Saturday, a winter's evening about a week and a half before Christmas, around 7 P.M. We're in Dr. Joan's bed, near a window covered by a lace curtain held up with green plastic push pins. On the wall above us is a large, framed engraving of 16th century Venice with clichéd domes and campaniles and gondolas. And there, by the foot of the bed, on an antique table, is a silver-framed black and white photograph of Abraham Rosenberg, Esq., Dr. Joan's illustrious father, gesturing with both his hands, caught by the camera in the middle of an intellectual disquisition. His glasses are resting at the end of his nose, and he casts his intense, expectant gaze directly at me, and at his daughter lying there so shamelessly and wantonly beneath me. What do you say, Abe?
Dr. Joan's usual ambivalence was not at all present as we undressed each other. And there was from her--at least this time-- no distancing or spacing out. We moved slowly, enjoying ourselves, on that oversized bed with a white quilted cover and hundreds of pillows of odd shapes and sizes and degrees of softness. I pulled her jeans from her slender legs, and then her white stockings, and then her white silk panties, and tossed them to the floor.
An hour later Dr. Joan reappeared in a white terrycloth bathrobe with a tray bearing steaming cups of coffee and two big hunks of creamy, gooey chocolate cake. She sat beside me and watched as I forked that luscious sweetness into my mouth. I closed my eyes and shook my head slowly back and forth. "I don't know what I like more…" I said, and she laughed and quickly finished my sentence for me: "Sex or chocolate cake!"
Actually I was going to say, "Chocolate cake or eating pussy." But I thought that might be too coarse for her, so I just nodded, yes, you're absolutely right.
We talked for a while, then fully sated and serene I drifted off. In the morning she told me during the night there was terrific wind, and driving rain, and thunder and lightning, yet I remained soundly asleep all through it. A couple times, she said, she thought of waking me up so I could experience the dramatic natural violence out there in the darkness, beyond the warmth of that room.
* * *
At a craft show near Fairmont Park, we encountered Dr. Joan's best friend Monica, and Monica promptly inspected me up and down, like a horse at an auction. Hers was a detailed professional appraisal, lacking only her prying open my mouth to see the condition of my teeth.
This nice Jewish girl Monica had a sly, knowing look that suggested she was thinking naughty things like: "Big nose, big cock, eh?" I imagined her later asking Dr. Joan provocative questions like, "You say he has good hands? What about his tongue? Ha, ha, ha, ha." Or, "Joan! You never told me a thing about him! So what's the story? Where did you find him? Have you fucked him yet? Oh, of course you have, silly me! Does he have any money?"
* * *
Our first serious disagreement came during dinner at an Italian restaurant in Narberth, right across from the movie house where we just saw "Ransom." She was rattling on about the increase in violence in movies these days, as we just witnessed, and also on MTV. All that brutality and bloodshed was doing tremendous damage to people, don't you think?
I repeated what I'd learned in a mass communications course at college, which is that over the decades, and after countless commissioned governmental studies, the conclusion always has been totally counterintuitive, and that is that violence--or virtually anything else that is negative in the media--either has no effect on people, or it has an effect that is too small to be measured.
Dr. Joan frowned, shook her head. "That's just not true. There IS an effect, a most powerful one. Besides, constantly showing violence is colluding with the evil part of society that initiates it. It's an endorsement, an affirmation."
I replied that what she just said seems very much to be self-evidently true, but nevertheless no one--I repeat no one--has been able to demonstrate that any such effect exists.
"No, no, no," she said. "That just isn't so."
And I said, "Well, since you made the assertion you have the burden of proof, and I don't see any proof, merely an unsupported claim. Actually, it sounds more like an uninformed opinion."
"I don't have to prove a damned thing to you!" she said, a flush spreading on her neck and cheeks.
Somehow, thank God, we eventually managed to change the subject. I really didn't want to argue with her. What difference does it make, anyway? Maybe my professor was mistaken. Or maybe I misheard him.
* * *
I left another message on her machine. Not Emily Dickinson, of course.
"I had a mild epiphany during my six-mile run through the park just now," I said. "I see you dimly through the nearly opaque veil of my ghosts, and you likewise see me, and our great task is to find the courage to move those veils aside and to look at each other and ourselves directly. Which is to finally live. And which also is to stand before each other naked. I repeat, naked! Bye."
When I arrived at her house she was excited.
"My contractor finally came today!"
I thought she was going to thank me for the lovely message I'd left. But no. She had much more important things on her mind.
"Really?"
"Yes. Marvin will be working here Friday through Sunday. I've been waiting for this for a long time. He'll be remodeling my office, and building new closets, and breaking down a wall to make extra floor space. I'm so excited!"
This seemed to me more of her famous distancing. Finding still another excuse for my not coming to see her. Closets? Floor space? Give me a break!
"I don't think you ever noticed how small the closets are in my house," she said, sensing my lack of enthusiasm.
"No," I said, "I've been more drawn to things like that steel engraving of Venice in your bedroom. Or that portrait of your glaring father on the antique table."
I thought this subtle taunt would provoke her, but it didn't.
"Marvin actually is an extraordinary man," she said. "He used to be a professional photographer so he has a very good eye. You can ask him a question about anything, and he can answer it. We Jews are always impressed by people who know how to make things work."
I tried to look interested in this conversational thread. Especially the part about this genius Marvin being, like me, a professional photographer. But it was HARD.
"Do you know how to make things work?" she asked.
"Some things, sure."
"Building things, fixing things?"
"I can build bookcases."
She laughed. "After all that reading you do, I'm not at all surprised."
But she didn't seem to like my answer. I wonder why.
* * *
A week went by. I hadn't call her, and she hadn't call me. I wondered what was going on. So I dialed her number.
"How are you? How's the construction project coming along?" I said.
"I'm too tired to talk right now," she replied.
"Okay."
I was about to wish her good night, when she said: "Listen, James, I need some space."
I said nothing.
She explained that she was really getting into this thing with me, but… "It's moving at a pace that is not my own. So I need to step back a bit."
I kept silent.
"I don't need to talk to you each and every day," she said. "Can you accept this for what it is, and not a rejection or abandonment?"
"Oh, absolutely," I said.
"Good."
I said good night, and hung up.
I decided, in response to her employing the dreadful relationship cliché of needing some space, to try hard to be accepting, and compassionate, and to recognize the poor woman was struggling mightily with intimacy issues. But gradually I started feeling depressed and just a bit sorry for myself. Because after all, I wasn't the one pressing, ratcheting up the intensity of our relationship. She was. Consequently the sex had been getting better and better, if that's any positive indication at all.
Her shutting things down so quickly embarrassed me, and I felt as if I'd done something enormously stupid. And then I got angry at myself for not seeing her rebuff coming. For making myself so vulnerable. For assuming--wrongly, it turned out--that what I feel she must feel. I know all about the fallacy of shared assumptions, and there I was, falling right into it. I regretted my yielding too quickly to romantic longings, getting crazy and being swept along, just like a teenager with raging hormones.
Me and my vulgar enthusiasms. What's embarrassing was that I realized I was being exactly like my father. I used to cringe at how his eyes gleamed and his voice rose in pitch when he encountered things that were so obviously trivial, or in bad taste. His sentimentality nauseated me because his rush of emotions were much greater than the thing or event warranted. I swore I'd never be like that. But there I was. Doing things that led to her saying, whoa, let's take a time out here.
To tell you the truth, it was like Dr. Joan had betrayed me exactly like Elizabeth did, and I knew that wasn't the case at all, not even remotely close to it, but that's how it felt. The dark side of me wanted to punish her for that outrage.
I knew what I'd do. I'd not answer the phone for the next two, three days, then I'll tell her that dinner party next Thursday with her friends she wants me to take her to is not possible since I have a photo shoot out of town. Yeah, right. As if I had the capacity to do something like that.
I had the feeling that our next meeting--if indeed it came at all--would be awkward. She'd be distant once again and I'd clam up and she'd ask me what I was thinking, and that would make me feel self-conscious and embarrassed and I'd then mumble something stupid in my attempt to disguise my hurt and anger.
So there I was. About to go once more around the same old track. Seeking the impossible. Taking big risks. Opening myself up, so that someone could break my heart. Oh, please break my heart once again! Seems like I fucking deserve it.
