Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [105]
I know he would meet me in Venice or Wyoming or Dubrovnik. But why? Somewhere between his final departure with Sylvie, AA, Pandora’s Box, and Madame Ada, I’ve let him go almost without even knowing it, released him into the universe. He knows that, and perhaps it’s why he’s offering to come back. He knows I won’t take him. And I know it. The obsession is gone. And in its wake? Sadness—overpowering sadness—which even cancels out the lust he stirs.
Now I am at the Gritti, waiting for Julian, who arrives in three days. And I am wretched. I should never have come—even for a week. I have suddenly been hurled back in time. I miss Dart in my kishkes—not to mention below. Is this a sort of phantom-limb phenomenon? Having lost him, I wish I could unlose him? Having struggled to let him go, I now want him back. Having gotten free, I long for my bondage. I’m terrified I’m going to drink. But it is my heart that is mainly afflicted. It is empty as a dock after an ocean liner has left. Is it Dart I miss, or am I nostalgic for the old hole in my heart? Am I nostalgic only for my pain?
They have given me the same room we had at the start of our idyll—Hemingway’s room. Venice, as always, is a city of ghosts, and you never know from one visit to another whether the ghosts will be benign or malign.
I step into this palatial room alone, exhausted, drained—as you always are when all your molecules have been rearranged by a transatlantic flight—and I crash. This is the room where Dart and I made love six times a night, the room where we screamed and barked and tangled like baby animals, the room we never left till after dark—when we would go out and prowl the streets of Venice by night, speaking of Ruskin, of Byron, of Tintoretto, of Shakespeare, and of how much we loved each other—only to come back to the room and make love again.
Dart is gone, and I have tried to replace him with meditation, with group love, with domination, with solitary work, with writing in my notebook, with my sane mind. Tonight none of that seems enough. The dybbuk is back, my serenity smashed. I have lost Dart—or lost my love of Dart—and I have lost my last baby. I have lost my baby self. I have had a summer of celibacy (if you don’t count Danny or the dominatrix!), and it has made me strong—but now all my bravery has fled, and I am in despair. The silk Fortuny walls seem to have all the love we made in their shining threads. I throw myself on the bed, distraught, hopeless.
All my old hotel room angst returns. All the panic and pain I thought the Program had banished. (These are the worst moments of a “free” woman’s life: alone after jet lag, alone after miscarriage, alone after passionate love, alone after lunch with one’s former lover.)
Everyone has someone, and I am alone! Why can I make nothing last? Why must I keep bolting and remaking my life? Why do I outgrow every man I join my life with? Or do I just throw love away with my two hands, using growth as an excuse?
Sadness, pain, despair. I rummage in my luggage for one of my little AA books and read the thought for today:
God’s help is always available; all we have to do is make room for Him to take part in our lives and keep ourselves ready to accept His guidance.
Fuck that!
I will throw myself in the lagoon. To die in Venice would be, at least, artistically correct. Isn’t Venice where artists go to die?
I switch on the light, grab some stationery, and scrawl a note to Dart.
I fold up the letter, address it carefully to the apartment in Hoboken (Hoboken!) where he lives with his little bimbo, amid my books, the clothes I bought him, the film stills I did of him. I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll send this missive to him by courier. Tomorrow. Meanwhile, try to sleep.
But sleep eludes me in my jet-lagged state.
I toss and turn, masturbate—slowly and longingly, thinking of him—then, frenziedly, not thinking of him. I turn on the light and start to read a friend’s