Something Happened

'You made me this way.'

'You made me make you.'

'You made me make you make me. Why can't I talk to you?'

'Call your sister.'

'I need a sympathetic ear.'

'You drink too much.'

'You make me.'

'Call your sister and complain to her.'

'I hate my sister. You know it.'

'She has a sympathetic ear.'

'You bastard,' she blurts out. 'You just can't wait to get away from me, can you? I know what you're thinking. I can tell by the way you look.'

More and more often lately, I find myself looking her over critically evenings for stains and bite marks of illicit sexuality. I feel cheated when I don't find any.

'What'd you do today?' I'm the one who's likely to ask.

'Nothing.'

'Shopping.'

'Went to the beauty parlor.'

'Saw my sister.'

'Saw some friends. Why?'

'Just curious.'

'What'd you do?'

'Worked. Nothing.'

'Anything happen?'

'It's moving along, I think. I don't want to talk about it.'

'Jinx?'

'That's talking about it.'

'I'll knock wood.'

There are even mornings now when I catch myself scrutinizing her for stains and blemishes obsessively with the same aggressive and scavenging suspicions, and this, I know, is irrational, for she has spent the night in bed with me. I don't want to go crazy. I like to keep tight rein on my reason, thoughts, and actions, and to know always which is which. I don't want to lose my inhibitions. I might hit people if I did (strangers, friends, and loved ones), commit murder, spout hatred and bigotry, scratch eyeballs, molest teen-age girls and younger ones with trim figures, come on crowded subway trains against the side of a hefty buttock on someone like my wife or Penny. Dreams are merciless; they come upon you when you're asleep.

I might start stuttering.

Waking up is such a peculiar and extraordinary process that I'm surprised we are able to manage it successfully so many times while we are still half asleep.

I think I might get used to the idea of my wife's copulating with other men, but never to the specifics, the mechanics, to all that probing and liquid, all those grunts and strenuous bendings. Everything gets wet. Places are raw or bruised afterward. I don't like to picture my wife ever doing with another male the things she does with me. Or my daughter. (Will he put — of course. Will she — why not?) Everything does get so wet and smelly, and this is called making love. Beasts do it. It has no connection with love, q.v., op. cit. (But better wet and smelly, for my taste, than dry and perfumed. I hate those artificial, candy-store scents. I want to embrace human flesh with musky, natural odors, not a bar of soap.) Even business handshakes these days have turned wet and smelly. Show me a young man with a dry, pumping handshake today and I'll show you an unscrupulous young man on the make. I wish my daughter would stop leaving her bra around where I can see it and stop leaving her nightgown hanging on the door of the bathroom. She's developed fast and knows it. I see the way she dresses sometimes to go out, and I am furious. (She has bigger breasts now than my wife.) I can barely look at her as she pauses in front of me to wait for the money she says she needs. (There isn't anything I can say that wouldn't be derogatory and crushing to her self-esteem at a moment when she might be feeling good about herself. I wish she'd always wear her bra instead of leaving it tossed around. She'll wear blue denim jeans and doesn't always look clean. She reminds me of Ann Arbor. Every girl I meet these days reminds me of a different one I've known.)

'No wonder they say dirty things to you when you walk past. You're asking for it. If you get raped you deserve it.'

She'd break down immediately into sobbing hysteria.

'You always do that,' she'd accuse shrilly (while my boy watches from a corner in apprehensive deliberation, and I am already sorry I started). 'You always say something to spoil everything.'

'I have spoken to her,' my wife replies in wilted exasperation. 'She thinks I'm mean and jealous. She thinks I'm envious because I've got no tits.'

'You've got tits.'

If anything does happen to my daughter these days, it will probably happen with that college graduate she's mentioned who works on a land-fill track and has offered to give her driving lessons evenings and weekends if we let them have one of our cars.

'No.'

My wife nods in agreement. 'You have to be sixteen.'

'I can get a little head start. Everyone else does. You want me to pass, don't you?'

I want her to pass geometry, English, French, social studies, and science — not driver education. And I want her to get at least a B average so she'll be able to go off to college when she's through. (I won't want her here.) I don't see how I'll ever be able to make conversation with a simpering, clever son-in-law much younger than I who I know is humping my daughter quietly in another part of the house when they come to visit us weekends. My wife will bake cakes for them and look forward to grandchildren. (She's the one with the dirty mind.) They'll want things from us and lie to me.

'Maybe she won't. Maybe she'll be different. Maybe she'll grow up by the time she's married.'

'We didn't.'

'What do you mean?'

My wife doesn't understand me. I don't think she ever thinks I'm thinking she might be out screwing another man or that I am inspecting her belly, hair, thighs, neck, chest, panties, slips, and blouses systematically and belligerently for semen stains that aren't mine. (My wife has one of those light and softly sloping bellies you often see in photographs of attractive, long-waisted girls.) Often when I'm inspecting her hair and belly closely my antagonism turns into passion (to antagonistic passion, of course, otherwise known as lust, and I will want to make love). I'll have to leave her if I find one. I have something more potent than an ordinary hypocritical, male chauvinist double standard to give me the strength and determination to walk out: I have insecurity.

I have forgotten all about brain tumors, the thirteenth largest killer of undivorced men my age in Connecticut with three children, two cars, and an opportunity for promotion to a better job. No wonder I have to yell a lot at home to make my identity felt. (I don't really want to be feared; I want to be nursed and coddled. I don't get the love and sympathy from my family that I used to get as a child from my mother and certain women teachers. God dammit — I want to be treated like a baby sometimes by my wife and kids. I've got a right. I need that feeling of security. I'm not one of these parents that expect to be taken care of by their children in their old age: I want my children to take care of me now.) My wife believes I enjoy being home with her these days; she cannot detect that I can hardly wait to get out of the house to the office to be near Arthur Baron (with whom I am exchanging glances these days, I think, that are of more than ordinary significance).

The convention's in Puerto Rico again (to do rightful honor to Lester Black's wife's family), and Kagle's away in Toledo. My wife will find it hard to forgive me for firing Andy Kagle (until I tell her unequivocally it's him or me. Then she'll look over my shoulder into a distance and not wish to know anything more about it). My wife feels sorry for Kagle's leg, wife, and two children. My wife empathizes easily with all religious families, except Black ones, and except Jewish ones, whose foreign language ('It isn't even Latin.') and incomprehensible praying seem