I had been married for six years when The Unimportance, as I call it, hit me. For three years, my wife gave me unwavering support. Then the problem became more than she could deal with. She announced that she was not able to face the prospect of married life with a partner who believed, and believed deeply, that he was unimportant, one who had declared that his soul had vanished. She left me. She was 34 at the time. I am now 38. Although I was devastated by her decision, we parted on a friendly basis. She recently remarried. He’s a businessman over-brimming with self-importance and I wish her well.
My problem is that I have met a very attractive divorcee my own age and we seem compatible in all respects. But as this relationship progresses, I am dreading the time when she will expect the mutual “baring of souls” and discover that I am completely without one. She has twice dropped hints that I would be welcome to enter into a long-term commitment with her. But I believe it unfair to a woman who is still under 40 to be stuck with a man who is, essentially, a barren human being without any value whatsoever.
Melody is her name, a name she lives up to. A piano teacher, she gives lessons to hemophiliacs. They love her instruction because she allows them to dispense with all those pounding, fortissimo movements, allows them to brush the keys ever so slightly and what results is a delicate, whispering music, bloodless, divine.
Dear Advice Giver, what should I do?
Dear Unimportant,
I find nothing to approve of concerning your condition. Your minuscule, personal, empty-shell problem bores me to distraction. Welcome to the human race! Everyone is insignificant in the teeming insect-like order of things. Wake up and smell the nightshade!
My advice is to toss maudlin self-reflection out the window and become a blood work entrepreneur. That’s where the smart money is and that Melody of yours is onto something. Why not start a home business canning the blood of hemophiliac pianists? The Hot Bath Method is a good canning option. In fact, the entire field of Home Economics, that steamy marriage of science and domesticity, awaits your oh so gentle touch!
Otherwise, scurry under your sofa and stay there.
2. DEAR ADVICE GIVER,
My wife has a Leviathan on her tongue. Please write about cures and prevention.
Dear Husband,
Leviathan is a catch-all phrase for verbal monsters in the mouth that can’t be rubbed off. Leviathans hold onto the tongue and mouth for dear life. Some Leviathan conditions are harmless. Other Leviathans are quite dangerous. Deadly spite, hateful, accusatory remarks, the spitting hellfire of the self-righteous are examples. Ritual thinking and arrogance are the cause. Leviathans are born in the mind and flower on the tongue. There is no reliable cure other than a change of mind.
Dear Husband, you are in danger! Leviathans can spread like crazy, especially through romantic love that fosters like-mindedness. Prevention is the only hope. Cultivate an independent mind. Regard romantic love as just another dispensable emotion. Refuse to be moved by anything.
3. DEAR ADVICE GIVER,
I have a great husband. “Buddy” and I are in our early 40s and have been married for ten years. We do everything together. We never argue, and our marriage is nearly perfect. The only problem is that Buddy has no interest whatsoever in Bondage. He can take it or leave it. Approximately every week or 10 days, he will accommodate me and allow me to chain him to the bed but I can tell he’s just doing me a favour. “How much longer, Mandy?” he’ll sigh with his head turned away while I, attired in my cute dominatrix nurse’s outfit, sit on his chest barking orders.
Buddy talked to his G.P. about this because he realizes that it’s not normal for a man to deny his wife intimate pleasure, but this hasn’t made any difference. Frankly, I don’t think Buddy will ever learn to enjoy Bondage. I have asked him repeatedly to tell me what I can do to make it more enjoyable for him but all he’s said is, “Install a TV on the ceiling so I can watch the hockey game while you’re pinching my nipples.”
Here’s my question, Dear Advice Giver. I know that electric shock is given to sex offenders to curb their unhealthy appetites. Would it be possible for a doctor to give Buddy such conditioning in reverse? Electric shock to spark his interest?
Dear Mandy,
Buy Buddy a 52-inch TV. Then forget him and come visit ME!
WHOOPS
I’M LOVELY. I drink 40 glasses of water a day and I always wash my hands. I’m never sick and I’m lovely. If you knew me you’d know it’s true about the water. If I could, I’d have an I.V. attached to my arm just to get a constant supply. As it is, the water bottle is never far from my hand: driving the freeway, lying in bed beside my lawfully wedded husband, Lewd. Or on the air because I’m a kind of performer. Water—keeping me lovely.
I’m so lovely animals lick my face. Cats and dogs wander up wagging their tails when they see me. Same with children and the mentally deranged; they recognize loveliness—they’re lovely too. Children and deranged people want to sit on my lap and stroke my hair.
Everyone at Disneyland is lovely; it’s the rule for working there. That’s why I picked Disneyland to have my birthday party. To work at Disneyland your soul must be as clean as a white plate and your eyes must dance with wholesome joy. As an employee you must love and help people; bad people are not allowed to work at Disneyland.
I don’t mind saying the word “bad”; I don’t mind facing up to the errors of other people’s ways. I tell my callers, I get it very clear: “This person, your husband, who abandoned his wife and children to shack up with a honey is a BAD PERSON. Remove him from your life.”
I’m able to speak plain because I’m lovely. I sleep well at night because I’m lovely. Because I am my husband’s tart.
Feminists are not lovely. Career women who leave their kids with sitters are not lovely. Abortionists and day care centers are not lovely. Left-wing liberals and welfare initiatives for single mothers are not lovely. Undeserved help for the poor is not lovely. Homosexuals are especially not lovely because they could choose not to act upon their URGES.
This is the way it is. Because I know this I can take on the day. I am single-handedly returning morality to the people of the Western World. Morality is a lovely thing. Without it: drug addiction, alcoholism, every sort of BAD BEHAVIOUR.
Twenty million people listen to me every day; many of them tell me they are honored, honoured to have me speak to them. But now and then a doubter. One caller said: “I’m a fence sitter, Doctor Lovely. How can I be sure there’s a God?” I said: “Hello? Excuse me? Look out the window. See the sky, the birds, the beautiful world. How do you think it got here? You think it just happened? I don’t think so.”
I hung up. “That was not a real call,” I told my audience, “That was an insincere person and, very probably, a BAD PERSON.” To the producer who screens my calls I said:
“How could you let that unlovely person get through?”
I tell my listeners: “The path of the righteous is a lovely path. Because all the landmines and nasty surprises are going off in the backyards of those people who have chosen a life of unloveliness.”
There is no excuse for being unlovely.
Penises are lovely. I tell my female callers: “Cherish the legally sanctioned penis in your life. Without that penis … whoops … no making babies. Do whatever you need to do to keep that penis happy. The maintenance of a happy penis will render you lovely.”
I’m a walking talking example. Ask Lewd. When Lewd introduced the goat mask and leather harness to our lovemaking did I run screaming from the bedroom? No siree. I cherished the opportunity to make his penis happier still. I love and honor that penis and I thank God every single day for giving me such a big and inventive one.
God, by the way, thinks I’m lovely. He’s given me His halo of stars for my personal use. God said: “Here you go, Doctor Lovely, an exact replica of my favorite celestial sphere.” I wear God’s halo of stars like an arch above my head. I wear it always so people will be reminded of my loveli
ness and LISTEN TO ME.
My hairdresser listens to me; she couldn’t be my hairdresser unless she did. She designs my hair into a vision of spun gold; it goes nicely with my halo. My hair may look like Pomeranian fur but Doctor Lovely is no dog. Why not? Because other men find me lovely. They wouldn’t be men if they didn’t. This is because I’m an IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD. I accept my responsibility; now you accept YOURS. This is my message: shut up and quit whining.
Doctor Lovely has a sense of humor.
A recent New Yorker cartoon has me standing, hands on hips, before Jesus on the cross and declaring: “YOUR PARENTS DID WHAT!!???”
I laughed. The Nation laughed. But one caller thought the cartoon profane. “No,” I told her, “the cartoon is not profane; the cartoon honors Doctor Lovely and the fine work She is doing.”
Did I mention I’ve rewritten the Ten Commandments? Updating them for these unlovely times? Come to my birthday party at Disneyland and you’ll receive an autographed copy. The party will be held in the Grand Ballroom; we’re decorating it to look like a High School gym and asking people to wear costumes: poodle skirts, prom dresses, white sports coats. The Ten Commandments will be the highlight of the party, delivered by me at a buffet dinner before an expected crowd of thousands. (Just phone us after the show to order tickets.) Then: a night of dancing and GOOD CLEAN FUN. Everyone over the age of 12 is invited, especially OLD PEOPLE.
Old people are lovely? Absolutely. Old people are God’s way of reminding us that … whoops … here comes death.
Never mind. If you’re a GOOD PERSON, Doctor Lovely will hold your hand.
THE MIRROR
EACH MORNING I WANDER OUTSIDE in my white pajamas and dressing gown to squat among the cornstalks. Later I join the Fathers for coffee and donuts in the monastery lounge. The Fathers sitting on the couch together worrying over me, their most difficult charge.
The trick I’ve played on them is to write to another Father—Father Abraham—who lives in the city monastery; I’ve asked Father Abraham to be the father of my yet-to-be-conceived child, placing the letter in the internal mail chute knowing the Fathers here will find it and begin their fretful interception. Naturally the letter can’t leave the monastery confines and what follows is the delicate questioning of me over morning coffee, the Fathers not letting on about the letter, of course, trying to keep their interception immaculate. But after details, hoping I’ll reveal things under their seemingly innocent probes.
But I prefer to speak of my morning excursions. Squatting among the cornstalks is not always easy, I tell them, because workmen are often about, or transport trucks delivering frozen hamburger patties, chickens, and other foodstuffs to the monastery kitchen. (There Father Able wields his mighty cutting knife revealing forearms as thick as honeyed hams. Ah, Father Able!)
For the morning excursions I braid my hair and carry a hand mirror held firmly against my leg. From the monastery windows, the Fathers watch me in my solemn wanderings and shake their heads. It’s a mystery to them why I don’t walk with the mirror held before my face like the other young women do. But this is another strategy of mine to unsettle the Fathers—to appear both decorous and impure. I’m certain they whisper to one another in the pews before matins: “What will become of her?” I’m always on their minds. Oh, to be prayed over with such constancy and devotion!
But alone in the cornfield, free of the Fathers, I hold my mirror aloft and gaze at myself in admiration. What I see there: a cupid’s face, rosy, full-lipped, blue-eyed. The Fathers think I go to the cornfield to relieve myself but the truth is I go there to gaze in the mirror, to revel in the seeming endlessness of my youth.
When the corn is not yet high enough to shield me in my gazing, I venture further, to the sea cliffs where the monastery hermit lives. Often I find him sitting on the large rock in front of his hut—a slow, sad hermit, slower than a mountain, slower than a tree; a breathing statue, an object of time. He doesn’t have a proper name like Abraham or Able; he’s simply called Our Father Who Art. At the monastery it’s said that if you stroll by the hermit at sunrise you may catch him stirring. Then you will hear the slow groaning of his mind forming thoughts—one wise thought a day for you to guess at.
When I hold my mirror before the hermit’s ancient face he doesn’t blink or seem to see what lies before him; his gaze is elsewhere—-inward or to the sea beyond, it’s impossible to tell.
Nor does he appear to notice me seated on the ground before him, my mirror held high, reflecting sun and sea and my gazing eyes, so clear and blue you’d think you’d found perfection.
And I have.
TRAVEL
IT HAD BEEN RAINING but suddenly the sun broke through, hot, and the rain on the cars in the Safeway parking lot steamed. From the back of the car she unloaded five cases of empty beer bottles and three large plastic bags filled with beer cans and wine bottles—refuse from her daughter’s 19th birthday party—into a shopping cart. Then she pushed the cart through the parking lot. The chrome bumpers on the steaming cars flashed erratically in the sunlight bringing to mind cries for help, the crude signals, say, from a sinking ship and desperate survivors using broken mirrors or glass as beacons to alert hoped-for rescuing planes.
Passing through the lot she saw a heavy-set man leaning over the back end of an open pickup truck patting a rain-soaked golden retriever with a towel, the dog wagging its tail. Nearby, in a parked car, a middle-aged woman sat behind the steering wheel eating salad out of a Styrofoam container with a plastic fork. Inside another car a young man fumbled with a set of keys, trying to fit one into the ignition while in the back seat three small boys sat quietly. Further off, a woman darted from behind a parked car and grabbed the collar of a fleeing toddler. Then an old man in a baseball cap was observed sitting in the driver’s seat of a beige sedan, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers. Across the way, in the alcove by the bank, a group of teenage boys roughhoused while keeping an eye on the street where an old woman in a walker held up traffic at a crosswalk.
She reached the liquor store. The clerk, who took her bottles and cans and gave her $9.40 in return, had silver rings on every finger, some extending past the knuckles, one ring covering a thumbnail. A woman in her mid-forties, with high cheekbones and a sharply thin nose, her dark hair wound in a coil around her head. She suddenly realized that she’d met this clerk once, years ago, at a party; the clerk had been married to a friend’s acquaintance. Back then the clerk had been a beautiful girl with long hair reaching to her waist. Her name was Melanie. For some reason she’d looked up the meaning of the clerk’s name when she’d heard of the husband’s repeated unfaithfulness and was strangely satisfied that the name meant sorrow. Now the clerk wore the liquor store uniform: blue and maroon striped shirt, light blue pants. With rings on every one of her fingers like camouflage it was impossible to tell if the clerk was still married or not.
Driving home she took the winding road through the airport land. The sun was fully shining now; the rain clouds of only an hour before had disappeared. The fields on either side of the road were leased to farmers for hay. Cows usually grazed here during the day and in the evenings regrouped for the plodding journey alongside the road to the gate at the far edge of the field. This afternoon, though, there were no cows to be seen. But a man was striding waist-high through the hay; he was dark-haired and wore a brown suit jacket reminding her of the character in the film Paris Texas, a madman who, when about to board a plane, had asked incredulously, “You mean it leaves the ground?” Further along two men, one leaning on a bicycle, and the other standing beside him, laughed together by the side of the road. At the same time a small bird flitted across the windshield, low and fast.
For some reason she pictured herself on vacation, driving along a country road in England and feeling charmed by the sight of laughing country folk. Thinking this she wondered at the habit of experiencing a thing by comparing it to something else, in this case, the immediacy of the airport drive with a romanti
cized, even nostalgic, idea of England. The same thing had happened the night before. Looking out the living room window at the few lights across the inlet, her husband had remarked that the scene looked like San Francisco, even though he’d never been to San Francisco. Earlier she’s done the same thing: the view from their deck through the arboured vines of clematis and wisteria to the hanging fuscia basket, the gum maple, and the blue spruce, looked in the summer sunset, she said, like a scene from some European villa—even though she’d never been in a European villa and had only seen pictures in magazines or films. Why is it, she wondered, that we have difficulty experiencing what is before us? We’re always sliding into somewhere else, someplace imaginary, second hand, unreal; it’s like an experiential tic, as if lucidity were something to be taken only in small, furtive doses, as if present experience isn’t worthy of our attention.
She’d traveled this way the day before. When her husband was leaving to spend the afternoon with friends, he’d unexpectedly pulled her towards him. It was an unusual good-bye. Unusual because of the way they clung to one another at the prospect of separation even though he’d only be gone a few hours. The sudden urgency of their parting made her think he was about to fly missions over Germany, that they would be separated for a long time, and that, quite possibly, he might never return. They had these movie emotions because that was the only dramatic leave-taking they knew: World War II. Even the enemy country dated from that time. In the truck he’d waved three or four times as he headed out the driveway. She’d stood on the front porch like it was a dock, like he was on a troop ship, and she was being left behind. She stood there watching him leave and was dumb struck by the force of the love she was feeling: a terrible wonder. For a few moments tears sprang to her eyes and she worried about widowhood, aloneness, and how she could possibly carry on without him.
Darwin Alone in the Universe Page 7