Free Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin Page B

“You should do something with it.”

    Our margaritas arrived, so we ordered lunch—grilled chicken sandwich for him, fruit plate for me. To pull him out of his funk, I told him about my new job, leaning heavily on my cute boss to keep it interesting.
    “Is this guy married?” Jeff asked.
    I shook my head. “Divorced. With a seven-year-old kid. The kid lives in Tarzana with the ex-wife.”
    “Mmm.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Sounds like he’s ready, that’s all.”
    I rolled my eyes at him. “He’s my boss , Jeff.” I could see how much he wanted to build a case for me and Neil, but I wasn’t about to let him. He’s already mythologized my sex life to the point of absurdity. It delights him no end to paint me as some rabid little horndog, humping her way around Tinseltown. I told him once that many little people are offended, much in the way that gay and black people are, by the commonly held notion that they’re oversexed. He wasn’t fazed a bit. He said he’d never considered that an insult and that I shouldn’t, either.
    The fact remains: I’m no Jezebel. The last time I had sex with anybody was over five years ago. The guy’s name was Henry something, and he was an old friend of Jeff’s, someone he’d known at UC-Davis, visiting from Kentucky. He was sort of a hippie, skinnyand goofy-looking, but nice enough. One afternoon at Jeff’s house, while Jeff was out shopping for dinner, Henry gave me a massage, using cedar oil he carried in an embossed leather case. When his fingers strayed accidentally—and how could they not, on this body?—I responded with a not-so-subtle moan of appreciation. After that we were off and running.
    And, yes, penetration was achieved. I know that’s your first question, so let’s just get it out of the way. I’m a dwarf, remember, not a midget, which means that certain parts of me are closer to average size than others. That may be a little hard to picture, but trust me; I wouldn’t lie to you about this. At any rate, poor Henry seemed even more surprised than I was, fretting a lot afterwards about whether he’d taken advantage of me. I assured him he hadn’t, but he was a wreck for the rest of his visit.
    The following December he wrote me a long, earnest Christmas card from Bowling Green, apparently to determine whether I’d been permanently traumatized by the experience. He hadn’t told Jeff about it, he said, and swore he never would, as if that would somehow protect my honor. Jeff already knew everything, of course, since I’d spilled the beans as soon as we dropped Henry off at the airport. Ever since then, Jeff has tended to exaggerate my sexual potential the way he exaggerates everything else.
    While we’re on the subject: I haven’t had much luck with men my own size. There aren’t a lot of them, in the first place, and the ones I’ve met just haven’t turned me on. Mom tried on several occasions to fix me up with men she met at LPA meetings, but I found them ridiculously macho and unappealing. Some people would say that this apparent inability to eroticize my own kind reflects serious self-loathing on my part. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe I just like big guys. God knows, other women aren’t required to apologize for their taste in men.
    For a while in the early eighties I did all right in the sex department. Nice men propositioned me in the weirdest places, and I became a sort of serial slut, though not without occasional misgivings. Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I wondered if they reallywanted me , Cadence Roth, or were just being kinky. Then I realized how thoroughly I’d been victimized by the semantics of the larger world. If sex with a little person was kinky by its very definition, I had no choice but to embrace kink when it found me and be damned grateful for its existence. When long legs and big tits worked for other women, why shouldn’t my body work for me? And if the guy laughed with his buddies about it later and never