Women

"Oh, you can sleep in my bed, but no sex."

"Why?"

"One doesn't have sex without marriage."

"One doesn't?"

"Drayer Baba doesn't believe in it."

"Sometimes God can be mistaken."

"Never."

"All right, let's go to bed."

We kissed in the dark. I was a kiss freak anyway, and Sara was one of the best kissers I had ever met. I'd have to go all the way back to Lydia to find anyone comparable. Yet each woman was different, each kissed in her own way. Lydia was probably kissing some son of a bitch right now, or worse, kissing his parts. Katherine was asleep in Austin.

Sara had my cock in her hand, petting it, rubbing it. Then she pressed it against her cunt. She rubbed it up and down, up and down against her cunt. She was obeying her God, Drayer Baba. I didn't play with her cunt because I felt that would offend Drayer. We just kissed and she kept rubbing my cock against her cunt, or maybe against the clit, I didn't know. I waited for her to put my cock in her cunt. But she just kept rubbing. The hairs began to burn my cock. I pulled away.

"Good night, baby," I said. And then I turned, rolled over and put my back up against her. Drayer Baby, I thought, you've got one helluva believer in this bed.

In the morning we began the rubbing bit again with the same end result. I decided, to hell with it, I don't need this kind of non-action.

"You want to take a bath?" Sara asked.

"Sure."

I walked into the bathroom and let the water run. Sometime during the night I had mentioned to Sara that one of my insanities was to take 3 or 4 steaming hot baths a day. The old water therapy.

Sara's tub held more water than mine and the water was hotter. I was five feet, eleven and 3/4 inches and yet I could stretch out in the tub. In the old days they made bathtubs for emperors, not for 5 foot bank clerks.

I got into the tub and stretched. It was great. Then I stood up and looked at my poor raw cunt-hair-rubbed cock. Rough time, old boy, but close, I guess is better than nothing? I sat back down in the tub and stretched out again. The phone rang. There was a pause.

Then Sara knocked.

"Come in!"

"Hank, it's Debra."

"Debra? How'd she know I was here?"

"She's been calling everywhere. Should I tell her to phone back?"

"No, tell her to wait."

I found a large towel and wrapped it about my waist. I walked into the other room. Sara was talking to Debra on the phone.

"Oh, here he is…"

Sara handed me the phone. "Hello, Debra?"

"Hank, where have you been?"

"In the bathtub."

"The bathtub?"

"Yes."

"You just got out?"

"Yes."

"What are you wearing?"

"I have a towel around my middle."

"How can you keep the towel around your middle and talk on the phone?"

"I'm doing it."

"Did anything happen?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"I mean, why didn't you fuck her?"

"Look, do you think I go around doing things like that? Do you think that's all there is to me?"

"Then nothing happened?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Yes, nothing."

"Where are you going after you leave there?"

"My place."

"Come here."

"What about your legal business?"

"We're almost caught up. Tessie can handle it."

"All right."

I hung up.

"What are you going to do?" Sara asked.

"I'm going to Debra's. I said I'd be there in 45 minutes."

"But I thought we'd have lunch together. I know this Mexican place."

"Look, she's concerned. How can we sit around and chat over lunch?"

"I have my mind set on lunch with you."

"Hell, when do you feed your people?"

"I open at eleven. It's only ten now."

"All right, let's go eat…"

It was a Mexican place in a snide hippie district of Hermosa Beach. Bland, indifferent types. Death on the shore. Just phase out, breathe in, wear sandals and pretend it's a fine world.

While we were waiting for our order Sara reached out and dipped her finger into a bowl of hot sauce, and then sucked her finger. Then she dipped again. She bent her head over the bowl. Strands of her straight hair poked at me. She kept sticking her finger into the bowl and sucking.

"Look," I told her, "other people want to use that sauce. You're making me sick! Stop it."

"No, they refill it each time."

I hoped they did refill it each time. Then the food arrived and Sara bent and attacked it like an animal, just as Lydia used to do. We finished eating and then we went out and she got into her van and drove to her health food place, and I got in my Volks and started out toward Playa del Rey. I had been given careful directions. The directions were confusing, but I followed them and had no trouble. It was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn't much left you could depend on.

I drove into Debra's yard. I saw a movement behind the blinds. She'd been watching for me. I got out of the Volks and made sure that both doors were locked since my auto insurance had expired.

I walked up and bing-bonged Debra's bell. She opened the door and seemed glad to see me. That was all right, but it was things like that which kept a writer from getting his work done.

92

I didn't do much the rest of the week. The Oaktree meet was on. I went to the track 2 or 3 times, broke even. I wrote a dirty story for a sex mag, wrote 10 or 12 poems, masturbated, and phoned Sara and Debra each night. One night I phoned Cassie and a man answered. Goodbye, Cassie.

I thought about breakups, how difficult they were, but then usually it was only after you broke up with one woman that you met another. I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them. So I explored them as best I could and I found human beings inside. The writing would be forgotten. The writing would become much less than the episode itself until the episode ended. The writing was only the residue. A man didn't have to have a woman in order to feel as real as he could feel, but it was good if he knew a few. Then when the affair went wrong he'd feel what it was like to be truly lonely and crazed, and thus know what he must face, finally, when his own end came.

I was sentimental about many things: a woman's shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, "I'm going to pee…"; hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking, talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes, the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3 am; being told you snore, hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce, but always carrying on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she's now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends, your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side, and her doing the same; sleeping together…

There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary, just for bloody, shitty kicks, like a bloody, shitty movie. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were. I thought of Sara, she had that something extra. If only there was no Drayer Baba holding up that damned STOP sign.