What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Ohhh Freckhead!—I mean Freck-l’-head!—are you funny!”

  “Ain’ he funny? Ohhhh I’m gonna wet mah pants!”

  Marilee Plummer mimicking a Southern black, comical-sly parody of stereotyped Negro speech, purely good-natured, Corky thinks, and no malice or anger in it, Corky thinks, and Kiki falling in with it, a natural mimic too, the two girls like jazz musicians off on a riff. “Freckhead” veers hilariously close to “Fuckhead”—more squeals, howls—Marilee leans across Corky squeezing her sizable breast against him, practically in his mouth as she slaps at Kiki, “Girl, you watch yo’ mouth! Yo’ white girls is all the same: bold an’ brazin’! this gen-mun here’s gonna be shocked, yo’ watch yo’ mouth, hear?”

  Well, hell, it is funny. At the time.

  Which time is approximately two and a half years ago, summery weather but Corky seems to remember it was autumn at the time. The North American climate’s so screwed up now with ozone holes—“greenhouse effect”?—you can’t take any season for granted, even the Snow Belt’s been having mild winters, not the savage snowstorms and eight-foot snowdrifts of Corky’s childhood. So in fact it was autumn, that wild night. Jesus, wild! When, a few hours earlier, he’d picked up these two girls, or had they picked up him, at some lavish crammed cocktail reception at the Hyatt, or was it the Empire, one of those affairs honoring an outgoing president of some charity organization, or the fiftieth anniversary of the Union City Arts Council, and up on the dais speaking briefly and wittily there’s Mayor Slattery, and one or two beaming officers of the organization, and maybe a vice-president from Squibb or Exxon announcing a $5-million subsidy, much applause and cheering and crowding at the bar and next thing you know you’re slipping out with these two girls who call you “Corky” and laugh uproariously at your jokes, in your car (the white Audi, at this time? yes) driving to a favorite nightclub, a pretense of supper, this terrific jazz combo at The Bull’s Eye except, how the hell, you who’ve lived in this frigging city for forty years and boast you could make your way around it blind somehow take a wrong exit from the Expressway, let’s go to the Zephir instead, down on Chippewa, it’s the Zephir you really meant to go to anyway, why not?

  Where they know your name, they’re always impressed.

  H’lo Mr. Corcoran!

  Good evening Mr. Corcoran!

  Thank you Mr. Corcoran!

  Thank you!

  Are Marilee and Kiki impressed, too?—Marilee on Corky’s left and Kiki on Corky’s right, both girls drinking red wine and leaning across Corky to whisper at each other and dissolve in giggles, and Corky’s got his arms looped over both, in play, only in play, you can tell it’s play because he’s grinning his boyish-affable grin, his arm around Kiki’s bony shoulders as a way of covering for his arm around Marilee’s warm solid rich-ripe-smelling shoulders, the more he gets to know Marilee Plummer the more he’s crazy about her, what a figure, and her hair’s in cornrows at this time, numberless cornrows, tiny braids, weird, Corky’s never seen cornrows close up before, practically in his nose, and an oily-sweet scent lifting from Marilee’s scalp, must take forever to braid hair in such thin braids, and do they grease it, too?—or doesn’t Marilee’s hair require straightening?—she’s got so much Caucasian blood in her, she could almost pass for white. Something exotic like—what?—Spanish, Portuguese. Smoky-creamy skin but with a texture different from Caucasian skin, a thicker skin, doesn’t age the same way, fewer wrinkles, creases. The way black boxers can take punches to the face that white boxers, poor saps, can’t: the day of the white pro boxer’s over forever, Rocky Marciano the last white American heavyweight, never another. “High yellow” is what Marilee Plummer would be called by other, darker blacks and Corky’s wondering is that a term whites can use, or is it racist, insulting? He seems to know that Marilee Plummer, so seeming at ease with her white girlfriend and her grinning white-man escort, is sensitive about the color of her skin, as about her identity. God, yes. You wouldn’t want to cross her.

  Strange how, at his age, knowing so many people as he does, so many connections in the Democratic party in the business sector and more generally, Corky Corcoran has so few black friends. In truth, no real black friends. God knows, Corky’s tried—he really has. At Rensselaer he’d known two or three black guys, the only ones in the school and he’d gotten along pretty well with them working in the cafeteria with them but never kept up any contact afterward. And in Union City, over the years. Since the 1960s. It seems if you’re white you’re always courting blacks and they seem to like you well enough but they never call you back, never invite you over. Except for political connections it’s the same thing with Vic Slattery, Vic confessed to Corky. You feel like such a hypocrite.

  But Corky in his warm erotic daze isn’t thinking much of these matters. Nor seriously listening to Marilee and Kiki chattering across him, their flirty-oblique allusions, teasing-taunting incomprehensible to his ear as if they’re speaking a foreign language, poor Corky in his chic flannel Polo suit, metallic-midnight-blue Hermès tie, his hard-on the size of a bowling pin draining all the blood from his faltering brain, thus he can’t think, isn’t trying to think, it’s Friday night and he’s a free man a divorced man with no encumbrances save memory and what’s memory if your brain’s shut down and his American Express Gold Card is his ticket to ecstasy or at least oblivion. How Jerome A. Corcoran of 33 Summit Avenue, Union City, New York, Democratic City Councilman and next-in-line president of the Council and millionaire businessman-financier has wound up at the Zephir, this overpriced and glitzy-tacky nightspot listening to a combo like Muzak played with air-hammers and chainsaws and a lead singer gravel-voiced singing bad Lou Reed so his head’s not only buzzing from scotch but vibrating and rattling, and these amazing girls on both sides squeezed into the banquette-booth, he’ll be unable to recall afterward. Nor will he be able to recall the precise sequence of events that will lead him—no, propel him with vertiginous speed—to the emergency room at Union City General Hospital.

  Marilee, Kiki. No need for last names in the Zephir. Sharp shrewd girls but they know how to play, too. Smart career-oriented girls, grown-up girls. Of that new breed of strong-willed young women masquerading as girls, health club members, some of them bodybuilders and all of them with an eye on the prize, not feminine but female, fashion condoms in their Gucci purses and they know how to ply them. To be frank, Corky would be scared as hell of such women except he’s had so much practice handling women. And women are drawn to him. From the age of fourteen onward Corky Corcoran has practically had to fend females off, and of course he’s a gentleman, too, or has made himself into one, a small price to pay for the prizes a gentleman gets that some crude asshole hasn’t a clue he might be missing, like a man who drinks Four Roses instead of Johnnie Walker Red or drives a budget car instead of a really good car hasn’t a clue what he might be missing in life, poor dumb prick.

  A small price to pay, thinks Corky, dazedly grinning. Lifting his glass—“I’ll drink to that!” and Marilee and Kiki raise their glasses too, drinking to whatever it is they’re drinking to.

  This, then: Marilee the dusky-skinned beauty and Kiki the pale-frantic beauty are leaning across Corky Corcoran chattering giggling making jokes that elude him, maybe involve him but elude him and thus the more hilarious for being uttered in his smiling presence, in his lap you might say—where both girls are leaning familiarly in, thighs warmly aggressive against his, Marilee giving him plenty of her fleshy-doughy breast against his arm, Kiki giving off a stoned radiant heat in his face, Corky’s cock is so immense and rod-hard the girls can’t seem to keep their hands from brushing against his knees, thighs, crotch, for conversational emphasis perhaps, the way, so seemingly innocently and by chance a woman will touch a man’s arm, or wrist, or lightly tap the back of his hand as she speaks to him, so seemingly innocently and by chance. Oh God, yes. Corky loves ’em, Corky’s crazy about ’em, these terrific girls, these grown-up flirty-sexy wild-reckless fantastic girls, Corky do
esn’t have a clue who they are really, as he’d be the first to admit he doesn’t have a fucking clue, who they are as girls, as women, as fellow citizens, hard to think of them as fellow citizens in fact, like these feminists yammering on about a woman’s personhood, a woman isn’t just tits and ass and can she fuck and can she serve, Corky’s bemused trying to consider a woman’s personhood if it isn’t her body what the fuck is it? why the fuck is it? Corky doesn’t have a clue but he isn’t going to let that worry him, not now, not tonight, fuck that heavy crap, too much talk in the world and too much “communication” Corky’s thinking, “communication” of the wrong kind, Corky doesn’t know what these girls want of him, he only knows, or thinks he knows, what he wants of them.

  And oh God does he. Does he want it.

  Marilee leaning across Corky from the left, Kiki from the right, Corky guesses every guy in the Zephir’s staring at him in envy, yes and they’d be right, poor bastards. It’s cocoa-skinned Marilee whom Corky’s most dazzled by, can’t keep from sniffing her, Doggy-Corky with his nose alert and sensitive as his prick, his nose is a kind of prick he’s thinking, laughing thinking, Christ he’s drunk but happy-drunk, elated-drunk, not mean-drunk and certainly not falling-down-drunk, Corky’ll show ’em. Marilee’s bronze fingernails tapping his knuckles so Corky’s dying to seize her hand, grab hold and suck at the fingers, her exotic cornrow braids are slithering like snakes in his face, Corky’s vision is beginning to go, his eyeballs misting over, Doggy-Corky who’d like nothing better than to poke his avid nose in the crevice of Marilee’s neck, a plump dimpled fold of skin, yes and nuzzle the nape of her neck, and her breasts, he’d like nothing better than to bury his face between those hefty big-girl’s breasts, tearing through the silvery-twinkly fabric with his teeth, then down on his knees beneath the table burying his face between her thighs, his flushed-freckled face right there between her thighs, her bush he knows must be thick, kinky-wiry, very black, and her vaginal lips fleshy—warm as her lipsticked lips, and her clit that’s fat and hard and pumping-hot with blood, he’d guess it’s a larger clit than any he’d ever seen or touched or tongued or even imagined, not a Caucasian clit but a black clit, this girl may be high yellow but she is black, black blood in her, that makes a difference, Corky knows. Practically swooning now, panting like an actual dog, not trusting himself to raise his glass to drink, he’s in two places simultaneously, crowded in the booth between Marilee and Kiki and also beneath the table with his face between Marilee’s fleshy-warm-damp thighs, down there between her legs where she’s wet, slick and wet, and he’s tonguing her like mad, Corky knows how to set the pace, the rhythm, how to vary the rhythm, it’s a gradually accelerating rhythm and the pressure of the tongue must increase, he’s going to bring off Marilee right here on the sticky red-leather banquette amid the air-hammer disco, yes but they’ll stop you, somebody will stop you, no Marilee won’t let Corky stop, no Marilee has got Corky’s head pinioned between her muscular thighs and she won’t let him go, leaning back and pushing up into his face, her pelvis rocking too like mad, and the rhythm so fast now there’s almost no pause between beats like that weird thing he’d read the other night sleepless and horny 10 million trillion neutrinos speed through your brain and body in a single instant! one single instant of the unfathomable instants that constitute a life! almost no pause as Marilee leans back moaning and gasping for breath digging her bronze-polished talons into Corky’s curly hair that’s damp with sweat and murmuring “Mmmmmmmm white man, you sure do know how!” Except Corky’s so excited he’s close to losing it, if one of these girls so much as brushes her fingers against his thigh, let alone his crotch, he’s fearful he’ll come in his pants, and not inconspicuously but with a groan, a sob, a yelp, he’s terrified this is going to happen coming in his pants like a kid, like that time he was sure he was going to come in the confessional, the actual confessional!—a nightmare episode that went on and on and on as Father Sullivan interrogated him in pitiless detail about impure thoughts and practices since his previous last confession the previous Saturday, how many times a night do you commit this impure act, my son? what are the impure thoughts that accompany it, my son? do you not know that such impure thoughts and acts are like thorns in the heart of Our Savior, my son?—the old beery-breathed priest wheezing and grunting, settling his bulk closer to the confessional grill, insisting Jerome lean his mouth right against the grill to speak directly into my ear, otherwise I can’t hear you, my son, you speak so softly, I won’t be able to absolve you of your sins and these are grievous mortal sins, my son. Come closer.

  Clos-er.

  Thinking of the old priest sobers Corky, for a few minutes at least, he feels the hot-pulsing blood drain out of his cock, his thoughts aren’t so muddled, wipes his face with a cocktail napkin: Jesus, sweating like a pig. His hand’s steady enough to trust with a glass. And the girls are gaily raising theirs, delicious red wine, sparkling long-stemmed glasses, a toast to you, and to you—and to me.

  “Waitress?—another round here.”

  A good thing Corky’s in control of himself again: this flirty Kiki nudging her sharp little chin against his shoulder, her wine-stained tongue protruding between her lips, and she’s trailing her long beringed fingers against his belt buckle, the girl is high on something and not just red Bordeaux. Corky’s attracted to her, too, Kiki’s a physical type like Thalia, tall willowy-thin small-breasted narrow-thighed very young-looking and enormous-eyed girls, hectic nerved-up mannerisms, probably their pulses are faster than the normal pulse, heartbeat faster, the classic ectomorph type, or is it endomorph?—Corky can never keep the two straight, he’s a mesomorph.

  Meaning square in the middle, the most common physical type.

  Only maybe just a little too short, for a man. At five feet nine.

  Marilee’s a bit calmed too, admiring Kiki’s jewelry: her exotic earrings in particular. Corky’s noticed the half dozen gold studs in the girl’s ear, also a cruel-looking gold clamp on the outer whorl of the ear, sort of butch, sexy. Suddenly Corky’s enthralled with Kiki’s ear, it’s so delicate in its contours, so naked and exposed. He says, touching the clamp gingerly with a forefinger, “Honey, this thing must hurt like hell. What is it?”

  Kiki shivers, and giggles. The movement of her shoulders—shrinking, combative, provocative—reminds Corky of Thalia. She says huskily, “Well, Corky, maybe I like hurt.”

  Marilee takes this up, a big toothy smile. “Maybe Kiki likes hurt, ol’ Frecklehead, you ever thought of that?”

  So. Somehow it happens that Kiki removes the cruel-looking gold clamp from her ear, and Marilee, who’s wearing, this evening, big amber rhomboids, eye-catching but conventional earrings, examines it with a bemused expression, and Corky’s got to examine it, too, Corky insists upon taking it and fumbles to fit it on his own ear, and both Marilee and Kiki are dissolved in laughter, and Corky says, “Hey, gimme a hand, eh?” so Kiki fits, more precisely forces, the clamp on his ear.

  And in that instant the clamp’s on.

  “Oh God.”

  Pain like a razor slicing the outer rim of Corky’s ear. Pain like a flash of lightning blinding him. Pain like a shout, like a scream, like a shriek. Corky yanks at the clamp but it doesn’t come off, God damn it doesn’t come off, he knows he’s made a mistake already breaking into a cold sweat, trying to laugh, muttering, “It’s a little tight, it hurts—can you get it off?” Marilee and Kiki see this is sudden, serious business, Mr. Corcoran has gone dead-white in the face and looks as if he’s about to pass out. How old is he, they might be wondering. In their forties, men start to have heart attacks.

  So, biting their lips to maintain grave expressions, the girls try to pry Kiki’s clamp off Corky’s ear. His poor right ear. Poor Corky! They take turns, Marilee’s long sharp fingernails are impractical for such a task, and Kiki’s too nerved up, breathless. Minutes of mounting pain, agony, pass as the girls tug, twist, wriggle, wrench at the brutal thing, with no luck.

  Corky mut
ters, his face, his entire head, aflame, “God damn, God-damn fucking thing, this isn’t funny, God damn get it off. Get it off!” Hearing, he thinks, the girls’ muffled giggles, though when he turns to them, tears brimming in his eyes, they look innocent enough, sympathetic and apologetic. Oh so sorry, Corky!—so sorry!

  Corky’s losing it. Corky’s got a temper, and Corky’s in pain, it’s only the outer whorl, the rim, of his ear, but God! what pain!—like a torture instrument, like an instrument that’s being tightened, so he’s sweating like a pig, ashamed and panicked and in utter physical distress that’s at the same time laughable distress, poor Corky! And so clumsily on his feet the table’s almost overturned. And Kiki’s part-filled wine glass goes clattering to the floor, splashing wine on Corky’s dove-gray sharp-creased flannel Polo trousers. “Shit,” says Corky, and, “Fuck it, get this off,” says Corky, and, “God damn, this isn’t funny,” says Corky, his eyes leaking tears, his vision shimmering yet he can see, and he’ll remember seeing, the bemused faces of other patrons, quizzical glances and concerned frowns and outright smiles, grins. And Corky Corcoran in the most astonishing physical distress though it’s only, what?—a gold clamp of no more than two inches affixed to his ear. His ear!