Nude Men

video store, picking out a movie for Laura and me to watch that evening, cuddled up cozily in her bed. A middle-aged woman is standing next to me, also looking through the movie boxes. She pulls one off the shelf, turns to me, and asks, “Have you seen this movie?”
    The movie she’s holding in my face is Lolita. How unsubtle can one get? I almost burst out laughing.
    “I think I did, a few years ago,” I reply.
    “What did you think of it?”
    I try to come up with the best possible answer to this delicious question. I could tell her, “I think you should tell my mother to stop pestering me.”
    Or I could turn to her and say, “I thought it was the most romantic movie I’ve ever seen.” (Which, in case you’re interested, isn’t true; it actually left me quite indifferent.)
    Or I could tell her she’s ugly, that she has no sense of fashion, that one should not wear one’s collar up, the way she wears hers. I could tell her anything in the whole world. Because one can take liberties with fake strangers. One can be delirious, unrespectable, ridiculous. My answer must be outrageous.
    I puff out my chest and say, “It’s a monstrosity! It should be banned. I was so shocked I don’t think I ever recovered.”
    “I see,” she says. “I have a daughter—”
    “Eleven?”
    “Yes. She—”
    “Absolutely. Eleven-year-old daughters definitely have a tendency to sleep with dirty old twenty-nine-year-old men who constantly try to seduce them. I myself start drooling when I see one of those eleven-year-old nymphs. Exactly like the big bad wolf. I want to tweak their fannies.”
    “That’s not good. You should—”
    “Well, I’m not only interested in your daughter; I also find you very attractive. I love the way you wear your collar up. Raised collars excite me.” I slide my hand behind her neck and start stroking the back of her collar. “Would you like to come to my apartment? We could watch Lolita together. You could describe your daughter to me. Is she well developed? They should not be too developed, or it defeats the whole point, you see, and then one might as well settle for a big girl like yourself,” I say, looking at her chest.
    She blinks at me and says, “I was warned that you’d be a tough one. Tom was very upset. He’s a gentle and sensitive man, and he still talks about how obnoxious you were to him, when all he did was ask you for a light. And then you touched him on the shoulder. And now you’re touching my neck. You have a tendency to touch. You take liberties. We don’t like that. You should be kinder to strangers.”
     
    T he following day I call my mother, because I haven’t spoken to her in quite some time, ever since I changed my phone number. I want to try once more to convince her to stop sending me her insects.
    The first thing she says after I say hello is: “You are pestering my agents. I want you to stop pestering my agents. They cost a lot of money to hire, and you are ruining their work.”
    “But they are so charming, I can’t help myself.”
    “It’s not gonna work.”
    “What’s not?”
    “Telling me you’re enjoying it, telling my agents to tell me this. It’s not gonna make me stop.”
    “Good, because I really am enjoying it. Please don’t stop. If you stop, I’ll hire my own agents to come and talk to me in the street.”
    She hangs up.
     
    M y relationship with Laura continues to develop and deepen. I think she is as in love with me as I am with her. Not only is she so normal, within her strangeness, but she’s good-natured, natural, and cheerful. Very compassionate. She often gives money to beggars.
    About a month has passed since I “quit” my job, and I haven’t yet started looking for another one. I’m enjoying life so much right now that it seems a shame to change it in any way. My savings are not being depleted very quickly, since Laura insists on paying for things whenever we’re together, “Because I’m rich,” she says, “and you’re not, and I love you, so it’s only normal.” If my savings do run out, she says she’ll support me until I feel like going back to work.
    One day I tell her what happened at Disney World. She says she knows about it; Lady Henrietta told her. She says it does not change her feelings toward me, and that although she does not think it was a wonderful thing, I am not completely to blame, considering the circumstances, and Sara is obviously mature for her age. What Laura disapproves of is