A week before Christmas she took me to the church of St. Luke and the Epiphany near University City in Philadelphia, to participate in what for her was a holiday tradition: Amateur night. We picked up our sheet music, and we went to our respective groups. She sat in the soprano section, and I was in the tenor. We joined all the others in the singing of Handel's Messiah. I loved the soul-stirring resonance of the massive pipe organ up in the choir loft, and the energy of all those joined voices. Great music it most certainly was not, but nevertheless it felt so good doing it.
She told me afterward that she was watching me carefully, and she was intrigued by my obvious enthusiasm, passion. "You were so utterly INTO the thing, you know? It made me smile."
"And were you into it as well?"
"For me it was merely an interesting to do."
I hadn't been aware of her scrutinizing me so carefully. And I was surprised by how much it pleased me that she had been. I told her, "I really like imagining myself as you saw me," I said. "I like the image. The musical score in my hand, in the tenor section, along with all the others, singing that amazing music..."
"That's fascinating," she said. "Did you know that we form our identities by our reflection in the eyes of our mothers?"
I grinned. "Listen, babe, you are NOT my mother."
"Speaking of eyes, do you remember what happened a couple weeks ago? When I got upset because you always keep your eyes closed when we make love?"
"Yes, I remember."
"That act suggests to me that Elizabeth is in bed with us."
"But that wasn't and isn't the case," I said.
"So what were you thinking about, then?"
"I was in the moment, that's all. It was about delicious sex, and how good it felt."
"Ah, you really know how to depersonalize it."
"What in hell are you talking about?"
"You didn't say how good I felt to you. Just sex. IT. Not me."
"Oh, for God's sake, Joan."
Sometimes she gave me a headache. Literally.
I never told Dr. Joan the full truth about why I closed my eyes. Which was that I didn't want to see anything in her 50-something body that contradicted my vision of a truly desirable sexual partner. Like, say, a very young woman. Who has flawless, firm flesh, lots of energy, great beauty. And safety.
Safety?
Yes. A young girl is less likely to hurt me with either betrayal or abandonment. So it boils down to the merging of aesthetics and a naif's benevolence.
But then I wonder: What exactly did my closed eyes trigger in her? I mean, besides her thinking Elizabeth was wedged in there between us. I suspect it might have had something to do with the "shaming monster" metaphor she used in her therapy with girls with eating disorders.
Did Dr. Joan ever say she had an eating disorder, thus her great interest in the subject? She might have in passing, I don't remember. I thought about how little she ate at a sitting, and all those detailed discussions about food preparation she gets into with waiters at restaurants. For her food and its consumption was a major preoccupation.
I imagine she saw in my closed eyes a repetition of her father's shaming messages. "James doesn't want to look at me directly when we're fucking," she said to herself, "because like my father he thinks I'm ugly, bad, unworthy and inadequate."
No, I certainly was NOT her father. I just played him in Dr. Joan's little soap opera.
* * *
I kept my eyes closed when I made love to her those first few times because, as I've said before, I didn't want to see the terrible things age does to a woman's body. But what did I actually see when my eyes were open? Like one Saturday evening when I slowly undressed her?
I saw her white silk panties shimmering in the shaded lamplight, like the inside of a sea shell. I saw her long, smooth, slender legs. I saw her regal half-smile. So I spent a long time caressing her breasts, belly, inner thighs and, after the required twenty minutes, her aesthetically pleasing pubis, with its subtle traces of fine hair. I buried my face in her belly, and kissed her skin repeatedly as a prelude to my removing those silky sea shell panties and placing my mouth on her cunt and running my tongue along the delicate rose-tinted labia encasing her precious little clit, and I continued tonguing until she appeared to orgasm, and then I knelt, spread her legs, and penetrated her with abandon.
"Wait!" she cried. "It hurts!"
She pushed me up with both hands, and I withdrew.
In odd slow-motioned and clumsy movements she turned onto her belly. "Try it that way," she whispered.
I lifted her rear end and pushed into her, doggie style, but that didn't seem to lessen her discomfort. Trembling on the verge of orgasm I forced myself to obey her request to stop, please. I didn't wish to hurt her.
Then with an unselfconscious smile she grasped my cock and began expert slippery manipulations with her fingers, breasts and mouth. In seconds I came all over her hands and face. She lay her cheek on my belly and with a languid light tingling touch of her fingers spread semen all over my skin.
When I came back from the bathroom she was still in bed, and I crawled in beside her. I'd thought perhaps when I got back she'd present me with another of her delicious deserts, but there wasn't anything for me. She seemed deep in thought, so I lay back in the soft pillow and soon I was drifting off.
Her elbow jabbed into my ribs, and I was again fully conscious. "Tell me something," she said.
"What?"
"The exact truth about what you were thinking while you were making love to me this time."
"Oh, no. Here we go again."
"Come on. You've got the gift of gab. So speak to me."
"All right. When I saw your panties they seemed to me like the inside of a seashell. Which in turn reminded me of the famous Botticelli painting of Venus, the Greek goddess who brought love to the world."
"Oh, come on. How do I resemble Venus?"
"Long legs, long hair. A somewhat imperious look."
"You're kidding me, right?"
I sat up in the bed. Turned and adjusted the pillow. I knew this was going to be still another of those interrogations of hers. Which likely would take a while, so I might as well get comfortable.
"Why should I kid you?" I said. "You asked, and I replied. If you don't like what I'm saying we can change the subject."
"You don't have to be so defensive all the time."
"I'm not."
"So the white of my panties reminds you of a shell and the shell reminds you of a painting."
"Exactly."
"What is in the painting?"
"You'd recognize it instantly. Venus stands in a large, open scallop shell. Hovering in the air to the upper left Zephyr and Chloris appear together, embracing."
"And?"
"That's it."
"Come on, there's more. You wouldn't have thought of the image if it hadn't somehow resonated powerfully somewhere in that deep, dark subconscious of yours."
Jesus. This woman just can't get enough! All right. Let's really get deep into it, shall we?
"Zephyr is the Mediterranean term for any soft, gentle breeze, derived from the name of the Greek god of the west wind."
"You mean, like, a whole lot of hot air?"
"Something like that, yes," I said grinning. "Now the figure of Zephyr, with his cheeks all puffed out and his lips pursed, was an image Botticelli used in a subsequent work of art."
"Go on."
"In the fifteenth century Lorenzo d' Medici commissioned Botticelli to execute a series of illustrations for Dante's Inferno. It was to have been 100 drawings depicting Dante and Virgil in their traversal of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven."
"By any chance are you making this up as you go along?"
"No, this is absolutely true, every word of it. You could look it up."
"How in hell do you know these things?"
"I minored in art in college."
"All right, go on."
"Botticelli executed the drawings with a metal stylus on sheep's parchment, and went over them with a lead point similar to a pencil, and finally reinforced the strokes with ink."
"What does this have to do with our making love and that Venus painting?"
"Be patient, babe, I'm getting to it. You recall the puffed cheeks of Zephyr above Venus?"
"Yes."
"Well, in one of the Inferno drawings Botticelli makes a deliberate visual allusion to it."
"How so?"
"All the illustrations are meant to convey the utter horror and degradation of eternal damnation. So if you look carefully, you will see a demon's raised bare arse. And from the anus embedded within those swelled cheeks comes forth an enormous noxious wet fart, which spews down into the face of one of the condemned."
Dr. Joan covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. "That's awful."
I pinched my nose. "Yes, utterly grotesque," I said, sounding as if I had a cold. "But that's the whole idea of hell, isn't it?"
"Wait a minute," she said. "How do we get so quickly from the goddess of love to the stink of hell?"
"Botticelli's range as an artist illustrates that within him--and indeed in all of us-- there coexist polar opposites. Love, hate. Softness, hardness. Acceptance, rejection. Come here, go away."
I was about to add, "Of all people, Joan, you should know all about that particular topic." But I thought better of it. No sense stirring her up.
"Do you write stuff like this in your journal?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied.
"Even about our having sex?"
"That, too."
"And is your journal where you intend to keep it?"
"Absolutely," I said earnestly. "It will remain our secret forever."
Liar, liar, pants on fire!
* * *
The next day she said on the phone that she'd been suddenly struck down by a serious case of the flu. Was in bed, in total misery. Had to cancel her appointments for the next two, three days. Sniff, sniff, sniff.
"I'm thinking that if you're still bedridden tomorrow I should come over anyway, and bring you some chicken soup. I mean real chicken soup, my own, made from scratch." I thought for sure she'd immediately laugh and say I was being exactly like a Jewish mother with all my solicitude, especially the chicken soup part, but she didn't. Instead she said, "Oh, I just love chicken soup."
She added that it was so sweet that I wanted to nurture her. I said that I really wanted to see her again, sickness notwithstanding. That was the thing: my wanting to see her.
"Obviously you're concerned that I don't already know that."
"Yes, I am. And there's no harm in my repeating this. As we once discussed, one of the greatest things about music is its repetition and recapitulations. So I'm going to keep singing that tune over and again as long as I have to."
She laughed.
Score! Score!
When you make an Ice Queen like Dr. Joan laugh, by God you know you've put a few points up on the board. Yes, I saw our convoluted interaction as a game. A long and complicated one, which I was grimly determined to win.
* * *
From my big thermos I poured out a bowl full of my steaming chicken soup, and I lathered butter on a thick crusty slice of fresh French bread, and carried the tray into her bedroom. She raised the spoon to her lips and took a tentative sip. "My god, this is absolutely delicious!" she said.
"Thank you."
"I'm serious. This is sooooo good. How on earth did you manage it?"
"All the great cooks of the world are men. So why do you doubt my capacity?"
"You never mentioned this talent of yours, that's all. That you actually are so good at it is quite unexpected."
"Glad you like it."
"So what's the secret here?"
"It's one of many recopies my 98-year-old grandmother from County Cork Ireland gave me before she died. She wanted me to pass her secrets to the following generations so it wouldn't die with her."
Dr. Joan shook her head. "When you say things like that I don't know whether you're serious or if you're making it up, just for the hell of it."
I thought: Oh, I'm so glad you feel that way, my sweet.
