Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [19]
John had what I would call a sexual mode, into which he would switch when he took off his clothes. In sexual mode he could perform the male part perfectly adequately – adequately, competently, but – for my taste – too impersonally. I never had the feeling that he was with me, me in all my reality. Rather, it was as if he was engaged with some erotic image of me inside his head; perhaps even with some image of Woman with a capital W.
At the time I was simply disappointed. Now I would go further. In his lovemaking I now think there was an autistic quality. I offer this not as a criticism but as a diagnosis, if it interests you. Characteristically the autistic type treats other people as automata, mysterious automata. In return he expects to be treated as a mysterious automaton too. If you are autistic, falling in love translates as turning some or other chosen other into the inscrutable object of your desire; being loved translates as being treated reciprocally as the inscrutable object of the other's desire. Two inscrutable automata having inscrutable commerce with each other's bodies: that was how it felt to be in bed with John. Two separate enterprises on the go, his and mine. What his enterprise was I can't say, it was opaque to me. But to sum up: sex with him lacked all thrill.
In my practice I have not had much experience of patients I would classify as clinically autistic. Nevertheless, regarding their sex lives, my guess is that they prefer masturbation to the real thing.
As I think I told you, John was only the third man I had had. Three men, and I left them all behind, sex-wise. A sad story. After those three I lost interest in white South Africans, white South African men. There was some quality they had in common that I found it hard to put a finger on, but that I somehow connected with the evasive flicker I caught in the eyes of Mark's colleagues when they spoke about the future of the country – as if there were some conspiracy they all belonged to that was going to create a fake, trompe-l'oeil future where no future had seemed possible before. Like a camera shutter opening up for an instant to reveal the falseness at their core.
Of course I was a South African too, and as white as white could be. I was born among the whites, was reared among them, lived among them. But I had a second self to fall back on: Julia Kis?, or even better Kis? Julia, of Szombathely. As long as I did not desert Julia Kis?, as long as Julia Kis? did not desert me, I could see things to which other whites were blind.
For instance, white South Africans in those days liked to think of themselves as the Jews of Africa, or at least the Israelis of Africa: cunning, unscrupulous, resilient, running close to the ground, hated and envied by the tribes they ruled over. All false. All nonsense. It takes a Jew to know a Jew, as it takes a woman to know a man. Those people were not tough, they were not even cunning, or cunning enough. And they were certainly not Jews. In fact they were babes in the wood. That is how I think of them now: a tribe of babies looked after by slaves.
John used to twitch in his sleep, so much that it kept me awake. When I couldn't stand it any more I would give him a shake. 'You were having a bad dream,' I would say. 'I never dream,' he would mumble in return, and go straight back to sleep. Soon he would be twitching and jerking again. It reached a point where I began to long to have Mark back in my bed. At least Mark slept like a log.
Enough of that. You get the picture. Not a sensual idyll. Far from it. What else? What else do you want to know?
Let me ask this. You are Jewish and John was not. Was there ever any tension because of that?
Tension?