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“Jesus Christ! You’re some fine feminist.”
“Oh I talk a good game, and I even think I believe it, but secretly, I’m like the girl in Story of O. I want to submit to some big brute. ‘Every woman adores a fascist,’ as Sylvia Plath says. I feel guilty for writing poems when I should be cooking. I feel guilty for everything. You don’t have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty. That’s Isadora Wing’s first principle of the war between the sexes. Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture. Do you know what Teddy Roosevelt said?”
“No.”
“Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.”
“Teddy Roosevelt never said that.”
“No, but I did.”
“You’re just scared of him-that’s what you are.”
“Who? Teddy Roosevelt?”
“No-you idiot-Be
“You’ve never seen me when I’m ready to fall apart.”
“Piffle.”
“You should see. You’d run miles away.”
“Why? Are you so unbearable?”
“Be
“Then why hasn’t he run? Actually that’s just bullshit to keep you in line. Look-I lived with Martine once when she fell apart. I’m sure you couldn’t be worse. You have to take a lot of shit from people to get the good bits too.”
“Hey, that’s pretty good-can I have that on tape?”
“How about videotape?” And we kissed for a long time. When we stopped Adrian said, “You know, for an intelligent woman, you’re an idiot.”
“That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”
“What I mean to say is, you can have anything you want-only you don’t know it. You could have the world by the balls. You should come along with me and see how little you’ll miss Be
“Is that all? When do we start?”
“Tomorrow or the day after, or Saturday. Whenever the Congress is over.”
“And where do we go?”
“That’s just the point. No plans. We just take off. It’ll be like The Grapes of Wroth. We’ll be migrants.”
“The Grapes of Wrath.”
“Wroth.”
“Wrath, as in wrath of God.”
“Wroth.”
“You’re wrong, sweetie pie. You’re illiterate by your own admission. Steinbeck is an American writer-The Grapes of Wrath.”
“Wroth.”
“OK, you’re wrong, but let it go.”
“I already have, love.”
“You mean we’ll just take off without any plans?”
“The plan is for you to find out how strong you are. The plan is for you to start believing you can stand on your own two feet-that ought to be plan enough for anyone.”
“And what about Be
“If he’s smart, he’ll just piss off with some other bird.”
“He Will?”
“That’s what I’d do, anyway. Look-it’s clear that you and he are due for a bit of a reshuffle. You can’t go on whining at each other like this all your lives. People may be dying in Belfast and Bangladesh but that’s all the more reason why you ought to learn to have fun-life’s supposed to be fun at least some of the time. You and Be
“He called you the worst name possible,” I said laughing.
“Did he?”
“He called you a ‘part object.’ ”
“Did he really? Well he’s a bloody ‘part object’ as well. The psychologizing bastard.”
“You do your share of psychologizing too, sweetheart. Sometimes I think I should get away from you both, woman smothers in jargon. lover and husband held for questioning.”
Adrian laughed and fondled my ass. No jargon about that. That was a whole object. An ass and a half, in fact. Never had I felt happier about my fat ass than when I was with Adrian. If only men knew! All women think they’re ugly, even pretty women. A man who understood this could fuck more women than Don Giova
“I love your fat ass,” Adrian said. “All the food you had to gobble to get such a fat ass. Yum!” And he sank his teeth in. The ca
“The trouble with your marriage is,” he said to my ass, “that it’s all work. Don’t you ever have fun together?”
“Sure we do… hey-that hurts.”
“Like when?” He sat up. “Tell me about when it was fun.”
I racked my brains. The fight in Paris. The car crash in Sicily. The fight in Paestum. The fight about which apartment to take. The fight about my quitting analysis. The fight about skiing. The fight about fighting.
“We’ve had lots of fun. You don’t have to grill me.”
“You’re a liar. All your analysis is really a waste if you still go on lying to yourself all the time.”
“We have fun in bed.”
“Only thanks to my not fucking you properly, I’ll bet.”
“Adrian, I think you really want to break up my marriage. That’s your game, isn’t it? That’s your kick, that’s what you’re hooked on. I may be hooked on guilt. Be
“Yes, when I find carrion, I like to clean it up. You said it, not me. The vulture metaphor is yours, ducks. The dead flesh is yours too. And Be
“I think you like Be
“Can’t decide whether I’m queer or not,” he said, gri
“Think what you like, ducks. Anything to get out of really enjoying life. Anything to go on suffering. I know your type. Bloody Jewish masochist. Actually, I quite like Be
“If I take off, I’ll lose him.”
“Only if he’s not worth having.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s so obvious. If he takes off, then he’s not for you. And if he takes you back, it will be on a new footing. No more groveling. No more manipulating each other with guilt all the time. You can’t lose a thing. And meanwhile, we’ll have a great time.”
I pretended to Adrian that I wasn’t tempted, but in fact I was. And sorely. When I thought about it, it did seem as if Be
Be