“Then why don’t you tell me.”
“Take that bathrobe off and I’ll show you.”
I coughed into my burger. “Excuse me, too direct.”
“You’re in my hotel room, wearing my bathrobe, and you’re saying I’m being too direct.”
“Look, I’m still eating here.”
“Fair”—one hand going up in surrender—“fair.”
I put the burger down. “I’m going to use some toothpaste I saw in the bathroom,” I said. “You think about your answer.”
When I came out of the bathroom, he was standing in front of me, one hand braced against the interior of the door’s frame. Try not to think the word menacing. I took the glass of scotch from his other hand, nudged him back toward the gray armchair, nudged him and he went. In the bathroom the bathrobe had shifted, had slipped slightly so that it gaped away from my body when I leaned forward, facts I was not unaware of as he sat back down, as I stood over him.
“Why,” I said, sipping his scotch, “are you here.”
“I’m here,” he said. He closed his eyes. “I’m here because”—he smiled—“because every so often I need.” His hands clenching and unclenching, “Every so often it becomes important,” his hands under the bathrobe, moving up my thighs, “to be someone else,” his hands at my hips, pulling, “someone other than myself,” his eyes opening, the smile becoming a grin.
I stepped back and after a moment his grip loosened, his hands fell away. I handed him his glass of scotch. “Who do you want to be?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just, not myself.”
“Just not yourself.” I was sitting on the bed now, the burger, half-eaten, and fries, barely touched, on a tray next to me. “What if I helped you?”
“Helped me how?”
“Figure out who to be.”
“Put the tray on the ground.” I put the tray on the ground. “You want to help me figure out who to be.” I nodded. “You’d like that.” I nodded. “Say you’d like that.”
“I’d like that.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be someone,” he said. “And you tell me”—I nodded—“how much you like it.”
“Don’t ruin it.” I lowered my hands.
“I won’t,” he said. “I know,” he said. A pause, then: “Can I take off my tie?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because,” he said, his eyes wide, his eyebrows furrowed in a pantomime of sincerity, “because I want to make sure. I want to make sure you’re comfortable with this. I want to make sure you’re comfortable with everything I do.”
“Oh I hate this already.”
“So,” he said. He was blinking slowly. “Can I?”
“Oh I hate this.”
“Can I take off my tie?”
“Oh this is perfect.” He was already fussing with the knot.
“My tie,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “yes I am comfortable with you taking off your tie.”
“What about my shoes?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, you can take off your shoes.”
His burgundy socks were bright against the white carpet. “I’m taking off my shirt,” he said.
“That wasn’t a question.”
“Can I take off my shirt.”
“That was phrased as a question but actually I didn’t hear it as a question? The way the voice is supposed to lift? At the end? Of an interrogative? I didn’t actually hear that?”
“Can I,” he said, “are you comfortable with me taking off my shirt?”
I said, “Yes,” but his shirt was already off. His undershirt was white cotton, crew-necked. “If you leave it there on the floor,” I said, “it’s going to wrinkle.” He was standing at the foot of the bed.
“Can I take off my belt,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Can I take off my pants,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Can I kneel on the bed,” he said.
“Yes.” My hips were between his knees and my shoulders were between his hands and my robed back was against the duvet. I felt it with my fingers. Not polyester.
Maybe it was the not-polyester, which reminded me of the polyester duvet in my own hotel room. Maybe it was his bare knees squeezing my hips. “Wait,” I said, “can I—”
“No.”
“But you didn’t even hear—”
“I’m going to ask you a question.”
“Okay, but—”
“Why are you here.”
I shook my head.
“I told you.”
“Barely.”
“Now you tell me.”
“Do you do this a lot?”
“Do you do this a lot.” His mouth twisted. “No, don’t do that, you know better than that.”
“Know better than—” I raised my head, shifted my weight, tried to sit up on the bed but already he had lowered his body onto mine, raised my hands above my head. Already he had secured both my hands with one of his own, squeezed those thick, promising fingers around my wrists.
“You do do this a lot, don’t you.”
He shook his head. “Stop. Asking. That question.” He was six feet tall, six-two. One-seventy, one-eighty. I’ve never been good at estimating weights.
“Look,” I said, trying to move my hands, “I think—”
“No,” he said, “answer my question. Why are you here.” His grip tightened.
“Why do you care.”
“Tell me why you’re here.”
“Can I have some bourbon?”
“Tell me,” he said, “why you’re here.”
“Please,” I said, “may I please have some bourbon.”
“No,” he said.
“You didn’t even think about it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You’re not going to let me off this bed,” I said, “are you.”
He put the hand that was not on my wrists against my neck, very lightly. “Answer,” he said, “my question.”
“I’m here,” I said, “because my husband is a very nice man. I am very mean to my husband and my husband is very nice to me and I feel, therefore, like a monster.” The blood in my neck was throbbing against his thumb. It was not an unpleasant sensation. “I feel like a monster,” I said, “and this is his fault. Even thinking it’s his fault, only a monster would think that. I am here because my husband loves me, even though I am a monster and therefore unlovable. I am here,” I said, “because I hate myself. I am here because I want someone else to hate me, too. I am here to prove my monstrousness to myself and to my husband. I am here because I want someone else to see it. I want someone else to see, to confirm, my monstrousness, too.” Something like that.
Silence. His lips fluttered, like he was trying not to smile.
“You don’t like yourself very much.”
I shook my head.
“And you don’t want me to like you very much, either.”
I shook my head again.
“I’m asking because girls get confused. Some girls, you have to tie their wrists, make the knot real firm, can’t trust them like I trust you.” I felt my breath in my throat. “You know, I’m stronger than you but I’m holding your two wrists with my one hand. You could break my grip. You could break my grip if you wanted to, only you don’t want to.” He moved his hand away from my neck, began untying, began opening my bathrobe. “But some girls, some girls get confused. Some girls don’t know what they want. And then you have to tie their wrists up real tight even before you take your belt off, even though she should know, she should know you’d only ever use the leather end, you’d never use the buckle end. Sometimes, how she’s moving against the knot you used on her wrist, you change your mind, you leave the belt on the floor. My belt, right now, just so you know, it’s on this bed, it’s right where I can reach it. With some girls, you’re not even hitting her yet, and all of a sudden, just totally out of the blue
, she starts looking scared. She starts saying, What are you doing, starts saying, Hold on a minute, starts saying, Wait I don’t know about this, and so then you do have to hit her”—and here he slapped me—“not hard”—no, not hard, a sting, brief, and then the pleasure of the sting’s absence—“just to get her to shut up but then she opens her mouth like she’s going to scream,” he shook his head, “so you have to put your other hand against her mouth and now her eyes are open wide and now you can tell that she’s scared and so you put your knees on her thighs because she’s starting to move too much, it’s starting to seem like she might try to get up, get off the bed. You know,” he said, “my knees aren’t on your thighs because I know I can trust you. You can get off this bed anytime you want,” he said, “only I know you won’t. I know you won’t because you’re not going to get scared, are you. No, you’re not going to start looking at me like please, like don’t. Because when girls do that then you have to raise your hand again, because if a girl’s going to be scared, well,” he smiled, “you might as well scare her, you know, you might as well hit her,” he raised his hand, “I mean you might as well really hit her, on the ribs maybe, just below the tits, some place that won’t show when she puts her dress back on. But when a girl’s confused,” he shook his head, “you go to lower your hand,” he slapped me again, harder this time, “and she closes her eyes and that,” he shook his head, “well that ruins it. You have to untie the knot. You have to get off the bed. You have to tell her to leave. You have to let her go. Do you,” he said, his hand resting on my throat, beginning to squeeze, “do you want me to let you go?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t,” I said. “I won’t close my eyes.”
Los Angeles, 2012
The curtain rises on: my mother’s kitchen; the curtain rises on: me, making myself a gin and tonic. It was early afternoon; I’d been in Los Angeles two days. This part is hard to talk about, I dislike doing it, for that reason I may, forgive me, attempt to be funny.
I drove back from San Francisco in the morning. I didn’t shower. This was a Sunday. I found John and I sat him down and said, I’m having an affair. Of course it wasn’t an affair it was a one-night stand, but I thought affair was smarter, as in more painful. Smart as in to smart, my words a hot needle, digging into John’s palm. Then I waited. I waited for him to say he wanted a divorce. Instead he sat down on our couch and put his head in his hands. Instead he said, I love you. Instead he said, What about therapy.
That business about the hot needle, you know heat is also used to cauterize. Say one-night stand, offer the hope of mistake of won’t happen again, inflict the first of many wounds, so much pain before the one that’s fatal. No, not the first, for years I’d been poking at him, that was the problem. Hard to believe, but this was me trying to stop, this was me trying to be kind. After a fashion. Affair, though, deep but clean I thought, he’ll want to walk away I thought, heat the knife, press it to the wound, stop the bleeding. Knife, needle, in moments of emotional extremity it’s true, my metaphors become mixed.
What I didn’t expect: John, on the couch, his head very recently in his hands, saying, What about therapy. And if the sight of him, I think I do not exaggerate if I use the word devastated, if this provoked pain it also provoked anger. At his weakness. Provoked also disgust. I was stuck with myself wasn’t I, but here he was being given a chance to walk away and here he was squandering it.
Perhaps the conversation continued beyond my initial refusal. I mean my refusal to speak, so it was more of a monologue, John saying, Don’t you love me, and Shouldn’t we give ourselves a chance to fix this, and We were going to have a baby, and me not trusting myself to open my mouth. How animals, caught in a trap, will gnaw off their own limbs, maybe it was a little like that only I think the comparison gives me too much credit, it was John’s limb and I was the one chewing, him saying, I still think we can make this work, him saying, Here, do you want this leg, too.
Anyway if the conversation did continue I don’t remember any of it, what I remember is saying, I’m going now, what I remember is calling a cab and going to the airport, what I remember is buying a ticket to Los Angeles at the airport and how expensive it was.
I hadn’t called my parents ahead of time. I wasn’t ready to answer questions, and questions are more easily ignored in person than on the phone. Besides which I didn’t need to because the fact is that my parents are lovely people, really very nurturing. My father more notionally as in he’d love to be but mostly he isn’t around, my mother sloppier the later it gets, but well-intentioned, both of them, and kind. Gentle with me, eager to care for me, my mother especially, traits as unforgivable in a parent as in a lover.
So they’d welcomed me in and allowed me to ignore their questions and now it was two days later, early afternoon, and I was in the kitchen making myself a gin and tonic. My whole body, I should mention, abuzz with fury. Drinking an attempt to calm down. Furious with myself because by the time I got to Los Angeles I’d realized, I wasn’t stupid, that I’d done it all wrong.
The childhood fantasy of running away, we’re all familiar, yes? Similar in many respects to the childhood fantasy of being allowed to witness one’s own funeral, the difference is only in emphasis. The child who dreams of witnessing her own funeral dreams of being allowed to hear the unqualified praise that is due the dead; mere mention of her faults is, if only temporarily, if only publicly, banned. The child who dreams of running away knows that in so doing she provokes anger, that her action may in fact be an occasion for the dredging up and reexamination of wrongs committed. But what is this to her? Those wrongs, like the people she has wronged, lie in the past; she has given herself the chance to begin anew.
Of course there’s a reason this fantasy belongs to childhood. Starting over is difficult and painful and the past isn’t dead and buried it isn’t even, etc. And the fact is that starting over becomes more so—difficult and painful I mean—the older one gets, for the older one gets the more numerous the ties to the life one wishes to leave behind, the more ties therefore to cut. The more ties therefore, later, if one is possessed of what is sometimes called a weak ego and what is sometimes called a conscience, to mend.
What I mean is I’d waited too long. If I’d changed my life after leaving graduate school. If I’d changed my life after moving to Lincoln. But I’d waited too long; I’d waited long enough that a change in my life provoked also a change in the lives of others, a violent and unwanted change that I would eventually, I was aware of this, I was not so wholly without feeling that I did not care about this, have to, I think the term is deal with.
Let me try to explain this another way. As a child, my interests, if you could call them that, were the highly regimented activities at which I immediately excelled. The fact that I’m one dissertation away from a PhD in English, this is at least in part because I read easily and early and because grown-ups, teachers especially, do love to compliment a little girl with a big book. If homework can be a hobby it was, throughout elementary and middle and high school, primary among mine. What I wanted was direction and praise for following it. As a child these were easy to find. As an adult I learned that the only people who seemed inclined to give out both were my professors, married men, almost all of them. But you can’t marry your married professor. So instead I married John. John, who was so kind and so supportive and emotionally generous and a good listener, who was everything a liberated woman is supposed to want. But then there was no one to pat me on the head for making the right choice. There was only John, who was so kind. Who was so kind and who wanted me to have desires of my own. Really it was a mean trick that the only one I developed was the desire to leave him.
What I’m trying to say, the theorem that must be accepted as a premise if any of my behavior is ever to make any sense, is that I have been, that I continue to be, best at being a vessel for the desire of others. And that this has made me good at exactly two things, school and sex. Also that yo
u’re not supposed to use people as means to an end, you’re only supposed to treat them as ends in and of themselves, a very smart and famous man by the name of Immanuel Kant says so. Only I did want to be used as a means, and mostly it made me miserable and was evil besides, and in an attempt to fix this fundamental problem with me as a person I’d used John as a means and that, not questions like What are you going to do for money, and How are you going to find a job, and Have you opened the e-mail from your manager in response to the e-mail in which you quit without notice, and Is it irony to quit without notice i.e. in a very inappropriate way when the job you’re quitting is in HR, the fact that I’d used John, that was what was eventually going to bother me, when I allowed myself to feel things again.
But the time when I allowed myself to feel things again, that time was not now. Now was early afternoon and I was fixing myself a gin and tonic and watching YouTube videos. In the spirit of Well certainly there must be people who are even more miserable and evil than me, the search terms I was using included the word violent and also the word marriage.
What I found first was a scene from Robert Altman’s 1973 film The Long Goodbye. This was one-and-a-half gin and tonics later. In the scene, a gangster breaks a Coke bottle across his girlfriend’s face. The attack is unprovoked. The girlfriend is wearing a peach-colored dress made of some gauze-like material, chiffon, possibly. The dress has modified bell sleeves that cinch at the wrist and are finished with ruffles. It has what appears to be a natural waist, likely elastic, though this is impossible to determine with any certainty because the waist is partially concealed by a loose, slightly asymmetrical panel that falls on top of and is constructed of the same material as the body of the dress. The panel floats on the left side to just below, and on the right side to just above, the elbow. The girlfriend’s name is Jo Ann Eggenweiler and she is played by an actress named Jo Ann Brody. Not an actress, a waitress who served Altman and two members of his cast during a break in the shooting of the only scene in which she appears. Onscreen, Jo Ann is mostly silent. She and her gangster boyfriend, Marty, are in Philip Marlowe’s apartment. Philip Marlowe is played by Elliott Gould. She sits, impassive, while Marty tells her how beautiful she is, how much he loves her. “I sleep with a lot of girls,” he says, “but I make love to you. Right?” She nods. A few moments later, he breaks the Coke bottle across her face. She screams. As the gangster’s henchmen hustle her offscreen, she utters two words: “Oh god!” “Now, that’s someone I love,” the gangster says to Marlowe. “And you I don’t even like.”
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