OUT ON a LIMB

by Shirley Maclaine

  “I thought you said I wouldn’t have to do anything.”

  He untied it himself and stood with his arms beside him. I didn’t make any move to take off his trousers. I turned him around, gently pushing him face down on the bed. I reached for some Albolene cream and began to rub his back. He sighed with pleasure and curled his arms under him. I took off my slacks and sweater so I could straddle him around the waist and use the massage technique I had learned in Japan with more strength.

  My nails were a problem so I used the base of my hands. His shoulders and arms were so muscular, my hands felt ineffective, but he sighed deeply.

  “You know,” he said, “this is the first massage I’ve ever had in my whole life.”

  I knew he was telling me the truth, regardless of how unbelievable it sounded. But then with Gerry there was so much he didn’t know about self-pleasure. His skin was cold. I knew how warm my hands must feel to him. I massaged his neck until I felt him relax. I put more Albolene cream on my hands and moved down to his back and waist. He began to undulate under me and I playfully smacked him.

  I continued to knead his back and waist. He reached around and put his arm around my waist. I knew he was too tired. But he wouldn’t stop. He wound the other arm around me too.

  This whole scene was unreal. We were perfectly free to make love together but somehow he wanted it to be as if it really wasn’t happening.

  I tried to squirm away from his hands, still massaging his back. He reached around and pushed me toward him until I fell on him pressing myself against his back and squeezing him with my legs. He turned over.

  Before I knew what was happening, he clasped me to him and we were making love. His arms held me so tightly I could hardly breathe. He held me tighter. Over and over I whispered that I loved him. His only reply was to breathe as though he were home again.

  Afterward he rested. Neither of us said anything.

  He stayed still as though he never wanted to move.

  Suddenly I felt afraid. I stirred under him.

  “Gerry,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid. I need to talk.” I stammered when I said it and lay beside him.

  He stared at the ceiling for awhile and then leaning on his arm looked deeply into my eyes.

  “I have thought very hard every day,” he said. “I’m going to state the problem. I’m not stating any solution because I haven’t reached one.”

  I could feel my stomach turn over.

  “I love you,” he said. “I love you deeply, but half of me resists it. I hold myself back subconsciously because I know that I’m not strong enough to tolerate the consequences of our relationship either in a political or a personal sense. I feel that I have been in a kind of mental and physical hole with this relationship and what became so clear to me is that I am not strong enough. I have been confronting myself up ’til now, but now I see it clearly and I want to be fair with you.”

  He patted my hair and smiled shyly almost as a child would smile, guiltily at the truth of what he was saying.

  “Please don’t pat my hair and smile shyly,” I said. “Just treat me seriously and tell me the truth.”

  His face went solemn. He understood that although he hadn’t known me very long, I was more serious than I had ever been in my life.

  He looked deeper into my eyes. “Without you I can push my feelings under, but when I see you, I love your face, your hair; I love listening to the things you tell me. I love touching you. I love you and I love loving you. All those feelings come back and I can’t cope with them.”

  I wanted to cry.

  He took a long beat.

  “I don’t understand why you love me. Subjectively, I suppose I do, but objectively, I don’t.” He waited for me to say something.

  “You don’t understand why I love you or that I do?”

  “I don’t understand either. So now, I’ve stated the problem,” he went on, “let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  I didn’t say anything. He seemed afraid that he might have given me the cue to walk away.

  “Let’s get under the covers,” I said.

  We did. I still didn’t say anything. He decided to continue.

  “The world is a crazy place right now I want to help my party and my country into a better period, and politically our relationship could lose me the election. I know that is a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth, and I can’t do that to my party. They depend on me to win again, nor do I want to lose my seat in Parliament. But personally acknowledging our love would make it three times harder for me. My wife and children have been so patient in putting up with me. There is no stormy loving passion in my relationship with her, but she and they have been a stabilizing force in my life. Morally, I can’t do anything to hurt them. I have worked most of my life, usually to the point of exhaustion, and they have tolerated it. You see how this is morally unacceptable to me? And even if I leave out everyone else’s feelings, I know I’m not strong enough to tolerate my own feelings if I hurt them or my party. And even as I say this to you I feel that I am speaking from a hole, but from this hole I see things clearly.”

  I turned over inside the covers and rested on my arm and looked into his face.

  “Gerry, tell me something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I feel that along with your own loneliness, that you feel that your family has held you back. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s true too, but we have a very intricate relationship with each other and maybe it was good that they held me back. Otherwise I might have grown into a weed.”

  “A weed?” The self-image was so inappropriate. Did he mean that if he was free of them he would strangle all other growth around him? That was what weeds did. Or did he think he’d just grow wild and unruly without the discipline of a family? I was turning the imagery over and over in my mind. I remembered how it struck me when I had read once that there was no such thing as a weed but only a plant in the wrong place.

  “My wife is very harsh and judgmental of others,” he said. “That’s why I know she would never accept our relationship. I’ve never been able to understand that streak in her, but it’s very strongly there. She’s monopolistic. She rules the family with an iron hand.”

  “An iron hand?”

  “Yes. And I think that’s been good. But she would be very harsh in understanding my need for you.”

  The pangs of conscience I had been feeling rapidly vanished.

  “But if you are unwilling to be what you’d call immoral to her, why do you accept her being immoral to you?”

  “I don’t think she’s being immoral.”

  “Well, what’s immorality anyway? Isn’t it immoral to be harshly judgmental of someone you love?”

  “But they have all been so sweet and patient. I can’t hurt them now.”

  I tried to grasp what he was saying, particularly when I wasn’t asking for any commitment from him.

  “Well, listen darling, no one is suggesting you do anything. I’m certainly not. Please understand that. I’m more concerned with what you think you’re doing.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “Well, has it occurred to you that you are afraid of bursting out with a new freedom?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, bursting out with freedom carries a lot of pain and responsibility with it. Maybe you were ready to do that when you met me, but only up to a point. And maybe you are legitimately retreating back into your hole so you can avoid it for a little while longer. A new freedom for you can mean a better relationship with your family too.”

  He blanched. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, maybe you’re in your hole because your own potential might frighten you too much. I feel as though I fell in love with your potential and you’re afraid of it.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Then I said, “I guess I have to ask you, don’t I?”

  “Ask
me what?”

  “Could you do without me? Do you want to do without me?”

  His face looked pained and drawn. I waited for him to answer, churning inside because he was taking so long and also because he was making a superhuman effort to be fair.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I would have to say yes. I could give up my feelings and go back to the loneliness you recognized. Yes, I think I could.”

  I could feel myself shaking inside. It seemed to be up to me now to make it easier for him and walk away because he loved me.

  I stifled the tears. “What should I do?” I asked. “I don’t know if I could stand how lonely I’d make you by leaving, to say nothing of myself.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it would make me desolate if you left me.”

  “And if you can’t understand that I love you that much, then how can you understand how you love me? If you loved yourself more, you’d be freer to love me and others too.”

  His face went quizzical. “I can’t understand that,” he said.

  “What I mean is, you have to love yourself before you can really love anyone else.”

  “I still don’t understand,” he said.

  “It’s as though you’ve dedicated your entire life to helping others unaware completely that you were doing nothing to help yourself.”

  He got out of bed.

  “Does this mean you don’t want to discuss it any further?” I asked.

  He laughed and fell on top of me sheepishly. “But there is a limit to how much I can take,” he said. “You are very strong.”

  “Relentless is the word. But you are ready for relentlessness or you wouldn’t be here.”

  He sat up beside me and said, “All right, there are three solutions as I see it. One—to continue this deception politically and personally. Two—to effect your solution … and …”

  “Wait a minute. What’s my solution?”

  “The solution you suggested a moment ago. You know …”

  He couldn’t even say the words, “Leave me and walk away.”

  “And three—to reflect a while longer.”

  “We’re reflecting right now, aren’t we?”

  He laughed.

  “Well, at least we’re really talking about it,” I said.

  He looked out the window.

  “You know,” he said, “this is the longest personal talk I have ever had.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” I said. “I think it’s the only personal talk you’ve ever had. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t want to mess up your marriage and I don’t want to mess up your political career. But I also don’t like participating in deception of any kind whether it’s personal or political on any level.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “As far as a solution is concerned, I would be happy if you would be more free when you’re with me, that’s all. And in that respect, we can buy some more time.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I understand. I’ll try to be more free if you’ll continue the deception awhile longer.”

  “Okay, it’s a deal,” I said, “but one more thing. You’re right that there is a limit to how relentless I should be, but there is also a limit to how ‘fair’ you should be. Please stop being so fair and just enjoy yourself with me and I’ll stop being so relentless.”

  “All right,” he laughed.

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head in mock despair. He was wonderful to talk to: no hostility, no giving up, no arguing; just a deep and desperate desire to understand what was going on between us.

  He dressed and so did I. He said he had a youth meeting in some other city and wouldn’t be back in Stockholm until the day after tomorrow. But we would see each other as soon as he returned.

  I had agreed to more deception, but I didn’t want to mention the true and real immorality he was committing by keeping this from his wife for what would be a whole year. And I didn’t mention that I suspected what worried him the most was that if she knew about us, she would be harshly judgmental of him in public, which would not only lose him the election, but also shatter all the illusions he had as to how moral she really was … or wasn’t.

  I walked him to the private entrance, showed him how the key worked, and watched him walk away in the snow muttering about the night watchman who might recognize him.

  Then I remembered something he had said that was too complicated for me to understand.

  “I like to be admired,” he had said, “but not by those people who really mean something to me.”

  I thought about that all night while I tried to sleep.

  To be admired by people you care about carried with it a responsibility to live up to that admiration. It was more than public relations; it required substantial qualities which could stand the test of scrutiny and continued observation over a period of time.

  Most people didn’t seem to allow themselves close personal contact. It aroused too much anxiety, was too difficult to sustain … for a few days maybe, but on a long-term basis it became too threatening. The irony was that all of us looked for love. We spend our lives searching for another to share it with. And when we find someone with the potential for fulfilling that need, we back away.

  Chapter 10

  “I think immortality is the passing of a soul through many lives or experiences, and such as are truly lived, used, and learned, help on to the next, each growing richer, happier and higher, carrying with it only the real memories of what has gone before …”

  —LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

  Letters

  I didn’t see Gerry again for three days. During that time I sat in my hotel room and thought. I slept about four hours a night. I left to take frozen walks in the snow, but I was unaware of the cold. I turned over my whole life in my mind. I read some of the books I had bought at the Bodhi Tree, especially on Edgar Cayce. And then I pulled out the address and telephone number for the Swedish trance medium who channeled Ambres.

  I called my friend who had met me at the airport. Lars and his wife were in advertising; they were upper-middle class, although the Swedes didn’t like to think they still had a class society. I had met them when I was on tour in Stockholm a few years before.

  They had been very discreet in meeting me at the airport and refrained from asking me why I was in Stockholm now. We chatted for awhile on the telephone and in that context I mentioned that I had been reading some metaphysical books, particularly on the psychic readings of Edgar Cayce.

  “Oh yes,” said Lars. “Edgar Cayce. I know quite a bit about his work. He was very astute.”

  I was slightly taken aback that in Sweden Edgar Cayce was known when I in America had only recently heard of him.

  “It’s strange and coincidental you should mention him,” Lars went on, “because just tonight we are going to a psychic session with a Swedish trance medium. Would you like to come along and meet the spiritual entity?”

  “A trance medium?” I said. “Lars, you are seeing a spiritual entity?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Ambres,” he said.

  Well, to put it mildly, the “coincidence” was not lost on me. I had been flipping through the Cayce book as we talked. Now I closed it firmly and said yes, I’d love to come. I was definitely in Sweden for reasons other than Gerry. Things were really getting interesting.

  I was ready when Lars and Birgitta picked me up a few hours later. They didn’t ask what I had been doing since I arrived, so I volunteered that I had an idea for a new book and was spending time away from my hectic life in America and needed peace and quiet in the Swedish winter. They seemed to accept my explanation, but then Swedes rarely expose their feelings.

  They drove me toward the outskirts of Stockholm where the trance medium and his wife lived. They told me the trance medium’s name was Sturé Johanssen and his wife’s was T
urid. The spiritual entity that Sturé channeled was becoming famous all over Sweden.

  “Many people are coming to the teaching sessions of Ambres,” said Lars, “because he helps so many with medical diagnoses.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, remembering that Cayce had channeled what sounded like much the same thing.

  “Oh,” said Lars, “people come from all over Sweden with needs of every description. Some are suffering from chronic problems of health, some with terminal diseases, some with psychological confusion, some just with questions about where mankind came from and where we are going.”

  “And this Ambres can provide answers for all of that stuff?”

  “Well,” said Lars, “if people follow his holistic directions perfectly, they usually find some relief, and most of his instructions have to do with understanding the power each of us has within ourselves to know everything if we’d only recognize it and believe in it.”

  “What if someone is suffering with terminal cancer? Ambres can put it in remission?”

  “No,” he said, “Ambres doesn’t put it in remission. He helps put each person on the right course mentally and spiritually so that they can attempt to do it themselves, or at least to deal with the emotional problems involved. It’s basically a holistic and spiritual approach.”

  “Does it work?” I asked.

  “Well,” Lars replied, “the basis of Ambres’ teachings is educating us that we have the power and the knowledge to become anything we want to become. That we have dimensions and understanding that we are not aware of. He teaches that our positive energy is awesome, just as his is, only he, as a spiritual being without a body at the present, knows it, and we don’t.”

  “Well, what is a spiritual being really? I don’t quite understand.”

  “We are all spiritual beings,” said Lars. “We just don’t acknowledge it. We are spiritual beings of energy who happen to be in the physical body at the present time and Ambres is a spiritual being of energy who does not happen to be in the body right now. Of course, he is highly evolved, but then so are we. The difference is that we don’t believe it.”

  Shades of what David had said to me ran in and out of my mind. Snippets and phrases from articles and books I had read played around in my head. Sai Baba in India had said what sounded like the same thing. Likewise, the spiritual master Krishnamurti. “We are capable of everything there is,” they had said, “and the acknowledgement of our seemingly invisible spiritual power would hasten our improvement.”