(Please Note: This is a serialized follow-up essay to, and meant to be read after reading “Peep Show.” If you missed ’em, here’s part one and here’s part two and here’s part three and here’s part four)
Spring 2005. An old friend walks into the bar while I’m working my Sunday shift. I haven’t seen him in almost a year. “Paul” was always tall and thin, but now he looks gaunt, his head is shaved, his skin pale; he looks like he’s been going through chemo. He moved away about a year ago to a small town in the Northwest. He’s been having a rough go of it – not cancer, but divorce. He didn’t want the divorce, doesn’t like the small college town he’s living in. He has a small child. His ex- doesn’t want to move. He feels trapped. Part of the reason Paul’s getting divorced is his wife’s discovery of all the porn he’s got on his computer, a scenario that’s been played out ad infinitum across American over the past decade. I learned about his situation in an email he wrote me after reading “Peep Show.” Like me, Paul too had been suffering with very similar issues of guilt and shame and lifelong secrecy involving porn. The first thing Paul says after hello is “I’m here visiting you so I won’t go to a strip club.” I tell him that if I had known I’d have worn something sexier. Then I ask him why, why come see me instead of going to the strip club? I pour him a g&t and tell him to go the club first, then come back and tell me all about it. He shakes his head, takes off his coat. The bar is empty but for us and a couple on a first date anxiously interviewing each other, so we have plenty of time to talk. I’m thrust into the position of bartender-confessor-therapist, a role I don’t mind at all. What I do have trouble with is the sex part. Ever since “Peep” was published, friends had been telling me things – personal, sexual things, that I didn’t always want to hear and often didn’t know how to respond to. Paul talks to me about his guilt, his self-flagellation, he talks to me about . . . me. And he looks at me, to me, as if I have answers about divorce, answers about porn. I remembered feeling exactly that way after my wifre left – looking for someone to tell me an answer. I tell him it gets easier, to breathe, as silly as it sounds, make sure you breathe. About porn and strippers, I tell that once I stopped beating myself up so much and just let myself have my desires, the desires and the guilt both lessened. That the taboo was a huge part of the attraction, and that once I let go of it being forbidden I didn’t need it as much and when I did indulge it was easier to enjoy myself. I tell him everyone has fantasies that don’t match their values. I tell him that therapy helped. I suggest again that he go to the strip club. He stays, has a second drink. After drink three, he tells me it was good to see me, and leaves. I don’t ask him where he’s going.
***
Response to “Peep Show,” but for one furious letter to the editors of the Sun (in which I was called a sex addict who blamed my parents and feminism for all my problems), has been shockingly positive and productive. Both men and women have offered valuable, interesting (as I said above, sometimes more interesting than I could handle) feedback. It even felt a bit disappointing at times – to have revealed my deepest, darkest secret and be met with . . . approval. Or worse yet, to be met with, Eh, what’s the big deal? But that response too, was fascinating, useful. As one reader friend pointed out: no one’s fantasies match their values, that’s why they’re fantasies. One friend who said she liked the piece did also mention that she was “a little grossed out,” that every time she sees me now she can’t help but think about my “pee-pee,” but I can live with that. But, there was one very negative and upsetting response to “Peep Show” – from Triste herself. Before publishing “Peep,” I mailed her a draft of the piece. I wanted her to like it, of course, but I also wanted her to vet it for accuracy, to tell me if I had misrepresented her or our relationship. Months passed, and, despite my nagging emails, I got no response. In October 2004, a few months before the essay was published, I visited New York again and Triste and I met up for a drink. It was the first time we’d seen each other in well over a year. It was a pleasant, platonic, evening. As we parted, she handed me an envelope. I read the letter on the subway back to Brooklyn. Triste wrote that she found “Peep Show” boring and naive and shallow, both intellectually and emotionally. She repeatedly wrote that she was writing her letter out of love and not anger and resentment, but the opposite seemed to be true, or both seemed true at once. She faulted me for my silent neediness as a customer, and concluded by informing me that strippers dance for money, not to be loved, as if I had written otherwise. I certainly never felt that strippers dance to love or be loved, which was why her seeming connection to me as a customer felt so special. She was disgusted by my guilt, and felt that I rationalized a great deal. I was shocked by her response, and in that shock made the mistake of writing back quickly, defensively, via email, responding line by line to what I felt were her attacks. Although I later wrote her again expressing my regret at how I responded, I haven’t heard from her since. Seeing as I can’t (for legal reasons) let her words represent her, I won’t go into why I think she had such a negative reaction to the piece, nor will I address the ways that I agree and disagree with her take. I’m pretty sure Triste and I will never meet again, unless it’s by chance.
[Note: As we go to “press” here at M.A.I.D., I’m delighted to note that the above entry is no longer entirely true. The woman I call “Triste,” whom I’d thought I’d permanently, utterly alienated, emailed me yesterday, saying that she was enjoying reading “After.” It was the most unexpected and satisfying reader response I could ever have hoped for.]
