Sex and Death in the American Novel

by Martinez, Sarah

  “Have you read this entire book?”

  “Have you?” I asked, annoyed. “Yes, it was long and I did skim a fair amount. Parts were idiotic, even ridiculous, but you could say the same about Atlas Shrugged.”

  He looked to the back of the book, back to me, still frowning.

  “Judge not, then,” I said, reaching toward his hand and tried to pull it away.

  He held the book firm and said, “Who wrote this?” He had flipped the book open to a page with a sticky note on it.

  “One of Tristan's more witty criticisms of the text.”

  Jasper held the note up while I stared at the page he had removed it from, afraid he would lose the page and I would lose one more small part of my brother along with it. I wrung my hands while Jasper read the note: “How is this even possible? Give me a break! You will grow out of the need to read shit like this. T.” When he looked to me again, Jasper looked guilty, and amused. His face held varying shades of emotion the way lava lamps or those weird electronic paintings change as soon as you get a fix on them.

  “Anyway, that is not my favorite book,” I said, rooting through another shelf until I came across a small yellow paperback.

  He finished reading Tristan's note, looked up and took the book. “Exit to Eden?”

  “This book is what made me want to write erotica. You've got men with men, women with women, power, domination, submission—and out of all of it comes this crazy freedom.” His face was blank. “There's fighting, like in my boxing story, and then finally what is basically a sweet love story. It makes all the other events seem unimportant, but without the sex the actions aren't as interesting, the context is different. It's what I love about a lot of these books.” I swept my hand past the shelves at the bottom. “Once you strip past the physical arrangements and choreography, you find people who were free to imagine not just sex, but new ways for people to be and understand each other. They found an important freedom in the way they lived and looked at the world. Even if it wasn't written with a prize in mind, Exit to Eden was still an important book for me.”

  I went to my desk and grabbed The Stoned Apocalypse and held it up to him. While I still held it in my hand, he flipped it over and scanned the back cover. “Marco Vassi went out in the world, explored himself—his physical limits, his spiritual limits, his mental limits. In a very important way it is not about sex at all, it is about free thinking, imagination, creativity—finding a way to connect with a greater whole: the universe, nature—the self.”

  Jasper stared at me from the floor. “So you're telling me this guy who wrote for Penthouse has some mainline to the spiritual world?”

  I threw my head back and sighed heavily.

  “May I borrow it?”

  I watched him for a minute, unsure if he was serious. “You're really going to read it?”

  “I want to understand.”

  I handed him the book and paused before letting it go. When he took it, the same weird fear was back that I was about to lose something important.

  “I will leave it when I go, okay?” His tone was soft, and I felt silly for holding so tight to every little thing. Every book. Every note. Every item that may have meant something to my brother meant ten times as much to me. It was tiring to hold on to it all, and even now, when I had a safe place to deposit this one book, I was still afraid.

  After a moment I pulled down a copy of The Mists of Avalon. “Would it help you to know that this has been one of my favorites since I was thirteen? The first page sort of sums up my philosophy about the world in general.”

  He scanned the front page, then flipped through the pages. “There are notes in this one as well. Your brother was thorough.”

  “He did that when he helped me move in. I found most of those after he was gone. I'm still finding them. It's like he is still here. A lot of these books he sent to me over the years, big clunky tomes you'd probably like. Vollman's here somewhere… Thomas freaking Pynchon.”

  “Do you have Blood Meridian?”

  I swept over the two shelves in the next case. I pulled down the thin book and handed it to him. “Haven't read that one yet.” I pointed to the shelves.

  His eyes swept over the shelves where I had just been standing. “Thomas freaking Pynchon.” His laugh filled the whole room and he shook his head. “Why not donate them and keep the list of titles?”

  “Because they were his! The thought of parting with his stuff fills me with this awful dread. I will probably never part with most of it, until I die or the place burns down.”

  He took Blood Meridian from my hands and smiled, running his fingers over the back cover. “I was sixteen when I read this. This book changed my life.”

  “Tell me about this,” I said and rested my chin in my hand and focused all my attention on him.

  “Well, for one, no one can construct a sentence like Cormac McCarthy. Plus, this book in particular appealed to my sense of adventure—the blood lust that pervaded a lot of my reading material in my teens, and the sense that I was finally reading something that showed me you could read on more than one level.”

  I got up to lead him away when his eye caught the books lining the top shelf of the bookcase by the door. He stopped and I fell back into the room. “These are all first editions?” he asked as he took one of my father's older books down and flipped to the first pages. He looked up and I met his gaze.

  “What? He wrote that sappy inscription when I was like five.”

  “Do you have all of them?”

  “I assume so…except for one that is still in the mailer that I didn't open. I was too pissed at him. That was the one Tristan kept trying to get me to read, Staccato, the one I told you about.”

  Jasper bent his head to the open hardcover in his hand, ran his fingers over my father's scattered cursive letters. “He didn't sign very many books…”

  “He didn't do a lot of things…” A thought occurred to me. “You'd probably really love to see what's in all the unopened letters he sent after he moved out.”

  “You didn't read them!”

  I stood and moved over to the wooden file cabinet across the room. Why did I feel the need to show off the fact that I hated my father? Was it because I knew I had something Jasper would have liked to have? Or did I fear that my father's memory—his books, his words—was competition for Jasper's attention? I jerked the cabinet open, pulled out a brand-new, crisp manila file, stuffed with the unopened letters my father sent me over the last years before his death. I brought the folder over to the desk and laid it down.

  “Wow, if I had something like this…” He stopped himself and gently moved envelopes over to separate the pile. “You kept them in order?”

  “Just how they fell in…”

  He bit his lip and sighed.

  “What?” My stomach twisted and I wanted to leave the room. Instead I forced a smile and reached past him, gathering the envelopes and placing the whole mess back in the cabinet. I spoke so he couldn't see my face, “My father wanted me to be a dancer. First it was ballet, then I had to fight him so I could switch to ballroom. When I was in high school and I told him I wanted to be a writer, you know what he did?”

  He faced me with a look of dread on his face.

  “We were at the cabin one summer. He took me into the study and sat me down. He patted my hand and just shook his head, with this smug motherfucking look of knowing. Like he was God or something.”

  “What did he say, Vivi?”

  “He told me that women weren't built to write important fiction.”

  His face suggested he didn't believe me.

  “I told him I wanted to be like him. I was all happy and excited. I had come to this understanding of myself and my place in the world. He just sat there like he couldn't believe what I was telling him. First he asked me what was wrong with dancing. He said he told everyone he knew all the time how beautiful his daughter was, how special and gifted.”

  “That sounds good…”

 
; “Yeah, so I knew that if I persisted in what I wanted I would be giving up that admiration. Even though he took Tristan camping and all that crap, Tristan and I both knew he was more proud of my dancing. At the time Tristan was trying to get this band going and disappointing Dad all over the place. I knew when I put my foot down and quit dancing that was all going to go away.”

  “That's a lot for a teenager.”

  “I know right? So first he starts off like he was working with a student or something. He spoke using his hands, holding out his fingers and tabbing off each reason why it wasn't going to work. ‘Don't you want to do it well?’ he says, and ‘It takes years of education to understand the history behind the tradition you would be working in,’ and the real kicker was…and ‘women's issues are more concerned with run-of-the-mill topics like interpersonal relationships, raising families and all that. Men have more to consider, need to be more thoughtful and have responsibilities and anxieties that concern readers of serious fiction. I'm just not sure you would be able to tap into that.’ This coming from a man who couldn't type up his own manuscripts, who couldn't manage even basic domestic tasks.”

  Jasper frowned. “Did you tell your brother about this?”

  “Of course, I told Tristan everything. He was the only person in my family who encouraged me. Once he got all his education he really went to work on me too. Said I could write whatever the fuck I wanted and be good at it.”

  “Your brother still wanted to be like your father though.”

  “Of course. I know it was twisted but we both got that about each other. Our need to please Dad, and then in my case, the need to give him the finger. Tristan understood that, but he was glad Dad still did things with him; that was rare too, but he did get some time…when Dad could tear himself away from the typewriter or lining up the next piece of graduate student ass…”

  “Do you think Tristan knew he would be the last person to see your father?”

  “Probably.”

  “I had a thought…”

  “What if,” he examined his fingernails, “well, what if time ran out. Maybe your father did want to talk to you.”

  “Why are you defending him? I'm pouring my heart out here.”

  Jasper tipped his head and considered me. “Thank you for trusting me with this.”

  I wondered if this was trust or blind faith. A knot was rising up my throat threatening to choke me and make me scream.

  He watched me with a pained expression. I ruffled his hair to try and lighten the mood. “Can we just not go over this anymore?”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you.” I stood on my toes, he leaned down and I kissed him on the end of his nose.

  We drove out to the island, and because of the way he acted when I found his John Denver CD, I played Kenny Rogers in the car the entire way there. At first he sat rigid, staring at the CD deck, giving me uncertain looks but with a shy smile on his face. “You sure this is your speed?”

  I laughed. “It is amazing how easily you decide what I am capable of. I grew up with this stuff. You easterners think you know everything. The egotism!” I slapped the steering wheel for emphasis.

  “I'm not a New Yorker originally. I grew up in Nebraska.” His fingers were already tapping along to the rhythm of the music against his denim-clad thigh. His head craned around as mine had when I was in New York, trying to take everything in at once. I loved the way his face relaxed and his expression changed to wonder while he took in the distant snowcaps and the pelagic-blue sky beyond the secretive forest.

  “Omaha right? And how come we didn't talk about that before?”

  He made an amused face and said, “We were pretty busy, Vivi.” He stopped to clear his throat. “I mean, most of the time you were out there.”

  “I know, but the phone? Email?”

  He held up his hands to show he was at a loss.

  “Why did you move?”

  “College. After four years in New Hampshire, the idea of staying east sounded better than going back home. By then I had an agent, and he encouraged me to stay there and see what I could do.”

  “I bet you felt very important,” I chided him.

  His tone was serious. “I did. Won't lie about that. People I went to school with were serving out internships or working in mail rooms.”

  “Including your friend?”

  “He graduated a year ahead of me. I don't know what happened to him.”

  A strange silence descended for a moment until I said, “So how did you support yourself? I don't know about you big literary types, but in my world the advance on a first novel is not enough to support anyone for more than a week.”

  He laughed. “In my world, or maybe I got lucky…it's more like a month, at least a month in the city. I had enough from my parents for about a year before I would have had to go get a job.”

  A thought occurred to me. “So who did you celebrate with? Who took you out and got you drunk, all that stuff?”

  He shrugged. “I had lunch with my agent when Forests was sold…you mean like that?”

  I shook my head. “When I sold my first book, Eric and a couple of girlfriends took me out—we had dinner with my mom, got trashed….really trashed, and I knew I was somewhere. Then later it was right back to work—”

  “That's about it. Back to work. If I let myself get too distracted I won't get back to work.”

  I shook my head again. “I'm sorry, Jasper.”

  He stared out the window. I let him sit like that for a few minutes until I said, “You've never admitted to anyone else that you like country music have you?”

  He shrugged.

  I turned the music up and when Kenny started singing about the unfaithful Ruby, I sang at the top of my voice, leaning close to him.

  He twisted his head to look at me. “Sometimes you are too much.”

  “What times?”

  When he didn't respond, just sat there laughing and shaking his head, I said, “My father loved country music. When we would go on trips, like driving out to the cabin, or up to Vancouver—”

  Jasper interrupted, “He didn't like to fly, did he?”

  I shook my head. “He hated crowds. Sometimes I think he just plain hated people.”

  “Or hated being around them.”

  “Is there a difference?” I asked. He made a face like he wasn't sure. “Mom had to drag him out for any sort of festivities, even if a dinner or something was in his honor. Once a year she would have people over and through the whole thing he would be totally checked out.”

  “He didn't appreciate the attention at all?”

  “Unless the attention came from a student, and she was pretty. He couldn't listen; he was always thinking about something else. He would interrupt someone in the middle of what they were talking about with some totally random question about something they'd said a long time ago, or else he would flat out change the subject. Mom would be horrified; you'll see she's big on appearances.”

  “Sounds sort of funny to me,” Jasper said.

  “The eccentric writer, right?”

  “So…he was a recluse. What was so bad about that?”

  “He couldn't engage!”

  Jasper sat back and watched the road.

  “Don't act like that, it's not like he was shy. If you asked him a question at the wrong time he would get really irritable, or he would just ignore you. Most of the time I felt like I would have had a better chance if I'd been the family dog.”

  “I don't make you feel like that, do I?” The gravity with which he said this made me want to laugh.

  “Jasper. Two things…One, I haven't known you long enough for that level of disappointment. Two, every time I talk to you, you ask some question that makes me think I never understood what I was talking about to begin with. It's like you're there listening but also trying to offer something at the same time. You're nothing like my father. You even do your own work! You're miles ahead of my father, unless you tell me you have a secretary.�
�

  “No.”

  I drove around on Highway 20 so we could go over the bridge at Deception Pass. After the way he got so excited about the height of the trees just driving around Seattle, I had to see what he would do with something really dramatic.

  “We don't have woods like this…this majesty, this…” He groped for the words as he craned his neck around to see both sides of the bridge.

  I pulled off at a small parking spot at the scenic overlook. The air was warm but the wind blowing past made us both cinch up our coats at the collar. He rushed over to a cement pad with the little monument before the awesome view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

  “Your expression has to be goofier than mine when I was in New York.”

  He turned, his face cleared and he focused again, approaching me. “Really?” He looked around again. “There is so much to see all at once!”

  I nodded and headed down the steep path that went under the bridge. Above us hung the iron structure of the bridge; underneath were rocky hillsides, small pines and brush that grew from the clay-hued rock face. I moved to where I could reach a heavy beam. He came over and helped me up. When I planted myself there, the cold of the steel chilled me through the fabric of my jeans.

  “You're not going out there are you?” he asked.

  “What? You never jumped off a bridge before?”

  “Absolutely not. And you're not going to either.” He got up on the beam and eyed me with a stern face. “I would rather not have to come out there after you.” He was so serious I had to give him a pout.

  I had already worked twenty feet farther from where I started. He looked down, swung his legs back and forth and turned to assess the area below my feet. I followed his gaze. If I fell I would drop at least fifty feet, and if I was lucky I would hit the spiny trees instead of bouncing to the water far, far below.

  I worked my way farther out, bracing myself both by tightening my thighs against the hard edges of the cold steel and locking my wrists. If I did slip, I prepared to hold myself upside down by my legs, though I was sure it wouldn't come to that.