The Rubber Vagina Club (cont.)
 

I put the rubber vagina, still sealed in its paper bag, on my bedroom closet's highest shelf. I shoved it towards the back, behind a jar of coins that I had been putting aside to lose the next time I went to Vegas. I stared at the bag, which went in and out of focus as I swayed back and forth, still drunk.

A rubber vagina is a hell of a thing. If I opened the bag, was there any going back? Was it a test from God? Worse yet, what if, as I had always believed, there was no God and the thing worked? What then? What sort of beast would I become? Would I ever stop fucking it? Would I slip it into my pants so that I would be fucking all day long everywhere I went? Would it remove my need for women altogether?

I shut off the light and closed the closet. Garfield Place was quiet. I listened carefully in the darkness of my room and could hear the bubbling fountain in the courtyard, and further away, the white noise of swift traffic on The 101.

I thought of calling ex-girlfriends and making them save me from the life of the undead. Perhaps a little phone sex, or better yet they could come over for a late night re-kindling of an old flame.

It was a sleepless night. My bedroom felt suffocating and hot. The air around me was slow; I could see it moving through my closed eyelids. Sleeping on my side toward the window, I avoided eye contact with the closet door, which taunted me with its contents. What had I done?

Finally, mercifully, I passed out.

The next morning was cool and steeped in fog. I could smell the damp air as it mixed with old eucalyptus leaves that littered the grounds of 1835 Garfield. It did much to soothe the lingering sense of dread and death left by my hangover and the previous night's purchase. I wandered into the front room of my apartment where the comforts of television awaited.

I spent a listless Saturday driving the Hollywood Hills looking at houses I would never afford. I dreamed of being a socialite. A giver of large parties. Smoking the finest cigarettes and drinking perfect martinis made by a live-in bartender. Eventually I would marry some lovely woman named June or Marianna and we would have two children whom I would love and whose concerns would outweigh the petty ones that once were mine.

My children would grow into fascinating human beings that would gently get me to stop smoking and drink slightly less as I got older. When June or Marianna would die, I would, in my sadness, travel across France and Spain and even China on foot. Then I would become a lonely painter, strolling the beaches of the South Pacific in breezy, white linen pants while impossible, complex and introspective thoughts came to me like God was sending them on the incoming tides.

I caught myself talking to my phantom wife in the car. A woman wearing a tee shirt, khaki shorts and a backpack watched me intently through the passenger window. She looked healthy and relaxed and peaceful. I hated her. I sped away. I tried in vain to return to my fantasy, but it was unbearable now. I could never be that man. Men like that didn't have rubber vaginas in their closet. Or maybe, just maybe, only men like that had rubber vaginas in their closet. The bold and adventurous. The Ubermenches. The Masters of the Universe. The Rubber Vagina Club.

I drove by the apartment several times. My place was on the second floor at the rear of the courtyard and I could see the windows through the trees. It wasn't time to go home yet.

I had one last chance, I thought, to make an appeal to real women before I was sentenced to a lifetime alone with a rubber twat. An old friend was having a goodbye party at a bar on Wilshire-Lila, a lovely half-Egyptian woman with large, expressive brown eyes and lively breasts placed perfectly on a slight frame. She was leaving for New Jersey to be with her mother, who was suffering from cancer. Her mother had taken a turn for the worse, and Lila decided to forsake her stalled career as a movie producer and return home to watch her die.

I had always wanted Lila, but she seemed beyond my reach. She would catch me staring at the soft slope of her neck as it joined her shoulder and then look away pretending that she had not seen anything. Her collarbone accented the base of her neck, and I found her irresistible. Men that are afraid to go home for fear of a rubber vagina in the closet have no chance with such women.

Some famous actor owned The Connecticut on Wilshire, and since his purchase it became a spot for the fools and those who love the fools to gather in safe numbers and drink the latest popular version of a martini. It was not a bar I frequented, but its transient popularity appealed to Lila. It was still early when I arrived.

"I didn't think you'd come," Lila said smiling. Even the narrow gap between her front teeth did nothing to trouble those lips as they spread in their joyful reach.

"Oh, you know, I wouldn't miss saying goodbye to you..."

"Aw, Charlie. I'll miss you."

"Me too. How's your mother doing? Better?"

"A little. She says she feels stronger. She'll be going through more chemotherapy in a week. Pretty aggressive treatment. It wipes her out. But I don't know. It doesn't look good." A nervous laugh broke her silence. Lila always laughed when she said something that troubled her.

I looked at Lila. Why did I bring up her mother? I had bungled for something to say. Anything. I wanted Lila. Talking about her dying mother wasn't the answer. She left me to attend to another of her friends, and I made my way to the bar to order a drink. The bartender was busy with several other customers, so I took a moment to survey the room: People I don't know. A group of men at a booth. An elderly couple taking delicate sips of their white wines. A woman by herself downing the last of her drink.