Sex and Death in the American Novel

by Martinez, Sarah

  He came out a few minutes later with a bag in his hand. His lips twitched as if he didn't know if he should laugh or glower.

  I let the silence hang and finally apologized. “Look. My dad…my parents aren't like yours were. Not supportive and encouraging and all that. At least not when I started doing what I wanted. If you could pile up every person who ever disappointed you, who you ever hated, you would still only have a tenth of the shit my father represents for me.”

  When I didn't say anything else, he walked over and rested his chin on the top of my head and we stood like that a moment. I wanted to cry, but that would have made everything worse. I swallowed a hard knot in my throat and placed a shaky arm around his waist.

  We spent two days driving around New England. I begged to see Maine and he indulged me. We went by Stephen King's old Bangor Mansion. Maine was wonderful; we ate lobster and stayed in a lovely three-story bed and breakfast that I imagined in the deep winter might look like something out of Lovecraft with its iron gates and leaded windows.

  Late one night after I thought he had fallen asleep, I stood and went to the bedroom window. I sat in a plush velvet chair with carved cherry arms. Time and the air itself felt ancient in this place. Old things were haunting me, making my present life insufferable. I was happy now; why did the subject of my father have to intrude and screw everything up?

  Jasper's voice came from behind me. “What are you thinking about?”

  I froze. There was no way out of this. I didn't turn around, only addressed his reflection in the window.

  “Please. Is it what happened at the bookstore?”

  I stared back, unable to turn and face him, so I studied my face in the reflection, skeletal with wide eyes in the window's reflection.

  “Let's talk about this. I've read your father. I've read you. There are similarities you probably can't or won't see. I think you learned a lot from him. Even if he wasn't perfect, I can't believe that the same person who made me feel so incredibly transformed after reading one book could be one hundred percent bad.”

  “So you want me to make you feel better about admiring his writing?”

  “No. This isn't about me.” The rustling of the bedcover. His reflection as he sat against the massive headboard. He leaned forward and I could see in the glass, frosted with cold dew, his long white arms wrapped around his legs, raised underneath the tapestry bedcover. “This is about you and why you're angry and won't talk about it.”

  I was so tired. “That stupid inheritance. Do you know how freeing it was when he cut me off? I knew I had to make it on my own. I sometimes wonder if Tristan's problem was that he had things too easy after Dad died and spent too much time on his work, and no time out hustling. He didn't have to publish anymore, so he quit submitting to magazines, and…”

  “He didn't have to listen to anyone else, and you think that hurt him?”

  “Something like that. Out loud it sounds too simple, but yes…I guess so. It wasn't that much either, not when you consider how famous Dad was. After what my mom and the trophy got, not much left really. Maybe there wasn't much to begin with. Dad had expensive habits.”

  “Habits?”

  “Women, travel, stupid women, more travel. How should I know? It's not like I got to watch.” In the reflection I looked to him and gave him an apologetic look.

  We stared at each other through the window's reflection until I climbed back in to bed. He moved behind me. “I'm sorry you're so unhappy.”

  “I'm not. At least I didn't think I was. Lately I have been very happy.”

  His hand spread open, the full width of his splayed fingers covered my torso. With gentle pressure he rolled me onto my back. I reached up to trace the line of his ear, pinching his earlobe. He closed his eyes and opened them, the shining orbs barely visible in the dark. Only the slightest sliver of moonlight cut through the draperies to the spot where we lay.

  My lips parted, waiting for something to happen, only he just watched me, turning his head by degrees, as if he could follow the movement of my thoughts or feelings if he looked long enough.

  “You're the most intense man…”

  He came closer, narrowed his eyes and traced the line of my brow, and then over my nose and to my lips which he pulled open farther, roughly. He took my chin in his hand and kissed it, then my jaw, completely avoiding my lips. He moved lower, so slowly it was impossible to tell how he did it.

  This was the closest to meditation I had ever come. It was like he was trying to stop time by being still. Even the branches of the elms stopped scraping against the window outside. For long moments there was only the sound of my own breath, and the blood in my ears. When he finally did make his way to my groin he paused, tipped his head, one more way to examine me. I ran my fingers over his cheekbones, nose, along his jaw. He set to work; kissing, sucking, lapping, breathing in hot gusts against me. He did it so slowly and so lightly I couldn't tell if we were actually touching. The whole world rested on the tip of his tongue. Gradually he increased the pressure, still teasing, until I couldn't hold back any more. He held my ass in his hands, dipping in for one moment with more force, like he really meant to set to work, then he would pull back again. Probing and testing, after every movement he paused, gauging my reaction until I was insane with the most tortured need.

  “Please,” I said. “Stop.” I pulled him up to me, and he moved onto his back, pulling me on top of him. He scooted me up to sit on him, kept his eyes on me and allowed me to study the curves of his face. With my fingers I traced a sensory map of the person I was now unafraid to admit I was invested in. What happened to him mattered to me, more maybe even than what happened to myself. A terrifying and liberating feeling. I whispered, “I understand why people compare falling in love to flying.”

  “Tell me…” He pushed me back and worked himself inside while I braced myself with my hands on his legs.

  The sensation of being invaded and happy at the same time was thrilling. “Every time.”

  He moved slowly, matching my rhythm; this was not about getting to the end, this was about just being. Tears welled to my eyes, and I wiped them away. He took my hand and kissed it and pulled me closer to him with one hand, while holding me tight to him with his other hand on the small of my back. “Tell me…”

  Exposed, and for once unafraid of the feeling, I said, “You're doing it to me…you've gotten inside me in the deepest way possible.” He paused and I was afraid he was going to stop for good. I began moving again and straightened up. “It happened in my body first, moved to my mind, then to my soul, or maybe it happened all at once. It happened in between my throat, and my heart. There's a fullness there. You did that.” I took his face in both of my hands. “I have never had this kind of peace. It's not your words or how hard you think about them. There is something inside you that makes me want more.”

  Jasper's arms came around my shoulders and pulled me down. “Words are all I've ever had before.”

  At breakfast the next morning he kept giving me these outrageously sheepish looks in between pouring coffee, wiping his mouth, and buttering a banana nut muffin.

  “I would love to show you the Dartmouth campus. I haven't seen it in years.”

  While I drove the rental car, he navigated with the map. On the road he hummed along to the radio, a weird folk station he'd found somewhere along the way. While I wasn't wild about the music, it fit in with the quiet beauty of the landscape, lush green forests of leafy trees, picture-perfect sloping hills, a tamed wilderness. That was the east to me. Everything pretty, manicured, processed. I liked it better where I was from, where some things were still wild. Trees and grizzly bears and imaginations were allowed to soar—grow as tall as they could.

  In between his instruction to turn or veer or stop groping him and watch the road, he tried to convince me he wasn't an absolute hermit.

  “I talk to you on Tuesdays. When I am in town there is a group of us that get together; that happens every other week, somet
imes monthly if people get busy. It was started as a way to review each other's work, but usually devolves into a bullshit session. Most days we sit around somebody's apartment, drink, bitch about editors, marketing departments, critics, whine about who hasn't been nominated for or won some prize. Sometimes people talk about their families…kids, that sort of thing.”

  “Sounds efficient.”

  “It is. Very.” He grinned. “We do trade manuscripts once in a while over email. That's where the real work happens. The group is invaluable that way.”

  “Just like Eric and me.”

  “And what does he get out of it?”

  “Not sure…I'll ask him the next time I see him. Maybe he still feels guilty for leading me on when we were teenagers.”

  “Is that how you think of it?” Jasper had turned in his seat and faced me. He took up the entire space in this small car.

  “No, never did. I know he was figuring things out.”

  Jasper looked like he wanted to ask something else but I didn't want to get into the topic of my best friend.

  “Girls?” I asked trying to sound casual.

  “In the group? There have been a few, they don't stay long though. Not sure why. What? Oh, you mean…” He rolled his eyes. “All the time. I try for at least four a week.” He affected the same casual tone.

  I didn't respond, knowing he was trying to get a rise out of me and desperately wanting him to announce the joke at the same time. What was it my beloved Marco said about jealousy? That fucking shit is inevitable, no matter how regrettable.

  “Vivi?”

  I scowled, making a big show of being upset, until his face changed to an expression of worry. “As long as they are hookers, and you're only getting blowjobs. Agreed?”

  The next twenty minutes became a competition of who could say the most creative and exciting way to cheat, lie and get away with screwing around.

  When we arrived at the campus, he directed me as I drove through the brick buildings, stopping every so often for him to point something out. “I took my first class in this building…Spent too many nights over there,” he said when we drove through town and passed an ancient-looking pub a block away from the campus.

  We grabbed lunch and then settled on one of the sloping lawns to sit and watch the clouds. He propped himself up on one elbow, the full length of him stretching down the gentle grade in his white t-shirt and faded jeans.

  I watched the way his eyes moved over the grass, my outstretched legs, back to the clouds. “What was it like for you?”

  “What was what like for me?” he said.

  “Losing your parents…going through college, this time that is supposed to be so carefree and knowing there is no one at home waiting for you…”

  I turned from my position on my stomach, rolled over and watched his hair rustle and flip over in the wind. He reached up to run his fingers through the thick wisps. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. “Hard. Tried not to dwell on it.”

  I waited a beat. Then another. He didn't turn to look at me, only continued to watch the clouds.

  I feared how the words would sound in the real world, but I had to say them. “You don't trust me with this, do you?”

  He finally turned his head and met my eyes.

  “I was alone. After my dad, I was alone. Yes. Totally alone. I didn't know what else to do but move on.”

  “To make them proud of you?” Lame. Cliché.

  “Yup.” He ran his finger over my neckline. “I'm not alone anymore, so it doesn't matter now.” He held my eyes for way too long then rolled onto his belly and picked at the grass. His shoulder was warm and solid when it rested against mine.

  “My dad disinherited me, and then on the day he died he told me to leave the room so he could talk to my brother.” The words got hard to push from my throat. “I missed his last breath.”

  Jasper became still beside me, moved closer to me, but didn't speak.

  “I don't judge you, Vivi.”

  I placed my hand over his and pulled it to my chest while I spoke. With his flesh held securely inside my own, it felt like I could keep him safe and close. “I do.”

  More grass picking until he said, “Trust you…I do. I was thinking about something else before.”

  The emerald lawns of the campus and the heavy clouds with their sharp outlines made me imagine fiberglass against the pale sky. Alice in Wonderland couldn't have felt this out of her element, though I bravely pushed on. There was nowhere else I would have rather been.

  I ran my fingers through the cool lengths of his hair, propped myself on my elbows. He turned and surveyed me with eyes so true they matched the color of the blades of grass beside his head.

  I lay back and pulled his hand over my stomach, taking his big hand in both of mine and played with his fingers.

  “I lost my virginity here.”

  “You mean like right here on this lawn? Good for you. We should go streaking before we leave,” I teased.

  He flipped over. His face didn't change though.

  “What? Everyone loses it sometime. You were probably a bit late, but I won't judge you for that if you won't judge me for, you know…the football team, the drag queen, that stint as a stripper…oh, and that regrettable donkey during spring break.”

  He pushed my head back gently. “His name was Alejandro.”

  Jasper didn't meet my eyes, just studied the blades of grass in his hand.

  “What else?”

  The way he bit his lip and turned to look so deeply into my eyes, I knew what I said next mattered to him more than anything he could have ever said to me about my writing.

  “Was he any good?”

  After a moment when he saw that I was serious, he smiled. “Yes. But well, I have no real point of reference. He was the only man I've ever been with.” He took my hand. “He wasn't as good as you though. No one is as good as you.”

  I buried my head in his hair, breathed deeply of his scent. “You've been holding on to this for a long time, haven't you?”

  He nodded his head and I kissed his smooth temple. Then his ear, forcing my tongue inside and he twisted away, coming back to land on top of me. He kissed me for a long time, no doubt this revelation was something he'd been working up to for a while. I remembered how he'd wanted to say something about Eric in the car.

  He planted sloppy wet kisses on my neck that made me squirm. He had my arms pinned and his weight on my legs. This was the first time he'd ever used his size against me. In between kisses he said, “I was waiting. Yes. To see…”

  On my last day there I was ready to get back to my own space, and he surely was ready to have his back. I sat and waited while he pulled several books down from his shelves in the bedroom and stacked them on the table by the couch. I took one down, a plain white cover with a nice-looking tree behind block letters.

  “Galley?”

  He nodded.

  “How many errors did you catch?”

  He made a face. When he saw I was actually waiting for a real answer, he stopped. “I mean to look at them every time, but then somehow the deadline slips by and everything seems to turn out okay…” He gave me a shrug halfway between boyish and at a loss for what else to do.

  “You're telling me you don't look at your galleys?”

  He sat on the edge of the sofa as he had that first day, watching me.

  “Maybe the publishers I work for make more mistakes?”

  “Maybe, or maybe I'm just lazy,” he said and got up to grab a book off the shelf. He patted the seat beside where he sat on the couch. “I want to read to you.”

  I lay across his lap and stretched my arms out. “This reminds me of the way I used to lay with my parents when I was very small. My mother would stroke my hair as she read, my father would turn every so often, look behind the book, stare down his nose and when he found I was still awake he would continue. I think back now there was a hint of disappointment in his voice.”

  Jasper cocked an eyebrow to s
how his skepticism and opened the heavy book, the fingers of his right hand covering the spine. “This poem is called The Youthful Truth Seeker,” he cleared his throat loudly, “by Robert Penn Warren.” He looked around the book, down the bridge of his nose and raised his eyebrows. When I gave him a smile he went back to the page in front of him.

  The words came easily enough, in one ear and out the other. That's poetry for me most of the time. To keep myself entertained I peeked around the side of the heavy book and watched his face as he read, and when he pointed something out that he really liked, his eyebrows twisted up, his facial muscles moved, his nostrils twitched, it was like watching him during sex. He was totally in the moment, present, not distracted by anything else. I wanted to be able to focus like him.

  It occurred to me that either while listening to him read, or talk, or sex, my mind hadn't wandered, he'd kept me anchored. How far had I come since meeting him…how much had changed about what I thought was possible to feel and want. I'd started with him thinking what a novelty he was and didn't see him for the amazingly complicated and beautiful person he was.

  His clear even voice spoke these lines:

  “What was the world I had lived in? Poetry, orgasm, joke:

  And the joke the biggest on me, the laughing despair

  Of a truth the heart might speak, but never spoke—

  Like the twilit whisper of wings with no shadow on air.”

  He stopped; maybe he sensed I was staring too intently. He let the book flop over and tipped his head. “I'm not losing you, am I?”

  “You should read for the blind,” I said hoping my voice was even.

  “I am,” he said, and I stuck my tongue out at him. I blinked back tears and put one hand to his lips, he kissed me firm and held my hand in one of his.

  And then the last stanza, when I could barely keep still:

  “While fog, star by star, imperially claims the night.

  How long till dawn flushes dune-tops, or gilds beach stones?

  I stand up. Stand thinking, I'm one poor damn fool, all right.

  Then ask, if years later, I'll drive again forth under stars, on