Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [40]
“You said it—I didn’t.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to have great sex without domination and abuse—it’s built in somehow. When we adore them, we give it all away. All my intellect rebels against this notion, but my kishkes know it’s true. When Dart fucks me I feel alive. When he doesn’t, I wither.”
“Did it ever occur to you that feelings are not facts?”
“I’ve never lived without a man. I need sex to power my creativity. I need that skinlessness to get in touch with the muse.”
“You need you to power your creativity. Dart takes you away from you. From the twins. From your work. If you make yourself the center of your life, if you stop giving away your power, other kinds of men will be drawn to you—equals, not dominators or wimps.”
“Like who? Thom was a wimp. Elmore, for all his bravado about equality, was both a dominator and a wimp. Even the twins know it. Ed said to me when I took them to the airport, ‘Why do we have to go to Daddy’s, Mom? Daddy’s a big baby. You support us. You take care of us. He just bosses us around.’ I said, ‘He’s your dad, and you love him,’ and Mike said, ‘Are you sure he’s our dad?’ ‘Absolutely sure,’ I said. ‘Okay, Mom,’ said Ed, ‘we take your word for it.’
“They know he’s a wimp and a weakling. They know who they can depend upon and who they can’t. I try to tell them how great Elmore is, and they laugh at me. Ten years old, and they know everything. They even asked me once if I’d ever done it on a plane. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Wet or dry?’ I thought for a minute and then said, ‘Dry.’ ‘Oh,’ said Ed, ‘that doesn’t count, Mom. We were wondering about the Mile High Club.’ ‘How do you little pishers know about the Mile High Club?’ I asked. ‘We read,’ said Mike. ‘And watch those videos you have,’ said Ed. This was a shock, but I pretended to be cool. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there’s ever anything you want to know about sex, please ask your mom. Don’t go to strangers, okay?’ ‘Okay, Mom,’ said Ed, ‘but we know about everything.’ ‘Even pantric sex,’ said Mike. ‘You mean tantric,’ I said, glad for some little corner of expertise. ‘I told you it wasn’t pantric,’ said Ed to Mike. And off they ran, to play with their Barbies.”
Emmie laughs and laughs. “What do they play?”
“They play Barbie joins the Mile High Club, I guess. With twins you never know—they have a whole secret life.”
During the evening, Fleur’s story drifts back to me. Some of it is even starting to make sense.
“I keep thinking of Fleur,” I say, “of women not loving their daughters into health unless they can love themselves into health—you know what I mean?”
“I do,” says Emmie.
“And that makes me think of Theda, who certainly didn’t love herself—and yet she gave me this crazed bravado, this notion that I can do anything. And Dolph too. I am so much my father’s daughter. My mother’s madness fired my ambition in a strange way too. I want to redeem her life and make her pain worthwhile. If only she could have stopped drinking.”
“Tell me about ‘The Rules of Love,’ ” says Emmie.
“Let me find the book.”
I run up to the attic and look among the shelves where I keep the books from my Yale days. There it is, a dusty greenish volume called Italian Social Customs of the Sixteenth Century which I have saved all these years because of its account of the tradition of courtly love and its survival into the Renaissance. I pull the book out as carefully as I would an ancient scroll, sealed in a tomb, preserved from ordinary air. As if by magic, it falls open to a page headed “The Rules of Love.” I stand alone in the attic and read in the dusty sunlight from the dormers:
I. Marriage is not a just excuse for not loving.
II. He who is not jealous cannot love.
III. No one can be bound by a double love.
IV. Love always increases or diminishes.
V. What the lover takes from his beloved against her will has no relish.
VI. A man can love only when he has reached full manhood.
VII. A dead lover must be mourned by the survivor for two years.
VIII. No one should be deprived of love without abundant reason.