The High Cost of Living

by Marge Piercy

  “You did get some pleasure out of that?” he asked doubtfully.

  “I’m not that hard to please. It was nice, Bernie, you were right.”

  “Are we technically lovers?”

  “Technically? What nonsense is that? If Val and I were lovers, you and I are lovers. But what does that mean? We’re friends. That’s what we were half an hour ago, it doesn’t go away or turn red or something.”

  She was standing in a kitchen that was hers and Val’s although it seemed to be twice the size of their old kitchen and boiling with light. She was at the stove making coffee; yes, she was making breakfast for Val to bring it to her in bed as a treat. Then Valerie came up behind her—she was simultaneously standing at the stove measuring coffee into the drip pot, and floating up someplace where she could omnisciently watch Valerie steal across the floor toward her and slip her arms around her waist. Valerie hugged her close and she melted with pleasure.

  She woke gradually in the dream and then she was puzzled. She was aroused as in the dream, arms around her, lean flat arms covered with curly brass hair hugging her back against bony, angular … Bernie. Yes. Oh. They were in George’s big kingsized bed (although she should think of it as Sue’s also, she did not) with the sun bleeding in through tortoiseshell blinds and light green draperies. It felt late. The bedside clock radio that flashed digits said in inch-high letters that it was nine-thirty: later than she had slept in months.

  “Good morning,” Bernie murmured at her ear and tickled around the lobe with his tongue. “King-sized bed is wasted on us. We slept curled up like two kittens in the middle. How delectable to wake up with an erection and something to do with it. I adore making love in the morning, it takes the hard edge off the day. In fact sometimes there’s no point in getting up at all.”

  “Good morning.” She began to turn but he held her fast, one hand making slow circles around her breast, the other edging under her to caress her belly. She yawned again and cuddled closer. Her eyes shut.

  “We’re prefectly matched, me so gabby and you so silent. We could go on indefinitely. I talk for an hour and you say yes or no. It’s deeply satisfying. I won’t let you go back to sleep.” He brought his hand between her legs and began to excite her, more confidently this time.

  “I normally talk as much as you do. Almost. This is the last day of my vacation.”

  “Let’s make it a good one.” His mouth burrowed in her nape and along her shoulder. His teeth closed lightly on her skin, worried a fold. “Do you like biting?”

  “Not really. It hurts.”

  “I’d let you bite me too? All right, all right. I won’t bite. I’ll only squeeze.” His hands were hard, rough on her. If she had not awakened already excited, he would have hurt her. She felt confused. She did not like the way he was holding her, her back to him with her hands lying open and useless before her. This was a position which gave him all the initiative and control and there was an edge to that control, a slight stain of sadism in his excitement. Was he making up for what he might conceivably define as failure? She was not at ease. At the same time if he continued touching her just that way she would come in a few minutes. She yawned sleepily, groggily, trying to throw off the sense of sinking in layers and layers of warm cotton. She was not really awake yet. Her mind and body felt ill-coordinated. His hand on her seemed miles away from her puzzling brain.

  He eased her over on her stomach and moved onto her. She thought he was going to enter her ass. “I don’t want to do that,” she began, and then realized he wasn’t.

  He entered her vagina from the back, thrusting hard, and she winced with pain. Even though she was wet with excitement still from the dream, it hurt at first. It felt strange in her, the alien object pounding. She could not move at all in this position but only lie and be pierced and hammered in. But she adjusted to him, easing and shifting around till the discomfort lessened. He was not heavy but she wasn’t used to having anyone lying on her, so the weight on her back made her feel a little claustrophobic, a little squashed. She wriggled around under him but still felt pinned down. If they ever did anything like this ever again, lying on her belly was never going to be her favorite position. She felt too powerless, too contained. Her breasts were flattened by his weight. She could hardly move. Even if the thumping inside had aroused her, the complete passivity would have stolen the excitement away again.

  She suspected he had chosen the position not by chance but because it gave him maximum control and because it emphasized the buttocks. The banging against her behind did not excite her and she wished it would end already. Performance, it was all performance. She began to feel hostile. She would have liked to wake up cuddled and loving, with kisses and conversation. He must have wakened some time before her and worked himself up on sexual fantasy until he was ready to stage his scene.

  Finally he came with a shuddering groan. The liquid felt hot in her as it began to drip along her thighs.

  “Oh my god!” she cried out suddenly. She started up and bucked him off, relaxed as he was.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked drowsily. He rolled over onto his back and lay smiling, looking pleased with himself. “Wasn’t that something? Where are you running off to?”

  “The bathroom. But it’s hopeless.” She made herself pee. Then she began going through Sue’s drawers for a douche bag. Sue did not seem to have one. She came to stand beside the bed wrapped in a towel. “We’re both idiots. Complete assholes.”

  He sat up rubbing his eyes. “What’s wrong? I thought you came. Didn’t you come?”

  “No, of course I didn’t. How would I come? But you did. That’s what I’m talking about. We both forgot that makes babies!”

  “Makes what?”

  “Babies! We’re … interfertile!”

  “Just from that?” He sat on the bed’s edge stretching. He stared at her as blankly and incredulously as if she were telling him there was a lion in the bathroom.

  She wanted to beat on him in exasperation. “That’s how it’s done! We’re both prize jackasses. We forgot. We just plain forgot that’s how you make babies. I haven’t had to use contraception since I was in high school!”

  “But don’t women take something?”

  “Now why in hell would I take the pill? Valerie can’t make me pregnant. I haven’t taken any of that crap since I was sixteen! Oh, we’re idiots!”

  “Well, we could have a baby.” He yawned again, looking even more pleased with himself. He couldn’t see past his newly fledged prick. “How else would we get one? I like babies.”

  “Look, it’s me that would be pregnant! And I am not, am not, not, not willing! We’re assholes, that’s what we are.”

  “You know that term is anti-gay,” he drawled, hugging himself across his chest. “Like cunt for a woman, you know?”

  “We don’t deserve a license to walk the streets with adults. We don’t deserve to survive. We’re too stupid!”

  “Speak for yourself, honey.” He got up, chin in the air, and stepped into his pants. “I for one am hungry. You can have breakfast with me or you can stay upstairs by yourself and scream at the hamsters. Fertile little bastards. Maybe you can make them miscarry!”

  He went down to make breakfast while she rummaged a few minutes longer for a douche bag before she gave up. She felt raw and sore as she moved, and sperm was sticky on the inside of her thighs. She took a shower, scouring herself. Then she dressed, stripped the bed, gathered the towels and came downstiars carrying the laundry. She could smell coffee and bacon, and her stomach shrank into a hard ball. There must be something she could do. She hated to feel so stupid. At fifteen she’d acted with more intelligence. Her body did not feel good. Her waking excitement had been battered into resentment. Because they had had oral sex at night, that had put her in a position where she had felt constrained to go along with him in the morning. It was so complicated, thorny, confusing.

  “It’s a drag trying to cook in a filthy kitchen. I told you I’d cook if you cl
eaned up, but you didn’t take that bargain seriously,” he said, slamming plates down on the table.

  “You know why I didn’t get to it last night. I’ll do the dishes right after breakfast.”

  “I know … Don’t drop innuendos on me. I didn’t rape you this time.”

  She sat down and he brought out the bacon and eggs. It looked so good, English muffins in the toaster, she said appeasingly, “It looks delicious.”

  “Hmmmm. For all I know, you can get pregnant eating eggs.” He was sulking determinedly, in full pout. “You didn’t say a word about it. Not this morning, not last night. I certainly don’t know a thing about contraceptives. Where would I have learned? Getting fucked doesn’t make me pregnant. It seems to me a real long shot to imagine that five minutes would do it to you. After all, people spend years trying to have a baby!”

  She put down her fork, annoyed again. “Oh? Remember how you were conceived? A bit of bad luck for Mommy.”

  “Don’t throw my mother up to me. I adored her.”

  “I wasn’t throwing her up.”

  “Besides, you’ll probably eat and then throw up. That would be par for the course.” He buttered an Englsih muffin, glaring at her. “You’re just having a reaction and taking it out on me. A lesbian withdrawal syndrome.”

  “I fail to see how spending one night with you makes me a withdrawn lesbian.”

  “Because it felt good, you’re taking it out on me. How am I supposed to know if you come or not? You’d rather preserve your purity and not enjoy it. You didn’t want to come! That’s why you’re pissed.”

  “Oh, so I made you do it and got myself pregnant. That’s what men say. She got herself pregnant. With who? The family dog?”

  He took the untouched bacon from her plate. “Don’t you want any? Are you turning into a vegetarian too? Well, my goodness, two minutes in bed, and you’re convinced you’re pregnant. I certainly seem to have sullied you.” He got up for coffee and came back with the pot, rolling his hips and waving his arm in the air. “First you punch me in the belly and almost kill me—that’s how Houdini died, did you know that? You could get a manslaughter conviction for that. Now you carry on as if I’d overpopulated the world single-handed before breakfast. It’s dreary, that’s what it is. Like stupid pricks who pick me up to ball and then call me queer. The morning-after syndrome, that’s all. Dreary!”

  She had already stopped being angry and she stared at him. He hated her. She stared at him while no words came to her. What he had said about the morning-after syndrome reminded her that there was something called a morning-after pill, which she had certainly described, pro and con, to raped women ten different times. She had just forgotten it, never expecting it to apply to her. She would go and get one.

  He hopped up, letting his chair fall over backward. “Well, shit! Cheerio, my deario, you can stuff it in the orifice of your choice. You can stuff it and cook it and eat it by your lonesome.” He stormed out and grabbed his jacket. Then he ran back in again to shout some more at her. She felt frozen, staring at him. “I’ll hitchhike home and I’ll get laid by someone who likes sex, actually likes it, can you imagine? No, you can’t. So I disappointed you, huh? I know what you did in bed with Valerie—you tortured her. No wonder she ran off with a rich middle-aged dyke. I’d never have looked at you twice if it hadn’t been for you hanging around Honor. Waiting for a chance to make her miserable too, I suppose! Well, you won’t get it. I’ll see you never get your hooks in her!” He was white with anger, burning, rigid. He stood there with his leather jacket on waiting for her to say something, but she could not. Nothing. She could not even quite look at him. Then he left.

  She did the laundry and wept, she washed the dishes grimly, she cleaned the house and fed the fish and hamster and watered the hanging houseplants, the spider-plants, the begonias, the African violets, her face stiff and masklike. In the bathroom mirror she glared at herself and clenched her teeth. She must take herself in hand. Before she left, she was satisfied the house was cleaner than it had been. She did not eat lunch, fasting for her excesses, her sins and failures, the mess she had made. A mess with a man. She was deeply embarrassed.

  thirteen

  Monday morning she went over to Student Heath to get the DES pills. They had told her she had to come at ten, which meant missing Walpole’s seminar, a genuinely bad idea. His methodology seminar was the traditional one in authenticating documents, archival work, dating techniques. Walpole viewed her as an emanation of George, brought in unnecessarily from the outside. He had contempt for women students and pretended to be unable to learn their names. They were all Miss … Eh … to him. One time she had dragged herself out of bed with a hundred-and-one-degree flu fever to attend his class. Now she was sitting on a bench outside gynecology waiting and waiting for her name to be called.

  She sat there her entire seminar. A lot of action over the hot weekend, probably. Today it was cool and raining. The air smelled foggy in the waiting room. She felt conspicuously on display for two hours. She had arrived early, hoping to see a doctor and get to Walpole’s seminar. She tried to study, but every time someone walked in, through or past she cringed. She had to look up to see if it was anyone she knew. She had a fantasy bordering on conviction that Tasha was going to come by. She had decided to say she was having trouble with her periods. She would not admit to anyone why she was here; but it would go in her record. She was sure every lesbian in all of Detroit would know before noon where she was and why. It was incongruous, it was humiliating. She disliked herself for getting into a smelly situation. DES caused cancer. Wonderful. Maybe she should take a chance on getting pregnant. She had looked up the matter in Our Bodies, Ourselves, and they seemed to suggest she might be better off taking her chances (4 in 1000). But an abortion would be worse: Pregnant lesbian seeking abortion wants hand held. It would be too ridiculous and she would have to keep it as secret as a Victorian lady hiding her shame. She did not wish to parade her foolishness in front of strangers, let alone friends. Better to take the cancer chance, sweat on display in the busy waitingroom. Then she could forget.

  “Why don’t you go on the pill?” the doctor asked, reaching for his prescription pad. “We recommend that over the IUD for most cases.”

  “This isn’t going to happen again. I don’t need the pill.”

  “You didn’t think it was going to happen this time, did you? We can put you on Enovid.”

  “It’s not necessary. I don’t intend to have it happen again. I haven’t needed contraception in … two years,” she said, unable to be more truthful, with him peering at her in that paternalistic way.

  “If you’re afraid of the pill, we can fit you for a diaphragm. But we can’t have you coming in every week for a morning-after pill. The receptionist will make an appointment for you to come back in two weeks for an IUD or a diaphragm. Have you ever been pregnant?”

  “No,” she said, seeing the miscarriage. Don’t let them put it on your record.

  “The doctor who examines you will decide. See the receptionist. Take one of these every morning for four more mornings. If your menses are delayed past two weeks, make an appointment. Every morning for four more mornings.”

  She did not make the appointment. As she hurried in the rain across a campus crisscrossed by commuters, she felt nauseated, although whether from the shot or depression she could not tell. The rain pelted her hair flat to her skull and tried to creep into the neck of her jacket. She felt extraordinarily sorry for herself.

  Chilled, she bent over old real estate records in the anteroom of George’s office. Hot coffee alone kept her moving. Around four, George called her in. “Shut the door.” He frowned. “You look under the weather. Are you coming down with something?”

  “I got soaked.… Is everything all right at the house?”

  George had returned with sunburn and he was still bright red, lit up. “Good job. Except that you could have given the lawn a soak. Not cool to let it dry out The rain will help now.
”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think of the lawn.”

  “Keep an eye on it next time. Sometimes you have to touch the ground between the roots to be sure.” George stretched, running his hand gingerly over his arm. “Still tender. I hope my tan doesn’t peel off and wash away. How was your vacation?”

  “Fine.”

  “You went to Grand Rapids?”

  He would not let her off the hook. She nodded. “But that’s over now.”

  “Too bad.… Is Cam living with Mark Hennessy?”

  “Cam? I don’t think so. They’re seeing each other.”

  “She changed her phone number this morning.” He pointed to a card in the Rolodex on his desk. Silently they compared the numbers.

  She scratched her head. “I know she wanted to leave home. I can find out from her sister Honor. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Why should I?” He flexed his arms behind his head, gingerly, and stuck his feet up. “I like to keep on top. Actually, I’m not sure I love having my secretary shacked up with one of my assistants. We’ll see. I could imagine situations where it might be sticky.” He peered into her face. “You look awful today. Are you coming down with the flu?”

  “No. I just didn’t get much sleep.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No. My personal life is not exactly wonderful at the moment, but I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.… Mark came to me this morning by the way and told me in all confidence that you are a l-e-s-b-i-a-n. I was a mite annoyed. I said, ‘Fine, I imagine some other ambitious grad student will come to me privately next week and tell me you fuck ducks. It will mean as much.’ But I was annoyed.”

  In her slough of misery one more bit of trouble hardly mattered. “I had the feeling he was chewing on that.”

  “Hope it doesn’t spread. I’m behind you, but we have enough campaigns under way.”