Acts of Service

by Lillian Fishman

he seemed utterly capable of determining our value.

Wasn’t there something demoralizing about it: the way romance with a woman so often asked that I advocate for myself and trust that I would be loved once I had shown how I could care for and excite her, how this kind of relationship seemed to rely on my convincing a woman of my value? What a pleasure it was to be obvious, even if what was obvious was merely my body. I knew that it haunted women that their bodies were designated for sex—even

Isn’t this a cop out? Self objectifying?

women were valuable only until their bodies expired, that women who gave themselves only to each other relinquished this value altogether.

But with Nathan I glimpsed how easy it would be to simply relax into this ready-made achievement, as if he were saying to me, Don’t you see that what you were born with has been precious all along? That you would be a fool to disavow it?

Most of the time group sex is like a birthday party. That’s what it is for people—a big event, a good story.

my sense of self was tied up in the belief that Nathan’s privilege far outstripped mine—and

Well, what about Olivia? I said. I mean—why is she so nervous around me? We never fuck. It’s like we’re obedient planets caught in the same little orbit around you.

What occurred between us was not relaxed or celebratory;

Watching him eat made me confused and tender toward him.

I wanted access to Nathan’s luxuries but I didn’t want to own them myself. I didn’t want to get cabs at ten in the morning, but I wanted to ride the train home again after a night in a fresh, blank hotel room. I wanted to spend nights here and there in hotel rooms until I died. And not hotel rooms in foreign cities, not hotel rooms where I was sleeping before I needed to be somewhere, not rooms I’d paid for, not rooms where anyone knew how to reach me. Rooms a few miles from where I lived, booked on a whim, out of desire—places

Why was it so difficult for me to believe that women could be inevitable, that sooner or later we would end up together, the way men believed that of me?

But I’m grateful for that, at least when I have the wherewithal to be, Romi said. I mean, who wants to just slot into the role they’ve been told to slot into, make no fuss, roll along with it, just marry some guy and fuck him like you were brought up to? Romi! I don’t think I’ve ever heard you be so vulgar. Is it vulgar? she said. I mean, weren’t we brought up to fuck men, even if no one wanted to admit that was what was happening?

And once things get going, you know, between women, Romi said, it’s so much more intense because of that. Because it was so uncertain.

I’d had the sense that beneath her unassuming jogging clothes and the shell of her apartment, Romi resembled a literary hero:

So I’m supposed to think I can’t damage myself, that things don’t hurt me, if I choose them, if I see them clearly? Isn’t that just the deepest submission to power? Here, fine, I can’t resist this anymore?

Tell me honestly, Nathan said. Isn’t it true that you didn’t want me to use one? I asked you to get one. Eve, Nathan said. Isn’t that what you wanted? Yes, I said slowly. Isn’t it true you didn’t want me to use a condom? Yes. Didn’t you like it that way—that I pushed you? Yes. You wanted it just like that. Yes, I said. I thought I would cry. The truth of it felt miserable, impossible, ecstatic.

I thought of the conversations I had with Fatima when she asked me what it was like with Nathan and Olivia. It’s baffling, I remembered saying to her. I say things I can’t believe, things I know are stupid or that I’m ashamed of. I even start to hate Olivia! And then I want more.

First of

all, you have a straightforward rape fantasy. Fuck you. You’re too afraid to get near it, Nathan said. Rape. Submission. Too anxious about it. Surface. Whereas Olivia is just totally comfortable with the fact that she wants to be humiliated?

I was not so different from Olivia. I would never be finished with Nathan of my own volition.

He wasn’t dangerous after all—wasn’t a sociopath—he had never misled Olivia.

advice of a natural liar, all you need to know is, don’t lie. Say, You’re close, but you’re wrong. Say you can’t explain it. Just gesture at the truth without confirming it. I recognized in this advice Nathan’s whole orientation toward life, narrowed to a point—how he managed his wife, Olivia, me, and God knew what else.

Jesus Christ, Eve. What you’re saying, essentially, is: I found out the man I’ve been fucking had been lying to me about being married for, what, a year, and I’m so relieved he’s not a sociopath—which, by the way, he may well be—so glad he’s happily married! Do you have any idea how I would react to something like this? To being lied to and manipulated like this? You love to be manipulated by him!

What better way could there be to live? To be in constant motion toward something perfect, a motion that would carry you to the end of your life?

Steadfastness and sincerity were religious qualities—terms for how one might prioritize others over oneself. How one might respect other people as sacred, their realities as sacred and not to be trifled with. We knew we ourselves were sacred and since there was no one else to protect us we would protect ourselves by becoming the triflers, to prevent being subject to them.

I felt like a new woman who had been cut out of the aching cloth I had been before. There I was, in the paintings, being cut into shape by Nathan’s attention.

as though there existed a sexual truth that was born in me, immune to every social lesson about what is sinister and what is sweet.

What did Nathan say? I asked Olivia. Challenging you is not the same as violating you?

We love what disturbs us if it chooses us and tells us how we matter.

When I thought of Nathan now I could think only of two things in tandem, never one without the other, never anything else: the richness of what he had given me and his happy, mysterious freedom, his nakedness in the bedroom uptown and right beside it the car and the open road I envisioned him driving down. His was the greatest act of service I had ever received.