Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [90]
“Tell me what’s in your head,” says Lionel.
“Just that we don’t have enough time to do this right. Your briefcase will beep. My twins will run in. We need a whole weekend, a whole week.”
Lionel rubs my neck. I am thinking like a woman. Men like nothing better than to fuck and run—leave the primordial cave and return to the proxy fight. It’s the woman who wants the weekend or the week.
Lionel kisses me. His kiss is surprisingly wet and warm, passionate, deep. He fondles my breasts.
“I want to give you everything,” he says, “everything.”
He reaches down and starts to unzip his fly, when the briefcase beeps.
“Goddamn,” he says, lunging for it.
With one hand on his fly and the other on the telephone, he continues his proxy fight.
This is the world they’ve made, a world in which sex is always interrupted by proxy fights, and they love it. Even men like Dart are demoralized by it. They live to fuck but feel like gigolos because of men like Lionel. What’s the answer? Who knows?
“Tell the bastard I’ll have his balls on a platter,” Lionel is saying, perhaps to his lawyer, or to the proxy solicitor, or someone.
As he speaks, his erection subsides. I have the fantasy of blowing him as he talks on the phone, female power against male, but I resist—and not only because of my aching innards. Trying to get sober has made such games less attractive to me than they once were. I see my own hunger for power and dominance in my sexual play. I see myself in Dart—Donna Juan, Donna Giovanna. I am getting wise to my own tricks. A lot of sex is just vanity, isn’t it? The thrill of making someone fall in love with you, the narcissism of being desired. I never saw this before, but I am certainly seeing it now. When the fuck works, nature’s narcissism wins. Another baby for her team. Yay, team. By outwitting her, we have probably outwitted ourselves. God gave human beings too much brain power and not enough judgment and compassion—that’s the sad truth. Balls on a platter, indeed.
Lionel sputters, zips up with one hand and holds the telephone with the other.
“Be there inside an hour,” he grunts.
“Baby, got to go,” he says to me, needlessly. “Catch you later.”
My belly cramps. I run to change my Maxipad, then kiss him goodbye and walk him to the chopper.
There was no way I could have had sex anyway in my condition, I realize. Who was I kidding? Lionel barks orders to the pilot, who is sunning on the grass. He hops to it like the semislave he is: “Yes, Mr. Schaeffer. Right away, Mr. Schaeffer.”
The pilot is a handsome blond shagetz, twice Lionel’s height. Lionel clearly loves bossing him around. Cossacks who looked like this pilot doubtless raped his grandmother—and he hasn’t forgotten, either.
The chopper whirs, brutalizing the air above my sweet green hillside.
“I’ll call ya tomorrow!” says Lionel, using that old male line.
Why, I wonder, do they bother? It’s the rare one who actually calls—and usually the one who doesn’t say he will.
That night, still hemorrhaging, I try to call Dart. I phone L.A., trying first the new listings in area code 213, then the new listings in the valley (818). No luck. I can find no Dart, Darton, or Trick Donegal in all of greater Los Angeles. I consider trying the bimbo’s phone number, but then realize I’ve never had it. In fact, I don’t even know her name.
If I had any number, I would ring it and ring it far into the night, wait for someone to pick up, hang up, ring it and wait again. Finally, in desperation, I call the elder Donegals’ number in Philadelphia. The phone rings and rings. In the eternities between rings, our whole relationship replays. Finally a voice answers. It is Dart who says “Hello.”
I slam down the phone and take to my bed, bleeding heavily.
16
Empty-Bed Blues
When my bed get empty
makes me feel awful mean an’ blue.
My springs are gettin’ rusty
sleepin’ single as I do. . . .
—J. C. Johnson
Now that I know where Dart is, I begin to obsess