“For instance, I might imagine that I was actually not the child of my mother and father, but was a foster child placed with them for romantic reasons. My true father was, perhaps, a well-known statesman, my mother a great beauty who had sinned for love. For various reasons, whatever, they were unable to acknowledge me, and had placed me with this dull, putty-faced, childless Indian couple. But the day would come…
“There was something else I became aware of during my early boyhood, and this may serve to illustrate my awareness of myself. Like most young boys of the same age-I was about twelve at the time-I was capable of certain acts of nastiness, even of minor crimes: wanton vandalism, meaningless violence, ‘youthful high spirits,’ etc. Where I differed from other boys of that age, I believe, was that even when caught and punished, I felt no guilt. No one could make me feel guilty. My only regret was in being caught.
“Is it so strange that someone can live two lives? No, I honestly believe most people do. Most, of course, play the public role expected of them: they marry, work, have children, establish a home, vote, try to keep clean and reasonably law-abiding. But each-man, woman, and child-has a secret life of which they rarely speak and hardly ever display. And this secret life, for each of us, is filled with ferocious fantasies and incredible wants and suffocating lusts. Not shameful in themselves, except as we have been taught so.
“I remember reading something a man wrote-he was a famous author-and he said if it was definitely announced that the world would end in one hour, there would be long lines before each phone booth, with people waiting to call other people to tell them how much they loved them. I do not believe that, I believe most of us would spend the last hour mourning, ‘Why didn’t I do what I wanted to do?’
“Because I believe each of us is a secret island (‘No man is an island’? What shit!) and even the deepest, most intense love cannot bridge the gap between individuals. Much of what we feel and dream, that we cannot speak of to others, is shameful, judged by what society says we are allowed to feel and dream. But if humans are capable of it, how can it be shameful? Rather do as our natures dictate. It may lead to heaven or it may lead to hell-what does ‘heaven’ mean or ‘hell’?-but the most terrible sin is to deny. That is inhuman.
“When I fucked that girl in college, and later with my wife, and all those in between, I found it exciting and pleasurable, naturally. Satisfying enough to ignore the grunts, coughs, farts, belches, bad breath, blood and…and other things. But a moment later my mind would be on my collection of semi-precious stones or the programming of AMROK II. I had enjoyed masturbation as much, and began to wonder how much so-called ‘normal sex’ is really masturbation a deux. All the groans and protestations of love and ecstasy are the public face; the secret reactions are hidden from the partner. I once fucked a woman, and all the time I was thinking of-well, someone I had seen at a health club I belonged to. God knows what she was thinking of. Island lives.
“Celia Montfort was the most intelligent woman I had ever met. Much more intelligent than I was, as a matter of fact, although I think she lacked my sensitivity and understanding. But she was complex, and I had never met a complex woman before. Or perhaps I had, but could not endure the complexity. But in Celia’s case, it attracted me, fascinated me, puzzled me-for a time.
“I wasn’t certain what she wanted from me, if she wanted anything at all. I enjoyed her lectures, the play of her mind, but I could never quite pin down who she was. Once, when I called for a dinner date, she said, ‘There is something I want to ask you.’
“‘Yes?’I said.
“There was a pause.
“‘I’ll ask you tonight,’ she said finally. ‘At dinner.’
“So, at dinner, I said, ‘What did you want to ask me?’ “She looked at me and said, ‘I think I better put it in a letter. I’ll write you a letter, asking it.’
‘“All right,’ I nodded, not wanting to push.
“But, of course, she never wrote me a letter asking anything. She was like that. It was maddening, in a way, until I began to understand…
“Understand that she was as deep and moiling as I, and subject, as I was, to sudden whims, crazy passions, incoherent longings, foolish dreams…the whole bit. Irrational, I suppose you might say. If I didn’t lie to myself-and it’s extremely difficult not to lie to yourself-I had to recognize that some of my hostility toward her-and I recognized I was beginning to feel a certain hostility, because she knew-well, some of this was because I was a man and she was a woman. I am not a great admirer of the women’s liberation movement, but I agree men are victims of a conditioning difficult to recognize and analyze.
“But once I stopped lying to myself, I could acknowledge that she upset me because she had a secret life of her own, an intelligence greater than mine and, when it pleased her, a sexuality more intense than mine.
“I could realize that and admit it to myself: she was the first woman I had been intimate with who existed as an individual, not just as a body. The Jewish girl from Boston had been a body. My wife had been a body. Now I knew a person-call it a ‘soul’ if it amuses you-as unfathomable as myself. And it was no more logical for me to expect to understand her than to expect her to understand me.
“Item: We have come from a sweated bed where we have been as intimate as man and woman can be physically intimate. I have tasted her. Then, dressed, composed, on our way to dinner, I grab her arm to pull her out of the way of a careening cab. She looks at me with loathing. ‘You touched me!’ she gasps.
“Item: She has been tender, sympathetic, but somewhat withdrawn all evening. We returned to her home and, only because I need to use the john, does she allow me inside the door. I know there will be no sex that night. That’s all right with me. It is her prerogative; I am not a mad rapist. But, from the bathroom, I return to the study. She is seated in the leather armchair and, standing behind her, Valenter is softly massaging her neck and bare shoulders with loving movements. Curled in a corner, Tony is watching them curiously. What am I to make of all this?
“Item: She disappears, frequently and without notice, for hours, days, a week at a time. She returns without explanation or excuse, usually weary and bruised, sometimes wounded and bandaged. I ask no questions; she volunteers no information. We have an unspoken pact: I will not pry; she will not ask. Except about the killing. She can’t get enough of that!
“Item: She buys an imported English riding crop, but I refuse. Either way.
“In fact, there is no end to her.
“Item: She treats a cab driver shamefully for taking us a block out of our way, and tells me loudly not to tip him. Three hours later she insists I give money to a filthy, drunken panhandler who smells of urine. Well…
“I think what was happening was this: we had started on one level, trying to find a satisfactory relationship. Then, sated or bored, the wild sex had calmed and we began to explore the psychic part of sex in which she, and I, believed so strongly. After that-it proving not completely satisfactory-we went on digging deeper, inserting ourselves into each other, yet remaining essentially strangers. I tried to tell her: to achieve the final relationship, you must penetrate. Is that not so?
“I must not see her again. I would resolve that, unable to cope with her humanity, and, at the last moment, when I was certain our affair was over, she would call and say things to me on the phone. Oh! So we would once again have lunch or dinner, and under the table cloth, beneath our joined napkins, she would touch me, looking into my eyes. And it would start again.