Great Kills Review - Winter 2008

Great Kills Review

Winter 2008 – Volume II, issue 1

Matthew Boedy

Sleepy Sunday

My therapist says I need sex. He told me that after he had his orgasm and I faked mine. I need sex. I need the comfort, the pain, the pillow talk, the foreplay. I need it like water.

It is one of the many reasons I went to my therapist. I am a 28-year-old woman who needs sex, who uses men to get it, and who once tried to kill herself. I work in a research office in New York City, take the subway to work, and buy organic foods at a market near my apartment.

I need my fix. I usually buy a dress, buy some shoes or something else new, and use that something new to get my fix. That fix: one-night stands. I have gone to three bars over three months, switching every few weeks. I change locations because I don’t want to become a groupie. That girl who goes to the same place and does the same men from the same bar. So I mix it up every now and then, bars and the types they house.

I need sex. I understand it. My therapist certainly understands it. I need sex.

I suppose what I am saying is that while I understand and my obviously misguided doctor understands that means no one understands. How can a sex-addicted, sometimes pot-smoking woman of New York and a horny, married, sophisticate of the psychology scene understand anything?

I have sex on average six times a week, sometimes going 24 hours without it. I never do it at work. Never do it in public. Never do it in a car. Never do it on the roof or in the basement. I never do it without protection. And I never do it on Sunday.

I’m not into Sunday like that. It’s just that while I need sex, I need some time to recover as well. I understand my body and my body has told me that I need a day off.

I like the Sunday Times and the afternoon matinees. I like the Yankees when they have a weekend at home. And I like to watch the Sunday political shows. I am from South Carolina and Sunday there is a lot of doing nothing. I grew up with Sunday sermons, Sunday lunch, Sunday nap, Sunday prayer, Sunday sleep. So I know Sunday. I know it is a day of rest.

I like New York. You can get your fix here easily. But every summer since my parents died, I go to Edisto, to the house they left. It is named Sleepy Sunday. That’s really all I ever think about Sunday.

Well there was this guy last week. It was one of those awkward times when you reach for the last can of applesauce on sale. He grabbed for it and so did I. I looked up and was in love. He let me have the can. He took another brand and the quarter more on his receipt.

He had spaghetti noodles, pasta sauce, and a bottle of wine in his basket. He was alone. How was I to know he was a minister?

“What’s the wine for? Have you got a date?’’

He plucked it from the basket and looked at the label as if he didn’t know it was there.

“Nah. It’s for communion.’’

Do they really buy it at the grocery store?

“Don’t you need bread for that?’’ I joked.

“Yeah, we got that already. You seem to know a lot about it.’’

I was disappointed there was a “we’’ but smiled because he seemed interested in me.

“My parents were into that.’’

“Into what?’’

I looked at him like he was stupid. I noticed he was cute, too.

“Into… God.’’

“God, huh?’’

He held up the bottle and shook it.

“You think God is in here?’’

If God was in there, he was giving the Lord of Creation a good wake-up call. I wanted to be funny because he was cute. There was a chance the “we’’ was his church. I grabbed the apple sauce and shook it.

“Maybe he’s in here.’’

He smiled as he replied.

“Maybe he is.’’

We stood there for a second. I looked past him like I wanted something down the aisle. He looked at me like he wanted me to hear him.

“Maybe you should join us.’’

Join us. Sounded like he wanted me to join one of those comet cults. He certainly wasn’t asking me out for dinner. And in defense, he didn’t know what he was asking for. Me. Join?

Still he looked all right. Jeans, sneakers, t-shirt that had a picture of the galaxy on it with an arrow and a caption: You are here. Hair combed. Teeth clean. Breath minty.

“Yeah. Where at?’’

“Tonight. At the bookstore a few blocks from here.’’

“At a bookstore?’’

“Yeah.’’

I was dying for an explanation but he didn’t offer one. I knew why he didn’t speak. He wanted me to ask. I knew the trick.

“We never had that there. Is that legal?’’ I said.

He laughed, and I noticed he was cute, again.

“Yeah, it’s cool. We’ve been going there for a few months. A handful of guys, girls, some wine, and God.’’

Cool. Communion was cool. Right. I said thanks and went on my way. I would have gone, but who gets involved with those types anyway? Maybe he was married. That wasn’t the problem. My therapist taught me that. But of course with those religious types, there is much work to do. It takes more than a good dress, a nice smile and a dark bar to get them. And although I did do a guy once in college who said he believed in God and left in the morning to head to Mass, I think it would just be wrong. For him. And I wouldn’t want him to feel that way. Because it might rub off on me.

I don’t understand them, anyway. I understand my therapist. I understand myself. But those faith-types and their attitudes, they’re beyond me. And sometimes the women are worse with their looking. They do wrong – I know they do. Then they wallow and cry and then go mute as if silence will make it all better.

I know this because I sat at my cubicle last year when Sarah, the girl next to me, stapled that last stack of papers, got up from her chair, and sat on the floor inside my cubicle.

She put her head into her chest, her arms on her knees and starting sniffling.

Sarah had worked for us for about a year, her first job in the big city. From North Carolina somewhere. It was that accent that got me. It reminded me of Sleepy Sunday. Born and raised in Carolina goodness – and it didn’t wear off. She wore those summer beach dresses in June, took off Good Friday and always wore that same gold cross necklace. She explained to me how the one I wore as a kid was a crucifix. Mine still had Jesus on it. Hers did not. Hers wasn’t better, she tried to say, just different. Different because Jesus is not on the cross anymore. Is not – as if he were alive. That’s how they say it. I understand that a dead Jesus to her was as anathema as sex before marriage.

I was going to speak but she spoke first.

“My boyfriend and I…..I’m pregnant.’’

I had never met him so picturing her having sex was hard – for more than that reason. When she started here, my sex escapade stories got the impolite look after a few days. So I was trying not to give off the self-righteousness I know she deserved.

“Do you know for sure?’’

She sniffled and nodded yes. She had gotten a pregnancy test from the drugstore – oh the awkwardness she showed as she told me. It was like a teenage girl taking out the trash. Holding it at arm’s length, turning her head from the smell. I could imagine her in the store, picking the test off the shelf with soft, aloe-laden pinchers for fingers.

“I cried myself to sleep.’’

By this time I was leaning out of my chair, trying to be on her level.

“You know… well actually you probably don’t know but those tests aren’t always accurate.’’

She was still stuck on that other deal.

“Yes but my virgin….’’ she fumbled her words. “His, too. Now what do I do?’’

I had never thought of his virginity my first time. He never told me then but I was sure I wasn’t his first. It was special in a way I suppose.

And then the other thing hit me. She really didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what prayer to say, what verse to recite, what of anything to do. She sat there sniffling, obviously came to me for help and I could tell she was lost.

It was early in the day and so I told her to get up, go back to her desk, try to look like she was working, and I would try to keep people from stopping between us too long. I suppose she needed some girl time, someone to understand, someone to say something about it being OK. But as she stood sniffling, wiping tears off her blouse, I doubted she would agree with any comfort I gave. She was lost.

I never made any other offer of compassion. It took a few days, but we made chatter at work for the next few weeks. But she said nothing about her pregnancy. She quit two months later.

It is strange, but as I sit here on the beach at Edisto, on the porch of Sleepy Sunday, I see those two faces – the cute preacher and the pregnant believer.

It is strange also that this is the first summer that I have come to Sleepy Sunday alone. Usually I bring some work, someone, or some gaggle of girls who want to spend their days in Charleston or Hilton Head.

So left without real faces, I try to dig my nose in a book. Something about Colorado gold. It’s No. 3 on the Times’ bestseller list. But those real faces come back to me.

I take the preacher and put him in front of that church I see. That place where I sit in the same spot - four rows back – every Sunday. I get to sit on the end of the pew, Mom and then Dad. I hear the preacher telling us about the wine and the bread and how we’re supposed to wait until everybody has some before we put it in our mouths. We pass around small plastic cups, like the ones you take cough medicine from. Then the plates of bread, like crumbs from crouton making. The preacher smiles at me.

I hand the plate and the leftover capsules to Mr. Porter in his suit and see the girl. She is in the pew next to us, the aisle and Mr. Porter’s dark blue between us. I lean back to see her. Then forward and finally Mr. Porter has stepped back a row.

She is sitting as she is sitting in my cubicle. She is crying. The pew is full, the church is full, but no one comforts her. No one turns their head. No one notices her. I want to get up and go over there, but know I will be scolded if I move during communion.

I stare at her. I hope she looks up. She doesn’t.

When the preacher tells us we can eat of our Lord, I look at the girl. She rubs that cross necklace between her fingers.

It is strange as well that this is the first summer, the first length of extended time I have decided to go celibate. This whole week at Sleepy Sunday I will not have sex. It has taken some getting used to, now in my third day. The flight into Charleston was long, and the drive over in the summer wind seemed to offer enough pleasure. Yesterday I went shopping for food and all I saw were families, grandparents, and teenagers manning the tourist counters. No temptations there.

And perhaps it is the preacher’s smile in my daydream, the man who would make me holy, that keeps me from getting off this porch and heading down the beach in search.

Perhaps it is the thought that the girl on that cubicle floor, the one who appeared across the aisle, was more than a dream. It is why she never showed her face. Then I would lose the dream and gain consciousness again.

It is funny how dreams and memories do not rest. They wrestle with each other, producing one scene filled with the past and present. They do not rest. Even on Sunday.

I never knew why I saved Sunday for myself. But once I started to, once I made Sunday a day for me, me and the Times, me and the Yankees, me and the matinee – I realized I was taking back Sunday. Taking it back from the men I knew on Saturday nights, the men I knew all week. I was taking it back from the faces that filled that church, those faces that ignored two pregnant believers. I was taking it back from the home I was forced to leave, the childhood and child I was forced to abort.

I offer myself, just me. I am offering my blood and body, as some sort of offering to the day. Sunday will take me back. I wonder what it will be like tomorrow. Sunday as a day of rest. The Sunday I never knew.

About the Author

Matthew Boedy has worked as a journalist, high school teacher, and (for a few weeks) a Wal-Mart associate in the electronics area. He is pursuing an MFA degree in fiction at the University of South Carolina. His work has appeared in Slow Trains, Infuze, and Relevant.

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