Calculus
is a collection of ingenious fallacies.
Michel
Rolle
We
have to silence Gramsci’s brain for twenty years.
Mussolini
I
know that I can’t possibly know what I was feeling then. I remember nervousness accompanied by a
constant effort to forget, to make light, to appear before myself that I wasn’t
nervous. Convincing myself that I was
not thinking about her, I thought of nothing else. Like the Puritan whose obsession with sex is
masked by its opposite, I had a clear conscience. Or maybe, thinking myself at the center of
the Universe and Enlightened, I stunk of Zen and was at the antipodes: I was
still capable in those days of trying to convince myself that I was going to
get a free lunch and a piece of ass and that it wasn’t really important. The only noble thing about me was the terror
that I could never completely suppress.
I
looked up at her from the porch steps when she opened the front door. She smiled and I noticed her
nervousness. I thought she saw only the
insouciance that I had been assiduously cultivating because she seemed to be
even more nervous than me, standing there and smiling like a fool.
“Why
don’t you come in,” she said, and I had
the feeling that, upon seeing me, she had considered turning me away, and then,
in a whimsical instant, decided to relent and invite me in. As I entered the house I looked sidelong at
her face and it was flushed and stony and her eyes were staring at some inner
fire and I thought that she had decided that she didn’t like me. So I cursed my fate and began again to try to
live with women’s eternal contempt, and I wanted to leave, hardly before I got
into the living room.
“It’s
dark in here,” I challenged, wanting to
return to the light of the Spring day.
“We
always leave the curtains closed. We
spend most of our time in the kitchen.”
I
was surprised. Somehow it seemed
incredible that she would say that, even if it was true. I knew that she was a radical feminist.
We
stood there in the dark. She looked at
the floor. The happy, friendly young
woman was not there. My stomach began to
tighten again, and I wondered how I could get out of eating lunch. Then I imagined that she wanted me to go, but
she felt that she couldn’t tell me to go because she had invited me to
lunch. I was about to tell her that it
didn’t matter, that people made mistakes about each other, and that I would go
if she wanted me to, when she said, “Do
you want to go into the kitchen?”
I
didn’t want to stand there in the dark and I didn’t want to tell her that I
wanted to leave, so I said, “Yes, I
guess that’s where people usually eat lunch.”
She
smiled faintly and indicated with a movement of her head that I should go in
front of her. “I haven’t made anything
yet,” she said apologetically.
“That’s
all right. I’m not really very hungry.”
“You
don’t want to eat lunch?”
“Well,
uh. What were you thinking of
making?” She laughed.
I
looked around the kitchen. It occurred
to me that it probably looked as if I were looking for food.
She
said, “If it isn’t good you won’t eat it, heh?” The humor had a hostile edge that brought
back the tension.
I
smiled and after a silence I said, “No,
I just didn’t want to put you out.” I
tried to match her tone. I felt certain
that I was too tense to eat lunch.
“Well,
I invited you for lunch, so I must have thought I would have to make it.”
“True.”
I
began to prepare myself to go through with it.
The kitchen table stood between us.
She stood with her hands resting on the plastic table cloth. It was faded, yellowish-white with dull red
roses all over it. The kitchen looked
dingy and I noticed a cockroach feeding on the counter behind her. We looked at each other in silence.
She
asked, “How was work last night?”
“Oh,
actually it was interesting. Ted
Williams rode in my cab last night.”
“He’s
a baseball player isn’t he?”
“Well,
he’s retired now but he was probably the greatest player that ever played the
game.”
“Did
he autograph your hat?”
That
struck me as funny and I broke out with a good laugh.
“No,
but that probably would have been a good way to break the silence. I wish I had thought of that.”
“Maybe
you should take me along with you. I
could give you ideas like that.”
“Well,
maybe I could arrange it.”
We
smiled at each other and I suddenly remembered the reason that I thought I was
coming over for. I gave her a little
appreciative look. She
reciprocated. She looked at the
refrigerator. “I could make a
salad.”
She
waved her hand as if it she thought I didn’t really want anything.
“Sure,” I said without conviction. I looked at her again, I thought subtly,
trying to communicate my desire and not imagining that she would respond.
She
asked, “Do you want to do it
first?”
She
spoke in a tiny voice that was almost a whisper. I wasn’t certain at first what she meant and
I said, “Yeah, sure,” almost in the same tone of voice that I might
have used to ask for the salad. I looked
back into her eyes and suddenly it was obvious what she meant, and so I
said, “Where, right here?”
She
didn’t seem surprised but she said,
“No, we could go upstairs to Tilly’s
room. Her bed is bigger and more
comfortable than mine.”
I
walked over to her and put my hand on her shoulder and looked into her
eyes. She lowered her glance and her
face took on the same sad expression it had the day before. I kissed her cheek as if she were a little
girl and I was surprised by my perception that she was in greater need than I
was. Afterwards, I made the mistake of
asking her if she had an orgasm.
“I
can’t believe that you would ask that.”
“What
do you mean? Why shouldn’t I ask that?”
She
looked at me with a kind of amazed superiority.
“My orgasm is my own responsibility.”
I
had read various books that explained female sexuality precisely and I
considered myself something of an expert.
I was so surprised that I couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally I said, “What do you mean? You like to do it to yourself?”
She
smiled. “You can do it to me if you
want.”
After
I had demonstrated my knowledge, she said,
“You’re almost as good as my ex-husband.”
“You
didn’t tell me that you were married.”
“I
wasn’t married very long. I mean
technically I was married over two years but about nine months after we got
married we had an accident and he spent the rest of the time in the hospital.”
“What
happened?”
“We
were making a left turn on his motorcycle and a truck didn’t see us and smashed
right into us. We both went flying.”
We
were lying in each other’s arms. The
room was warm and the covers were pulled all the way back. I asked,
“Was it the truck’s fault?”
“Oh,
there was no question about it. But we
had to take them to court and there was no settlement until three years after
the accident.”
“Did
they pay for the time you had to spend in the hospital?”
“Yes,
they paid for that.”
“You
weren’t hurt?”
“Are
you kidding? I broke both legs and there
are scars all over them.” She showed me
scars running from her knees to her feet.
“I’m
ashamed of them. They are so ugly that I
haven’t worn shorts since the accident.”
I
thought her legs were too fat but the scars didn’t bother me. I hadn’t even noticed them until she pointed
them out. She was very thin, with small
bones, but her legs carried twenty pounds too much fat.
“How
long were you in the hospital?”
“Six
months. But he was there for almost two
years. In fact he was still there when I
divorced him.”
I
felt sorry for the guy. There was a
silence.
“He
must have been hurt pretty badly.”
“Not
any worse than me. But he was older than
me so it took him longer to heal.”
“How
old was he?”
“45.”
I
was shocked again but didn’t say anything.
“It
must have been really bad for your sex life.”
“No,
on the contrary. We had the best sex of
our lives in that hospital bed. They put
us side by side. We were quite a sight
in our casts. I’m sure the nurses
watched sometimes.”
“How
did you do it with casts on?”
“Well
it wasn’t easy at first because one of his legs was in traction but I could
move around and then, after three months, they took my casts off.”
“What
caused the divorce?”
“I
can tell you one thing, it wasn’t the sex.”
I
lay on the bed, with visions of two people in casts dancing in my head. Her head was cradled in my arm. She raised her head from my arm to look at my
profile and asked, “Have you ever been
married?”
I
frowned and she snuggled her head back into my shoulder. I said,
“No, I don’t believe in marriage.
I mean I think people should live together but they shouldn’t get the
government involved.” I glanced at
her. She didn’t seem shocked or
surprised. I continued, “Almost half of all marriages end in divorce
anyway.”
She
said, “I was only nineteen. I was just trying to get away from my
parents.” She paused, looked at me
cautiously and said, “I would never get
married again.”
There
was an awkward silence. I wasn’t used to
women who agreed with me on that subject.
I said, “I lived in a commune
for a year.”
She
looked impressed.
“Yeah,
last year in fact. It was a disaster
actually. No one wanted to do the
dishes.”
She
laughed.
“Really. They wanted me to do them. After the first day there was a mountain of
dirty dishes and it took me two hours to wash them. I said “it’s someone else’s turn now.” But no one else wanted to do them.”
“So
you ate out of dirty dishes?”
“No,
but whenever anyone ate anything they had to wash a dish to eat out of.”
“It
sounds like a nightmare.”
“No,
not totally. There were good
things. But I learned that behind a lot
of idealism you just find hypocrisy.”
She
asked, “Were you involved in politics?”
“Not
really. A little bit. I followed Dick Gregory from a distance. Do you know why the computers stopped working
on election night?”
“No. Were they sabotaged?”
“The
rumor is that Gregory had about 75 percent of the vote in
“I
believe it.”
“Have
you ever read his book, Write Me In! ?”
“No.”
“It’s
just an expanded version of Gregory’s platform.
I’ll loan it to you if you want to read it.”
“I’ll
look at it.”
“Gregory’s
really far out. He’s planning to open a
national headquarters in
“I
can’t take him seriously. He seems like
an Uncle Tom. Always joking to keep the
White Folks laughing.”
I
didn’t think she wasn’t right about Gregory but I changed the subject back to
her. “You were involved in the Women’s
Movement?”
“I
was part of the original group that started in
“Original
group?”
“Well,
it all started in Becky Weston’s apartment.”
She
explained who all the women were, and she was amazed that I hadn’t heard of any
of them.
“That
really pisses me off. Everybody knows
Kate Millet but she wasn’t even a part of the early movement. She used to come to the meetings sometimes
but she just hung around in the background and never said anything. No one knew her and she didn’t contribute at
all. Now she is famous and the real
workers in the Movement are unknown.”
I
said, “Her book is really terrible. I hate that book.”
She
didn’t say anything. I added, “Sexual Politics. As if politics can be sexual.”
“Actually
I like the Title.”
My
arm was getting sore but I wanted her to stay where she was. We wrangled for awhile about the definition
of politics. She asked, “Did you vote in the last election?”
“Yeah,
I voted for Gregory and
“I
voted the Communist ticket.”
I
laughed, and said, jokingly, “I can’t go
that far.”
She
looked at me with serious eyes and said,
“I’m a Communist.”
I
was stunned. I thought immediately of
She
answered with a laugh, “No, I’m not a
member of the Party. I would never be a
member of the Party. But I believe in
Communism. I believe that people should
be absolutely equal in everything.”
I
said, “I believe there is injustice and
I think people are a lot more equal than most people think... but I can’t go
that far.”
She
said, “The top one percent of the
American population owns one third of all the wealth in
“I
know that. I mean more or less. I find it hard to believe because I can make
almost four thousand dollars a year driving cab part-time. I’m not exactly a socialist because... I mean let’s just say I’ve never seen
Socialism anywhere except maybe at AT&T or at
I
had been struggling with the problem for seven or eight years and still hadn’t
really come to anything like a solution.
I said, “We’ve inherited
“You’re
too pessimistic. You’ll never do
anything if you think like that.”
I
said, “I think it is basically a problem
of authority. Americans worship
authority because they know instinctively that reason is useless. Think of all the fundamentalists: the
Mormons, the Seven Day Adventists, the Moonies, the followers of Jim Jones,
Billy Graham... Not to mention the
Scientologists, Psychoanalysts... whatever... let’s face it, even the Catholic
Church. To most Americans, reason is
hair-splitting and thinking is dangerous because it leads them to question
authority and to be ousted from the party or church or club or, more to the
point, from their JOBS. If you think and
try to reason about things, they see you as a crank or a fool or
dangerous. That is, if you don’t have
any money. And most Americans
don’t. I think it goes back to our long
history under the authority of the Church, but who knows.”
The
people cannot get their fill of seeing the tortures inflicted, on a high
platform in the middle of the market-place, on the magistrates suspected of
treason. The unfortunates are refused
the death blow which they implore, that the people may feast again upon their
torments.
She
said, “You must run around in some
strange circles. Most of my friends
constantly question authority. I mean
our whole society is a bunch of lawyers, always arguing about
everything... What do you call the
protest against the Vietnam war if it isn’t a questioning of authority?” She paused for her rhetorical question and
then said, “I can’t relate to what
you’re saying at all.”
“Well,
it seems like I’m just agreeing with what you said before. The rich have all the power, not because they
deserve it but because they inherited their money. They will do anything to keep their power and
so they hire the most intelligent lawyers, newspaper editors, college
professors, politicians, cops, whatever, to convince the people that socialism
is treason and a crime against humanity.”
“So
we have to try to do something about it.
Your solution is to sit around and do nothing.”
I
said, “I’m afraid of Communism because
of the example of the Church in Western History. Heresy was a crime for which no punishment
was too cruel. Communists treat all
unbelievers like heretics.”
When
Damien was executed in 1757, every available spot within eye-reach of the
scaffold was crowded with Parisian sightseers, who gloated over the doomed
man’s sufferings. After having his hand
burned off and being subjected to the horrible torture of boiling oil and
melted lead, for hours, to the accompaniment of his piercing screams, the
whip-goaded horses dragged his limbs and body apart. Casanova, who was an eye-witness to the
scene, although compelled to turn his face away and to stop up his ears, noted
that the females around him “did not budge an inch.”
I
asked her if she had heard of George Orwell and she called him a
reactionary.
In the Congo Free State of King Leopold,
who succeeded in reducing the population from 20 million to 10 million in two
decades, with Nazi-style atrocities, a native army of 20,000 men, given “a
completely free hand to loot and rape,” was instrumental in implementing the
conversion of the country into a Belgian slave labor camp.
I
said anyway, “I think I can influence
people by devoting my life to learning and writing, on the fringes of the
establishment. I’ve either been lucky
enough or unlucky enough to have experiences that very few people have had, and
I’ve learned things from them that very few people know.
Emigrants
introduced the torture of lashing an Indian to a wagon wheel to die a lingering
death as the vehicle bumped over the plain.
The Indians retaliated by tying settlers to the wheels of destroyed
vehicles and leaving them mutilated and bleeding to die under the burning sun.
“For
example I know that I’m equal in intelligence to my step-brother Jacob, and he
was the Valedictorian of his class at
I
remembered my pessimism about being published and I thought she would confront
me with it. Instead, she wanted to know
about Jacob and so I told her what I had told Pinson.
“Just
because I had problems when I was seventeen and eighteen, I lost my chance to
go to
We
meditated on Bad Luck for awhile. She
asked, “Couldn’t you transfer to
“I
was in the process of transferring to
Between
1778 and 1871 the
“I
still don’t understand why you didn’t transfer to
“
No other nation on earth can boast of breaking
so many treaties, solemnly executed under oath.
Not even
“Why
didn’t you apply to the
“Well,
believe it or not, at that time, no one had ever been accepted from
“I
didn’t know it was that fucked up.”
“It’s
even worse than that. Listen to this
one. My step-brother had a friend who
was married and had two kids. He was in
his senior year at
“That
sounds too horrible to be true.”
In
all fairness, perhaps at least one piece of sculpture should be created which
depicts a trooper in the uniform of the
The
inscription at the base might be composed of the adage, so long popular with
Americans:
“The
only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
“I
know it sounds incredible. But that is
exactly what happened. I can’t believe
it myself. He was really brilliant in
mathematics. I thought he was smarter
than both my step brother Jake and me when we were kids. But Jake was in a rock band in those days and
I was a jock. Sampson was a scholar even
back then.”
“Sampson?”
“Hilary
Sampson, Jake’s friend. He went to the
same junior high school and high school that Jake went to.”
“This
Jake sounds like quite a character.”
“Well,
he basically just studies all the time.”
“I
used to be like that,” she said.
She
looked at me as if she were revealing a great sordid secret, and as if I should
prepare myself for the painful details.
“I
went to a private school. Horton. Very exclusive. I was the best student in the class. I mean there was only one class for each
level. But we all took four years of
French, three years of Latin, and Calculus in our senior year. There was an open ranking system and everyone
knew everyone else’s level in the class.
I was the top student in the class every year and I was stupid enough to
be really proud of it. But in my junior
year I suddenly realized that no one cared about grades. The other girls were all from rich families
and I was a Day Student because the school was close enough to my home so I
didn’t have to board there. I always knew
that they looked down on me for being a Day Student. But in my junior year I realized that they
just saw me as an ambitious grind.
Status came from looks or money or both.
So I just gave up.”
“Did
you flunk out?”
“Oh
no. That came later. I ended up graduating second in the
class. I was the Salutatorian. I could have been first easily, but I stopped
studying completely in my senior year. A
fat, ugly girl, Sara Dahl, was the Valedictorian and I was actually glad it
wasn’t me.”
“You
must have gotten into a good college.”
“Have
you ever heard of
“More
or less. But I don’t know anything about
it. Is it a good college?”
“It
isn’t Smith or Vassar but it’s Ivy League.
It didn’t matter. I spent most of
my time daydreaming and literally didn’t do any studying at all. I was obsessed with finding a husband. To give you an idea of how far gone I was,
once I stood up on a table in the cafeteria in the middle of dinner just to get
attention. I would do anything to be
accepted. I was a disgrace.”
“What
did you major in?”
“Are
you kidding? I know it sounds like a cliché
but it was basically “husband
hunting.” I mean it isn’t like I was all
that different from the other girls, except that I virtually didn’t study at
all and presumably they studied at least enough to get C’s.”
I
said, “Well, I know what you mean because when I first went to college I didn’t
study either. But I educated
myself. I read all the time. But I just didn’t get around to reading the
books that were assigned. I read the
complete works of Freud when I should have been studying Calculus.”
“I
didn’t read anything. It was just a
farce. The Dean had a nice conversation
with me and in a very roundabout way and very politely, he told me to quit
before they threw me out. At least he
was nice about it. If I had been in his
position I probably wouldn’t have been nice.”
“It
sounds bad.”
“Believe
me it was worse than it sounds.”
She
had been cradled in my arm for more than a half an hour and my shoulder was so
sore that I groaned when I tried to lift it from under her head.
“Do
you want me to move?”
“Yeah. Just for a minute.”
She
sat up and I rubbed my shoulder with my other hand. It was partially numb. I could barely move my elbow above the
horizontal.
“Do
you want me to massage it?”
“Sure.”
I
had never been massaged by a naked woman.
She began with my shoulder and progressed into a full body massage. We ended up making love again. It was obvious that she had learned something
from being married to an older man in a body cast. We slept for awhile under a sheet, and I
awoke first. She was hot and slippery
with sweat. I had her in a tight
headlock, and I remembered that, as a child, I used to wake up holding my teddy
bear that way. I had dreamt of
“How
are ya doin big fella?” She looked
up at me with trusting eyes.
I
asked, “Are you OK?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Well,
I had you in a pretty tight head lock.”
“Oh,
that’s all right. I didn’t notice
anything.”
I
said, “I was having a nightmare.”
“I
give you nightmares.”
“No,
I was dreaming about
“Do
you want to tell me about it?”
She
was being a sympathetic big sister.
“Well,
it isn’t anything much. Just that I was
selected to take a college course when I was still in high school and...”
I
proceeded to tell her more of my scholastic misadventures, more than anyone but
a lover could possibly find interesting.
“You
dreamed all that?”
“No,
I just dreamed that I couldn’t find the class and I was supposed to take the
final but I couldn’t find the classroom.”
“Well,
I think you’re a genius.”
She
looked up at me and smiled with the same little girl smile, but her irony was
implicit and I gave her a little kiss on the cheek.
“I
think you are a genius too.”