The Marriage Book (64 page)

In the third of his four novels featuring everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, John Updike (see
Power
) follows Harry and wife Janice through a financially comfortable, if maritally complicated, middle age. In Updike’s work, sex and money frequently intertwine—here more explicitly than usual.

[Rabbit] has locked their bedroom door and arranged himself in his underpants on the bed. He calls in a husky and insinuating voice. “Hey, Janice. Look. I bought us something today.”

Her dark eyes are glazed from all that drinking and parenting downstairs; she took the shower to help clear her head. Slowly her eyes focus on his face, which must show an intensity of pleasure that puzzles her.

He tugs open the sticky drawer and is himself startled to see the two tinted cylinders sliding toward him, still upright, still there. He would have thought something so dense with preciousness would broadcast signals bringing burglars like dogs to a bitch in heat. He lifts one
roll out and places it in Janice’s hand; her arm dips with the unexpected weight, and her robe, untied, falls open. Her thin brown used body is more alluring in this lapsed sheath of rough bright cloth than a girl’s; he wants to reach in, to where the shadows keep the damp fresh.

“What is it, Harry?” she asks, her eyes widening.

“Open it,” he tells her, and when she fumbles too long at the transparent tape holding on the toilet-seat-shaped little lid he pries it off for her with his big fingernails. He removes the wad of tissue paper and spills out upon the quilted bedspread the fifteen Krugerrands. Their color is redder than gold in his mind had been. “Gold,” he whispers, holding up close to her face, paired in his palm, two coins, showing the two sides, the profile of some Boer on one and a kind of antelope on the other. “Each of these is worth about three hundred sixty dollars,” he tells her. “Don’t tell your mother or Nelson or anybody.”

She does seem bewitched, taking one into her fingers. Her nails scratch his palm as she lifts the coin off. . . .

. . . “Where are you going to keep them?” she asks. Her tongue sneaks forward in thought, and rests on her lower lip. He loves her when she tries to think.

“In your great big cunt,” he says, and pulls her down by the lapels of her rough robe. Out of deference to those around them in the house—Ma Springer just a wall’s thickness away, her television a dim rumble, the Korean War turned into a joke—Janice tries to suppress her cries as he strips the terrycloth from her willing body and the coins on the bedspread come in contact with her skin. The cords of her throat tighten; her face darkens as she strains in the grip of indignation and glee. His underwear off, the overhead light still on, his prick up like a jutting piece of pink wreckage, he calms her into lying motionless and places a Krugerrand on each nipple, one on her navel, and a number on her pussy, enough to mask the hair with a triangle of unsteady coins overlapping like snake scales. If she laughs and her belly moves the whole construction will collapse. Kneeling at her hips, Harry holds a Krugerrand by the edge as if to insert it in a slot.
“No!”
Janice protests, loud enough to twitch Ma Springer awake through the wall, loud enough to jar loose the coins so some do spill between her legs. He hushes her mouth with his and then moves his mouth south, across the desert, oasis to oasis, until he comes to the ferny jungle, which his wife lays open to him with a humoring toss of her thighs. A kind of interest compounds as, seeing red, spilled gold pressing on his forehead, he hunts with his tongue for her clitoris.

STEPHEN DUNN

“THE NIGHT THE CHILDREN WERE AWAY,” 1986

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Stephen Dunn (1939–), author of more than a dozen poetry collections, writes of the struggles and joys of the American middle class. A
New York Times
review of a later work described his voice as that of “a regular guy cursed with an understanding of human nature more subtle than he’d prefer.”

When she comes home he’s waiting for her

on the secluded deck, naked,

the wine open,

her favorite cheese already sliced.

Though he hasn’t done anything

like this in years

he knows she’ll laugh at his nakedness

as one laughs at seeing

an old friend

at a dirty movie. Then she’ll take off

her clothes, join him.

Tonight

he wants to make love profanely

as if the profane

were the only way

to disturb, to waken, the sacred.

But neither is in a hurry.

They sip wine,

touch a little, nothing much needs

to be said. That glacial

intolerable drift

toward quietude and habit, he was worried

that he’d stopped worrying

about it.

It’s time, a kiss says, to stop time

by owning it, transforming it

into body-time, hip-sway

and heartbeat, though really the kiss says

now
, the now he trusts

is both history

and this instant, reflexive, the good past

brought forward in a rush.

KENNETH LONERGAN, PETER TOLAN, AND HAROLD RAMIS

ANALYZE THIS
, 1999

In this broad parody of such Mafia films as
The Godfather
and
Goodfellas
, nebbishy psychiatrist Ben Sobel (played by Billy Crystal) is conscripted to treat menacing but panic-prone mob chief Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro).

ISADORA ALMAN

“TWO LIVES,” 2005

The California marriage therapist (1940–) has written a syndicated sex and relationship column, “Ask Isadora,” for more than a quarter century. Here she describes meeting a coworker from the 1960s for the first time in four decades.

Mike is the husband of Isadora’s friend Mavis. The ellipsis is the author’s.

I plunged right into pressing for details of her life and, most specifically, her feelings. She painted what I saw as a dismal picture. Neither she nor Mike had worked at a paying job for some years. She went to parties, to political functions, to her various volunteer causes, and Mike sat at home consuming at least one book and two six-packs of beer a day. “Girl,” she laughed, “I bet I am the only individual in the history of humanity who went to a drive-in movie by herself. And then I had to get back early to fix his supper. I mean, he doesn’t do one damn thing for himself. Sometimes I just hate that man.”

“But why are you still married, then?”

She gave me a variety of “good” reasons—embers of old affection, the comfort of habit, companionship of a sort, no attractive alternatives, inertia, and ended with a casual . . . “and, of course, he doesn’t ever bother me for his husband’s rights in bed.”

I was stunned into silence. She filled it with a barrage of questions about my life. I thought I presented a truthful and upbeat picture of a single working woman in the big city, but as I spoke I could see she was appalled. Having to meet bills and mortgage payments on my own? Sole responsibility for a child all those years? Coming home to an empty house after a disappointing date? Midnight heebie-jeebies faced alone in a solitary bed? “But you two got along so well. He never even drank. I don’t understand why you left.”

So I gave her my variety of “good” reasons—boredom, growing differences between us, different interests and friends, the call of imagined possibilities elsewhere. “And,” I finished. “I wanted more intimacy in my life, more sex.”

She couldn’t hide her shock. “Whatever for?”

ESTHER PEREL

“MATING IN CAPTIVITY,” 2007

A New York–based psychotherapist with gifts for both insight and provocation, Esther Perel (1958–) struck a chord in 2006 when her first book offered the somewhat challenging suggestion that in order for their marital sex lives to survive, husbands and wives had to confront the tension between the separate lures of domestic security and erotic adventure. Perel’s exploration of this paradox hit people where they lived—and loved.
Mating in Captivity
was translated into two dozen languages, and Perel has become a familiar figure on television talk shows, in TED Talks, and on the
Huffington Post
, where this article by the same title appeared.

As a couples therapist in New York, I’ve seen young and old, married or not and gay, bi and straight, with passports from all over the world. Plenty has changed in my 20 years of private practice, but not my patients’ opening lines.

They tend to go something like this: “We love each other very much, but we have no sex.”

Next they’ll move into describing relationships that are open and loving, yet sexually dull. Time and again they tell me that, though they treasure the stability, security and predictability of a committed relationship, they miss the excitement, novelty and mystery that eroticism thrives on.

Sophia’s gripe says it all. She wants the comfort of familiarity, but misses the edge of the unknown. “We get along really well; [Jeff] is warm and reliable, and even though he’s not the type to gush, I feel cozy with him. I know we’re lucky. We have a nice place, enough money, three great kids. So what is it I miss? I want to feel some of the intensity of the beginning, the butterflies in the stomach, the feeling of anticipation. I know that the excitement was bound up with insecurity, with not knowing if he would call or not. I don’t want that insecurity at this time in my life. But I would like to feel something. . . .”

So, there you have it: the human species design flaw. Exactly the caring and coddling that nurture love snuff out the unselfconsciousness of desire. When we love, we worry about our partner and feel responsible. Desire is more wolfish. Selfish. Beast-like.

Funny thing, desire. You’d think you’d need to throw more intimacy at it to keep it in pink health. But you’d be wrong. Withered desire is all too often the unanticipated side effect of a growing intimacy, not one that’s cooled. In fact, the very qualities that nurture closeness can be sexually deflating. Sophia points to the familiarity between Jeff and her, the protectiveness she feels. She talks about the shared rituals that make their days more predictable, the security
of knowing that Jeff checks in with her four times a day. But in their attempts to secure love, Jeff and Sophia have squeezed out the very erotic ingredients that spurred the relationship into being: novelty, spontaneity, curiosity, surprise.

Popular psychology tells us sexual problems come from relationship problems. Poor communication, lack of intimacy and accumulated resentments are some of the boxes checked off to explain this numbing of desire. If troubled relationship = no sex, then it flows that if we improve the relationship, hot sex should follow.

But my practice suggests otherwise. I’ve helped plenty of couples buff up their relationship and it did nothing for the sex. Because the rules of desire are not the same as the rules of good citizenship.

It isn’t always the lack of closeness that stifles desire, but too much closeness. And while love seeks closeness, desire needs space to thrive. That’s because love is about having, and desire is about wanting.

Here’s the nut of it: Eroticism occurs in the space between self and other.

Now, most of us don’t want that uncertainty in the very place where we seek consistency. We prefer to experience the thrill of the unknown elsewhere.

But there’s no way around it. Learn to love the unknown right here with your honey. To want, you’ve got to have a synapse to cross. In short, fire needs air, and many couples don’t leave enough air.

SEXES, THE

BAN ZHAO

LESSONS FOR WOMEN
, CIRCA 100

Ban Zhao (circa 45–circa 120) is considered to have been the first female historian in China, but there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of competition for the title. The exceptionally well educated daughter and sister of brilliant scholars, she was eventually asked to complete their official history of the Han Dynasty. At roughly the same time, she wrote the book that would make her most famous.
Lessons for Women
, though short, was clear in its rules for women’s conduct, which essentially involved subjugating oneself to one’s husband. As a book of etiquette, it is considered to have had a greater influence on the conduct of women in China than virtually any source. While drawing clear distinctions between the sexes, Ban argued, almost paradoxically, that women needed to be educated in order to serve their husbands best.