Thirty Read online

  “I know. I can’t stand to look in mirrors.”

  “Well, they ought to pass a law against mirrors. That’s something else again.”

  “But I find myself looking into them all the time.”

  “Because you’ve forgotten who you are.”

  “Oh, come on—”

  “A little trite, I grant you—”

  “More than a little. Pure soap opera.”

  “—but no less true for a’ that. Jan? Have you ever?”

  “Ever what?”

  “Had an affair?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You . . . ?”

  She smiled at a happy memory.

  “You’re not having one now?”

  “Be serious. The way I look?”

  We sidestepped into the Oh, you don’t look so bad/Oh, I’m so damn fat and what I wouldn’t give for your figure routine. But I was so taken with all of this that I almost forgot my lines. And she wouldn’t say anything much about her affair, just that it had happened a couple of years ago, lasted a couple of months, and left her very happy about the whole thing.

  “Was it with someone I know?”

  “Now don’t ask, Jan.”

  “That means it was. Did Edgar know the man?”

  “Cut it out.”

  “Well, did Edgar ever find out about it?”

  “No.”

  “What if he had?”

  “Do you really think he would have minded all that much?” I must have stared incredulously, because she reacted to my expression. “Let’s face it, honey. Edgar plays around.”

  “I didn’t know that.” This is not exactly true.

  “Oh, of course. He’s like a little boy, for God’s sake. I think all men are. I’m positive he started fooling around before we were married two years.”

  “Well, who does he—”

  “Girls at the office, tramps he picks up. There was a time, in my younger days, when I made scenes and threatened to leave. I laugh to think of it. I mean, where would I go?”

  “But—”

  “But what it amounts to is that something inside him makes him want that variety, and I can understand it most of the time, except when I start thinking that he wouldn’t do it if I took off thirty pounds or got the ironing done or compensated for one or another of my many faults. But actually I don’t think that would make any difference at all. I think he’s simply the way he is. You know, he even makes passes at my friends. Has he ever made a play for you?”

  “No.” This wasn’t exactly true, either. I can remember a couple of boozy kisses at a backyard barbecue, a tentative Grope for the Boobies while collecting the coats at another party. The bit at the barbecue had been merely annoying, but the other pass had come at a time when I felt myself slightly less attractive than Miss Hippopotamus, and while I might not welcome the grab, I welcomed the reassurance in the knowledge that Edgar Hillman thought I was still worth grabbing, an opinion that Howard Kurland had not at the moment appeared to share.

  “You know,” she said, a little later, “if you think Howard takes his marital vows so seriously, you’re only kidding yourself.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Nothing specific, no.”

  “Do you know something that I don’t know?”

  “Just that he’s a man.”

  “And all men run around? I’m not positive I believe that. I’ve heard it often enough, but I’m not sure I believe it.”

  “Maybe not. But things haven’t been going too well lately, have they?”

  “Things have been going badly on and off for probably six out of the last seven years. Our marriage is like the country’s foreign policy. We somehow muddle through.”

  “The country’s foreign policy before Vietnam, you mean. Now we muddle, but not through.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t see—”

  “Okay.” She pointed a finger at me. “Not all men run around. Some men have perfect marriages. Other men are profoundly unattractive, and other men lack the opportunity for an affair. Farmers who never get off the farm, for instance. But if a man’s marriage is not the ranking love affair since Heloise and what’s-his-name, and if he’s got a certain amount of poise and looks and intelligence, and if he’s got room to operate—”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And if, like most men, he tends to think with his penis—”

  “You are describing Howard.”

  There was more, but that will do. My hand hurts. He called around dinner to say he was catching a late train. I had trouble not laughing until I put the phone down, and then for no particular reason I started crying instead. Real tears. My goodness, I hadn’t cried in, oh, perhaps a day and a half.

  The funny thing is that I have to admit I don’t care if he’s fucking Elizabeth Taylor, as far as that goes. I really don’t care, and I suppose that was part of Marcie’s point.

  I don’t know.

  What do I want with an affair?

  January 19

  More snow.

  The kid who carried the groceries out to the car at Pathmark yesterday said something fresh. I can’t remember exactly how it went, just some inane sort of double entendre which gave me the impression he wouldn’t mind taking me to bed.

  I’m sure I am at least ten years older than him. Than he.

  January 20

  Last night was an odd, disjointed evening. Howie came home on his usual train. If he’s having an affair it can’t be a very intense one because he’s usually home on time. Maybe he’s screwing away his lunch hours.

  If nothing else, I suppose that’s probably healthy. Good for the muscle tone and all.

  During and after dinner, we talked more than usual. He talked mostly about the office. There’s some sort of minor crisis coming up and different people are positioning themselves on different sides and some of them may find themselves fired if things don’t go right. Not Howie, however. Or if his situation is risky, he’s not saying so.

  Frankly, I had trouble following the whole thing. I didn’t even try very hard. But at least we were talking to each other. I talked about something I had read and some household things, and he nodded at the right times.

  Now that I think about it, it was our first togetherness evening in a while, and neither of us was listening to a word the other was saying.

  Are all marriages like that?

  At eleven-thirty we went to bed and started necking. At first I was just going through the motions (Pardon, m’sieu, I thought she was English!) but all at once I was turned on as suddenly and completely as if someone had thrown a switch. It was like a rebirth. I was alive in all my more interesting organs. More than alive.

  He spent some time nuzzling my breasts while he worked a finger into me and diddled me. (It is frighteningly embarrassing just putting the words down. I’ve enjoyed putting down occasional conversations here. I wanted to be a writer in college, and there is a certain pleasure in structuring scenes, and all without the need to invent. But sex writing!)

  Does it matter who did what and with which and to whom? I don’t know. I got sopping wet immediately, hot and wet, and he went from breast to breast like a bee from flower to flower, which I do not suppose is an original image, but I couldn’t get it out of my head at the time, so it must have meant something to me. He buzzed from nipple to nipple while he fingered me very diligently, and I thrashed and panted and did other ladylike things until he took his finger back and climbed aboard and stuck it right on in. Look, Ma, no hands! He got the target on the first try and sank it all the way home, and he was hard as a bar of steel. I couldn’t remember the last time he had been so firm.

  (I have been sitting here staring at the page. I have to stop now. I don’t know why. A woman ought to be able to write about her husband’s cock. It is, after all, something with which she is hopefully more familiar than anyone else on earth, himself excepted. But something is stopping me. More tomorrow,
perhaps.)

  January 23

  I was going to mention some things that have happened over the last couple days but they aren’t important. And the whole point of this is not to write a record, a day book.

  I just went over the last entry. It’s odd how I had to stop writing. I suppose you could say that I blocked. I remember the feeling that if I put it all down on paper just as it happened I would be stepping off the edge of a cliff and falling into darkness. I don’t know why.

  He was, as I guess I said (as I know I said) rock hard, utterly virile. While I have never much understood the appeal of phallic statuary, there is something magnificent about the penis in full erection, when absolutely every cell of the man’s body is devoted to single-minded sex, when the penis leads and the rest of the body follows. Which is to say that Howie had what you might call an ultimate hard-on.

  (Three days ago I was embarrassed. Now—admit it—I’m getting a kick out of this. Maybe I’ll masturbate later. God, it’s working, though, this diary; it opens me up, to myself if to nobody else. I wonder if this is good or bad. I read or heard that all meaningful analysis is self-analysis, and I don’t think I could bring myself to go to a psychoanalyst anyway, even if we could afford it, but I wonder if it is perhaps risky to do this oneself. Maybe so. But I don’t think it is any riskier than not to, if you follow me. Hah! I follow me. That’s what matters.)

  So where was I? Ah, yes. In the privacy of my own bedroom, getting fucked by my husband. And, in keeping with the perfection of his erection (an unconscious rhyme, I swear) he had that total control which he has now and then and which was wholly in keeping with the perfect maleness of his erection. In and out, long whistling rippling strokes, in and out, so hard, so big, and with such sweet confidence. I know where the word cocky comes from. I never knew before. I just realized this moment. Cocky. Oh, he was cocky, and he fucked me with these long rippling slow strokes, in and out, in and out, and I suppose I’m being intentionally literary now, arranging words purposefully to create a mood, to create a rhythm, but thus it was, thus indeed it was, in and out, in and out, and the sweet pressure of his body on mine, and his chest just pillowy pressing on my breasts, and his tobacco and booze taste in my mouth, his mouth on my mouth, and fucking me so marvelously well!

  And I was so hot, probably as hot as I’ve ever been, if one can keep track, if one can analyze in the heat of the moment the comparative degrees of hotness. And, a-tisket a-tasket, somewhere along the way I lost it.

  This is hard to write not out of embarrassment but because I still don’t understand exactly what happened. I had it and I dropped it. It wasn’t anything he did or didn’t do. I’m positive of that. And it wasn’t a matter of getting turned off, actually. It was just that the way things started there was no question in my mind that I would make it, which is to say that I would come, have an orgasm, call it what you will. And then, after I had been fucked long enough and well enough for the average girl to have had several orgasms, and with no letup in passion, I came to realize that I wasn’t going anywhere, or that I wasn’t coming anywhere, or something.

  I wasn’t going to make it.

  Poor Howard. Whether out of gentlemanliness or male pride, he wasn’t going to let himself go until I was ready to go with him. And somewhere along the way I sensed that he was finding the whole thing frustrating. Here he was, hammering away at me, building up a full head of steam, so to speak, and we just weren’t making it.

  So what I ultimately did was fake it.

  Not for the first time, although on previous occasions it was passion that was feigned in the bargain. Show me a wife who has never pretended and I’ll show you a wife who is a lot less of a whore than I am.

  Oh. . . .

  He came like gangbusters, predictably enough, and I hummed along with him, and afterwards I heard a lot of Oh honey oh baby I love you, which is the way the male animal announces that he has enjoyed getting his rocks off. Then he fell asleep and I fell awake. I lay there with his come oozing out of me I wonder if we made a baby. How could one create a good child with a phony fuck? It would seem impossible.

  All right, let’s put it all down. Therapy. Afterward I walked to the bathroom, dripping on the carpet as I walked, and cleaned up, and went back to bed, and lay there. And—say it!—finger-fucked myself easily and expertly to a frustrating, demeaning, easily reached little climax.

  January 24

  It’s the middle of the night but I can’t sleep. Howie is asleep now. He bubbled through breakfast, called me once from the office, and was positively bubbling when he got off the train. What ever happened to post coitum tristesse?

  I thought we would have another hop in the hay with all that well-being on his part, and I didn’t think I would be up to it. He had felt so good he had a couple of drinks on the train, and two more after he walked in the door, and to fit the festive mood we had a bottle of Montrachet with dinner and brandy afterward. So he told me I was the bestest little girl in all the world, or something along those lines, and then he went upstairs, let his clothes fall where they may, and passed out on top of the bedspread.

  Why am I such a bitch?

  January 27

  Marcie came by but didn’t stay long. One of her boys requires orthodontia. If she told me which one—and one would think she would have—then I don’t remember.

  Or much care.

  Is that all there is? Children with braces on their teeth, meals to prepare, dishes to wash, things, acres of meaningless things to do.

  February 2

  I went shopping this afternoon. To Pathmark for groceries. They were out of leg of lamb. How can a supermarket be out of something like that? Everyone knows it all comes in cellophane packages and they store it in a warehouse in the back.

  Enough cuteness.

  The same boy carried the bags to the wagon. Absolutely nothing happened, nothing at all, except in my own mind.

  (Why am I bothering to write all of this? I just stopped and looked back through what I’ve written. The Chronicle of a Totally Uneventful Life. That’s what I could call it. Why am I bothering to write it all down? Why, for that matter, am I bothering to live it? Oh-oh, girl. Easy, now. There are certain questions one is better off not asking oneself. In college I went with a boy named Ray who told me never to ask a question unless I really wanted to hear the answer, whatever it might be. I had just finished doing unto him what I had done unto no man before, and only to Howie since, and, with the taste of his seed still lingering rather pleasantly, if the truth be known, upon my tongue, I asked him if he loved me. He said that he did not. I, predictably if illogically, cried. Ever since then I have tried to avoid asking such questions, which means that, in the space of a few minutes, Raymond had taught me two things. I wonder which was the more valuable?)

  In the supermarket parking lot, then, following this boy ten years my junior, and watching his buttocks move as he walked, and chatting lightly with him, I found myself wanting him to resume the flirting, to say something mildly unpardonable to me. Not, of course, that I intended to do anything about it. Or to let anything happen.

  Am I becoming sex obsessed?

  The question seems laughable. Sometimes I play with myself. Sometimes I may let my mind wander a little when I do this. Having fantasies of things that—

  February 17

  It has been, let me see, more than two weeks since the last entry. Fifteen days, to be precise.

  I never thought I would come back to the book. I didn’t even finish the last entry, I see now. I don’t remember what happened, whether I was interrupted by a jangling telephone or what. Probably what, she said archly.

  Come to the point.

  Yes, Doctor. Yes, you there in the mirror. The point. The point is that there is no point. I wonder how I expected to end that last entry. Having fantasies of things. Oh, yes. All manner of things.

  I want to get this all down and make it right. I want to get it down right now as fast as I can. I don’t know what
is going to happen next. I’m in this plastic motel that I don’t remember the name of, a Holiday Inn or Howard Johnson’s and I can’t remember which, and writing in this book, and trying to get it all down before it gets away.

  Friday I was supposed to meet him in the city. Howie, that is, in New York. We do this occasionally. When we first made the move to Eastchester we swore we would do this once a week. After all, it’s simple enough to come in from the suburbs for a night on the town. Especially when you don’t have children. You just drive in and meet him after work and have a drink and dinner and a show and more drinks at a nightclub and then drive back to your happy little home in the country. The best of both worlds.

  We did this every week at first, and then it gradually tapered off to once or twice a month. But Friday it was all set, he had tickets to I Love You Under the Olive Trees, and we were meeting at Gatsby’s at five-thirty.

  It got called on account of snow. The worst storm of the season, and the Central canceled trains, and I couldn’t get the car out anyway to meet him at the station. Scratch Friday.

  I don’t remember very much of Saturday, during the day. We stayed around the house mostly.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Saturday night there was a party at the Cargill’s. Edgar and Marcie were there, and Bill and Missie, and Walter and Lenore, the usual crowd.

  There was nothing wrong with the party.

  Just as there had been nothing wrong with the daytime, some sort of postseason exhibition football game—the fucking football games never stop, all weekend long whenever I look at the set he is in front of it and a football game is on it, it used to be just in the fall but now it never stops, preseason and postseason and season and training, nothing but football.

  But there was nothing wrong with this, you see, that’s the whole point, that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was all perfectly normal, perfectly usual. The usual people at the usual party, the usual conversations, the usual drinks. Good New York suburban conversations. Wasn’t the President a horse’s ass, and would the war ever stop, and how the price of absolutely everything was going up, and some learned commentary on the wage-price spiral by Herb Gardenia, and Missie leasing Walter because Walter had once announced that he had smoked marijuana a couple of times, and general agreement that we would all like to try it, and unspoken certainty shared by all of us that of course we never would, or if we did it would be in the privacy of our own homes, away from each other, like masturbating. Does pot give you pimples? Or make you go blind?