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Authors: Erica Jong

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BOOK: Parachutes and Kisses
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—JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
ISADORA was indeed in vagabondage—in bondage to a vagabond, that is. The OED may define
vagabondage
as “the state, condition or character of being a vagabond,” but Isadora preferred her definition, with its vaguely sadomasochistic implications. Vagabondage is bliss, she thought, and I am a vagabondager—or is it vagabondagess? She would swear to stay away from Bean, not to call him, not to take his calls—but then he would phone, or appear out of the blue in his skiddy van—and all would be lost. Just when she was most convinced she had invented him, he would turn up in her driveway either in the van or in an old red MG that had no backward gears, and she would drop whatever she was doing just to be with him.
She tried to restrict him to Tuesday and Friday nights (Kevin still had weekends and various other “eligible” swains commandeered various other nights of the week), but little by little he began to encroach on her life, always calling at the last minute, appearing or disappearing with the unpredictability of a true vagabond.
One night he appeared at the house just as Kevin was about to arrive at the train station and she had to send him away though it broke her heart to do so. (That night she went to bed with Kevin dreaming of Bean.) In fact, her nights were full of Bean dreams, and days full of Bean fantasies. She had all the unmistakable signs of infatuation: singing in the streets, skipping everywhere, unaccountable cheer in the face of financial ruin.
When the phone rang, adrenaline flew into her veins. When he wasn't at the other end of it, her mood plummeted. When he called, she was frantic, counting the hours till they might meet. When he did not call, she was frantic, lest he never call again.
She read horoscopes—his first, then hers. (Then, belatedly, Amanda's.) She was sure her stars were about to herald a sudden turn for the better.
Aries: March 21—April 20
This year the Sun enters your birth sign on March 20th and puts the influence of Mars, your ruler, to flight. All questions pale beside this one: Can you finally come to terms with the fact that a relationship still fraught with difficulties and conflict must end? After all, it seems you have had less choice in the matter than you would have wished; others have been attempting to cut loose. March and April will be decisive months. Now all the rest is sweetness and light. Beautiful planetary influences relate to finances and long-term business interests, but more important still, the New Moon on March 25th is certain to herald a truly remarkable phase for travel and connections with people far, far away. Wholly unexpected events will restore your optimism and give you the courage to start life afresh.
Beautiful planetary influences relate to
finances,
Isadora thought. Finances! Surely this must be wrong. And yet she was absolutely certain—in that blithe way that fools and children have —that everything was about to improve.
She had not been idle. She was busy scaring up as much work as she could handle: magazine pieces, book proposals, lectures, treatments for movies. This is what her grandfather would have done in a similar situation—paint his heart out—and she had been well trained by her family. They were not only artists, but artisans. They did not wait for luck, they made it with their two hands.
Though all she could think of was Bean, Bean's eyes, Bean's cock, Bean's voice, she knew she had to work. She was simultaneously trying to untangle the tangled business affairs Mel had left and trying to drum up work.
Arbeit macht frei,
she thought. It was what the diabolically ironical Nazis had put over their particular gates of hell—Auschwitz. It might not be as poetical as what Dante put over his—
Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch‘entrate
—but it had a certain ring to it, didn't it?
Work would save her; work would redeem her; it always had in the past.
But it was not easy to work when you were always throbbing at the heart, the cunt, and the telephone (surely in the twentieth century, the telephone had become an organ of the body—and an erogenous one at that!). While Danae continued in residence as temporary-permanent nanny; while Danae's sons and lovers supplied Mandy's surrogate family, Bean and Isadora were forever sneaking off to lose hours, afternoons, whole days and nights in ecstatic embraces. Isadora had a host of houses to choose from—both in Connecticut and in New York. Since her separation from Josh, she had collected proffered keys to second homes from a variety of friends and relations (whose pipes she monitored against frost and whose mail she collected—in exchange for perfect playgrounds for illicit sex).
What can be sweeter than an empty house on the Sound on a gray and blustery February day when no sailboats dot the horizon and no kites wing across the sky? The two illicit lovers tiptoe in (though no one at all is there to hear their footsteps—no one but the skeletons in the family closet).
“Hello? Hello?” she calls.
“Nobody here but us sex maniacs!” he growls.
And often before the door is properly shut or before the thermostat has been turned up to seventy, they have fallen to the deep shag carpeting in the living room (with its view of the blustery Sound and dipping seagulls), and are hungrily eating each other as if they had been starved for years—though it's only been two days. In between bouts of passion, they refuel on the picnic they've brought: icy white wine, lobster salad, crabmeat stuffed back in its shells. They pass the wine from mouth to mouth, the joint from mouth to mouth.
“This time I'm going to give you a pearl necklace,” he says, jerking off slowly, and slowly spraying her with his pearly come.
“This time you'll have to crack your own crab,” she says, spreading wide to let him stuff her with crabmeat, then lick it out.
Everything is salty, tangy, sweet, and sour—like the Sound itself at low tide. They are the flotsam and jetsam of the beach, coming together to make music with their bodies, to make blue light, white foam, sweet and sour hope. The ordinary organs which join them —join them at one pulsing point on both their bodies—are mere appendages of flesh, shared by apes (if not angels). And yet these foolish, vulnerable appendages can carry them into the cosmos.
Astounded by their love, by its mere physicality (which seems so spiritual), its spirituality (which seems so physical), they are suddenly alive to all the world as well. The Sound delights them with its blues and grays; the taste of crab seems newly minted for their tongues; the wine from Napa Valley seems grown especially for them from bursting grapes.
They notice everything as if with Edenic newness. Alive only to each other and their own stoned senses, somehow they still see the family pictures in the hallway (and laugh over them), the leftover Valium in the bathroom, the little bottles of nail polish left on the bedside table—for they fuck from room to room—and their poetic names: Etoile, Misty Lilac, Pennies-in-a-Stream, Disco Platinum, Fire and Ice, Mocha Polka, Cocoaberry, Mochaberry, Kumquat Peach, and Mango Pink.
“Clitoris Pink,” she says.
“Foreskin Fuchsia,” he counters.
They have become silly in their love, silly in that intimate way lovers have that means as much to them as sex.
Starved for such intimacy for so long, Isadora thrives as much on the private jokes and hijinks as on the fucking. Random sex, lottery sex, does not supply what an
amour
supplies—the jokes, the looks, the tender teasing. How to sustain life without it? Well, she has done it, but
how,
she does not really know. Life without intimacy is a desert which stretches out to the last syllable of recorded time. To have been so intimate with Josh—and then to have that intimacy cut off—has left her with a bleeding stump. Bean's love has begun to cauterize that stump. Lust itself can cauterize an amputated limb—and yet and yet, the hunger for the intimacy with Josh has not really left her.
But her love affair with Bean has something strange about it—death clings to their violent coupling. She is always somehow sure that he will die before they meet again; he will swerve off the road for good, skid on the ice as he did that time he nearly died, smoke one joint too many, pop one pill too many, fry his senses until they betray him utterly.
For they are both sensation seekers, unstoppered in their lust. Neither holds the other back. Their lust is like flowing wine unconstrained by any cup; their coupling threatens to invade their lives until all there is in life is coupling—coupling and death. And is there more to life than that, anyway? Isadora has her doubts.
They fall upon each other hungrily—as if this were the last fuck on earth. Isadora pierces his back with her nails; he falls sobbing into her arms after his orgasm. His thighs shudder and pulse. She weeps when he enters her, weeps when he fucks her, weeps when he stops. They meet in abandoned houses in part because their sex is so loud and so uncontrollable. The growl that rises from the throat extends the orgasm, makes it more powerful. The scream redoubles the come. Lovers like this cannot live in condominiums —newly built with ticky-tacky walls. They must have solid plaster houses by the Sound to contain their screams and cries.
And yet, and yet—he will be dead before his thirtieth birthday. She knows this almost as if it were a proven fact. And so she clutches him all the tighter, knowing that they are doomed to drift apart; history separates them. The history of death.
Waiting for him, she sometimes shakes with fear—fear of his never coming back, or fear of his death? Ah, what's the difference, really? If she and Josh could be so close and then could part—then parting is death and death is parting and she has already died many times—and then come back to life.
Although the love affair with Bean seemed to be absorbing most of her life, she also had other tasks to perform, and she did not shirk them. The meeting with Lowell Strathmore, in particular, had been on the books for some time, but, oddly, he kept postponing it. Originally, they were to meet in New York at his office, but he put it off again and again—until one day he called, asking—could he come to her house in Rocky Ridge, for dinner? This was indeed a peculiar request for a man who was so powerfully afraid of his wife.
“Leona must be out of town,” Isadora said to him on the phone.
“How did you guess?” Lowell asked.
“There's no other way you'd even
consider
coming for dinner.”
“She's with her sister in Southampton.” he said. “Her mother died and they're clawing each other to death over the family jewels.”
“Are you sure she's not driving home unexpectedly?”
“Not a chance. She has to stay there and keep watch over those canary diamonds.”
“Then come to dinner,” Isadora said. Danae would provide.
Danae came up with a fabulous meal—roast quail with wild rice; mango mousse; cappuccino. She threw the meal together cheerily enough, while Isadora got Amanda ready for bed, then Danae took off for the movies with her twenty-two-year-old struggling-rock-singer lover. Her kids were scattered around town, peddling dope, doing their homework, getting laid.
Isadora read Amanda not one, but three bedtime stories. Big
Bird Gets Lost
(an epic of scratch and sniff—ah, someday she herself would write an
adult
scratch and sniff book to end all scratch and sniff books!),
Let's Eat
(a very simple, beautifully illustrated book in which Amanda could participate by picking out all her favorite foods), and Bemelman's
Madeline and the Bad Hat
(one of Isadora's favorites—and Amanda's). Then she went through Amanda's bedtime ritual with her—certain lights had to be left on, others left off; certain doors had to be left open, others left closed; Camelia had to be safe in her arms—and went downstairs to get herself tarted up for Lowell.
Remembering that he loved Opium, she doused herself in it—powder, body cream, perfume. She wore a pink suede shirt, the color of white baby's skin; brown suede jeans, the color of black baby's skin; and crushed suede boots with fur tops, the color of chicano baby's skin. She brushed her mane of blond hair, did her makeup slowly and elaborately, put on a Fats Waller tape on the machine, and danced out into the foyer, singing along with “Your Feets Too Big.”
Pretty soon the doorbell rang and the Big Foot in question arrived.
Now, Isadora had not seen Lowell since the advent of Bean—but she dimly remembered Lowell's particular brand of WASP lust and she remembered it with fondness. He was a masculine man—in the manner of Bean—a passionate man, a priapic maniac underneath his reserve. Supposedly he was coming over to advise Isadora about her future course of action in the wake of Mel Botkin's mess—but Isadora had the feeling that Lowell had other fish to fry as well.
 
She opens the front door. Dogstoyevsky growls lethally. (Since the separation, Dogstoyevsky has become even more antimale than usual—attempting to defend Isadora from her hosts of motley suitors.)
He looks just as she remembered him: that stooping tallness, red hair parted amidships, Ben Franklin glasses, a crisp new shirt (which
must
be from Turnbull and Asser) with the addition of a jaunty silk paisley bow tie, tied to perfection.
“I always admire men who can tie bow ties,” Isadora says.
“And I admire women who can untie them,” says Lowell, scooping her into his arms. He picks her up as if she were nothing more than a paper doll and presses her to his huge torso. He is such a
big
man; his bigness alone is exciting.
“Don't ...” says Isadora.
“Why?” says Lowell. “No one who smells the way you do really means don‘t!”
“My kid's upstairs,” says Isadora.
BOOK: Parachutes and Kisses
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