Bernadette Esposito
You see them on the streets: driving cars, riding bicycles, walking, running, even pushing strollers. You see them at rest stops, at gas stations, at Laundromats and Supermarkets. You see them in front of you: in lines, on billboards, in movies, at post-offices. Whether they hanker for juice or juleps, Keirkegaard or comic books, these men implicate themselves. In high school we called them In-a-minute men, an innocuous fleet of testosterone whose identities were construed in comeliness alone. Tattooed or tailored, combed or corrupt, predator or pussy cat, these were men we would do in-a-minute. Whatever it was we would do given the opportunity is still unclear. For these were not men we would venture off into relationships with—although the fantasy may have been present. In-a-Minute-Men would not secure our domestic tranquility, father our children, or discover our inner beauty. And neither would we hinder them with similar requests. Instead, we defiled these platonic Adonises, stripped them of their intellectual and emotional dignity by relegating them, simply, to caricatures of our lust. The secret pact of which was never revealed.
“Sweet Jesus, Liberty.” My eyes sprang from their sockets with all the profundity of a Hanna Barbera production. My friend Liberty down-shifted up the hill where Hot Guy—not to be confused with Ass-Man or Saucy Mouth—rode his bike. I gasped, fumbled for my sobriety, knowing that if I lost touch now a giddy stupor would dilute the moment. And that’s what this was all about: The Moment. The hill was optimum for viewing Hot Guy from behind. His calves bulged. Our pupils dilated. Looking closely, as we always did, sweat seemed to form on his brow adding to the frequency of moisture already soaking his wet hair. While we honed in on Hot Guy, fixating on the most subtle changes in his physical condition: The increased heart rate, followed by heavy breathing—near panting—our own arrhythmia went virtually unnoticed. We might have even ignored these minor and uncharacteristically charming nuances had we not hugged the curb and evened our speed. We drove right alongside him. “Can you imagine sinking your teeth into those thighs?” I shuddered. I bit my lip. I caressed my neck with my palm. Hot Guy’s thighs were meant more to expand and contract, heave upward than to mar any physical disturbance we had already incurred simply pacing him.
If Twain was correct when he said, “Countenance could disclose what was passing in the heart plainer than the tongue could,” then complicity reigned over my silent and tense dual with Hot Guy. We never met. We may never meet. This is all part of the In-a-Minute Man mystique, what is innately In-a-Minute Man-ly: That you never talk to him, you never get to know him. Say he’s lying prone in an Adrian Lyne film, then the likelihood of having anything more than an extra-sensory experience is even less than discovering a chip off the Hope diamond in tornado alley. These men are less risky. Their stakes are much lower than the In-a-Minute Man who works in the office down the hall or the one who walks his dog or child around the lake at five. While it may feel acutely human to supinate, exposing the façade means risking the serenity: Stepping into a bed of wild flowers and discovering Nightshade or Foxglove. Beautiful, but deadly.
And you can never ensure that you won’t be struck dumb, rendered mute in the presence of an In-a-Minute Man. One can easily become mesmerized by sheer physicality of the visage—not unlike Eustacia Vye’s in Hardy’s Return of the Native: “The mouth seemed formed less to speak than to quiver, less to quiver than to kiss, less to kiss then to curl.” The slightest interaction with Hot Guy could shatter the fragile, crystalline, in-a-minute façade once and for all. Say, for instance, I did attempt to speak, knowing good and well that in his presence my vocal chords weaken. A loosely knit informality such as, “Hi” or “Hello” is easily exploited to a garbled orgy of glib and nonsensical utterances resembling dry heaves.
Hot Guy may recognize me as the woman who objectifies him. Another time this would have embarrassed—even disgusted—me, that I would partake in the male gaze, that I might actually have something in common with the whistlers, the gawkers, the gapers, the hound-dog sniffing, slobbering, verbally accosting males acquiescing to their fluctuating testosterone levels.
Imagine if every advertisement catered to the heterosexual woman by exploiting partially dressed men, their vital parts shrouded in mystery by some scintillating fabric tossed carelessly over some bump or bulge. Would we have hidden these magazines from our mothers during adolescence? Would we stare shamelessly while purchasing beer or diapers? Would we cop a glance while clutching our partner’s hand? Yes. Yes. And, yes.
We have chemicals in our brains called neurotransmitters that make the experience of eros universal—even common—under the right circumstances. On account of these chemicals, In-a-Minute-Men, whether they exist on your T.V. screen or in your coffee shop, are spotted instantaneously. They can cause withdraw symptoms like mind-alternating drugs. This happened to my mother, who managed to thwart such attacks with pro football. Every Sunday after church she sealed an irrevocable, lusty pact with In-a-Minute-Man and quarterback Doug Flutie. She would never meet Doug Flutie and she knew it, yet she spoke of him with an interminable carnality, cajoling him through another game, all the while disclosing his vitals: “Which position does he play, Mom?” “Missionary position, Honey.” Understand that a fickle veneer lies dormant within this brand of in-a-minute-man lust, a veneer capable of casting off a tethered, whimsical line and hooking another. Flutie was replaced by the hotter, hunkier Mike Tomczak whose poster hung for a while over my sister’s crib so “she knew who her real father was.” This cycle continued, until the next In-a-Minute-Man was spotted, deflowered and sequestered to verbal servitude, setting a precedent for In-a-Minute men everywhere.
Like Flutie, Tomczak and the others, Hot Guy would have to endure the rapaciousness of desire—my desire, a self-inflicted denial. No one denied me Hot Guy, not even Hot Guy necessarily. I denied him myself. And in human fashion I continue to want what I can’t have.
Our next move was spontaneous, yet decisively cutting-edge and riddled with a mixture of feline ferocity and drunken debauchery. Like two sailors negotiating jailbait Liberty and I craned our necks and smacked our lips. Hot Guy made eye-contact. “Nice ass!” we screamed. We watched his In-a-Minute Man essence become cryogenically suspended, like Han Solo’s, preserved indelibly for future fantasies before careening upward, squealing shamelessly.
Bernadette Esposito is a writer, mathematician and quilt maker. She is currently writing a book about plane crashes.