Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [94]
What a flourishing business for busy creative women! AIDS-tested studs for the creative woman (or the busy executive) who doesn’t want to get involved. But of course it would never work. Most women don’t want studs, AIDS-tested or not—they want love. They want romance. And so the escort business would never work.
It wouldn’t work for me—no matter how appealing the fantasy seems. I may pretend to myself that I want a stud, but alas, what I want is frighteningly more complex: a lover, a partner, a friend, a daddy, a baby. A stud would be too easy—even if I had the faintest idea where to find one.
So I go on making my collage, like a woman possessed, hoping that all the passion and energy and lust will go into the paper, all the blocked come will go into the glue, and the images will vibrate like an orgasm well and truly achieved. I could also call this collage Empty-Bed Blues. And I could dedicate it to Bessie, Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, my heroine.
17
Leila in Nighttown
I’m lookin’ for a woman who’s looking for a low-down man
I’m lookin’ for a woman who’s looking for a low-down man
Ain’t nobody in town get more low-down than I can.
—Freddie Spruell
Wayne Riboud hasn’t been heard from since the night he disappeared into a covey of tootsies at the roadhouse in the absurd suburbs of New York. Now, suddenly, he is on the phone, importuning me as if nothing ever happened. Men who vanish for weeks at a time and then reappear used to mystify me. Now I know they are either in retreat from intimacy or pursuing other women—which of course amounts to the same thing. I left Wayne because he was drunk—or did I?
How often in my life has the man who has just fallen for me taken off and seduced another woman—just to prove he’s not trapped? Truth is, I’ve done it myself and know the beast for what it is: fear of getting close. Did I abandon Wayne, I wonder, because of his drinking, or because he stirred something in me and I panicked? I’ll never know. Since AA, everything in my life has been called into question. I don’t know whether I drank as an excuse to fall into bed with men, or fell into bed with men as an excuse to drink. I don’t know if my addictive substance was booze or cock—or a combination of the two.
Now Wayne’s inviting me to spend a night on the town in New York. Am I sober enough to do it without drinking?
“Come on, Leila—you haven’t been seen for weeks. You’ll die in that fucking silo. Let’s do a night on the town—downtown style. I miss your giggle.”
“How can I resist someone who misses my giggle?”
“You can’t, babe. Also, we pay for everything with my bills. It will be a gas.”
“My license is suspended.”
“Ha! And you thought I couldn’t drive! I’ll drive,” says Wayne.
“Oh, no you won’t. Never again.”
“Then take the train or get a driver.”
“What do I wear?”
“Black leather.”
“Just remember, I no longer drink or do drugs.”
“I have other intoxicants, babe,” says Wayne. “Have no fear.”
I leave the twins with Lily and hire a driver—a slender young black man called Charlie—to blast down from Connecticut in DART.
We stash DART in my garage, Charlie takes off, and I meet Wayne in his loft on La Guardia Place.
I’m wearing a black lace bustier, Madonna style, black leather jeans, black S&M spike-heeled sandals, and a black motorcycle jacket that used to belong