“Forget I said a word,” I said, and grabbed her.
We went into a friendly clinch, but then she broke away from me, raised herself up on one elbow, draped her breasts over me, and poked her eyes into my eyes.
“Why?” she demanded.
“I wondered.”
“I know you wondered, you wouldn’t have asked if you hadn’t wondered. Why?”
“I’m not really sure.”
“Meaning you’re not really sure you want to say. Yes, I have, as a matter of fact. It’s better than ham.”
“Oh, you know that one?”
“Honey, doesn’t everyone?”
“I suppose.”
“Hey, do you have a lesbian hang-up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. What the hell is a lesbian hang-up, anyway?”
“What you got, I think. Hey.”
“What?”
“I got a sensational idea.”
“What?”
“Go get us each a drink.”
“That’s your sensational idea?”
“No, but first get us a drink.”
I came back with drinks and the bottle. She sat on the edge of the bed, deep in thought. I kissed the back of her neck. She didn’t seem to notice.
She said, “You like things a little kinky, no?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Well, I have this idea.”
“You’re gonna call up a girlfriend to join us.”
“I am like hell.” She swung around, eyes positively fierce. “What the hell do you think I am?”
“A virgin.”
She whooped. “All right, I had that one coming. Where did I pick up this outraged innocence, I wonder? But no, I’m not into that any more. Girls. For a while, yes. In the future, perhaps. At the present, I pass. And I never did like crowd scenes. I like one-to-one relationships, otherwise I get paranoid and become convinced that the other people dig each other more than they dig me. My shrink says-forget it.”
“Forget what?”
“I don’t have a shrink. It’s an obnoxious habit I’ve developed of starting sentences with My shrink says when I want to endow thoughts of my own with extra authority. It’s handy, but fuck games for the time being, I’ve had it with games.”
“What was your sensational idea?”
“Oh, yeah.” We had refilled our glasses by now, and were probably pretty drunk. “My idea. I don’t know if it’s a good idea any more. I thought we could both be girls.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Both be girls making love. You and me. Lesbians.”
“Wouldn’t I have to have an operation? Because I don’t think I’d care to.”
“Clown.”
“Well, what then?”
“Role-playing. You have to consciously force yourself to think of yourself as a girl.”
“For thirty-six years I’ve been consciously trying to think of myself as a man. You want me to undo all those years of effort?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“At one time or another, sweetie, Mama has done everything.”
“Okay, I’m game.”
“You’re a girl.”
“All right.”
“And I’m a girl, and I love you. Close your eyes, keep them closed. I’m going to take the lead and make love to you now. These are your breasts, big beautiful breasts. This is your slender shapely hairless body. Your soft female skin. This-” Her fingers pressed briefly at my genitalia “-does not exist. Numb, nothing there. This-” her fingers lingering below the base of the scrotum “-is your sweet little snatch. How nice, how sweet-”
How fucking weird.
She made love to me, girl to girl. Or perhaps man to girl, because she took a very active role, did Marcia, leading, guiding, initiating, directing. Did I feel like a girl? I don’t know, I’ve never been a girl, I don’t know what a girl feels. But it was strange. Responding to caresses upon parts of me unused to that sort of thing.
For the finale, I lay on my back with my legs spread and my knees up, the missionary’s wife, and Marcia lay upon me, supporting her weight on her elbows and slamming her ridge of pubic bone into the base of my scrotum. She was fucking the hell out of me. She had no penis nor I any place for her to put it, but that was precisely what she was doing.
I think kinkiness is a turn-on in and of itself. In any event, I did not find any of this remotely boring. As she delivered her final thrust, I came like Old Faithful.
When drinks were freshened and cigarettes lit, I said, “Aggressive castrating bitch.”
“Who says?”
“You did, remember? And I’m not gonna argue with you. I’d be afraid.”
“Damn right.”
“Cause you might rape me.”
“Damn right.”
“That was a gas.”
“Yeah, it kind of was, wasn’t it?”
“Absolutely. I don’t think I ever want to do it again, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“Yeah.”
“Scary.”
“I’m a little bit shaky just now, to tell you the truth.”
“It’s a scary world.”
“Not for me. The only thing that scares me is me. I frighten the shit out of myself, Harry.”
“You okay?”
“I guess.”
There was something I was trying to remember. Oh, yes. “Incidentally, there’s a non-book in it.”
“Huh? Even with the new permissiveness, sweetie, there’s a limit.”
“No, something you said before. My Shrink Says. ”
She was instantly interested. “That’s the title? Hey, I think I dig it. Give me a handle on it.”
“I didn’t get that far.”
“ My shrink says. Uh. My shrink says kumquats make you horny. No, it doesn’t make it. My shrink says sometimes it’s only a cigar.”
“That’s sensational.”
“It’s also a steal. Freud said it.”
“Honestly? Let him sue, we’re using it. It’s too visual to pass up. A girl smoking a cigar with her eyes glassy and obviously what she’s doing is going down on that cigar, and that’s the tag line.”
“Brilliant.”
“What else did Freud say?”
“Oh, he said a million things. He said the paranoiac is never entirely mistaken.”
“You’re making these up.”
“God’s truth.”
“If there are enough of them, we could make it Freud Says. ”
“ Sigmund Says. ”
“Much, much better. Worlds better. Although I don’t know-”
“I think I like My Shrink Says better.”
“So do I.”
“More room to move around, too.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who do you think would like it?”
“I was thinking of Jonathan. It’s his kind of thing.”
“Your agent or mine?”
I thought it over. “Better call Alex. I don’t think Peggy gets through to Jonathan very well.”
“All right.” She leaned over to grind out her cigarette. “If you want, I’ll fix some dinner. And then we could ball some more.”
“I ought to get on home.”
“Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut.”
“Massachusetts. Say, did you hear about the guy who ran his boat aground in Gloucester Bay?”
“He didn’t know Mass. from a shoal in the sound.”
“Now how in hell did you know that one? I made it up.”
“You told me once before.”
“Oh.”
“And I always remember everything you tell me.”
“My shrink says nobody likes a smartass.”
“Does he really? My shrink says a bird in the hand is perfectly normal.”
“A prince of a man. My shrink says pimples cause masturbation.”
“Mine used to say that. Now he says sodomy is a pain in the ass.”
&
nbsp; “My black shrink says every motherfucker has an Oedipus complex.”
“He should know. I wonder if we’ll come up with anything printable?”
“Call Alex.”
“I will.”
“And stay as sweet as you are.”
“My love to Priscilla.”
Did I give you her love, Priss? I can’t seem to remember. Jonathan was crazy about My Shrink Says. It was singularly easy to write and to illustrate, and seems to be selling, although figures will not be in for a while.
I am beginning to realize what writers do. Because as slow as this went at first, it picked up speed at a remarkable rate. Writers, I think, do the same thing everyone else does who makes something out of nothing. The typewriter is just another form of pen and sketch pad. The brain seeps down into the tips of the fingers, and one gets into synch and lets everything play itself through the medium of fingers and typewriter and onto the paper.
Listen to the idiot, drunk with triumph at having written a chapter. One chapter doesn’t make a book any more than one swallow makes a hangover.
And there’s also the question of whether or not the chapter’s relevant. Is it enough about the three of us or is it too much a matter of What I Did On My Wednesday Vacation? I think it’s pertinent.
I also think it’s impertinent, come to that. But it does bridge the gap to Rhoda’s arrival, and who is better equipped to tell you about Rhoda’s arrival than the lovely Rhoda herself?
That’s your cue, kid.
RHODA
After a bus and a plane and another plane and another bus, I found a taxi driver who seemed to understand how to get to the Kapp house. The fare, he told me, would be seven and a half dollars. When he pulled up in front I gave him ten and told him to keep the change. He seemed astonished, as if unaccustomed to being tipped at all, and never so lavishly, and wanted to carry my bag up the hill to the house. I said I’d rather do it myself, and probably sounded quite like that anguished young woman in the Anacin commercial.
Priss was out the door before I reached it. “Oh, Rho,” she said, and ran to meet me, and hugged me.
I was near tears. Throughout the endless flights and bus rides I had hovered on the brink of tears, and kept crying or nearly crying over absurd things-trashy sentimental crap novels, dumb tear-jerking images. It felt a little like the tail end of an amphetamine jag, the exhaustion of endless wakeful hours punctuated with semicolons of nervous unsatisfying half-sleep. Bitter cups of coffee, my life and my trip measured out like Prufrock’s in coffee spoons, clothes sweaty, smelly, bra strap digging into flesh, eyes reddened, gritty as if circled with sand, sour taste in mouth, intermittent heartburn and fleeting waves of nausea Getting there is sometimes less than half the fun.
Prissy was telling me that I should have called, that the cab rates were outrageous, that she could have picked me up at the station. I just kept nodding and not quite smiling. I had thought of calling but had deliberately decided not to, and for no rational reason, but as if covering every bit of the distance under my own power was somehow necessary, would somehow prove something which somehow had to be proved.
“Where are your things?”
“Here.”
“Just one suitcase?”
“Can we go inside?”
“Of course. Harry’s out back, I’ll get him-”
“Don’t disturb him if he’s working. Not yet. I have to get my bearings, I-”
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” And then, using a part of my mind to shake the other part, “Oh, hell, I guess I’m all right. I’m being dramatic, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just a rotten endless trip, that’s all. No, I don’t want coffee, thanks, but I’ve had so much coffee and so little sleep-”
“Would you like to lie down?”
“Not yet, I have to unwind first. I feel over-wound. Do you remember when I broke my alarm clock and you took it apart and tried to fix it? Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“I just have the one suitcase.”
“Do you have trunks coming, or-”
“No, nothing. I think I need a drink.”
“Sure. Scotch? Just a sec. This won’t knock you out or anything, will it?”
“If it does, throw a rug over me. Thanks. Do I have a trunk. No. Just this suitcase. Before I went to Las Vegas, before I went to Las Vegas-”
“Take it easy. Tell me later.”
“-I walked around that fucking apartment trying to figure out how to pack, what to take, put things in storage, ship them somewhere, what to do with everything. And I realized that there was nothing there I wanted. Things, just things, I didn’t want any of them. I filled one suitcase and walked out the door. I was going to call the Salvation Army, tell them to take the rest, but for some reason or other I didn’t. Maybe I forgot. Or it was something about not wanting to be around to let them in, that was it.”
“Come this way, Rho. I want you to get to bed.”
“Can they do anything to me? It’s not against the law to abandon your fucking possessions, is it? Can they say it was a case of littering your own apartment? They can’t do that.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I had to come here. I’m sorry, Priss. I fucked up my whole life and now I’m in everybody’s way.”
Sleep helped, and solid food, and more sleep. Staying in one place helped. Sitting in the house or walking in the yard. The view helped. It is good to be able to rest one’s eyes with distant scenes.
And of course the company helped. Two good people, easy and comfortable in conversation, a dual relief from forced conversations with strangers and the burden of having only oneself for companionship.
If it was a time of slow mending, the surface symptoms went away almost at once. At least I hope they did; I’d hate the thought that I was as dismal on subsequent mornings as I was that first day. The outpourings of self were bright and cynical and wryly humorous, typically Rhoda, spoken through Rhoda’s typical surgical mask.
Ecchhh!
Why am I typing out all this garbage? Too heavy a remembrance of things past. Marcel Proust is a yenta, after all. This is supposed to be a bestseller, clever and groovy and sexy and all, and if it stays maudlin like this how can anyone tell the nitty from the gritty?
Get with it, Muir.
Evenings, in those first weeks, were the best times. We three would sit around the living room, drinking but rarely getting sloshed. From the first there was no need to make conversation per se; conversation made itself. Early on there was a lot of do-you-remember crap, nostalgia for the old college days, filtered and lamed by my not knowing that Harry already knew how much Priss and I had been to each other. But we got out of that habit quickly enough (the conversational habit, I mean, not, oh, you know what I mean) and our conversations after that were mostly about nothing in particular, and about ourselves.
I sit here, I smoke cigarettes, I get up and pace this brick-textured kitchen floor, doing my caged lion number to perfection and trying to figure out just how and where and when sex began to put in an appearance. But I cannot nail it down. It began for me as the newness of being here began to wear off and as I began to feel myself reacting-to Harry, to Priss, and to my particular role in their lives.
Growing awareness, hints, allusions, glances, intimations, speculation rising to become desire. I would look at Harry during a conversational interlude in which Priss was doing her Mrs. Malaprop routine, scattering her brain around for all to see, the shameless wench, and I would think how much alike he and I were, how our minds worked in not dissimilar ways. The next mental step was not so awfully hard to take. One did not even have to break stride.
And at other times, in much the same sort of conversation, I would catch Prissy’s eye and remember the splendid self-sufficiency of the room we shared, where the male animal did not intrude and was not missed. And recognized that, although there had been
no other girl for me since Priss (except for a feeling session at a drunken California party, a pushy butchy young lady who insisted on groping me) that I still, God help me, wanted her in precisely the same way I always had.
But I am explaining too much and showing too little. So, if you will, a scene or two Scene: the Kapp living room at minutes past twelve of a weekday evening. Priss has been in the bathroom washing her hair, reappeared in a terry cloth robe (looking unpardonably desirable) and then asked if anyone was coming to bed. (I nearly accepted.) Harry said he thought he would have another drink or three. I grunted something along those lines. Priss said goodnight and went off to beddie-bye, a not uncommon occurrence at that hour. We remained in our chairs. On the record player, the food of love played on.
HARRY (getting to feet): You about ready for a refill, Rho?
RHODA: Oh. Yes, I guess so. Thanks.
HARRY: Sort of a lazy evening.
RHODA: Uh-huh.
HARRY: This must be getting pretty boring for you.
RHODA: What must?
HARRY: The way we live. One day the same as the next. I keep feeling we ought to be entertaining you in some way
RHODA: Oh, God, no! I just like being with the two of you, that’s all.
HARRY: We’d have some people in, but RHODA: You don’t have much to do with other people, do you?
HARRY: We never see anyone.
RHODA: That’s-I’m sorry, what were you going to say?
HARRY: No, go ahead.
RHODA: I was just going to say that it was unusual, and I was just thinking in terms of my own marriage, may it rest in peace. And the marriages of people I knew. We weren’t as wonderfully self-sufficient as you two.
HARRY: If that’s what it is.
RHODA: Isn’t it?
HARRY: I don’t know. When we lived in the city we always had other people around. You know, other people are very necessary. They’re stimulating, you feed off them. That makes it sound parasitic. I mean everybody feeds off everybody else
RHODA: Symbiotic.
HARRY: That’s the one. And after we moved out here we would still see our New York friends. They would come here for an overnight or a weekend, or we would drive into the city and stay over. But gradually, and I don’t know how exactly, all of this dropped off in frequency and those relationships faded to an annual exchange of Christmas cards.
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