by Erica Jong
Bennett knew about part objects and whole objects, Oedipus and Electra, school phobia and claustrophobia, impotence and frigidity, patricide and matricide, penis envy and womb envy, working through and free association, mourning and melancholia, intrapsychic conflict and extrapsychic conflict, nosology and etiology, senile dementia and dementia praecox, projection and introjection, self-analysis and group-therapy, symptom formation and symptom exacerbation, amnesiac states and fugue states, pathological weeping and laughter in dreams, insomnia and excessive sleeping, neurosis and psychosis until they were coming out of your ears, but he did not seem to know about laughing and joking, wisecracking and punning, hugging and kissing, singing and dancing-all the things, in short, which made life worthwhile. As if you could will life to be happy through analysis. As if you could get along without laughter as long as you had analysis. Adrian had laughter, and at that point I was ready to sell my soul for it.
The smile. Who was it who said that the smile is the secret of life? Adrian had an antic grin. I too laughed all the time. When we were together we felt we could conquer anything merely by laughing.
“You have to get away from him,” Bennett said, “and back into analysis. He’s not good for you.”
“You’re right,” I said. What was that I had just said? You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. Bennett was right and Adrian was also right. Men have always liked me because I agree with them. Not just lip service either. At the moment I say it, I really do agree.
“Let’s go back to New York right after the Congress is over.”
“OK,” I said, meaning it.
I looked at Bennett and thought how well I knew him. He was serious and sober almost to the point of madness at times, but it was also that which I loved about him. His utter dependability. His belief that life was a puzzle which could ultimately be figured out through hard work and determination. I shared that with him as much as I shared laughter with Adrian. I loved Bennett and knew it. I knew my life was with him, not with Adrian. Then what was tugging so hard at me to leave him and go off with Adrian? Why did Adrian’s arguments speak to my very bones?
“You could have had an affair without my knowing,” he said. “I gave you plenty of freedom.”
“I know.” I hung my head.
“You really did it for my benefit, didn’t you? You must have been terribly angry with me.”
“He’s impotent most of the time anyway,” I said. Now I had betrayed them both. I had told Adrian Bennett’s secrets. And Bennett Adrian’s. Carrying tales from one to the other.
And myself the most betrayed of all. Shown up for the traitor I was. Had I no loyalty at all? I wanted to die. Death was the only suitable punishment for traitors.
“I’d have thought he’d be impotent, or else homosexual. At any rate, it’s clear he hates women.”
“How do you know?”
“From you.”
“Bennett, do you know I love you?”
“Yes, and that only makes it worse.”
We stood looking at each other.
“Sometimes I just get so tired of being serious all the time. I want to laugh. I want to have fun.”
“I guess my somberness drives everyone away in the end,” he said sadly. And then he enumerated all the girls it had driven away. I knew them all by name. I put my arms around him.
“I could have had affairs without your knowing. I know lots of women who do that…” (Actually, I knew only three who made a constant habit of it.) “But that would be even worse, in a way. To lead a secret life and go home to you as if nothing had happened. That would be even harder to take. At least, I couldn’t bear it.”
“Maybe I should have understood how lonely you were,” he said. “Maybe it was my fault.”
Then we made love. I didn’t pretend Bennett was anyone but Bennett. I didn’t have to. It was Bennett I wanted.
He was wrong, I thought later. The marriage was my failure. If I had loved him enough, I would have cured his sadness instead of being engulfed by it and longing to escape from it.
“There’s nothing harder than marriage,” I said.
“I really think I drove you to it,” he said.
We fell asleep.
“His being so goddamned understanding only makes me feel worse, in a way. Jesus, I feel guilty!”
“So what else is new?” Adrian said.
We had found a new swimming pool in Grinzing, a small charming one, with relatively few fat Germans. We were sitting at the edge of the pool drinking beer.
“Am I a bore? Do I repeat myself?” Rhetorical questions.
“Yes,” said Adrian, “but I like being bored by you. It’s more amusing than being amused by somebody else.”
“I like the flow of conversation when we’re together. I never worry about making an impression on you. I tell you what I think.”
“That’s a lie. Just yesterday you made a big deal about what a good lay I was when I wasn’t.”
“You’re right.” That was fast.
“But I know what you mean. We talk well. Without lumps and bumps. Esther goes into these long gloomy silences and I never know what she’s thinking. You’re open. You contradict yourself all the time, but I rather like that. It’s human.”
“Bennett goes into long silences too. I’d almost rather he contradicted himself, but he’s too perfect. He won’t commit himself to a statement unless he’s sure it’s definitive. You can’t live that way-trying to be definitive all the time-death’s definitive.”
“Let’s have another swim,” Adrian said.
“Why were you so angry at me?” Bennett asked later that evening.
“Because I felt you treated me like a piece of property. Because you said you had no empathy for me. Because you never said you loved me. Because you’d never go down on me. Because you blamed me for all your unhappiness. Because you lapsed into these long silences and would never let me comfort you. Because you insulted my friends. Because you closed yourself off from any kind of human contact. Because you made me feel as if I were strangling to death.”
“Your mother strangled you, not me. I gave you all the freedom you wanted.”
“That’s a contradiction in terms. A person’s not free if their freedom has to be ‘given.’ Who are you to ‘give’ me freedom?”
“Show me one person who’s completely free. Who? Is anyone? Your parents choked you-not me! You’re always blaming me for what your mother did to you.”
“Whenever I criticize you in any way, you throw another psychoanalytic interpretation at me. It’s always my mother or my father-not something between us. Can’t we just keep it between us?”
“I wish it worked that way. But it doesn’t. You’re always reliving your childhood whether you admit it or not-what the hell do you think you’re doing with Adrian Goodlove? He looks exactly like your father-or maybe you hadn’t noticed.”
“I hadn’t noticed. He doesn’t look anything like my father.”
Bennett snorted. “That’s a laugh.”
“Look-I’m not going to argue with you about whether or not he looks like my father, but this is the first goddamned time you’ve ever showed any interest in me or acted as if you loved me at all. I have to bloody well fuck someone before your very eyes or you don’t give a damn about me. That’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Doesn’t your psychoanalytic theory tell you anything about that? Maybe it’s your Oedipal problem now. Maybe I’m your mother and Adrian resembles your father. Why don’t we all sit down and have a group grope about it? Actually, I think Adrian’s in love with you. I’m just the go-between. It’s you he really wants.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all. I told you I think he’s queer.”
“Why don’t we all sleep together and find out?”
“No thanks. But don’t let me stop you if that’s what you want.”
“I won’t.”
“Go ahead,” Bennett screamed with more passion than I had ever heard him muster. “Go off with h
im! You’ll never do any serious work again. I’m the only person in your life who’s held you together this long-but go ahead and leave! You’ll screw yourself up so thoroughly that you’ll never do anything worthwhile again.”
“How can you expect to have anything interesting to write about if you’re so afraid of new experiences?” Adrian asked. I had just told him that I wouldn’t go with him but had decided to return home with Bennett instead. We were sitting in Adrian’s Triumph, parked on a back street near the university. (Bennett was at a meeting on “Aggression in Large Groups.”)
“I plunge into new experiences all the time. That’s just the trouble.”
“Bullshit. You’re a scared little princess. I offer you an experience that could really change you, one you really could write about, and you run away. Back to Bennett and New York. Back to your safe little marital cubbyhole. Christ-I’m glad I’m not married anymore if this is what it leads to. I thought you had more guts than this. After reading all your ‘sensual and erotic’ poems-in inverted commas-I thought better of you than this.” He gave me a disgusted look.
“If I spent all my time being sensual and erotic, I’d be too tired to write about it,” I pleaded.
“You’re a fake,” he said, “a total fake. You’ll never have anything worthwhile to write about if you don’t grow up. Courage is the first principle. You’re just scared.”
“Don’t bully me.”
“Who’s bullying you? I’m just leveling with you. You’ll never know fuck-all about writing if you don’t learn courage.”
“What the hell do you know about it?”
“I know that I’ve read some of your work and that you give out little bits and pieces of yourself in it. If you don’t watch out, you’ll become a fetish for all sorts of frustrated types. All the nuts in the world will fall into your basket.”
“That’s already happened to some extent. My poems are a happy hunting ground for minds that have lost their balance.” I was cribbing from Joyce, but Adrian wouldn’t know, being illiterate. In the months since my first book had appeared, I had received plenty of bizarre phone calls and letters from men who assumed that I did everything I wrote about and did it with everyone, everywhere. Suddenly, I was public property in a small way. It was an odd sensation. In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but then when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced for all the wrong reasons. Or are they the right reasons? Do all the nuts in the world really have your number? And not just your telephone number either.
“I thought we really had a good thing going,” Adrian said, “but it’s over now, because you’re so bloody terrified. I’m really disappointed in you… Well, I guess it won’t be the first time I’ve been disappointed in a woman. That first day, when I saw you arguing at registration, I thought: that really is one splendid woman-a real fighter. She doesn’t take life lying down. But I was wrong. You’re no adventuress. You’re a princess. Forgive me for trying to upset your safe little marriage.” He turned the key in the ignition and started the car for emphasis.
“Fuck you, Adrian.” It was lame but it was all I could think of.
“Don’t fuck me-go home and fuck yourself. Go back to being a safe little bourgeois housewife who writes in her spare time.”
That was the unkindest cut of all.
“And what do you think you are-a safe little bourgeois doctor who plays existentialist in his spare time?” I was almost shouting.
“Go ahead and scream, ducks, it doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t have to account to you for my life. I know what I’m doing. You’re the one who’s so bloody indecisive. You’re the one who can’t decide whether to be Isadora Duncan, Zelda Fitzgerald, or Marjorie Morningstar.” He raced the engine dramatically.
“Take me home,” I said.
“Gladly, if you’ll just tell me where that is.”
We sat for a while without speaking. Adrian kept racing the motor but made no move to pull out, and I just sat there in silence being torn apart by my twin demons. Was I going to be just a housewife who wrote in her spare time? Was that my fate? Was I going to keep passing up the adventures that were offered to me? Was I going to go on living my life as a lie? Or was I going to make my fantasies and my life merge if only for once?
“What if I change my mind?” I asked.
“It’s too late. You’ve already ruined it. It will never be the same. I don’t know now whether I want to take you, quite honestly.”
“You really are a hard man, aren’t you? One little moment of indecision and you give up on me. You expect me to give up everything-my life, my husband, my work-without a moment’s hesitation and just follow you across Europe in accordance with some half-baked Laingian idea of experience and adventure. If at least you loved me-”
“Don’t bring love into it and muck everything up. That’s a copout if I ever heard one. What does love have to do with it?”
“Everything.”
“Bullshit. You say love-but you mean security. Well, there’s no such thing as security. Even if you go home to your safe little husband-there’s no telling that he won’t drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow or piss off with another bird or just plain stop loving you. Can you read the future? Can you predict fate? What makes you think your security is so secure? All that’s sure is that if you pass up this experience, you’ll never get another chance at it. Death’s definitive, as you said yesterday.”
“I didn’t think you were listening.”
“That’s how much you know.” He stared at the steering wheel.
“Adrian, you’re right about everything except love. Love does matter. It matters that Bennett loves me and you don’t.”
“And who do you love? Have you ever let yourself think about it? Or is it all a question of who you can exploit and manipulate? Is it all a question of who gives you more? Is it all a question, ultimately, of money?”
“That’s crap.”
“Is it now? Sometimes I think it’s just that you know I’m poor, that I want to write books and don’t give a damn about practicing medicine-unlike your rich American doctors.”
“On the contrary, your poverty appeals to my reverse snobbery. I like your poverty. Besides, if you do as well as old Ronnie Laing, you won’t be poor. You’ll go far, my boy. Psychopaths always do.”
“Now you sound like you’re quoting Bennett.”
“We do agree that you’re a psychopath.”
“We, we, we-the smug editorial ‘we.’ My-it must be awfully cozy to be boringly married and use the editorial we. But is it conducive to art? Isn’t all that coziness stultifying? Isn’t it high time you changed your life?”
“Iago-that’s what you are. Or the serpent in the Garden of Eden.”
“If what you have is paradise-I thank God I’ve never had the experience.”
“I’ve got to get back.”
“Back where?”
“To Paradise, to my cozy little marital boredom, to my editorial we, to my stultification. I need it like a fix.”
“Just as you need me like a fix when you get bored with Bennett.”
“Look-you said it-it’s over.”
“So it is.”
“Well, then drive me back to the hotel. Bennett will be back soon. I don’t want to be late again. He’s just heard a paper on ‘Aggression in Large Groups.’ It might give him ideas.”
“We’re a small group.”
“True, but you never can tell.”
“You’d really like him to beat the shit out of you-wouldn’t you? Then you’d feel properly martyred.”
“Perhaps.” I was aping Adrian’s cool. It was infuriating him.
“Look-we might just do a communal thing-you and me and Bennett. We could drive across the Continent à trois.”
“Fine with me, but you’ll have to convince him. It won’t be easy. He’s just a bourgeoi
s doctor married to a little housewife who writes in her spare time. He doesn’t swing-like you do. Now please take me home.”
He started the car in earnest this time and pulled out. We began our familiar meandering way through the back streets of Vienna, getting lost at every turn.
After about ten minutes of this we were laughing and in high spirits again. Our mutual ineptitude never failed to make us delighted with each other. It couldn’t last, of course, but it was intoxicating for the moment. Adrian stopped the car and leaned over to kiss me. “Let’s not go back-let’s spend the night together,” Adrian said.
I debated with myself. What was I-some scared housewife?
“OK,” I said (and instantly regretted it). But after all, what difference could one night make? I was going back to New York with Bennett.
The evening which followed was another one of those dreamy blurs. We started drinking at a working man’s café off the Ringstrasse, kissed and kissed between beers, passed beer from his mouth to mine, from mine to his, listened avidly to an elderly female lush criticize the expenditures of the American space program, and how they should spend that money on earth (to build crematoria?) instead of wasting it on the moon, then ate (kissing throughout dinner) at an outdoor garden restaurant, fed each other Leberknodel and Bauernschnitzel in passionate bites, and very drunkenly made our way back to Adrian’s pension where we made love adequately for the first time.
“I think I’d love you,” he said while he was fucking me, “if I believed in love.”
At midnight, I suddenly remembered Bennett who had been waiting six hours at the hotel, and I got out of bed, padded downstairs to the pay phone, borrowed two schillings from the sleepy concierge and phoned him. He was out. I left a cruel message saying, “See you in the morning,” and then let the switchboard operator copy down my phone number and address. Then I went back to bed where Adrian was snoring like a pig.
For about an hour I lay awake in anguish, listening to
Adrian snore, hating myself for my disloyalty, and unable to get relaxed enough to sleep. At 1 a.m. the door opened and Bennett burst in. I took one look at him and knew that he was going to dispatch us both. In my secret heart, I was glad-I deserved to be killed. Adrian, too.