Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [28]
“He has guns?” Emmie asks.
“Emmie,” I say, “goyim have guns.”
“Well, I don’t,” says Emmie.
“I never think of you as goyim,” I say.
“Thanks,” says Emmie, understanding the compliment. “Just promise me you’ll tell him to take the guns out of the house. Okay?”
Strange, isn’t it, the way all relationships unroll backward? When I met Dart nearly five years ago, he rode a motorcycle, which he abandoned for the blood-red Mercedes I bought him. Now, for some reason, he is using the motorcycle again and leaving the Mercedes (DART—his alter ego) in the garage. He is terribly guilty about something—even he who feels so little guilt, compared with real people.
The motorcycle stops with a roar and a put-put-putter, and I hear his boots on the gravel path.
I spray myself with Lumière, fluff my hair, and run to the door. I don’t want him to see I’ve been on the phone with Emmie, whom he resents because he knows (all men know this instinctively) that we talk about him. That this talk is a matter of survival is something no man understands (or perhaps they do—and that’s why they resent it: how dare we survive them?). All they know is that we have something they can’t touch or enter: a sisterhood of shared affection, a safety net to catch us when they drop us and we fall.
“Baby,” says Dart, taking off the Darth Vader helmet and grabbing my ass.
“Hello, darling,” I say, looking up at him to be kissed. No “Where the hell have you been?” or “Why didn’t you call me?” If a woman wants an animal like Dart, she has to be disciplined and clever, never betray jealousy, never show possessiveness.
Alas, this is impossible. Even women are only human.
No kiss is forthcoming. “Have you been working?” he asks, almost as though he knows he has blasted my concentration and is glad of it.
“Yes,” I lie. “A new series of paintings.”
“Of me?” he asks, greedy to be my muse even though he is no longer keeping his part of the bargain.
“Of course, darling.”
“Are you lying?” he asks. “I feel you are lying. You know what happens when you lie, bad girl, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say, very gamine, very excited.
“Come into the studio. I want to see what you’ve done.”
And he strides out the back door, across the grass, and into my studio-silo, giving off a goatish whiff of black leather and dust of the road.
In my studio, all is chaos. Blank canvases stacked against the walls, rejected C prints from the film-stills show (on some of these I have doodled in acrylic, covering the photographic images with Warholesque scrawls), rejected canvases from the Cowboy show, one canvas of the twins for a double portrait titled Doppelgänger Daughters, which I have abandoned as not good enough, and the usual self-portraits I begin when no other model comes to hand.
The chaos in my studio mirrors the chaos in my mind—a million things begun and nothing finished—a wild casting about to find inspiration in the past, in my children, in myself.
“So—you are lying,” he says. “You know the punishment.”
“I know,” I say, growing very excited.
“Bend over the easel,” he says, “and take down your jeans.”
Isadora: I can’t really believe that Leila would do this. After all, she’s an artist, a heroine, a feminist. Why would she let this putz abuse her?
Leila: Love. Surely you remember love?
Isadora: What’s love got to do with it?
Leila: Everything. This is a story about the fine line between love and self-annihilation. We’re talking skinlessness here. Surely you yourself have sometimes sought it—or am I dreaming?
Isadora: I’ve read Story of O, but I’m not French enough to buy it.
Leila: Wait.
He starts to unzip me, and I, anticipating this moment, have worn black lace bikini pants under my jeans. He tears the denims away from my behind but leaves the lace drawers in place. Then, extracting a black riding crop from one high black leather boot, he begins to sting my bottom teasingly, taking special pleasure from the fact that I am leaning over my own easel, on which is perched