Coward/Hero

(First Nude, 1974)

When she left the room, I put the wine glass down. Wine was a mystery to me. I'd read you drank it in small sips letting it play upon your tongue, and that different wines were best drunk with certain foods. It was too complicated, I thought. Besides, it was mid-afternoon. I went to my car and got my camera.

I heard the shower go off and could smell the sweetness of the soaps and shampoos that drifted with the steam. What am I doing, I thought yet again? But my throat and gut was tight with excitement. The intimacy of smelling the scents of her bath, of listening to the tinkle and the thuds of her. . . doing something. . . I tried to imagine.

"You alright?" she called out from her bedroom. "You need more wine?"

"No, I'm doing OK."

I sat playing with the lens on my camera. I loved looking through the viewfinder. Everything was transformed. The world was fragments, objects surrounded by unfocussed parts. That is not the way the world looked, of course, and it was just the oddness of it, the ability to select that excited me, the unreality of it.

She walked out in a short dress, her hair just damp.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I got my camera out of my car. I was just messing with it."

"You a photographer?"

"I just got this at Christmas," I said.

I put the viewfinder to my eye and framed her face. She smiled.

"You mind?" I asked her.

She didn't say anything but put her hands to her waist, cocked her hip, tilting her head to one side. I immediately got an erection.

"You're not drinking," she said draining her glass and pouring another. I reached for mine and took a sip. She refilled my glass though I'd barely touched it. She sat on the couch and I sat on the floor looking at her through the lens. As I took pictures, we talked about the class.

"Which of the films has been your favorite so far," I asked her.

"Oh, I don't know. That's hard. They're all so good. City Lights, maybe. I don't know. When Horwitz talks about the films, I just melt. I'm in love with him, I think. I've never heard anybody talk about anything the way he talks about Chaplin. You know?"

"Yea. I think I pissed him off, though, one day before class."

"How?"

"I asked him if the film he made was a real movie. He yelled, 'Right, you know, popcorn, box offices. . . .' He was irritated."

She laughed and poured more wine. From where I sat, I was looking up her dress, but she didn't seem to mind.

"Hey. You want me to take this off?" she asked pulling at the hem of her dress. Adrenaline shot through me like hot lead. I couldn't breathe at first, and then I gasped. But the question was rhetorical. She was already pulling it over her head.

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. That was all I could think. My heart, which had stopped for god knows how long, was now pounding so that I was afraid she might hear it. I was paralyzed. I was afraid I might embarrass myself.

I put the viewfinder to my eye and tried to keep the camera from hopping up and down with the shaking of my hands, but I was blind. I wasn't even sure if I had focused the lens. Snap. Snap.

I reached for my glass and took a big slug. So much for sipping. It was better that way, I thought.

"God, I don't know what to say. You're beautiful. I don't know, I just. . . I don't know."

"Are you shy?" she giggled. "You looked scared."

"No, I just, I don't know, I just. . . ."

She started making sexy poses and so I shut up and just took photographs. We didn't talk for a long time except for her asking me how this looked or if she should move this way or that. Sure, sure, I said. Maybe, I thought, she had done this before.

I finished the roll of film and reached for another. While I fiddled with the back of the camera, she came over to where I sat on the floor. She was pale and naked and smelled like fruit. And she was a little drunk. When I turned to look at her, she kissed me. There was no air, I knew that, no oxygen left in my body. I could feel the world begin to spin. I was dead certain I would pass out. The only girl I'd kissed since high school was Sherri. She was the only girl I'd seen without her clothes on, too. Now, in the middle of the afternoon I was drinking wine and photographing a naked girl who was obviously way more advanced in her social skills than I. Her lips were softer than Sherri's and tasted like strawberries. And I was filled with urges I'd never known. I could feel the transformation, I thought, feel myself fill with new hormones. It was like the sudden onrush of an instant development. In a microsecond, I'd chemically changed from one thing to another. I could feel a pimple forming on my chin.

"Come on," she said, getting to her feet. "Let's go into the bedroom."

I followed her. It wasn't a decision. It just happened.

She lay down upon the top blanket and looked at me. I sat on the edge of the bed and began to photograph her again. There wasn't enough light, I knew, just the dim bulb of single lamp beside the bed. As I looked at her, she began to rub me with her foot. And in a minute she said, "Put the camera down and come here."

I sat looking at her for a moment just breathing in and out, in and out. "I can't," I said. "I have a girlfriend."

It was that, of course, but it was something else, too, I knew. I was scared.

She just looked at me for a minute then said, "You're kidding, right?" I could feel the change in her. It was as if the projectionist had put on the wrong last reel, something that belonged in another movie.

"No, I'd better go."

She didn't say anything, didn't get up. I tried to feel myself a hero. I'd done this for Sherri, I told myself. Yes, I would go to heaven.

My mind went a million ways as I drove back to the little trailer on the edge of town. I couldn't call it thinking. It was something else, just a swirl of images and remembered words. I didn't feel much like a hero.

"You missed the game," Mike said. "It went into three overtimes."

"Really? Damn." I should have been here with Mike, I thought. I should have watched the game.

"What'd you do?"

"What? Oh, nothing. I had a glass of wine, that's all. We talked for awhile. Who won?"

Mike began to tell me about what I'd missed. It felt good to hear it. It was solid ground. Mike and I would make dinner in a little while. Maybe we'd play guitars for a bit. And then we'd go out. We might stand outside a bar and talk to people without ever going in. If the band was good, we might pay the cover and even buy a beer. Then we'd go out into the crisp, cold air and hunch our shoulders against the night as we walked through the streets under the clear sky and moonlight. And we'd know we were cool for being here. Yes sir, just for being here. It was nothing like home.