Lying in Bed (25 page)

Was I trying to tell him something. I didn't think I was. Until he asked the question. I thought I was just reading something interesting. Passages in books about having children always make me stop. I'm not a freak. I sometimes feel like a garden where children should grow. But I still don't want one. I still don't need anyone else in the world to love.

But I can't tell him the truth. So I just sat there with my eyes on my book again.

“It does make a difference. Children aren't symbols. Whoever wrote that is lying. Or having his character lie I should say. You never know with novels, do you. You never know to whom you're really listening. But whoever says those words you read sounds like someone who doesn't want to have a child at all. Not at all.”

Why can't I tell him? Why do I think it would break his heart to find out I love him so much I don't want to have our child.

I know he cares. But he doesn't blame me. I don't think he
blames himself either. We just keep making love. That seems to sustain him. He trusts me. He trusts nature. He's an idiot. Holy. But an idiot.

“You see why I prefer philosophers. They write about the same things with just as much beauty but a great deal more truth. In Nietzsche children are redeemers. Derrida calls pregnancy holy. He says the way you behave even before you have a child influences the child. If you suppress your anger and you offer the hand of conciliation your child will grow out of what's most gentle. But if you're caustic and abrupt with one another, if your love is bitter and untrue—listen to this—it will pour a drop of evil into the dear stranger's cup of life. Tell me that isn't a beautiful vision. The triumph of goodness in the unborn child. We could have a world of saviors. We create a world of scum.”

If anyone had told me I'd be married to a man who goes around quoting philosophers and whistling classical music, I would have pictured myself tied up to a bed and not for fun. What I didn't know was how he would connect me to everything he knows. Some men just give you their dicks and the latest crap to enter their minds from Daily Variety or Business Week. Johnny all dressed up in his suit and his big glasses communicates this pool of pain of people trying to figure out what it means to be alive.

What it means to me is to have him to myself and fuck you scum! (I'm the angry one in this family. Johnny is the one “most gentle”)

Sometimes when he's fucking me I don't even know who he is. I could swear he's somebody else. I don't know how he does it. I look down there and it's not his dick in me. It's fatter or
it's thinner. It's darker or it's even paler than that pale it gets sometimes from the cream I sometimes make not just before I get my period but just before that. He knows I sometimes like to grab hold of it and feel it slide along my palm while it's going through me, but it even feels different sometimes, it's someone else's dick. I don't mind that. He knows I don't. He does this to me and I don't know how. It's not just the dick. Though it starts there. He feels different all over. His shoulder's in a different part of my neck. His hand's not in my hair the usual way. His finger's not on my lips or in my mouth. His breathing's not the same. Even his voice is someone else's voice. It drives me wild. Also he comes faster. But I think that has to do with me. I have this other man on top of me. I can't contain myself. Johnny's behind this, I know that, but it's not Johnny who's doing it to me. Johnny's watching—thank God!—but this stranger has his dick in me and I want to push him off and pull him in at the same time. Mostly the latter.

A man came into the shop and said he had my diary. He found it in the street. He was holding it behind his back like a bunch of flowers. I asked him if he read it. He said he couldn't. So I plucked out his eyes.

A man came into the shop and said he had my diary. He found it in the street. He was holding it behind his back like a bunch of flowers. I asked him if he read it. He said he had. So I opened it up and we stood together reading.

Johnny never comes to visit me in the shop. He used to come in to learn about quilts before we actually got married. But once we did, he just stayed home. So I sometimes imagine that I see him enter as he did that first day. The only quilt I still have left from then is the Broken Star. It needs work. But
that's not why I keep it. I keep it because it's the first thing we ever looked at together. I believe that whatever eyes look at they leave something of themselves upon. So we are joined forever on that quilt. And when I look at it now I can see Johnny. He comes through the door and he's the most beautiful human being I've ever laid eyes on. He hands me my diary and I open it up and we read it together.

I'm sorry, but it's the sexiest thing I can imagine. I am split open like a plum and all the tears I've never cried fly out.

Johnny was telling me about how Nietzsche and Strindberg wrote letters to each other. In Latin, Greek, German, and French. This was in 1889, when Strindberg returned home to Stockholm after years of traveling and Nietzsche went crazy. Nietzsche lived 11 more years, but he never recovered. That's when his work became known. He might as well have been dead, Johnny said, just like Schubert, who never got to hear people humming his pretty melodies. Strindberg lived on for many more years after that and gave up socialism to carry on Nietzsche's ideas and then became a mystic. Johnny calls my diary my mystic pad. To me that sounds like a sanitary napkin. But he always wrote about sex. August Strindberg I mean. I once knew a girl named April. There was someone named January in a Jacqueline Susaan novel. And I've heard of Mays and Junes. But never anyone named July. And I never heard of a man named after a month except for August Strindberg. Most months don't fit men. Though maybe March would be a good name for a man. For a woman too. A woman can be named anything really. Words just fit us better. August Strindberg was married to a writer and to actresses and when he
wasn't married he jerked off. But he said he couldn't live on masturbation and charity. “I don't want to fuck any more children into the world”—I didn't know people spoke like that then, which they'll probably say about us someday—so he tried to find a woman who already had children, because he said he couldn't work without the sound of children's voices.

Johnny made him seem real to me. I could see him sadly jerking off into a handkerchief and could hear the voices of children as if they were my own.

There was a time Johnny said when Strindberg couldn't make his wife come and he thought it was his fault. So he went to have his penis measured. Johnny read to me from one of his letters. “I arranged a cock inspection at 3 o'clock one summer morning, in the presence of witnesses, including a whore. The whore gave me her approbatur, except sine laude.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means, you pass, but without honors.”

I laughed.

“What about mine?” asked Johnny.

“Your what?”

Johnny got up from the bed and came to stand beside me where I was sitting. He unzipped his pants.

“You want me to measure you?”

“No. Just tell me. You know. You've seen so many. You've seen a flood of men.”

“True.”

“So.”

His penis was before my eyes. I could have stuck out my tongue and touched it.

“I'm sure Mr. Strindberg's wasn't growing during the examination.”

“That's probably because his wife wasn't there.”

“Big dik-dik,” I said, to make him laugh. According to Johnny that's the name of one of the only animals who doesn't cheat on his wife.

“You think so?” He wasn't laughing. Men. I should have known.

“Big.”

But it isn't. From what I know, which I guess is something, it's about average. But it's very beautiful. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And when it's inside me, it's as big as I am. It is all I am, and so is he.

Johnny took me out to Bouley tonight for our 1st anniversary. When he told me where we were going, I said, “How did you get a reservation?” “Oh, I had to make it long before I met you.” “Did you tell them it was for our anniversary?” “Of course.”

It can't be true. But I believe him.

Dinner took 6 hours. We both had the chef's tasting menu which means we ate whatever they brought us. 9 courses. But only 2 bottles of wine. And 1 of champagne of course. And now I sit here not full and not tired waiting for Johnny to come out of his bathroom. We have no windows to the east but I can hear the morning light on the roof above.

We talked the whole time. Even for us 6 hours is a lot.

Johnny said, “I'd like to make a toast.” He raised his glass. “Don't worry. I won't quote Nietzsche.” I laughed, and he said, “This year with you has been an eternity of joy for me. Life was given to me, but only you could have brought me to life. Thank you for marrying me, Clara. I love you with all my mind.”

What other man could have made me cry and laugh at the
same time. And what is it about a man who can make fun of himself that makes him so unbearably desirable. We touched glasses. I sniffled and wiped my tears on my sleeve and raised my glass and said, “Fuck me, Johnny. You're the only one.” Little does he know how true that is.

Later on we tried to figure out how many times we'd fucked. I suppose that's what couples do on their 1st anniversary.

“I remember every one,” said Johnny, which I wouldn't put past him.

I don't remember every one. I wouldn't want to. I don't even bother to mention most of them in here. To me fuckings aren't separate events. They accumulate in you like knowledge.

“Do you think we do it too much?” I asked. Ingenuously. Disingenuously. What's the difference? I'll have to ask my husband. What kind of husband would a husband be if he can't answer a question like that.

“Well,” he said, which he never says unless he's about to make a speech, “there are contradictory instructions in that regard. Methodius as well as John Chrysostom say that if you don't do it too much you can still go to heaven. So long as you're married of course. The church itself says you don't have to do it but you're allowed to do it. It took 5 long centuries of painful debate for this to be decided. Nuptius non concubitus sed consensus facit. But only if you're married. And not that often. Sundays, no—the resurrection. Saturdays, no—the Virgin Mary. Fridays, no—Christ's death. Thursdays, no—Christ's arrest. That leaves Mondays and Tuesdays, except for certain periods of fasting and commemoration—the week before communion, the 40 days before Easter, before Christmas, before the Pentecost. Otherwise, fine, if you can bear the animus of the saints. Jerome said it's dirty. Arnobius
said it's debased. Tertullian said it's opprobious. Methodius said it's indecent. And Ambrose said it's debauched. Of course they knew this from experience. They were all reputedly great lovers in their time. Augustine prayed for chastity—but not right now. Such a tired, anticipated sentiment. Like people on diets—just let me eat this one last creme brulee. I prefer what Napoleon wrote to Josephine: I'll be arriving in Paris tomorrow—don't wash.”

I laughed and asked Johnny, “Would you prefer me not to bathe?” (God, I was starting to sound like Josephine. It must have been the champagne)

He looked at me over the top of the shaky little lamp on our table. “Would you prefer me to be Napoleon?”

I shook my head and felt the bubbles wash over my gums onto my lips. I looked at him learning how to make jokes and thought to myself that I wouldn't prefer him to be anyone but himself. Except in bed, where lately he sometimes seems to be someone else, no one in particular, just someone else. No one has ever done that with me before. Most men try so hard to prove who they are. Johnny seems willing to sacrifice who he is to whoever I might want him to be. He can do this with a different touch. Or a touch timed differently. Or a sound he'll make that doesn't sound like him exactly. Or the way he'll move his body. Or maybe it's just an illusion. Maybe I'm just recreating him. But if I am, he knows it. I can tell he knows it. And he becomes who I want him to be. Not anyone in particular. I don't have fantasies about people I know. But I do like to be seen for the first time. I enjoy the beginningness of it.

I remembered how I told Johnny the first time I met him that I felt religions crushed women. Everything he'd just said made me feel the same way. What all those saints thought was dirty wasn't sex. It was women. And Johnny knew it. That's why he told me the Napoleon story. “Isn't that right?” I asked him.

“Well, the Jews were different,” he said. “But aren't they always. My father hates Jews because he never knows what side they're on. They defend. They prosecute. They think they are the people of the law. He railed against them at every opportunity. And he so rarely got a chance to put any of them away. He used to say that a Jew would be the only person he'd rather sentence to death than to life in prison. Why would I give a Jew a chance to sit and think? he would say. It's like throwing B'rer Rabbit in the briar patch. But the Jews didn't tell their people when they couldn't fuck. They told them when they had to. The writers of the Talmud were able to face what other religious scribes could never acknowledge—that women's desire is greater than men's. So they told men it was their duty to satisfy their wives. Workers who lived at home were instructed to do it twice a week. Salesmen once a week. Camel drivers once a month, no matter how far away their camels took them. Students of the torah had to do it every Friday night. And the rich every night.”

“Are we rich?” I teased him.

“Even if we aren't we certainly pretend to be.”

He's in bed now, waiting for me. It's a new day. A new year for us. I don't think I'll bathe.