Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [46]
I know that the struggle between art and life is a never-ending one. Difficult enough for a man, who is not indentured to the species’ very survival. But for a woman, a true dilemma and conundrum, never to be resolved—until, perhaps, the freedom of menopause that Emmie talks about. Do I believe her? Emmie, after all, has never been a mother and does not know how motherhood reshapes the heart. But am I Dart’s mother—or the twins’? Or somebody else’s that I have never met? If I had a son, Dart would never have been in my life this long. The notion starts to turn the gyres of my brain. Stop it, I tell myself, and doze off for a while, hoping that sleep will knit this particular raveled sleeve of care.
By the time Dart awakens, it’s lunchtime. Terrified of what new stunt he will pull today, I awake suddenly, with a lurch of terror, wanting a drink, a meeting, anything but Dart.
Dart rolls over and smiles his bogus blue-eyed smile.
“Baby, you look beautiful.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.” He nuzzles my hair, my breasts, my navel. “God—I have a headache, cottonmouth, got to brush my teeth.”
And he lurches up and into the bathroom to make his ablutions.
Torn between waiting for him to come back and fuck me and bouncing up out of bed, I lie there, totally lost to myself, admitting that the last few days without him have been easier than most days with him.
Suddenly I have this terrible thought: What if women all admitted to themselves that men are more trouble than they’re worth? Think of how free we could be! But that admission opens such abysses of terror! If a self-supporting woman with as many children as she wants is still dependent on men, then the need must be deep and unfathomable. Nor is it only a sexual need. Can it be the need for validation in a world in which being a woman is not in itself enough validation? And when will we learn to validate ourselves?
Dart comes back to bed. He dives into the covers as I have so often watched him dive into the Caribbean.
He kisses my neck, my ears, my breasts. He seems about to make love to me again, but both of us hold back, as if a decision has been made. I am remembering Dart once saying to me, “You’ve got it on tap, baby.” There was considerable resentment in his tone, as if his “I can’t give you anything but love, baby” stance troubled even him. He has always used sex as a weapon, all the while resenting the fact that it’s the only weapon he has.
When the only place a relationship wholly works is in bed, both people eventually get nervous. They get nervous because they never want to get out of bed. They get nervous because they have to get out of bed. They get nervous because The Land of Fuck is a place where you lose all your boundaries. Skinlessness is what you seek, yet skinlessness terrifies.
Dart and I seem to have come to the end of a long and winding road. The sex is starting to pall. (“A lover cannot tire of the favors of his beloved.”)
“Baby,” says Dart, playing his final trump card, “we have to stop drinking and drugging. I’m ready to try AA—are you?”
Now, this is a subject Dart and I have talked about from time to time but not lately. It’s as if Dart has intuited my conversations with Emmie and is ready to try anything to keep our danse macabre going. Only I am not quite so cynical in my response.
“Oh, darling,” I say like a robot, “how wonderful!” And the sad fact is, I mean it.
Which is how Dart and Emmie and I end up at the same meeting in the same Greek Revival church.
Dart is uncomfortable, sits stiffly on his chair, looking desperately around.
I am uncomfortable, feeling responsible somehow for his reaction to the Program. What if he doesn’t like the meeting? What if he quits the Program? Will I then be tempted to quit? Emmie is right. I think I can control everything.
Somewhere deep in this anxiety lies the key to the mess I have made of my life. If only I could