Even though my cock had been in her asshole, she turned around and greedily took it in her mouth. She wanted me. She wanted me as much as she ever had before. It reminded me of the lights going on after a blackout. The increased verbal communication had created a powerful physical attraction. I only hoped that Monica would finally show her gratitude by acknowledging to General Shapiro that he'd been of help.
"I have a question." General Shapiro and I looked at each other wide-eyed with amazement. We had just walked into the office the morning after a night in which Monica had expressed one harebrained idea about art after the other. I had responded with a series of sexual assaults that she welcomed. During one incident, after she told me that some abstract expressionism reminded her of the markings on the famous Lascaux caves, I rode her like a horse, slapping her behind and yelling, "Heah, heah giddy up!"
"Maybe you can be of help. Does this new thing we're doing mean that every time 1 express myself, I'm going to get a cock stuck in my mouth, cunt, or ass?"
"What's striking to me is that you have a very high standard. You can never be satisfied or happy. Before, the only thing that turned you on was museums. Now, you're having typically onesided conversations with a bullying artist intellectual who treats you like a prostitute every time you open your mouth, demeans you, and obliterates any vestige of self-confidence you might be trying to develop about your ability to have opinions. This is progress. There are limits. Your perfectionism, your inability to appreciate your own limits, was making it impossible for you to be happy. The question is, can you be satisfied with this compromise, however imperfect it might be?"
I was distracted. 1 remembered an item on the E! channel about a new bit that some S&M couples had purchased for each other on Valentine's Day. When you wanted to ride your wife, you just stuck it in her mouth and grabbed the reins. It would be a convenient way to deal with Monica's growing interests in art and politics.
1 didn't mind screaming at Monica and berating her; it was better than getting drunk, but 1 was feeling a resentment, which I expressed in AA, about the fact that I had to keep supplying her with stupid things to say. I was constantly running out to the magazine stores, searching out opinions in the kind of trendy magazines with the facile overviews that were such an effective lubricant for us. Fashion publications are notorious for presenting a superficial view of the art world. So if there was a De Kooning retrospective at MOMA, I'd run to get the Pogue review, which I'd leave next to Monica's side of the waterbed. By the next day, I'd be pulling her hair, screaming at her for being a "decadent bourgeois" while Greek-fucking her in the middle of the kitchen. Naturally, Ting would be waiting outside the window with our order, frantically pulling at himself as he watched me thrusting into her and moving her across the floor.
Robert Hughes, the Australian art critic who specializes in modernism, eventually became a great help to our sex life. In fact, he was not only a help, but a virtual sex aid, a walking Masters and Johnson, a human form of Viagra. I purchased a volume of Hughes' essays after Shapiro had whispered, "Robert Hughes," into my ear as we were leaving one session. Having left the volume on Monica's pillow, I came in one afternoon to find her lying in bed spread eagled with two fingers in her cunt and an essay on the legacy of abstract expressionism in her free hand. She was moaning loudly. I took my clothes off thinking she would want a good fuck. She quickly covered herself up.
"1'm really excited about this." She held up the book. "I'm just loving it, just reading the names. The way he goes into the lives of the painters and lets you see what d'ya call it, lets yuh see about all the painters that came before."
"You mean he gives you the historical context for the rise of abstract expressionism."
"Yeah, how did you know?" she asked, playing dumb so she could indulge her desire to be cut down.
"You're a dumb bitch and a cunt. Just remember that. You don't have a brain in your head. All you're good for is a good hard fucking." Like magic, my words caused her to throw the sheet off. She spread her legs and started playing with herself again, only this time it wasn't a prelude to talk.
"Come over heah and give me a taste of your big hard cock, sailor." As I lowered myself onto her and shoved my dick into her hot pussy, she let out a cry whose resonance 1 hadn't heard since Stratford, Ontario, where the actress playing Jocasta in a production of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex had let out an animal utterance that sent a shiver down my spine. The only difference with Monica was that hers was a cry of joy, though its shrillness made it seem like anguish.
In the meanwhile, even though 1 had stopped drinking after my first day of inebriation, and even though my qualification, as they say in the program, only concerned one day, 1 was a loyal participant in meetings. You don't have to take the elevator to the bottom is a famous AA saying, along with one day at a time-an expression that had particular meaning for me due to the duration of my drinking career. Scarcely a day went by when I didn't go to a meeting, and soon I found myself elected chairman of the meeting in the very church basement where I'd attended my first day in AA. Isn't it amazing how life comes full circle? They say there are no coincidences. Everything is part of God's plan, and here I was at the break between the qualification and the sharing from the floor, sanctimoniously intoning, "Anonymity is a spiritual part of our program, ever reminding us to place principles over personalities. In other words, what you see here and hear here, leave it here." I was as compulsive in attending my meetings as Monica was in coming out with derivative critiques of abstract expressionism so I could berate her into a state of sexual
But we were running into yet another problem. AA is a program of honesty. Wasn't I harming Monica to criticize her so cruelly? Was it wrong of me to do something harmful to her, even if that harmful thing brought about pleasure? And should I have promptly admitted I was wrong even though it would have eliminated Monica's desire for me?
I dealt with all these problems in the meetings. Another AA slogan is progress, not perfection. I felt bad about berating Monica, pulling her by the hair, and even punching her, as I did on one occasion when she said that Larry Rivers reminded her of Rembrandt; but if she enjoyed it, who was I to adjudicate another person's pleasures? Life was a mystery. They say seek and je shall find.
Since Monica was in a relationship with an alcoholic, she qualified for Al Anon, but when I mentioned the Al Anon slogan detach with love, she became apoplectic. For someone who thought nothing about throwing her legs around my waist in an attempt at midair copulation, the notion of detachment was a hard concept to grasp. Monica was also not interested in some of the other ideas that came up in recovery meetings, like sitting with your feelings. The only way she was going to sit was on my lap with a cock between her legs-a position that contradicted some of the basic premises of the Al Anon program.
I was more dependent on General Shapiro than ever. At times, I felt like a lucky man. I was living the American dream, getting my brains fucked out night and day with no strings attached; Monica was too busy being horny to think about marriage or babies. What she dreamt about was what she hadthe equivalent of a brutal abstract expressionist who subjugated her to his ideas and pushed her around before throwing her down on the bed. At other times I felt I was living a nightmare of brutality in which I was controlling another human being for my own invidious purposes. Only General Shapiro could effectively wean Monica from her outdated ideas. Part of the therapy was to build up her self-confidence. Shapiro was walking a fine line. How could he get rid of the sex kitten without losing the sex?