“How many men have you slept with?” Gary asked while we strolled by a violinist, busking at the West 72nd St. entrance of Central Park.
My eyes shifted from the musician to Gary. Gary stared at me, anxious for a reply. I tensed the muscles in my cheeks and forced a smile to conceal my panic. Everything that is happening is totally normal, I wanted my face to say.
“What?” I replied, hoping he would forget the question. But he didn’t.
“How many men have you slept with?” He repeated. The tendons in his neck jumped at me as he strained his voice for emphasis.
What’s the correct answer to that question? I thought. “I’m not sure,” I said.
“No, you know,” he insisted. “How many have you slept with?” His pace quickened as we approached a group of teenagers who filled the pavement, causing a pedestrian jam. Gary stepped off the sidewalk to pass them. He hobbled on the grass to the right of the congestion, and as he met the group, the girl to his left turned to her friend, swinging her backpack into Gary’s path. I flinched. A near miss.
“HOW MANY?” Gary demanded as soon as the teen gossip about how Madison’s alleged thrift-store-flip Homecoming dress was actually purchased at Urban Outfitters faded into the muffled sounds of the city.
How many men had I slept with? Honestly, I didn’t know the answer to Gary’s question. More than fifteen, less than thirty. But I couldn’t tell him that I’d quit counting years ago to keep my Catholic guilt at bay. Gary sped up, as did my heart rate when I matched his stride. Why Gary walked so fast to go nowhere I’ll never know.
We sprinted through Strawberry Fields and dodged tourists throwing up peace signs. Gary’s shoe kicked a yellow flower displayed on John Lennon’s Memorial. I knelt down to push it back in place, but in my haste, I displaced even more flowers. When I looked up, I saw Gary had taken the lead by at least twenty feet. Oh well, the Beatles are overrated anyway, I joked to myself and ran to catch up. As soon as I did...
“I SAID, HOW MANY?” Gary demanded.
His eyes bulged. I needed to answer before Gary gave himself a stroke. I had to give him a number that wasn’t too high, so he wouldn’t think I was a slut, but wasn’t too low, so he knew I was cool. I really wanted him to like me.
“Four,” I said.
“Four?!” He asked.
I doubled down. ““Yes, four.”
“Huh.” Gary stopped walking and faced me, expressionless, like a post-mortem portrait of a Victorian-era child. “I’ve slept with 89 and a half,” he said. He beamed when he said half.
I paused before asking, “What?”
“Eighty-nine and a half,” His chest puffed out like a bird seeking a mate. The brag brought his corpse back to life.
“Really?” My question sounded more like a statement.
“Yes, really! Eighty-nine and a half F-E…” Gary’s mind emptied. He pointed his finger and drew the letters in the air. F - E - F -E. His hand floated down to his side in defeat. “What’s the word?”
“Females,” I said.
“Yes, eighty-nine and a half fema--”
“Excuse me,” a British man interrupted. “I’m trying to take a picture of my kids.”
Gary and I had stopped between a father and his family. Two young children posed by the lake. Their arms wrapped around each other in a patient hug. They waited for their dad to count to three while Gary and I talked about his promiscuous past.
“Oh, yes, sorry. We’re sorry,” I apologized. “Let’s keep going, Gary.”
Gary walked ahead, but it wasn’t because I’d asked. Gary didn’t do anything unless he wanted to do it.
We beelined towards the Cherry Hill fountain. The park was especially crowded, Black Friday at a suburban mall crowded. I pushed through the park goers like an offensive lineman, protecting Gary, my quarterback. No one would touch him. Not on my watch.
A large group of tourists stood by the fountain singing “I’ll Be There for You” from F*R*I*E*N*D*S despite the fact that the F*R*I*E*N*D*S fountain is actually in California. I thought everyone knew that.
Gary sat on an empty bench with a view of the lake. He spread his knees wide to claim the entire bench. I sat on the adjoining bench, occupying as little space as possible. We sat in the scant silence New York can offer and watched. I saw an elderly man, donning a flat cap and cane, circling the fountain, looking for a place to rest. Gary must have noticed the old man too because he stretched his legs even wider to claim his ground. The old man passed Gary and approached me.
The man let out an audible exhale as he sat, the universal sound of stiff joints and the exhaustion that can only come from 80+ years of living.
But the moment the man’s rear hit the bench…“MOVE,” Gary ordered.
“It’s ok,” I said to Gary. “I don’t mind him sitting next to me.” I turned to the man on my right to apologize, but he had already grunted his way back up and was off to find a more welcoming spot to sit. “Gary, I don’t mind if people sit next to me.”
Gary slid his phone out of the front pocket of his button-up shirt, began playing a game, and ignored me.
I closed my eyes and accepted his cold shoulder. I pulled my hoodie over my head and let the late afternoon sun warm my arms. I’d spent the day like Goldie Locks, too hot, then too cold, pulling my sweatshirt on and off. My curly hair had frizzed into a halo of knots. I looked at Gary in his khakis and loafers and long-sleeved button-up shirt. Gary’s hair parted on the left, smoothed with gel and a comb. He looked like a man who had his life together in contrast to me.
The horse carriages rolled into the cul de sac and stopped in front of the fountain for the tourists to hop off for a moment and capture pictures of themselves jumping. When I was a kid, my mom and I watched the movie Home Alone 2. There was a scene where the main character, a kid named Kevin McAllister, jumped into a horse-drawn carriage in New York City to hide. I remember how magical it looked, even despite the fact that in the movie, Kevin was being hunted down by two grown men.
“I’ve always wanted to go on one of those carriage rides in New York,” I remember my mom saying. And ever since then, so did I.
But now it seemed cruel to me to have horses in New York City. Where do they keep them? And why are the horses dressed up like 19th-century French generals with ridiculous feathers on their heads? The horses deserve--
“You’ve slept with four men,” Gary piped up again, halting my internal, horse-girl rant. “And I’ve slept with 89 and a half F - E…” Gary nodded, granting me permission to complete his sentence.
“Females,” I said.
“Females,” he agreed. “Eight, nine, eighty-nine, and a half females.”
“Ok,” I fill the space between his thoughts.
“It’s 89 and a half and not 90 because one female, we just spent 14 hours together in P-A-R-I-S.”
“Oh, I see.” I’m desperate to go back to thinking about horses.
“So, I didn’t put my penis in her vagina.”
“I understand.” Are the horses happy?
“But we did everything else.”
“That’s good.” They deserve a nice farm.
“I put my penis in her ass.”
. . .
I never thought I’d end up with a man like Gary. I’d envisioned a different person when my friend told me about a job opening at Golden Years as a companion to the elderly. I thought I’d be matched with a former Broadway producer who’d regale me with stories of opening nights of Fiddler on the Roof, Hello, Dolly!, and Chicago. Who’d tell me first-hand accounts about how Bob Fosse was an asshole. Or I imagined myself paired with an old Polish woman who would fatten me up with pierogi and Hunter’s Stew. Who would tell me stories about Poland that my grandparents never got to tell me because they passed away before I was old enough to ask. In my head, my elderly person would be an accordion player who was now too weak to play or a book lover whose eyes could no longer make out the words, and I’d learn to play or I’d read out loud, and they’d adopt me as their granddaughter because they had no family left. And they’d leave me their fortunes when they passed with a note that said, “Thank you for being my trusted friend in my final days.”
But Gary was not that person. In fact, he wasn’t even elderly. Gary had no wrinkles except for two lines between his eyes. His hair was full and still mostly black. He was just 58 years old.
. . .
“Oh?” I said to Gary because what else was there to say?
“Yes, I put it in her ass one time, but not in her vagina, so she is only a half.”
“Ok,” I said, horses, horses, horses.
“Do you have a husband?” Gary asked.
I relaxed into the bench, relieved that we were moving on from talking about ass-play. When strangers saw Gary and me together, they assumed he was my dad. When they heard Gary and me chatting about butt-stuff, they assumed he was my daddy.
“No,” I replied.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
I did have a boyfriend, but I was planning to break up with him so… “No,” I told Gary.
“Do you sleep with men or women or both?”
“Men,” I said.
“So, if you don’t have a boyfriend, who do you sleep with?”
That’s a good question, I thought. My boyfriend and I hadn’t had sex for six months. Don’t get me wrong; I’d tried. Oh boy, had I tried. Weekend getaways. Lingerie. Romantic dinners. Spontaneous blowjobs. Each rejection hurt more than the last. Something about a soft penis in the mouth really takes a toll on one’s self-esteem.
Are my lips too thin? Are my teeth too big? Is my hand too cold? Are my breasts too small? Have I gained weight? Is it my personality? My lips are thin. My teeth are big. My hands are always cold. My breasts are small. I have gained weight. So, I know it can’t be my personality. I have a great personality. ...Oh, God, it’s my personality.
“I sleep with no one,” I said, now wanting to go back to talking about butt-stuff.
“No one?!” Gary couldn’t believe it.
“Right. No one,” I confirmed.
“Seriously? No one?!” He said again.
“Seriously. No one,” I widened my eyes to make more room for the tears beginning to form.
“He’s probably asexual,” my roommate and best friend, Adoara, had consoled me one night after the many nights Michael had said he wanted to spend alone.
“Or addicted to porn,” said Caroline, my other roommate.
“So, you don’t sleep with anyone?!” Gary continued.
I pretended to yawn as an excuse to wipe the tears away from my eyes. “This conversation is starting to hurt my feelings.”
“What are feelings?” Gary asked.
Not only had Frontotemporal Dementia robbed Gary of his empathy, but it had also stolen the words needed to describe the experience.
“F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S,” I spelled.
“F-E…females?”
“No F-E...feelings”
Gary wrote in the air, waving his fingers like a conductor orchestrating the words from his shrinking brain. “F-E…” he tried again
“E-L-I-N-G-S.”
We spelled “feelings” so many times that the word lost its meaning, even to me, and Gary gave up.
“I don’t know what that is.” His gaze dropped to his feet. A hotdog wrapper littered the ground below him. He punted it. “I lose the words,” he admitted.
“I know,” I empathized. “Are you hungry?” I asked.
“I could eat,” said Gary.