I get up, cry, go to bed, cry, take some Tylenol because the roof of my mouth hurts so much from crying, get up, take a shower, cry, go to bed again.
I’m down in the kitchen making a jam sandwich with the cheap jam from the blue plastic bucket I bought for Frederik when I hear laughter out in the street. Through the window I see Niklas and Emilie. She has a sweet way of laughing with a single tone, like the signal call among some pygmies I once saw a documentary about.
They grow quiet as they approach our front door. Will she come in here again after her experience with Frederik? Yes, I can hear them in the hallway. Brave girl.
They mustn’t see me in this state. I slip into the unlit living room, just in case they want to get something from the kitchen, and I sit down in the armchair. My sight adjusts to the darkness of the room, my hearing to the silence.
Some of my friends have told me about their teenagers having sex at home. When we were their age, we too would have sex when our parents were elsewhere in the house, but we were quiet. My friends’ kids aren’t; there are moans and grunts and smacks regardless of who’s nearby. Youngsters have gotten so unself-conscious, though I can’t imagine Niklas being that way.
Have the two of them done it before? Of course they have. Has he done it with other girls? I don’t think so, but what do I know? Are they going to do it tonight? Of course they are.
And you can’t help but see it unfold before your eyes. The smooth young bright faces, the lean bodies, the swelling red-brown genitals pumping away at each other. You can’t help but see their laughing, kissing, and groping, or the quiver of their faces in orgasm.
In the darkness here, I can’t hear a thing. I listen but no, there’s nothing. I’ve got to make sure that Frederik doesn’t try to barge in on them. I have to protect them.
Quickly I tiptoe up the stairs. Outside Niklas’s room, I remain standing a little while, and again I hear Emilie’s laugh — softer now, more of a giggle, while Niklas speaks with a mild adult voice that I’ve never heard before. The voices stop — and then?
I ought to walk away. I hear a light clattering noise in there. What’ll I say if the door opens? My mind goes blank. I should definitely walk away.
The sounds are so muted now as to be almost inaudible — a YouTube clip? Some synthetic-sounding voice? Is that Niklas speaking again? Silence? Breathing? Gasps?
A few steps down the hall, I open the door to Frederik’s workshop. The light here is cold and overwhelming after the darkness of the hallway and the room downstairs. He sits at his desk, bent over some technical diagram. He doesn’t react when I come in; he probably has no idea if Niklas is even home.
I remain silent too, standing just inside the door. How different it would all be if it were Bernard who sat there, in the same posture and the same clothes, bent over the same sheet of paper. I’d walk over to him without speaking, take his head in my hands, turn his face up to mine. And then I’d do it again, the thing I mustn’t — I would — I’d kiss him.
He would laugh, speak, do something. And it would be something that had meaning, something that fit the occasion, that fit him in particular and me in particular — because he’s a real person and not just a diseased brain with a body attached.
Or no, no words. I would let him know that with just my eyes, and immediately he’d understand. And then he’d rise, and we’d press our bodies together, in a way I haven’t pressed my body against anyone’s in more than half a year.
He won’t get sick. He won’t call later and say that we can never see each other again. This time we can keep going. And we’ll unbutton each other’s pants right there on the desk that stands in front of me, there where my foolish, sick husband sits with nothing but speakers in his head.
I look at Frederik’s face. He’s gotten small pimples on the top of his forehead these past few months, and fat deposits on his cheeks; all that unhealthy food. What’ll he do if Emilie’s noisy when she comes? He must be just as starved for it as me. Will he try to go in there? Will he throw himself on me? Will he become aggressive and unbearable so that I have to hit him again?
“Come, we’re going for a walk,” I say.
He stares at me, only aware now that I’m in the room. “Now? It’s nighttime! We never go for walks at night.”
“No, but tonight we’re going to.”
“I’m sitting here in the middle of deciding whether—”
“It’ll have to wait for another time. Come. We’re going now.”
“Why?”
“We just are. Come.”
“But I don’t want to go for a walk.”
Since the operation, it’s been me who decides everything here at home. Which friends we’re going to call, and when; what we’re going to eat, and when; which websites we visit, and when. He grouses about it all the time, but he always does what I say anyway.
“Let’s go,” I say, pulling him out past Niklas’s room. I still don’t hear any sounds from in there. Downstairs, I throw Frederik his jacket, the lining the color I imagine Bernard’s pubic hair must be, and then I drag him out onto our small residential street, with the high hedges standing there so peaceful and lovely in the night. This is where we live.
~ ~ ~
Which Alcoholic Would You Prefer as a Son-in-Law?
TOM BUCHMANN
Our society risks becoming much more callous in its treatment of deviants.
Tom Buchmann has an MS in sociology and serves as a senior researcher at the Center for Future Studies.
IN 2009, AFTER IT WAS revealed that Tiger Woods had had at least 11 extramarital affairs, it didn’t take long for the golf star to be admitted to a rehabilitation facility for the treatment of sex addiction. Woods wasn’t a mendacious, egotistic person — no no, he was merely the victim of an illness.
After similarly embarrassing public episodes, other celebrities have explained that they too suffer from disorders, including various forms of dependency and the inability to control anger. We’re inclined to shrug off these statements with a quick laugh and not think any more about them, but in point of fact the celebrities are right. They haven’t wanted to take drugs, or to destroy their marriages and careers with angry outbursts. They’ve never consciously wished for lives like that.
In recent years, science has found genetic and neurological explanations for a host of human weaknesses, including:
• alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse
• lack of concentration
• poor social skills
• excessive fits of rage
• timidity
• self-centeredness
• loss of initiative
The latest research has shown that all of these character traits have a physiological basis — and that if it’s at all possible to change them, it isn’t simply by “pulling yourself together.”
As a result, we live in an era when our shared sense of what it means to be human and exercise responsibility has been changing at breakneck speed. The way we think about our impossible son (ADHD), our boozing uncle (addictive personality), and our killjoy mother (hidden depression) is shifting. Who are these people really? And how should we relate to them if they’re not to blame for their own actions?
IN THE COURSE OF the next few years, many other human traits will become closely associated with neurological functions and dysfunctions. This is something that can be stated with complete confidence, since it’s an unavoidable consequence of the huge breakthroughs in brain research.
If someone is lazy, for instance, soon we may be able to measure what it is in his or her brain that is causing the laziness. And perhaps all lazy people will be able to address this trait merely by taking a pill — just as we’ve seen with the tremendously widespread use of anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants, and of concentration-enhancing drugs for children with ADHD.