It’s easy to be a moralist when you’re ugly
Jon Paul Fiorentino
Photography by ISTOCKPHOTO: Ooyoo
“Say something lovely,” I said.
“God, you are such an emotional wimp!” Dora said.
“That’s not lovely at all!”
I would always start our telephone conversations by demanding a compliment or a lovely locution. I’m not sure where I got the guts. I would call Dora, night manager of Libby’s Discount Fabrics, at the beginning and end of my shift, and during the break. We had started our affair one night when she came by the Shill gas station where I worked to trade some bills for coins and we made eyes at each other. She wasn’t particularly seductive—in fact, she had an extremely off-putting lazy eye—but her intentions were clear and I was always up for romance. That’s why I stayed at the Regent Park strip mall for so long. It wasn’t like I didn’t have better offers for employment. Hell, my uncle could have scored me a position as a night watchman for a window company in South Transcona if I wanted it. They had a union and everything. But nothing compared to the rich social tapestry of the strip mall. These were my people. This was my home. When I was too drunk on peach Schnapps and gas fumes, I would sleep in my little grey Chevette in the middle of the stripmall parking lot and everything would seem right with the world, except for my brain, which was damaged on account of all the huffing.
Dora was a slim young woman in her mid-twenties. She didn’t believe in monogamy. She believed that sex was simply fucking and should not be regulated by archaic notions of patriarchal possession. She was taking some courses at the University of Winnipeg. Her ideas intrigued me. Especially the parts about fucking. I called her Dora the Explorer. When I was a young man all I ever wanted was to have sex with a girl. My mother told me that if I ever had sex, she would know because she knew the smell of sex intimately and if she ever smelled it on me, she would make me a eunuch. Mom was very concerned for my well-being. “I have a nose like a bloodhound,” she would say. “If any little harpy is going to devirginize my Jonny, she had better be a Christian, it had better be 10 years from now and she had better have a ring. And if any man even thinks about touching my little lamb, I will destroy him. The only man who will ever be inside Jonny is Jesus Christ.”
Even though she was my best girl, Dora was not allowed to meet my parents. This was a good policy because she had a tendency to spew gender theory straight out of first-year undergraduate courses. Stuff like: “I am not queer but I am queer-bodied; monogamy is a repellant social construct; we are all hermaphrodites, and the closer we get to our inner hermaphrodicity, the happier we will be.” I always find that kind of talk very arousing, but my parents were more apt to find it satanic. She had a bumper sticker on her Plymouth K-Car that said, “Polyamory is not a crime.”
“Say something lovely,” I said again.
“Okay, I want you to taste Darren’s cock.”
“Who’s Darren?”
“Mmmnngh,” she moaned into the phone, “he’s this new attendant at Sudsy’s Car Wash. You should see him, Jonny. He’s very built, super-hot, and he seems really freaky, too. He’s not like you at all!”
“Thanks, Dora.”
“Well, let’s face it, you’re not exactly George Clooney.” She always used that line, no matter what the situation. If I was having trouble deciding what to order at a restaurant, she would say, “Let’s face it, you’re not exactly George Clooney.”
I was willing to do anything for Dora. And the weird thing is, I don’t think I was actually all that attracted to her. She looked like a world-weary Thora Birch. I wasn’t quite sure of her exact age because I didn’t really care about such things. (I was only 21.) But I did care about pleasing Dora. She introduced me to a world in which mutual masturbation and foot licking were not deviant behaviours. When people tried to chastise her regarding her libertinism, she would stare at them and say, “It’s easy to be a moralist when you’re ugly.” She was so fearless, so in control.
I should explain that my mother had not only threatened to lop off my manhood, she was also my Grade 7 sexual education teacher. Transcona was a small town and the educational options were limited. My mom doubled as both guidance counsellor and sex-ed instructor at Arthur Day Junior High. I had no choice but to take the class. And my mother had no choice but to teach the class. It was a provincial requirement of our Manitoba NDP government. I would sit in the back corner of the class as she explained the function of ovaries and fallopian tubes. And every once in a while she would glare at me as if to say, “You had better not be learning any of this, you little pervert. I’m going to pray those demons of lust right out of you as soon as we get home!” So we made a deal. Mom told me she would give me a solid B in the class if I would just sit there, not pay attention and do my homework for other classes instead. While the other students got to read pamphlets with titles like A Boy’s Guide to Masturbation and So, You’re Ready to Be Penetrated, my mom would supplement my learning with tracts like Celibacy: The Long Road Ahead.
Dora had made the arrangements for my very first threesome: it would be comprised of me, Darren, Dora the Explorer, many candles and the music of Percy Sledge. I would have much preferred if there were to be two women and me, but I was not in a position to bargain. I would never have been able to experiment if it weren’t for Dora’s initiative and legwork. I arrived at Dora’s bachelor apartment a halfhour early, hoping to express my appreciation and trepidation to her, but Darren was already there and they were snorting coke off the coffee table and making out. I feebly shuffled over to the couch and did my best to join in, but they seemed pretty focused on each other. It was hard to find a way in that wasn’t awkward. Darren was hypermuscular, had tattoos all over his hairless arms and both of his nipples were pierced. He had long, flowing, curly brown locks and the face of a cherub. I suddenly felt like the kid at the pool, too ashamed to take his shirt off, choosing to swim in it and let it cling to his rolls of fat instead. Of course, this was quite a natural feeling since I was always that kid. I stopped rubbing Dora’s back, backed away and did a line.
That’s when it happened. Darren and I made eye contact. “Hey, champ,” he said, and gave Dora a gentle shove to the side. For the next eternity or so, Darren gave me a thorough sexual education. I glimpsed Dora pouting about all the attention I was receiving, but it was pointless to be diplomatic about it. The boy was only interested in me, and frankly, that was a good feeling. For the rest of the night, Dora explored her newfound sense of rejection, I explored a tandem feeling of guilt and arousal, and Darren simply explored me. Eventually Dora asked us to leave and Darren held my hand and walked me back to my Chevette. He was a perfect gentleman.
In the end I realized I was not really built for threesomes or open sexual encounters or anything involving me taking off my pants. It felt amazing at the time to be desired, but the guilt crept up on me and the guilt was so stifling. In fact, my favourite moments from that time involve lying down with Dora in the back of the Chevette and talking about our hopes and dreams or queer theory or whatever. I liked those quiet times, when Dora and I would smoke hash out of the car lighter and the buzz was nice and mild and the strip mall was quiet and still and the mosquitoes danced under the amber floodlights. I guess I’m a bit of a traditionalist. I’m like my mother that way.
