“I’m not interested in Suzette.” Dave sounds surprised. “Linda, the woman communicates with Venusians.” He fits Mrs. Kirk’s key into the lock. “You’re not drunk, are you? I mean not even a little. You hate beer?”
“Yes.”
“Just a lucky guess.”
“But I’m working on it,” Linda tells him. “I’m growing. I’m changing.”
“Oh, no. Don’t do that,” says Dave. They enter the penthouse and are attacked by a mob of affectionate cats, escaping to the terrace with their lives and a quantity of cat hair. The evening couldn’t be more beautiful, absolutely clear, and the lights on the hills extend all the way to the water, where Linda can actually see the small shapes of the waves, forming and repeating themselves endlessly over the bay. The air is cold, and somewhere below she hears the sound of breaking glass.
“Did that come from the basement?” Linda asks with some interest.
Dave shakes his head tiredly. “The apartment. That’s what I get for leaving Kenneth in charge.” He moves closer to Linda, putting his hands around her shoulders, making her shake. She can’t think clearly and she can’t hold still. The entire attention of her body is focused suddenly on those places where his hands are touching her. “My apartment is full of drunks and it’s after curfew,” Dave says. “I’m going to kiss you now unless you stop me.”
And what Linda feels is just a little like fear, but no, not like that at all, only it is so intense that she is not quite able to participate in the first kiss. She does better on the second, and by the third Dave has moved from her mouth to her neck and is telling her that he fell in love with her the first time he saw her, that first day in the elevator, when he saw she had Jack Lemmon’s chin.
• • •
WELL. THERE WE ARE. This seems to me to be a natural breakpoint, and although I can’t deny that we could learn a great deal more by going on here and, time permitting, we may return and do this later in the term, for now I want to bring this experience to some sort of close. The course is, after all, Romance and the focus is courtship, not mating, and let me add that the process of absorption is rather — well, untested in situations involving actual chemical changes in the subject’s physical system. We don’t want to find ourselves as subjects in someone else’s lab test, now, do we? Of course we don’t. Let’s let the lab work this out first.
We did go far enough with Linda to make some final observations concerning women and the physical aspects of romance. These are the sort of concerns which will continue to occupy our attention, as we determine whether or not they are universal, specifically female, or merely manifestations of a particular personality type.
I’m speaking, more specifically, of the body/mind split which occurred at the moment Dave touched her. I thought it was very pronounced. Did anyone not feel this? Yes, very pronounced. Linda’s body began to take on, in her own mind, a sort of otherness. Partly this was inherent in her conscious decision to feel whatever her body was feeling. A decision to be physically swept away is a contradiction in terms even when carried out successfully, and I feel Linda was relatively successful. But this is only the most straightforward, simplest aspect of the split.
Linda’s arousal was dependent upon Dave’s. Not upon Dave himself. Upon Dave’s arousal. Did you notice? In the earlier encounters we didn’t find this. Linda responded to his hands, to his face, to his voice, to various secondary male characteristics. She found him attractive. Mentally and physically. But toward the end she was much more aroused by the fact that he found her attractive. I don’t want to get into a discussion of evolution or of psychology. I merely point this out; I ask you to consider the implications. We have a sort of loop between the male and the female, and the conduit is the female’s body. It has been said — and we will be trying to determine, as we move on to other subjects, different ages, different sexes, whether it has been oversaid — that any romantic entanglement between a male and a female is, in fact, a triangle, and the third party is the female’s body. It is the hostage between them, the bridge or the barrier. At least in this case. Let’s be cautious here. At least for Linda. I’m ready for questions.
I would imagine that being told you had a nice chin was about as exciting as being told you had nice teeth. But this is just a guess. Linda was hardly listening at this point.
They went to Dutchman, a movie in which a white female seduces and destroys a black male. It made for an uncomfortable evening. Yes?
Well, the Joey Heatherton choice would have been problematical, too. No, I understand your interest. We’ll look at Lauren more later. I promise.
Nobody has a clue as to what the lyrics to “The Weight” mean. I doubt that the man who wrote it could answer this question. He was probably just making it rhyme.
Are there any more questions?
Anything at all?
Then I’m ready to dismiss you. Be thinking about what you’ve absorbed. Next time we’ll begin to look for common themes and for differences. It should be enlightening. The course is Comparative Romance. The point of view is female. We’ll start next time with questions. When you’ve thought about it some more, I’m sure you’ll have questions.
GAME NIGHT AT THE FOX AND GOOSE
The reader will discover that my reputation, wherever I have lived, is endorsed as that of a true and pure woman.
Alison called all over the city trying to find a restaurant that served blowfish, but there wasn’t one. She settled for Chinese. She would court an MSG attack. And if none came, then she’d been craving red bean sauce anyway. On the way to the restaurant, Alison chose not to wear her seat belt.
Alison had been abandoned by her lover, who was so quick about it she hadn’t even known she was pregnant yet. She couldn’t ever tell him now. She sat pitifully alone, near the kitchen, at a table for four.
YOU’VE REALLY SCREWED UP THIS TIME, her fortune cookie told her. GIVE UP. And, in small print: CHIN’S ORIENTAL PALACE.
The door from the kitchen swung open, so the air around her was hot for a moment, then cold when the door closed. Alison drank her tea and looked at the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. They were easy to read. He doesn’t love you, they said. She tipped them out onto the napkin and tried to rearrange them, YOU FOOL. She covered the message with the one remaining wonton, left the cookie for the kitchen god, and decided to walk all by herself in the dark, three blocks up Hillside Drive, past two alleyways, to have a drink at the Fox and Goose. No one stopped her.
Alison had forgotten it was Monday night. Sometimes there was music in the Fox and Goose. Sometimes you could sit in a corner by yourself listening to someone with an acoustic guitar singing “Killing Me Softly.” On Monday nights the television was on and the bar was rather crowded. Mostly men. Alison swung one leg over the only empty bar stool and slid forward. The bar was made of wood, very upscale.
“What can I get the pretty lady?” the bartender asked, without taking his eyes off the television screen. He wore glasses, low on his nose. Alison was not a pretty lady and didn’t feel like pretending she was. “I’ve been used and discarded,” she told the bartender. “And I’m pregnant. I’d like a glass of wine.”
“You really shouldn’t drink if you’re pregnant,” the man sitting to Alison’s left said. “Two more downs and they’re already in field goal range again.”
The bartender set the wine in front of Alison. He was shaking his head. “Pregnant women aren’t supposed to drink much,” he warned her.