In One Person

Sutherland in what everyone said was her “signature role”; I knew how much Esmeralda loved
Lucia di Lammermoor
, which I put on softly.
    “It’s your big night, Billy—mine, too. I’ve never had vaginal sex, either. It doesn’t matter if I get pregnant. When an understudy
clutches
, that’s it—it’s over,” Esmeralda said; she’d brushed her teeth and washed her face, but she was still a little drunk, I think.
    “Don’t be crazy,” I told her. “It
does
matter if you get pregnant. You’ll have lots more opportunities, Esmeralda.”
    “Look—do you want to try it in my vagina, or don’t you?” Esmeralda asked me. “I want to try it in my vagina, Billy—I’m
asking
you, for Christ’s sake! I want to know what it’s like in my vagina!”
    “Oh.”
    Of course I used a condom; I would have put on two of the things, if she’d told me. (She was definitely still a little drunk—no question.)
    That’s how it happened. On the night our president died, I had vaginal sex for the first time—I really,
really
liked it. I think it was during Lucia’s mad scene when Esmeralda had her very loud orgasm; to be honest with you, I’ll never know if it was Joan Sutherland hitting that high E-flat, or if it was Esmeralda. My ears weren’t protected by her thighs this time; I still managed to hear the landlady’s dog bark, but my ears were ringing.
    “Holy
shit
!” I heard Esmeralda say. “That was
amazing
!”
    I was amazed (and relieved) myself; I’d not only really,
really
liked it—I had
loved
it! Was it as good as (or better than)
anal
sex? Well, it was
different
. To be diplomatic, I always say—when asked—that I love anal and vaginal sex “equally.” My earlier worries about vaginas had been unfounded.
    But, alas, I was a little slow in responding to Esmeralda’s “Holy
shit!
” and her “That was
amazing
!” I was thinking how much I’d loved it, but I didn’t say it.
    “Billy?” Esmeralda asked. “How was it for you? Did you like it?”
    You know, it’s not only writers who have this problem, but writers really,
really
have this problem; for us, a so-called train of thought, though unspoken, is unstoppable.
    I said: “Definitely not a ballroom.” On top of what a day poor Esmeralda had had, that was what I told her.
    “Not a
what
?” she said.
    “Oh, it’s just a
Vermont
expression!” I quickly said. “It’s meaningless, really. I’m not even sure what ‘not a ballroom’ means—it doesn’t translate very well.”
    “Why would you say something
negative
?” Esmeralda asked me. “‘Not an’
anything
is negative—‘not a ballroom’ sounds like a big disappointment, Billy.”
    “No, no—I’m
not
disappointed. I
loved
your vagina!” I cried. The disagreeable dog barked again; Lucia was repeating herself—she had gone back to the beginning, when she was still the trusting but easily unhinged young bride.
    “I’m ‘not a ballroom’—like I’m just a
gym
, or a
kitchen
, or something,” Esmeralda was saying. Then her tears came—tears for Kennedy, for her one chance to be a
starting
soprano, for her unappreciated vagina—lots of tears.
    You can’t take back something like “Definitely not a ballroom”; it’s simply not what you should ever say after your first vaginal sex. Of course, I also couldn’t take back what I’d said to Esmeralda about her politics—about her lack of commitment to becoming a soprano.
    We would live together through that Christmas and the first of the New Year, but the damage—the
distrust
—had begun. One night, I must have said something in my sleep. In the morning, Esmeralda asked me: “That rather good-looking older man in Zufall—you know, that terrible night . What did he mean about the writing course? Why did he call you ‘young fiction writer,’ Billy? Does he know you? Do you know him?”
    Ah, well—there was no easy answer to that. Then, another night—that January of ’64, after I got off work—I crossed the Kärntnerstrasse and turned down Dorotheergasse to the Kaffee Käfig. I knew perfectly well what the clientele was like late at night; it was all-male, all-gay.
    “Well, if it isn’t the fiction writer,” Larry might have said, or maybe he just asked, “It’s Bill, isn’t it?” (This would have been the night he told me that he’d decided to teach that writing course I had asked him about, but before my first couple of classes with him as my teacher.)
    That night in the Kaffee