From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [415]
During the past three or four months, his mind grinned sardonically, in which you have been so busy, having had nothing else better to do, I have occupied myself with making a searching and profound study of the institution of married life as practiced in these United States, somewhat in the manner of the psychiatrists who write those articles for the Ladies’ Home Journal. Oh, yes; dont look surprised; didnt you know; sex is an open topic in the United States now. Would you care in hear my conclusions?
He, Warden, had never seen her drink so much. Usually she drank very little if any. She did not even like for him to drink much. This time she ended up by getting as drunk or drunker as often or oftener than he did, and he resented it. Not only had he needed that whiskey himself, but it frightened him. He did not want a wife who was going to turn into an alcoholic anonymous. He did not want to have to add that guilt onto all of the other guilts. He must have overlooked something. He must have made some mistake.
My conclusions, his mind went on anyway, are that marriage in the United States is based upon the principle of romantic love. Not wholly, of course, but in the majority; you will agree that the majority in the United States accept the principle of romantic love. They accept it so strongly, in fact, that even the minority who marry for other reasons such as money or social position or business or just plain security still strive to give the impression of having married for romantic love. This is, incidentally, perhaps the only country in the world where that is true, even among the most ignorant lower classes of peasantry, if you discount England. Myself, I always discount England. Well, by personal observation and careful experimentation, during these three or four months I had nothing to do, I have finally isolated the virus of the illusion of romantic love. My conclusion, in this paper, is that the epidemic of romantic love which is threatening to decimate the United States is the direct result of a viscid vicious virulent virus, or infection, which, for lack of a better name, I shall call Ego-stimulation; or, naming it after its discoverer, Warden’s Bacillus.
By way of proof, his mind said, let us take a case in point. Let us take a hypothetical young female aged 18 and a hypothetical young male aged 19, both you understand of the acceptedly superior type considered most likely to succeed (both in life and in love), such as, say, a football-hero-recipient-of-the-DAR-medal and a straight-A-girls’-college-prep-major-who-also-doubles-as-cheerleader.
If we take, his mind said, this hypothetical young couple, at the beginning of their—
“Oh, go fuck yourself!” Warden hollered.
He got the bottle out of the filing cabinet again and drank, this time not because it was thin, but in pure self-defense. If a man could just hang onto one illusion he could still love. The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.
Penetrated by a sudden cunning idea, he set the bottle up in plain sight on the corner of his desk, instead of putting it back in its hiding place. Then he leaned back in his chair still Then I was going to in the dirty, crumpled, prize $120 Brooks Bros, tropical suit and cocked his feet on the desk and grinned at the innocent bottle slyly. He locked his arms behind his head and settled back hopefully to wait for that Chicago stupid Jew lawyer son of a bitch Ross to come in. Maybe that was the ambulance chasing bastard that had been watering his whiskey.
The very least he can do is transfer me. Maybe he’ll even bust me, he thought hopefully, he busted Ole Ike, dint he?
Chapter 47
IF IT COULD ONLY all be like the luau had been, all the time, Warden thought with his feet cocked on the desk and his head