THE MEN'S PLANET VI:

The Ultra-Sonic Nut Detector

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When I met a nice Jewish boy from Flushing, Queens, it turned out that he was beyond bonkers. I have this ultra-sonic roach and rodent repellent device in my kitchen and bedroom. It emits a high-pitched frequency that supposedly only bugs and animals can hear. But when cute little 21-year-old Barry, who worked at the yuppie deli across the street, came over to help me get rid of an old mattress, he covered his ears and exclaimed, "Ouch! What is that racket? It's giving me a headache."

Later, he revealed that he had been hospitalized in numerous mental hospitals after numerous suicide attempts. And then Gerald complained that a piercing noise was giving him a migraine. Believe me, I've had those devices going 24/7/365 and no one else, myself included, has ever heard an iota of a sound. Apparently, they
also function as nut detectors.

From now on, as soon as I meet a guy, I'm just going to bring him into my kitchen and ask, "Do you hear anything?"

I met Gerald on the Fifth Avenue bus, having just replenished my Coco perfume supply at Bergdorf Goodman's. Hey, they sent me the credit card in the mail-did I ever say I could pay the bill? I gravitated like a magnet towards an incredibly handsome blond guy and tried to open the window.

"What are you looking for?" he asked me.

"Air," I said.

He pointed to an opened hatch in the ceiling that also doubled as an emergency exit.

"That's in case we get attacked by a troop of elephants or a band of terrorists," he said.

Impressed by his wit, I commenced a conversation. He told me he worked as a cotton importer and an art collector.

"You look artistic and autistic," I said.

He stayed on the bus for an extra three stops, and when he took my card, I knew he'd actually call me, unlike all the self-involved liars I've met in the last three months.

Okay, I admit it's just a fantasy of mine that I date guys three times before I sleep with them. Okay, so I succumb to sensual self-indulgence on the first date, but at least I've been using condoms avec my diaphragm since 1972.

When Gerald asked me out to dinner, I envisioned a classy Italian restaurant. Then, the night before, on the phone, he said something about pizza.

"I don't eat junk like pizza," I said snottily. "I'm into seafood, veggies and salad."

But on the day we were supposed to go out, I was stricken with the worst PMS in world history. If I was in England and had committed a murder, I would have gotten acquitted using the PMS defense. Plus, there was a nasty, damp, clingy rain and my bad back felt like it had been broken into two pieces. All I wanted to do was to eat pizza, lying in bed on my heating pad. But I was also incredibly horny, the only positive feature of the PMS experience. I always have so many memorable orgasms then.

So I asked him if he would just come directly over to my apartment with a pizza, some Jamaican ginger beer, and a bottle of Advil. Over the phone, he mentioned that he had a 20-year-old son, the child of an ex-girlfriend he had adopted at the age of two. In my demented, hormone-tormented brain, I rationalized that this made him mature, sympathetic, responsible, and trustworthy.

By the time he got over to my apartment, I was starving and totally ragged out. I grabbed the cheese off three slices and gobbled it down. Then I told him I had to immediately segue to the bedroom. I could barely sit up.

I felt so comfortable with him, despite the fact that he heard the ultra-sonic roach detector, and we had such hot sex, with him spanking my ass, and forcing me to jerk him off, saying in a mean, domineering voice, "You know how to make a man's dick hard, make it hard" that I told him my sexual fantasies which I challenge you, dear readers, to guess at.

He told me I was too skinny, but he said, "Now you have a boyfriend and you'll start getting laid regularly and you'll start eating more and getting more zaftig."

He chainsmoked, was about 30 pounds overweight, and only read magazines in airplanes, but to paraphrase Patricia Arquette in Ed Wood, "If I ever made any value judgements, I'd never have any friends." Anyway, ever since I hit 40, my priority is: can you get it up and keep it up? Hell, go weigh 500 pounds, be illiterate and smoke five packs a day. I don't give a fuck.

The first time, despite my queasiness, and the fact that we had already consumed a pizza, he kept suggesting we go out for Thai food, but by the second time he came over, he had apparently lost his desire to spend money on me and told me he'd be eating something before driving in from Queens. I was in the mood to prepare dinner: Cornish hens, home-fried organic yams, steamed veggies, mescalun salad with homemade bleu cheese dressing. Can you believe with my dual culinary and orgasmic talents I'm still single? I asked him to bring a bottle of champagne.

"Are you very picky about your bubbly?" he asked.

"Of course," I said.

But when he got to my apartment, he claimed the liquor store was closed and had brought a bottle of strawberry-kiwi juice, three apples, and a candy bar.

This reminded me of Suzanne, whose dog I walked when she went to Paris for a month. She was supposed to bring me back a pair of French jeans and a bottle of Coco perfume, but returned instead with a beige sweatshirt, a pair of lace stockings, a package of almond cookies and a bottle of shower gel.

"We can take a walk later and get the champagne," he said, and I knew we never would.

He had brought a jogging suit to change into and insisted that he only drink from glass, not plastic. Compared to my ex, the famous writer who made incessant emotional demands on me for eight years and was constantly saying, "You're not giving me enough affection," this seemed like a relatively straightforward request. I told myself that it was refreshing to be with a non-intellectual extrovert whose only concern was his physical comfort. I did, however, feel compelled to say,"You're the most neurasthenic person I've ever met in my life. Do you know what that means?"

(He didn't.)

The next day he called to tell me he was going to his oncologist for a biopsy. A biopsy? Everybody, myself included, is obsessed with AIDS. But cancer? Radiation. Chemotherapy. When I asked him which part of his body was involved, he said, "Stop being such an investigative reporter."

I was writing an article about a group of police impersonators who ripped off Colombian stashhouses. I had to call my source and say, "Bob, I may have to reach out to you over the weekend, could you keep your beeper on? I just lost a day's worth of work. I've been seeing this guy and he just laid this whole trip on me that he might have cancer and it totally freaked me."

"Oh, that's an old routine," said Bob. "I'm dying, I don't have long to live, you have to do all these disgusting things to me."

Sure enough, the next time I talked to Gerald, he asked me if I would stick my tongue where the sun doesn't shine (see Men's Plant I.)

"No, because you can get hepatitis, and you haven't even gone down on me yet," I said.

He had, however, scored major points for erotic creativity by inspecting me closely and whispering, "You have a beautiful clit." I came really, really hard.

Somehow, the conversation turned to food. I said that my specialty was pasta with white clam sauce, and that I used eight cloves of garlic.

"This Korean woman vibed me out with a heavy garlic trip," he said. "She's still chasing after me."

Previously, he had mentioned living with French and Belgian women.

"What is it with you and the international babes?" I asked. "Do you have something against us passionate Jewesses?"

Then he told me he was off to a urologist to check out a rash on his scrotum. He didn't know if it was from the biopsy, or, frankly, from my...you know.

I told him again about the relatively celibate life I had been living since fracturing a vertebrae of my spine.

"Have you slept with anyone else after me?" I asked.

"Just one girl, but she's clean as a whistle," he replied.

Then he told me he had gotten a negative AIDS test.

"Are you saying you want me to take a test?" I asked. "Because the only sex I've had, I've used condoms plus my diaphragm," I said.

"You can't just get AIDS from sex, you can get it from a blood transfusion!" he yelled.

"How many people get blood transfusions?" I yelled back. "And may I assume you always use condoms with your assorted femmes du monde?"

"I use a lot of bags and I break a lot of bags," he replied. "But I always destroy condoms after I come because a lot of women are after my beautiful blond Jewish babies.

As I was saying about that nut detector...

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