Authors: Erica Jong
“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 cannibal.
“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. Bennett may be hooked on jargon. But you’re hooked on triangles. That’s your speciality. Who was
Martine
living with that made her so attractive to you? Who was Esther fucking? You’re a marriage ghoul, that’s what you are. You’re a vulture.”
“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
Bennett’s.”
“I think you like Bennett more than you admit. I think he turns you on.”
“Can’t decide whether I’m queer or not,” he said, grinning. “I’ll bet that’s true.”
“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
Bennett, only he’s a bloody
Chinese
masochist. It would do him some good if you took off without him. It might show him that he can’t go on living this way, suffering all the time and calling in Freud as his witness.”
“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 Bennett knew everything about life except that having fun ought to be part of it. Life was a long disease to be cured by psychoanalysis. You might not cure it, but eventually you’d die anyway. The base of the couch would rise around you and become a coffin, and six black-suited analysts would carry you off (and throw jargon on your open grave).
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 him! 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.