Postcards From the Edge

by Carrie Fisher

  “So I called him up and tried to make a little joke about the situation, and he jumped on me. He said, ‘Well, this is like the pot calling the kettle black.’ Implying that just because I’ve slept with these two other people he knows—over a period of five years—and because I slept with him on the morning after our first date, I’m some kind of slut. I guess anybody who slept with him would have to be a slut. So we had this huge fight, and he accused me of having initiated the whole sex thing with him in the first place, and I said, ‘Well, if I initiated it, then I’m stopping it right now. I make a great memory.’ And I hung up.

  “When he didn’t call me back, I decided to call him and tell him not to even think about ever calling me again. His machine was on, and he had a one-word message that said, ‘Slut!’ And I freaked out. I mean, I knew it wasn’t just about me, it was about every woman he’s ever been with, and I was lumped in there somewhere. I was so shaken I can’t describe it to you. I imagined him dead, and I left him a message in a very cold voice. But then he called the next morning, and he said that his message didn’t say, ‘Slut!’ It said, ‘What!’ And then I thought, maybe I made this whole thing up. He was being so charming, and maybe he . . . I mean, he did say the thing about the pot calling the kettle black, but maybe he meant it in some other way.

  “I was so confused that I could have made a ‘slut’ out of a ‘what,’ and I knew he’d said some pretty reprehensible things, but now I was thinking, maybe I did, too. And the night before I’d sworn I’d never speak to him again unless he apologized, and he didn’t apologize and yet there we were having this conversation. And I thought, ‘I love this guy,’ and then I thought, ‘No, I don’t, I’ve got a crush on him.’

  “He asked me out to lunch, and I said I couldn’t come. I told him I had low self-esteem, not no self-esteem. Then he called me that night and joked about how we’d broken up. He asked what I was wearing, and I told him I had on a huge ball gown with bowling shoes and a scuba mask and a red wig, and no underwear. We were very funny, and it was like it was new again, only it hadn’t had that much time to get old. But it had gotten old. We had taken it to its illogical conclusion, but it wasn’t finished.

  “On Sunday afternoon he called to ask if he could come over that night and watch this awards show with me, and I said okay. I was still keeping a little bit cool, which I’m sure attracted him. He can’t resist people who can resist him. So he came over and we heated up food badly together, and he said he’d missed me and it was great. So he slept over again, and we had some sex.

  “This time, though, he got away with a shatteringly low amount of foreplay. In fact, he told me this joke: What is Irish foreplay? It’s when the guy says, ‘Brace yourself, Bridget.’ Then he wanted us to stay in bed all morning, but I had to come here.

  “The thing is, I hope I’m not pregnant, because I have a feeling I could get pregnant easily. I mentioned this to him and he said he wouldn’t mind going to the abortion with me if I was. I guess that’s how guys are thoughtful in the eighties—they accompany girls to their abortions. That’s the new manners. It seems so awkward, though, to see each other for a week and then you go and have an abortion together. Maybe I should just have a child . . .

  “What worries me is, what if this guy is really the one for me, and I just haven’t had enough therapy yet for me to be comfortable with having found him? How long do you think this whole process is going to take? Do you think we should have double-length sessions? It’s like, not only am I changing cabins on the Titanic, I’m dating the crew.

  “Maybe I should be coming every day . . .”

  “There’s a lot of pressure to get this new film done in time for Christmas. And what I do when I have a lot of work pressure is, I try to relax, and how I like to relax is . . . Well, I used to like to get loaded, but now I like to go out with women. Certainly this comes as no shock to you after all these years. I’m not looking for a girlfriend, but I’m going out with girls and keeping my mind open to the right girl if I could meet one.

  “It really pisses me off, I met this one girl last week, this actress, Suzanne Vale, and . . . You know, I’m very up-front about not wanting to get into a committed thing. And girls always go along with this at first, and then suddenly they’re into this relationship thing. Right away it’s ‘Who else are you seeing?’ And if you’re seeing anyone else they call you promiscuous, or a womanizer. I hardly think that sleeping with two or three, maybe four girls a week—rarely more than four—makes me a ‘womanizer.’

  “I’m very selective. I only go out with certain types of girls: beautiful or voluptuous. And it’s not that I go out with them just to have sex, but I don’t think you should get into a serious relationship without testing out the sex area. I mean, if that doesn’t work . . . So, I say this to this girl and she says, ‘What do you mean? Is this like a litmus test, and if your dick comes out of her blue then you know you’ve found a girlfriend?’ I mean, that’s absurd! The point I was trying to make is that if the sexual area doesn’t work, then you shouldn’t really pursue any of the other ones, because you can’t really repair it.

  “It’s starting to get on my nerves that I have this reputation for being sexually compulsive. I like sex a lot, I admit it. But, you know, I like food a lot, too, and nobody calls me a foodaholic. I just don’t like that people are always putting a label on you. Women expect you to come on to them. It’s like, if I didn’t, they’d think I was a fag or something. Impotent. Well, it’s not like I couldn’t handle it if somebody thought I was impotent, but I don’t like the idea of people thinking that.

  “I’m not defensive, I’m angry. I don’t think I’m defensive. That’s what she said. I don’t know . . . Everything goes so fast, you know? And I always wait for them to slow it down, and they never do. I thought maybe this girl was going to be different, ’cause she did say she wouldn’t sleep with me right away. She came back to my house, and then she said she wouldn’t sleep with me, and I thought, ‘Well, good. Maybe somebody is finally going to slow the whole proceeding down.’ I could see she was a very intense girl, and everything seemed like it could get very sped up, so I was relieved she was going to be the one to put some brakes on. I don’t know how to do that myself. It’s a skill I’d like to develop, but as of yet I don’t have it, so I usually look to the girls to slow it down. Possibly I should be the one who says, ‘No, no, never mind my boner, let’s not have sex,’ but it’s against my nature. My dick wants what it wants, and then I want what it wants.

  “You may be a shrink, but you’re also a guy. You know what I’m talking about. I see a woman mailing a letter, and I see from the way her breast is curved under her sweater that there’s no bra and I want to bend her over a car and have her. You know, you see these movies of prehistoric people who just bend people over and, Bam! I wish it was like that. It’s an appetite men have as mammals, damn it. I’ve always meant to do some more reading on it.

  “I don’t know, maybe I’ll be able to have a relationship one day. Or maybe I’m not made for relationships. There are probably some people who aren’t. But, you know, I’m thirty-five now and I’m slowing down . . . Well, actually I’m not slowing down, I’m just . . . I’m not slowing down. But I think I should just let my process continue and . . .

  “The thing is, it’s all so interesting. Every part of the sex act is interesting. How they undress, how they look during it, their reaction to it, all of it. And I think I’m really sensitive. It would be hard for me to believe a woman could fake an orgasm with me. I’m that in tune with what’s happening with them, like a safecracker.

  “I could write a travel brochure about women’s bodies. I like when a woman is backlit and you can see what’s under her clothes. I like it if she moves a certain way and something is revealed. I like something to suddenly appear that didn’t seem to be there. I like to be surprised in the area of flesh. I don’t necessarily like to be surprised in the area of brain, although I must say this girl did interest me that w
ay. At one point she said something like that I should fuck bimbos and have the cigarette with her, which was a funny line. She says some very funny stuff.

  “In another sense, though, she’s the same as all the others. When she said she wouldn’t have sex that first night, I asked her to stay over anyway, thinking that maybe in the morning if I acted a little distant . . . And sure enough, Bam! Girls just can’t handle that distance business. Even smart girls aren’t so smart about that. And she’s very possessive. I mean, this girl is a little nuts. She called me up one day and I had this very abrupt message—‘What!?!’—on my machine, ’cause I was in a bad mood that day, and she thought it said, ‘Slut!’ She thought I was calling her a slut. I mean, talk about projection.

  “I don’t know, I think it’s the wrong time for me to get into a relationship, but maybe something will happen from this. I do like her. Of course, I like to think I’m in love. That’s what gets me through the whole process, so it doesn’t seem cheap. I can’t act like I’m in love unless I am in love, so I become in love each time.

  “Sometimes I think I should marry one of them and just fuck around. There are times when I wish I had kids. I just don’t want a wife. I think I need the kind of relationship where if I want to see other women every now and again, the woman I was with would understand it was just a physical thing, and not about loving somebody else. I would certainly be discreet, like I was very discreet when I was with Jill, my last girlfriend. True, she did find out, but not for a long time. And she didn’t leave me because of it. She left me because I gave her crabs—remember? That was the final thing, that I gave her crabs . . .

  “Maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe that isn’t the right way to have a relationship. It’s just that I get very claustrophobic and . . .

  “Here’s what I think. I think my areas of expertise are areas of expertise because I do them to excess. I’m expert at my work because I do it to excess. And I think that if I’m finally able to have a relationship, it will be because I do it to excess. It’s almost as if I’m working at it, but it’s a pleasure doing that kind of business. The trouble is, this girl leveled a couple of accusations that really . . . I don’t think they hit home, but they hit near home. They certainly hit my neighborhood, and I don’t like that.

  “I don’t know if I should see her anymore. I mean, we’re talking about someone who’s smart and funny and has great skin and great tits—you know how I love tits—and a great ass and a perfect pussy, but you never know. I mean, she’s great, but there could be a better one. Maybe somebody like me dies looking for the perfect one. I wish I could look and see it all in one girl. I wish I could stay with that one girl and not feel suffocated, not feel frightened of my need, or repelled by it, or whatever.

  “It’s like there are so many different facets to each of them, and it’s always interesting, but it’s never interesting for long. This girl’s flaw is that she’s a woman, one woman. She’s only one woman, not all of them. And she’s gonna act like one woman. She’s gonna do all that stuff where she needs me, or she yells at me, or she wants me to be something I’m not. Not that I would respect a woman who accepted me like this. She said something funny, she said, ‘If I could make a man, I’d make him just like you and then I’d try to change him.’ I thought that was pretty self-aware.

  “I just don’t like all that nosing around, you know? Where they count the days since you called, and they know exactly what you said you’d be doing, and they remind you of it when you say you did something else? I mean, I think I’m a sensitive guy, but I can’t watch everything I say all the time. I can’t just take care of them all the time. It’s too much responsibility, I’m not ready for that. I don’t know if I’ll ever be.

  “At this point, I’d rather make good films than a good home. I’m not saying this is an ideal outlook, I’m just saying it’s how I see things right now. I do think this new picture’s gonna be really good, which will be a drag in a way. Because then, you know, I won’t be able to tell whether women like me for myself or for Ziz! . . .”

  “I was at Helena’s Friday night and I saw George there,” he said. “He was so cold to me I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Who were you at Helena’s with?” she said.

  “I don’t think . . . I’m just telling you about George,” he said. “I don’t think that that matters.”

  “It’s not that it matters,” she said. “Look, we’ve known each other for three months. I know you don’t see me exclusively, we’ve gone over that. Who were you with?”

  “Well, you’ll probably hear about it anyway,” he said. “Charlene Hasselhof.”

  “The girl from television?” she said. “The television actress?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Really?” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d go out with somebody from television.”

  “Actually, I normally wouldn’t,” he said. “I find it a very limited medium, as you know. But it turns out she’s very . . . She’s bright. She’s almost as . . . No, I would just have to say she’s as bright as you are.”

  “She’s as bright as I am,” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “Is she funny?” she said.

  “Well,” he said, “she’s not as funny as you, but she is funny. Yeah, she’s funny. I mean, I was very surprised.”

  “Why would you tell me this?” she said. “Why would you tell me this?”

  “What do you mean?” he said. “You asked me. I thought you’d want to know that there was another smart girl out there.”

  “Why?” she said. “Why would you think I would want to know that? What is it about me that looks like I would want to know there are other smart pretty girls? Because I’ll fix it. I’ll change it. Is it something I’m wearing? Is my lip curled in a certain way that says, ‘Got to tell her there’s another bright woman around’? Why would you think I would want to know that a beautiful, gorgeous, supermarket-famous face from television is as bright and funny as I am?”

  “I didn’t say she was as bright and funny,” he said. “She’s not as bright. She’s not bright like you. She’s bright in a totally different way.”

  “How can she be bright in a different way?” she said. “What is her area of expertise? Is she bright about cooking? Literature? She knows languages?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “I really—”

  “It’s just so interesting to me,” she said, “that you thought I would want to hear that this beautiful girl is also brilliantly smart and you love her.”

  “I don’t love her,” he said. “I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”

  “I’m jealous, okay?” she said. “I admit I am jealous. Look, we don’t have a commitment, but we certainly have an area of commitment, which is that we talk to each other. I mean, we don’t understand each other, but we don’t pretend to understand each other like other people do, and I feel betrayed here. I suppose you talk to her like you talk to me?”

  “No, I don’t talk to her,” he said. “In fact—”

  “Well, what is she?” she said. “A great fuck?”

  “No,” he said. “In fact, we haven’t even fucked yet.”

  “Oh, great,” she said. “Great. You respect this one too much to fuck her. You didn’t do that little distance thing in the morning? Or she’s too bright to fall for it?”

  “Look, I—” he said.

  “You like to have smart girls get stupid over you, don’t you?” she said. “Well, watch out. If they get too stupid, you might as well go back to just boffing bimbos.”

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t think we should continue this discussion. I don’t like this side of you.”

  “I’m not a box,” she said. “I don’t have sides. This is it. One side fits all. This is it.”

  “How did we get on to this?” he said. “Do we need to have this fight? We have an understanding that we don’t have an understanding, and we enjoy it very much. Now I think we should j
ust order some food and have a pleasant evening, if that’s possible.”

  “All right, yeah,” she said. “I let myself in for it. I should never have asked you.”

  “What do you want to eat?” he said.

  “Something bad for me,” she said. “Caffeine and sugar and salt things. French fries, probably some Coke. You know, just stuff that jolts your system. You order.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Two cheeseburgers well done, a large order of fries, two Cokes, and whatever other carcinogens you have. Thanks.”

  “Oh,” she said, “that guy Gary was going to set me up with called.”

  “What guy?” he said.

  “I told you,” she said. “Gary was gonna get me a blind date with this friend of his.”

  “Really?” he said. “I don’t remember you telling me that. What does he do?”

  “He’s a screenwriter,” she said.

  “Oh, a screenwriter,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “he just did a script for Spielberg.”

  “Really?” he said. “So you talked to him and . . .”

  “Well,” she said, “he has a huge vocabulary.”

  “It sounds like maybe it’s a little too huge,” he said. “I mean, normally you don’t notice people’s vocabularies, do you? It’s like with your teeth. You don’t want people to say, ‘Good caps.’ You want them to think you have a nice smile. A huge vocabulary.”

  “No, no, not too huge,” she said. “But he did use two words I didn’t know.”

  “Really?” he said. “What words?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I understood the sense of the sentence, but I didn’t know the words.”

  “Really?” he said. “So he’s trying to impress you with the way he talks. So, when are you going out with him?”