Fay ce que vouldras.
Rabelais
Pinson
woke me out of a deep sleep up the next morning with a telephone call from next
door. He told me that my mother had just
called and that she wanted me to call her back right away, that it was an
emergency. I called, and she insisted
that I come to her house and hear the news.
She wouldn’t tell me over the telephone.
When I got there she told me that my stepbrother Jacob had been offered
an associate Professorship at Harvard.
She
talked without stopping, for about a half an hour and I just sat there,
listening and drinking coffee. What
gradually emerged from her rambling discourse was that he had declined the
offer because the pay wasn’t enough, because he thought he would have to work
too hard to keep it and because his wife didn’t want to move to
I
couldn’t believe that it wasn’t an assistant Professorship that he had been
offered but she had written it down on a stray piece of an envelop, to make
sure that she got it right, and she read it to me.
It
was depressing. She harangued me about
cab driving and she said that I should be teaching at Harvard instead of him,
and I said that the reason that I wasn’t teaching at Harvard was that she had
married his father who was a son of a bitch and a drunk and I hated her for
it. By the time I got back to
Sitting
there with
Now,
after five years, I can see that I needed her and loved her. I needed her because she was the opposite of
my mother: she was calm and reasonable and intelligent, and she never screamed
at me. But for that very reason I felt
that something was lacking in her and therefore, that I didn’t love her, or
even more, that I couldn’t possibly love her.
Rather
than talk about my feelings, we talked politics. Somewhere in the middle of it I said, “Look,
I’ve had power. I mean even if it
was only being captain of the football team in junior high school. I know it sounds ridiculous. But listen, the coach sends in Kerensky and Kerensky thinks it
is his big opportunity. But the coach
really just wants to give him the thrill of being in a big game so he can lie
to his kids and say he started in a couple of high school games and feel good
about himself.
What
do I do but throw the ball to Smith.
Smith drops the ball. Kerensky shoots me a look of implacable hatred as he leaves
the game, his last, his only chance. Why
did I throw to Smith instead of Kerensky? Because he is our star receiver, and we
needed the points. Sure, I knew
Smith was tired, but he is the star, not Kerensky. Why didn’t I throw to Kerensky? I don’t know.
Maybe I suspect that he really is good, and that if I give him an
opportunity, he will finally be as good as I am and replace me. Maybe I know he isn’t any good. I don’t know the answer. Anyway, I feel that he and his, his brothers
and sons and daughters, hate me and anyone who looks like me, and that we have
become their implacable enemies because we have destroyed their chances
forever... You think I’m crazy don’t
you?”
She
smiled ironically and then answered mechanically, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. But I love you so it doesn’t matter.”
It
was the way she had first declared her love and she was doing it again: in
passing, without a feeling of danger, of self-exposure, and accompanied by
self-protective irony.
As
she became more sure of me, her declarations of love became more direct, almost
challenging: as if I were somehow defective in my capacity to express love
because I refused to respond. I thought
it was beneath comment and I hated it.
I
said, “That isn’t like you.” I went back to a previous argument, “Look, I don’t approve of Nixon. I don’t know what he’s doing. But I know he’s an intelligent man. I know he isn’t Evil with a capital E. I know...”
She
interrupted me. “Sometimes I don’t know
how I put up with you at all.” The words
stung. They seemed to come out of
nowhere. She continued, “You
sound like a fascist.”
It
sounded so ridiculous that, again, I didn’t feel like responding. But I heard myself say, almost
reflexively, “Look, I’m not a fascist.”
But
I was surprised by a hysterical note in my voice. And I wondered how I put up with her. She stared at me. The silence was there again. I continued,
“I’m trying to say that... Look,
maybe we can’t hero worship each other.
Maybe we are all just basically the same and ... Nixon is just a human
being.” I stared at her. She gave a little wave of the hand as if she
was brushing me aside, not my thought, and accompanied the gesture with a
disgusted grunt.
I
started to ask her a question, “Why do
you need to...?” But I didn’t finish the
sentence.
I
had started to ask her why she needed to see him as a monster, as the
embodiment of Evil. But I knew it was no
use. The irony hit me. I was as helpless as Nixon himself in
I
said, “Love is similar. We pretend to love when we are the
blindest. We don’t want to see the
other. We idealize the loved one until
he is forced to be a hypocrite and imagine some gain of his own so that he can
give in to our desire without a hopeless loss of self-esteem. I hate the word love.”
We
were surprised that I said it. I
continued, aggressively, swept away with emotion, “I’ve even heard women talk about falling in
love with each other. I mean pretending
that they aren’t lesbians. But they fall
into the same trap as men: subconsciously idealizing some phony trait like a
straight nose and large breasts. They
fall for the same thing they denounce in men because...”
“You
don’t understand at all. It’s not like
that.” Her eyes flashed and blood rose
to her face. The silence returned and
her eyes were deep and watching and I felt superficial and helpless.
I
knew that if I wanted to learn anything from her I had to observe and
listen. I began to breath deeply and
rhythmically and I stared into her eyes and tried to stop thinking. I saw a woman looking at me malevolently but
unaware of it. After fifteen or twenty
seconds I asked, “What are you
thinking?”
She
didn’t answer. I waited, breathing
calmly, and I imagined that I could see her ordering her thoughts. I admired her for her capacity to think
silently while I watched and I loved her for it without knowing it. Later, I thought that it was her proud
revelation to me that there is a depth and strength in American women that is
shy and almost invisible.
I
remember thinking that I could see a piece of the soul of the Native American
in her eyes, something deeply pagan, something that no other Civilization
has.
After
two or three minutes of silent waiting, she said, “I don’t know how to say it
because you are so wrong.”
I
could see that there was no malice in that.
“Try.”
She
said, “My feeling is that everyone is
trying to seduce me.”
I
was silent, thinking, breathing regularly, allowing my thoughts to form, almost
of themselves. “You mean women and men?”
“Yes.”
I
let it sink in, forcing myself to think before responding, respecting her
rhythm. I waited a few seconds longer
than necessary and then asked, “Everyone?”
She
gave a little laugh. “Well, more or
less.” She thought for five, ten seconds
and then added, “Sometimes they aren’t
aware of it.”
There
was no irony in her voice. Again I was
silent, almost waiting for a response to form, of itself, without any conscious
effort. I responded, “Well, it’s funny because, actually, it seems
to me like no one ever tries to seduce me, ever.”
Habit
had conquered purpose. The reversal was
too much. It was an exaggeration to
produce an effect. I added a slightly
ironical smile.
She
was silent for a long time. I meditated
and tried not to think and tried not to protest against her silence in any
way. But my mind wandered.
I
remembered that I had grabbed a handful of pumpkinseeds that morning and
noticed a small, rusty nail just before I threw them into my mouth. Was it the terrorism of a disgruntled
employee, an accident?
I
also meditated on the “closeness of disaster,” on the license plate tracing a
deadly arc into the night sky like a screaming debbuk
beckoning me to eternity.
I
remembered a Pomo Indian who had worked alongside me
at the cannery. As we watched the tomato
filled cans moving towards the lid machine he let out a war cry over the roar
of the cans and spit a large gob of snot into one of the cans just before the lid
went on. “Just adding salt,” he screamed
over the din.
I
tried to concentrate on her face. She
wasn’t looking at me but seemed to be meditating, quietly. I didn’t say anything or ask her what she was
thinking. Five minutes passed. I wondered if she had ever tried to seduce
anyone. I wanted to ask her but I wanted
her to break the silence.
Finally,
she said, “I feel like you don’t
understand me.” And then, a little
apologetically, “Well, that you are out
of touch with your feelings.”
I
forced myself to think instead of just react and throw something back at
her.
I
thought of the five years of psychotherapy I had had and the ten years of
reading and studying. My
psychotherapist, who had a Ph.D. from
Suddenly
I wondered if she thought that Nixon was trying to seduce her. “No, that’s Ridiculous,” I thought. I had told her about the fare who said that
“Nixon is the coldest son-of-a-bitch you’d ever want to meet.”
Did
she hate her father because she fantasized that he was responsible for her
mother’s paralyzed legs? I wondered if
she hated Nixon because she felt that he wasn’t trying to seduce anyone. Did Nixon correspond to her cold, paralyzing
father? It seemed almost ridiculous, and
certainly farfetched, but maybe it would add some humor.
I
asked without a hint of irony or a smile,
“Is Nixon trying to seduce you?”
She
gave a little laugh. She thought for a
few seconds and then said, seriously, “I
don’t know him personally.”
Again,
the silence. It suddenly occurred to me
that her legs were fat and immobile and that only her upper body seemed to be
truly alive. I had a vision of her
mother sitting paralyzed in her wheelchair.
A body without feeling from the waist down. It suggested the Freudian idea, that for her,
the Woman’s Movement was, unconsciously, literally necessary: she had to steal
something from the father, the patriarch, so that she could move. Her mother was only half of a human
being.
Outside,
the sky was a brilliant blue and I realized that there were only two things
that I felt like doing. One was to make
love, again, and the other was to run.
She
had refused to jog with me once before.
It occurred to me that I too should try to seduce her, but to seduce her
into movement.
Suddenly,
she seemed very far away. I got up,
walked over to her and sat down next to her.
Sitting next her, her anger seemed like sadness. I kissed her cheek. I said,
“Why don’t we go outside. It’s
such a beautiful day.”
I
watched and waited for a response. I put
my arm around her shoulder. She didn’t
resist.
“All
right.” She smiled like a little kid
who’s ready to make up after a stupid argument.
But
I wasn’t finished. “I want you to go
jogging with me. Just a little jog-walk
at first. You’ll get used to it. It’s fun.”
“I’m
afraid I won’t be able to keep up with you.
I told you I’m ashamed of my legs.”
“Look,
you can walk fast. That’s a good way to
get started. I know a place where there
aren’t any people. It’s a beautiful
park. Have you ever heard of Joaquin
Miller?”
“No.”
“He
was a nineteenth century
She
said, “All right. But only for you.”
Suddenly
it seemed to me that she wanted to tell me that she loved me, but only because
she wanted me to tell her that I loved her.
I
kissed her on the cheek again and messed up her hair, “Come on Flo, let’s get out of this dingy room and get some fresh
air.”
There
was a wedding reception at Joaquin Miller park, so I took her to
She
said, in a playful tone, “You mean you
don’t believe in ability at all?”
“Sure
I do. I mean it’s obvious when you look
at people who don’t have ability. I mean
a lot of people don’t have much ability for anything. Music, drawing, whatever.”
We
picked our way through the brush, winding along an almost nonexistent path
about ten feet from a well-traveled dirt road.
I
said, “After reading the story of Paul Morphy, the chess
player, I thought for a while that maybe some people have a kind of unequalled
natural ability for things like mathematics and music. Have you heard of him?”
She
hadn’t.
“Well,
he was probably the greatest chess player who ever lived and he wasn’t a
fanatic like Bobby Fischer. His talent
seemed to come naturally.”
“You
found out that he was a fake?”
“No,
of course not. I mean I’m probably not
being clear. It isn’t that I think
people aren’t different from each other.
I think we probably differ inside our bodies and brains even more than
we do outside. But my point is,...well,
that discipline, concentration, and desire are the most important things. Usually.”
“It
sounds like you’re hedging your bets.”
“It’s
true that I’ve never come to a really solid and definite conclusion about it
all but... well, basically, I wanted to say that Morphy
not only didn’t accomplish anything in his life but he ended up a mental
case. He became a certified
paranoiac. So it seems to me that there
was something in his mental constitution that allowed him to concentrate
on minute details and work out all of their implications and that he had a sort
of obsessive personality and that’s what allowed him to give so much passion
to chess. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yeah,
pretty much. I just don’t see why it is
so important to you. It seems obvious to
me.”
I
didn’t say anything but I didn’t think it was obvious.
She
said, “I have a retarded brother. He is officially classified as dyslexic. He’s been rehabilitated to almost normal, but
he’ll never be anything more than a very competent truck driver. In fact, that’s what he’s doing now. Actually, he makes a good salary.”
I
said, “My mother isn’t intellectual at
all. I mean she isn’t retarded, but she doesn’t
care much about philosophy or literature or politics. To say the least. She was very pretty when she was young and I
suppose my father married her for that.”
“So
you don’t believe in talent at all but you are the only talented one in your
family.”
I
wondered if she had a Kleenex. I could
feel my fundament moving.
I
continued, “It sounds
contradictory. It is. Once when I got high, you know, smoking dope,
marijuana, with one of my cousins -- a guy who the family maintains is retarded
-- I had a bad trip and he seemed more intelligent than me! It seemed to me that he was so intelligent
that he didn’t need to be intelligent in all the normal ways. That he had long ago decided that it was a
waste of time to learn how to fix anything or remember rules, or do mathematics
or science. I never really forgot that
experience. Anyway, even if it was only a kind of hallucination, it made me
realize that compensation probably explains a lot also. Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly, skinny kid
but he spent all of his life compensating for it.” I waved my arm, “In fact, these parks are a
direct result of his love of nature. Did
you know that?”
She
did. I was embarrassed for trying to
impress her.
I
said, “Anyway, when I was in high
school, I didn’t know any of that. It
took me a few years for me to figure it out and by then I had already destroyed
my grade point average. I started out
thinking that I would automatically rise to the top because I had so much
talent, but it became obvious to me that work was more important, especially
when I saw what Jacob did at Berkeley.
He used to lie to his friends and tell them that he never studied. Actually, I think it was his need to lie
about it that got me interested in the literature on genius and talent. Anyway, as I told you, he studied almost
constantly, like a man possessed. For
sixteen hours a day, for days and weeks on end.
He crushed my love of mathematics and physics and chemistry with the
ugliness and aggressiveness of his ambition and drive for power. I don’t think he even liked mathematics and
science. I’ll never know why he didn’t
become a stock broker or real estate agent.
People like him will kill science and mathematics someday in America.”
“What
made you think you were so talented?”
“Well,
I told you already. When I scored 99.5
percentile on the California State aptitude tests as a high school senior, I
was seduced. I thought the test really
meant something for me because I didn’t have time to study much at all when I
was a kid. From age ten to sixteen I
played first string varsity basketball, baseball and football. Practice lasted four hours a day, every day
of the school year. After practice I was
so tired that I barely did any homework at all.
Maybe an hour or so at most. So I
thought I was a kind of genius to score so high on the tests. I guess I bought the IQ myth, totally. I thought I must have an IQ of about 160, or
one out of ten thousand, because when I was ten... don’t laugh... I scored “15 years and 11 months plus” on the reading
test... That was as high as it was possible to score then and that was before I
started playing sports. So I thought it
didn’t matter where I went to college, that I would automatically get all A’s
because I didn’t plan on playing sports and I would have time to study. So I was a fool. What else is new?”
My
bowels rumbled but before I could ask her if she had a Kleenex, she asked,
“Do you think you’re smarter than I am?”
The
question startled me.
“No,
of course not. I’m sure we’re probably
equal. Maybe you’re smarter in some ways
than I am and vice versa.”
“You’re
the first person that I’ve ever met who thinks he’s smarter than I am.”
I
forgot about my bowels and asked, “Why
do you say that?”
“It
seems obvious that you think you’re smarter than me.”
I
was surprised. “Well, maybe I do think
of myself as a kind of genius. Maybe it
comes from being a sports hero. Being
captain of the football team, even in junior high school, has ruined better men
than me. Or, maybe it’s because I used
to beat Jacob in Hopalong Cassidy Canasta when we
were kids. I don’t know. What can I do?”
“You
can realize that I am smarter than you.”
She laughed.
I
said, “Believe me, it is a great luxury
to be with an intelligent woman. I
appreciate it.”
“You’d
better.”
I
said, “It is a paradox. My mother doesn’t feel stupid. She acts like she is a genius. Like she is more intelligent than everyone
else. But she obviously isn’t. I can’t explain it. Sometimes when I leave her house I feel like
committing suicide. I feel like she has
destroyed my life with her stupidity.
And I hate her for it. But it is
an impotent feeling. When you feel like
your own parent exploits you and treats you badly and dominates you
and...”
I
was being incoherent and tragic, trying to deal with feelings that were too
complicated and too difficult to verbalize and organize. I needed more time. I was surprised that I had passed up a particularly
cozy looking bush. I couldn’t seem to
forget the disagreeable morning with my mother.
She
said, “It sounds terrible.”
“It
is.”
I
was already sick of feeling sorry for myself and besides, nature kept asserting
itself. I said, “Well, everyone has problems. I shouldn’t pour all my bad feelings out on
you.”
I
opened my mouth to ask her if she had a Kleenex, but she said, a little
tragically herself, “My mother had polio
when I was just a small child.”
“You
told me a little bit already. She was in
a wheel chair wasn’t she?” I wondered
about her sex life.
“Yes. She ended up completely paralyzed from the
waist down. She has been in a wheel
chair as long as I can remember.”
“I’m
sorry. It must have been very bad for
you and your family.”
“Oh
no, they were a very loving family. I
never felt deprived.”
For
some reason, I indulged myself in self-pity again, I just couldn’t seem to get away from
it. “I guess love is the most important
thing. I always felt like my step-father
hated me.”
She
looked shocked.
“It’s
true. The guy is such a bastard, its
hard to describe. When my mother married
him I almost couldn’t believe her. The
man came home drunk after work every night and then went bankrupt about three
months into the marriage. My mother gave
herself a hernia over it. Literally.”
I
was really getting sick of being depressed.
My bowels gave another one of their famous, imperious signals. “Do you have a Kleenex?”
“No,
I don’t think so.” She rummaged in her
pockets and then said, “Uh Oh. I guess you’ll just have to use a leaf. Why don’t I walk ahead while you do your
business?”
“Fine. I’ll suffer alone.”
I
found an unusually thick bush that opened almost into a private little cave and
went inside feeling very isolated and cozy.
I even found a piece of old newspaper, which served the purpose. As I was putting on the finishing touches, I
heard a loud motorcycle chugging along the dirt road. A Hell’s Angel and his girlfriend roared by
in a cloud of dust and stopped about twenty feet down the road. A stab of fear pierced all the way to my
fundament and I wondered if they had spotted Florence walking alone in the
underbrush. I was about to show myself,
when I saw the woman walking towards me carrying a large wad of toilet
paper. I stayed put. She came to within three feet of where I was
crouching, looked around to make sure no one was looking and turned her back to
me. She pulled down her pants, squatted
down, and displayed an extraordinarily white and well-formed ass. I could have reached out and touched it. She let go of a turd
about two feet long with a voluptuous sigh and a finishing grunt and then
pissed thunderously for about a minute.
She wiped her crotch for a tantalizingly long time but finally stood up,
hitched her pants, surveyed her apparently isolated location and strode back to
the motorcycle. They roared off in a
cloud of dust.
I
caught up with Florence and described the event.
“Did
it get hard?”
“As
a matter of fact, it started to, but the situation was a little awkward.”
“Yeah,
I can imagine. What do you say to a
white bum?”
“Yeah,
and she didn’t even ask for a handout.”
I
was astonished at my wit. She said, “Very good. Maybe you really are a genius!”
We
had a good laugh. She tried another
one: “Well, maybe she was a little
backward.”
I
gave her a pat on the butt and said:
“True, she wasn’t exactly in the missionary position.”
She
said, “Some people like it that way.”
“If
the shit fits, wear it, is that it?”
“That
one seemed a little strained.”
I
said, “Not bad, not bad.”
We
strolled along in silence, with arms around each other’s waists, slightly
awkwardly.
I
broke the silence, “Nothing like a good
shit to liberate the mind.”
She
answered, “Sounds like a good idea. Do you want to watch me?”
“Right
now? On command?”
“Why
not?”
“Well,
remember, there isn’t any Kleenex.”
We
stopped and she gave me a salacious look.
We kissed. She slipped from my
arms, “You’ll have to find me some
leaves big fella.”
I
handed her a wad of the softest leaves I could find and she pulled down her
pants, squatted, looked into my eyes, and grunted out a rather long, very soft,
yellowish turd..
After wiping with the leaves, she said in a raspy voice, “Let’s do it.” I started to unbuckle my pants when she
added, “I want it in the ass.”
I
pointed to the pile of baby shit and quipped,
“All the leaves in Oakland couldn’t get a mess like that off my prick.”
She
looked a little chagrined and explained,
“I didn’t bring my diaphragm.”
I stood looking up at the Oakland
Hills and then back down to her blond head, wondering why I wasn’t comfortable
with another human being kneeling at my feet.
But I didn’t moralize. Instead,
I produced a fantasy of a very white, fleshy Elizabethan woman from Pilgrim
times, holding her dress and petticoats up to her large white breasts, sitting
against a stump, exposing a very wet, black, and hairy vulva; and a
brown-skinned, naked Indian woman, kneeled in front of her, and moaning while
she licked her cunt with a subdued, mechanical and knowing tongue. I was the Elizabethan woman and had an
extraordinarily animalistic orgasm.