"Oh, yes. Why do you think I put out a magazine? So that girls I've been with will see it and twist." Alex's voice as he said this was calm, but underneath was a muffled agitation that made Jill think of the dentist wresting his wrist out of his sleeve. It made Jill want to hold Alex and stroke his head. "I wanted him to pierce my genitals with needles," she said dreamily. "It's funny. That's not something I usually fantasize about."
"Was he wearing his white coat while he pierced you?"
"No. He was just George." George with his glassy eyes, his cold lips, his jocular warmth held far away in a tiny place.
"That's the trouble with your fantasies," said Alex. "You haven't got the right clothes."
Meanwhile, someone made the argument that it would be awful if the "mainstream" ever came to truly accept whatever anybody might want to do sexually, because then sex wouldn't be shocking anymore.
"That won't ever happen," said Jill. "Sex is too complicated, it means too many things to people. It connects to the dirt within, and there's just too much dirt."
"You're wrong," said the television producer. "It's already happened, in San Francisco anyway."
Their words were such announcements, yet Jill could barely feel the life in them. She tried to fixate on the dentist, but he only came to her in faint, cold wisps of idea. The woman next to her was describing a transvestite bar to which they might go after dinner. She said that when loathsome suburban men came to her strip shows expecting to buy sex, she sent them to this place as a joke, archly informing them that "the ladies" there would be pleased "to negotiate." She was tall and full of disdain. Her long black hair was dull and fake, her eyes were made up huge and dark in her chalky face, her lips were full and dry; like a starved feral cat, she appeared both fierce and desperately unctuous, which was interesting with her disdainful affect. Jill thought she was beautiful and wanted to talk to her, but the woman's words were harsh and so full of puzzling judgments that Jill was afraid of her. She looked down at the woman's hands, which were delicate and looked strangely lost in their movements, the nails pathetically small and bitten. Jill put her own hand down on the table so that their wrists were touching. The woman let her wrist stay there, and Jill thought she could feel her through her skin. She did not feel harsh or disdainful; she felt like a tense animal, very fearful but also resourceful and curious, even rather innocent. Jill thought she could feel the woman sensing her back, as one animal sniffs another. But then she moved her hand.
Jill and Alex left at the same time. They stood on the street for some moments, chatting. He said that he had gone to a sex store to get toys in anticipation of his tryst with Cindy. He said he was going to tie her up, and he pulled a piece of black thong from his pocket, apparently thinking that Jill would want to see it. Jill thought that if she hugged him goodbye, it might generate feelings of warmth and friendship, but it only made her feel uncomfortable.
"I'm enjoying your discomfort," he said.
"I'm glad someone is," she answered.
They kissed each other goodbye. Alex got into a cab and sped away. Jill decided to walk a little. The evening was warm and mild. Traffic ran and darted according to plan. Homeless people strolled about, pushing shopping carts full of hoarded things. She imagined the dentist driving up and down the street, staring at the restaurant, trying to glimpse the dinner party inside. She imagined his eyes moving back and forth as he turned his head away from the window and then looked back again. She was distracted by the sound of someone muttering. It was a man crouching on the sidewalk in dirty, wadded blankets. He glared at her. "If it's a man, I'll castrate him and stuff his balls in his mouth," he said. "If it's a woman, I'll stick my fist up her cunt and fuck her dead." Jill understood how he felt, but she still walked a few feet up before she stepped off the curb to hail a cab.
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