Thus
the vagina of many women is a simple, more or less insensitive hole.
Marie
Bonaparte
“Look,
masturbation is the preferred method of orgasm in women.” She paused and then added, “And I know that I’ll never convince you, but
cunnilingus is the preferred form of masturbation.”
“But
that isn’t even masturbation.” I
contemplated a lifetime of cunnilingus in silence. That is, in silence, I contemplated a
lifetime of cunnilingus.
She
said, “I’ve told you that the vaginal
orgasm is a myth. The vagina exists only
for the stimulation of the penis. There
are almost no nerve endings in it.”
I
said, “An orgasm is a whole body
experience. It’s a spiritual experience
that shakes the foundations of your existence.”
“Have
you been reading Norman Mailer again?”
“No,
of course not. I mean, yes. I read Mailer sometimes, but he’s got nothing
to do with it. Remember, I’m a
Reichean.”
“You’re
a phallocrat... It’s incredible. It’s straight out of Norman Mailer.” She shook her head in disgust and added, “I really wonder sometimes how I put up with
you.”
Our
dinner with Van loomed five hours hence and for an hors-d’oeuvre, I ate the rage of my wounded pride and withdrew into my
thoughts. Naturally, it was a retreat
that she allowed and even expected. We
sat there in silence.
In
a Freudian mood, I asked myself if Marie Bonaparte would agree with
I
remembered Freud’s early obsession with
Again,
I wondered if Florence’s fixation on oral sex was caused by the paralysis of
her mother: that it might be possible that as a small child she had fantasized
that her mother had been injured and paralyzed by the penis, and that she,
Florence, was forced by her unconscious fear, to eat the penis, over and over
again, to neutralize its force, thereby protecting herself from the same
fate.
There
was a loud thump on the wall. Florence
looked at me with wide eyes and asked, as if I had privileged knowledge, “What was that?”
I
looked out the window. A couple of black
kids, about ten years old, were running away. “Nothing. Just some kids, playing.”
She
said, “I’m going back to
“What? What brought that on?”
“It’s
nothing that you did. I’ve been meaning
to tell you. It just kept slipping my
mind.”
“When
are you going?”
“In
a few weeks.”
I
was sad that she was going, but, paradoxically, happy too. I couldn’t remember feeling so happy and so
sad at the same time.
She
added, as she was rummaging through her purse,
“I’m going for my mother’s birthday.
Also, I haven’t been back there since Christmas and I have some
unfinished business. But I think it’ll
be good for us to be separated for awhile.
I mean we’ve been together almost every day for more than four months.”
“Sure. You’re probably right. I guess you can afford it, so it’s no
problem.”
“True.” She found her ticket. She read from it, “The flight leaves
“Well...I
should be able to take you to the airport...”
“You
can take care of my Volvo for me when I’m gone.”
I
got up. I said, “I think I’ll go back to my place for
awhile. Suppose I come back at about
five and then we go pick up Van?”
“Fine.”
Pinson
was sunning himself in the backyard. He
was wearing his swim suit and lying on a sun-faded, yellow, plastic-cushioned
chaise longue. From the kitchen window,
I could see him holding a green can of
He
asked, “How’s it going dad?”
“Not
too bad.”
He
said, “I just talked to Adrienne. You know the woman who lives in 10?”
He pointed to a door that looked down at
us through a second story railing.
I
said, “Yeah. I’ve talked to her a few times.”
“We’re
invited to play cribbage.”
“Cribbage? When?”
“She
didn’t set a date.”
“Sounds
far out.”
“How’s
“She’s
OK. She’s going back to
He
took a swig of beer. He said, nodding to
10 with his head, “Have you seen that
friend of hers? The one with the black
hair?”
“Yeah. I met her the other day. Her name’s Helen.”
“No
shit. Like Helen of
I
said, “That reminds me. How’s Penelope?”
“You
know. It’s on again, off again. It’s not gonna work but she doesn’t know it.”
We
were silent for a few seconds. I
asked, “Her legs are too skinny?”
He
laughed. I asked, “Did the Mets win again today?”
“Yeah,
they beat the Giants 4 to 3.
He
said, “Two in a row. How many games out are they now? Still six?”
“I’m
not sure. It’s either six or seven. I just heard it on the radio but I was
thinking of something else. I didn’t
catch it for sure.”
I
asked, “Where’s Billy?”
“He
went to the store to get some supplies for the Sports Club.”
“What’s
this about being invited to play Cribbage?”
“I
was just talking to her. About fifteen
minutes ago. She was standing right
there.” He pointed to the fence. “She said they play cribbage. She and, what’s her name? Helen.
They invited us to play sometime.”
“You
talked to Helen?”
“No. Adrienne said
‘We thought you might like to play cribbage with us sometime.’ “
I
asked, “What do you think of Helen?”
He
stretched out his hands and made an hour glass in the air, “She looks like a bombshell. From thirty feet, anyway.”
“She
looks pretty good close up too.”
He
smiled and said, “Florence might get
jealous.”
I
asked, “What do you think of Adrienne?”
“How
old do you think she is? About thirty?”
“Maybe
a little older. Melissa’s eleven.”
“Her
daughter?”
“Yeah.”
He
said, “I like older women.” He made a hole with his left hand and put a
finger from his right hand into it. He
said, “What counts is...” He rubbed his finger back and forth in the
hole.
I
said, “You don’t care about their
minds.”
“I
wouldn’t go that far. But if I have to
decide between their minds and this, I know what to choose.”
Muffy
ran down the back stairs, ran over to the chaise longue and put his nose into
Pinson’s crotch. Pinson pushed him away,
yelling, “Get out of here you grungy
mutt. Go sniff your master’s
trunks.” He broke out laughing.
Billy came to the top of the stairs
carrying two shopping bags full of soft drinks and potato chips. He yelled down, good naturally, “Taking out your aggressions on my dog again
Pinson?”
“If
you could only train him to keep his nose out of my swim suit, I could learn to
live with him.”
The
phone rang. Billy answered it. It was Turnbull. He was three sheets to the wind. His voice boomed over the telephone,
theatrically, “William. How’s it goin?”
“What’s
up Mike?”
“Well,
old bean, we’re having this party on the boat, and I was wondering if you could
come?”
“When
is it?”
“Oh. What time is it anyway. Hmmmmmm.
I mean what day of the week is it?
Sorry about that. Anyway. Yeah...” He gave a date that was a few weeks
into the future.
“Fine. I mean yeah.
It sounds great.”
“You
can bring what’s her face... uh, Florrie? Isn’t it?”
“Florence. Seven O’clock?”
“Yeah.”
For
some reason, he hated Florence. I
said, “Oh shit. I just remembered. She’s got rehearsals for the big play she’s
been working on...” Pause. “You’re an ex-actor Turnbull. You can understand that.”
“Sure
old bean, I can understand that... And I
am an ex- actor... Oh my God yes, I’m an ex-actor...Well... bring yourself then! I mean unless it’s dress rehearsal or opening
night or... WHATEVER... Hell, bring the
whole crew.”
“I
never go to those things Martin. I don’t
even know the whole crew. Actually, I
don’t know any of them. I can’t stand
actors...” I paused, theatrically, “...
they’re a bunch of pretentious fags.” I
enjoyed saying outrageous things to him, especially when he was drunk. He broke out laughing. I added, filling the silence, “Especially unemployed actors.”
“Yes
indeed. But don’t let me get started on that. PLEASE.”
“We’ll
talk about it at the party.”
“All
right then. I’ll see you at seven.”
“Seven
O’clock.”
He
said, “And don’t bring any actors.”
“Count
on it.”
I
went back downstairs, carrying three beers with me. Billy was already holding one. I threw one to Chris.
Billy
asked Chris, “So you’ve decided for sure?”
“I
haven’t decided anything for sure.”
He
sounded irritated. I handed him one of
the beers and opened another one for myself.
I looked at him questioningly. He
said, “I’m thinking about joining the
Coast Guard Reserve. It’s my best
option.”
I
asked, “Six months in and then six years
of inactive duty?”
He
said, “Beats Canada.”
I
said, “I got a letter from the draft
board saying they’ve postponed my appeal hearing. It means I’m finished with them. I’ll be 26 on the 15th of August.”
“So
you’re officially a Conscientious Objector?”
“Oh
no. They’ve consistently turned me down
on that. I’m just exhausting all of my
legally allowed appeals. They’ve got so
many people appealing it takes months, years to schedule them all.”
Chris
said, “I wish my feet were a little
flatter,” and looked at Billy who was 4F
because of his five years of “psychotherapy.”
Billy
asked me, grinning, “Did Playboy decide
to publish your article?”
“No,
... they sent a rejection slip. Said it
was too scholarly and... what else...” I
couldn’t remember the last adjective. I
didn’t know, at that time, that a personal rejection slip from Playboy was
considered to be an honor.
Chris
asked, “Are you going to send it
anywhere else?”
“Yeah,
I’ve got about ten magazines lined up. I
wanted to give Playboy first shot.”
He
asked, “What do they pay?”
“Five
hundred bucks.”
Pinson
said, “Shit, you guys are pulling down
more than that every month in the Sports club aren’t you? For a couple hours a day, four days a week
for playing with little boys. How many
members do you have now anyway?”
Billy
said, “Sixty four. But only about thirty five show up at one
time.”
I
said, “I made just a shade under six
hundred last month. Kidd made about a
grand.”
Billy
grinned in self-satisfaction.
Chris
said, “Give up writing Jack. There’s no money in it.”
I
took the letter out of my pocket and read,
“Pointless, ... too scholarly, somewhat chaotic … and…. no central
point.” They didn’t say anything. I said,
“Anyway, before I give up writing I’ve got to finish my next
article. You know, the one that proves
that it’s impossible to publish anything.”
Neither
one of them laughed. Billy said,
probably to the Reader, (because, after all, even though he had read only one
novel, even he believed in literature and the reader.) “Jack still thinks he’s an unappreciated
genius. Smarter than his
half-brother. So he’s going to brood in
his room for the rest of his life reading Nietzsche when he could go to Law
School with me and make something out of his life.”
Chris
got up. He said, “I’m going to leave you two jocks to your own
devices. I’ve got to go to work.”
Billy
said, winking at me, “You call that
work? Parking cars for a bunch of rich
drunks.”
The
aggressive grin was on his face. Pinson
crumpled his empty beer can and threw it at Billy’s head. Kidd ducked and it banged against the fence.
Pinson
laughed and said, “Why didn’t you catch
that? You overgrown ape.”
Billy
broke out laughing. “Pinson’s mad!! Watch out!!”
Chris trudged up the
stairs and a horrified look came over Billy’s face. He said,
“Shit. I just remembered. I forgot to get CORN CHIPS.”
It was my turn to shop
for the Sports Club so I followed Chris up the stairs and walked to my
Volkswagen.
Heading up Telegraph
Avenue to the Berkeley Co-op on Ashby, I remembered that I had planned to look
for a used edition of Stendhal’s On Love, at Moe’s bookstore. I hung a right on Ashby and drove all the way
to College Avenue so that I could avoid the usual mob near the University.
I gambled and parked on
Haste, about four blocks above Telegraph.
There was a large crowd around People’s Park, and inside the fence about
thirty hippies were dancing. Four or five
of them were completely naked and many of the women were bare-breasted. A couple of the women had babies on their
hips and a bluish cloud marijuana smoke, or incense, or something, hung over
the dancing crowd.
I picked up a pamphlet
from the sidewalk and pushed my way through the crowd towards Moe’s.
I couldn’t find a copy
of On Love but I bought a badly damaged copy Abel Bonnard’s The Love Life of
Stendhal, for twenty-five cents. I went
across the street to the Cafe Med for an expresso and a chance to read for
awhile, before picking up the Corn Chips and getting ready for dinner with Van
and his girlfriend. I sat down with my
expresso, opened the pamphlet I had found on the street and read:
We will make Telegraph
Avenue and the South Campus a strategic free territory for the revolution... We
will create our revolutionary culture everywhere... We will turn the schools
into training grounds of liberation...students must destroy the senile
dictatorship of adult teachers and bureaucrats.
Grading, tests, tracking, demotions, retentions, and expulsions must be
abolished.
We will destroy the
university unless it serves the people... Our battles will be conducted in the
classrooms and in the streets...We will struggle for the full liberation of
women as a necessary part of the liberation process. We will expand and protect our drug
culture... we intend to establish a drug distribution center and a marijuana
cooperative.
We will break the power
of the landlords and provide beautiful housing for everyone... through rent strikes,
direct seizures of property and other resistance campaigns... we shall force
them to transfer housing control to the community.
We will define ourselves
against law and order. The people of Berkeley must arm themselves and learn the
basic skills and tactics of self-defense and street fighting ... We shall make
Berkeley a sanctuary for rebels, outcasts and revolutionary fugitives.
We will create a soulful
Socialism in Berkeley. We will unite
with other movements throughout the world to destroy this motherfucking, racist
capitalistic imperialist system... We will create an International Liberation
School in Berkeley as a training ground for Revolutionaries.
I put the pamphlet down, took a sip of expresso and opened Bonnard’s
book.
Mérimée said of Stendhal
that he was always in love, or thought he was.
He left the drama of his
cares for the opera of his loves.
Stendhal is a hero of
pleasure.
Every really noble
sensitivity wants one to discover it.
He takes the failure of
his work with complete insouciance, he jokes about it and, having given his
epoch this marvelous book, finds it completely natural that it fails to provide
him with the slightest sign that it has received the gift. The poor reception of his works affects him
so little that it doesn’t even prevent him from writing others and to
write them just as freely.
In the last analysis, he wants to
love; or rather, he must love because it is the only escape offered to his
imprisoned sensibility.
He
lies occasionally, but the essential thing is that he never lies to himself.
From
my table in the café Med, I could see a crowd of people streaming down
Telegraph avenue, heading towards Dwight Way, away from People’s Park. They were making a lot of noise and some of
them were running.
A
dark-haired woman, sitting at a table to my left and in front of me, but with
her back to me, looked up from a pile of papers. She had been writing on one of the papers but
now she sat motionless and seemed to be looking for a word. I could see that her face was drawn and
pale. She began scribbling again,
furiously, and then stopped, held the paper up to the light, crumpled it and
threw it into a large leather briefcase in front of her. Her white jacket was hanging on the back of
her chair.
I
found myself studying its texture, and it seemed to live in my memory, as a
musty smell that I couldn’t place. Over
the back of Bonnard’s book, I studied her partially visible profile. Her hair was thick and black, and it hung
loosely, falling onto her shoulders. It
was streaked with gray. She was wearing
a long-sleeved pink blouse.
As
I was trying to make out the pattern on the blouse, the noise of a loud crash
filled the room. The crowd had pushed a
man against the closed front door of the café and the noise was enormous.
The
woman turned around and her eyes were wide with fear. It was Vida!
I waited for her to recognize me.
Another
group of people moved past the windows but this time they moved in the other
direction and there was a club-wielding Berkeley Policeman among them.
She
recognized me with a mixture of relief and terror. She gathered up her papers and stuffed them
into her briefcase, and without closing it, carried it to my table. She said,
“I thought it was over.”
“What?”
“The
riot.”
“Riot?”
“Last
night. Didn’t you hear about it?”
She
placed a chair directly in front of me, with her back to the windows, as if she
wanted me to be her eyes.
I
said, “I heard about it. I mean it’s been going on all year. But...”
“Remember
the tear gas we smelled last night, after the party?”
Her
eyes danced with visible energy, energy that surpassed the energy on the street
and made me forget everything but her eyes and the shape of her face and its
energy.
She
continued, “It was from the police. There were twenty thousand people there
yesterday.”
She
was staring at me and I realized that she was waiting for a response.
I
said, “Twenty thousand people! In People’s Park!? How could twenty thousand people fit into
People’s Park?”
She
shrugged her shoulders and stared into my eyes.
I imagined that I could see little circles of bluish energy in her eyes
and on her cheeks.
I
asked, “Why didn’t you say anything
about it last night?”
“I
was out of town. We came right to the
party. We didn’t even get out of the car
before. We didn’t know.”
She
turned her entire torso around, slowly, without moving her legs, and looked out
of the window behind her.
I
said, “Why don’t we get out of here?”
She
said, “I’m afraid to go outside.”
The
street and both sidewalks were choked with moving bodies.
I
said, “God, I didn’t know anything about
it either. I mean I knew that the
National Guard was still in town but I thought the demonstrations were over. I mean I’m used to the tear gas... Anyway...” I paused, “Anyway...
I was fighting with Florence all day in Oakland and I wasn’t thinking
about the news.”
She
looked down at the table. Her hands were
lying flat on the table, palms down, and she looked as if she didn’t know what
to do with them. She took them off the
table and placed them on her lap and looked into my eyes again. I looked into her eyes without saying anything. Finally I said, “I see a gray hair.”
She
looked at my hair. I smiled and
said, “I’m prematurely gray and getting
bald too.”
She
looked back at the table and said, “I
don’t see it.”
I
moved my head closer. “It’s there. Can’t you see it?”
Her
eyes didn’t leave mine. “I don’t see it.”
I
said, “Don’t worry about the crowd. I’m sure...” I didn’t finish the sentence.
The
crowd began a deafening chant, just outside the large plate glass window: “Power to the people, People’s Park to the
people,” and then, thunderously, “DOWN
WITH THE FENCE, DOWN WITH THE FENCE, DOWN WITH THE FENCE, DOWN WITH THE
FENCE...”
She
looked up into my eyes, pleading with me to do something.
I
said, “Close your briefcase and let’s
try to get through the crowd.” The
people were still moving towards People’s Park.
I said, “We’ll have to move
against the crowd, towards Dwight Way and see if we can get to my car that
way.”
We
got up.
I
said, “Wait. Let me put my book in your
briefcase. I’ll carry the briefcase.”
We
moved through the doors into the crowd as if we were diving into a surf. I yelled to her, “We’ll have to move up the street towards
Haste instead and try to go down Haste.
Take my hand so we don’t get separated.”
The
crowd had stopped moving and we pushed our way up Telegraph Avenue, but we
couldn’t get across the street. The
crowd surged forward again and we found ourselves stuck against the front door
of the same Mexican Restaurant that I had taken Van to for his birthday, across
the street from Cody’s,
She
looked up at me and her face was white with fear. A tear streamed from the corner of her eye,
across to her ear and mascara streaked onto her cheek. Standing in the doorway, I put my hands on
her shoulders and squeezed them, trying to reassure her. The crowd started to move again, back towards
Dwight Way.
I
yelled into her ear, “Hang onto me
whatever happens. Don’t allow yourself
to be separated from me.”
I
grabbed her hand and we moved into the crowd.
We were pushed forward in a wild surge of bodies, and a woman in front
of us held her baby high in the air and screamed. I moved Vida in front of me. To guide her, I put my hand on her neck
through her hair. We stopped, crushed
together against an immobile mass of bodies.
The same woman screamed again. A
voice said, through a megaphone, “Don’t panic.
Everyone keep moving DOWN Telegraph.
DOWN TELEGRAPH.”
The
crowd started to move again and the chanting started again. It was a wild, thunderous and deafening
noise. They chanted over and over: “DOWN WITH THE FENCE, DOWN WITH THE FENCE,
power to the people, power to the people...”
The
shattering sound of a huge plate-glass window breaking transformed the chant
into an outraged scream of surprise and fear.
Vida
looked back at me and we could see that a plate glass window at the cafe Med
had shattered. Glass was lying on the
tables. I could see her white jacket, still hanging on the back of a chair near
a table that was covered with broken glass.
Another
surge from the crowd pushed us, violently, towards Dwight Way, and as we turned
around to head in the same direction, a small army of Berkeley Police, in riot
gear, came into view at the corner of Dwight Way and Telegraph Avenue, marching
up Dwight Way towards Telegraph. They
were being pelted with rocks, bottles, food... They held their shields over their
heads and their clubs high.
Suddenly
the front rank of police charged into the crowd, clubs swinging. Everyone around us fell, or were pushed onto
the ground, as people began running in all directions, away from the police.
Within
seconds the police were standing above about twenty of us, swinging their clubs
and screaming at us. I fell on top of
Vida and I raised her briefcase to intercept a vicious blow from a cop whose
crimson face was twisted into a sneer, as he sunk his club into the briefcase. Two more cops rushed over to us and I thought
we were finished.
Someone
behind us yelled, “Fucking PIGS.”
A
couple of longhaired, bearded men appeared a few feet to our right. One of them, with reddish hair and beard, and
with a red and white bandanna around his forehead, was holding a large piece of
wood about the size of a two by four. He
raised it above his head and screamed again, “Fucking PIGS,” and the three cops
turned their backs to us, and faced them.
I
grabbed Vida by the shoulders and rolling onto my back, catapulted her into the
air, grabbed her briefcase, sprung to my feet and yelled, “Run,” and we broke
free. We sprinted up Dwight Way and
turned right onto Regent street. I was
holding her briefcase against my chest, like a football and she was running
alongside me.
Somebody
yelled, “Do you know who that FUCKING
was?” I looked back but didn’t see
anyone. The voice yelled, “THAT was Jerry RUBIN.”
We
sprinted for three blocks, all the way to Derby street and then turned right
towards Telegraph. Catching my breath, I
said, “We can walk back to my place or
catch a bus if they are still running.”
We were both breathing hard. I
reached out, awkwardly, and put my hand on her shoulder. “How are you doing?”
My
hand felt like an enormous weight and intrusion and it seemed that unless she
acknowledged its right to be there, I would have violated something in
her. I let it remain there, heavy and
disembodied. I was afraid that she
wouldn’t look up and meet my eyes and I thought of Florence, on that first day,
sitting on her bed, and the experiences of our four months together were there,
in my mind. Finally she looked into my
eyes and smiled.
We
looked at each other’s hands and they moved with their own wills and joined, and
we walked hand in hand towards Telegraph Avenue and I felt a profoundly
primitive feeling of ownership.
At
Telegraph, we peered around the corner towards the Campus. Tear gas canisters were exploding, rocks were
flying and the chanting sounded like yells at a football game.
I
noticed that we were standing under a columned portico and that if we moved
just a few feet into the doorway, no one would be able to see us. We moved into the shadows and stood there
staring into each other’s eyes, savoring the moment of our first kiss.
Locked
in a very long kiss, I stroked her hair with my right hand while she leaned
back and swooned into my left arm which held her firmly. Suddenly her body
jolted, as if she were possessed of a wild impulse to run and then she swooned
towards me and we kissed for more than a minute, until a kind of moan welled up
from her and her mouth flowed with saliva and she shuddered for quite a few
seconds.
Our
mouths parted and we held each other, lost in the remembrance of a perfect kiss
and then I looked down at her, calmly and curiously, and she looked back,
surprised, with a smile playing at her lips.
She
looked over my shoulder, down Telegraph towards Ashby, and her eyes filled with
terror. She dug her fingernails into my
sides and I grabbed her shoulders, thrust her from me and wheeled around to see
a contingent of about a thousand Oakland Police Officers marching towards us,
in a perfectly ordered phalanx. They
were dressed in full riot gear, with plastic masks and shields, and were
marching in step like an Army battalion, about two hundred yards from us.
A
voice same over a megaphone, “Telegraph
Avenue is closed from Ashby. Get off if
you don’t want to get arrested.”
She
looked up at me. I said, “We can go back up Derby. It runs into College Avenue. No problem.
Let’s get out of here.”
We
turned and walked back towards College Avenue.
We stopped for awhile and listened to the marching feet of the police
and the chanting of the crowd. But the
silence that arose between us soon dominated us, and I felt that I could only
dispel it with an apology. I felt as if
I had violated her in a moment of fear and weakness.
We
were under a tree, near Willard Park and I stopped, grabbed her by the
shoulders and wheeled around in front of her,
“I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
She
laughed. “I’ve been kissed before.”
The
surprised look came back into her face.
I looked away first, over her head, into the distance, and she
said, “You’re thinking of Florence.”
“Yeah,
I guess so.”
We
began walking towards College Avenue again.
She asked, “Are you going to
marry her?”
“Neither
one of us believes in marriage.”
We
walked on in silence. She asked, “But you believe in living together?”
“That’s
right.”
College
Avenue came into sight. People were
streaming away from the campus, in all directions.
“We’ve
been arguing a lot. She’s going to go
back to Connecticut for awhile.”
“Is
she coming back?”
“Well...”
I wanted to lie and tell her that she wasn’t sure.
She
asked, “She doesn’t know?”
“Oh,
she’ll probably come back. It isn’t
that.”
We
were nearing College Avenue. I was
carrying her briefcase. At the
intersection, I set it on the ground. I
asked, “Are you going to try to go back
to the I house?”
“Do
you think I should?”
“I’ll
walk you up there. I think it’s all
right.”
It
was almost five O’clock. She said, “If you think it would be all right for me to
go by myself...”
“Well,
no. I’ll walk you up there, but it looks
like there won’t be any problem. You can
stay...”
She
interrupted me. “I’ll call my uncle from
the I house and go to his house.” She
pointed to a telephone booth across the street and said, “I could call him from
there.”
There
was a heavy silence.
I
said, “Hey. I...”
But
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I wanted
to tell her that I loved her.
She
knew it and said, “I would have been
hurt if you hadn’t come... I might have been killed. My jacket is still there... I’ll never forget
what happened.”
I
said, “You’re one hell of a runner. I mean most women can’t run across the
street.”
She
smiled, “I was a sprinter in
“Where?”
“
I
said, “You don’t like me.”
She
looked up at me again with her intense eyes, shaking her head slightly from
side to side and I thought that she was about to burst into tears.
Like
a chess player, I said, “I can tell, you
don’t like me.”
“I
LIKE you.”
I
had been holding my breath, and I let the out of my lungs slowly, and asked,
without emotion, again, like a chess player,
“Can I see you again?”
She
said, “At Tilly’s.”
“Can’t
I have your phone number?”
“You
know the number of the I House.” She
said it as if there was nothing she could do about it.
I
noticed the gray hair again and I realized that she had colored it the night
before for the party but she had washed it out again. I wondered how old she
was. She looked at the phone booth.
I
said, “You’re getting gray.”
She
looked down. “I’m old... older than I
look.” She paused. “I’m thirty two.”
“Oh. Thank God.
I thought you were going to say 48 or something like that.”
She
laughed and said, “Yes, Thank God.” She looked at me again as if she wanted to
say something about God, but then looked away into a place that was foreign,
and private.
I
said, “The Mets won today. They beat the Giants 4 to 3.”
She
smiled and motioned to the phone booth with her hand. “I’ve got to go.” She started to cross the street.
I
said, “I’ll call you.”
She
raised her hand to wave good-bye. She
wasn’t watching the street and a car was coming towards her. She began to walk into it.
“Watch
out!” I grabbed her by the shoulders and
pulled her back. I held her tightly,
while the car passed, and then she slipped from my arms and glided across the
street, like a dancer. I yelled after
her, “You could have been killed!”
“Thank
you for saving my life again.” Her eyes
were dark and serious. She waved again,
turned her back and walked towards the telephone booth.
I
yelled back, adding a month to my age,
“I’m 26.”
She
turned and smiled.
I
said, “I like older women.”
She
waved good-bye again and I turned and began to run and jog, all the way to
I
described the riot, and most of my encounter with Vida. I didn’t tell her about the kiss.
She
said, “I was beginning to get
worried. It isn’t like you to be
late. Oh well, we’ve got plenty of
time. It’s only
“Shit,
I forgot to get the Corn Chips.”
She
laughed. “It’s no wonder... We can get some when we pick up Van.”
I
nudged her and said, “Let’s go
inside... Is anybody home?”
“No.”
Afterwards,
we fell asleep and had to hurry to get dressed and to pick up Van on time.
He
was standing there waiting for us, in front of the garage, which had been
converted into a room. He was wearing
his suit and the wing tipped shoes with the cardboard inside. He seemed very self-contained and for the
first time since I had met him, I felt that he was more sophisticated than me
and that that he knew it, and felt superior to me. The resemblance to David Niven seemed more
pronounced, and something in him seemed to be genuinely puzzled that he was
being called, by fate, to share an evening with “people like us.” I attributed my feelings to his suit and
tried to forget them.
But
his girlfriend really surprised me and I don’t think I ever really recovered
from my first impression of her. To
begin with, she was about five foot ten, and a hundred and eighty pounds. And she wasn’t fat. Her face was quite pretty and her skin was
beautiful. It was a satiny-brown
color.
My
first coherent thought was, that a very intelligent professional football
player would find her a very delectable morsel indeed, but then reason
intervened, reminding me that there has never been a professional football
player capable of resisting Dolly Parton, and the scowl on her face reminded me
of that fact.
I
imagined that she looked at my shoulders with affection but the flicker of
affection sputtered into a crooked, black line of smoke when I noticed that her
face looked like Norman Mailer’s, and at that instant I broke out in a high
pitched, nervous titter whose metallic, Maharishi quality surprised even
me.
It
seemed clear, even certain, that she hated me for the laugh. But no one, really, has privileged knowledge
about things like that, and I certainly didn’t have privileged knowledge
either.
She
sat near the wall, next to Van and across from
I
looked at Van. He hid his face in the
menu. I mused on the fact that I
couldn’t possibly put such an improbable and yet certainly true event in a
novel. It simply wouldn’t ring true that
a Harvard graduate would ask such a question like that so aggressively.
I
answered, mechanically, “
“Oh.” It was the perennial, disappointed
exhalation. It reached my ears as a
quick jab, or pop to the solar plexus intended, clearly, as payment, in kind,
for the laugh. I deflected the pain with
the observation that only an incredible boor would dare ask a question like
that in such an insulting and self-vaunting tone without introduction or apparent
provocation.
She
looked back at the menu and tilted her nose into the air. I looked at Van and
“Harvard.”
Balzac
might not have shrunk from describing the incredible mid-Atlantic, twangy,
plucking sound of the a’s, or the leathery texture in the whip-like crack of
the consonants as they scampered across her lips. I, however, am forced to excrete ridiculous
adjectives and (really) beg the reader’s forgiveness.
She
studied the menu for awhile and then turned to Van and asked, “What are you going to have?”
He
said, “I haven’t decided yet.” And I thought he should have added, “Dear.”
I
said, “I hear you teach at a community
college.” I intended the intonation to
be, “Fuck you, Norma Mailer.”
She
said, “Yeah.” She paused, and without looking at me, said,
“I don’t feel like talking about it.”
She hadn’t looked me in the eye since the laugh.
I
answered with irritation, “I haven’t
decided yet.”
Rose
looked across the table, at
“I
didn’t graduate... I went to
“Oh,
yes.
I
asked, “Why was he a puke?”
She
looked at the menu. No response. Van coughed and then looked at me,
warningly.
I
said to him, and really, not to her, because I wanted to know why he was
looking at me that way, “Well?”
Her
voice broke slightly, “I suppose I’m not
being fair to him.” She seemed ashamed
of something. She added, “It wouldn’t be
fair to talk about it here.” She looked
at me for the first time since the laugh.
Van
said, sharply, “She doesn’t want to talk
about it Jack.”
I
said, “Fine.” I raised my hands in mock submission. The waitress came over.
Rose
said, as if there were no doubt who was in charge, “We’re not ready to order
yet.”
The
pock-marked face of Richard Speck appeared in my mind’s eye. It stared out at
me from the pit of memory. He had killed
thirteen nurses and given himself up without a struggle. The first day in jail, he received more than
ten thousand love letters.
I
grew slightly antic with the mixed metaphors of my imagination and
thought, “I’ve got to pop the
hippopotamus, for Van’s sake.” I
said, “I hear you teach mainly blacks.”
Silence.
I
said, “I hear you are battling the
administration because they don’t want you to use Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the
Earth.”
Van’s
head seemed to glow in the darkness of the Mexican restaurant. The light fixture behind my head was
reflected in his David Niven eyes and I saw the great actor and bon vivant
reincarnated in the line of his jaw and the cleft in his chin and the hint of
circles under his eyes.
She
said, “I’m using it in an English
composition class.”
His
eyes softened and his mouth dropped slightly open. I thought that it was the slight lilt in her
voice that startled him. And, still
influenced by Yoga and Mailer and Reich, it seemed certain, somehow, that the
tremulous quality in her voice came from the electricity of her vegas nerve
imparting electricity to her cunt which in turn sent the message to her brain
to befuddle her rationality.
I
cursed Norman Mailer and the Subtle Body of Yoga but I wouldn’t let the
opportunity slip away. I said, “I don’t see how you think you can get away
with using a book like that in an English composition class.”
I
let the sting settle into her central Chakra, and then waited for it to spread
out into her body. After a suitable
pause I asked, irrelevantly, free associating,
“It’s a translation from French isn’t it?”
She
looked at me with more submission that I had anticipated. But suddenly her lip curled, involuntarily,
into a sarcastic and challenging line that I returned with a cold stare. She
said, “That’s got nothing to do with
it.”
Van’s
face softened and I counted it a small victory.
I wanted to ask him if he had ever thought about growing a mustache like
Niven’s but, naturally, I couldn’t ask him then.
Suddenly
But
the sound of her voice and the manner in which she leaned forward, cutting a
line into the table between them and Van and me, told me that they both needed
to learn to submit to the will of their bodies, but that they would use all of
the force of their combined intellects to assure that only a man whom they
imagined, in their deepest subconscious minds, to be some form of nigger,
savage, red skin, coolie, step-n-fetch-it, slave, bum … my imagination failed …
would ever be allowed near that possibility.
The insight, however, didn’t help. I was a twenty-five year old god who
was blind and like Odysseus thrived on hopelessness.
Rose
answered, “Yes. They are all from the ghetto. There are a few Chicanos. But they’re all poor.”
It
was the beginning of a new intimacy and I imagined that nothing less than a
psychic bomb would bring them back to us.
Van’s eyes had already warned me against that. But I was trying to help him. And so, in my
uniquely innocent and feckless way, I sacrificed myself for him.
I
said, “I know it isn’t true, but what
if blacks really were inferior intellectually.
I mean certainly it is a possibility.
Slaves weren’t exactly bred for their intellectual capacities.”
Rose
stared fixedly at me, as if there might be something that she hadn’t
understood, something that she ought to allow to penetrate deeper. Suddenly, her face snapped towards Florence
who said, curtly, as if she had the right to say it, “Don’t bring that up again
Jack.”
Van
straightened his tie and said, with a less than David Niven giggle, “It isn’t exactly nice dinner conversation.”
Rose
was silent and looked steadfastly at Florence, as if she were embarrassed for
her. I forged ahead, “Look, I don’t necessarily believe it, but if
we can’t even examine the possibility, then we can’t really deal with the
problem intelligently. I mean what would
we do if they were inferior? What would
we do?”
I
had reached back into the place where I wanted to be but I knew they would
offer no avenue of return.
Rose
said, looking away from me into some voluptuous scene, (and I felt that in the
luxury and ambiance of absolute righteousness she allowed the image of her
gleaming black lover to dominate her consciousness,) “That’s easy. Nothing, because it isn’t true.”
She
looked back at Florence, triumphantly, and Florence seemed to cringe and fawn,
I thought, as she had at the Horton School for girls, before she had become
“enlightened” as she put it.
I
asked, but my voice had weakened, and there was the hint of the boy who has
been disciplined by his mother, “But why
can’t you even talk about it?”
Like
a Harvard student answering an easy question on an exam, she smashed me. “We aren’t in the habit of talking about
fantasies.”
I
answered reflexively, without hostility or irony, “I thought you were an English major.”
They
were all silent and for the first time that night, energy seemed trapped in my
body and I knew that I had been checkmated.
My mouth was dry and I noticed that I was sweating under the arms.
The
waitress appeared and, with an angry scowl, asked us if we were ready to order.
They
began to order and I knew that I needed to get in one last hit, before I
capitulated. I was the last to order and
I said, humorously, but obnoxiously too, in my best Oakland Nigger accent, “I think I’ll have chitlins.”
Rose’s
eyes flashed again and I savored my last Pyrrhic victory. The passionate brown eyes stared from the
regular face. The honey blond hair fell onto her jacket in ringlets and her
face wore an expression that Renoir would have cherished.
She
seemed curious and even grateful. But
after I had recovered from my ridiculous joke and ordered the only thing I ever
order in a Mexican restaurant, a Chile Relleno, her eyes had turned inward, and
I knew that she had barred me forever from the domain that she seemed so
arrogantly to despise and yet in truth mortally feared. She didn’t look at me again that night and
Van threw my attempts at conversation into an ocean of contempt.