Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,26

reasons. But if she’d be willing to put Ruský Rouge on her lips, what else would she be willing to try? It seemed significant that the gift was a girly one: a sexy, creamy tool passed from woman to woman.

The first time I’d ever masturbated, I’d straddled my pillow and fantasized that I was being passed between women this way. I imagined a roomful of women, each a different classmate’s mother, moving me from lap to lap, thigh to thigh, taking turns rocking and soothing me. Their gestures seemed nurturing, rather than lusty, and so, when I came, and came again, I was able to avoid thinking about what my pleasure could mean.

Over time, this fantasy became more overtly sexual—escalating from lap sitting into kissing, dry-humping. Every time I came, I would think, Oh god, please don’t let me like women. I forced myself to change the narrative, imagining the women with their husbands instead of me. I imagined the married couples rubbing against each other in abandoned offices, or the men eating their wives’ pussies in their backyards at night under the stars, poolside. In these fantasies, I got to be both woman and man: shifting my consciousness from the wife to the husband to the wife to the husband. This felt less shameful than two women.

In college, I’d been all bravado with Zoe and Cait, the adrenaline of novelty and the velocity of intrigue propelling me through my encounters with each of them. I was moving so fast that I didn’t really have time to be afraid. But now, going to meet Miriam, I felt the same Oh god I’d felt when I was young.

The truth was, I knew very little about Miriam. I knew that she was Jewish, a bit younger than me. I knew that she was very, very nice to me. I knew that around her, I felt like I could eat a sundae, or two sundaes, and maybe even Chinese food. I knew how she made me feel, which was full of confetti instead of blood. And so I reasoned, as I paid for the lipstick, that while my illusive pursuit of Cait had been based on an idea, at least with Miriam I was following a feeling.

CHAPTER 24

I stood outside the Golden Dragon, chain-chewing nicotine gum and waiting for Miriam. The evening air was cool, the sidewalks, cars, and buses cloaked in pink light. It was LA’s magic hour. The Golden Dragon looked to have once been magic too, but now it was in a state of disrepair: the corpse of somebody’s 1950s Hollywood regency-tiki dream.

The façade was a ranch-style stucco painted with banana leaves. It had survived the Cold War, only to fall prey to black mold. Two cracked lacquer Foo dogs, one missing an ear, stood guard at the red pagoda entrance. A turquoise neon sign over the pagoda blinked: G LDE DRA N.

But the place was surprisingly popular. Women in wigs kept entering and leaving with takeout. A party of ten drunk Chassidic men clambered in. There were also nonreligious patrons: an aging Hollywood rocker couple with full sleeves of ink, a group of what looked like set designers in paint-covered jeans. Each time the doors opened, I heard the sounds of animated voices buzzing over notes of Hawaiian guitar music.

I waited for ten minutes, then went in. It was dark and fragrant with fried food, a fun house of gilt bamboo mirrors and pink leather banquettes. I didn’t see Miriam, so I sat down at the rattan bar, beneath strands of lights in pinks, blues, yellows, and greens. A gold dragon hung from the ceiling over my head. Every minute or so, the dragon exhaled a stream of light and steam.

What was I doing here? It was like the place existed in a cipher—zero Yelp reviews, a web page with only a name and a menu, and then the place itself—a glowing black hole. I’d always wanted to escape to a black hole. I felt awed by the glow. And who was this random person I was meeting at a Chinese food restaurant bar? Technically, it was less random than a Tinder date or something. But it seemed weirder to go out with my yogurt scooper than with someone whose picture I’d only seen online.

Just calm down, I said to myself.

I am calm, I replied.

The bartender brought a bowl of fried, crunchy noodles, primed for duck sauce and spicy mustard. I hadn’t tasted those noodles in over a decade,