Fear Of Flying

I slept. I think I actually fell asleep with my face pressed to my spiral notebook. I remember waking up in the blue hours of early morning and feeling a spiral welt on the side of my cheek. Then I pushed away the notebook and went back to sleep.

And my dreams were extravagant. Full of elevators, platforms in space, enormously steep and slippery staircases, ziggurat temples I had to climb, mountains, towers, ruins… I had some vague sense that I was assigning myself dreams as a sort of cure. I remember once or twice waking and then falling back to sleep thinking: “Now I will have the dream which makes my decision for me.” But what was the decision I sought? Every choice seemed so unsatisfactory in one way or another. Every choice excluded some other choice. It was as if I were asking my dreams to tell me who I was and what I ought to do. I would wake with my heart pounding and then sink back to sleep again. Maybe I was hoping I’d wake up somebody else.

Fragments of those dreams are still with me. In one of them, I had to walk a narrow plank between two skyscrapers in order to save someone’s life. Whose? Mine? Be

Then I remember the dream in which I was back in college preparing to receive my degree from Millicent McIntosh. I walked up a long flight of steps which looked more like the steps of a Mexican temple than the steps of Low Library. I teetered on very high heels and worried about tripping over my gown.

As I approached the lectern and Mrs. McIntosh held out a scroll to me, I realized that I was not merely graduating but was to receive some special honor.

“I must tell you that the faculty does not approve of this,” Mrs. McIntosh said. And I knew then that the fellowship conferred on me the right to have three husbands simultaneously. They sat in the audience wearing black caps and gowns. Be

“Only your high academic achievement makes it impossible for us to withhold this honor,” Mrs. McIntosh said, “but the faculty hopes you will decline of your own volition.”

“But why?” I protested. “Why can’t I have all three?”

After that I began a long rationalizing speech about marriage and my sexual needs and how I was a poet not a secretary. I stood at the lectern and ranted at the audience. Mrs. McIntosh looked soberly disapproving. Then I was picking my way down the steep steps, half crouching and terrified of falling. I looked into the sea of faces and suddenly realized that I had forgotten to take my scroll. In a panic I knew that I had forfeited everything: graduation, my fellowship grant, my harem of three husbands.

The final dream I remember is strangest of all. I was walking up the library steps again to reclaim my diploma. This time it was not Mrs. McIntosh at the lectern, but Colette. Only she was a black woman with frizzy reddish hair glinting around her head like a halo.

“There is only one way to graduate,” she said, “and it has nothing to do with the number of husbands.”

“What do I have to do?” I asked desperately, feeling I’d do anything.

She handed me a book with my name on the cover. “That was only a very shaky begi

I took this to mean I still had years to go.

“Wait,” she said, undoing her blouse. Suddenly I understood that making love to her in public was the real graduation, and at that moment it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Very aroused, I moved toward her. Then the dream faded.

18 Blood Weddings or Sic Transit

The real trouble about women

is that they must always go on

trying to adapt themselves to men’s

theories of women.

– D. H. Lawrence

I awakened at noon to find the blood welling up between my legs. If I parted my thighs even a little, the blood would gush down and stain through to the mattress. Foggy and half-dazed as I was, I knew to keep my legs together. I wanted to get up to search for a Tampax, but it was hard to get out of that sagging bed without parting my legs at least a little. I stood suddenly and blackish-red rivulets began to inch their way down the inside of my thighs. A dark spot of blood glistened on the floor. I ran to my suitcase leaving a trail of glistening spots. I felt that heavy and familiar pull in my lower belly.

“Fuck,” I said, fumbling for my glasses so I could see to rummage for a Tampax. But I couldn’t even find my goddamned glasses. I thrust my hand into my suitcase and began feeling around. In exasperation, I started tossing the clothes out onto the floor.

“Damn it to hell,” I screamed. The floor was begi

What a bunch of useless junk I had in my suitcase. I could use my poems as sanitary napkins, couldn’t I? Charming symbolism. But unfortunately not very absorbent.

Ah-what’s this? One of Be

I hobble out to the hall in my trench coat holding my knees together to keep my diaper in place. Then suddenly I remember that everything which stands between me and destitution is in my handbag: passport, American Express card, traveler’s checks-and I hobble back to the room. Then out into the hall again, knock-kneed, barefoot, clutching my bag, and I seize the doorknob of the toilet and begin rattling.

“Un moment, s’il vous plaît,” comes an embarrassed male voice. American accent. It’s August, after all, and there probably aren’t any French people within miles of Paris.

“It’s ok,” I say, holding my diaper in place with my thighs.

“Pardon?” He hasn’t heard me. He’s still trying to come up with French phrases as he squeezes out the last dollop of shit.

“It’s ok,” I yell, “I’m American.”

“Je viens, je viens,” he mutters.

“Je suis américaine!”

“Pardon?”

This is getting embarrassing. At this rate neither one of us will know what to do when he finally emerges. I decide to hotfoot it down to the next floor and try that toilet. So I hobble down the winding stairs again. The toilet on the floor below isn’t locked, but there’s no paper at all, so it’s down still another flight. Actually, I’m begi

Voilà! Paper! But what atrocious paper! Talk about the history of the world through toilets-this toilet resembles nothing so much as an oubliette, and the paper seems to have dead bedbugs embedded in it. I lock the door, heave open the tiny window, toss Be