Fear Of Flying

“Better find a nice Chinese girl,” I said. It wasn’t racism, just my skittishness about marriage. Such permanence terrified me. Even the first time, with Brian, it had terrified me, and I had married against my better judgment.

“I don’t want a nice Chinese girl,” Be

(It turned out Be

“I’m glad you want me,” I said. Grateful. I was really grateful.

At what point had I started pretending Be

q: “Dear Dr. Reuben: Why does the fucking always become like processed cheese?”

A: “You seem to have a food fetish, or what is known in psychoanalytic parlance as an oral fixation. Have you ever considered seeking professional help?”

I shut my eyes tightly and pretended that Be

But I have more respect for fantasy than that. You are what you dream. You are what you daydream. Masters and Johnson’s charts and numbers and flashing lights and plastic pricks tell us everything about sex and nothing about it. Because sex is all in the head. Pulse rates and secretions have nothing to do with it. That’s why all the best-selling sex manuals are such gyps. They teach people how to fuck with their pelvises, not with their heads.

What did it matter that technically I was “faithful” to Be

Maybe Be

3 Knock, Knock

Sex, as I said, can be summed up in three P’s: procreation, pleasure, and pride. From the long-range point of view, which we must always consider, procreation is by far the most important, since without procreation there could be no continuation of the race… So female orgasm is simply a nervous climax to sex relations… and as such it is a comparative luxury from nature’s point of view. It may be thought of as a sort of pleasure-prize like a prize that comes with a box of cereal. It is all to the good if the prize is there, but the cereal is valuable and nourishing if it is not.

– Madeline Gray,

The Normal Woman (sic), 1967

In my dream Adrian and Be

“Maybe she ought to be analyzed in England,” Be

Adrian had his feet on the ground now and he began shaking the seesaw like a big kid unloosed in the little kids’ playground.

“Stop that!” I yelled. “You’re hurting him!” But Adrian kept gri

“What’s wrong?” Be

“What happened?”

“You were on a seesaw with someone. I got scared.”

“Oh.” He rolled over.

Normally Be

I was wide awake now and could hear birds making a racket in the garden behind the hotel. At first they comforted me. Then I remembered that they were German birds and I got depressed. Secretly, I hate traveling. I’m restless at home, but the minute I get away I feel the threat of doom hanging over my most trivial actions. Why had I come back to Europe anyway? My whole life was in pieces. For two years I had lain in bed with Be

“If it weren’t for you, I’d have been a famous artist,” my furious red-headed mother used to say. She had studied art in Paris, learned anatomy and cast-drawing, water color and graphics, and even how to grind her own pigments. She had met famous artists and famous writers and famous musicians and famous hangers-on (she said). She had danced naked in the Bois de Boulogne (she said), sat in Les Deux Magots in a black velvet cloak (she said), driven through the streets of Paris on the fenders of Bugattis (she said), gone to the Greek islands three and a half decades before Jacqueline Ke

Was any of that my fault?

I had spent my whole life feeling that it was. And maybe I was responsible, in a way. Parents and children are umbili-cally attached and not only in the womb. Mysterious forces bind them. If my generation is going to spend its time denouncing our parents, then maybe we should allow our parents equal time.

“I would have been a famous artist except for you kids,” my mother said. And for a long time I believed it.