So finally all the falseness and illusion had gone out of our relationship. We were true friends and I loved her as a person. I admired her courage, her indestructibility with all the disappointments of her professional life, all the treacheries of her personal life. I understood it all. I was for her all the way.
Then why the hell didn’t we have those deliriously good times we had before? Why wasn’t the sex as good as it had been, though still better than anyone else? Why weren’t we as ecstatic with each other as we used to be?
Magic-magic, black or white. Sorcery, spells, witches and alchemy. Could it really be true that spinning stars decide our destiny and moon blood makes lives wax and wane? Could it be true that the innumerable galaxies decide our fate day by day on earth? Is it quite simply true that we cannot be happy without false illusions?
There comes a point in every love affair when, so it seems, the woman gets pissed off at her lover’s being too happy. Sure she knows it’s her making him happy. Sure she knows that it’s her pleasure, even her job. But finally she comes to the conclusion that in some way, the son of a bitch is getting away with murder. Especially with the man married and the woman not. For then the relationship is an answer to his problem but does not solve hers.
And there comes a time when one of the partners needs a fight before making love. Janelle had come to that stage. I usually managed to sidetrack her, but sometimes I felt like fighting too. Usually when she was pissed off that I stayed married and didn’t make any promises for a permanent commitment.
We were in her house in Malibu after the movies. It was late. From our bedroom we could look over the ocean, which wore a long streak of moonlight like a lock of blond hair.
“Let’s go to bed,” I said. I was dying to make love to her. I was always dying to make love to her.
“Oh, Christ,” she said, “you always want to fuck.”
“No,” I said. “I want to make love to you.” I had become that sentimental.
She looked at me coldly, but her liquid brown eyes were flashing with anger. “You and your fucking innocence,” she said. “You’re like a leper without his bell.”
“Graham Greene,” I said.
“Oh, fuck you,” she said, but she laughed.
And what had led to all this was that I never lied. And she wanted me to lie. She wanted me to give her all the bullshit married men give to girls they screw. Like “My wife and I are getting a divorce.” Like “My wife and I haven’t screwed in years.” Like “My wife and I don’t share the same bedroom.” Like “My wife and I have an understanding.” Like “My wife and I are unhappy together.” Since none of this was true for me, I wouldn’t say it. I loved my wife, we shared the same bedroom, we had sex, we were happy. I had the best of two worlds and I wasn’t going to give it up. So much the worse for me.
Once Janelle laughed she was OK for a while. So now she went and drew a tub full of hot water. We always took a bath together before we went to bed. She would wash me and I would wash her and we’d fool around a little and then jump out and dry each other, with big towels. Then we’d wind ourselves around each other, naked under the covers.
But now she lit a cigarette before getting into bed. That was a danger signal. She wanted to fight. A bottle of energy pills had spilled out of her purse and that had pissed me off, so I was a little ready too. I was no longer in so loving a mood. Seeing that bottle of energy pills had set off a whole train of fantasies. Now that I knew she had a woman lover, now that I knew she slept with other men when I was away back with my family in New York, I no longer loved her as much, and the energy pills made me think that she needed them to make love to me because she was fucking other people. So now I didn’t feel like it. She sensed this.
“I didn’t know you read Graham Greene,” I said. “That crack about the leper without his bell, that’s very pretty. You saved that one up just for me.”
She squinted her brown eyes over the cigarette smoke. The blond hair was loose down over her delicately beautiful face. “It’s true, you know,” she said. “You can go home and screw your wife and that’s OK. But because I have other lovers, you think I’m just a cunt. You don’t even love me anymore.”
“I still love you,” I said.
“You don’t love me as much,” she said.
“I love you enough to want to make love to you and not just fuck you,” I said.
“You’re really sly,” she said. “You’re innocent sly. You just admitted you love me less as if I tricked you into it. But you wanted me to know that. But why? Why can’t women have other lovers and still love other men? You always tell me you still love your wife and you just love me more. That it’s different. Why can’t it be different for me? Why can’t it be different for all women? Why can’t we have the same sexual freedom and men still love us?”
“Because you know for sure whether it’s your kid and men don’t,” I said. I was kidding, I think.
She threw back the covers dramatically and sprang up so that she was standing in bed. “I don’t believe you said that,” she said incredulously. “I can’t believe that you said such an incredibly male chauvinistic thing.”
“I was kidding,” I said. “Really. But you know, you’re not realistic. You want me to adore you, to be really in love with you, to treat you like a virginal queen. As they did in the old days. But you reject those values that surrendering love is built on. You want us to love you like the Holy Grail, but you want to live like a liberated woman. You won’t accept that if your values change, so must mine. I can’t love you as you want me to. As I used to.”
She started to cry. “I know,” she said. “God, we loved each other so much. You know I used to fuck you when I had blinding headaches, I didn’t care, I just took Percodan. And I loved it. I loved it. And now sex isn’t as good, is it, now that we’re honest?”
“No, it isn’t,” I said.
That made her angry again. She started to yell and her voice sounded like a duck quacking.
It was going to be a long night. I sighed and reached over to the table for a cigarette. It’s very hard to light a cigarette when a beautiful girl is standing so that her cunt is right over your mouth. But I managed it and the tableau was so funny that she collapsed back onto the bed, laughing.
“You’re right,” I said. “But you know the practical arguments for women being faithful. I told you women most of the time don’t know that they have venereal disease. And remember, the more guys you screw, the more chance you have of getting cervical cancer.”
Janelle laughed. “You liaaarr,” she drawled out.
“No kidding,” I said. “All the old taboos have a practical basis.”
“You bastards,” Janelle said. “Men are lucky bastards.”
“That’s the way it is,” I said smugly. “And when you start yelling, you sound just like Donald Duck.”
I got hit with a pillow and had the excuse to grab and hug her and we wound up making love.
Afterward, when we were smoking a cigarette together, she said, “But I’m right, you know. Men are not fair. Women have every right to have as many sexual partners as they want. Now be serious. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” I said just as seriously as she and more. I meant it. Intellectually I knew she was right.
She snuggled up to me. “That’s why I love you,” she said. “You really do understand. Even at your male chauvinistic pig worst. When the revolution comes, I’m going to save your life. I’m going to say you were a good male, just misguided.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
She put out the light and then her cigarette. Very thoughtfully she said, “You really don’t love me less because I sleep with others, do you?”
“No,” I said.
“You know I love you really and truly,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you don’t think I’m a cunt for doing that, do you?” Janelle said.
“Nope,” I said. “Let’s go to sleep.” I reached out to hold her. She moved away a little.
“Why don’t you leave your wife and marry me? Tell me the truth.”
“Because I have it both ways,” I said.
“You bastard,” She poked me in the balls with her finger.
It hurt. “Jesus,” I said. “Just because I’m madly in love with you, just because I like to talk to you better than anybody, just because I like fucking you better than anybody, what gives you the balls to think I’d leave my wife for you?”
