“I don't care. Just put it in.”
I went in. Slow. Cautious. Being in her was a revelation. I had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be in a woman. When it comes to sex, I think we all suffer from a kind of amnesia. We can never fully recollect what it's like. Our memory doesn't allow it. So we're compelled to do it over and over, again and again. I think this memory loss must be a function of the brain. Good old Darwin! He knew what he was up to.
“Please don't move,” I said.
I tried to remember to breathe, to stay calm. I was my own minefield. I had to not set myself off. I made it through the first minute. Maybe I can do this, I thought. I began to apply some strokes. She was sensitive, knew I was struggling, and so she didn't do anything too dramatic. She just made small movements, lifting her hips just the slightest.
Then I got the hang of it. Wasn't in immediate danger. We began to move together more rapidly. I kissed her. I grabbed her breasts. We kept moving. I got her arms above her and pinned her wrists again. She liked that. Her legs were wrapped around me. I was fucking her. It kills me to use that word, but that's what I was doing. She was moaning and crying out quite a lot now. I pinched her nipples. Kept the wrists pinned. I gave her some slaps with the back of my hand and the palm of my hand. Never too hard, but enough to make a sound like a clap.
Then we found our spot together. I was kissing her and my pubic bone was rubbing against her pubic bone. That was the spot.
Then I had to stop kissing her. It was too exciting. Too intimate. I had to be alone. So I nursed on her neck and kept rubbing that bone. I didn't think I was going to make it.
“Keep doing that,” she said.
The more she got excited, the more I thought I couldn't hang on. But I had to last. I had to make her come. I had to be good. I had to be better than all those Africans and Mexicans and Japanese. I hid in her neck and rubbed. I fell back on that old male trick of thinking about sports. In my mind, I began to recite the Mets lineup from 1973, which was the year I became truly conscious of sports and the Mets went to the World Series but lost.
I started with the catcher and then went around the infield and then started over.
Jerry Grote. Ed Kranepool. Felix Millan. Bud Harrelson. Wayne Garrett. Cleon Jones. Don Hahn. Rusty Staub. Jerry Grote. Ed Kranepool. Felix Millan. Bud Harrelson. Wayne Garrett. Cleon Jones. Don Hahn. Rusty Staub.
I did a few of the pitchers.
Tom Seaver. Jerry Koosman. Jon Matlack. Tug McGraw.
Then she really started to moan. Come, goddammit, I shouted in my mind. I visualized each player. Felix Millan's batting stance. Wayne Garrett's red hair. Cleon Jones's Afro. Rusty Staub's belly. I tried to think of the ugliest Met: Ed Kranepool. I remembered his swing. A lefty. He had dark stubble. Thinking about him was very good. He was completely unfeminine. I couldn't think of anything feminine. So I kept thinking about Ed Kranepool, and all the while I was thrusting and rubbing.
I was able to be detached from my body as long as he was in my mind. I said his name backward in my head.
Loopenark. Loopenark. Loopenark. Loopenark. Loopenark. Loopenark.
Then I did the whole team. I've always been good at speaking people's names backward.
Etorg. Loopenark. Nallim. Noslerrah. Tterrag. Senoj. Nhah. Buats. Revaes. Namsook.
Then there was a cry like no other cry. Just had to give her a few more thrusts to finish it off. Loopenark. Loopenark. Loopenark. Another cry.
She had to be done. I gave one deep final thrust, like Brutus. Something inside me screamed; I was ready, beyond ready, but I had the presence of mind to yank the knife out, rub it wet and alive against her belly and spill all over her.
I rolled to her side. We were silent. Then I asked, “Do you want me to get a towel, clean you up?” I was embarrassed that I had made a mess; suddenly, I felt like I hardly knew her.
“No, it's okay,” she said.
We lay there quietly. I kissed her shoulder, but it was a phony move, just something a man does to keep the peace with a woman. You see, I was starting to commit what a friend of mine once called mentacide. This is when your brain tries to kill you. My thoughts went like this: What if I dripped a little? She could be pregnant. She seems very fertile. If she's pregnant, I'm doomed.
Then I thought: She's been with Africans. Almost all Africans have AIDS according to The New York Times. But she's been celibate six months, she would know if anything is going on. And I'm sure she's safe with those Africans. But she wasn't safe with me. Why should I think she's safe with them? But how does a man get AIDS from a woman? They never explain this. They're very prudish when it comes to this. I have to have a cut? There's a cut on my nose. When I went down on her, I could have gotten AIDS in the cut on my nose.
So I wasn't exactly plotting our honeymoon. I was depressed and fearful and committing mentacide, but there's a scientific explanation for this. It's my understanding that one's testosterone level dips dramatically after orgasm, and this loss of testosterone deprives a male of his unconscious sense of purpose, which is to impregnate women, despite whatever conscious fears one might have about that. And without purpose we get despondent. We don't know why we're alive. We don't know why we just made love. Our testosterone does all our thinking for us, and in those few minutes without it, having just spilled it, we're lost.
Well, a few minutes later, my body had begun to regenerate and I was feeling much better. My fears and paranoid worries disappeared. New testosterone had been manufactured. I had purpose again. I was happy now to be lying next to this beautiful woman. Happy to have just made love to her, with very good prospects of making love to her again. I didn't want to impregnate her, but my testosterone did, my body did, and it was looking forward to the chance to manipulate me into taking another shot at it.
She was very quiet. Just lying there, staring at the ceiling. What was she thinking?
“Are you all right?” I whispered, a little worried about how rough I had been.
“Yes, I'm all right,” she said. “I feel really good.”
“Did you come?” I then asked selfishly, needing confirmation that I had indeed proved myself a capable lover. Every now and then, one does encounter women who scream quite magnificently and you think you've done it, only to find out you haven't, and this can be terribly disappointing.
“What do you think?” she said sweetly, teasingly.
“I hope so. I mean it sounded like you did.”
“I did. Twice. When you were licking me, and then now, and it was a long one. I think I'm still coming.”
I hugged her. I was myself. How could I ever have slapped her? Who was that fellow? I knew he would come back; that she would want him back; but for now he was gone. She demurely turned away from me, proffering her rear for me to snuggle against, and so I held her that way. I felt her stomach. It was still slick.
“Are you sure you don't want me to clean you up?” I asked.
“I'll do it,” she said.
She got up, took a towel from the closet. She looked beautiful, standing at the end of the bed, naked.
“I'm going to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I'll be right back.” She put on her robe and went out.
I lay there. It was all so improbable, but it had happened. I had just made love to a sexy, gorgeous woman. I was quite pleased with myself. And exhausted, too. I assumed she wanted me to spend the night. But I had to be discreet. Couldn't let anyone see me leaving her room. I'd leave early before people were awake.
She came back, turned off the little lamp on the bureau, and got into bed. She offered me her rear again, for me to slide into place against it. We fit nicely. I kissed the back of her neck.
“Thank you for making love with me,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said.
We were silent. Ready to sleep. Then I felt a terrible gastric pressure. There was a rumbling noise, like thunder. This didn't bode well. Where there's thunder, there's lightning. You see—and to further borrow from the
world of meteorology, to be even more explicit—one of the earth's elements was trapped inside me. Wind. Oh no, I thought. No. No. No!
I shifted it around inside me. I could go to the bathroom, but that would mean getting dressed, possibly being seen coming from her room if someone was up late. Therefore, I tried to redirect the pressure as best I could, finding emergency valves, but I felt like I was doing structural damage. I'd buy myself a few seconds reprieve with these maneuvers, but then the wind would start to howl again. For several minutes, I was in one of the circles of hell. Experiencing gas while in the presence of a new lover is one of the worst tortures known to man.
Then the wind absolutely insisted on being released or something very bad internally would occur. With my last bit of strength, I tried rationing its dispersement, like slowly opening a bottle of seltzer and releasing the gas in small measures so that the seltzer doesn't come bursting out.
Well, this seltzer method seemed to work. No sound effects, anyway. If there were other effects, which for the moment were being held up by the sheets, I figured that Ava had been with many men, that she knew I was human and would accept me, not judge me. So I opened the seltzer bottle a little more. I sniffed the air, pretending to take a deep breath. No odor, thank God. She seemed to be drifting off. I held her close to me. I emptied out the rest of the bottle. The crisis had passed. The gods had been kind to me: odorless wind!
She wasn't asleep; she said, “I have to go to New York tomorrow. I have to go to my gallery. Can you take me to the train? There's an early one at six-thirty. I was going to call a cab.”
“Yes, I can take you, of course…. How long will you be in New York?”
“I'll be back Sunday.”
Then there was talk of how we would wake up; she had already set her alarm before having run into me in the hallway. So then we tried to sleep, but she kept pushing her rear against me, seeking me out, and I responded. She reached around and put me in her. Then she was on her knees and I was in her and staring at her beautiful back, this heavenly letter V, leading to the globes of her bottom, where I was hidden. As we made love this way, I was struck anew by the utter vulnerability and submissiveness of women. How do they do it? I kissed her neck and reached under her and took hold of her breasts. Everything about her was so sumptuous.
“Come,” she whispered.
“Are you going to?”
“I want you to.”
Then she violently pushed back for more and cried out, and this was terribly exciting, so I pulled out and spilled on her back. This time I got the towel.
We lay there silently. I was holding her from behind again. There was no despondency this time, no mentacide. I felt myself slipping into that thick black sleep that comes after pleasing sex, but I asked, “What are you thinking?”
“How I lose control of myself,” she said.
Then we slept, just a few hours, and in the morning, she packed a small bag and went and performed her toilet. I dressed and put my tie in my jacket pocket, which made me feel like a rogue. We left her room together and no one saw us. It was too early.
I stopped in the bathroom, and then we went out to the parking lot. Everything was very still and quiet and so we dared to hold hands. It was unspoken between us, but at a place like the Rose Colony, the need for secrecy and discretion and privacy, at least at the start of an affair, seemed very important.
“You like these hummingbirds, right?” I pulled my tie out of my pocket with a flourish like a magician as I opened the car door for her. She sat down in the car and looked at me: the tie was this beautiful blue ribbon of birds.
“I like them,” she said. “They're pretty. But your black eyes are even prettier.”
When I got in the car and looked in the rearview mirror to back up, I saw that the colors beneath my eyes were changing, there was some yellow and green and purple.
I drove her to the train, we got there just in time, and I kissed her good-bye on the concrete platform, and for good measure I kissed her playfully on the tip of her gigantic sexy nose. She smiled. The train was a big silver Amtrak. I almost said I love you, but I knew better than that. So I said, “Thank you for last night.”
She smiled, then she said, “I'll see you tomorrow. I'll take a taxi back. I'm not sure what time I'll get in.”
She got on the train. I took my tie out again and waved it like a handkerchief, being silly. I don't know if she saw me. The windows were impossible to look into.
Then the train left. I stood on the platform, waved my tie a few times, then shoved it in my pocket and watched the train until it had completely disappeared and the long, rusted track was empty.
It was an overcast day, gray and cool, especially for summer. I didn't know if the weather would change. I liked being up while the world was so quiet, and I felt a little relieved to be alone. I drove back to the Rose Colony and went to my room. There was still the hush of sleep to the Mansion. I wondered for a moment why my slippers were outside my door and then I remembered and collected them. The trap had failed. I thought of Jeeves: I owed him an apology. Then I crawled into bed and slept for hours. There were no dreams. I didn't need any.
CHAPTER 33
An apologyI'm jaundiced but not jadedJeeves explains to me the nature of time and memory and nearly gives me a seizureThe utter meaninglessness of life tries to bite me in the neckI crave some Raymond ChandlerIs it Great Britain, England, or the UK?The parable of a young girl on a toiletA walk in the woods with Jeeves, not Robert FrostI don't fly with the FederationOne of those glorious morningsA chant and a spell
I was sick the whole day. There was something wrong with me. I was nauseous, fitful, itchy. The booze, the marijuana, the vigorous lovemaking—it all had done a number on me. I was a wreck. Also, there was the collective trauma and strain of everything I had been through since New Jersey, and I finally just collapsed. You would think it would be a day of celebration after my conquest of Ava, but it was the opposite. I was utterly dissipated and tormented. For hours and hours, I stayed in bed, reading, twisting about, sometimes sleeping, and sometimes talking to Jeeves.
When Jeeves first attended to me around 1 P.M., bringing me a glass of water, I said from my sickbed, “I'm so sorry about last night, Jeeves. I feel terrible about it.”
“There's no need to apologize, sir.”
“But I was rude and histrionic…. Even if you say there's no need, I'd like it known for the record that I'm apologizing and that I hate myself for talking to you like an idiot.”
“Try not to hate yourself, sir. I wasn't offended by your remarks.”
Jeeves was a statue of forgiveness. I perceived no rancor in the man.
“You're kind and generous to me, Jeeves.”
“Very good, sir.”
“I see we didn't catch the slipper thief,” I said, shifting the conversation from the emotional realm to the practical.
“No, sir.”
“Well, we can try again tonight.”
“Very good, sir.”
“I don't feel much like working on the novel today, Jeeves.”
“You do seem a bit jaundiced, sir.”
“My eyes are yellow, Jeeves?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That medical marijuana didn't live up to its reputation…. Oh, well, live and don't learn, that's my motto…. Jeeves, how long has it been since we left New Jersey? Three, four weeks? This trip has taken a good deal out of me.”
“We left New Jersey four days ago, sir.”
“Don't be insane, Jeeves!”
“I'm not being insane, sir.”
“Today is Saturday, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We left New Jersey …”
“This past Tuesday, sir.”
“Oh, God, Jeeves, you're right. That's only four days. Or is it five? Do we at least count today?”
“I believe, sir, that most people would say that we had left New Jersey four days ago.”
“Oh, Jeeves, I think I'm los
ing my mind … I can never tell if life is long or if life is short…. Do you have an opinion?”
“I have noticed, sir, that small increments of time can feel quite long: an hour, ten minutes, a day. But that over the course of one's life, longer stretches—ten years, fifty years—feel quite short.”
“Do you know why this is, Jeeves?”
“It may have something to do with memory, sir. We do not have the capacity to recall each instant of our lives, so experience becomes compacted, summed up, dismissed. An affair is reduced to a sentence: ‘We were together three years.’ This makes the life lived seem rather short…. The whole thing is a conundrum, sir. It takes us sixty, seventy, eighty years to live a life, and it appears to go by so quickly, and yet we also know how long it took to get where we are…. I think of the world of cinema. A two-hour film is the result of hundreds of hours of shot footage. The same thing with a life. It can all be remembered and reviewed quite quickly, but it took millions of moments to create it.”
“Don't torture me, Jeeves. My brain just jumped up and banged its head on the inside of my skull. Go easy with me intellectually. I can hardly spell my name today.”
“I apologize, sir.”
“It's my fault, Jeeves, I asked the question.”
“Very good, sir.”
I was somewhat eager to tell Jeeves that my romance with Ava had escalated considerably—my impulse to confide in him was a mixture of vanity, confession, and a desire for counsel—but I didn't want him to think poorly of me, to think that I was the type of man who spoke of his lady friends in a less-than-discreet manner. So I remained silent on the issue. He, of course, was aware that I had been out all night, but he probably thought I'd been toping with Tinkle and Mangrove until dawn and so didn't suspect that I had been with Ava.
“Jeeves, I think I'll go back to sleep.”
“Very good, sir.”
About an hour later, I woke up, threw on some clothes, and retrieved my lunch pail and thermos from the mudroom. Then I sat at my letter-writing desk. I sipped coffee and stared out the window. The day had continued to be gray and overcast. More of a cool spring day than a summer day. One of the male poets, a middle-aged Jew with a classically round bald spot, went jogging by. Why do we Jews bother? I thought. We're doomed.
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