Part Twenty Two

This part I can tell in the first person. Why should Preacher have all the fun?

Late in the semester I said that Kafka was the Lenny Bruce of his era, or vice-versa, and I preferred to live in the former world. And Ilona Volkov laughed, and knew exactly what I meant, and I was smitten.

Ilona was from Chicago. Her parents were Russian émigrés. She was yet another in the line of depressingly gifted people I met at St. John’s. Her thing was languages. To this day she is the only person I knew who actually became fluent in a foreign tongue based upon the instruction she received in an American public school – when she got to St. John’s she spoke English, Russian, German, and Hebrew. At St. John’s she learned ancient Greek and French with the rest of us, plus Latin. She picked up Italian and Arabic later. I understand she works as an interpreter at the UN.

My primary talents involved sarcastic comments and lighting one cigarette off the end of another. In retrospect, I should have anticipated a future as an unemployed alcoholic.

(In keeping with my usual habits, I didn’t go see Ilona for this. I can’t go see ex-girlfriends. When I go to see someone we sit down in a restaurant and they give me a business card and we chat. How can I take your business card when I can still remember the smell of your hair? I interviewed her by e-mail. She now works as a translator at the UN. No surprise there.)

Before Ilona and I started dating I believe I described her as a bosomy sausage, and Preacher had corrected me with the more charitable “zaftig.” Rubenesque would have been an overstatement. She had a waist. “Voluptuous” is what I’ll use.

She had crystalline blue eyes and dark hair that she usually wore in a ponytail and she had no aversion to wearing tight clothes. Our first date was to a Cecylia Barczyk concert (most assuredly Ilona’s idea) and we sat on a bench outside her dorm and we made each other laugh and she took my hand and said “OK, you can cop a feel.”

I did.

Our second date was at party off of Union Street and we sucked face and she made sure I kept my hands outside her clothing. Because she was the sort of girl you could say anything to, I told her I’d never been so torqued up in my life.

It’s the tits, isn’t it? she said, looking up at me with those steel blue eyes and smiling with the serene confidence of a hot woman holding a four aces.

That’s just part of it, I said.

Take me to the movies next week and maybe you can touch ‘em, she replied, and winked. She bit her lower lip a bit to keep the smile from eating her face.

What if I buy dinner?

“You can still feel me up, but I won’t eat as much of your popcorn while you do it,” she said.

She quite deftly kept me out of her pants. For awhile. It got to the point where I would suffer a debilitating priapism if she so much as touched my arm. I don’t know that I’ve ever been as hot for anyone in my life as I was for Ilona Volkov.

Every year the school sponsored a three-day weekend in New York, right before the end of the semester. It was a hundred bucks and you got a bus ride to and from Manhattan, and two nights sharing a passable hotel room with another Johnnie. Ilona and I signed up that year. Also her idea. I figured it had to be more fun than the cello concert. She insisted on paying my way. We actually quarreled over it, until at last she said “look, I’m planning on putting out while we’re there, and if I pay, it won’t make me a whore.”

I promptly withdrew my objections. Instead I spent the next week worrying that there would be some freak blizzard or bubonic plague epidemic or nuclear catastrophe that would keep us from going on the trip.

OK, now we get to the part about Preacher. The day after we signed up for the trip I came home from class and Preacher was in the kitchen making Kurbispastete. The room smelled like fresh-cooked pork chops.

By this point in the semester, it was rare to see him doing anything like that. Classes, a little reading, and then he’d disappear until late at night. He was one of those people who only needed about four hours’ sleep (I compensated for him by needing twelve) and so he’d be up running or rowing or doing whatever other sweaty pastime he’d set for himself long before I was out of bed.

What are you doing? I asked him. I mean it looks like pumpkin vivisection.

At the moment, I’m trying to make a pumpkin pie with ground pork. But if you had been here a minute ago you would have heard me pissing off your mother.

My mother called? And, gross.

Yeah. I told her you were off nailing your hot Jewish girlfriend.

That would piss her off. Seriously, pumpkin and pork?

No, she seemed relieved you weren’t gay. What pissed her off was when I told her I wasn’t coming home with you for Christmas.

I watched him pour bits of pumpkin into a pot of water and add vinegar.

That’s a joke too, right? I said after a pause.

The Kurbispastete, or telling your mother you weren’t gay?

Not coming home for Christmas.

No.

But the pie is, right?

No. But I was kidding about the other thing. In fact I assured your mother that you were still gay.

I sighed. You have come back with me, I said. Otherwise I have to talk to my asshole brother.

DJ had gotten a job selling mobile phones. He attacked it like it was a six-pack of Genesee Cream Ale. I guessed – correctly, I might add – that the only thing I was going to hear about from DJ were the wonders of the mobile phone industry.

Can’t, he said. He was rolling out dough.

I’ve yet to actually copulate with Ilona Volkov, I said to him. I’m telling you this because it is the only thing you don’t know about me.

He gave me a puzzled look.

So now you’re going to tell me what the fuck’s been wrong with you all semester, I said.

He sighed. There’s nothing wrong with me.

Bullshit. You’ve been disappearing for longer and longer periods. This is the first afternoon I’ve seen you in… weeks. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that you’re becoming more and more of a pill when you are around. What the hell is going on? You don’t… you, of all people, you, Mr. Popularity, you have no social life at all. When I have a better social life than you, something has gone terribly awry.

There will be a time, he said, a long time in the future, when I can tell you. And when I tell you you’ll understand why I can’t tell you now.

I lit a cigarette and told him the three leading theories about his disappearances

First, you’ve taken some horribly demeaning job to make ends meet, and are ashamed to tell anyone.

He furrowed his eyebrows deeply. What kind of job could that be? he asked. And don’t get ashes in my pie.

Yeah, I don’t like that theory either, I told him. You could be working as a crack whore and you would be telling us about the ennobling qualities of gainful employment. The second theory is that you’re having an affair with a married townie.

Her husband must work some insane hours, he pointed out.

Right, that’s just one of the holes in that theory – you’re gone days and nights. Plus, while I wouldn’t put it past you to sleep with a married woman, I certainly can’t see you getting serious about one.

But clearly those two theories cover the entire universe of possibilities, he said, smiling as he lined the dish with his pie dough. So which is it?

No, there’s my personal favorite: you’ve been recruited by the CIA, I told him.

That is a good one, he admitted, nodding.

Sure, I said. You’re doing your training now. Your cover stays intact as a mild-mannered if slightly priapic college student. When you graduate you become an exchange student somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, and nobody suspects a thing.

Behind the Iron Curtain? he laughed. You’re the one dating a Russian.

The beauty of that theory, I continued, ignoring him, is that it automatically dispenses with any explanation you might come up with. You could have photographs and affidavits showing that you were spending all this time building housing for the homeless of Eastport, and we could dismiss it as nothing more than an Agency attempt at keeping your identity hidden.

And the trip to France last summer, just a training mission. It all seems so obvious now, he said.

Of course. You told me yourself you didn’t go to any of the classes in Paris.

And that would explain the miniature camera in my toothbrush, he continued, nodding sagely.

And the truth serum you gave Mark to uncover who drank all your Seven-Up.

He had a date over, Preacher said. Otherwise I would have given him my special CIA Touch Of Death. He sprinkled bread crumbs into the pan.

I was cool with Mark having sex with other men. In our house. While I was there. So long as I didn’t think about it too much.

Seriously, I said. What’s the story.

I can’t say, he told me, looking as if he wished otherwise.

Come to New York with us, I said out of the blue.

Right now?

The school’s sponsoring another one of those three-day excursions to New York. Bus ride, couple nights in a cheap hotel, do all the tourist crap with the millions of other people who show up during the Christmas season… how about it?

He mulled.

C’mon, I said. You told me once that you’d never been to New York City. Man of the world, been everywhere, done everything, never been to New York. Ilona and I are going. You need to buy my mom something nice to soothe her hurt feelings. You need to buy me about three keys of heroin to survive four weeks with my brother. Let’s go to New York. Whatever the hell you’re doing, you deserve a weekend off. The CIA can give you a three-day pass. Tell you what, you can bug the East German consulate while you’re there.

How can I turn down an opportunity like that? he concluded.

He signed up.

And god damn it, I hate to admit it, but Kurbispastete isn’t bad.

Morning of the trip he dragged me, blinking and stumbling, to the gathering point and we all got on the bus. There were maybe thirty of us, including three non-students: the director of admissions and her husband, and our scary preceptorial tutor, Moira Callahan.

(Preacher had given his oral performance a few days earlier. A passage from Finn McCool. He was, as always, a hell of a storyteller. But Callahan was, in my opinion, even harder on him than on the rest of us. At the time I attributed it to his choice of an Irish story.)

We were surprised by her presence. But she said she wasn’t about to spend a year in America without seeing New York. Fair enough. And on the way up she was actually pretty nice. Talked with us and not at us. Laughed a lot. I remember that I was able to realize how beautiful she was, something that was usually obscured by how intimidating she was.

But Dr. Callahan’s presence created an obstacle to my primary objective for the weekend, which was a prolonged visit between Ilona’s wondrous thighs. Originally a friend of Ilona’s had signed up as her roommate for the trip. We figured we could persuade her to go do… something. At the last minute she canceled, which seemed even better; Ilona would have a room to herself.

But then Moira took the open spot, and now we were back to having to evict a roommate. Namely, Preacher, who would certainly go along with it (he owed me big time in that regard, after our freshman year), but my hopes had been raised about the possibility of a room to ourselves and…

And so I had a good rant during the bus ride about the patent unfairness of it all. Because there were two gay guys who could room together, but straight couples couldn’t.

Moira interrupted my rant halfway up the Jersey Turnpike. You knew this was the policy when you signed up, right?

Right.

You and your lady-love are both over the age of consent, right?

Yeah.

There was nothing stopping you from buying your own train tickets to New York and getting your own room, right?

Except that it costs three times as much, I said.

So really your problem isn’t with the rules. You agreed to them up front, and they’re the price of the subsidized trip. Your problem is just that you can’t afford to do this on your own.

Well…

Your problem is that there’s no school subsidy for shagging your girlfriend in New York, right? I mean that’s what you’re looking for.

Preacher – who had headphones on and who was not, I thought, listening to any of this, sort of came to my rescue.

You’re ruining a good rant with logic, he told her. I’ve learned to just let him go until he’s spent.

My mistake, she laughed.

Well, I’ll let it slide this time, I said. I think it was the first time I’d addressed her without stammering.

I didn’t know then what I know now. But even in retrospect I saw absolutely no indication of anything between her and Preacher.

So we get to New York and proceeded to have a good time. If you are ever in a strange city, I highly recommend going with Preacher Haywood. People talked to Preacher Haywood. He found out about things, after-hours clubs, out-of-the-way stores, things like that. He took a bunch of us to this jazz club and we saw some old man playing a guitar – Tiny Something – and Preacher went back and talked to him after the set and he sat down with us and told a story about someone named Charlie Christian.

It was probably impressive if you knew anything about jazz. I didn’t.

Preacher said to Moira, that’s storytelling. That’s oral history. She didn’t argue with him.

When we got back to the hotel Dr. Callahan said that she couldn’t stand to see two horny kids kept apart by fate, so she was going to book another room and I could spend the night with Ilona. She and Preacher and a girl named Dana and a guy named Alex weren’t as exhausted as the rest of us and went off to some after-hours dance club and Ilona and I went up to the room and…

Now here I find myself in a quandary.

Modesty forbids waxing rhapsodic about the incredible night. Yet I had to go on and on about Preacher Haywood’s unparalleled heights of sexual ecstasy under his Page-3-model-turned-sensei, Moira Callahan. Do I succumb to temptation?

I had feared, truth be told, that after a month or two of anticipation there was no way the real thing could be anything but a disappointment. My fears were unfounded. But still, I should be discrete…

If I wasn’t discrete I would mention, for example, that Ilona gave me the first real blowjob of my life. Is that indiscrete? To date I have not encountered any other woman who could use her teeth so skillfully in that enterprise. There’s something about the fear of imminent amputation combined with intense stimulation… let’s just say it didn’t take very long. (In retrospect, that was probably why she started that way. It meant we were able to proceed at a much more measured pace subsequently.)

But I’m too discrete to write about that.

If I wasn’t such a liberated post-feminist modern man I would be tempted to use all sorts of vegetable imagery, too. Lots of different kinds of melons come to mind. But we know that’s demeaning to women. But let me just say that there’s something about a woman with an actual bottom, an actual honest-to-god soft bottom… I am not one to fetishize any particular body parts, I am not a butt man or a boob man or a leg man, per se, but in the case of Ilona it is difficult not to fetishize ALL of her body parts. She was... succulent.

OK, to balance the whole (admittedly indiscrete) thing about her teeth, let me talk about the sensation of having those two round knees plunk down on either side of my head. About her fingers in my hair, pulling hard enough to make my eyes water. When she came she couldn’t help but squeeze with those big thick thighs and I didn’t know if I was going to die from skull fractures or asphyxiation or delight.

And all this was during the warm-up phases.

Fortunately, I’m not the type to mention the fact that we went at it six times that night. But I will say that by the time I fell asleep I had sworn to myself I would never again so much as glance at a skinny woman. I wanted hips, not ribs.

(Sarah, my ex, was built like a pixie. I am trying to figure out when and where I deviated from that well-intentioned Ilona-inspired oath.)

In the morning I woke up before Ilona – sore – and tiptoed across the hall to my room for a change of underwear. When I slipped in the door I saw two lumps under the sheets and wondered if it was someone we came with or someone he’d met in New York. Then Moira raised herself up on one elbow and blinked at me from under a tousled mass of red hair.

I crouched there next to my suitcase like a deer in the headlights, underpants in my hand and chin on the floor.

You can breathe, if you want, she said, using one pale smooth flawless arm to push the hair back. Preacher sat up next to her.

Welcome to the CIA, he said.

Moira took a shower. He told me… well, not everything, but enough. He left out the tutorial aspects of their relationship. I kept repeating something while he spoke. I think it was “holy shit,” but it might have been something different. But equally profound.

That’s why I couldn’t tell you, he said. But she surprised me herself with the trip. Didn’t say a word, just showed up on the bus yesterday morning. And she’s why I’m not coming home with you for Christmas. I promised her cowboys. We’re driving to Texas, maybe other places.

But you have to keep this under your hat, he concluded.

That reminded me of Ilona, still (I hoped) sleeping across the hall.

Of course, I said.

Moira came out wearing only a towel. I fled.

When I got back to the room the sound of the door closing woke Ilona, and she told me I was going to come scrub her back, and pulled the sheets down to reveal that magnificent front, and I managed a half-hearted leer even as I sat on the edge of the bed, still dumbfounded.

And she had a really sneaky way of getting it out of me.

She touched my arm and said, “What?”

And I told her: I went across the hall and found Moira and Preacher together.

She did a double-take. Must’ve been some party they found last night, she said, eyes wide.

Apparently they’ve been having an affair all year, I added, completing my betrayal of the secrets. What the hell, I’d kept it to myself for almost 45 seconds.

Ilona wasn’t as shocked as I was. She was shocked, don’t get me wrong; she gasped, she gaped, she laughed. But she said she thought she’d seen something between them last night.

She was imagining things. There hadn’t been anything to give it away.

I swore Ilona to secrecy, too. I didn’t tell anybody else, myself. Except Mark. I mean he was sharing a house with us. Ilona later admitted she told her roommate, who also happened to be in Callahan’s class. By the time we returned for the Spring semester, everyone knew.

When I interview Moira, years later, she said that sometime in February the Dean had called her in to discuss the matter. "All he really wanted," she said, "was for me to deny it, and be a little discrete. But I decided, the hell with that. We'd been discrete half the year. I wanted to be able to eat in restaurants. So instead I mentioned the names of a few of my male colleagues whom I knew had been with students. Indicated that having a double-standard for the female faculty would not look good. And reminded him that I would be gone at the end of the semester anyhow. We reached an understanding, then."