Jonah
An excerpt of Catherine Texier's forthcoming novel, "After David."
The chat box glowed hot pink.
“Salut! Ça va?” (I had taught him a few French words).
My heart leapt. I didn’t expect to hear from him on a Sunday afternoon.
He: Will you be there at 6? I want to bend you over your piano.
Me: You’d have to come earlier. Louise is coming for dinner.
Two hours later he cancelled. He had to substitute for a friend and give a guitar lesson. I felt a sting of disappointment, but then I remembered the heart emoji he had texted me after watching the Wong-Kar Wai movie, and my chest melted a little bit at his impulsivity.
“You spend way too much time on that site,” Louise said in a stern voice, hearing the ping of a new message on my phone. She was home from Brooklyn for our Sunday night menu of take-out Indian food, Game of Thrones and Girls. I quickly unlocked my phone to make Jonah latest text vanish from the screen.
“I get messages. I have to log on and answer them.”
Louise picked up my phone and scrolled through the apps. She rolled her eyes in horror.
“Mom! No! I can’t even…NOT Tinder! You can’t go on Tinder. It’s for 16-year-olds.”
I was pulling down the zipper on my boots, the same clog-boots with the wooden soles that Jonah had told me he liked when we first met.
“I know this woman – an art dealer – who met someone on Tinder when she was traveling for work in Chicago,” I said, “and now they are dating. She’s 46.”
“46 is not elderly like you,” Louise deadpanned, helping herself from chicken tikka masala and saag spinach.
“At what age does elderly start?”
“I don’t know. Like 55?”
I kicked off the boots, pushed them under the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the couch, my plate balanced on my knees, trying to absorb the blow. Louise pulled the blanket over us and clicked on Game of Thrones. We watched Tyrion Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen engage in a verbal joust while our respective dishes of chicken tikka masala and vegetable kumai gave off a scrumptious aroma.
“You guys are much more conservative than we are,” I said, soaking a piece of poori into the bright orange masala sauce. “Our generation broke a lot of rules. Age means nothing to me. I want to enjoy the years that I still have ahead of me.”
The first years after David’s departure, when I was in my early 50s, I turned into the Merry Widow, dancing until the wee hours on the roofs of Williamsburg when it was still an industrial no-man’s-land, hanging out in Lower East Side dive bars, flirting with the boys at Saturday night parties in East Williamsburg and Bushwick…
An expression of panic passed in Louise’s eyes. “You’re in denial. You’re not getting any younger, you know. I won’t be able to take care of you when you’re old. Who’s going to take care of you when you can’t climb up the stairs?”
“Well, there’s Juliet and Scott.” I giggled. “I can move in with them. My grandmother climbed up the stairs in her house when she was in her 90s. I’m not there yet. But anyway, I can sell the apartment and move to a place with an elevator, or better yet, find a muscular, young guy to carry me up and down the stairs?”
“Mom!”
“I was kidding, mon amour. But what do you want me to do? I am not going to live with any man, just because. I was married to your dad for twenty-two years. It’s not easy, after that, to start over with someone else. I wanted to be free for a while.”
“For a while? That was almost thirteen years ago!”
I got up and wrapped my arms around her shoulders.
“Ma chérie. Maybe I haven’t found the right man to settle down with.”
“Stop it.” Louise moved her shoulders this way and that to get rid of the hug like an uncomfortable blanket. “You won’t find him on Tinder, that’s for sure! And don’t stand in front of the TV!”
When I opened my phone the next morning, the Tinder icon had disappeared. I let it go. All that dating was only compensation for the absence of Jonah. Anyway, I’d never even gone on Tinder. I’d just downloaded the app out of curiosity.
The first years after David’s departure, when I was in my early 50s, I turned into the Merry Widow, dancing until the wee hours on the roofs of Williamsburg when it was still an industrial no-man’s-land, hanging out in Lower East Side dive bars, flirting with the boys at Saturday night parties in East Williamsburg and Bushwick, dating a couple of screenwriter friends of David’s who suddenly showed their interest, previously carefully kept under wraps. Men are loyal to their men friends until the coast is clear. I had my weekends free while Louise spent them at her dad’s and his new wife's. It was like being 20 again. With David, I thought I had the couple and the family of my dreams. I disregarded the fights, his bad moods, his reproaches. His fits of anger. My panic attacks.
I pulled a Heineken from the fridge. I’d grabbed the pack at the deli the day before, just for Jonah’s visit, because I don’t usually keep beer in my apartment.
“Heineken, so 80s,” he teased me, taking a swig. Smiling his dazzling smile.
But the next time he came, I made sure to get proper Brooklyn-brewed IPA.
“You didn’t have to do that.” He pointed to the Brooklyn Lager label. “Heineken was fine. I was joking.”
“I know,” I said. But I was embarrassed that he had so easily seen through me.
We were seated on my big couch, our legs touching, sharing the bottle of IPA. He placed his hand on my thigh and it was like an electric burst, flashing through my body.
“Wow, you still have the old tapes! With his other hand he pointed to the shelves sagging under the weight of the VHS and audio cassettes that had continued to live there, gathering dust, after David’s departure. Betraying my age, like the landline my wifi was still connected to – even though I didn’t use the landline anymore. I felt my cheeks turn hot and I vowed to get rid of the tapes, and the old bookcase, everything that was left over from David.
Bit by bit, he had been telling me about himself. He had studied music at Berklee, moved to New York after 9/11, and got into the experimental jazz scene right away. He played with his own quartet – they had produced a CD a couple of years ago – but mostly he played as a sideman with various bands and had made records with them as well. The latest one had just come out and they’d had an event at Le Poisson Rouge. He never said any of this in a bragging tone, but matter-of-fact, like, that’s a musician’s life, and I shouldn’t be impressed, even though I was, because I knew from my own experience how hard it was to survive and persevere as an artist in New York. He had also scored some movies, including one that had won a prize at Sundance. I only knew about the prize because I’d watched the clips on YouTube. I had really liked the music. I could see he was pleased, and I told him I had mentioned him to one of my screenwriter friends, who was looking for a composer. It was for an indie film, but James Franco was attached, I added, chuckling ironically. It would get made.
He slowly put the bottle down on the table and dropped his hand from my thigh.
There was a distinct change in the vibe. I turned towards him.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“You told him about…?” His hand swept the air between him and me as if he couldn’t bring himself to say us, as if these two letters would bring us together in an unacceptable bond.
“Her. Not him. My friend Lena. Why?”
“My brother is a film director. I wouldn’t want him to find out.”
My heart sank.
When I opened my phone the next morning, the Tinder icon had disappeared. I let it go. All that dating was only compensation for the absence of Jonah. Anyway, I’d never even gone on Tinder. I’d just downloaded the app out of curiosity.
I wouldn’t want him to find out. So that’s why he didn’t want any public dates with me. Not because I had already decided but because he only wanted to see me on the down low. I was the woman with the scarlet letter. I knew all about those women. My mother had been that woman, the unmarried mother, the woman with the scandalous love life. The mistress. The woman who trailed a vapor of sulfur behind her, and considered that her role on the planet was to burst open hypocrisies, expose the pus, hang the dirty laundry in public, pull out all the shit pushed under the rug.
When my mother got pregnant and started to show, she was shipped to a home for unwed mothers in Brittany to stay until I was born. Then we all moved to the big villa outside Paris with my grandparents, and my mother got a fake wedding ring she slipped on her left hand to pretend she was married, even though all her mail was addressed to Mademoiselle, which filled me with shame. My father was in med school, and disappeared mid-way through the pregnancy, when his parents found out my mother was ten years older than him. A tart prying on his naiveté. Not a pure young thing. Who even knew if he really was the father?
Jonah was nervous, sipping on his IPA, avoiding my eyes. He looked very young, way younger than his age, as if he had suddenly realized I was holding his fate between my hands. I recognized that look on his face. He was ashamed. Why? Because he was sleeping with an older woman, who could almost be his mother? Because one word from me could ruin his image in front of his brother, in front of the whole world? But what image was that? A jazz musician is not exactly a model of straight living. Why would his brother care about who he was dating, sleeping with or fucking? What power did his brother have over him, what image was he trying to give his older brother that he was so worried about destroying it with a naughty misalliance?
And then it dawned on me.
“Wait, your brother is… Judd Burnstein?”
“Actually, I wrote the music for his first two.”
Judd Burnstein was famous for his very personal, semi-autobiographical movies. I had seen them all. I tried to remember if there was a younger brother in any of them.
“You did? Swing Left is my favorite.”
“I didn’t do that one. I did Baby Girl and The Mendelsohn Files.”
“Wow. I remember the music for Baby Girl. So cool.”
“I didn’t want to keep working for Hollywood. By the time you pay all your musicians, it’s barely worth it. Besides… I don’t know… Maybe I should give it a shot again. But I don’t like that world. It’s all about money. It’s fake.”
He sounded like Louise. Fake was her most merciless criticism. Kiss of death.
I picked up the bottle and sipped a little from it. I wondered if he felt more exposed because his brother was a hot, up-and-coming director. Or because he was in competition with him? Did he drop out of Hollywood because he didn’t feel he could win the contest? Or was it truly that world of money he hated, just as he hated Chelsea and the art world?
In the silence, desire between us was spreading like a vapor, encircling us. But the vapor had turned cold for me, my heart frozen in its center, even though my crotch was liquefying, my underwear soaked. Perhaps his moment of shame aroused me because shame in my family always implied sex, and vice-versa. He took the bottle from my hands and set it on the coffee table.
It used to be a tradition in France, in some circles – perhaps only in literature – for young males to be initiated to the delights of sex by a sensually accomplished, older – sometimes way older – woman. They were much sought after as sexual mentors. Evidently Jonah didn’t know that. But I had no reason to give in to his scruples.
I decided to let it go and took his hand.
I felt like the countess in Vivant Denon’s 18th century novella No Tomorrow, taking the young narrator to her boudoir, while he imagines unfathomable delights. Or like Lea in Colette’s novel Chéri – the 50-year old ex-courtesan who has an affair with the 25-year-old son of her best friend.
It used to be a tradition in France, in some circles – perhaps only in literature – for young males to be initiated to the delights of sex by a sensually accomplished, older – sometimes way older – woman. They were much sought after as sexual mentors. Evidently Jonah didn’t know that. But I had no reason to give in to his scruples.
In real life, in 1920, at the age of 47, Colette first met the 16-year-old son of her husband Bertrand de Jouvenel at her seaside villa. Not bothered a bit by society’s disapproval, she gave him a copy of her recent novel Chéri (the story of a liaison between an older courtesan and the 25-year-old son of her best friend), with the inscription “A mon fils chéri, Bertrand de Jouvenel” ("To my cherished son Bertrand de Jouvenel.") Soon after, they embarked on an intense affair that went on for four years, and continued after Colette and her husband divorced.
“Am I too forward?” I asked, as I led him to my bedroom.
“No. Am I?”
“No. You are the man.”
To be honest, he didn’t act much like the man. But that was what was exciting, the blurriness of the roles, the taboo we were breaking by reversing the conventional order of things. He acted way younger than his age. He seemed almost shy, out of his depth. He handed me the reins. “What will you teach me,” he texted me before coming over. “What shall we do now?” It was a kind of vertigo. I felt empowered, and the power was firing me up.
When we got to my room, he took the lead. He pressed me against the wall, and took me straight up, my dress pulled up to my waist, my thighs clasping his waist, until we tumbled on the bed, and then he flipped me on my stomach and took me the way he’d always dreamed of doing – but not without asking my permission – metrosexual knight true to the new code of sexual behavior: always ask for consent first.
Previously, Catherine Texier has published “I’m 72. So What?” and “Confessions of a DMV Vision Test Failure” in Oldster Magazine.
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Thank you so much for publishing this, Sari!
Fantastic - so looking forward to this book! Thanks Catherine, and Sari for publishing an excerpt.