by John Cheever
•
In Esquire, a piece on the New Homosexuality. I don’t know what to make of it. The claim is that once guilt is overcome the eccentricities of the old-fashioned homosexual will be overcome. Men who love men will be manly and responsible citizens. They claim that an androgynous life can be completely happy, but I have never seen this. Drugs seem very important. The old-fashioned faggot with his dry Martinis is a goner, forgotten. There is something wonderful about being one’s own man. This is not the part of a man that was written by one’s father; it is a question of essence, self-esteem. The fact that I am fifty-eight years old may have something to do with my attitude, my lack of understanding. There may not be such a thing as a normal man, but there is something very close to it.
•
Into town on the 4:40. Night falls on the river. At Grand Central, crowds of commuters wait at the gates. They do not seem undone by death. They seem to be a reasonable, clean, and useful population, a little urgent and a little tired, but I think it would be a fatuous mistak to compare them to the population of Limbo. I walk the streets. Anxiety and perhaps The New York Times have built up in my mind a feeling that the city is sinister and dangerous, but tonight the couples that I see on their way to a restaurant or the theatre seem very happy. On Sixth Avenue there are two stores where you can buy colored photographs of naked men and women, displaying their genitals. One can see as much in many Italian cathedrals. It rains. The sound, the voice of New York for me is the sound of taxi horns reverberating off walls. It is not a sad sound, but it is far from cheerful.
•
What I think of as “the maldispositions” continues. This is the longest stretch I can recall. It began in Majorca early in July, and now, with snow expected, continues. Slammed doors, venomous remarks, a general attitude of revulsion and contempt. I think frequently of S., although this could be just another dream girl. She sleeps. She is beautiful. There is a wide hem to her nightgown. She is fragrant, graceful, intelligent. She wakes. Is it raining? Yes. Your hair is wet. I went out and closed the car windows. I kiss her and laugh. Did you get terribly wet? Not terribly. I dried myself off with a towel. I can’t hear the waves. There aren’t any. It’s calm. It usually is in the rain. I’m going back to sleep. Good night, my love. Good night.
•
My older son seems seriously to have switched his allegiance from me to his father-in-law. This is no cause for feeling, merely something to be observed.
•
I board the 2:20. As we go through the tunnel the lights in the car flicker and go out. We make our way into the daylight, but the train seems to move haltingly. The uptown slums are being demolished—have been in this process for fourteen years. I am the sort of man who would regret the rats, broken toilets, and fire hazards of a cold-water tenement because its cabbalistic lintels were supported by rams’ heads, scrolls, platforms, and other inventions. But the rectangular tenements that replace them have not a trace of invention. Their bleakness is absolute. No man has ever dreamed of a city of such monotonous severit, and there must be some bond between our houses and our dreams. The train makes its halting way as far as Hastings, where it seems to die. All the lights go out. The conductor and the engineer not only refuse to explain what has happened, they are rude. The train shows no signs of life at all; the lights, the ticking and kissing sounds are all gone. It is too dark to read, and the woman across the aisle from me shuts her paperback copy of “Grand Hotel.” Our situation is mysterious, and our response seems to be complete passivity. I think of striking up a conversation, but there is no likely companion around. Would it be different in another country? I think not. I leave the haunted train and, with some other passengers, take a cab. An old man laments the death of the railroads. The trains break down regularly. How wonderful they were ten years ago: speedy, luxurious. Now the equipment is obsolete, the roadbeds are dangerous, the staff is surly.…
•
And look at poor W.B. in his liquor store shaped like a dark hallway, selling what he knows will be, six times out of ten, a means of death. He knows the symptoms as well as any doctor: the deepening flush, then a bleacher sunburn; the shaking hands; the desperate telephone calls—“Hey, Walt, could you have the taxi rush over a quart of gin? I don’t happen to have any money in the apartment, but you know I’m always good for it.” They were in many cases intelligent, courageous, and gallant, but they were headed straight for the cold-turkey ward of the county hospital.
•
Bill Faversham stepped into the bathroom to brush his teeth and found his wife, Martha, in the tub, but she had closed the shower curtains and was invisible. Bill, in a mood that was much more light-hearted than lewd, opened the curtains for a look at her breasts. They were, in a sense, his breasts; he had worshipped them, kissed them, clothed them, and taken them around the world. He parted the curtain innocently, as one might go to a window to see the sky. She gave him a look of pain that was withering, and sank deeper into the water so that nothing could be seen. He turned back to the washbasin. Cheerfulness was obviously his best target, and he banged away at this, knocking down a few of the travelling ducks; but a blow had been deal, and dealt at an area of his spirit that was already lacerated. He went down to the living room, not so much wounded or angry as astonished at the traumatic and reverberative nature of his experience. He had no coherent memory for ecstasy or pain, but an acute experience of either was a sudden revelation of the sum of his memory. The present seemed like some modest, lighted table at which four people played Russian bank, but beyond them was some dark and cavernous backstage, hung with sandbags and the scenery for yesterday’s garden and tomorrow’s forest. The present claimed to be supreme, but the truth seemed to lie somewhere between the lighted card table and the cavernous wilderness.
The only light in the living room was the moon. The night was cold and so was the room. It was, or seemed to him, a cluttered room. Any taste for simplicity that Martha may have had seemed to have vanished as she approached her fifties, and every surface was covered with porcelain lions, sets of luster, pots of china flowers, agate paperweights, etc. It made him feel a stranger there. Then he decided to change his name. He had done this before. He was not Bill Faversham. Bill Faversham was flying over the Urals in an Aeroflot 707, a frightened little man sneaking drinks of vodka from a flask concealed in his jacket. He was Tom Brown, Farmer Brown’s oldest son, a natural man, a little stupid perhaps, but a free spirit, genuinely loving. He was not Bill Faversham nor was this his house; it was merely a place he had stepped into to get out of the cold. He had no investment in the porcelain lions; he had no investment in the withering look of pain Martha had given him. I am Tom Brown, and this is a strange place where I have come in to spend the night.
The discovery, it seemed, of something invincible in himself, clean, free, and strong, was so strenuous that he threw out his arms and braced his back. “I do not live here,” he said happily, ecstatically. “I do not live here, I do not live here, and my name is Tom Brown.” Then he loped up the stairs, parted the shower curtain again, kissed his wife’s breasts, and went to bed.
•
The contemptuous silence goes on for another day. We drive to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Mary says nothing. I joke and talk with my son. Our jokes may be childish and banal, and I may be drunk, but this would hardly account for her formidable silence. The restauran is crowded, and I am pleased at the sight of families eating good food. They are mostly families, large tables of parents, children, and grandchildren. Mary does not speak throughout the meal. Since I observe the others, I wonder what the others would make of us. My son’s face is cheerful, his color is high. I may seem loud and drunk, but what would they make of this haughty woman who does not speak during the four-course dinner? She is thought to be good-looking—sometimes beautiful. Her clothing is fashionable and expensive. Why is it that she will not speak to her husband, will not answer his questions, will not even look in his direction? She serves herself and
her son. She pointedly does not serve her husband. He asks to be served, and if he is to be faulted this is it. She pushes the serving dish in his direction, looking away. She manages to make this simple gesture contemptuous. Have you ever seen people like that in a restaurant? I mean, have you ever seen a man and his wife come into a restaurant and the wife not speak a word during the whole meal? She doesn’t seem dreamy, or angry, or even sad, and he seems not to mind terribly. He talks and jokes with the children. But have you ever seen anything like that?
She is silent on the trip home. I am angry, and I don’t understand. Sometimes I think I am being provoked to physical cruelty. Her father once beat her cruelly, and I sometimes think she drifts back to this scene. She does not treat all men with contempt. I saw her kissing D. in the pantry a week ago. I think these flirtations—whatever—may be some part of the wish to humiliate and destroy; but I may be wrong. Anyhow, we return and she settles down to read the bound galleys of a book sent to me (I claim) by a friend. I think of taking the book out of her hand and tossing it into the brook. It is, after all, mine. However, this is not, even drunkenly, my kind of thing. I watch TV with Federico. When there is something funny I call her attention to it, but there is no response. Since I think anger despicable, I decide to make a stab at mending my fences with a kiss. I get neither the lip nor the cheek. What I get is a feeling of revulsion as shocking as a charge of electricity.
I may imagine all of this, of course, but I come away from my attempted kiss with the feeling that I have brushed not against madness but against obsceneness, wickedness, malice, and evil. I am shaken. I fall asleep, and wake when she enters the bedroom. “Did you finish the book?” I ask. “Yes.” The reply is nearly inaudible. “Did you like it?” She replies to this by closing the door and running her bath. These ar small matters, very small, really, and yet I cannot sleep. I go naked to the dining room and sit in the dark, as I have done a hundred times before. I cannot take a Seconal. I seem allergic to sleeping drugs. I drink a little whiskey and think about mountains, streams, the back streets of Rome. I sit in the dark until two or later and, feeling drowsy, go back to sleep.
•
Assuming that there is some sort of absolution in recording the most tedious and mistaken conduct, I will set down that the following took place. The morning was unpleasant, and the few words spoken were wounding. “Won’t you at least let him finish a sentence?” That kind of thing. I drink. That is a great help. It seems, in fact, to be the only way I have of remaining relaxed. I am left alone after lunch, and I wander through the rooms thinking how happy I am to be free of a censorious presence. I will go to the B.s’ for cocktails. I will play games with A. But then I think I will do none of this. I am tired; I am tired of these dreary social occupations. I am a man, a free man: I will drive into New York, I will take a hotel room, I will screw H., and take S. to the big dancing party. Pow. This is partly genuine enthusiasm, partly gin. I sit in the yellow chair with a drink, seeming to be the object of the attentions of two forces—stamina and inertia—represented by two presences as subtle as the representation of good and evil in some comic strip. I will go, I will liberate myself, I will relish life! I have another drink to steel my nerves for the drive. It is late afternoon, and the snow on the lawns has begun to turn from gold to blue.
The first thing is to write a note, and I do this. Then I must pack. This takes, I think, another drink. Shirts, drawers, Seconal and Miltown, a brown suit for the seduction and a dark suit for the party. What next? Call New York and reserve a room. But why go to all this trouble? says the voice of Inertia. Why not go to the B.s’ and have a drink in front of their fire? Change, move, enjoy your freedom, says Stamina, and I call New York and reserve a room. But what about dinner? It is already too late to make a date, and I don’t want to dine alone in a hotel. Watching the light fail, I think that the traffic will be heaviest at this hour. I am in no rush to get to the city. I put into the oven a frozen serving of Salisbury steak with sauce, take the tires and the car cover from the back of my car, have another pleasant drink, and the eat my steak. Now night has fallen, and I am a little drowsy. Why not take a nap and leave for New York at around nine? I can walk the streets and go to bed early so that I will be particularly potent for H. after lunch. I lie down and fall into a deep—not to say drunken—sleep for an hour. Then I stir myself once more, carry my bag out to the car, write another note, fill my flask, and drink a little more, because it is a well-known fact that I cannot drive when I am sober. I start the car, find that the speedometer is broken and that I have no gasoline. I head for the nearest gas station—a few miles away—and observe that my vision is bad, my driving dangerous. I think this is because my head cold has weakened my alcoholic tolerance. I turn back at the gas station and drive home. I destroy the note, cancel the hotel reservation, unpack my toothbrush and my pills, undress, and climb into bed. I sleep soundly.
•
It is the morning of the day when I will see H. Mary’s contemptuous and weary voice cannot reach me in any way, since I am the beloved of a young, beautiful, and passionate woman. I take three heavy scoops to relax for the train trip, although I’m not quite sure they take hold. On the train I sit beside a good-looking woman who seems appalled and terrified by my presence and perhaps by the fumes of gin that must roll off me. I hope to reassure her by reading the Times very carefully—including all the editorials, financial page, and sporting section. This seems to work, and a little past Yonkers we get into a pleasant, sympathetic conversation. I am early, and, like all countrymen who are early in the city, I begin to walk. I walk up to the Sixties, cut over to Fifth, have a drink, walk down to Forty-second Street, loiter in a bookstore, and finally beat my way back to the hotel. I have a head cold and am not sober. I go up to H.’s room.
It is not as good as it was a year ago. I somehow—hooch and a head cold—can’t get quite on the beam. She’s left her husband, and had, I guess, several affairs with celebrated cocksmen, and her infatuation for my thighs seems to have waned, if not died. She is still terribly pretty, and her figure is astonishingly beautiful, the breasts high and full, the waist very small. She is a year older, and I think I can see this in her face. It is a year during which she worked very hard, and there are new lines around her eyes. Her shine is a little dim. Her hair is a curious shade of pink, some hairdresser’s triumph. It cannot be caressed ardentl, and I dislike this, but I don’t say so. I am very happy in her company but not, as I was last year, ecstatic. She laughs at my jokes and says that I look much better than I did. Stoned and with a runny nose, I don’t see how this could be possible. We lunch and return to the room, but the kissing is halfhearted, and when I suggest a fuck she says gently that she somehow doesn’t feel like it. The fish she ate for lunch … I say it doesn’t matter. She is expecting a friend at three, and before that, after a display of drunken foolishness, I kiss her goodbye.
On the train home I sit beside a drunken salesman, who calls everyone by his first name and who is marketing a portable oxygen mask. He urges me to try it, and I do—with no appreciable effects. I think this terribly funny, but when I reach home and start to tell my story Mary says, “I would like to hear your funny story, but I have to go to the bathroom.” I don’t terribly mind the statement or even the fact, but I do mind that it seems to display a kind of feeling that I don’t understand. I talk freely about H. I see no reason—and this may be my stupidity—why I shouldn’t.
•
Palm Sunday, and I do not go to church to receive that leaf, or frond, that is meant to bless my house. Last year I was in a plaster cast; this year I am on the ropes. On the evening of our anniversary it seemed as though things might be as they had been, for better and for worse. It was the best hour we’ve had in months. But things are dim in the morning, and grow dimmer, I think, as the day passes, until by late afternoon Mary has stopped speaking altogether. I wash a Seconal down with whiskey and check out.
•
So New York-Fairban
ks-Tokyo-Seoul and off into the country of love. Why should it be so like the seasons—a cruel winter and a clement spring? Loving and being loved, I hear the mourning doves. It has been more than a year since their singing—billing—has meant anything but regret, bitterness, and mystification.
What, then, do I remember vividly? The fishbone pines in Fairbanks. This outpost. The light in the sky is gray, but there has been no diminishment in its brilliance for fifteen hours. The faculty wives from Akron, wearing dead flowers and carrying bottles of hometown water. What a waste of time to ridicule them. They are out to see the world, and what is wrong with that? They will have some excitement, pleasure, a dossier of colored photographs, and diarrhea, athlete’s foot, anti-American riots, and the peril and fear of sudden death in the Bering Sea. The smog in Tokyo obscures the city and its mountain. The cabdriver wears a surgical mask. “Made in Japan” was a watchword of my youth. Almost everything for sale in that paradise—the five-and-ten-cent store—was made in Japan. Goldfish, toys, screwdrivers, can openers, beads were all made in Japan. That city, bombed and firestormed, is long gone, but on street corners you sometimes see an old house with curved eaves that was made in Japan.
•
Whatever happened to Johnny Cheever? Did he leave his typewriter out in the rain? Anyhow, he was never known as Johnny by anyone but his friends C. and L., who changed all names to suit them. Eddie, Neddie, Howie, Robbie, and even Petey. Did he write a very clean story? A story about love? A gray day, rather like dusk at ten. J. appears at the pool. He has a kind of looks or beauty that, this afternoon, seems to set him apart from the rest of us. His teeth—their number, size, and whiteness—seem false, although I’ve been told that they are not. There is a little gray in his Neapolitan curls, and a small but definite bald spot. The features are splendid, the manner is beautiful but manly. He tries, he has in fact been coached, to conceal his lack of education. A rich woman, no longer young, would dream of such a consort. I know him to be genuinely loving, a good fuck, and good company, but he seems, unlike the rest of us, to have an appearance that can be merchandised.