Starting Over

by Dan Wakefield

  “Nothing, I guess. She’s a nurse at Mass General. She wishes they would bring back Dr. Zhivago. She thinks it’s the most beautiful movie she ever saw.”

  “So?”

  “So nothing. I got her number, just in case.”

  “In case you feel like fucking her.”

  “In case they bring back Dr. Zhivago. Shit. I don’t know.”

  “You bastards.”

  “What?”

  Marilyn picked up her shoes and pantyhose, went into the bedroom and came back wrapped in her old blue terry-cloth bathrobe and a pair of red wool socks. When they were lovers, she wore a Japanese mini-kimono. Potter belched, and rubbed his stomach. He felt as if he and Marilyn had been married twenty years.

  “What’s this ‘bastard’ shit?” he asked.

  “You guys. You can always get laid.”

  “What? You mean you can’t—as easy as I can?”

  “Yeah, sure. To some married man.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s in it for me?”

  “So what’s in it for me fucking that redhead to the theme music of Dr. Zhivago?”

  “Fuck. At least you can take her out in public, go to a restaurant, have a good time. You don’t have to sneak around like a fucking criminal.”

  “Shit, Marilyn, every man in the world isn’t married.”

  “Every good one is.”

  “Thanks a lot, buddy.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean you. I mean every good one’s married, or divorced and bitter, or divorced and looking for some fucking nymphet teen-age bride.”

  “Not every man is.”

  “Yeah? Well tell me how many are looking for someone their own age when they’re thirty-five or so. Huh?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know, my ass. You and Dr. Shamleigh.”

  “What have I got to do with your goddamn shrink?”

  “I’ll tell you what. You’re both men, that’s what, and you won’t admit the truth. And I’m not talking any Women’s Lib bullshit, either, the stuff about who opens the door for who and whether you wear a bra and how you should light your own cigarette. I don’t want to run for President, either. All that’s very well and good, but it’s not the part where we really get screwed.”

  “What part is that?”

  “You guys can keep getting older, and keep getting younger women. But we can’t keep getting younger men, or even men our own age after a while. We’re like cars—we go out of style. The year of our make becomes obsolete, outdated, undesirable. And it’s even worse than cars, because there’s more new women coming onto the market every year than there are new cars.”

  “Maybe—uh—you have a point.”

  “You’re goddamn right I have a point. And that goddamn Dr. Shamleigh keeps asking me why I keep messing around with married men, like it’s some neurotic, sick compulsion or something, when the fact is I rarely meet any others. And when I do rarely meet them, either they have a twenty-year-old girlie, or they—well—they—”

  “They turn out like me,” Potter offered.

  “They don’t last, is all. Mostly they don’t even start.”

  “Yeah. Well, shit. What can I say?”

  “Nothing.”

  They both sat for a while in silence, drinking and smoking.

  “I’ve got to get some sleep,” said Marilyn. “I’m going to take a Phenobarb.”

  “When did you start on those?”

  “Week or so ago. At least the shrink’s good for that. Prescriptions.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, are you going to stay tonight?”

  “Well, I’d like to, but I know I can’t go to sleep for a while.”

  “Well, OK. But listen, it’s hard enough getting to sleep—will you try not to wake me up when you get in bed?”

  “Sure, but—you know, I can’t help it if I toss and turn.”

  “Well—maybe if you concentrate—”

  “No, hey, why don’t I just sleep on the couch? I don’t want to wake you or anything. But I hate to drive back home. I don’t much want to be alone tonight.”

  “I know.”

  Marilyn got sheets and a blanket and pillow, and made up the couch.

  “Thanks,” Potter said.

  She gave him a good night kiss on the forehead. Potter stayed up drinking, chainsmoking, and flipping through old magazines whose articles and stories failed to hold his attention very long. When the windows began to fade from black into grey, he slipped out of his trousers, folded them over the back of a chair, hung his jacket over it, and shoved himself into the bedding, still wearing his shirt and shorts and socks. He mashed the pillow over his head, hoping to muffle light, and noise, and memory.

  Potter sat in his office hoping no students would come. He’d drunk himself to sleep again the night before, and he felt as if he’d been stomped by a street gang. He sipped at a cup of coffee and tried to immerse himself in the box score of a Celtics game. Concentrating on the details, the names and numbers, helped him forget about the ache in his back, the throbbing in his forehead.

  Both sensations were brought back sharply by a sudden rap on the door.

  “Come in!” he said sourly.

  “Did I disturb you?”

  Miss Linnett’s dreamy grey eyes looked moist and innocent.

  “No, no,” said Potter, “sit down.”

  She did, crossing her long, lovely legs and tugging her leather miniskirt the four or five inches that it reached down her thighs. She wore the mini-est miniskirts of any Potter had seen, and her twisting around in them and tugging at them during class often made him forget what he was saying, had said, and wanted to say.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Linnett?”

  Miss Linnett twisted a strand of her long, yellow hair, and launched into a long explanation of why she wouldn’t be able to hand her paper in on time. Potter didn’t really hear the details. He wondered if she had a boyfriend. A lover. Maybe many lovers. Maybe she was a real swinger. Maybe she had a crush on Potter.

  Maybe she just wanted more time to do her paper. Or have it done for her. Maybe she wanted an A.

  Potter gave her the extension she asked for. He would probably give her the A, too. After all, if she distracted him in class she also inspired him.

  But, once again, he determined to stick to his hands-off-students policy. He was proud of this principle, but it was getting increasingly difficult, in fantasy if not yet in practice.

  Potter did not stand up to walk Miss Linnett to the door when she left his office. He feared she might notice his embarrassingly noticeable hard-on.

  3

  As he watched the number of shopping days till Christmas dwindle, Potter found himself dreading the end of school. It was not just the specter of Christmas itself that he feared in his present condition, but the space of empty time, the two weeks of days without classes or office hours, opening before him like a deep and treacherous pit through which he must fall in order to land at the start of another new year and the relieving resumption of duties.

  On the last day of classes before the vacation break, his PR seminar turned into an impromptu party. The students had got together and bought him a fifth of Cutty Sark for a Christmas present, a gift that indicated their knowledge of the bottle he kept in the drawer of his office desk and also their evident appreciation of his class. Potter was moved, feeling like a premature version of Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. He thanked the class, and, in the spirit of the occasion, proposed that instead of taking home his gift he share it with all of them right then and there. This daring proposal was greeted with cheers, and the peppy little Miss Patterson quickly brought back from the cafeteria a dozen styrofoam cups and two bags of Fritos.

  It was a nice feeling. The pleasant anticipation of the students for the season almost upon them relieved Potter’s own apprehension, allowed him to share the warmth. They spoke of ski trips and parties, of going home to Schenec
tady or Cleveland, of hitchhiking to Florida. Halligan, the veteran who was waging a losing battle against his girlfriend’s marital offensive, admitted with a nervous grin that he was getting engaged over Christmas. There were hoots and cheers.

  Ted Featherstone, an engaging young guy who had announced in the second session of the seminar that he was interested in public relations as it could be applied to selling things like peace and brotherhood, population control and universal health care, had come to class dressed in his usual outfit of Levis and motorcycle boots, and was also carrying a large rucksack.

  “Where you heading?” Potter asked him.

  “Oh. This commune where some friends of mine live.”

  “Going there for Christmas?”

  “For the Winter Solstice. That’s what they celebrate.”

  “How do they celebrate it?” Foster B. Stevenson asked with an obvious edge of contempt. “Get stoned?”

  Featherstone shrugged. “Some do, some don’t. On the actual day of the Solstice, people from neighboring communes come over and they have a real feast.”

  “What do they live on, Rich Daddy money?” Halligan asked.

  “Nope. Some have jobs in a neighboring town. Their farm’s over in the western part of the state. It seems real remote, but there are towns around. Also, they raise their own vegetables, of course. And some are musicians, they bring in a lot of bread. Like ‘The Sandman.’ You know, the guitarist? He signs all the profits of his albums over to the farm. If they can’t make a mortgage payment, he gets a gig.”

  “What do the women do?” asked Myrna Seely, who was one of the few Women’s Movement activists at Gilpen.

  “Everybody does their own thing,” Featherstone said.

  “Yeah—and I bet I know what their own thing is—cooking and washing the goddamn dishes and all the rest of the menial shit.”

  Featherstone only smiled, refusing to be drawn into battle.

  Myrna finished off her drink and left, and the room broke up into groups of twos and threes. Potter had more Scotch and questioned Featherstone further about the commune. Potter had never been able to imagine himself living communally, for he cherished his privacy as much as he despised his loneliness. But he had always had a fascination about such experiments, understanding as he did the need of people to huddle together, any way at all, for mutual warmth and sustenance. Featherstone spoke of his friends’ commune in glowing terms, and said they even had “this older guy” who lived there, who used to be an architect, as if this would make the whole thing seem more plausible to Potter. After a few more Scotches, Potter accepted an invitation to visit the commune that very weekend, along with anyone he wanted to bring. Featherstone drew him a map.

  Potter tried to convey his enthusiasm about the commune visit to Marilyn that night, but she seemed reserved, suspicious. Besides, she had lined up another party for them to go to on Saturday.

  “Jesus,” Potter said, “it’ll just be the same.”

  “Well, what’ll the commune be?”

  “Different,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, “I guess that’s something.”

  On the way to the commune, Potter and Marilyn stopped in a supermarket to buy some supplies. It seemed only right that they get into the spirit of the thing by bringing food and drink to share. But once in the supermarket, Potter was confused about what would be appropriate. Marilyn picked out a big roast she thought would be nice.

  “But what if they’re vegetarians?” Potter asked. “A lot of them are—I mean a lot of people who live on communes are, I don’t know if these people are, but they might be.”

  “You should have asked.”

  “Well, it’s too late now.”

  They walked slowly up the aisles, staring vacantly at the bright rows of cans and bottles and jars, all of which seemed too fancy and commercialized to be suitable for a commune.

  “If they’re vegetarians,” Marilyn said, “I guess we have to bring vegetables.”

  “If they’re vegetarians, they probably grow their own. Besides, you can’t just take people a bushel of carrots.”

  “Well, what the fuck can you take?”

  “There’s no need to get excited. Try to be co-operative.”

  Marilyn closed her eyes and sighed. “OK,” she said. “I’m trying. What about fish? Do fish count?”

  “Hey, that’s great. I think you’re right. I think fish is all right.”

  Potter purposefully pushed the empty cart to the fish section, and looked down at the selection, frowning. “These are all frozen,” he said.

  “What did you expect? This isn’t Fisherman’s Wharf.”

  “Is it all right for them to be frozen?”

  “What the hell do you mean is it ‘all right’?”

  “I mean, doesn’t freezing them add some harmful chemicals or something that they couldn’t eat?”

  “By God, if we can eat them they can eat them.”

  She started hurling packages of frozen haddock into the cart.

  “That’s enough!” Potter said.

  There were more than a dozen packages of the stuff.

  “OK,” said Marilyn. “What else? What about bread?”

  “They probably bake their own.”

  “Maybe they don’t need anything.”

  “Wine,” Potter said. “I’ll get some wine. They might just have dope. They don’t like hard liquor, but I think wine is OK.”

  He bought a gallon of Tavola red table. It seemed very earthy to him, and therefore hopefully acceptable.

  According to the map, the commune was a dilapidated brown small house with a garage whose roof was caving in. Potter was not so much surprised at the deteriorating nature of the place, if that was indeed the right place, as he was by its proximity to the world it was presumably trying to escape. It wasn’t far from the supermarket in town, and once here, you could see at least three neighboring farmhouses. Potter had imagined something hidden away, far from towns and main roads, far from anything.

  It was the place, though.

  A girl in a dirty blouse and torn jeans came to the door.

  “Hi,” said Potter, with his best smile. “My name’s Potter.”

  The girl only stared at him.

  “Is Ted Featherstone here? He asked me to come.”

  The girl turned in toward the room, and yelled, “Ted!” then walked away. Potter and Marilyn still stood outside, shivering. Featherstone appeared, looking a bit groggy and pulling a T-shirt over his head.

  He looked at Potter blankly for a moment, then rubbed his eyes and said, “Oh—hey—yeah.”

  “Well, I found it,” Potter said.

  “Far out.”

  “This is my friend Marilyn.”

  “Hey, yeah—c’m in.”

  “Thanks.”

  Potter handed Featherstone the supermarket bag filled with frozen haddock and the gallon of Tavola.

  Featherstone looked inside the bag. “Far out,” he said. “Listen, just sit down anywhere. I’ll get some glasses.”

  Potter and Marilyn took off their coats, and looked around the room. There was one old chair with the stuffing coming out, but it was occupied by the sprawled body of a large, redhaired young man reading a comic book. There were pillows scattered over the bare floor and Potter and Marilyn each grabbed one and sat down. Featherstone came back with jelly glasses filled with wine. A girl walked in from the kitchen, and climbed up a rickety ladder to what was evidently a sort of dormitory floor above, with bedrolls.

  Featherstone lit up a joint. “Wow,” he said, “you came.”

  “Yeah, we really came,” said Potter.

  He didn’t dare look at Marilyn. He was hoping things would pick up. Several other people passed in and out, glanced at them, and walked on, as if they had merely noticed a couple of spots on the floor.

  “So this is it,” said Potter.

  “Not everyone’s here right now—Roger, the older guy I was telling you about, had to make a run into to
wn. He ought to be back.”

  Potter inhaled furiously on the joint, wishing to hell it would stone him out of his skull, but it only led to a coughing fit, and he passed it to Marilyn, who puffed delicately, and drank more wine.

  A tall, frail-looking guy with thick glasses came out of another room and Featherstone motioned him over. It was The Sandman himself, and, true to his image, he looked as if he was still half-asleep. When introduced to Potter and Marilyn, he nodded and yawned.

  Roger, the older guy, came back from his run into town with a carton of Camels and some frozen orange juice. That made Potter feel better about the frozen fish. Frozen must be OK. For all Potter knew, frozen was beautiful.

  The fish, however, were never mentioned again. Dinner was pumpkin-and-cucumber soup, and homemade dark bread. Four people, including The Sandman, sat at a round table. The others crouched or knelt on the floor.

  “Let’s have some sounds, man,” The Sandman said, and the girl in the dirty peasant blouse put on a record. It was some kind of Rock, and blared out any other possibility of sound, which was actually a relief to Potter since the only other sounds were primarily those of snoring and farting.

  Roger, the older guy, nodded at Potter and Marilyn when introduced but didn’t look them in the eyes, as if he didn’t want anything to do with people who were vaguely his own age. Right after dinner The Sandman summoned Featherstone into the back bedroom, which it turned out The Sandman had all to himself. He seemed to have all the rights and privileges of leadership except for the lack of a title and the pretense that he was just one of the others. Marilyn went back into the kitchen to ask if she could help with anything, but the dirty-bloused girl and a tall, rather pretty blonde said no, they were going to leave the dishes till tomorrow.

  The dirty-bloused girl deigned to come out and sit by Marilyn and Potter on the floor.

  “How long have you been here?” Marilyn asked.

  The girl shrugged. “I wanted to go to South America, even found out about a job on a freighter, but they wouldn’t take me on, just because I was a chick.”

  “That’s too bad,” Marilyn sympathized.

  “You know it. I mean, it really shits when a chick can’t ship on a freighter.”