" hat should've been your first hint," said Pamela. "A twenty-some-year-old guy who's not interested in watching strippers but who wants to establish their lesbianism? He's either a pervert or he's pathologically frightened or he hates women. Or all three."
"I don't know," said Jill. "I thought it might be something else with him. I was pretty surprised when he said it, but I thought maybe he was trying to be a feminist or something."
When she finished her project, he brought her his printer.
"I must take you to dinner," she said. "You've been so incredibly kind."
He demurred, making the expected mutterings about the least he could do. "Besides," he said, "I like to help creative people."
They went to an Italian place in North Beach. They stared at their menus with ritual concentration. In the public setting, the dentist looked like a stranger, and that unnerved her; vainly she tried to revive the mysterious frisson that had arisen over the phone. He was wearing a loose-fitting turquoise sweater and faded corduroy pants, the casualness of which gave him a rumpled, little-boy sensuality that was pleasing but overly sweet for her tastes.
"How old were you when you did your thesis on lesbian strippers?" she asked.
"Twenty-two. Why?"
"It's very unusual for a man that age to be so uninterested in watching women take off their clothes and gyrate. Especially if you were interested in whether or not they were dykes."
"Have you ever been in one of those places, Jill? They're pathetic and-- "
"I used to work in one, actually." She paused so that he could say "Really?" but he just sat there and blinked. Maybe, she thought, he had read it in a magazine bio note. "I didn't think of it as pathetic, personally. Some of the women were worth seeing, I thought."
"It wasn't the women who were pathetic; it was the men." A certain professorial tone had crept into his voice. "Sitting there slavering over women who were really lesbians anyway."
"I'd just think...out of curiosity, if nothing else--"
"Look, during my second year of college I worked as an assistant cameraman for a low-grade porn company, and I wasn't interested in seeing any more naked women."
"Oh," she said. "Well. That's--"
"And I was disgusted by the way the women were treated. Really bad."
She pictured the young dentist standing in a nondescript basement holding camera equipment while all about him nondescript naked women assumed lewd poses. He was wearing the same beneficent, self-consciously goofy expression he'd worn when he'd first arrived at her home with his computer.
"But a strip show isn't necessarily the same as porn," she said. "At least not when I did it. It's more about watching someone's fantasy of themselves." She paused. "Unless of course you're gay."
"No, I'm not."
"Well, then--"
"Jill, I'm shy."
"he funny thing was, when he said the thing about not wanting to watch strippers? It made me feel slighted, almost demeaned." Jill was stationed on her bed in extended phone call position, bolstered by pillows, wrapped in a quilt, legs tensely curled into her chest. "When he said he wasn't interested in seeing any more naked women, it was almost like he'd slapped me," she said.
Joshua was silent for a moment. "That's a very unusual reaction," he said.
"I know it doesn't make sense," she said. "But I felt the same way when he talked about how terrible the porn people were. What he said seemed nice and even moral, but there was something...hostile in it."
"Are you sure?"
"No, of course not. But I can't shake the feeling. It's infuriating. He's trying to put himself in this superior position. Like, here's these strippers, doing their all, and he's sitting there going tut-tut. Unlike the gross, pathetic men who are interested, he's scrutinizing it with a purely scientific eye, in order to ascertain exactly how many lesbians there are per strip joint. And if he's so disgusted by porn, what was he doing there? He was feeling superior, the smug fuck."
"So I guess you don't like him anymore."
"He told me he didn't like strip shows because he's shy," she went on excitedly. "But I don't buy that. Strip shows exist for shy men."
"I don't know about that," said Joshua. "I'd be shy about going to a strip show. I mean, I could picture some huge, leering stripper putting her underpants over my face while brutish guys laugh."
"Oh, come on, Joshua. You know it wouldn't be that good."
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