Thirty

by Lawrence Block

  A book I read, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. About a teen-age schizophrenic, and she didn’t see depth or colors in real life, only in her self-constructed world of imagination.

  Is it possible that I am schizophrenic? That Eric and his entire world are a hallucination, a trick of my own warped mind? That he does not exist?

  Prove to yourself, Giddings, that you are not deluding yourself.

  A syllogism or tautology or conundrum, one of those things of which I can never remember which is which, meaning that you can’t prove any such thing. No, I am not schizophrenic. Yes, Eric exists.

  I just started writing this because it’s May. What do I care about writing this?

  I get up, I lie in bed several hours dreaming. I eat or don’t eat I have coffee. I walk and walk and walk, endless walks all over Manhattan. I never talk to anyone while I walk. Sometimes I buy something. Not often. When I do—a book, a magazine, a souvenir, an article of clothing—I most often leave it somewhere. Either because I consciously decide I don’t want it or because I just lose it, forget it, and then it is gone and I am somewhere else.

  I can’t write any more of this.

  May 5

  Today is the fifth straight day this month in which I did not kill myself.

  See how I am sustained by tiny triumphs!

  May 7

  Sex is a drug. A habit-forming drug on which one can get hooked.

  I was a candidate for this sort of habit. A sexual compulsive. Looking for something.

  Question: Which is worse, to spend your life looking for something or to find it?

  Answer: I don’t know, I’ve never been out with one.

  Long as you hang on to your sense of humor, love, you’ve still got a chance in this too-cruel world.

  Oh?

  May 9

  He called at five minutes of three. I was still in bed. Why? I don’t know. This happens so often lately. I go to sleep around midnight and wake up every four hours or so, have a cigarette, then slip back down under the covers and pull the blankets over my head like darkness itself, snuggling back under a blanket of sleep and drifting off in dreams for another four hours. And there are days when I do this for sixteen hours at a stretch. God knows why, or how.

  After a point it isn’t really sleep. A long waking dream. It just seems that there is nothing worth getting up for.

  A memory—I had days like that in Eastchester. Days of long sleep. I guess it was a way of avoiding things. Housework, things I did not want to do.

  I have none of those responsibilities here.

  Then what? Sleeping the long sleep to avoid being awake and facing—what? The fact that I have nothing to do, arduous or otherwise? The fact that life is empty?

  But is it empty? It does not always seem that way. It seems—oh, I don’t know.

  But I have to write about Susan.

  I bathed and depped and perfumed. Depped—the word I have been using inside my head. Used a depilatory on my legs and armpits. Went to him, clean and hairless and sweet to smell. He opened the door, looking quite dramatic—tight black pants, a black silk shirt, a scarlet ascot.

  “Come inside, Jan.”

  In the living room, Susan is sitting on the couch. The teenybopper, fluffy blond hair, a quietly beautiful little girl face. She looks toward me and tries on a smile.

  This rattles me. We have always been alone together in this apartment, Eric and I. I know there are other people in his life, as there were others in mine, but all our meetings have been one-to-one. I look at Susan and am unable to speak to her, nor can I speak to Eric. I wait.

  He takes my hand, leads me to her. “Jan, this is Susan. Susan, this is Jan.”

  We manage smiles.

  She is very lovely, at once innocent and knowing. I wonder what she might have been like at twelve, when he first had her. Or what she might be now if he had never entered her life. Or her vagina.

  “Each of you,” he says, “is a gift for the other. I trust you will enjoy your presents.”

  I look at him. He turns, walks to the door.

  “I have an appointment,” he says. “Good-bye.”

  He goes out. The door closes. Again the fancy that it is a dungeon cell door swinging irrevocably shut. I look at the closed door, gaze at it and beyond it for a time, then sense the girl’s presence. I turn, and she is standing a few feet away from me.

  She says, “Don’t be afraid.”

  “Afraid? I’m not afraid of you.”

  “I thought you were, you know, uptight in general.”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “What he wants—”

  Harshly, “I know what he wants.”

  “For us to make love.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve never been with a girl?”

  “No.”

  “That’s pretty weird.”

  “And you have?”

  “Well, like I’ve been with Eric for almost three years now. That’s a long time to be with someone like him. Catch me—someone like him. I guess there isn’t anyone like him, is there?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Anyway, three years. Almost three years. I guess there’s not much I haven’t done, you know, in that length of time.”

  She extends a hand. I draw away. She frowns, hurt, puzzled.

  “I just wanted to touch you.”

  “I don’t like to be touched.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m—this wasn’t my idea. The two of us.”

  “I know.”

  “It was Eric’s idea.”

  “I’m hip. So?”

  “Well—we don’t really have to do anything.”

  “He would want us to.”

  “We could tell him.”

  She shakes her head slowly. “You’re what, thirty?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “To be that old and still be uptight about things. And you’re so pretty.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’d love to look like you.”

  “I’m too thin. Skin and bones.”

  “Beautiful skin.”

  “You can almost see the bones through it.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  I light a cigarette. As I take it from my purse Susan says, casually, that there is grass if I want it. Not today, I tell her. She nods agreeably. I offer her a cigarette, as an afterthought almost. She says that she doesn’t smoke. “Except grass, see. No tobacco. No cancer trips for Susan.”

  “That sounds sensible enough.”

  “Sensible. Look, Jan. Let’s sit down, have something to drink, talk a little. You’re afraid to know me. We look at each other and your eyes run away. You won’t look at me.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “That we’ll ball?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “And that I won’t like it.”

  “Bullshit. You ever do anything with Eric you didn’t like?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And you lived through it, right? No agony, no sweat. What you’re uptight about is you’re afraid you will like it. You have a head full of labels.”

  “Of what?”

  “Labels. You ball me and you’re wearing a label that says dyke. Total bullshit. Everybody is supposed to swing every way there is. Otherwise it wouldn’t feel good. And you even know all that, I can tell you do, but you’re trying to block it. The hell with it. We’ll sit on the couch and look at the fire.”

  I am blocking. On the couch, the girl at my side, the fire glowing on the hearth, I make myself think long enough to see what I am doing. I am all tied up inside myself.

  I think of David and Arnold. Of the openness of the three of us tangling together in love. Of watching one of them suck the other. Of the naturalness of this, of how my own mind took this in without blocking.

  I can accept it for men. But for women—

  I am afraid
of it.

  Susan takes my hand. Her own little hand feels so plump and soft. I experience the momentary impulse to yank my hand away but this is largely reflex, there is nothing unpleasant in the contact of her hand with mine.

  “Jan.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is crazy. I almost feel like I’m the lady and you’re the girl.”

  “I know.”

  “You feel the same?”

  “A little.”

  “I’ll get us a drink.”

  “That red stuff?”

  “Eric left a bottle of it in the kitchen. He said we might want it.”

  “I don’t know if I do.”

  “Makes it easier.”

  “I don’t know. What is it, do you have any idea?”

  “He never tells me things like that.”

  “Well, he’s a secretive man. I don’t know him at all.”

  “Maybe no one does, Jan.”

  “You probably do.”

  “Hardly. Like in a way he’s the God that made me, do you know what I mean? I mean, what was I when I met him? Nothing. A little kid. I didn’t know a thing. Eric created me. But—”

  “Yes?”

  Tentatively, “Well, see, Jan, with all of this there’s still a part of me he doesn’t touch at all. You know, like, inside my head there’s still me, and it’s me and it stays me. I am not great at taking words and making sense out of them—”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “And I’m glad. I thought, oh, that some day there wouldn’t be any of myself left.”

  “No, you always have yourself left.”

  “Good.”

  “He never takes that away.”

  “Good.”

  “Listen, that red stuff, maybe I ought to get it.”

  “Susan? Do you want to make love to me?”

  “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

  “I mean, do you want to? Not that Eric wants us to, forget Eric, but what you want. Is that what you want?”

  “Well, yeah. Sure. Right.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh, yeah. I would do it anyway if he said to do it. I jump when he says frog.”

  “So do I.”

  “So does everyone.”

  “I know.”

  “But I want to, yes, right, sure I want to. It is so great with a girl. It is so much better.”

  “Better?”

  “In some ways. Yes, better in some ways. Clean, it’s the cleanest thing in the world. Oh, wow.”

  “You keep surprising me, Susan.”

  “Only it helps if you love the girl. I think I love you a little, Jan.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “I only say what I mean. That’s one thing, I never put anything on. I want to kiss you, Jan.”

  “Oh.”

  “May I?”

  I have no will. I have odd presences in my throat and chest. I have a dry mouth and wet eyes.

  And this pretty little blond girl reaches out for me like a phototropic plant for the sun, reaches out butterfly arms and a petal mouth, and I close my eyes, I close my eyes, I close my eyes, and our mouths meet.

  A voice in the brain: There, see, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t turn you into a handsome prince, it doesn’t do anything but feel a little good. Except that it does in fact do more. It gives peace. It takes all the tension and sends it away somewhere out of sight and out of mind.

  Her hands clinging to my shoulders, her head tossed a little back, her eyes half-lidded, her lips parted, curved in the merest shadow of a smile.

  I think she is beautiful.

  I want to kiss her.

  We kiss, and our lips part, and our tongues touch. We slide deeply into a kiss, her tongue in my mouth, our arms around each other. Our breasts touching.

  I am filled with a sudden longing to see her body. I want to look at her breasts and between her legs. I want to see all the parts of her body.

  And to do what with them? To kiss, to touch, to—what?

  She reaches out, opens a button on my blouse. I sit, legs curled under me, while her hands work idly, undoing each button in turn. She puts both hands inside my open blouse and takes my breasts in her hands. I have long since stopped wearing underclothing. Her hands settle on my bare breasts like birds on their nests, and I start to close my eyes but force them to remain open, and my eyes meet hers, and we drink each other like glasses of spiced wine.

  “I am in love with you, Jan.”

  “Oh, Susan.”

  “Mommy. Sister. I love you.”

  “God!”

  We undress each other, slowly, lingeringly, with many stops to cling together in urgent kisses. I am kissing a girl, my mind notes. I am kissing a girl who is saying that she is in love with me.

  Her body, revealed to me in stages, is incredibly beautiful. Skin like cream and honey, like warm living velvet. So rosy pink and clean. Breasts, beautiful luscious pears, and oh, I touch them, and oh, her nipples stiffen against the palms of my thin hands, and oh, she gazes into my eyes, moved by my touch, soft and liquid in her eyes and in her flesh.

  Her pubic hair is a tangle of the finest golden fluff, neatly confined to her private parts, not sprawling all over as mine tends to do. I love her body, it is so clean and neat and precise, it has fresh little girl smells to it, I love it.

  I want her.

  And this revelation, echoing in my head in verbal form, is somehow far more shocking than the fact itself. The idea of wanting a girl is jarring; the reality that one is confronted by this delicious body, that one is healthy enough to respond to its appeal—is acceptable enough.

  Life is infinitely easier without words and those thoughts which form in words. Animals fuck in the forest and walk away in stolid contentment without putting words to their actions. Only people need words, and only people have invented the sickness of civilization.

  We should all fuck in the forest, like animals.

  Nude now, both of us, in the bed, his bed. We have established, through words and gestures, that I am to lie still, that I am to be done to. I am to be the fuckee, the ballee, the suckee, as you will. I am to be soft and moist and passive, and Susan, sweet Susan, is to make love to me.

  And so she does.

  (Odd, this. I want to put down what happened and how it happened and what it was like. I feel certain that it is very important that I do this. That it is altogether fitting and proper that I should do this. But something stops me. As if this were private—and somehow more private than all the other private things which I have dutifully described and recorded on these pages.

  (Do I fancy myself in love with this girl? I don’t think that’s it, and yet, and yet, there is something there, something between us unlike anything between me and, oh, anyone else. Does this mean in some strange way that my fears were well founded, that I have opened myself up to a possibility I dimly foresaw—what stilted prose comes today from this pen!—and that I am indeed a lesbian? No, no, nothing of the sort. Labels are nonsense anyway, and I’m not.

  (I am, though, a little different than I was a day ago. Which is understandable, but which also seems in some way to inhibit the flow of ink from this pen.)

  To press onward—

  I lie on my back, eyes closed. She is partly alongside me, partly on top of me, and we are kissing, or more accurately she is kissing me, her mouth on mine, lips so soft, so infinitely softer than ever a male mouth could be, and our bodies are together, and her breasts touch mine, and our flesh merges all the way down. She is shorter than I am; when she extends her feet, lying on top of me like this, her toes reach to my ankles. I feel the contact there, and the joining of our thighs, and the sweet warmth where our loins do not touch, and the sensation of her pubic hair so beautifully golden, against mine, brushing me, and our bellies touching, fitting one into the other, her convexity into my concavity (or is it the other way around, I confuse the words, concave is like caved in, no?) an
d her breasts against mine, and our mouths, giving and receiving.

  She gives a small pelvic thrust. I arch to meet it, and we touch.

  It is like—I was going to write that it is like a plug going into a socket, but the phallic connotation of that metaphor is utterly wrong here, is it not? It is, rather, like the contact of two sockets, but with a great interchange of energy. I think that is what I mean. I am not too sure what I mean.

  (Perhaps, Giddings, you ought to let the facts speak for themselves. Metaphor is not your forte, Metafor is not your phorte. Just give us the facts, ma’am.

  (Ma’am. Who called me that? Oh, the schmuck with the snow shovel, half a hundred years ago. The connections, unbidden and unwanted, that the mind makes.)

  Again and then again she works herself against me, works her pretty blond pussy against me, and then her body glides down mine, but moving so slowly that I would not be aware of the movement were I not so overwhelmingly aware of everything being done by her to me.

  She moves downward, and rains kisses on my neck, and kisses the deep hollow of my throat. Her tongue touches the pulse there. She licks me like flame. My hands want to touch her but remain at my sides as if weighted down, as if nailed in place. She moves lower. Her hands are on my breasts and her mouth kisses their tops. She uses her tongue on my breasts, drawing wet lines from the outside to the center, starring each breast with lines radiating outward from the nipples. Each caress is not merely preparation but an act, satisfying and delicious, in and of itself. She spends a long time with my breasts. She becomes wildly involved with my breasts, and while her mouth and hands delight me and excite her as well, her legs straddle my thigh and I feel her pussy against my thigh, wet and warm, and she fucks herself gently against my thigh, so gently, that little moist open clam sucking at me as she rocks herself against me while she sucks my breasts, my breasts.

  Oh, God.

  I cannot recreate this scene. It hurts me to write it. I can summon up everything, every moment, every touch, every gesture, and I could fill this book all the way to the last page simply with the recollection of her progress down my body with mouth and hands until she magically reaches my secret place and eats me for months until I come like a star going into nova. I could write all of this and use thousands upon thousands of words and still not exhaust what I can recall. It is all still going on in my mind, it is all still happening as it happened then, but I cannot write it.