Starting Over (24 page)

“Oh—no thanks, I don't think so.”

“Well. Shall we go to bed?”

“OK.”

The sex was as dutiful as their conversation. Afterward she got dressed, and Potter asked for her phone. She wrote it on the inside of a matchbook, along with the name “Donna.” He assumed that was her.

“I'll call you sometime,” he said.

“If you want.”

That night Potter didn't want to be alone, and he was thankful Marilyn got back early from her latest New York weekend. He took over some Chicken Delight, and told her the story.

“Well,” said Marilyn, “I guess it's a dream come true.”

“When you tell it,” Potter said.

“But not really?”

“No. Not really.”

“Didn't it make you feel—sexy?”

“No.”

“Well—what
did
it make you feel like?”

Potter thought for a while. “Like death,” he said.

Potter vowed that he would stop his random fucking. He remembered in college reading a definition of morality by Ernest Hemingway that said what was moral was “what you feel good after.” In that case, the kind of fucking he'd been doing of late was indeed immoral. He felt lousy after it. The depression that followed his fucking the Sunday Afternoon Girl was so overwhelming that he pledged he would not go to bed again with a woman until he met one he really cared about.

Potter knew his vow was a good decision, because God interceded to aid him in keeping it. A few days after his encounter with the Sunday Afternoon Girl, he found himself itching a lot, in the area of his groin. He thought it was probably a nervous condition brought on by his decision to stop fucking for a while, and he put a lot of talcum on it. The itching got worse, though, and Potter took long, hot baths, soaking himself for as much as an hour, keeping the water as hot as he could stand it, stopping just short of scalding himself. And the itching grew even worse. It was getting to be an embarrassment. He could hardly get through a class without turning toward the blackboard and giving a quick, furious scratch to the area over his crotch. He woke in the middle of the night, tormented with the itching. He wondered if maybe he was being bitten by cockroaches, or some such thing, and he bought a can of bug spray and fumed up his bedroom with it. Still, the itching increased, to the point that it was becoming unbearable. Marilyn gave him the name of her dermatologist, and Potter made an appointment.

Dr. Garson Simpson was a large, ruddy man who had a muzak-filled office in a posh new building. When Potter described his complaint, Dr. Simpson said gruffly. “Take down your pants.” His fingers probed the hairs on Potter's groin while his tongue clicked reprovingly.

“Oh, brother,” the doctor said. “You've really got 'em. Holy saints alive, you have a
case
of 'em.”

Potter, growing panicky, was beginning to wonder if whatever the hell he had was fatal, or would require surgery or a trip to the Mayo Clinic, or perhaps mean lifelong hospitalization. Was it treatable at all? Would he die of itching?

“What the hell is it?” he asked. “That I've got?”

The doctor stood up, gave Potter a sneering sort of smile, and slowly walked back to his desk, sat down, motioned Potter to a seat, drew out a cigarette, tamped it on the desk, got out a lighter, flipped it several times without results, finally caught a flame, lit the cigarette, took a long drag, exhaled a smoke-ring, lounged back in his comfortable swivel chair, and asked, “Ever hear of The Crabs?”

Potter had heard of The Crabs in high school, he had heard of The Crabs in the Service. Some of his best friends had had The Crabs. It was one of the few miseries you could get without actually fucking someone who had it, but just by sleeping in a bed where a carrier had slept. If you actually slept with someone who had them, you were pretty sure to get them yourself. That pretty much covered Potter's knowledge of The Crabs, but he saw no reason to recount it.

“Yes,” he said, “I have heard of The Crabs.”

The doctor leaned forward, grinning now.

“Well, brother, you've really got 'em. I mean, you are in
fest
ed with 'em.”

Potter wanted to strangle the sonofabitch. From his luckily sketchy experience with members of the medical profession, he had arrived at a firm theory that most of them were sadists, and had the same psychological makeup as cops, but higher IQs, so they had gone into medicine instead of police work.

“I would appreciate it, Doctor,” he said, in an even tone of pure hatred, “if rather than dwelling with such apparent delight on the extent of my malady, you would simply tell me—that is, if you possess such information—how the fuck I can cure the goddamn thing!”

The doctor, snickering and shaking his head, slowly made out a prescription for some kind of medicine. Obviously unmoved by Potter's plea to restrict his remarks to medical advice, he muttered loudly, “Never heard of a guy going so long without knowing he had The Crabs. Jesus. Wonder you weren't eaten up alive.”

Potter took the prescription and exited without a word, leaving the doctor still shaking his head in joyous wonderment over his plight.

The medicine was called
Kwell
. Potter took the prescription to the Medical Arts Pharmacy in Harvard Square, and handed it to a young pharmacist who read it, moving his mouth, broke into a grin, and told Potter it would take about fifteen minutes. Potter had a double dry martini on the rocks at the Wursthaus bar, and returned to pick up the
Kwell
, which the pharmacist handed him with a wink, and a loud wish of “Good Luck, buddy.”

In a way, having the goddamn Crabs was a relief. Potter knew he couldn't, literally, go to bed with anyone while he had them without passing them on. And he would wish that exquisite torture on no one—except Dr. Garson Simpson, who he would gladly have condemned to a regular case of The Crabs throughout the rest of his natural life.

Much of Potter's attention now was focussed on the effort to rid himself of his evil itch. The good doctor had said it usually took about four days, but in his case it might be a week or more. If he wanted to hasten the cure, he could shave the hair on his groin before applying the medicine. Potter shaved. It was messy and almost sickening, but the act was a kind of penance, and would prolong the period of his celibacy, since he wouldn't want to expose his bare groin to a stranger, and have to go into lengthy excuses or explanations. Perhaps in the spirit that a monk shaves his head, Potter shaved his groin. He also had to buy new towels and sheets, and change them every day. Fighting the itch provided a temporary focus to his life, a goal, for which he was grateful.

It also gave him an excuse for refusing Gafferty the use of his apartment any time that week, any time until he had cleansed himself of The Crabs. When Gafferty suggested that just the two of them go to Jake Wirth's after classes for a beer, Potter knew what he wanted to ask, but he pretended innocence, and found that he secretly, shamefully got a perverse pleasure out of knowing he would have to refuse—on humanitarian grounds, of course—Gafferty's request to have another romp with his student lover in Potter's bed.

“Ah, that's a shame, man,” Gafferty said, then reddening, quickly added, “I mean your condition. Doesn't matter my not getting your place for a while, that's a luxury.”

“I guess you'll just have to rough it this week,” Potter said, grinning in spite of himself. “On the old desk.”

“Ah, well.”

“But your girl must be very understanding—I mean to have had to do it that way for so long. Or however long it's been.”

“That she is. Oh yes.”

The bastard wasn't letting the slightest bit of information eke out. Not even how long his affair had been going.

Potter began casually speaking of students, tests, grades, class response, and then, after a forced yawn, asked, as if nothing could be less important, “By the way. You ever have any students named Korsky, or Linnett?”

“Korsky. Linnett. Let me see. There was a Fred Kautsky, I think. I don't think it was Korsky, though. Why?”

“Oh, nothing really. Just wondered. They're pretty good students. I just thought you might have had them, but if you'd had them I'm sure you'd remember them.”

“Ah. No doubt. You remember good ones. Even some of the troublesome ones.”

The conversation droned down, and petered out, neither man having his mind fully on it. Potter felt slightly more assured that Gafferty's girl wasn't one of his own favorites, but of course there was always the chance that the clever bastard had only pretended ignorance of their names, that his mentioning a “Fred Kautsky” was only a ploy to make it seem he didn't even connect those names with girls. Thinking about it, Potter grew annoyed, and distracted. Gafferty was saying something he'd missed entirely.

“What?”

“I just said I better be going, and wished you luck getting rid of those little devils.”

“Oh, yeah. Right Listen, I'll let you know when—uh—when it's OK.”

“How long does it take,” Marilyn asked, “to get rid of them?”

Marilyn was fascinated by the subject of Potter's affliction. She had once had the clap, but never The Crabs, and was interested in all the details. She even wanted Potter to take down his pants so she could look at them.

“You can't see them,” Potter said. “All you can see is little red dots where they've nibbled at you.”

“Can't you see them scurrying around, like little ants or something?”

“No. They're too small.”

“Oh.” Marilyn was obviously disappointed.

“I'm sorry I can't put on more of a show for you,” Potter said.

“Don't get defensive.”

“All right, all right. Let's talk about something else, for godsake.”

Marilyn told about her growing dissatisfaction over the way things were going with Herb, her married shrink-lover. It was getting to be a routine, her going down on weekends, hanging around in the hotel room, waiting for him to come at whatever hours he could get away from his wife and family. He could rarely escape on Saturday nights, so Marilyn usually spent those evenings alone watching television, ordering up from room service.

“You're going down too often,” Potter said. “You've got to take a weekend off—do something else. You mustn't make yourself so available, all at his convenience.”

“But I do want to see him—I want to be with him. I love him, Phil. And he loves me too, I know it.”

“OK, but remember our pact? I was going to advise you on strategy. And I'm telling you now, you've got to be more—elusive. Hard to get.”

Marilyn sighed. “Play the game, you mean.”

“Yes,” Potter said, “that's exactly what I mean.”

He got up to go to the bathroom, but just when his hand touched the doorknob, Marilyn yelped, “Phil! Wait! You can't go in there!”

“
What?
”

Potter turned around, confused. “What are you talking about? Is there a body in your bathroom?”

“No, I mean—your
things
. The Crabs. Can't you get them on toilet seats?”

“I wasn't going to sit down.”

“Oh. Well—are you sure it's all right? No kidding, Phil, if I got The Crabs, I could never explain to Herb in a million years.”

“Look,” Potter said, “I'll be very careful. They're not going to climb out of my fly and parachute down to make landings on your toilet seat.”

“Well—if you're sure.”

Potter, feeling like a leper, pissed very carefully, zipped himself up, and only stayed long enough to get Marilyn's assurance she would take a weekend off, let her lover sweat a little bit. He advised her to be vague, make the guy worry and wonder about her. Reluctantly, she promised.

Potter was glad to get back home to the secure isolation of his own little private leper colony.

Potter was pleased when Chip Strider, the guy he met at the film buff evening, invited him to a dinner at the Harvard House where he served as Senior Tutor. Each house, Potter learned, had a Senior Tutor to counsel the undergraduates who lived there, and also a Master of the House. It sounded quaint and English, like Tom Brown's School Days. Potter looked forward to the evening as the kind of event that would provide high-level intellectual stimulation, and take his mind off mundane cares like curing The Crabs. He hoped he wouldn't be questioned too closely on his film knowledge, and he got himself pretty high before starting out. The Senior Tutor's residence was comfortably medieval, with heavy old wooden furniture and rich, dark wall hangings.

Potter felt at once he was involved in a form of ritual. Everyone had two drinks before dinner, which was fine except for the fact that it would have seemed a terrible gaffe if anyone had wanted one drink or three drinks. But everyone had two. The assembled company was carefully balanced, like a political ticket. There was the Senior Tutor and his wife, both of whom were economists; a lady anthropologist and a black assistant dean; a visiting Fellow at the Kennedy Center for Political Study, and an intense young woman biologist; a thirty-ish woman who was writing a study of The Women in Dostoievski on a grant from the Radcliffe Institute. And Potter. He was probably there for his phony film expertise, but he felt he represented the academic world's outcasts and also-rans.

All he remembered from the dinner were Names.

They spoke intimately of Teddy and Henry and Ken, who everyone understood to mean Kennedy, Kissinger, and Galbraith. Not only was everyone on a first name basis with their distinguished contemporaries, but also with the distinguished dead. When the conversation—which ran like a seminar, with one subject discussed at a time—took up American Literature, someone shook his head pitiably over “Poor Red,” who turned out to be Sinclair Lewis. There was also initimate chit-chat about Scott and Zelda, “Dos” and Gene O'Neill and Bunny Wilson. Potter was tempted to make some casual mention of “Hank” Thoreau, but restrained himself.