The Dog (22 page)

I can think of a few people who might say: Your hypothetical case, as stated, omits important facts. X’s behavior becomes highly explicable if you disclose that V was X’s long-term partner and (in X’s eyes) “dumped” her and “betrayed” her. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

With respect, this misses the point. Never mind that plenty of “scorned” women don’t get into a fury; or get into a fury but don’t want to destroy the “scorner”; or want to destroy the scorner but don’t, because it would be wrong. Never mind that the whole “hell hath no fury” racket (historically justifiable, I’m theorizing, as a way of granting profoundly oppressed womankind some measure of power and justice and psychological ventilation in epochs marked by the prevalence of crudely retributive ideas) in this day and age represents a tacit prolongation of the supposedly discontinued treatment of women as persons with less-developed moral and rational faculties akin to those we associate with young children and (in the inoffensive technical sense) idiots, an act of gender condescension whose inherent unacceptability is moreover combined with an anachronistic dangerousness, by which I mean that the modern legal and social and economic power enjoyed by many women in Western societies (the female entitlement to which power is, I underline for the avoidance of doubt, of course absolutely beyond question or qualification and not for me or anyone else to allow or tolerate or oversee or bless), when exercised wrathfully pursuant to the outdated “hell hath no fury” license, is a
dangerous weapon. To put it another way, it’s one thing for a helplessly vulnerable quasi-servant to be madder than hell; it’s something else if the infuriated party acting with impunity is a rich partner in a law firm who is practically one’s domestic and professional ruler. But, as I say, never mind. It’s all good. My point is that the Jenn I lived with, or next to, though by no means a saint (why should she have been? I certainly wasn’t), would not have done the things done by the non- or un-Jenn on the hellish fury basis. That’s why I can’t explain why she decided, in effect, to wear the latter’s bloodstained shoes.

I don’t want to be detained further by this stuff, because life’s too short. YOLO. But one last item makes a demand on the attention. It will be noted that our famous maxim doesn’t go “Hell hath no fury like a woman in a state of severe romantic disappointment.” Rather, it makes express reference to an action attributed to her (ex-) partner—the one who is deemed to have committed an act of “scorning.” I have inputted “scorn” in the Free Dictionary. To scorn someone means to treat that person with disdain or contempt; to mock. I have looked up “disdain” in the Online Etymology Dictionary: it is negatively derived, as one might expect, from the Old French
deignier
, to deem worthy or fit, which in turn comes from the Latin
dignus
, worthy, proper, or fitting, which in turn is rooted (as is “decent,” I see) in the Proto-Indo-European (i.e., over-five-thousand-year-old)
dek
, to accept, receive, greet, be suitable. I’ve also looked up “mock.” Though it obviously arrives immediately from
mocquer
(Old French), beyond that it is of uncertain origin (though there is a suggestion that the word may have to do with the Vulgar Latin
muccare
, to blow the nose (in a gesture of derision), which is itself the offspring of
mucus
, slime or snot). These investigations confirm that the evocation of the figure of the “scorned woman” contains within it an automatic characterization of the male (or female: I am not aware that the “hell hath” maxim is of only heterosexual
application) as actively snotty, derisive, and contemptuous. This blanket judgment, precisely because it is the nature of a judgment, in turn contains a grotesque rumor of the judicial—of a procedurally verified finding.

Was I a scorner? A looker-down? As I recall, this was a very lowly time for me, and I cannot think how I would have been able to look down on anyone, let alone high-up Jenn. Was I an oaf? Yes. Did I culpably cause damage? For sure. Did I fail her? Guilty as charged. It’s all somewhat foggy at this point, but certain memories are clear. Jenn had bravely done her bit—taken the follicle-stimulating hormones, gone every second day to follicle-measuring appointments, and above all taken on the chin the emotional agony that the dismal saga of artificial fertilization inflicts. All that remained, in order to try to make the baby we agreed we would try to have, was for me to do my part. The IVF calendar had produced an insemination date on which I’d be traveling for work, and this meant that I had to produce a semen sample in advance: the fluid would be frozen and used in my absence. I duly took myself to the clinic, or facility, which was in the basement of a brownstone in the East Twenties or Thirties. It was a strange little place. A sadness of masturbators, as I will collectively name them, sat around on gray chairs, each waiting his turn. A human voice was heard only when someone had dealings with the cheerful nurse-like woman who sat at a desk behind an open hatch. She gave me a form that required me, as I recall, to be specific about the number of days I’d been “abstinent.” I shamefully provided this and other information, and took a seat. The semen production took place in a separate area, the entrance to which was closed by a shut door. Once in a while, a guy went in and a guy came out. I did my best to not monitor the amount of time anybody took in there. Jenn texted,

A different nurse-like worker entered the waiting room. She called out a name that did not sound like a name at all. Everybody looked around. She tried again, with a different articulation. I realized she was trying to summon me, by my first, horrifying name. When I stood up, everyone looked at me with, I’m sure, a kind of revulsion. In I went. A short corridor gave on to the two chambers where masturbation happened. I entered one of these, on my own naturally, though I recall that I was nonetheless taken aback to find myself alone in this little room. There was a surprisingly cheap armchair—maybe I’d been half-expecting some kind of special custom-made jack-off lounger—a few worn pornographic magazines, and a tiny piece-of-shit non-flat-screen TV that must have been about twenty years old. Onan himself would have found the setup a challenge. I studied the laminated instruction card and wrote my name on the receptacle label and stuck the label on the receptacle. I activated the shit TV. There was a scene of a male repetitively fucking some featureless moaning blonde. I hit Fast Forward. Now some other dude was banging a woman from behind while she gave his or her buddy head. I watched for a few more seconds, hoping for some contagious performance of desire on the part of the woman actor, because surely that is the core fantasy—that one is desired. I was already distracted about how much time this was taking. What was normal? Five minutes? Ten? The question of volume worried me, too: I wanted audio, but I didn’t want it to be overheard by anyone. Fuck it, just do it, I said to myself. I dropped my pants and got started—standing up, because there was no way I was going to sit on that chair. A minute or two passed. My dick was inert as a sock. I turned off the TV and tried with closed eyes. When that didn’t work, I turned off the light, which was a bad idea, because I needed to capture the ejaculate in the receptacle and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I tried to relax; I breathed deeply; I recalled certain erotic triumphs of my youth; and I began to get a response. But every time I thought I might be getting close to
producing something, the climactic sensation dissipated. I kept working at it. By the time I finally gave up, half an hour had passed, and the guys out there were surely wondering what the hell I was up to. “I’m having a problem,” I said to the nurse, actually hanging my head. She looked at my information sheet. “You live nearby, right?” I said I did. She said, “Why don’t you take the vessel home with you, honey, and then just bring it back here right away when you’re done.”

Meanwhile, another text from Jenn:

I was done, all right—as of that moment. I walked to the rent-stabilized one-bedroom in a chill of nausea. I waited there. When she came through the door, I told her I needed to talk to her. She went off into the bedroom, and when eventually I went in there after her, she went back out into the living room. “Could you please stop moving around?” I said. “I want to say something.”

“I’m really, really tired.”

I was very clear in my mind what I wanted to say. I did not want to start a discussion. The time for discussion had come and gone. I made sure to use very plain sentences. I told her I’d tried and failed to produce a semen sample. I told her I did not intend to try again.

She said, “You mean you’re breaking up with me?” As usual, she’d gone straight to the pith.

I expressed no disagreement.

Next, I remember, she said, “I need a drink.” Later she said, “OK, this isn’t happening. Let’s just go to bed and see where we are tomorrow.” Later still, in tears, she said, “You can’t do this to me. I want a baby—you give me a baby! You owe me. You owe me my baby!” At some other point she said, “You can’t back out now. It’s not right. It’s not fair. What am I supposed to do? Start dating? Find someone else? I’m thirty-five years old!”
She made further statements, including the statement that I was the murderer of her marriage. She said, “OK, look, just give me the sperm. I’ll have the baby myself. I’ll take care of the baby. I don’t need you. I can do this. I’m strong.” And, “I’m going to be a laughingstock.” And, “You wait until I’m having fertility treatment, and then you quit? Oh, boy. It’s like you’ve done this on purpose. Is that it? I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve done this on purpose.” And, “My God. You’re a monster. A monster. A narcissistic psychopath. My God. That’s it. That explains everything.” She tore off her clothes and bent over and spread her ass cheeks, and said, “Fuck me! Go on! Fuck me! Can you do that? Get your cock out like a man! You fucking asshole! You coward! You had to wait until now? What’s the matter? You don’t like pussy? You fucking psychopathic asshole.” This was when she went for me, when she was naked, lunging at me with a terrible scream and clawing at my crotch and face. I fended her off and ran to my usual retreat, the bathroom, and locked the door. Leave me alone, I said. Please leave me alone. She started to punch and kick the door, which she had never done before, and there was the terrifying new sound of wood splitting. “Open up. Let me in, you coward,” she said. “Be a man. Face up to what you’ve done.” I stayed where I was, leaning against the door, panting. A very long time went by, as I experienced it, in which I stayed in the bathroom and she stood at the door and screamed obscenities and threats. Then she began weeping loudly, and the barrier I’d rightly or wrongly put up to defend myself against her agony crumbled, and as she sobbed I opened the door, hoping maybe to be of some comfort or at least to bear witness to her pain, of which I was the cause. I’d opened the door no more than three inches when I felt the crash as she tried, with another terrible cry, to push her way into the bathroom. The sobbing had been a ruse. I was only just able to heave back and lock the door once more.

Then came a quiet. I could hear movements. There was a
longer period of quiet. I didn’t dare move. I was well aware that this was a perilous situation—one of those moments of extremity when, the statistics show, the otherwise nonviolent can kill or seriously injure. I heard the front door shut. I waited. After a few minutes, I turned off the bathroom light and saw no light coming through at the door’s edges. She had left the apartment and hit the light switches on her way out, as was her habit. I opened the door. My intention was to pack a suitcase right away and get out.

I saw her sitting on the sofa in the darkness. I shouted with fright. “Sit down,” she said. “I want you to listen. You owe it to me.” I didn’t sit down, but I listened. She had put on clothes. The lights were still off. She said, “Sit down, please.” I did. She turned on the lights. She began to speak in a monologue. Now and then I tried to say something and wasn’t able to, because she kept talking so as not to permit an interruption. The gist of what she said was that I had a choice to make. I could choose to be a good man or choose to be a bad man. If I wanted to be a good man, a man of substance, a serious man, I would stay the course. If I wanted to be a small man, a scrap of a man, a nothing man, I would leave. These were the two paths. There was no third way. Either I would be a man who had stood by his life partner and made a family with her and lived a valuable and serious life, or I would be a man who would have nothing to show for himself but the ruination of another human being. Trying to speak, I made it as far as “—,” because Jenn did not relent. I could, Jenn said, choose to be a real man, an honorable man, or a mediocre, second-rate man. That was the nature of the election I faced: this, or that. It was a fateful moment, she said. The determination that was mine to make was a determination as to whether I wanted to be a whole person or a broken and scattered person. If I chose the path of wrong, I would never be able to piece myself together again. I would be a broken man, without integrity. That was how life worked.
You made choices, and your choices had consequences. For years it had been her understanding that my choice had already been made, namely to commit to a life with her and to start a family with her. Now I wanted to unchoose, or rechoose. You couldn’t. There was no such thing. I had chosen, and she had placed reliance on my choice. She had set up her life on it. To now go back on that choice would be to break and scatter not only me but her, too. That was the reality. I held her fate in my hands.

“—”

She said she believed that I was good, not bad. She said she understood that I believed that I was unhappy. But I wasn’t unhappy. My feelings of unhappiness were false. I did not understand this because there was a delusion at the center of my life. It was my job to recognize and overcome this delusion. My superficial feelings of unhappiness masked deeper states of truth. In any case, being happy or unhappy did not consist in having feelings as I understood them, superficially. It consisted in the giving of oneself to someone else. The feelings associated with the giving, these were the feelings of true happiness. Because I was a good person, not a bad person, on reflection I would understand all of this. I would overcome my delusion. I would recover the sense of reality that I had lost. To live without reality would certainly have made me unhappy. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of someone who had lost his sense of reality.