope with such solemn ceremony, and he showered her with so many elaborate felicitations, that the girl was forced to cut him short. All day Nar tried to find out from her why she was in such a bad mood. And when he phoned her the next day she told him that she didn’t want to see him anymore.
“Why?” Nar asked with sincere astonishment. “Maybe I did something wrong – come on, tell me.”
But she had no desire to explain anything and asked that he not phone her in the future. At first he resolved to go to her and demand an explanation, but then it occurred to him that this would be beneath his dignity, and he sat down to write a circumstantial letter, in which he proved with five pages of logic how important it was for them to remain together. “And if this doesn’t convince her I don’t intend to degrade myself further,” he said to himself, foreseeing quite clearly that she would not reply.
The most expensive item in Nar’s budget was food. He had to maintain hefty muscles – and they required a rich and abundant diet. His stomach accepted chopped meat grudgingly, and insistently demanded brisket, filet, and other choice cuts of meat. If a bowl of fruit happened to sit in front of him he was incapable of stopping until he had eaten all of it. So he behaved at friends’ houses with feigned casualness, as if everyone in the room possessed an appetite equal to his own. On being invited to eat he agreed at once, but always added: “Only a very little bit for me, please.” While waiting for the soup he helped himself to the largest piece of bread, which he thoroughly smeared with a thick layer of butter, until the surface of the bread was completely invisible. Then he covered the butter with thick chunks of meat or sausage – cheese he despised as low calorie. After this Nar graciously accepted a bowl of soup, consented to a second helping, thoroughly cleaned his plate after seconds and was ready for dessert. He loved chocolate, but tried not to eat much of it for fear that it would ruin his teeth. Since eating fruit nonstop was awkward for him, Nar would get up from the table and then, as he chatted with one person or another, would contrive to walk past the bowl of fruit and help himself, as if unconsciously, now to an apple, now to a pear, now to some third item. Thanks to his considerable digestive capacity, Nar’s muscles were soon bursting from beneath the thin film of his skin, which was somehow reminiscent not so much of a film as of a fine-meshed net thrown over the muscles and held in place by blood vessels.
On one of his summer vacations Nar went to relax by the seaside with a friend. They spent all their days on the beach, where they tried to make the acquaintance of every goodlooking girl. Spotting his latest victim lounging in the sun, Nar led the attack. His friend was a little behind him, and Nar, brandishing his muscles and blocking the sun with his hulk, intoned in a solemn, official-sounding bass:
“I hope we won’t disturb you if we recline in the neighborhood of your charming back.”
Every time he did this his friend winced inwardly at the stiffness of this opening, the more so when the girl responded with obvious irony; so the friend would start talking himself, thus saving the situation. His body looked like a weakling’s with Nar as backdrop, but Nar’s friend had a knack for conversing with any girl whatever as though he had known her from early childhood. Nar simply could not understand why girls so often gave preference to his friend, and, feeling wounded, tried hard not to look it and straightened his shoulders.
Once a day they ate in a restaurant, and they had agreed for the sake of convenience that each day one of them would pay for both; they would take turns. Thus it developed that when it was Nar’s turn to pay he ate twice as much as his friend, and when it was his friend’s turn to pay he ate three times as much. The friend noticed this, but felt awkward about discussing it. Something similar happened with the food they cooked at home, since again they split the cost fifty-fifty.
One evening, as he was preparing to go out for a stroll, Nar was sitting by the mirror, and, having cruelly disposed of an unwanted pimple, was patching the crater with an ointment of some sort. His friend approached and asked for some ointment, since the skin between his toes was chapped from spending time on the beach. Not budging from the mirror, Nar said, “I can’t give you any; it’s very expensive ointment. I had a lot of trouble getting it, and I only use it on my face.”
This staggered the friend, who said slowly, “You’re a rotten shit.”
“You watch what you’re saying.” Nar turned toward him menacingly, holding the tube of ointment between two fingers.
Until it was time for them to leave the resort Nar’s friend spoke with him no more, although Nar frequently turned to him with remarks like “I don’t understand why you’re mad at me” – until the friend finally explained that he didn’t wish to know him any longer. After this revelation Nar shut up out of pride.
In place of friendship, Nar was beginning to feel something else surrounding him. After working out, while washing in the shower, Nar often became aware of admiring glances from men. Their glances were flattering to him, like the glances of women, and he managed to suppress the feeling of embarrassment that they roused in him for some unknown reason. One day in the locker room, as he was carefully toweling himself after showering, a man struck up a conversation with him. The man’s back was covered with bushy hair, and his chest was completely hairless. Nar had noticed him before, since they habitually exercised at the same hour. Nar had observed that the man watched him with a fixed stare while he worked out, and had interpreted this as the natural admiration of an amateur for the musculature of a professional. And indeed, the man now began to compliment Nar on his physical attainments and clapped him on the shoulder. Then his hand slid to Nar’s waist and after this he gently touched Nar’s buttocks and significantly looked him in the eye. At this the true nature of his admiration dawned upon Nar, and he violently pulled away from the man. And when the latter put out his hand again, Nar hit him with all his strength, and the man struck his back against a locker.
“Get away!” Nar bellowed with menace in his voice, although really he felt no rancor.
“Idiot!” the man said calmly. And, supporting his bruised back with his arm, he went off to his own locker at the other end of the room. Nar hastily dressed and went out to the street in confusion. As he walked he thought that, probably, everything that he had previously interpreted as friendly masculine admiration for his well-developed body was in fact far from friendly. He recalled how several times in the men’s shower, men had started talking with him, admiring his body with too bright a gleam in their eyes. Once a man had slapped him on the rump, but this was by way of a joke – “look,” he said, “even here you have muscles” – and Nar, who had been on the point of getting angry, had calmed down at once since the slap had been in jest.
Nar also remembered the wisecracks of friends on the subject of his walk. He had tried to create a manly gait for himself, but the wiseacres claimed that he wiggled in back, like a woman. Nar walked back and forth in front of a mirror, and what others called wiggling Nar saw as well-defined workings of the muscles of the buttocks. And now, as he walked along the street, he tried to picture himself from the side – not that he was thinking of changing the way he walked; he was merely trying to ascertain, by glancing at passersby, who among them might find his walk seductive. These thoughts struck him as indecent, but he comforted his embarrassed conscience by reminding it that he couldn’t be responsible for other people’s feelings, just because he happened to have such a handsome body.
Nar constantly returned in thought to the incident in the locker room, and was forced to admit that he had felt no revulsion, but only a sort of reflex terror. Furthermore, this aggressive admiration for his body, the like of which he never got from women, suited his taste. In female admiration he always sensed excessive tenderness and a latent cupidity which inevitably led to a desire to be admired by him in return. The female body excited him to the degree that it was adapted for meshing with his own. Lately he often caught himself thinking that the female body impressed him more and more as something alien. He compared it with his own body, and found his own decidedly more to his liking; so, when the picture of that man’s body rose suddenly and unexpectedly to his mind, it seemed somehow nearer to him, because it more closely resembled his own.
For a month now Nar had not gone out with women, since he was intensively preparing for an important championship. Nar was firmly convinced that sexual relations were detrimental to his physique. He measured with a tape his waist, chest, calves and neck, and gleefully confirmed that his measurements approximated the ideal, as laid down in his special tables. When he glimpsed his aggressive admirer while working out, Nar pointedly refused to notice him. The man in return merely smiled, but never approached or tried to start a conversation.
In the championship Nar took fourth place, which, generally speaking, was not bad, but it carried with it none of the applause and other rewards conferred on the first three prizewinners. So Nar was out of spirits; the most upsetting thing to him was that he had not been invited on stage when the winners were announced, and that he had received none of the flowers and kisses that were being handed out by pretty girls. Wrapped in these gloomy thoughts, Nar failed to notice when someone approached him. And only when he felt someone’s hand in his shoulder did he turn around sharply. Before him stood his man.
“What do you want?” Nar said rudely, and tensed his muscles.
“They were unfair to you,” said the man, with fervent inspiration. “I was there and saw everything. The first prize should have been yours. Nobody has a more beautiful body than you.”
Nar involuntarily felt a hot pleasure in these words, and out of habit cast a glance at his reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. “There’s no harm in just talking with him a little,” Nar said to himself. Aloud he said:
“I was sure myself that I would get first prize. I have ideal proportions.”
“That’s it, exactly, ideal,” the man took up eagerly.
“Listen, I’ve always wanted to photograph you. I’m a professional photographer, and I have a little studio at home. I think that you need to send photos of yourself to some magazines. Only through the press can you achieve true recognition.”
Nar’s heart began to beat faster than usual. “Recognition” – that was so precisely the right word. His ideal musculature deserved universal recognition. Nar imagined to himself how people would open a magazine, look at his enormous muscles and begin to burn with undying envy and irresistible delight.
“If you want, I’ll do some trial photographs,” Nar heard.
“When?” The word shot out of him.
“Now, if you like.”
It occurred to Nar that this was the first time in his life that he had experienced such persistent interest in himself, and the sensation was extremely pleasant. “Probably women feel like this when I come on to them,” he said to himself.
And although he knew that the offer to photograph his body was not wholly innocent, Nar tried to suppress this knowledge with the iron rod of logic, and told himself that if the fellow gave him any trouble he’d show him who was boss.
“Well, OK, but just for a little while,” Nar agreed, and again was reminded that women, when asked to go home with him, had frequently answered him thus. The man had not been lying – his apartment consisted of a heap of photographic equipment, in the middle of which sat a large sofa, the sole indication that this was someone’s residence. The photographer produced a bottle from somewhere, but Nar refused to drink. All the while the thought would not leave Nar that he was in the position of a woman, and he liked the attention he was getting, the flattery, the wooing.
The photographer unrolled a large screen, plugged in his bright lamps and told Nar to undress. Nar hurriedly removed his training outfit and remained clad only in his shorts. The photographer, who turned out to have long, deft fingers, looked appraisingly at Nar; and his fingers swallowed the camera and froze for a moment.
“Take off everything. Haven’t you ever heard of a ‘nude study’?”
“I’ve heard of it,” said Nar, and thought, “Oh well, why not?” – and removed his shorts.
Now for the first time he felt a keen embarrassment in the presence of the man, and his ears turned red.
“Come here,” said the photographer, and tenderness could be heard in his voice.
He positioned Nar in front of the screen – an irrefutable pretext for gently touching his body – and then dove under his black velvet hood, while his fingers remained on the camera’s surface to skim over its various parts. Nar struck several different poses, and the photographer clicked the shutter.
“Well, maybe that’s enough for today,” said the photographer, and the bright lights died.
Nar felt uncomfortable in the ensuing half-darkness, and started in the direction of his clothes. But the man turned up at his side and said in a pleading voice as he embraced Nar’s waist, “Allow me to touch your god-like body. Please, don’t go away. I’ll make a celebrity of you – everyone will dream of looking at you. You’ll be rich and famous, and I will guard and cherish your beauty.”
In his imagination Nar sketched the picture of his life of wealth and fame, and his body felt not the man’s hands, but each of his fingers individually. Nar realized that he would never forgive himself if he let such an opportunity slip, and he tried to go limp.
After an hour Nar, worried and disillusioned, was on his way home. He was worried about the pain the man had caused him; and this pain was not going away. Nar took a taxi, but even sitting down he felt pain. Fear seized him that irreparable harm had been done to his body, that body around whose beauty and health his entire life was built. Nar would have liked to go to a hospital, but shame held him back, and he decided to wait until morning.
And he was disillusioned by the man’s indifference to his body, which had become evident as soon as his desire was quenched. Nar felt cheated, since for a short time he had believed that he had found a human being who really appreciated the beauty of his body.
By morning the pain was almost gone. Nar firmly resolved never to see the photographer again. For three days, as a precaution, he refrained from exercising, waiting until the pain was completely gone. When he first went back to the gym, he saw him right away. They remained at different ends of the gym while working out, and he did not approach Nar, as if perhaps he felt guilty. In the locker room he materialized in front of Nar with a large roll of paper in his hands.
“This is for you,” he said, “your photograph, the size of a whole wall. It turned out fantastically. I have the other photographs at home; if you like, we’ll go look at them.”
Nar accepted the roll: “Thanks for the photo, but nothing of that sort will ever happen again,” he said, and it flashed across his mind that he had honestly earned this photograph.
The photographer didn’t try to insist but only followed Nar’s retreating walk with his eyes.
When he got home Nar spread the roll out flat on the floor. He placed books at the corners, so the photograph would not roll up again; and there before his gaze, staring him right in the face, an ideal body lay revealed. The play of chiaroscuro on the muscles was so skillfully done that they looked even bigger and more prominent than they really were. Nar lifted the photograph from the floor and pinned it to the wall. “I’ll have to make a handsome frame for it,” he thought, stepping back to the opposite wall and unable to tear his delighted gaze away. He studied every sector of his body in the photograph and found not the slightest flaw. He had been shot with a very serious expression on his face, which always appeared when he tensed the muscles of his arm or abdomen. Nar considered that this facial expression gave him a look of handsome nobility. In the photograph his arms were bent at the elbows and raised to the level of his shoulders – the classic pose of the body builder – and the only thing at all out of the ordinary was his nonregulation nudity. Letting his gaze rest on his genital organ, Nar suddenly realized that it was every bit as beautiful as the other parts of his body. As he thought about this he began to feel a growing lust for himself. His hands instinctively reached for his trousers and undid them. Then, not taking his eyes from the photograph, he brought himself to an ecstasy that staggered him with its power. What he had experienced with women could not be compared with this. And what thrilled him most of all was this delighted admiration which the photograph never ceased to evoke in him even after he had heaved a sigh of relief and release. In fact, this admiration seemed to be growing in strength. After a few minutes his desire revived anew – which also had never happened with him before – usually he required about an hour for this. Nar exulted, gazing at his enormous image; now he identified it with himself, now he saw in it a fabulous demigod. Only now he understood what is subsumed under the word “love.” Love filled his entire soul with an immense joyous lucidity, which was understood by his body as neverending passion. Devouring his image with his eyes and attempting again and again to splash out his rapture, Nar suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, and, without having time even to fear for his body, crashed to the floor.
When his body was discovered, and with it the unseemly cause of his death, it was decided that Nar should be buried as quickly as possible and without fanfare. Perhaps because of this decision, the sole mourners at his funeral, aside from the unfortunate parents, who flew in from their home town, were two official representatives of the college. On the day following the funeral, when his parents came to plant flowers on his grave, they found to their astonishment that a lone white long-stemmed flower was already blooming there.
1984
Translated from Russian by Amy Babich
Nothing In The Mail[4]
The postman arrived around three o’clock. But right after breakfast Sandy was already sitting in front of the window with a book and a bag of popcorn, waiting. The book lay on her knees on the chance that the programs on television might turn out to be boring, but usually the programs attracted her more than the book. It was hard, however, for her to concentrate completely: her fantasies of what might show up in today’s mail were too strong. Since childhood she had always felt that the mail would bring her important, glorious news. As a little girl, not able yet to read, she felt her heart stop at the rustling sound of the letters the postman dropped against the metallic wall of the mail slot. Sandy wondered why her mother was in no hurry to pick up the mail, and, why, when she had finally gathered it from the floor and placed the envelopes on the living room table, she waited to open it until she had finished her work in the kitchen. “Maybe the letters are about something amazing and exciting,” Sandy thought. Later she realized that it was by no means necessary to open an envelope to know that it contained a bill or unsolicited advertising. But even for the grown-up Sandy, the most detested bill hid within itself a certain mystery and specialness, because it had been sent by mail. Sandy opened envelopes with an ivory-handled knife on which she had spent a week’s pay, in the superstitious dream that so beautiful and so expensive a knife would attract, by magical means, favorable correspondence. It was like sacrificing to a god. She would painstakingly inspect envelope, stamp, postmark and date of postage, after which she would take out the bill and ascertain its source, the sum demanded, the service rendered, the term allowed for payment, and whether there was a fine for late payment. She would then put it in a file with the other bills she had accumulated.
Sandy had been out of work for a month now. She had quarreled with the manager of the pet shop where she was working, collected all her equipment and walked out, slamming the door. Sandy, a dog-grooming school alumna, had managed to contain herself when her supervisor, who had no specialized training, began making comments to her. Finally Sandy exploded when her supervisor started to show her how to clip the legs of a poodle.
“Clip it yourself! And don’t try to teach me! ” Sandy screamed in her face, and left the manager to finish clipping the astonished dog.
During her vacation the many dog bites on Sandy’s hands had healed, and her skin had rid itself of the minuscule tick-bites that caused pain and itching.
Sandy languished in her leisure. Her mother went to work each morning, complaining that Sandy would loaf around all day again. Sandy tried to hold her peace – after all, her mother did not demand money, for either room or board.
After a hearty breakfast, Sandy straightened the house, filling the small rooms with her huge body. “What will come in today’s mail?” she sweetly titillated herself. A month ago an offer had arrived for her from the distributors of various magazines. With a subscription came automatic participation in a sweepstakes. Sandy had signed up for Playgirl, and now awaited with excited shivers not only her first issue of the magazine, but also her possible winnings. She had planned how she would spend the money; first, she would buy a car and rent an apartment downtown. At present she had to ride an hour on the bus to reach the center of town. She often noticed how people looked sideways at her fat body. Her two girlfriends from school had married and borne children, and lived in small towns over two hundred miles away. It was uncomfortable for her to go for a walk by herself, and she went to the movies only rarely.
But Sandy’s large body produced large desires, for whose satisfaction life offered meager possibilities. She had eagerly lost her virginity at eighteen with an undiscriminating fifteenyear-old boy, and since that time fate had smiled on her a countable number of times, and these smiles had been momentary and far from charming.
One day the mail fell to the floor more heavily than usual. It was the long-awaited magazine. Sandy leapt up in delight, and the house shook under her weight. She spread open the glossy pages with sweaty fingers. Oh, what she would give for just a minute with one of these men!
Before curling up with them in the bedroom, she thrust her hand into the mail slot, to check whether a letter might be stuck there. Once there had actually been a letter there, and ever since then Sandy had kept a spark of hope alive by checking the slot several times a day.
She had sent off for a vibrator that struck her fancy in a magazine ad, and had begun awaiting the package with trembling hope, as if it were a date. In the meantime, she routinely beckoned pleasure with her finger.
One morning when she pulled on her jeans, Sandy was unable to fasten the zipper. The jeans had grown unbearably small. Sandy rejoiced that now she had an excuse to roam the shopping mall and buy new jeans. She loved getting out of the house; it distracted her from the tedium of waiting for the mail. And she loved returning home to find mail waiting for her.
But buying jeans did not work out – there were no sizes big enough and she would have to go to a special store where only large sizes were sold. This store was at the other end of town, so Sandy decided to go home – the mail should already be there on her return. Sandy recalled her sensations from several years back, when she had gone on a weeklong vacation trip. All the lonely time of the vacation was colored with the anticipation of collecting the week’s mail. “Six times more letters,” Sandy calculated, looking at an opened book without knowing what she was reading. What joy and hope to open one envelope and see a pile of others waiting for you – she had had the feeling that the world, with all its unpredictable, inexhaustible possibilities, had crept in through the mail slot.
At home, the vibrator awaited her in its package. She threw herself on it and began her honeymoon. Later, the vibrator’s cold, mechanical efficiency wearied her, and after that Sandy used its services with satisfaction, but without trembling. Only the photographs from Playgirl invested her sensations with any romantic coloring. Later, the melancholy of her isolation overcame her, and she wailed with loud sobs – crying quietly was impossible. Sandy thought that if she could cease to be fat her life would change significantly; she had a pretty face, and men would start to find her attractive. Sandy had accumulated an entire library of books on every conceivable diet, and had passionately adhered to each of them in turn for a week. Several times a day, Sandy clambered onto the scale and watched the indicator, which sped around the numbered dial almost all the way around to zero. But she never succeeded in taking off more than ten pounds, after which she would grow weary of dieting and throw herself with new zest into eating. Each diet resulted in her putting on even more weight. Once she had recourse to a special weight-loss clinic. They put her on a diet, and every day Sandy had to go to the clinic to weigh herself, with the condition that if she had not lost a specified quantity of weight, she must pay a fine. It turned out that every time she went she had to pay. Hence, after paying the fine several times, she decided to waste no more money.
More than anything Sandy disliked Sundays, because on this day there was no mail delivery. And then, too, her mother was home on Sundays; so Sandy would go out to the nearby shopping mall and gaze at the shop windows and at the men passing by. Through their tight-fitting jeans it was easy to discern their maleness, and Sandy was unable to tear her eyes away from the variety of men’s thighs. “What if I went up to someone,” she mused, “and said, ‘Come on, let’s spend the night together’ – or – ‘Hey, let’s go to bed together’ – or…” But Sandy knew that she would never have the nerve to do this.
Once she saw a commercial for a computer dating service. Sandy sent off a letter of inquiry, and in a few days received a questionnaire in the mail. This was truly a holiday for her; it opened a season of hope. Sandy read through the questionnaire several times and in the blank for “attitude towards sex” put a check by “very liberal.” She couldn’t remember what she had checked for the other questions. Sandy sent off the questionnaire with the required fee, and began receiving lists of men’s names, addresses, and telephone numbers in the mail. She felt awkward about making the phone calls, but this turned out to be unnecessary – the telephone started to ring every night, non-stop. Sandy’s mother watched her suspiciously as she carried the phone into her bedroom. When Sandy returned to the living room, high from her conversation, her mother asked:
“Who was that?”
“None of your business,” answered Sandy.
“It is my business. When you’re earning money and living on your own, then I won’t care.”
“Then don’t care now!”
“I can’t afford not to care – next you’ll be bringing some infection into the house. Who was that on the phone?”
“Someone I know.” Sandy gave in, not wanting to anger her mother, for she was aware of her own financial dependence. But she could offer no good explanation for her sudden abundance of acquaintances, and she was ashamed of her helplessness. So she pretended it was the same acquaintance on the phone every time. Still, there was more than enough material for suspicion. More than once Sandy looked at her mother with hatred, ashamed yet gratified by this emotion.
Most of the men who called asked how much she weighed and, once she told them, expressed no desire to meet. Then she stopped telling her weight, and merely said that she was voluptuous. By this means she succeeded in meeting three men, each of whom tried to end the date upon seeing her. Once, a fellow phoned her and, without asking much of anything, invited her to dinner. He said he would pick her up. Sandy arranged her thick black hair provocatively and put on a dress with sequins. She slathered several layers of makeup on her face. But no one showed up. Her mother’s snide question – for whose benefit was she all dolled up? – let loose Sandy’s tears without relieving her emotions. Sandy had studied herself, and knew that only orgasm had the power to relax any tension whatever, be it due to anger, sorrow, or anxiety. So she used the vibrator not only to dampen her lust, but also for emotional therapy. She locked herself in her bedroom, and the quivering of the vibrator stilled the quaking of her body.
The next time a new voice called to arrange a rendezvous, Sandy imagined in advance how it might turn out, and decided to meet her date in a bar. First, this would prevent her mother from witnessing yet another fiasco if the date failed to show up, and second, she would at least get to hear some music, after her date, on seeing Sandy, announced that he had an urgent obligation elsewhere. The man gave his name as Bill, and that he would be wearing a leather jacket. Sandy said that she had brown eyes and black hair, and that she would wear a pin that looked like an envelope on her blouse.
Sandy sat at a table in the bar for twenty minutes, observing three men, one of whom was wearing a black leather jacket. She sipped her cocktail and wondered whether this was Bill and whether he would approach her. The men were drinking beer and laughing loudly. Sandy noticed that they were looking at her. She was sure that they were making fun of her weight, and Sandy felt ashamed, as if she were naked. The attention that her heavy body attracted always gave Sandy the sensation of being stripped.
It crossed her mind that a beautiful woman, stared at by all and sundry, must feel as if she were naked. An ordinary woman would attract such strong attention only if she actually appeared naked in a public place. But ugliness and beauty cancel clothing. These thoughts diverted Sandy and she did not notice the three guys moving right in front of her. Under the laughter of the others, the one in the leather jacket said: “Hey, sweetheart, let’s lift some weights together.”
“Lift weights?” The trembling Sandy failed to understand. “Are you Bill?”
One second later, Sandy understood the joke and laughed tolerantly. Bill took a swig from his tankard, quenching his laughter with beer, and said: “And you’re Sandy.”
Sandy nodded.
“Want to ride with us in my car?” asked Bill.
“Sure,” said Sandy, astonished at his obvious interest.
Bill whispered something to his friends, and again they burst out laughing. Sandy smelled the rawhide aroma that emanated from Bill’s jacket. “Let’s go,” said Bill, and Sandy hurriedly tossed down her screwdriver.
When she stood up, Bill’s friends again howled with laughter, seeing Sandy’s hugeness in all its glory.
“Go by yourself,” Sandy heard one of the friends say to Bill, when they got to the car.
“And what about you?” asked Bill.
“We’ll wait for you here,” said the other friend. “Now, make sure you don’t lose your head,” he added, choking with laughter.
Sandy settled obediently into the worn-out car. “Whereabouts do you live?” asked Bill as they drove away from the bar. Sandy gave her address.
Bill was silent, and Sandy waited to see what would come next. But then, unable to restrain herself, she asked: “Where are we going?”
“Your place.”
“We can’t. I live with my mother,” said Sandy calmly.
“Shit, we can’t go my place either. Why dincha say so before?” said Bill in annoyance.
“You didn’t ask,” Sandy said, surprised, and timidly offered, “We could stop at a motel.”
“What, are you kidding? Maybe you’ve got the money?”
“No,” said Sandy, and regretted that she lacked those twenty dollars, for which adventure could have been had.
They approached Sandy’s house. “My mom’s asleep,” said Sandy, seeing the dark windows. Cars drove past, their headlights illuminating Bill’s tense face and Sandy’s painted lips.
“He doesn’t even try to kiss me,” she noted to herself, verifying the usual.
At that moment, Bill laid his hand on her shoulder and with the other hand unzipped the fly of his jeans. Sandy happily opened her mouth. “Better than nothing,” she thought, hungrily drinking in the smell she had begun to forget.
Finally Bill pushed away her head and zipped his fly up.
“Success,” said Bill and added, “Well, I gotta go now.”
Sandy got out of the car in silence and headed for the house. She heard Bill start the car without waiting for her to open the door; she heard a loud acceleration as he took off. As she entered the house she slipped her hand into the mail slot to check whether something had gotten stuck there from the mail she had collected earlier that day. But the slot was empty.
Once the mail brought her a catalog of classes offered at the community center. She noticed that bellydance classes were offered. Sandy thought that this would be a marvelous use for her voluminous stomach. The courses were not expensive and would begin in one month. Sandy signed up and began to dream of how her dancer’s art would give her the power to attract men. Before her eyes flashed stills from a film in which belly dancers drew delighted howls from male viewers. But the nearer the starting date for the course approached, the better Sandy realized that her reveries had left out a few details – for example, just where she would display her skill, just who would be watching, and whether her belly would not provoke disgust instead of carnal desire.
In the end, she was seized by her usual shame at exposing her body.
Therefore, Sandy resolved to spend the money she had laid aside for the course on something else, and she bought herself a red silk bathrobe. Since its folds barely covered her, Sandy cinched it with a belt, accenting the waist.
One day Sandy was sitting in her usual place at the window in wait for the postman. He materialized without warning, and as he mounted the steps to the door he stumbled and almost fell down. Thus the thought first entered Sandy’s head that the postman was a man, and not a mere device for distributing mail. He had a beard and a large bald spot, though he looked no older than forty. Some ads had arrived in the mail, and it occurred to Sandy that the only people who gave her a thought were those who wanted to sell her something. There was also an announcement from a girlfriend saying that she was pregnant again. Sandy imagined her swollen belly and immediately recalled the postman’s bald spot.
“What if I started talking with him?” Sandy began to fantasize. “No, I can’t – he just drops the letters in the slot and walks away fast. I wonder is he married or not? What if I asked him to come in? But no, he wouldn’t-he’s probably in a hurry to deliver all the letters, and get back as fast as he can to his wife and kids.” Sandy had not made out the facial features under his thick beard, and she tried to guess whether or not he was circumcised.
The next day she awaited the mail delivery with still greater excitement. Just before his expected arrival, Sandy painted her eyes and lips, went out into the yard, and sat down with an open book.
The postman drove up in his jeep and started fiddling around, sorting the mail. Finally he got out of his truck with a heavy sack and, without looking at Sandy, began to approach her door.
“Good afternoon! ” she called to him.
“Afternoon,” he muttered, and strode on to the house next door. Sandy had the feeling that she had gone out for a date but that no one had shown up. Suddenly a plan arose in her mind, as if she had been preparing it for a long time, keeping it hidden from herself until it was complete and ready for embodiment in life.
The next morning, Sandy went to the post office and sent herself a registered letter, consisting of a blank sheet of paper. She was told that the letter might be delivered the same day. On arriving home, Sandy made herself a generous early lunch; then she went into the bathroom and started putting herself in order, aware that makeup brightened her face. Afterwards she remembered that she had not brushed her teeth. She tried not to smudge her makeup, but nonetheless had to repaint her lips. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw not her face, but only her burning eyes. Then Sandy covered her nails with bright polish and, with difficulty, gave herself a pedicure – her stomach was a great hindrance. Then she got up, angry with herself for not doing the pedicure first, and at the same time telling herself that she probably wouldn’t need it anyway. Finally, she put her new red bathrobe over her nude body, and tied the belt firmly. She left the folds of the robe half open so her enormous cleavage would be clearly visible. Sandy sat down by the window and almost reached for the potato chips, but found in herself the strength to refrain, so as not to smudge her lipstick. Then yet another idea gleamed in her head, and again Sandy wondered where she could have got it – she began to play with her nipples, which stirred right away and became clearly outlined against the silk of the robe.
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