23   1 Nov. 91   Last night I saw George Kenner at Tina’s Halloween party, five years to the day since the one where he first approached me. I was there with Bob, and so I felt safe. I had already sent George a thank-you note for the book, and this time I thanked him in person. He assured me that the doctor-author remembers me quite fondly from the two vacations that I spent on the islands. A captivating woman, he called me. I enjoyed hearing that. Yes, my journal, I am vain, and I know it. But I don’t like the word vain, it sounds like empty. (I remind myself of the princess Catherine in Henry V, when she did not like the word foot.) Why isn’t there in English vanitous, like vaniteuse in French? I will bring it up the next time I see one of my anglo friends, perhaps Jodi next week. But what was more interesting was that today G is going to New York for a medical conference and is taking Amy with him, so that she can be with Daniel. The girl is almost eighteen and still a virgin, and she wants Daniel to be her first, has been fantasizing about it for 3 years. And Daniel, according to G, is expecting her I spoke with Daniel a few days ago, and he said nothing about it (though he did tell me that he is no longer dating Cici). That doesn’t surprise me. It isn’t the kind of thing that he would tell me about. But he said something about spending this weekend with his friend Roger at his parents’ country house, as he did a month ago. Something seems fishy. Could Amy still be fantasizing? Did she misinterpret something D said to her? She is a very strange girl, after all. But I will stay out of it. Let them work it out. Betty has become quite the college girl. She likes her cégep but she missed English, so she asked for, and received, exceptional permission to take a literature class at Vanier and get credit for it at the cégep de Saint-Laurent. Paul, who is even more lawyerish than his father, helped her write the petition. She also has her own telephone. It makes life easier for both of us. Now when my phone rings I can take it either in my study or in my bedroom and have all the privacy I need. And I do need it: I am still keeping Bob private. How much longer? Time will tell. And, speaking of time, it is also the beginning of my 6th year with you, my journal. For me, that is quite a long relationship. Longer than any that I have had with a man. Perhaps it’s because we don’t meet to often. Let me see: this is my 23rd entry, so on the average I have opened you only 4½ times a year. But 87 and 89 were not good years between you and me. If we don’t count them then I have confided with you fairly constantly every 1 to 2 months. Perhaps that’s the key. Infrequency helps constancy. L’infréquence aide la constance. But wait – is there a word infréquence in French? It doesn’t sound right. And it isn’t in Larousse. How about this: la fréquence est l’ennemie de la constance. If Voltaire didn’t write it, he might have, and I will pretend that he did. From now on I will quote that saying and say “as Voltaire said…” We will see if anyone will catch me. It is certainly valid for me. I have been best friends with Tina, despite our differences, for more than 20 years, but we get together only every month or two. Same with the Bermans (except when I see Greg to talk business), with Mark and Julie (except when I see them at work), Jodi, Françoise, David L, Ryan B et al. And men? I was true to Miki for the 3 years (not quite) that I had him, and I am sure that I would have remained so, as long as we saw each other every few months. (Greg once told me, just after Miki left for the last time, that he saw us living together at some time in the future. Perhaps Miki had spoken to him about the eventuality. I smiled and said nothing.) With Jean-Marc, on the other hand, it was too frequent and it didn’t last. I mean, it lasted less than a year, contrary to the 2-3 years that my other relationships lasted. Which brings me to Bob. We see each other almost every week, and it’s going on a year and a half. I enjoy almost every minute with him, and yet I feel something like the ticking of a clock that is winding down. And that clock is inside me. Nothing to do with whether he will meet a younger woman. It’s me, my journal. C’est moi. Mireille, l’inconstante. Bonne nuit, mon journal.     Cusp and hyphen   It was quite late in the evening when he got home. He noticed his answering machine flashing with five messages, but he was sleepy and decided to postpone listening to them until the morning. The first message, time-stamped Friday evening, was from Amy. “Hi Daniel, we’re in New York. Call me here at the hotel.” And she left him the number. What?! Amy wasn’t due in New York for another three weeks! He went back to retrieve the card while he listened to the other messages. They were all from Amy, two on Saturday and two on Sunday, with their tone turning from surprise to disappointment to dismay to resignation. He looked at the note, and he realized that the cusp of the numeral 3 had a leftward extension of a millimeter or so. It was a hyphen! A hyphen that had merged with the numeral, and so led him to misread 2-3 as 23! He needed to get in touch with Amy immediately. He didn’t have her phone number, but he was sure that Betty did, and so he telephoned his sister – who had her own line by this time – and left her a message asking him to call him back as soon as possible with Amy Kenner’s phone number. He felt stupid, though the mistake had obviously been due to Amy’s careless penmanship. No matter: he should have confirmed the date with her. He was the older of the two, technically an adult while she was still a minor (though above the age of consent even in New York), and he had accepted the responsibility of initiating her into womanhood. That Monday he found it difficult to pay attention in his classes. He knew that he would not sleep well if he did not rectify the mistake by evening.   When he got home he found, to his relief, that Betty had called him back and left the number he needed. The message did not specify if it was Amy’s own number or her father’s. But at that time, late afternoon, he guessed, Amy would probably be home while George Kenner was still at the hospital. His guess seemed right. The voice that said Hello sounded as he remembered Amy’s. “Amy! It’s Daniel. I’m so sorry…” he began, in one breath. “This is not Amy,” the voice interrupted him. “It’s her mother.” “I’m so sorry,” he said again. So Amy, it seemed, traveled with her father but lived with her mother, except perhaps weekends. “Amy!” he now heard the mother’s voice exclaiming, behind a partially muffled phone. “It’s Daniel, for you.” There was a long silence before he finally heard a voice that could only be Amy’s ask, calmly, “What happened?” “I was away for the weekend.” “But I thought…” “Yes, but I had misread your card. Instead of November two to three I read it as November twenty-three. I missed the hyphen – it had merged with the three.” Amy suddenly laughed. “Me and my sloppy writing! So that’s what it was!” “I hope your time wasn’t wasted.” “No, I ended up having a good time. I met some people my age and a little older, and we hung out and went places. I love New York!” “I’m glad.” “But listen. If you already set aside the weekend of the twenty-third to be with me then I’ll come out and see you, on my own.” “Are you sure you can do that?” “I’m seventeen and three quarters, and” – she now lowered her voice – “I’m tired of being a virgin. I can fly out Friday evening and go back Sunday evening.” “But if that’s the case, there’s no need to wait till three weeks. How about next weekend?” “Are you free?” “I’ve got a soccer game on Sunday, but you can come and watch.” He had thought of attending a Saturday matinee of The Magic Flute, with Pamina sung by the same Korean soprano that he had heard in La Bohème, but it was something he could forgo. Or perhaps Amy might want to join him. “Cool! I love soccer.” He thought of asking her if she also liked opera, but decided to hold off. “So,” he asked, “are you going to try to come?” “You bet,” she said. “I’m going to call Air Canada right away, and I’ll call you back as soon as I know.” She did not call him back that evening or the following morning. When he got home from the morning classes there was a message from her. “Daniel, it’s Amy. My mom doesn’t think I’m old enough to travel by myself, at least outside Canada. I guess I’ll have to be a virgin a little bit longer. You’re coming to Montreal for Christmas, aren’t you? See ya!” Why, Daniel wondered, did Amy have to refer to her virginity so much? Doth the lady, perhaps, protest too much? Was it meant to make her more desirable to him? In anticipating his encounter with Amy, Daniel had been reflecting on the fact that, despite the extensive experience he had acquired in the three years since his own initiation, among the two dozen or so female bodies that he had experienced only one, Roxane Vanier’s, had been virginal, and that only in the most strictly technical sense. Gen had given him pointers on how to deal with a virgin, but he had had no chance to put them to use and didn’t remember them too well, except that the recommended position for the first penetration was one where he would be seated on an armless chair and the girl would straddle him, letting herself be entered at a pace of her choosing. He remembered that position because it was one that Cici liked, and it was one they used during breakup sex. He had now been continent for over two months, and for the last few weeks it had been increasingly uncomfortable. Perhaps longer – perhaps since first meeting Monica Lehmann, over a month ago now. He was beginning to regret ignoring Cici’s implied invitation. He thought about Cici as he walked back from his afternoon class, and when he saw yet another message light blinking on his answering machine he had the premonition that it might be from her. It was. “Daniel, it’s Cici. Please call me as soon as possible.” Her voice sounded urgent, and he called her immediately. “Hi,” he said in response to her Hello. “Daniel, thanks for calling.” She took a deep breath. “You know, the last time we were together, I wasn’t as careful as I should’ve been.” He waited for her to go on. “I’m going in for an abortion this Thursday morning. I’d like you to come to the clinic with me.” He had no classes Thursday morning. “Okay,” he said. “And I’d like to spend the night before at your place. Is that okay too?” “Sure.” “I should also tell you this: it’s probably yours, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. But it doesn’t matter.” He remembered her saying that it didn’t matter when he asked her if there was someone else. “I guess not,” he said. “Thanks for being a good friend. I knew I could count on you. See you Wednesday evening!” “See you!” he said just before Cici hung up. He had been so dazed by the call that he did not begin thinking about its ramifications until it was over. Not as careful as she should have been? Cici used the pill. Had she skipped some doses during the time before returning to New York? Did Hurricane Bob have anything to do with it? Not one hundred percent sure? Obviously, then, there had been someone else, probably in Florida just before her return. Spending the night at his place? Did that mean in his bed? With him? Sex would be safe, since she was already pregnant. He had never done it with a pregnant woman, as far as he knew. He had heard from his mother that a woman’s libido, typically, drops in early pregnancy before picking up in the middle trimester. Would Cici be showing? It would be almost two and a half months. Why, he wondered, had she waited so long? Perhaps she wasn’t really so far gone, and the father was not Daniel, or Hurricane Bob, but someone she slept with a month later, around the time that he implicitly spurned her. No matter. He would be the good friend that she thought of him as being.   The news that week was mainly about the Madrid Peace Conference. Daniel thought of calling Ora Rozen to ask her about her feelings on the matter, as an Israeli, but decided against it. His relationship with his former teaching assistant was too tangled to be reinitiated on any level except that of DNA analysis. He wondered when he would hear from Will Prosper about the prospect of identifying his father’s presumed bones. Michael Wilner would, Daniel was sure, have covered the conference and written about it. There was talk about a possible continuation of the peace process that had begun in Madrid. Perhaps he, Daniel Wilner, would cover it once he was a full-fledged journalist.   When Cici showed up at his doorstep Daniel could see, even with her overcoat on her, that the roundness of her belly – which had always enchanted him – was enhanced to a degree that allowed no doubt that she was a good two months pregnant. She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and, making no move to doff her coat – it was a chilly November evening – she said, “I’m starving. Let me take you out to dinner.” On the way out of the building, as they were walked toward the Cuban-Chinese restaurant where they had become acquainted, she said, “I owe you an explanation.” “Of what?” “For involving you in this business. As I said, it’s probably yours, but it might be someone I saw in Miami just before I got back.” “He wouldn’t be a football player named Bob, would he?” “What?” “When you mentioned Hurricane Bob, I thought of the Miami Hurricanes…” Cici laughed heartily. “The only thing he plays is cards. And piano. But his name is Roberto. This is really funny.” She laughed again. “But seriously, the reason I’m asking you to come with me is that there’ve been cases where a boyfriend or husband or ex would take legal action against a woman having an abortion, and the clinics are wary, so I’d like to present you as my boyfriend and the baby’s father.” The baby’s father! The words sent a chill through Daniel’s body, already chilled by the cold, damp air. Until that moment he had thought of the pregnancy as a kind of medical condition that she had caught from him, not the creation of a new human life that implied parenthood. What if Cici, like his mother, had decided to keep the baby? Of course there was no comparing the two cases. Mireille Bouchard had no access to a legal abortion in 1971 Quebec, though by then Dr. Henry Morgentaler had already begun his defiant campaign, and Mireille knew him. But, most importantly, Miki Wilner was a mature man whose longing for fatherhood, frustrated during his marriage to Brigitte, was not to be denied, and surely Mireille knew that. And while Cici, like Mireille, was twenty-one, he, Daniel, was only twenty. Fatherhood seemed far removed. “Did you ever give any thought to keeping it?” he asked, hesitantly. “Are you crazy?” Daniel found the response comforting. “How could you even ask that question?” “I don’t know. It’s just that you said baby, not fetus.” “Should I say the fetus’s father? That sounds funny. Maybe the guy who knocked me up. ‘This is Daniel Wilner, my boyfriend and the guy who knocked me up.’” “Am I your boyfriend?” “No, but you will be tomorrow morning. That’s why we’re sleeping together tonight, so I won’t be lying.” Cici laughed, and Daniel couldn’t help joining her. When they were seated in the warmth of the restaurant, amid the heady mix of Asian and Caribbean aromas wafting about them, he asked her, “When did you find out?” “Just a few weeks ago. You see, with the packing and unpacking and repacking and re-unpacking I wasn’t taking the pill so regularly, but I got back on schedule in September, and I had what seemed to be a period, though it was only for a day or two, which was strange. Then in October when I supposed to have my period again I didn’t, so I went to see my doctor. That’s when I found out.” Back at his apartment, as they were getting ready for bed, he asked her, “When you said ‘sleeping together,’ did you mean…” “Yes. I told you I didn’t want to be lying. So, for tonight, you’re my boyfriend again. By the way, in case you’re really curious, I can ask them for a DNA sample and your friend Ora” – the name was again pronounced in a Spanish way – “can analyze it.” Was she joking? With Cici he was never sure. He decided to ignore the comment, and she did not pursue the matter. In bed, she said, “Do what you want, but don’t expect me to be too active. It’s the hormones, you know.” And, in fact, he had never known her so passive, almost tentative, quite unlike the experienced woman that he knew her as. He couldn’t help imagining himself with Amy. And there was also that time with Megan, a year and a half since…   In the waiting room of the clinic there were three other young women, two of them with male companions, and another woman, alone, who looked close to forty. No one talked much. Cici was the first one to be called into the office. Daniel was given the expected waiver form to sign, and afterwards Cici said, “You can go now.” “Are you sure?” “Yes. I’m going to be here for a while, I don’t know how long, and I know how to get home.” “I’ll call you this afternoon.” “That’ll be nice.” “Good luck!” “Thanks. And thanks for everything!” He did call Cici that afternoon. He got her answering machine, but she called him back shortly to tell him that everything was okay. One again his thoughts, in the personal realm, were focused on Amy. When would he ever get to see her again? How about Thanksgiving? That was a four-day weekend, and he could take a short hop to Montreal. Of course American Thanksgiving was not a holiday in Canada, and so it would really be just an ordinary weekend for his compatriots. Still, he could be with Amy from Friday evening till some time on Sunday. He went to see The Magic Flute, and somehow Pamina made him think of Amy. By the beginning of the following week he had almost resolved to take the trip. On Tuesday there was another letter from Amy.   16 Nov., 1991 Dear Daniel, As you know, I’ve been very frank, maybe too frank (blush!), in communicating my feelings to you, about how much I’ve been attracted to you since the first time I saw you, and also about how I was tired of being a virgin. The two seemed to be joined together – I wanted you to be my first lover. But the difficulties in bridging the physical distance between us have led to frustration, and the two feelings got separated. So, continuing with my frankness, I need to tell you that I finally gave in to a boy who’s been after me for a long time. I don’t have the feelings for him that I have for you, and what made it enjoyable was that I thought about you the whole time that we were doing it, but it’s done. I realize that the idea of you being my first lover was purely mine and not anything that I owed to you. Still, for some strange reason I feel like asking you to forgive me. If you think that’s crazy, let me know. Love,            (no longer the virgin) Amy         There was something about Amy’s letter that felt to Daniel like a turnoff. Suddenly he no longer felt like going to Montreal over Thanksgiving, or even having sex with Amy at all. Perhaps it was her overdramatization of it all – something that might be perfectly natural for a girl, but that he had no interest in. Give me someone like Megan any time, he said to himself. The paper with Claire’s phone number was still on his nightstand. He called her, and she was free to have coffee with him that afternoon. After some chatting he asked her if she felt like taking a walk. “Where to?” she asked. “To my place,” he said. “Sure,” she said with no hesitation.   Daniel Wilner was now a junior. All five of the classes he was taking were upper-division, and four of the five required term papers. In fact, in one of them – Contemporary Europe – there would be no final examination, and the entire grade would be based on the paper, for which the ongoing breakup of the Soviet Union was Daniel’s chosen topic. Daniel decided that he would enter the postmodern age by composing his papers on his IBM PC. The computer came with Windows 3.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows, and that was the program that he determined to use, though more experienced computer users had recommended WordPerfect. But the value of the Microsoft stock that he had bought on Greg Berman’s recommendation had already, in six months, risen by a third, and he felt a proprietary pride in using Microsoft products. By mid-November, when he had gathered enough notes to begin typing the papers, he knew enough about Microsoft Word to enjoy the process, but he would still occasionally get hung up on such things as indenting quoted paragraphs. His decision to forgo the trip to Montreal meant that he now had a full three weeks until the papers were due, during the study days between the end of classes and the beginning of finals.   Claire dressed quickly, just as she had undressed, while Daniel disposed of the condom. She had put her glasses, after taking them off for their first kiss, on his desk. As she was now putting them on with her left hand, with her right she casually left-clicked the mouse of his computer. The Windows desktop came on. “You like little pictures,” she said. “What do you mean?” Daniel asked. He was zipping up his jeans. “This Windows stuff.” “What do you use? DOS? I know people who prefer DOS.” “No, I use Unix. My dad he taught me to use a computer when I was eight.” Daniel already knew that Claire was a math major and that her father was a physicist who worked at Bell Labs. “Now I’m going to switch to a new version of Unix that works on PCs. It’s called Linux.” “You’ve got a dozen years on me, then. I just learned. And only Word and e-mail.” “If you don’t need to do calculations, I guess that’s all you need. But there’s a new thing that’s just starting, called the World Wide Web. My dad says in a few years it’ll be available to everybody. It’s a way of accessing all kinds of information from all over the world, and not just text.” “That sounds interesting. What do you use for word processing?” “I use tek. That’s spelled capital T, small E, capital X.” “Funny spelling.” “Yeah. It’s that techie sense of humor.” “Do you know Word?” “Of course. Us geeks, especially Chinese ones” – she giggled – “make a point of learning every program that comes along.” It was only with Claire’s reference to her ethnicity that it struck Daniel that he had just had his first sex with an Asian woman, East Asian to be precise. And once sex and race were on his mind, he remembered that Marisa was the first who would be black if transported from Cuba (where she was a mulata) to North America. “Would you be able to help me if run into a problem with Word?” “Call me any time,” she said with a laugh that seemed provocative, followed by a tender look. It was the first indication that she had enjoyed their episode of sex, something she had not made evident while they were doing it. “Actually, there’s something I could use some help with right now.” And he explained his problem to her. She quickly showed him several ways of resolving it, using both keystrokes and mouse clicks, though she seemed to prefer the former. He thanked her with a kiss on her neck. “Oooh,” she said, and pulled away from him. Her parka was draped over his desk chair, and she picked it up and held it in her hand, hesitating briefly before beginning to put it on. With one sleeve on, she paused and said, “Let’s do it again.” “Sure. I’ll call you.” “No, I don’t mean ‘some time.’ I mean now. I wasn’t really into it when we did it before, because I had some stuff on my mind. But it’s gone now.” Once again she undressed quickly – she did not seem to have learned yet about seductive undressing or letting herself be undressed – and drew him inside her as soon as he was ready, in a sideways posture that Gen had taught him and that he had used occasionally with Megan. This, though, was the first time that his partner had initiated it, by sliding her leg under his waist. And this time, as far as Daniel could tell, Claire was really into it.   “So I hear you got it on with Claire Chen,” Roger said to Daniel after their first class on Monday morning. “Yeah,” Daniel said, trying to hide his surprise at his friend’s knowing about it. “How do you know?” “Claire told Monica, and Monica told me. You know, if I didn’t think that you know your way around women, I’d warn you to be careful.” “Why?” “Well, back in high school, Claire started out as a nerd, but then she overcompensated, getting herself contacts, wearing tight tops, frizzing her hair – she was even a blonde for a while – and so on. And she got a reputation as a man-eater – once she would get her clutches into a guy, she wouldn’t let go. I don’t she’s been quite like that here at Columbia – at least she’s back to glasses and her natural hair – but I don’t really know.” “She still wears tight tops,” Daniel said with a smile. “Yeah, she does have a great body. Anyway, Monica told me this time because you’re my friend.” “Were you among the guys in high school that Claire…?” “Me?” “Yes.” “I thought you might have noticed,” Roger said, and continued very slowly, “that I’m not actually into women.” “You mean…” “You didn’t suspect?” Roger asked with a smile. “I may have, but I thought that with your politics…” “Yes, there’s that. Something I’ll have to deal with. There’s an organization called Log Cabin Republicans that I’m going to join when I come out.” “So, am I supposed to be discreet about it?” “Hmmm. Monica knows. Claire knows.” Roger smiled. “Sophie and Mark know. I don’t know if my parents know or not. I plan to come out when I graduate.” “Will you have a coming-out party?” Roger laughed. “I may, if I have someone special at the time. For now I don’t, and I’m not looking.” “By the way,” Daniel said by way of the changing the subject, which was making him uncomfortable, “I don’t really know my way around women all that much.” Roger laughed again. It was time for the next class.