BACK
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
dawn corrigan
I’m writing to apologize for any embarrassment or
inconvenience I may have caused you when I refused to sleep
with you last Saturday night. I realize that my behavior earlier in
the evening may have suggested the night would turn out
otherwise; though, I would argue, only if one were being
inattentive to the nuances of the proceedings. However, I’ll
grant that the consumption of six rum and Cokes is more than
enough to render nuances elusive. And a shot of Jagermeister at
that point is simply coals to Newcastle.
I fear that my denial of your final request on the night in
question might seem to suggest I consider you an undesirable
companion. I assure you this is not the case. My decision was
not intended as commentary on the quality of your conversation,
on your appearance, or on your attractiveness overall. I’m sure
that, objectively speaking, you are most desirable as a mate.
The strange fact of the matter is, I’ve fallen into the habit of
desiring only those who are patently inappropriate for, or
unavailable to me. Currently, for example, I’m sporting a crush
on someone almost young enough to be my son; a person,
furthermore, regarding whom there are at least six other
reasons why he is completely unacceptable as a dating
candidate—that I am his aunt being only one among them,
though a definitive one.
Prior to him, I carried a torch for a man who belongs to a
religion whose dogma renders me—due to certain habits of
dress, consumption, speech, and thought—roughly in the Bride
of Satan category. The compatibility issues in that case are, I
trust, obvious. And before him, I spent several months madly in
love with a fictional character. They don’t get more inaccessible
than that.
You see then, why it was a foregone conclusion that I would
turn down your generous invitation of Saturday evening. The
mere fact of your extending it was enough to neutralize any
interest that, up until that point, I might have felt in pursuing it.
You’re probably thinking I’m simply one of the many people
who, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, refuses to belong to any club
that would have her as a member. If you considered it further,
you might assume my parents had been emotionally distant
when I was a child, and that therefore I don’t feel I deserve love.
However, I categorically deny that this is so. I am perhaps
the only person I know who is both a mama’s girl and a daddy’s
girl. I received an abundance of love as a child; love that
continues to pour forth from many quarters even now.
Besides, when I was younger, my habits were different: I
desired what I could have. Some, particularly those who knew
me in my earliest youth, will argue that my issue in those days
was more likely to be that I desired, and acquired, too much.
Reports of my promiscuity, however, are greatly exaggerated.
Though it’s true that I said yes to many propositions and
proposals (though never of the marrying sort) in those days, I
said no to a great many more. And sometimes my yes didn’t
mean what people thought it meant.
For example, to this day several of my cousins remain
convinced that once upon a time I had sex with a certain young
man. In fact, we shared only a single kiss. With that kiss, the
young man bought hours of my time, hours he chose to fill by
lamenting endlessly the loss of the girl he considered his one
true love.
As this story illustrates, my own desires have been
thwarted—or, let’s say, rerouted—on at least one occasion.
However, I’ve also had my share of suitors, pursuers, and
wooers of various persuasions.
For one, there was my best friend from high school. This
friend—let’s call her Kitty, for that was her name—was
everything I was not back then: tall, clear skinned, a
cheerleader, popular. I didn’t care much about these things,
except for the clear skin. It was Kitty who sought me out, rather
than the other way around. I like to think part of what drew her
was the conversation, which I have to imagine was better in my
world than the one she’d occupied up until then. However, the
main attraction was clearly my reputation—at that point, only
partially earned—for being a bad girl. Kitty had decided that she
wanted to be a bad girl, too. And I guess she figured the fastest
way to turn bad would be to learn from someone who’d already
acquired the skills.
At first I was simply too flattered to consider rejecting
Kitty's attentions. Though I hadn't felt I was missing anything
before she offered her friendship, once she sought me out, I
found it impossible not to accept her attentions.
Kitty loved rock music, especially the Rolling Stones. Her
hair was a long tangled horse’s mane. She had an older brother
who attended prep school in Philadelphia and brought handsome
friends home on the weekends. I could go on, but the details
may not sufficiently convey the overall effect, which was,
simply, that Kitty was all a teenaged girl should be.
Her company quickly grew to be a bit of an addiction. Things
were often at a fevered pitch. I longed, while I was with Kitty. I
longed when I was without her. When she began dating Bruce, a
young man whose greatest assets were a head of long permed
hair and membership in a Rush cover band, I cycled through all
the other band members, each one duller than the last, in an
effort to remain close to her. It was worth it, though, to put up
with dullards, in order to live in Kitty’s reflected glamour.
Then, after several months of this life, for the first time I felt
I had some glamour of my own to offer. It arrived in the form of
my most glamorous relation, Uncle Stephen. Uncle Stephen lived
in Manhattan, where he worked as an actor and director off-
Broadway. He was devilishly handsome. When we took a field
trip from our New Jersey high school into New York to visit the
Museum of Natural History, Uncle Stephen met us for lunch. Kitty
and I scandalized the other students by ignoring the exhibits
and spending the entire day ensconced in the museum cafeteria
with him. In retrospect, though, I stand by our decision. Uncle
Stephen was infinitely more interesting than the museum’s moth-
eaten replicas of Primitive Man.
After that trip Kitty demanded another audience with Uncle
Stephen at the earliest available opportunity. The chance arose
that summer when he invited my mother and me up to the
Hamptons to see the production of Noel Coward’s Private Lives
that he was directing. Naturally, once she got wind of it, Kitty
tagged along.
After the play Stephen took the three of us out for a drink at
the bar across the street, where the actor who played Elyot
joined us briefly. His name was Evan. He kissed our hands most
gallantly when Stephen introduced us, hastily downed a Scotch,
and then dashed off, no doubt headed for more sophisticated
company than two teenaged girls and a suburban mom. As per
the plan, my mother soon followed suit, returning to Manhattan
to stay with her in-laws and leaving Uncle Stephen at the mercy
of Kitty and me.
I suppose the intent must have been that we’d spend a day
or two basking in his sophisticated glow, and learn the proper
way, according to Hamptons’ etiquette, to lunch, sunbathe, and
drink. But those who had designed this plan—presumably my
mother and Uncle Stephen—had underestimated the power of
two teenaged bad-girls-in-training from New Jersey.
Kitty and I got trashed almost immediately. I’m quite sure
Uncle Stephen did too, though that wasn’t apparent to me at the
time. In fact, the sequence of the evening’s events is lost to me,
obliterated by alcohol. I can remember only a series of
disconnected images. One minute Mom was departing, and the
three of us were merrily ordering our second round; the next,
we’re in Stephen’s car, stopped at a red light, and Stephen is
shouting at Kitty, who, laughing uproariously, has just stuck her
tongue into his ear.
While Kitty made her move in the front seat, my thoughts in
the back seat had taken a melancholy turn. As Stephen tried to
explain to Kitty that his homosexuality meant he had no sexual
interest in her whatsoever—a fact that was much harder for her
to digest than the notion that Stephen liked to have sex with
men, since, up until that point, she had assumed her
attractiveness to be universal, an opinion our little community in
South Jersey did nothing to dispel—I was teaching myself the
same lesson by focusing on the actor, Evan. It had suddenly
occurred to me that if Evan were homosexual, it meant I would
never have the opportunity to have sex with him. Never!
Suddenly this truth seemed unbearable. I felt certain I’d
never met a man more charming, more sophisticated, more
desirable. I lamented not just for myself, but for all of
womankind. Woe was us, to be forever denied the pleasures of
Evan!
I was very drunk.
At a loss as to what to do with us, Stephen finally drove us
back to the Hamptons house. “Don’t do anything!” he warned,
planting us in the living room. Then he fled.
After he was gone Kitty and I wandered outside. By this
point she had joined me in the crying jag stage of the evening.
“You’re my best friend,” she sniffled.
“And you’re mine,” I agreed. There was some hugging. Then
suddenly there was some kissing.
However, after a moment, I pulled away and went aside.
Though I didn’t articulate the sentiment at the time, that was
when I realized I didn’t so much want Kitty as I wanted to be
her.
About a year later, back home in South Jersey, Perm Boy
was throwing a graduation kegger for himself in his spacious
backyard. As the best friend of his girlfriend, I was of course
invited. Though I generally didn’t enjoy large parties, I saw no
way to avoid this one, so girded my loins for the upcoming event.
Once it got going, though, I found myself enjoying the party
well enough. It was a beautiful, balmy night, perfect for roaming
about under the trees, a little tipsy, with a cup of cheap beer in
one’s hand. I had just revisited the keg and was making another
circuit around the yard when Kitty appeared beside me. Even in
my tipsy state I noticed there was something a little furtive
about her approach.
“So,” she said, “you know how I’ve been telling you about
Bruce’s thing?”
Bruce was Perm Boy. His thing was, of course, his penis.
“Uh, yeah?”
“Well, do you want to see it?”
Some backstory is in order here. Kitty had, naturally, been
telling me something of her sexual exploits with Perm Boy, who,
as it happened, had an uncircumcised penis. I had not yet come
across such a thing in my own encounters, and I found Kitty’s
descriptions baffling. Not so much of the object itself, as of the
manner in which it was deployed. According to Kitty, it took a
concerted effort on both her and Perm Boy’s part to get the U.O.
(Uncircumcised Object) to its destination. If Kitty made even the
slightest wrong move, Perm Boy would shout in agony, and the
mission would have to be temporarily aborted while he and the
U.O. regrouped.
This was puzzling. After all, Perm Boy’s object was in its
natural state, one that humans had used to procreate
successfully for millennia. If it were as delicate as Kitty
described, surely we would have died out long ago. Whereas in
fact, from an evolutionary point of view, we seem to be thriving.
Though I hadn’t voiced the meanest of my thoughts aloud to
Kitty—namely, that perhaps having a U.O. was some kind of
evolutionary intelligence test Perm Boy seemed to be failing—
nonetheless she knew I felt some curiosity about the subject.
Therefore, when she invited me to take a gander at the U.O., a
spirit of scientific inquiry quickly took hold of me. If I were to
see the object, perhaps some of Kitty’s descriptions would make
more sense. In addition, there was always the possibility that I
would one day encounter a U.O. in a personal situation. If I had
examined the U.O. of Perm Boy before then, I was less likely to
act startled when the time came, and perhaps exclaim something
off-putting, such as “What the hell is that?!”
Therefore I told Kitty, “Sure.”
She led me to the far side of the backyard, where Perm Boy
lounged against the fence. They grinned at each other, and I
believe he may have uttered “Hi” to me. Then, without further
ado Kitty undid his pants and took out the U.O.
As Kitty manipulated the object, I was able to observe it in
both its dormant and active states. I studied it closely for a few
moments, then said, “Thanks!” and stumbled off to the keg to
get another cup of beer.
About five years later, I was telling this story to a friend
when it suddenly occurred to me: Kitty and Perm Boy’s
intentions had not been purely scientific!
What can I say. Though I consider myself of above average
intelligence most of the time, I’ve been extremely slow on the
uptake at certain key moments of my life.
During college Kitty and I lost track of each other. I didn’t
see her again until our fifteen-year high school reunion, which
took place last month. In the intervening years I heard Kitty
married and had a few kids. Nonetheless, when I spotted her at
the reunion, she was as slim and elegant as ever, wearing a
black suit and pearls. Her hair was cut short. Her husband
wasn’t with her.
I arrived late and sat with the few people I still knew from
our graduating class. I was just settling in when Kitty moved
over from another table to join us. I knew she called herself
“Katherine” now, but I couldn’t think of her as anything but
Kitty. Therefore I felt a little shy about addressing her.
Kitty, however, had no such reservations. She asked me to
step outside with her while she smoked. Out back, she launched
into a barrage of questions. When she was finished cross-
examining me about my own life, she asked “And how’s your
Uncle Stephen?”
That was an interesting question. Uncle Stephen was in fact
dying of AIDS-related pneumonia even as we spoke. I’d left him
a few hours before to attend the reunion. At first, I wasn’t going
to go, as I was convinced I had to be there when he died, and I
was terrified he would die while I was away. Then I became
convinced he wouldn’t and jumped on a bus at the last minute.
All of this torrented out of me in a flood of words that
washed over Kitty as she slouched against the brick wall
smoking her cigarettes. When I finished, she crushed the last
cigarette out. Then she took my face between her hands and
kissed me.
Fifteen years before, I’d been too drunk to know much about
what was going on when Kitty kissed me. This time my senses
were clear. It was a very nice kiss. It lasted long enough to leave
me breathless.
When she finally released me, Kitty smirked and turned to
walk away. “Say hello to Uncle Stephen for me,” she said as she
departed. “Or I guess it’s probably goodbye.”
Indeed it was. Stephen died four days later.
And now, my Patient Addressee, I must once again ask your
forgiveness, for it probably seems like I’ve been tooting my own
horn, going on at such length about Kitty when this was
supposed to be about you. But somehow it all feels connected.
It’s all about the pressure so many of us feel to couple up, right?
But what’s that really all about?
After all, if you don’t want children, and don’t need someone
else supporting you, and aren’t uncomfortable attending parties
and eating out at restaurants alone, what’s a mate for? There’s
sex, of course, that great motivator. But have you seen the stats
on secondary abstinence? I’m not sure anyone is having sex
anymore, except maybe those who work in the porn industry.
They selflessly do it the rest of us don’t have to.
You and I are a case in point, aren’t we? No way, you’ll say,
not me. I don’t fall into this category. I was doing my darndest
last Saturday night to get laid. But I say the gentleman protests
too much. Turn your mind back to the scene. Consider the blonde
in the white hoodie, a perfectly attractive woman, ogled by
many. I watched you brush her off repeatedly, though I know
she wanted to go home with you—just as you wanted to go home
with me, and on and on, into infinity.
(c) 2008 by Dawn Corrigan