Bobby Likes A Lot of Things

A Short Sexual Interlude

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A/N Obviously, from the title, a bit of racier stuff in here. Gentle dispositions forewarned. xox - Z

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Fast-forward to graduation.

Bobby and I pose politely for my parents and older brothers, who ply us with bagels and creamcheese as I try to swallow my hangover. I put on the face of an innocent baby sister, wearing my mother's dress from the 1940s: a vintage number she'd picked up while she was in college at the same school, chocolate brown and knee-length with green and pink camels, very Lawrence of Arabia meets Marimekko. I win a Phi Beta Kappa award, but am too stupid to know what the club is, which should have disqualified me.

My family returns home, proud, in the dark. After graduation, I sleep with my Russian literature professor, who has already given me an A for the semester. It is not what I imagined. Less intellectual, more sweaty ponytail, mostly waiting for certain things to happen, things lost to nerves or old age. I give him a hickey and feel guilty for days.

I write, drink, and get scabies, not exactly in that order but almost. A friend from the indie movie theater where I work, Shannon, will go on to be an illustrator whose pop culture prints get bought by JJ Abrams. But that summer we're just fucking around, trying to figure out what makes us feel confident.

One hot summer night I'm dressed as a slutty pirate: an early-years Forever21 striped getup, too short as it always is, and caramel vintage knee-high boots. The soles are rubber, that dappled 60's flammable material that looks like fake vomit from a novelty store, but tonight I'm wearing them like fuck-me boots and hoping no one calls me out.

I get too drunk. Bobby doesn't drink beer, though he'll have a sip when we've dragged him out too late. On our way home on the bus, I insist this stop is my stop, yelling when he doesn't believe me. We get off 2 miles before my stop.  I walk in the middle of the street. Bobby holds my arm and tries to convince me that real adults don't get hit by buses. I am skeptical, but I lunge towards the sidewalk as a favor to him.

We get back to my place for a platonic sleepover, a regular Bobby tradition. Bobby has the hands of a handsome seasoned fisherman: smooth, masculine, perfect pink nail beds, and a way of grasping flesh that can only be described as instinctual. He explores each bend and curve of your body, talking about how wonderful skin feels and how its texture changes from the smooth back to dimpled butt to the scaly dry backs of your under-moisturized arms. His touch is both wildly erotic and entirely asexual. In the same two-minute span he will gently graze the space just above your natural hip while his beard tickles your neck, and then laugh at your prickly leg hair and saggy granny panties. It's transactional, but you keep forgetting who the customer is. He will tickle your back for hours; in exchange you have to stay up until 5 am listening to him talk about the history of racist cartoons, or watching bad Hallmark Christmas movies.

Tonight, I'm beyond my limit, but Bobby doesn't seem to mind. After hours of drunken cajoling and perfunctory peer-pressuring, he pity-lets me go down on him. He later says "it was a turning point" which is a nice way of saying, don't feel weird, I don't! And we never do again.

For years before I met Bobby, sex was a shameful thing. It was something you had to be very inebriated for: prior, during, possibly after. How else did one feel attractive and worthy of temporary attention masquerading as love? But spend enough nights with a man who truly loves women - all shapes and sizes, religions, ethnicities and dispositions - and that fear disintegrates. Bobby could wax rhapsodic on every permutation of the female body: one of his ex's had breasts like Yoshi eggs from Mario Cart, another had the body of a small-chested Boticelli raised on faux chicken patties, string cheese and luna bars. His greatest praise was reserved for the body types that could only be overly-sexualized by perverted outsider artists, a butt jutting out like a hula hoop from a smaller wasp waist.

For his final art show in senior year, I let Bobby draw me nude, along with the million other nameless girls who posed for him. I wish I could do it now, more confidently, but it was an honor even back then, like I was being entered into the pantheon of fucked-up Egon Schiele prostitute models, only we were the ones from a respectable predominantly Jewish university.

During our "modelling" sesssion, beneath his cold window, his scratchy navy sheets tangled at my feet, I challenged him. "I should draw you," I said. He laughed his deep belly laugh, struck a confident sailor's pose on his knees and let me try to recreate his foreskinned manhood.

He recently found the notebook with our drawings and praised me on my ability to capture something of its avuncular anteater likeness. I think he was just being kind. Bobby always ascribed to a certain Carnal Golden Rule. Maybe because he was handsome, or talented, or confident, or had sexed up fisherman hands, but you could tell back then Bobby had something. 

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He didn't have a passport. He'd never been out of the United States. But he painted skies like J.M.W. Turner, pinks and blues evoking both the heavens and man's mortality. 

Women have always loved artists but often they settle for the less attractive ones. Lee Miller, a svelte blonde beauty and Vogue model, bunked up with short, Sephardic Man Ray. 

Back then, Bobby's haircut lacked definition. His stomach paunched youthfully with the luxury of dining hall meals and late night studio pizza. He hadn't yet understood how to use facial hair to his benefit/ heard the siren call of a good beard. 

He was a find. My girlfriends didn't understand. Those late night moments were our secret, like something illicit but also desperately, protectively innocent. I wanted to see where he lived, where he came from. I wanted to know what his favorite pieces of music and art were. I wasn't heartbroken by knowing we would just be friends. I wanted a special place in his pantheon, and platonic friendship was the most direct route.