The Reluctant Exhibitionist

by Martin Shepard

  Last Sunday evening I arrived at Mount Sinai at about 9:30 at night, having left Bridgehampton some three hours earlier. My father was housed in the Klingenstein Clinical Center, a recently built wing. Not so recent, however, that any of the ancient, time-honored hospital traditions have changed. Like the tradition that dictates that a patient must hang about without any definitive treatment or tests on weekends. Unless, of course, the physicians in charge feel that the delay might kill you sometime between Friday night and Monday morning. But if it’s simply something “non-emergent,” like cancer cells multiplying daily around the common bile duct, well … you can just wait for that. It seems that everybody’s off for the weekend.

  He was in a room with three other men. One, a plump Puerto Rican, seemed hale and hearty enough to me. The other two were in trouble. A cadaverous-looking septuagenarian occupied the bed on my dad’s left. His face showed great pain as he lay unmoving in a fetal position during my hour-and-a-half visit. The other elderly gentleman was hooked up to a cardiac monitor that lit up, traced electrical waves on an oscilloscope, and bleeped with every beat of his heart—regular and irregular.

  I could not tell after a while whether the aberrant heart beats caused him to toss a bit beneath his covers or whether the effort of turning caused the broken syncopation. This man and his monitor seemed the very model of life itself.

  And there was my dad, dressed smartly in freshly ironed pale-blue pajamas with a hospital seal on the breast pocket. He broke out in a warm, broad smile. His hair was thatched white at the sides, so thin on top as to be almost non-existent, yet so persistent that it would be inaccurate to call him bald. His brow, wrinkling as his eyes opened and sparkled, surprised me for the depths of its furrows. As he talked I noticed the creases of age about his eyes and neck. The skin of an old man. Yet I never think of him as old.

  What is age, anyway? Are we not all children entrapped in aging tissue? As a child, I believed that there was a different species known as “grown-ups.” As an “adult,” I know better.

  He talked of how good it was to see me. He inquired about my weekend. He asked how the kids were and felt I must be exhausted from the long drive. He put out-out-out all this energy, all this loving concern and curiosity and warmth. He comforted me when I told him, tear-choked, of the world-pain I felt. For him. For Marc. For all of us on this anguished, maddening rock spinning wildly about the heavens.

  I asked how he felt. “Pretty good. I’ve been resting for the past two days.” And then he told me that the jaundice was beginning to set in.

  “You can’t see it in my face, because I’m tan. But here … look at my feet.” And like a small boy he showed me, with wonder, his feet. So beautiful. Such wonderment. So fucking sad.

  “Life is a rose garden,” I once heard Fritz Perls* say. “The petals wilt and the thorns remain.”

  What a strange, wonderful, uncanny conversation we had that night. For he told me of his father, and repeated, with different words and in a different context, much of what I had told Judy over the weekend about Mac.

  “My father—you would have liked him, you’re so much alike—died when I was twenty-two. He was a silent man. We rarely talked, and yet I sensed so much love from him and felt it back. Through small actions and silent acceptance.

  “Once, when I was at night school, at Cooper Union, a friend and I decided to walk home from lower Manhattan to the Bronx. Well, it was a long walk. And we didn’t have a telephone to call people. It was in the early hours of the morning that I got to Van Cortland Park, near where we lived. I saw this shadowy presence coming toward me. Naturally, I was scared. But it was my father. He couldn’t sleep, got up, and decided to head down to Manhattan to look for me. Imagine that! Hoping to find me in the vastness of the city.

  “And when we met in that park, all we did was turn around and walk home in complete silence, saying nothing to each other.”

  “How strange,” I said. “That same, quality is just what makes you such a groovy guy. I told Judy yesterday of my concern about one of the kids, and came to realize that my doing nothing in response to it was the best course. And then I realized that the thing I appreciated most about you was nothing. It was no thing that you did—but rather just your being there. Accepting and loving.”

  The dialogue went on that way. He talked of his understanding of nature. Of how things take their course inevitably. Of his appreciation that people have no choice other than to be what they are. That in fights between children, misunderstandings between adults, all react in the best and only way they can.

  That, too, I appreciated afresh that weekend. Judy and I had been talking of awareness and choices when I realized that consciousness has nothing to do with choice or free will. At the very most you can become aware of the trap you are in, the position you find yourself occupying in the life stream.

  Does a branch, floating down a river, have a choice over what direction it takes? If it has consciousness, it might choose to focus attention, alternately, on the warmth of the sun and on the coolness of the water. But basic choice about its ultimate destiny? None at all.

  I had thought that my appreciation of Tao* was the result of my restlessness, my own intelligence, my own curiosity. And yet talking with my father last Sunday night led to the discovery that I have been no more original in my religious thinking than the Catholic son of a Catholic parent. For my dad, by whatever name he called it, appreciated the Tao, appreciated the oneness of it all. And the endless flow. The endless flow.

  For the next two days I’d cry at the oddest times.

  Stop it. What are these tears, these reminiscences, these ambling, rambling dialogues? Do you really expect to interest anyone with stories of your visits to the hospital this past week? This talk of sticks floating downstream? This Tao nonsense?

  Armchair philosophy. Cracker-barrel camp.

  You promised to tell them about your sex life—to reveal your character through the travels of your cock.

  “But I told them I would offer something more,” I protested.

  “So far you’ve given them mostly more and not enough of the nitty-gritty,” I shot back. “Get on with your personal pornography, as you promised to do in the first place. And stop interrupting that flow so often. You will find out about your father in a few days, in any event. Stop wasting the reader’s time with all this sentimental mind-fucking.”

  * Frederick Perls, M.D., Ph.D., the originator of “Gestalt therapy.”

  * I should like to define the Tao. The literal translation from the Chinese is “the Way.” It is the opposite end of the spectrum from Confucianism, which maintains that one can become a better person by following a body of specific rules. The Taoists taught that you just had to tune into your own inner bell, that you have an innate sense of balance that will be operative if you are true to it. Yet the Tao that can be named is not the absolute Tao. Taoist thought is a religious view of life that is not a religion, a philosophical way of appreciating the oneness of creation that is nevertheless not philosophical. For a further appreciation of the Tao, the reader is referred to The Wisdom of Laotse (Modern Library), or to almost any work by Alan Watts. To quote from Laotse:

  The great Tao flows everywhere,

  to the left and to the right.

  All things depend upon it to exist,

  and it does not abandon them.

  To its accomplishments it lays no claim.

  It loves and nourishes all things,

  but does not lord it over them.

  VII-Tantric Road (continued)

  Thursday morning, July 9

  Our bed is only three-quarter size and can barely accommodate Eivor and me in comfort. What with Vincent in it as well, and the warmth of the night air, it was hardly a comfortable night’s sleep. Eivor had slipped out from between us in the dark hours of the morning but returned now to wake us up.

  We looked at one another, bleary-eyed and fulfilled. I rubbed Eivor’s thigh, Vincent kissed her a fond “Go
od-morning,” and she in turn kissed me. Vincent and I, still sprawling nude, half under and half out of the bed cover, locked arms and smiled at one another. I tousled his full, black, curly-haired head. If Marc and Richard had not burst into the room and climbed into the bed—as is their usual morning custom—we could easily have had a repeat of our evening’s adventure.

  Last night afforded me some of the richest and most meaningful moments I have ever spent.

  Nine months ago Vincent and I met in a Chinese restaurant to discuss the applicability of video-tape (with which he was then experimenting) to encounter groups. At first sight, I was put off. Although he was an attractive man in his early thirties (he looked like a cross between an Italian street urchin and a young Karl Marx) his seediness seemed guaranteed to put people off. His face had not been shaved for several days, giving his olive complexion a particularly begrimed appearance. And the gray jump-suit he wore seemed never to have been washed. The most prominent stains on his suit were above his pelvis and along the inner thigh, and looked to me to have been the result of old urine and semen.

  But as soon as he began speaking it all began to change. The man was obviously a genius, and had been traveling along so many roads of the exotic and mundane that it would have taken a hundred other bright young men, each on separate disciplines, to match his breadth of awareness and experience. In his youth he was a devout Catholic and a brilliant scholar. Later he left the Church and went, while in the service, to Japan. He met and married a Japanese woman, and studied Zen and other Eastern religions. Returning to America and the university scene he majored in psychology. He divorced his wife. He allowed himself to go mad. He saw a female psychotherapist and was seduced by her. He was exploring the Esalen “touch and feel and fantasy” type of therapy before Esalen ever existed. He has seriously tried every drug that he has come across. And every guru as well—from Gurdjiefians to Krishna Murti; from psychoanalysis to “all the crazy little therapies—body therapy, nose therapy, ear therapy, and ass-hole therapy.” He has wandered about the country “fucking hundreds of women and sucking hundreds of cocks” in every conceivable combination and permutation. Earning his living now as a writer of pornographic novels, he considers himself, quite rightly, a “sexual guru.”

  He is more sensitive to other people’s experiences and turmoil than any other person I have ever met. If he is a degenerate, he is certainly the most gentle degenerate of them all.

  Vincent is preoccupied with the meaning of death—and of life. Later on we would spend hours talking about sex and death with one another, as befits fellow Scorpios.

  Within five minutes of our first meeting we became as close as two friends could possibly be. I had known him for five hundred thousand years. And he knew me for at least as long.

  So when he called on Tuesday it was a special delight. Of course I invited him out the next day, and of course he accepted. It would be good to talk with a friendly soul, particularly since Eivor was continuing in her foul mood.

  On Wednesday I met him at the station and brought him home. Eivor soon returned from her tennis lesson and greeted him in a most friendly way, in spite of the fact that she’d have to prepare him special meals to fit his newly started vegetarian diet. For Vincent is one of my few “hippie friends,” as Eivor calls them, that she likes.

  The two of us spent the afternoon on the beach, mentally fucking every bikini-clad woman between fourteen and forty-four, while we talked of life and love, absurdity and meaninglessness, death and fate.

  In the evening, after supper, Vincent tried to bring about a threesome. He did it skillfully and with great artistry, talking about how, underneath all of our proper and friendly conversation, we were all playing roles: Eivor the faithful “talk-me-into-it” wife, I the experiential freak, and he the sexual catalyst. “Needless to say, if we eliminate all of the games, we would all be making love.”

  “I don’t know,” said Eivor, still true to her part, as her voice trailed off.

  For my part, I really didn’t care what happened. Had Vincent laid this rap down a few months ago, I would have been taken in by his idea that I was really trying to engineer this threesome. But for some time now I had pretty much decided to stop trying to force, push, argue, or manipulate Eivor into sharing my journey of sexual liberation. For two years we had been (under my initiative) open and honest with each other about our desires for others and our intimacies with them. But the strain that such honesty imposed on the marriage had recently led Eivor to suggest that we each do our own thing and not tell the other about it. I also felt that attempting to share these experiences with her—while mutually rewarding at times—was not really worth the effort.

  So Vincent’s attempts to get us started fell on Eivor’s unreceptive ears. I was truly neutral. Finally, near midnight, Vincent said “Look. Fucking aside, I don’t like to sleep alone. Would you mind if I just shared your bed, in a friendly way?”

  “It’s okay with me. Whatever Eivor says.”

  Eivor looked at Vincent, who suddenly seemed quite vulnerable, and said, reluctantly, “Yes. I guess so.”

  We all made our way to the bedroom. Vincent and I undressed and slipped under the covers. Eivor put on pajamas. “Why don’t I sleep on the outside and you two next to each other,” she said, on seeing the open space between us. I declined, joking that it would put me into a homosexual panic. In truth, in spite of my love for him, I had no desire to fuck or suck Vincent.

  It was warm under the covers, but given Eivor’s reluctance and her pajamas I did not really expect anything to happen. And so I turned over on my back to go to sleep.

  Just as I was falling off, I was awakened by Eivor’s hand, moving rhythmically on my back, followed by her soft kisses on my neck (later she was to tell me that it was out of guilt over having been aroused by Vincent, who was lying behind her and holding her close). I rolled around, opened my eyes and saw her, with her eyes closed, blissfully experiencing Vincent’s touch.

  I began to play with her right breast. Her chest heaved up to meet my hand and the nipple grew firm under her silk top. Without a word and with great harmony, Vincent began to play with her other breast, and next I was slowly and deliberately unbuttoning her blouse. She opened her eyes for a minute, looked at us with shameless desire, and closed them again, a smile dancing on her lips. Vincent and I lowered our heads on her now exposed breasts, sucking and moving, until the three of us were connected in the most delicate of motions. I removed Eivor’s bottoms and maneuvered my cock into her cunt.

  It was so incredibly beautiful, fucking her and seeing her clasp Vincent gently to her breast, that I came almost immediately. Slipping out of her, I took over the breasts while Vincent worked his prick back and forth within her.

  Within minutes I was erect again, so sensuous was the experience. Eivor rolled over on her belly and Vincent hovered over her to enter her from behind. The moon was full and flooded light into the room. Seeing her buttocks rise rhythmically to take his cock into her, watching her glide and slide along its shaft, I felt that I had never seen more beautiful or harmonious motion in my life. It was as if the Indian cave carvings at Ajanta had come to life. Copulation and its ripples of motion were at the heart and soul of the universe.

  I worked my way to her head, where she feasted on my resurrected cock, all the while dancing on the point of Vincent’s organ. With moans and groans and bursts we came, and then fell silent.

  After some whooshes of disbelief, we bid our good-nights. But the intensity of the moment was such that lying behind Eivor, I became erect again, and once more entered her waiting cunt. And again it was Vincent’s turn. Were it not for Eivor’s getting up to sleep elsewhere, I am sure we would have continued that way throughout the night.

  I had never, prior to this moment, fully appreciated the voluptuousness of my woman. The ballet of the fuck was never so clear when I was immersed in it myself. I understood, perhaps for the first time, why people fuck in front of mirrors or watch pornog
raphic films. I needed this stepping back and watching the two of them truly to appreciate Eivor’s ripeness and rhythm and beauty.

  Jealousy was nonexistent. Love flowed everywhere.

  For my friend to enjoy my wife gave me enjoyment as well. And unlike either experience with Tom and Mary, I knew just what I wanted. There was no hesitation or self-consciousness here at all. We were—all three of us—seemingly caught up in a choreography that expressed the Deity itself. It was witnessing creation.

  A year and half back, Eivor and I had shared our bed with Sara. To be joined with the two women I loved most had been the holiest and most ecstatic moment in my life, one that I thought could never be equaled.

  Until now.

  What a delicious way to end my week of sexual famine.

  Thursday evening, July 9

  Tamara burst on us full force today, along with her three children, on the same train that had brought us Vincent the day before. That the same iron horse could transport such totally different gifts must surely say something about the unpredictability of life itself.

  She is a Lithuanian Zsa Zsa Gabor, an aging beauty with grand gestures and definitive opinions on everything under the sun. Should you venture to disagree with her you are “a child,” or “without taste,” or “boorish,” or “haven’t had as much experience.” If you confront her with her Grande Dame Superciliousness she counters with her Democratic Alternative: “Listen … everyone is entitled to his own opinion … each to his own.” But in spite of the egalitarian words, her voice tells you that you are a fool.

  Ordinarily I would avoid such people entirely. With Tamara that is impossible. First, she is Eivor’s friend. This in itself puzzled me until I came to realize that Eivor, with her basic reserve and shyness, had great admiration for Tamara’s grandiloquent, extroverted style. And secondily, because Tamara is so incredibly fucked up that I, in the past, had been continually sucked into trying to help her. My distaste, rage, and my contempt for this woman—as limited as it was—was certainly a result of these frustrated attempts to be helpful. For how could anyone possibly help a lady who was so perfect, who knew more than you did, who was so mature? For she claimed all of these virtues, in spite of having had a chaotic marriage that had ended recently in divorce, in spite of being an alcoholic for several years (she of course does not consider a half bottle a day anything more than social drinking), in spite of not getting laid more often than once a month, in spite, in short, of being full of shit in general.