My Life as a Man (23 page)

I have of course to wonder now if Susan wouldn
’
t have been better off if I had deferred to her and simply left her alone about coming.
“
I don
’
t care about that,
”
she had told me, when I first broached the distressing subjec
t. I suggested that perhaps she
should
care.
“
Why don
’
t you just worry about your own fun
…
”
said she. I told her that I was not worrying about
“
fun.
”
“
Oh,
don
’
t
be pretentious,
”
she dared to mumble—then,
begging:
“
Please, what difference does it make to you anyway?
”
The difference, I said, would be to her.
“
Oh, stop trying to sound like the Good Sex Samaritan, will you? I
’
m just not a nymphomaniac and I never was. I am what I am, and if it
’
s been good enough for everyone else
—“
“
Has it?
”
“
No!
”
and out came the tear. So the resistance began to crumble, and the struggle, which I initiated and to which I was accomplice and accessory, began.

I should point out here that the distressing subject had been a source of trouble between Maureen and myself as well: she too was unable to reach a climax, but maintained that what stood in her way was my
“
selfishness.
”
Characteristically she had confused the issue somewhat by leading me to believe for the longest while that she and orgasms were on the very
best
of terms—that I, in fact, had as much chance of holding her back as a picket fence has of obstructing an avalanche. Well into the first year of our marriage, I continued to look on in wonder at the crescendo of passion that would culminate in her sustained outcry of ecstasy when
I
began to ejaculate; you might even say that my ejaculations sort of faded off into nothing beside her clamorous writhings. It came as a surprise then (to coin a phrase appropriate to these adventures) to learn that she had actually been pretending, faking those operatic orgasms, she explained, so as to protect me from the knowledge of just how inadequate a lover I was. But how long could she keep up that pretense in order to bolster my sense of manliness? What about
her,
she wanted to know. Thereafter I was to hear repeatedly how even Mezik, the brute who was her first husband, even
Walker,
the homosexual who was her second, knew more about how to satisfy a woman than the selfish, inept, questionable heterosexual who was I.

Oh, you crazy bitch (if the widower may take a moment out to address the ghost of his wife), death is too good for you, really.

Why isn
’
t there a hell, with fire and brimstone? Why isn
’
t there a devil and damnation? Why isn
’
t there
sin
any more? Oh, if I were Dante, Maureen, I
’
d go about writing this another way!

At any rate: in that Maureen
’
s accusations, no matter how patently bizarre, had a way of eating into my conscience, it very well might be that what Susan derided as my sexual good samaritanism was in part an attempt by me to disprove the allegations brought against me by a monumentally dissatisfied wife. I don
’
t really know. I believe I meant well, though at the time I came to Susan there is no denying how dismayed I was by my record as a pleasure-giving man.

Obviously what drew me to Susan to begin with—only a year into my separation and still reeling—was that in temperament and social bearing she was as unlike Maureen as a woman could be. There was no confusing Maureen
’
s recklessness, her instinct for scenes of wild accusation, her whole style of moral overkill, with Susan
’
s sedate and mannerly masochism. To Susan McCall, speaking aloud and at length of disappointment, even to one
’
s lover, was like putting an elbow on the dinner table, something One Just Didn
’
t Do. She told herself that by making her heartache her business and nobody else
’
s, she was being decorous and tactful, sparing another the inconsequential bellyaching of
“
a poor little rich girl,
”
though of course the person she was sparing (and deluding) by being so absurdly taciturn and stoically blind about her life was herself. She was the one who didn
’
t want to hear about it, or
think
about it, or do anything about it, even as she continued to suffer it in her own resigned and baffled way. The two women were wholly antithetical in their response to deprivation, one like a dumb, frightened kid in a street fight who knows no way to save his hide but to charge into the melee, head down and skinny arms windmilling before him, the other docile and done in, resigned to being banged around or trampled over. Even when Susan came to realize that she needn
’
t settle any longer for a diet of bread and water, that it wasn
’
t simply
“
okay
”
with m
e
(and the rest of mankind) that she exhibit a more robust appetite, but that it made her decidedly more attractive and appealing, there was the lifelong style of forbearance, abstemiousness in all things but pharmaceuticals, there was the fadeaway voice, the shy averted glance, the auburn hair drawn austerely back in a knot at the back of the slender neck, there was the bottomless patience, the ethereal silence, that single tear, to mark her clearly as a member of another tribe, if not another sex, from Maureen.

It need hardly be pointed out that to me hers was a far more poignant straggle to witness (and be a party to) than that one in which Maureen had been so ferociously engaged—for where Maureen generally seemed to want to have something largely because someone else was able to have it (if I had been impotent, there is no doubt she would have been content to be frigid), Susan now wanted what she wanted in order to rid herself of the woman she had been. Her rival, the enemy whom she hoped to dispossess and drive into exile, if not extinction, was her own constrained and terrified self.

Poignant, moving, admirable, endearing—in the end, too much for me. I couldn
’
t marry her. I couldn
’
t do it. If and when I was ever to marry again, it would have to be someone in whose wholeness I had abounding faith and trust. And if no one drawing breath was
that
whole—admittedly I wasn
’
t, my own capacity for faith and trust, among other things, in a state of serious disrepair—maybe that meant I would never remarry. So be it. Worse things had happened, one of them, I believed, to me.

So: freed from Maureen by her death, it seemed to me that I had either to go ahead and make Susan a wife and mother at thirty-four, or leave her so that she might find a man who would do just that before she became, in Dr. Montagu
’
s words, a totally
“
inadequate environment
”
for procreation. Having been to bat
tl
e for nearly all of my adult life, first with Maureen and then with the divorce laws of
the
state of New York—laws so rig
id and
punitive they came to seem to me the very codification of Maureen
’
s
“
morality,
”
the work of her hand—I no longer had the daring, or the heart, or the confidence to marry again. Susan would have to find some man who was braver, or stronger, or wiser, or maybe just more foolish and deluded—

Enough. I still don
’
t know how to describe my decision to leave her, nor have I stopped trying to. As I asked at the outset: Has anything changed?

Susan tried to kill herself six months after I had pronounced the affair over. I was here in Vermont. After I left her, my days in New York, till then so bound up with hers, had become pointless and empty. I had my work, I had Dr. Spielvogel, but I had become used to something more, this woman. As it turned out, I was no less lonely for her here in my cabin, but at least I knew that the chances were grea
tly
reduced that she would show up in
the
Vermont woods at midnight, as she did at my apartment on West Twelfth Street, where she could call into the intercom,
“
It
’
s me, I miss you.
”
And what do you do at that hour,
not
let her in?
“
You could,
”
Dr. Spielvogel advised me,
“
take her home in a taxi, yes.
”
“
I did—at two.
”
“
Try it at midnight.
”
So I did, came downstairs in my coat, to escort her out of the building and back to Park and Seventy-ninth. Sunday the buzzer went off in the morning.
“
Who is it?
”
“
I brought you the
Times.
It
’
s Sunday.
”
“
I know it
’
s Sunday.
”
“
Well, I miss you like mad. How can we be apart on Sunday?
”
I released the lock on the downstairs door (
“
Take her home in a taxi; there are taxis on Sunday
”
—
“
But I miss
her
!
”
)
and she came on up the stairs, beaming, and invariably, Sunday after Sunday, we wound up making love in our earnest and strenuous way.
“
See,
”
says Susan.
“
What?
”
“
You do want me. Why are you acting as though you don
’
t?
”
“
You want to be married. You want to have children. And if that
’
s what you want you should have it. But I myself don
’
t, can
’
t, and won
’
t!
”
“
But I
’
m not
her.
I
’
m
me.
I
’
m not out to torture
you or coerce you into anything. Have I ever? Could I possibly? I only want to make you happy.
”
“
I can
’
t do it. I
don
’
t want to.
”
“
Then don
’
t. You
’
re the one who brought up marriage. I didn
’
t say a word about it. You just said I can
’
t do it and I have to go— and you went! But this is intolerable. Not living with you doesn
’
t make sense. Not even seeing each other—it
’
s just too bizarre.
”
“
I don
’
t want to stand between you and a family, Susan.
”
“
Oh, Peter, you sound like some dope on a soap opera when you say that. If I have to choose between you and a family, I choose
you.
”
“
But you want to be married, and if you want to be married, and if you want to have children, then you should have them.
But 1 don
’
t, can
’
t, and won
’
t.
”
“
It
’
s because I don
’
t come, isn
’
t it? And never will. Not even if you put it in my ear. Well, isn
’
t it?
”
“
No.
”
“
It
’
s because I
’
m a junkie.
”
“
You are hardly a junkie.
”
“
But it is that, it
’
s those pills I pop. You
’
re afraid of having somebody like me on your hands forever—you want somebody better, somebody who comes like the postman, through rain and snow and gloom of night, and doesn
’
t sit in closets and can live without her Ovaltine at the age of thirty-four— and why shouldn
’
t you? I would too, if I were you. I mean that. I understand completely. You
’
re
right
about me.
”
And out rolled the tear, and so I held her and told her no-no-it-isn
’
t-so (what else, Dr. Spielvogel, is there to say at that moment—yes, you
’
re absolutely correct?).
“
Oh, I don
’
t blame you,
”
said Susan,
‘
Tm not even a person, really.
”
“
Oh, what are you then?
”
“
I haven
’
t been a person since I was sweet sixteen. I
’
m just symptoms. A collection of symptoms, instead of a human being.
”