exchange theory

by lori horvitz

    At first I was seduced by the delicacy of her needles. Unlike other dentists, Dr. B.’s Novocain injection didn’t cause my fingernails to dig for armrest innards. In fact, her introductory shot was downright calming. Maybe she had studied eastern medicine and knew the precise point where the shot would induce the most pleasure. “I use extra fine needles. They only cost fifteen or twenty cents more,” she explained ten minutes later, prodding a steel pick at my gums to make sure numbness had set in. As she strained her neck to peer into my mouth, I felt her third trimester bulge rub against my hipbone, straight up to my right breast. For a moment, I tried to imagine her protrusion belonged to me.

      “When are you due?” I asked, just before she placed the saliva suction in my mouth, my eye moving between her belly and a hanging television blasting the O.J. trial.

      “In about three weeks.” No doubt, by the indications on her office walls—enlarged photos of sanguine offspring—the baby lodged between us would be her third, maybe her fourth or fifth. “And you?” she said, “Do you have any children yet?”

      It was her yet that gnawed at me like a sharp-toothed termite, as if having a baby was a given, like menstruation, menopause, or for that matter, baby teeth.

      But I suppose I shouldn’t be too harsh about Dr. B.’s assumption; she knew I was married to a man named Marco; dental coverage, thank goodness, was one of the perks of this union. No way would I be able to afford Dr. B.’s services otherwise. My measly stipend at school—I was working on my sociology doctorate at a New England university—barely covered a yearly pap smear, let alone crowns, root canals, or a possible bone graft to replace my receding gums.

      And it was a pleasure to romp into Dr. B.’s office and be treated like somebody’s wife. (The truth of the matter is that Marco is a gay friend of mine from Uruguay. He needed a green card and I obliged.) Usually I’d resort to sorrowful clinics, places where pulling teeth was more common than fixing them. There, hygienists, before scraping off tarter buildup, would scornfully ask, “When’s the last time you had your teeth cleaned?” At one university clinic five years prior, a dental student, in the midst of killing my nerve, admitted he’d never before performed a root canal. He added, “I’d rather be a real estate mogul.”

      Dr. B. tugged my mouth open and drilled into my upper right molar. To make the experience more pleasant, I imagined having sex with Dan, my marine-biologist boyfriend of six months. Tall and skinny and blonde, he grew up in a tiny mid-western town, land-locked and isolated, not far from the Canadian border. As soon as he had the chance, he made his way towards the Eastern Seaboard to study the decline of billfish in the North Atlantic. Initially, I liked that about Dan. His passion for water. For life underwater. In a way he looked like a fish with big eyes and full flounder lips. And at times he’d strut in a manner reminiscent of a Sea Horse—deliberate and graceful.

      After a one-month dry spell, our sex life had gone from what Dan referred to as a parched desert floor to its lush spring greenness. That was part of the problem. Not the good sex, but the terminology. Dan equated everything we did with marine life, from doing the laundry to killing a mosquito to going to the movies. When I could no longer tolerate his underwater discourse, whether it was about the sex life of humpback whales or the digestion process of a parasitic isopod, I accused him of loving his fish more than me. “I’m not a fish!” I yelled.

      Dan paced the floor. I could tell he didn’t know how to broach the subject without speaking in fish. Following three indecipherable utterances, he accused me of spending too much time with Jen, another sociology doctoral student I’d met in my Social Stratification seminar.

      Perhaps my waning attraction to Dan and his underwater world had forced me to seek out more contact on dry land. Besides, Jen was a hoot. She worked hard and played hard and insisted I do the same. Her mantra: “You’re gonna be dead a lot longer than you’re gonna be alive.” She invited me to parties, dinners, happy hour. Maybe it was her striking blue eyes, dark hair and chiseled features (“I’m Black Irish,” she explained), or the flowy muslin clothes she wore, but even before we got to know each other, I watched her rotate the thin gold ring around her middle finger, reapply her chapstick, take notes with a green pen.

      Sometimes Dan reluctantly accompanied me to Jen’s parties; mostly he didn’t. One night, following a drunken debate over the intellectual superiority of dolphins versus humans, Dan referred to Jen as a catfish stricken with hole-in-the-head disease. Later, Jen gave me advice about Dan: tie him up in seaweed.

      And when Dan was away for three weeks collecting test tubes full of algae off Nova Scotia, Jen chaperoned me to an abortion clinic, held my hand before and after the procedure.

      “It was probably no bigger than the size of a piece of chalk,” Jen said, her attempt to alleviate my guilt, especially after the lunatics outside the clinic called me a murderer.

      “But what if that chalk was capable of drawing beautiful pictures?”

      I didn’t tell Dan about the operation until he returned home and shook his sandy sneakers over the trashcan. I wanted to spare him the worry, but more importantly, I wanted to tell him in person. And when I did, he wrapped his long arms around me and began to sob.

      And that was that. We never spoke of it again.  

      “Do you think O.J. killed his wife?” Dr. B. asked, yanking me back to her office, a baby pressing against my arm, a rotted tooth particle suctioned up from the back of my mouth; it was a loud, satisfying draw.

      “I want to give him the benefit of the doubt,” her assistant said. I studied the assistant’s hands, her tiny diamond ring, her spindly fingers handing Dr. B. a fine drill bit.  

     

        Benefit of the doubt. That’s why I was still with Dan. He was a good guy. Marriage material. Yet, while he was away, I thought of calling it quits with him and his fish. My friends gasped: “But he’s such a great catch!” And then there was Jen, whose big brute of a boyfriend not only owed her thousands of dollars, but also cheated on her. “If I break up with him,” she said, “I’ll never get the money.” Her situation helped me put my situation into perspective; no longer would I take Dan’s kindness, intelligence and sensitivity for granted.

      So I made every effort to savor him as if he were a tangy exotic dish. Together we drank fancy wines, rubbed each other with expensive massage oils, exchanged notes on our respective research projects—his observations on the settling preferences of larval flounders, my data on sex offenders and social control. To my surprise, I started to restate Dan’s research in sociological terms: “That particular pattern corresponds to urban gentrification examined within a symbolic interactionist framework.” Who would have thought that perverts and tiny fish could meet on common ground?

      Things were working out fine. Dan and Jen, despite their initial animosity towards one another, began to enjoy each other’s company. Together they planned my 29th birthday party, a surprise party, my first ever. And Dan, without hesitation accompanied me to Jen’s parties. Once I found Dan and Jen standing side by side in a friend’s kitchen, laughing uncontrollably over a platter of broccoli. I have to admit, I was slightly jealous of their evolving friendship. Of course that made Dan look even more desirable. 

      

        Six months after my first visit to Dr. B.’s (I’d been back to her office twice in between for a curettage and two fillings), her new hygienist sat me down for a cleaning. She was pregnant. The O.J. trial was over.

      Following the cleaning, as the hygienist prepared her tool tray for the next patient, Dr. B. inspected my mouth. She told me my gums were looking better—I didn’t need the bone graft after all—then asked if I had any children. Again. Did she receive confidential information from Planned Parenthood? Sprawled in Dr. B.’s baby blue dental throne, I couldn’t help but feel remorse for the child I could have had.

      “My sister, she’s finished. Already got three kids of her own,” the hygienist said. “She’s given me her hand-me-downs: a playpen, stroller, teething rings.”

      Finished? Like finishing a degree? Going to finishing school? To finish. Finishing a piece of furniture.  

     

        Dan told me that salmon, like other anadromous fishes, die once they reproduce. That’s when I thought, maybe if I don’t reproduce I’ll live forever. And speaking of forever, Dan asked me to marry him. Right there in a dimly lit sushi restaurant, in front of Jen and her boyfriend.

      “I’m already married,” I replied. How could he forget I was married to Marco? Shocked at the question, I was more bewildered by his timing. Couldn’t he wait until we were alone? I still had tiny fish eggs stuck between my teeth. But I rubbed his shoulder, pecked him on the cheek, placed his hand in mine. “I’m a little taken aback by the question—”

      “Why?” Dan snapped. He yanked his hand away and covered his face. A second later, through the V of his index and middle fingers, he looked at me, then lowered his head. “Sorry. Must have been the sake. Went straight to my brain.”

      “Here’s to sake,” Jen said, holding the thimble-size cup in front of her before swigging it down.

      Later that night, Dan caressed my belly in small circular patterns. Five minutes into it he slowed his fingers, said, “You’ve got me on a hook squirming above water.” He buried his head in a pillow and released a long, stifled groan. For a minute, I stared at the dark birthmark smack in the center of his spine and perched down beside him. As if the birthmark were a button that would make everything better, I pressed it and slid my finger up to his neck, around to the soft swirl of his left ear—a conch shell of sorts. (Would I hear ocean rumble if I placed my ear against his?) I knew things would be okay, for the time being, when I heard his muffled chuckle.

      To be honest, Dan’s marriage proposal brought me a sense of relief from the sporadic paranoia I’d had about Dan and Jen. Not that they spent any time alone, as far as I knew, but on more than one occasion, I’d observe them hunched together, speaking in a furtive manner. Coincidentally, as soon as my suspicions eased up, so did my attraction to Dan.

      But I still had faith in him, in us. And now that I was certain Jen posed no threat, I once again felt relaxed in her presence. So when she invited me over for her specialty—apricot jelly chicken thighs—I happily accepted.

      On her velvet green sofa, we drank a bottle of cheap Rumanian wine, sloppily clanking our glasses together after each refill. “I’m so glad you’re in my life,” she said, filling her glass to the brim. I felt awful. Why had I been so distrustful of her? Slumped upon the couch, she stared at the Dali poster on the wall in front of her. And as if she were confessing to the poster’s melted clock, she said, “I’ve been lying to my therapist.”

      “About what?” I tried to make eye contact, but had to settle for lashes.

       Before she spoke, the refrigerator motor came to a sudden halt. Finally she turned towards me. “Stupid things.” She sat up straight. “Like how Richard’s been treating me well. In reality, he’s...” Jen placed her hand on her jaw. “Same ol’, same ol’. But now he owes me even more money.” She moved closer; her knee brushed against mine. Her familiar body odor, a subtle compound of sandalwood and sweat, helped neutralize the lingering smoke from the over-broiled chicken.

      “Maybe you should find a new therapist,” I said, wondering how Dan would explain Jen’s situation. Probably something to do with the nature of parasitic relationships and polygmamal threshold theory. Or contaminated estuaries and their effects on spawning capacity.

      Jen clutched her jaw and grimaced. “My tooth. It just started to throb. What was the name of your dentist?”

      I reached over Jen’s legs for my knapsack. And when I returned to an upright position, her arm slung around my shoulder. How drunk was she? By the time I opened my phone book to find Dr. B.’s number, I realized I knew it by heart.

      All of a sudden, Jen’s lips glittered in front of me. “Kiss me,” she said. I studied the varying shades of wine stain on her teeth. She leaned her head forward. And I didn’t move away. In fact, I moved in closer and kissed her. For a moment, I felt like I was a five and dime goldfish, once confined to swimming circles in a clear plastic bag, finally released into the belly of a tranquil green lake. But then I thought about Dan.

      I inched away from Jen. “How’s your tooth?” I asked.

      “My tooth?” Jen rested her head on my shoulder. “You think you can tie a string around it and attach it to the doorknob?”

      But there was no time for strings and teeth and doors. I hastily zipped my knapsack, grabbed my jacket and reminded Jen about the lecture I had to prepare for my morning class on exchange theory and rational choice—the more a person is rewarded for a specific action, the more that action becomes ingrained in his or her behavior pattern.

      Instead of going home, I made my way to Dan’s apartment. Even though it was well after midnight, I lightly knocked upon his door. No reply. I knocked again. Nothing. So I let myself in, tip-toed into his bedroom. Lying on his back with both hands open as if he were meditating, I watched Dan take in and release deep breaths of air. I imagined he was in the middle of a dream—moving languidly through tropical waters, stopping to inspect dazzling coral reefs along the way. 

      I wanted him like never before.

      “Dan,” I whispered, stroking the inside of his hand.

      He opened his eyes and stared up at me. “Barnacles....barnacles were growing in between my toes,” he said, raising his leg to see if his dream correlated with reality.

      I ripped off my shirt and climbed on top of him, pinning both his arms down with my weight.

      Maybe that’s all I needed. A jump start. Jen’s kiss. One little kiss to get me going with Dan again. And it worked. Better than any pills or new age piano music or apricots (Jen told me they made for better orgasms). 

      After that, as long as Dan accompanied me, I made sure to attend every party Jen invited me to. Dan and I became inseparable. Our sex life was on the upswing.

      But there was a catch.

      During the course of each party, Jen would lead me into a strange bathroom, or bedroom, or out of the way nook. And we’d kiss. Sometimes for a couple of seconds, oftentimes for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t like I was drunk and reckless—I was well-aware of the situation and frequently stone sober. The kiss was a magic potion of sorts. And I took it for Dan, for us. Or at least that’s what I told myself at the time. And when I’d get my fix, I’d find Dan and wrap my arms around him, reach up and gently lick his earlobe, regardless of who he was talking to. He’d always react the same way—first he’d chuckle, then say something about how I was his “cute little pike perch.” Eventually, I’d escort him out the door and within the hour, we’d tear off each other’s clothes and have the most incredible sex.

      Three months into this successful jump-start method, Jen and I entered a maroon-colored bathroom at a party thrown by Dan’s professor. I fastened the hook on the door. But prior to embarking on our clandestine kiss, she unlatched the hook, said, “Let’s add some excitement.”

      “But your boyfriend’s in the next room,” I said.

      Jen looked at me, looked at herself in the mirror, turned the light out. “All the better,” she said. “It’s like stealing back the money he owes me. And with the door unfastened, I’ll get triple the money.”

      So the stakes were getting higher (which made for even better sex with Dan). Once we almost got caught. A drunk woman, a stranger to both Jen and me, stumbled into the bathroom and bumped into us, causing Jen to nearly fall over the toilet. I turned the light on, grabbed hold of Jen’s arm and pulled her up. “She lost her contact lens,” I told the drunk woman.

      Afterwards, I latched onto Dan, who was talking to his colleague about instinctual versus learned behavior in nesting Galapagos iguanas. The colleague mentioned a study in which iguanas would trudge over miles of scorched earth and climb up a thousand feet of baking volcanic ash to find the best place to lay eggs. Sometimes the volcanoes erupted, killing the nesting mothers.

      I slid my hand into Dan’s back pocket and thought about the connections between instinct and habit and passion. What about those gray areas between habit and genuine cravings? Do they, at times, become one and the same? When you thirst for the comfort and safety of routine, no matter how painful? 

     

        A year after my initial visit to Dr. B.’s office (I continued to frequent her office for more cavities filled and re-filled than I care to remember, and a gold crown), I was convinced she was running a refuge for pregnant, wayward women. Not only was Dr. B. pregnant again, but this time I got a double dose of fecundity; her new assistant, whose abdomen stuck out like a helicopter about to be launched, could have crouched down on her hands and knees right there. I imagined Dr. B., her gentle voice soothing the assistant’s moans and wails, pulling the bloody head of a healthy infant into the world of proxy brushes, amalgam, and dental dams.

      That day, because my car broke down and I didn’t know how to drive Dan’s stick shift pick-up truck, he had driven me to Dr. B.’s office for my semi-annual cleaning. In the waiting room, after taking note of Dr. B.’s pregnant assistant, I whispered, “It’s creepy...like these women are birthing machines.”

      Dan fondled his chin, then stared up at the ceiling. “Did you know that a Great White Shark’s tooth can grow up to four inches in length?”

      From the magazine rack, I picked up a copy of People with Madonna on the cover: The Maternity Girl.

      Jen had left town for summer break. She’d been back for a week but I hadn’t yet seen her. I’m not sure if Dan figured out the correlation between Jen’s presence in my life and my desires for him, but we both fell into a state of unconcerned resignation, as if we were an old Mid-Western couple eating hamburgers in a diner, staring out the window with nothing more to say to each other.

      Right after Jen had departed, Dan finally fessed up—just as I’d suspected, Jen had tried to seduce him not too long after he’d returned from Nova Scotia. “She’d been extra friendly and all,” he said, “but then she brought a slew of salamanders to my lab. Before she got anywhere with me, I told her to back off.”

      “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

      “I didn’t want it to come between you two.”

     

        In silence, we sat in Dr. B.’s waiting-room. 

      Until, of all people, Jen stormed into Dr. B.’s office. “I thought that was your truck in the lot,” she said to Dan. “Who else would have that ‘I Brake For Sea Lions’ sticker on his bumper?” Jen told us (despite my refusal to look at her) she’d woken up with a terrible pain in her mouth and come in for an emergency visit. From her bag, she lifted a bottle of brandy. “This is what’s helping me cope. Want some?”

      Dan clenched the liter-size bottle, stood up, turned his face to the wall and took a long swig. That’s when the hygienist came out to retrieve me. “You guys having a party? What’s the occasion?”

      “My throbbing molar,” Jen said.

      While the hygienist picked at my teeth, she told me about her infant son: “He’s an angel. A breathing miracle.” At one point, she put her probe down and showed me a wallet-sized photo of her son in a yellow one-piece bunny suit. Cute. But it was hard to focus on bunny suits. Especially knowing that Jen and Dan were getting drunk in the waiting room.

      Mid-way through the cleaning, I sat up, rinsed my mouth with water, spit it out. While I watched tiny strings of blood swirl down the drain, I heard Jen in the next room telling Dr. B.’s assistant how her pain was getting worse, “exponentially with each passing minute.”

      Following my cleaning, Dr. B. inspected my mouth, and for the first time, gave my teeth and gums a clean bill of health.

      Drunk and giddy, slouched on a wicker seat in the waiting room, Dan blurted out, “Hey, what’s the catch of the day? And where the heck are the males? They’re supposed to defend the eggs before they hatch! They’re gonna hatch upstream. They’re fucking like rabbit fish!”

      “How much did you drink?” I asked.

      He grabbed my hand, tried to pull me into the seat with him.

      “Stop that!” I said, holding my ground.

      He held his arms out. “Nobody’ll see us. Don’t be a prude!” 

      “Stay here. I’ll get you water.”

      “I could get my own water,” Dan said, attempting to ascend from his seat, only to plummet back in it. “Whoopsi-daisy!”

      I ran to the bathroom and tugged a tiny paper cup from the dispenser above the sink. Just before I turned the faucet off, I felt a breath of hot air on my neck. I looked in the mirror and saw Jen. She tapped the bathroom door shut; it remained partially open.

      “It’s been a while,” she said, moving next to me. 

      I stepped away. “Isn’t Dr. B. working on your tooth?”

      “She numbed me up with Novocain. Right now she’s with another patient. Give me a kiss.” Jen turned towards me and tightly clutched my wrist.

      “For God’s sakes! This is the dentist’s office!” For a tense moment, I glared at Jen, but I didn’t have it in me to confront her (or was I just as guilty?). I walked towards the door; Jen intercepted my arm, pulled it towards her. Again I moved away, tried to pick up the cup of water.

      Sternly, I looked at Jen. “How much brandy did Dan drink?”

      Jen leaned forward, pressed her numb lip on mine. Stunned by her brazenness, I froze up, then gradually backed away. And when I did, I noticed two sets of eyes peering at us: the assistant’s and Dan’s.

      “Dr. B. is....she’s read...ready for you,” the assistant said before sprinting away.

      Dan stared at me. At Jen. At me again. Jen excused herself and followed the assistant. I handed Dan the cup of water. He drank it and handed the cup back to me. I refilled it and again he swigged the water and waited for another. Over and over we repeated this motion. And as I continued to refill the cup, I finally understood that this time we’d been washed ashore, that no amount of water could resuscitate a dead fish.

Lori Horvitz’ short stories, poetry, and personal essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies including The Southeast Review, The Salt River Review, Hotel Amerika, Thirteenth Moon, The Mochila Review and Quarter After Eight. She has been awarded writing fellowships from Fundación Valparaiso, The Ragdale Foundation, Yaddo,

Cottages at Hedgebrook, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Blue Mountain Center. She is an Associate Professor of Literature and Language at University of North Carolina at Asheville.

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