Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [112]
And Julian? Julian waits in the hotel suite, writing symphonies in his head (and in his notebook), knowing and not knowing what I have been doing in the lagoon.
Julian and I are soulmates. We understand everything about each other’s hearts and souls, and yet we do not fuck. Both strangers from a distant asteroid of the mind, we speak the same language, the language of hyperspace.
When I return, Julian asks me if I have met a gondolier. And I say, “Yes,” and then I describe sex in a boat with this irresistible nameless gondolier. And Julian stares at me, spellbound, as I describe my adventure, which grows even more ecstatic in the telling.
Between Renzo and Julian, I have two men adding up to one whole person—every woman’s cure for the blues!
Nonattachment, I tell myself. Nonattachment is the key to all of life. I want to feel everything, to get lost in sensation, and yet I also want to be able to retrieve myself. I want to go down to the bottom of the lagoon and still be able to come back up. I want to give away all of myself and still have some piece of myself to regenerate from—like an octopus cut into bits and tossed into the lagoon to grow again.
What a terrifying life I have chosen for myself—or the muse has chosen for me! To dive to the bottom of the lagoon again and again, seeking skinlessness, seeking self-annihilation.
And yet I am happy. I had forgotten how happy you can be when the sex works! I had forgotten singing in the streets and sunlight glinting off your lover’s hair. I had forgotten . . . Dart!
Racing across the lagoon, singing like teenagers . . . I had forgotten the wonder of newly falling in love. Who needs Ada and her black leather and candles now?
Isadora: For once you and I agree!
Nonattachment. Can you love and still live completely in the present? Doesn’t love always leap ahead into anticipation? Waiting for Renzo’s calls, I become crazed, mad, obsessed—all the things I swore I’d never be again. I dream of having a baby with his oceanic eyes. My ovaries start to ache. How can you nonattach with aching ovaries? Can the female of the species ever be an existentialist?
Julian and I talk all night, our arms and legs wrapped around each other’s.
“Someday,” he says, “we’ll make love—but it will come not out of sex but out of love, time-tested, true love.” Ah, the land of promise!
Julian and I have been friends forever. He is the only person I can trust to see the dance of the molecules with me and know I am not crazy. He was the only person I could trust to guide me after I crashed through space-time in Connecticut and saw my mother stomping through the woods. He didn’t laugh at me. When I called him from Venice, he said, “Take two gondoliers and call me in the morning.” If I called him from the fourth dimension, he would probably say the same.
Julian and I have an understanding: we are not allowed to have sex. I’m not sure how the decision was reached or who made it. Perhaps we are too much like siblings to succumb.
We cuddle. We shower together. Naked, we eat strawberries in bed. But we are much more comfortable talking and dreaming with our arms and legs wrapped around each other than we ever would be fucking. Sometimes we talk all night, rub each other’s backs and legs, and float through space in the cosmic bed. Wherever we are, the bed becomes a starship. Strange planets hover overhead.
We speak of the nonexistence of time, the blurry line between meat and air. We heal each other with laughter. When we walk in the streets together, people stare at us because we seem like two little kids, giggling. Can we spend our lives together even though we never fuck? This is the question that bothers us both. I know there are various connections between people, not all of which are carnal. Since soul and body overlap in different ways,