They told me to go into the room.
For the record, I did not want to go into the room.
But here I am, in the room, where they said a woman would be. And a bed, four walls, and a woman. Who is this woman? I don’t know. All I know is that there’s going to be a woman.
This terrifies me. I haven’t been with a woman, touched a woman, smelled a woman in, like, five years. Not since Amelia, and that was, like, five years ago.
But here I am, in this room, where a woman is supposed to be.
Oh, and there are no lights. They told me that right before they pushed me through the door. When I’m inside they lock it. I step forward, my arms stretched out before me, my lips parting to say, “Hello?”
Is anyone there?
I hear breathing. No, someone is crying––no, sobbing. At this point I wish I actually read the terms and agreement before I signed the paper. I never read it. Does anyone read those documents? Terms and agreements are written to specifically bore you to tears and has you flipping to the last page just to get rid of it. All I cared about was the title of the study:
The Blind Intimacy Study.
I’m not here because I want to be. I’m here because I figure it’s an easy enough way to meet someone. And I’m getting paid for it. Fifty dollars before and fifty dollars after. If, you know…if we, like, consummate the study.
As I stand in this pitch black locked room with some crying woman, the word blind finally hits me.
Oh, I groan to myself.
My arms are still outstretched, my lips still slightly parted, saying, “Hello?”
“Do you know how big this room is?”
“Do you know where the bed is?”
She’s still crying, wherever she is, and I’m wondering if I’ll be able to see her after we, you know…if we, like, consummate the study.
I already know that it probably won’t happen, because I can feel my organs drawing up into myself. That and she’s crying.
I find the bed when I accidentally walk into it. (Is everything that happens in the dark an accident because no one sees anything?) Instead of swearing, I sit down. It’s a springy mattress, the kind you can tell which end someone else is sitting on because of how it dips under one’s weight. I’m on one side of the bed and she’s on the other, sobbing. I contemplate if I should touch her, put and arm around her, comfort her.
The Blind Intimacy Study.
“Hello?” I say.
I shift on the bed, saying, “What’s your name?”
The terms and agreement didn’t say we had to talk. It didn’t say anything about conversing with the opposite sex. Then again, I only skimmed the document. What I do know is the only thing we have to do is, you know…like, consummate the study.
We’re wasting the psychologists’ time right now. They didn’t say there wasn’t a window somewhere in here, but I wonder if there is.
I slide my hand across the springy bed until I touch her hand.
“Don’t.”
“Sorry,” I say.
I tell her, “My name’s––”
“We’re not supposed to tell each other our names.” She says, “It says that in the terms and agreement.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
The bed bounces as she moves. She’s moving closer to me. She sits next to me on the bed. I hear her wipe her nose.
She says, “Okay.” In the dark she finds my knee. With her other hand, I imagine she’s wiping away tears.
“Okay,” she says again. “Okay.”
I find myself getting more nervous. My hands cramp up. I’m sweating. I’m breathing through my mouth.
I say, “It really said we can’t introduce ourselves?” Her hand moves an inch up my leg. “We’re really not supposed to, like, know anything about each other?”
“Really, no.”
I move her hand off my leg. “They want us to breed like wild animals in the dark?”
She sniffs. “No. They gave me birth control a month before today.”
“How do you know it works? What if it’s the placebo and we come out of this study parents?”
She sniffs again. She’s crying again.
“Why are you crying?”
She puts her hand on my thigh and I move it off.
“Tell me why you’re crying.”
“I’m…I’m afraid.”
I thrum my fingers on the mattress. “Of the dark?”
“Of intimacy.”
I forget why I’m participating in this study. Oh yeah, to get my other half of the one-hundred dollars. And to, maybe, I don’t know, meet someone. I realize I overestimated that part just a tad. Okay, a lot.
I clear my throat. I’ve never not wanted to be intimate more than right now. I say, “If it makes you feel any better, it’s been a long time for me, too. Like, five years.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
And she’s crying again. No, sobbing. Why couldn’t I have been locked in a room with someone who’s ready to embrace intimacy full on? Or someone who doesn’t cry? I understand that asking for anything in this world is asking for too much. Plus, I’m afraid of intimacy, too, but I’m not about to just come out and say it like someone else I know.
My mouth opens again, my tongue searching for words but there are none. I have nothing. I’m drawing up into myself even more. I regret ever signing that damn piece of paper.
There’s her hand again, on my knee. A visual representation of insanity. Except we’re in total darkness.
“Let’s just get this over with so we can get out of here,” she says.
I stand up. I assume I’m facing her but I have no sense of direction anymore.
“Why did you want to do this study in the first place?” I ask.
I question her, “What are you hoping to get out of this?”
“We’re not supposed to talk. It says so in the terms and agreement. It also says we’re supposed to––”
“I know. Consummate the study.” I scratch my head. “What if we change our minds, though? They can’t keep us locked up in here, right?”
“We signed a document saying we agreed to the terms of the study. We’re legally supposed to––”
“Yeah, I know, but what if one of us changes our minds?”
I imagine her brow furrowing. I imagine she’s no longer crying. She asks, “Did you change your mind?”
I want to walk around. I express myself best when I have room to move. But I can’t see anything. For all I know, she’s a walking, talking pig. For all she knows, I might be a walking, talking pig.
For the record, I’m not a walking, talking pig. I can’t speak for her, though.
I shuffle my feet. I can’t stand still. I can’t do this.
I’m experiencing what they call “cold feet.”
Second thoughts.
Reevaluation.
Reconsideration.
“Are you changing your mind?” she asks again.
I shrug in reply, then remember that she can’t see me.
“I don’t know.”
“We’re under a legal contract.”
“But what if we break the contract? They can’t keep us in here. They can’t make us, you know…” I shuffle my feet. “That’s rape.”
“The terms and agreement said nothing about rape.”
Of course it didn’t. Doesn’t. Will not.
The Blind Intimate Study.
The bed creaks. I feel a warm body close to me. Then I feel something else, a hand. No, a face. Wet lips, wet cheeks, a wet face.
I push her back.
For the record, I did not want to go into this room.
If I had to blame somebody, it wouldn’t be the psychologists, it wouldn’t be my parents, it’d be my damn therapist.
“You need to get yourself back out there,” she tells me.
Have you heard of speed-dating?
Have you ever been to a strip club?
Yeah, I tell her, because I like being straddled by “Daddy’s Girl” when she never had a father to grow up with. Because I want an STD. Because I personally condone anonymous sex.
No, thank you.
I’m good.
I’m fine.
Really, I’m okay.
Then she tells me about this study. She finally admits that she’s tired of me talking about Amelia. She prescribes sex.
You’ll even get paid for it.
I’m no therapist, but I don’t think sex is the answer to my problems.
She signs me up for the study, anyway. She forges my signature. She gives them my phone number, my home address, my email.
What did you therapist prescribe you?
Mine prescribed me sex.
The part that’s really funny––my favorite part––the part that’s the real knee-slapper––is that my therapist can’t care less about Freud. She says he’s outdated. Yet here she is, prescribing me sex. Advising that I pimp myself out.
You’ll be doing a justice for psychology, she tells me. For science, for humanity I’ll be doing a great service.
Now I’m in this room. But, for the record, I do not want to be here.
Yet here I am.
Walah. Alikazam. Abrakadabra.
In the clutches of an invisible woman as I struggle for the door.
She begs, “Let’s just do it already.”
The woman who recently admitted that she’s afraid of intimacy is the one trying to unbutton my pants.
I grab her hands.
I ask, “What’s your name?” I say, “First, tell me your name.”
“No,” she pants. “We’re not supposed to.”
I shrug. No name, no sex.
She sighs, throwing her head back. I know this because I feel her hair whip me in the face.
“All right. Okay. Fine.”
She huffs.
I’m still holding onto her hands, waiting, doing everything in my power to stall her, to change her mind.
Then, finally, she answers, “My name is Amelia.”
What?
“Amelia. My name is Amelia. What’s yours?”
I’m speechless. I’m still holding onto her hands but my grip has loosened. I don’t know what to say.
“Your name,” Amelia says.
Derek.
“Derek?”
I nod, remembering she can’t see me. “Yes. Derek.”
Suddenly her hand is on my face, poking me in the eye, squishing my nose.
“It’s you?”
I say, “What are the odds, huh?” Laughing, I say, “Irony at its finest.”
How do you feel about consummating the study now?
A knock comes from wherever the door is. I guess it’s behind me. White light shoots into the room. We squint. I’m still holding on to one of her hands. I feel myself blush.
I ask, “Time’s up?”
“You wont get your second fifty dollars if you don’t follow through with the study.”
I look at Amelia. At her wet face, her smeared makeup, her lips twitching.
I run my fingers through a strand of her fiery orange hair. Genetically frizzy hair she’s always trying to tame. I find myself smiling. So does Amelia.
“You know,” I say, “if we combine our fifty dollars, we could go out for a pretty nice dinner.”
She’s no longer crying but there’s one more tear that slips down her face. She sniffs, then nods okay.
The psychologist sighs behind us.
“How long has it been?” She asks, “Do you know how long it’s been?”
“Like, five years.”
Five years, one month, and sixteen days.
“Something like that.”
For the record, I did not want to go into the room, but I’m glad I did.
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