Thirty (7 page)
Authors: Lawrence Block
The independence aspect went down well, though. Made perfect sense to him and he seemed to respect me for it. He had a last slug of wine, lit himself a cigarette, and away he went into the night, leaving me with more new thoughts to echo around in my head than I had room for.
He is really
weird.
Two men at once? I don’t think I could relate to that sort of scene.
Or is it that I don’t want myself to enjoy something like that?
I am still recovering from the other night with Arnold. What a strange effect it’s been having.
I find myself looking at people differently, and almost blushing for the thoughts I’ve been having. All sorts of thoughts. Sexual, of course.
I will see two men deep in conversation, and in my mind they become a pair of faggots who do all sorts of unspeakable things to each other. And then I find myself enlarging on this and imagining things. Myself with them. Doing what?
Everything.
Or with a girl. I saw a girl on the street this morning. Dark haired and slender, much the same physical type as I, although I rarely see that sort of similarity in others. And I honestly didn’t have any sexual desires for her, not as far as I can tell, but I found myself, oh, thinking.
What do girls do with each other? Primarily eat each other, I think, although I suppose they could have dozens of other things that they do and that I have never thought of.
Being eaten is nice. If you can just give yourself up to it. If you can make yourself completely passive and just take a bath in feelings.
Howard never liked to do it. He did it, but he didn’t like to. He did it, I think, out of a sense of duty, and not well. He did it until I got sufficiently passionate to be an interesting fuck, and then he would stop eating me and climb aboard, which usually was the last thing I wanted him to do. And I suppose he made it obvious that he didn’t like to do it, just as I suppose I made it obvious I didn’t care much about returning the favor, and neither of us did it very well, and so we didn’t do it very often, or want it one from the other very often.
What a stinking shitty marriage. What an absolute complete farce of a marriage.
Incredibly, I don’t miss him at all. Sometimes I wonder where he is, what he is doing, if he has found someone, if he has moved permanently to the city. As you might wonder about some old friend you hadn’t seen in years. But as far as caring about him or what he is doing, I don’t.
At least I don’t think I do.
Would it be different to be eaten by a girl? How?
Could one just have that or would one be expected to return the favor? It would seem that there ought to be girls who would prefer to eat, while others like oneself would instead prefer to be eaten. Is there a whole body of rules of etiquette for this sort of thing?
And why do I care?
Do
I?
I don’t think I do. This is silly. I’m not a lesbian, I don’t want any girl or woman touching me, I don’t want any of that.
Or do I?
Sometimes it seems as though I just don’t know anything anymore. As though all I really get in my travels through whatever it precisely is through which I’m traveling is more confused than ever.
If I have reached the point where I can write sentences like that last one I think it is time to stop.
Eric spoke to me this afternoon. I looked up from a Nero Wolfe mystery to smile at him, as I often do when he comes in, and he gave me the smile back and came over to my table.
He said,
“The Mother Hunt?
I think I missed that one.”
“You could borrow it when I’m done.”
“I’d appreciate it. I enjoy Nero Wolfe. I prefer to believe that he exists, you know, and that some day I could be invited to that West Thirty-fifth Street brownstone for dinner. And then I would know that I had made a success of my life.”
I laughed pleasantly. The one time I would have liked to say something bright, and all I could manage was a laugh. Eric smiled somewhat warmly and then went on to his usual table.
Big deal.
I wonder if he’s fucking that teenybopper.
I dragged
The Mother Hunt
to the coffee house. He never even showed up today. I’m seeing Arnold tomorrow.
Nine days since the last entry?
Doesn’t seem that long.
I’m a little depressed. Also maybe a little drunk. A little fuzzy in the head.
Last night was terribly frustrating. Things were going along on a nice even keel, I was seeing Arnold a couple of times a week, and nothing was too exciting but everything was loose, easy. I don’t know.
I’m having trouble making this come out on paper. I keep blocking and just staring at the page. I took a pill earlier today, one of my antidepressants. I have been trying not to take them but I thought it would be better for me in the long run to take the pill than to cut my wrists.
Not really.
But I took it, and you shouldn’t drink when you’re on those things. They don’t go together very well.
Last night we went to a party. A horrible place a couple of blocks from Arnold’s apartment, a really foul, filthy cockroach trap. Cracked plaster and broken pipes and genuine filth all over the place. Everybody seemed to be stoned, mostly I guess on pot but there were also some speed freaks.
Frightening. I felt at least a hundred years old and hopelessly square.
We didn’t stay long. Arnold smoked some grass. I didn’t. Why? Because I didn’t want to be high, I guess.
We went back to his apartment and had a scene. I guess I provoked it. It was a marriage game—Let’s Have a Fight So We Won’t Have to Fuck.
Stupid. Stupid and self-destructive. Why do something like that? We had a good relationship developing. It didn’t have a future but the last thing I need right now is a relationship with a future. Instead it looked as though it might have a long and pretty good present.
I can’t write any more of this, I have to go to bed or something.
I have a hangover. Well, I came by it honestly. I got what I deserved.
Eric returned the book and we talked about it. There is something about the way he looks at a person that suggests that he is having thoughts about one which are totally unrelated to what he is saying. As though while we chat blithely of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe and the orchids on the roof, he is really looking right through my clothes and counting the hairs on my cunt and guessing what I am like in bed.
He terrifies me. I can’t avoid the feeling that he could make me do absolutely anything he wanted. All he has to do is ask. Absolutely anything.
I know why I had the fight with Arnold. Not to avoid going to bed with him. It was deeper than that. I was trying to break off the relationship permanently.
Because of the way it scares me.
The two of us have been getting much more deeply into sex the past week or so. Doing things we hadn’t done previously. We go down on each other, for example, lunching in marathon bouts of sixty-nine. Which is not scary in and of itself. It’s the conversations we have before and after and the effect they have upon the sex.
How to explain?
Oh, he talks about threesomes and group sex, not only in an effort to convince me to try it but also because the talking stimulates him. (Be honest. Stimulates
us.)
He talks about things he’s done and things he’s seen others do. Sometimes he’s almost blindingly graphic and other times he is annoyingly oblique, so that my own mind finds itself sketching in the details he has omitted, enlarging the fantasy.
And then, when we make love, the fantasy of what we have discussed slips in on the heels of the actual sex we are having. It is very strange. I clutch his buttocks in my hands and take his penis in my mouth while he gobbles away between my thighs, and somewhere in my mind behind my closed eyelids he is a girl eating at me and—
I can’t explain it. It’s something that was happening more in the mind than in the flesh and I don’t know how to make words out of it.
But it was scary, and I knew we were going to do scarier things as time went by. And that I wanted to do them, and would let them happen.
So I started a fight in an effort to break up with him, and I haven’t heard from him.
So I guess it worked.
I don’t know whether I’m glad or not. I really don’t know. I wish he would call and I hope he won’t call and, oh, maybe I should just go out and find somebody to ball to get my mind off all this.
I know one thing. If he called now and said he had a male friend over and why didn’t I just come over and join them, I would go. No question. I would go and I would do everything. I hope it doesn’t happen but if it did I would.
Sick sick sick.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.
Sitting in the coffee house absolutely all strung out. This black pit of depression has been deepening all week, a really fragmented sense of self. Sitting and turning the pages of a book and not retaining anything of what I was reading. My mind wandering all over the place.
“Jan.”
I look up. It is Eric.
“You are ready, aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“I have been watching you. You’re ready now.”
“For what?”
“To be yourself.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
The power of his eyes, his voice. He draws me and mesmerizes me.
“Come with me.”
I stand, put coins on the table, grab up my purse and book. He takes my arm. We walk through slushy gray afternoon streets. He strides. I have to walk very quickly to keep up with him.
“Where are we going?”
“My apartment.”
He lives south and west on a block I don’t know. His building is drab brick. It looks dismal. He unlocks doors and I follow him inside, up one flight of stairs. He unlocks a door. We walk into another world, a complete departure from the neighborhood, the buildings, the stairway, the hall.
Extreme modern furnishings, but with everything exquisitely selected. No straight lines. Everything curved, flowing. Everything perfectly rounded. Bold colors, black and white and a deep red. A black, high-pile fur rug on the parquet floor. A massive white couch, white velvet. Scarlet draperies.
“How beautiful!”
“I’m comfortable here.”
“I’ve never been anyplace like this.”
“You are going to go to many places you have never been.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m—”
“Yes?”
“Afraid.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Yes. Twenty-nine years in the bud. And now you are going to open yourself up. You are going to become a flower.”
“Who are you?”
“Eric.”
“I mean, oh, what do you do?”
A rich smile. “You’ll see.”
He leaves me momentarily, brings two glasses of a dark red liquid that matches the drapes. I take a glass. The scent is of rose petals.
“What is it?”
“Drink it.”
The taste is sweet-and-sour, not unpleasant but quite unusual. There does not seem to be any alcohol in it. I am aware that the drink probably contains a drug. But it does not occur to me to refuse.
There is music, something faintly Oriental. There is the aroma of rose petals lingering after the drinks are gone. He touches my shoulder. I look into his eyes. They have infinite depth. One could drown in them.
We kiss. His hands are firm, gripping my shoulders, drawing me close. His mouth is hard against mine. I open to him entirely and his tongue is deep in my mouth, searing me, shooting flames. I am alive in every part of my body. I can feel his legs against mine, his chest against my breasts, his hands on me, his mouth on mine. I feel everything at once and am aware of everything at once, the taste of him, the feel of him, the music, the rose scent, everything.
In his bedroom he tells me to take off my clothing. I undress artlessly as in a dream, taking things off, dropping them. His bed is huge. It fills the room.
His eyes are on me as I undress. I can feel his gaze. There is warmth in it, as if a beam from his eye touches me. I feel his gaze on my breasts and their tips quiver and grow warm. I feel his eyes stroke my belly and thighs like fiery hands, like tongues of flame.
I have no will, I have no will at all.
He strips swiftly. I watch him. His body is beautiful, he is as all men should be, big in the chest, flat in the stomach, sloping shoulders, no fat anywhere, just enough hard muscle. His penis is huge, fully erect, a column of ivory topped with a fiery red sphere.
He crosses the room to me. He takes me in his arms. He puts me on the bed.
His hands are everywhere, touching me, preparing me. He strokes my shoulders and my breasts, runs his hands down to my thighs, opens me. He handles all the parts of my sex and his fingers start little fires wherever they touch me. My head is floating, my whole body is floating, my flesh is melting, I am alive for the first time, I am dying, I am everything at once.
He positions himself over me. The tip of his penis is poised at my entrance. I throb, wet, hot. He touches me, comes just a little ways into me, just half of the head of his penis enters me.
I begin to shudder.
He is huge. I am hot, I am wet, I am open, but still he must enter me little by little, must enter me by degrees. He begins to withdraw, and then he thrusts gently forward again and the entire head is inside me and I am on fire.
Only his penis touches me. None of the rest of him is in contact with my flesh. He supports his weight on his hands on either side of me, and his penis labors upon me as if it is his entire self.
He works himself in and out, in and out, and I pant and moan and writhe in involuntary motions, and all of his penis is all the way inside me, and I can feel him pressing against the back of my womb, I can feel him all the way up to my neck, not merely my vagina but my entire body is filled with him, and he presses all the way in and holds it there, and I seem to swoon, I go off somewhere deep in the private places of my mind.
