... these events demonstrated that the
Noam Chomsky
It
turned out that
“Well,
I actually have to go shopping again. I
know it’s not very considerate.”
“I
can’t believe it.”
She
was silent for a few seconds and then laughed awkwardly, involuntarily, to
herself. “I shop for women who need
assistance. Once a month. It’s part of the Women’s Movement.”
“You
mean you buy food for them?”
“Well,
that’s usually what people do when they go shopping.”
“You
don’t even have a job. It must be a
drain on your savings.”
“I
manage.”
“Can’t
you tell her you’ll go tomorrow?”
“No,
you don’t understand. She’s expecting
me. She’s very poor. She has a baby. You got
a haircut.”
“Yeah,
like it?”
She
said, “It’s kinda short.”
“I’ve
never worn long hair.”
“I
like it.”
I
said, “Thanks. You didn’t forget that it’s Van’s birthday
tonight did you?”
“Women
don’t forget things like that. You’re
going to that organic restaurant on
She
looked very pretty in her brown and white cotton serape with the drawings of
prehistoric elks on it and I didn’t like the prospect of being separated from
her for so many hours.
She
asked, “Why don’t you go shopping with
me?”
“Well,
I actually want to learn something about
“All
right. You can tell me all about the
lecture tonight when you get back from dinner.”
“OK. I’ll probably spend some time with Van after
dinner, but I’ll be back before eleven.
How’s that?”
She
looked more disappointed than I thought she should. I didn’t like possessiveness but I was glad
that she would miss me. She said, “Well, you have your key. Wake me up if I’m sleeping.”
I
drove to the address on
I
went into the whitewashed wooden building. There was a thirty-five-year old,
bespectacled, thirty-pounds-overweight, balding man with black hair, sitting by
the door behind a folding card table. If
it hadn’t been for his John Lennon glasses, it would have surprised me that he
wasn’t sitting at home with a beer, watching the Sunday afternoon football
game.
“How
much?”
“Oh,
it’s free.”
“Sound’s
like a good deal to me.”
“We’d
like to get your name and address it we could.”
“Sure,
I’m not afraid of the FBI.”
I
looked over my shoulder at two women and a man.
They were talking and pretended not to hear what I had said.
I
asked, “Do you think those three are
socialists?” I printed my name and
address, too large and very legibly, on the blank page. He smiled and then snorted. He knew that it was obvious, even to me that
they were eastern seaboard, private school, rich kids playing hippie in
I
asked, “What about you?”
He
looked at me like a riverboat gambler getting ready to draw to an inside
straight, paused, and said, “My father
is a Communist. I grew up that way.”
His
eyes held a conversation with me for a few seconds and I thought I understood
him to mean that he was going to play his hand for all it was worth.
I
said, awkwardly, backing down from my arrogant insouciance, “Don’t worry about it, I understand. Anyway, we need some Communists in
I
didn’t think I had said enough so I paid back his honesty with my own, “At least you have a father. Mine was killed by a Kamikaze pilot in World
War ll.”
He
started to say something but then his glance turned inward, to look at some
past disaster maybe and he remained silent.
I
turned around to see the undercover agents standing there, looking like girls
at a junior high school dance pretending that they didn’t want to dance with a
Real Communist.
I
left them standing there and went into the lecture room. A gaunt man, about twenty, nervous and with a
three day black stubble, was sitting in the back row in the far right
corner. Straight, black hair fell across
his eyes, completely covering his right eye, and falling over his nose onto his
right cheek. I could barely see his
dark, shining eyes darting around the room, like a sewer rat looking for an
exit.
Sitting
dead center, a fat, Germanic-blond, rag picking woman in layers of colored
clothes ate greasy chicken out of a large brown shopping bag. She licked her fingers occasionally, wiped
them on her dress, and militantly ignored my eyes.
I
sat down, left center, and waited for some more people to show up. The three agents came in and sat down next to
the nervous guy and the guy who was taking tickets at the door came in after
them and sat down in front of the agents, sitting very straight and high on his
chair, as if he was trying to block their view.
Suddenly,
the lecturer came into the room from a back door that I hadn’t noticed. He was accompanied by a woman whose face
looked like an empty bottle of Mary Kay nail polish remover. She was wearing blue jeans and a man’s
sleeveless undershirt. You could see
large, pendulous breasts through the shirt, hanging waist level, and two thick,
black bushes growing from her armpits.
She sat down in the front row, on the right side, and the man strode to
the podium.
He
stood there shuffling papers and muttering to himself for about two minutes,
not looking at the audience. He paused
and looked up. He looked at the agents,
at the blond woman in the center, at the nervous guy on the right, and then he
turned around and looked at the door and I thought he was going to leave. The room was completely silent and then one
of the agents coughed. The speaker
turned back to face the audience again, cleared his throat and looked at
me.
We
looked into each other’s eyes for about seven or eight seconds. The woman in the front row turned around and
gave me a dirty look but he raised his hand slowly and then lowered it
theatrically and just as slowly and began talking, to me, for about two
hours.
It
was one of the greatest lectures I’ve ever heard. We followed Mao all over
The
lecture didn’t end, it just stopped, in mid-sentence. He looked at his watch, like he’d forgotten
an important meeting, turned around and walked through the back door with the
lady who snatched up her papers and following hastily behind him.
I
turned around to see the blond woman looking for something in her bag, the thirty
five year old ticket taker, directly behind her, trying not to meet my eyes,
and all three FBI agents standing up, behind him, looking at me eagerly like we
were long lost friends. The sewer rat
was already gone.
I
thought, “Oh shit.” I hadn’t anticipated the lecture lasting more
than two hours. I was certain that I had
got a parking ticket. I rushed out of
the room and was happier than I should have been when I saw that there was no
ticket.
To
kill time before dinner, I drove to Lake Merritt and sat on a wooden bench in
front of the duck pond and continued reading in a scurrilous book about the sex
life of Jack Kennedy.
After
about an hour of reading and watching black women and their children feed the
ducks with little fish and bread crumbs, I looked up from the book to meet the
eyes of a high school girl who seemed transfixed. She had stopped right in the middle of the
walk and was standing still, about five feet from me, staring at me.
I couldn’t believe me eyes. I knew that Kennedy would have taken her to a
penthouse furnished for the occasion, fucked her, got her phone number to make
her feel good, given her fifty bucks for a new dress, and forgotten her.
I,
however, would engage her in conversation, find out that she was an idiot, ask
her anyway, against my better judgment, if we could go to her apartment and she
would accuse me of trying to rape her and...
She
stood there for about forty seconds, pretending to watch something else, and I
ignored her with resolution, moralizing along with the amazed author of my
book, feeling false virtue for resisting a temptation that I shouldn’t have
felt in the first place.
I
went to Van’s apartment a half an hour early and he was glad to see me. We talked about Wagner, Nietzsche, Ruskin and
Carlyle and walked more than ten blocks to the restaurant, hardly noticing the
distance.
I
was amazed when he gave ten cents to a bum on Telegraph avenue: the bum wasn’t
dressed much better than he was. It
seemed like an act of bald self-deception.
As
we walked into the restaurant, he commented on the ugliness of the
architecture, and said, “I guess you
can’t expect that men will build suitable buildings for themselves when they
are so cut off from their true natures.”
I
asked, “What is it that jumps out at
you?”
“Well,
everything. I mean what doesn’t jump out
at you?”
I
recognized the waitress as a woman whom I had met in the Food Mill a few months
before. We had had a very nice
conversation and I had almost asked for her telephone number. She was a long-legged twenty-two year old
beauty with an agreeable mix of Indian blood.
She pretended that she didn’t recognize me and I thought she was acting
the role of an icy bitch. It put me in a
guarded mood. I said, in an attempt to
dispel a foul spiritual gas that I imagined building in the tubules of my
brain, “Well, there are too many plants
in here. I mean if you are a vegetarian
restaurant, you shouldn’t hang your food around your customer’s ears.”
“Yeess,”
he hummed approvingly, in his inimitable and indescribable way.
We
studied the menu in silence. The
selection seemed truly abominable. It was Mexican vegetarian food, something I
hadn’t expected. It seemed a contraction
in terms, a logical conundrum that Abelard himself might starve to death trying
to resolve. But when I saw the words
“Ovo-Lacto vegetarian,” I realized that it was just standard Mexican food
translated into Berkeley English. The
only thing missing was carne asada and Dos Equis beer.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” I groaned.
“What?” he asked.
“Mexican
food without beer. I don’t think I can
take it.”
“What’s
this?” He pulled out the wine list from
his menu.
I
said, “Thank God.”
There
were four or five kinds of beer listed at the bottom but there weren’t any
Mexican beers so I decided on a San Miguel, dark.
The
menu was quaint: “Rolled eggs seasoned
with Chile and jallapeno pepper sauce with brown rice and beans.” or, “Homemade beans and onions stuffed in rolled,
unleavened bread seasoned with the spices of Northern Mexico.”
The
prices were reasonable; nothing was over a dollar fifty. But the San Miguel was thirty five cents and
there were bottles of wine that cost four dollars. But, I reasoned it was his birthday.
I
said, “Go ahead and order a bottle of wine. Pick any one you like.”
“I
can’t drink that much Jack. Thanks. I’ll just have a bottle of beer.”
The
waitress appeared and her face was contorted into the coldest, haughtiest look
that I had seen in at least two days.
“Can I take your order?”
“Yeah,
bring two San Miguel darks out here as fast as your ass can trot,” I thought, but said, looking at Van for
approval, “Two San Miguel darks, to get
started, and I’ll have Chile Relleno, or, what’s it called?”
After
an appropriate, uncomprehending silence she asked, “Do you mean the eggs rolled over chili
pepper?”
“Yes,
that’s it.”
Van
ordered the taco dish but I didn’t know it until it arrived.
“How’s
your novel coming?” he asked as we were
waiting for our San Miguel’s.
“Actually,
I didn’t tell you but I’m stopped writing if for now. I’m working on two articles right now. I was writing three but I gave up on the Mick
Jagger article.”
“Well,
I don’t know if I should ask you about that one or about the other two.”
“Well,
as you know, I was writing one about Mick Jagger’s relationship to the
psychology of Wilhelm Reich but I found out that Reich was, well, kind of
crazy. He had this thing called an
orgone box and he thought that he could actually catch sexual energy in the box,
that orgone energy was a particle that emanated from matter.”
“You
mean like from rocks and inanimate matter?”
“Yeah,
I’m afraid so.”
“That
sounds odd. I’m surprised that he wasn’t
English.”
“Why’s
that?”
“Well,
the English are known for their sexual eccentricities.”
“They
could take lessons from Reich.”
“How
did you get interested in it in the first place?”
“Well,
I read his book, Character Armor, and it made a lot of sense. He claimed that Freud didn’t go far enough,
that human beings could only be psychologically healthy if they could
experience full orgasms and that most people were inhibited and the reason that
they were neurotic was that they held their bodies in strange positions and
tensed their muscles to prevent themselves from feeling sexual feelings. I experimented with some of his ideas myself,
you know, while smoking marijuana.”
I
looked at him cautiously. He was
embarrassed. The waitress arrived with
the beers and almost bounced them on the table, leaning away from us as if she
couldn’t stand the possibility that she might touch either one of us.
He
said, unexpectedly, “I’m probably
neurotic by that definition.”
“Why’s
that?”
“Well,
I’m thirty two years old and still a virgin.
I mean there’s supposed to be a sexual revolution and I’ve lived in
Berkeley for ten years, since 1959. I
don’t know what he would say about it.”
We
had talked about it before. I
asked, “What about that woman you were
telling me about?”
“You
mean Rose?”
“Yes. The one who’s teaching in that college. The one who has a Ph.D. from Harvard.”
“Well,
first of all, she only has a Master’s Degree, and second, she’s teaching in a
junior college.”
“Have
you made any progress with her?”
“I’m
not sure. As soon as I think we are
getting closer she does something that makes me think I’m wrong. And then there is her black boy friend.”
I
said, “Oh, crap.”
He
became agitated, “Oh, she has this thing
about blacks. You can’t say anything
about them to her. She just gets
completely irrational.”
He
was starting to loosen up and he took a long swig of beer, showing me a profile
that I knew he thought looked like David Niven’s.
“Have
you done anything yet?” I didn’t even
try being discrete. Whenever I did, it
turned out badly. I knew it was better
just to say whatever I was thinking.
He
asked, “What do you mean? Something physical?!”
I
gave him an assenting glint.
“Oh,
heavens no.” And then, with a slightly
dejected look, “I would never have the
courage to try anything physical.”
“Sometimes
I think you just have to do something Van.
You have to reach out and break across the space. Women expect that. It’s kind of crude sometimes but ... well...
sometimes there is a kind of silence and the only thing you can feel is the
space and it seems impossible to bridge it.
That is the time when you have to do something, to reach across and...”
The
longer I talked, the less sure of myself I felt. But I remembered his Ph.D. thesis and his
virginity and I felt that I had to say something. I asked,
“By the way, how is your thesis coming?”
“Well,
you know. It’s stuck. I feel like a fraud. I mean, “The Moment of Ecstasy in English
Literature” is hardly the appropriate theme for someone who is still a
virgin. It’s scandalous.”
His
candor disarmed me and I felt sorry for him.
“All
the more reason that you’ve got to do something.”
“If
all else fails,” I thought rather disingenuously, “you can fuck Florence.”
I
asked, cautiously, “When is your next
date?”
“She’s
taking a trip back East. She said, we’ll
talk about it when she comes back.”
“Why
don’t you invite her to go to dinner with Florence and me? Maybe if I meet her I can get a better idea
of what you’re up against.”
He
seemed slightly hesitant but agreed. The
waitress loomed behind him like an impregnable fortress of beauty, almost
floating towards us, and shrouded in what I imagined to be a poisonous miasma
of Pochahantic revenge.
After
she had left the table, my convictions were shaken and my body was rigid and I
was afraid to eat from the dish of food that she had placed in front of me
because I imagined that she had put poison in it.
When
Van plunged into his taco as if it were his last meal, I looked into my plate
again with interest. The food looked
appetizing: it was the first Chile Relleno I had ever seen that was served with
freshly baked beans and whole grain rice.
I was hungry again.
I
asked, getting up, “Care for another
beer?”
The
waitress was walking towards the kitchen and I caught up with her, walking
quickly and silently until I was close enough to touch her. She sensed me there behind her and turned to
face me.
I
drew a breath of air and prepared myself.
She looked like a trapped doe, longing and terrified and I paused for a
delicious second before I said, in an intimate and sexy voice, “Could we have two more San Miguels?”
“Of
course. I’ll bring them right over.”
“Thank
you.”
I
went back to the table knowing that Van needed another approach to his
girlfriend, Rose, but I couldn’t think of anything.
I
sat down, not knowing what to say. Even
though he had told me about his early religious experiences, many times, I
asked him about them again, just to break the silence, “You used to be
religious when you were a kid.”
“My father was a Seven Day Adventist and
didn’t believe in surgery. They waited
so long to have my appendix out that it almost killed me. The doctor... Oh God. That is such a horrible story I don’t even
want to talk about it... I’ll never
forget that night driving on those winding mountain roads to Los Angeles.”
We
both remembered that he had already described the whole bloody mess to me in
detail. We probably thought we were
“reestablishing intimacy” or some other nonsensical, Age of Aquarius state of
mind.
I
said, “That’s funny because I grew up in
the Advent Christian Church. They
weren’t as fanatical as the Seven Day Adventists, but they were
Fundamentalists. I think a lot of
Americans have the same problem. I mean,
we’ve thrown away Christianity but we still have the early training. It’s still there... in our subconscious
minds... You know the Jesuits said,
“give us a child until he is six years old and we’ll have him for life.” Nietzsche was like that. The people of Turin called him “The Saint”
when he was living there and writing The Anti Christ in his room. You and I are like that Van.”
He
gave a merry little cackle, “You mean we
can’t give up our Puritanism even though we are convinced that it is our moral
duty to do it?”
“Well,
you said it better than I could.”
I
tried to catch the waitress’ eye but it was impossible. She thought I was trying to flirt with
her. I said, “Well, I suppose we ought to get out of
here.”
He
agreed and hailed the waitress with a quick and highly visible wave of his arm
and thanked me for the dinner. The total
bill came to only $4.19 and I knew right away that she had charged exactly one
dollar too little. I left a tip of
twenty cents and went to the cash register with the bill. As I paid the bill I lied to the
cashier, “This is really a nice
restaurant you have here. It was the
best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten. And
great service.”
He
gave me a big smile and thanked me. I
asked for four quarters in change. “This is for you.” I gave him a quarter and walked back to the
table where the waitress was clearing off the table.
“Here
is an extra quarter for you.”
She
gave me a guarded smile. I walked
towards the door where Van was standing next to a waiter. I gave the waiter a quarter. As soon as the restaurant door closed, and we
were standing outside on the sidewalk, I flipped the last quarter high into the
air and caught it. I stretched out my
hand to give it to him and laughed uproariously.
“What’s
so funny?”
“She
shortchanged herself a dollar, and I gave it back to them in tips.”
He
was silent. It was clear he wouldn’t
take the quarter.
I
said, “I kept a quarter for myself just
for the hell of it.”
After
a painful silence and scowl he said,
“Well, it seems dishonest to me.”
I
was in high spirits. “Comon Van, lighten
up.”
“Well,
you just stole a dollar from them. I
don’t think that’s funny.”
“It
was a joke. I stole a quarter from
them. It’s worth the laughter.”
“I
can’t see how stealing is a joke.”
His
moralistic tone stunned me into silence.
He
continued, “You can’t argue out of
it. You should go back and explain what
happened and return the quarter.”
I
suppressed my anger. I said, “Look, I stole a dollar from the restaurant
but gave it back to the employees.
They’re all happier...” I stopped in mid-sentence thinking, “as we would be too if you weren’t such a
prig.”
He
said through clenched teeth, “I still think you should go back in there and
tell them what happened and give them back the quarter.”
“I’m
not going back in there.”
We
walked towards Dwight Way in silence ignoring the same bum as we passed the
Cafe Med. The bum mumbled an obscenity
after us. We crossed the street,
putting The Shakespeare Bookstore at our backs.
Trying
to find a way to bridge the gap between us, I convinced myself that, at bottom,
it was my fault: I said to myself that in boyish high spirits I had forgotten
his high moral standards and I had lost control of my reasoning power.
“Look
Van. I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t strictly moral. I was just having fun.”
He
said, viciously, “I don’t mind the fun,
but it is the fact that you refuse to admit your error and go back in there and
give them the quarter. That’s what I
can’t tolerate.”
It
was clear that he wouldn’t forgive me unless I went back to the restaurant and
gave them the quarter. In vain, I tried
to be honest, “That seems impossible at
this point Van.”
It
wasn’t impossible. But I didn’t see what
purpose it would serve to humiliate myself to make him feel that I was morally
worthy of him. I don’t know how we
managed to get back to his place with any semblance of good feeling, but it
happened.
I
imagined, as I walked back to my car, that he was used to such moral impasses
and that he was, in fact, forced to cross over the abysses that he created for
himself. We parted amicably.
When
I arrived at
Mary
opened the door and gave me a big smile and I could see that she wanted to hug
me but I wasn’t used to being hugged in doorways and so I pretended that I
didn’t notice and looked as uncomfortable as I could manage.
I
opened
“
“I
had it cut. Don’t you like it?”
“It
looks like you’ve shaved your head.”
She
was hurt.
“I
mean it doesn’t look bad but I’m not used to you ... in ... short hair... I mean I’ve never liked ...
crew cuts.”
It
was the wrong thing to say. I said, “Well, it sort of looks cute actually.”
She
smiled and said, “You got a short
haircut so I did too.”
I
said, stupidly, “When I was a kid we
used to get real short haircuts in the summer.
We called them “slitzies.” I
don’t know where the word came from.”
“I’ve
got a lot of compliments on it already.”
I
knew I should lie. But I said,
instead, “My ears stuck out so much the
first time I got one that the kids razzed me.
So I never got another crew cut.”
“I
can tell you don’t like it.” She looked
like she was going to cry.
“Well,
no, I guess I don’t. I have to be
honest.”
She
burst into tears. I went over to her and
put my arm around her. “Well, you still
look pretty. I just don’t like short
hair.”
She
laughed through her tears. I kissed her
on her cheek and said, “It will grow
out, don’t worry.”
“I’m
going to cut it again when it grows out.”
“Why?”
“If
you wear short hair then I’m going to.”
“You
mean every time I get a hair cut, you’re going to get yours cut?”
“Yes.”
I
was silent.
“So
if I let my hair grow then you will let your hair grow?”
“Well,
I hadn’t thought of that, but if you put it that way, yes. I told you, I think men and women should be
equal in everything.”
I
was charmed by her logic.
She
asked, “How was your dinner?”
“Oh.
We had an argument about money.”
I
explained what happened. I added, “I don’t see how he can be so blind. I mean I have decided to live a life of
relative poverty so I can be a writer, and he accuses me of trying to cheat the
restaurant out of a quarter.”
“He
sounds really rigid.”
“Well,
in principle he may be right. But.. you
know, I’ve told you... he is still a virgin.
Well, I mean,.. He just doesn’t seem to be able to... “
“Did
you yell at him?”
“Me? No. I
don’t yell at people.”
“Sometimes
you get a little aggressive.”
“No,
we managed a handshake when we parted, but I thought he was struggling
with... I mean he probably thinks I am a
kind of neo-Nazi. It seems so ironic. I mean there are times when I think that
maybe I should just throw it all over and sell real estate. Why should I live in poverty? .... Well, I suppose I shouldn’t talk to you
about poverty. You’re worse off than I
am. You don’t even have a job.”
I
looked at her with concern. I had been
prodding her for quite awhile, subtly I thought, to get a job.
She
said, hesitantly, “I suppose I should
tell you.”
I
felt a stab of emotion.
“Tell
me what?”
I
was ready for the worst.
“Well,
remember the motorcycle accident?”
“Yeah.”
“I
received a fifty thousand dollar settlement.”
“You
paid half of it to your husband?”
“No. He got fifty thousand too and the lawyer got
seventy five thousand.”
“Wow. Have you paid the taxes yet?”
“It
was tax free.”
“That’s
why you don’t work.”
She
looked uncomfortable.
“So
you’re living off the interest?”
I
did a quick calculation. “About three
hundred dollars a month? That’s almost
as much as I make every month driving cab three nights a week.” I smiled, enviously.
“No,
actually, I keep it in a checking account.”
“You just got it?”
Her
eyes got big and she looked right at me,
“I don’t believe in receiving interest.
It’s capitalist exploitation.”
“I
don’t understand. Couldn’t you just give
the interest away to charity, or use it to pay for groceries for the women...”
Her
voice rose with emotion. “I told you I
don’t believe in any kind of interest or rent.”
I
paused and said, very softly, “Engels
helped support Marx from his inheritance.
He probably never would have written Das Kapital if...”
She
interrupted me, “I know about that but I
told you I am a Maoist. I believe that
all private property should be abolished.”
I
felt like asking her why she didn’t just give the money away but I asked
instead, “You didn’t tell me about it
because you thought I might be interested in you for your money?”
She
laughed. “Well, sort of, but I guess I
knew almost right away that you didn’t care about money. I mean it’s kinda obvious... If you want to know, really ... I could tell
by your car.”
We
laughed. I joked, “I thought you fell for me because of my
car. I’m disappointed.”
She
said, “Seriously I don’t want you to
tell anyone else about it.”
“Do
Tilly and Mary know?”
“Yes. I gave Tilly my Volkswagen as soon as I got
the money and I bought the Volvo for myself.”
“Did
you give Mary anything?”
“No. Why?”
“Well,
I thought maybe to be fair...”
“Tilly
and I were buying the Volkswagen together.
Actually we just shared the down payment. It only amounted to about two hundred
dollars.”
I
thought about Engels again but I said,
“Well, I can’t say there aren’t any idealistic people left in the
world.”
“I
try.”
“You
could live for the rest of your life on fifty thousand, supplementing it with a
part time job. Maybe you ought to buy a
house so you would always have someplace to live. You would never have to worry about
rent. You could buy a really nice house
for about thirty-five thousand.”
It
was a stupid thing to say. Her tone
of voice was sharp, “I don’t want to
talk about it anymore. I don’t want to
talk about investing it. I don’t want to
argue. I’m going to keep it in the
checking account.”
That
night I awoke in the middle of the night.
My arm was locked around her neck in the same way I used to hold my
teddy bear when I was a child. She was
drenched in sweat and her body was hot.
I disentangled myself, gently, and asked her if she was all right. She said “yes,” in a small and meek voice.
“You’re
burning up Flor. It’s not normal.”
“I’ve
told you, it’s normal for me, I’ve always had night sweats. It doesn’t mean
anything.”
We
had talked about it before. I wouldn’t
let it go this time. “I’m going to bring
my thermometer over. I mean you don’t
even own a thermometer. I think you are
out of touch with your body.”
“You
treat me so badly. You are so
aggressive.”
I
thought she was going to cry. “I’m not
aggressive.” I added, “I mean if you are sick you should go to a
doctor. It’s love not aggression.”
“I
told you that I’ve always been like this.
Please let me sleep.”
Her
voice was sharp with anger and I convinced myself that I might be wrong. I thought it was possible that I was too
possessive. It wasn’t the first time
that I had awakened in the middle of the night, clutching her neck in a
headlock, as if I were mortally afraid of losing her. She was the first woman that I had slept with
for more than a few nights and I was afraid that I didn’t know what a normal
human being felt like.
“Look. I am concerned about you,” I said, trying to express my love.
“Then
show how concerned you are by letting me sleep.”
She
went back to sleep almost immediately but I stared into the darkness for hours
meditating on honesty before I finally fell asleep.