What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And if not your own, whose?

  They fumble at each other’s clothes like kids. Ritual unzipping, unbuttoning. Careful!—don’t tear. Repeated whiskey-kisses like vows of confirmation a few seconds’ neglect might revoke. Kissing so much more intimate than fucking, Corky has to force himself not to think of the woman he really wants to be kissing, fucking, wouldn’t want Charlotte to know, not right now. She’s embracing Corky’s hips, tugging at his trousers and shorts bravely burying her face in his groin Love love love oh Corky nobody but you and Corky’s embarrassed and excited hot with urgency now his prick’s hardening, he’ll be O.K. And she won’t ask him to put on a condom, she wants him just as he is. Asking him does he love her and Corky isn’t listening, Corky’s grunting, sure, O.K., he isn’t one to talk at such a time, for Christ’s sake the point of fucking is you don’t need to talk isn’t it? Trying not to think of Christina, nor of Thalia. Nor of Kiki. God damn! He’s losing it. No, he’s got it. He’s O.K. The ridiculous leather sofa sinking and wheezing beneath them like a partly awakened third party, roused too, sexy. But leather’s impractical—his knees skid. His heated face against a cushion, the skin sticking, slapping. Fuck it! But this lovemaking is so spontaneous, so unpremeditated, thus so innocent neither can reasonably suggest they move somewhere else—to a bed, for instance. In any case it’s Charlotte’s prerogative as the hostess to make such a suggestion but she’s too distracted to do so, lying invitingly beneath Corky, reaching up to frame his face in her beringed hands and to kiss him on the mouth, her eyes shuddering whitely upward in their sockets. Her need, her terrible need. Hungry void that must be filled.

  Corky’s erect cock is bouncing against his stomach, thighs, like it’s alive, rod-hard. Made me love you. Didn’t want to do it.

  Charlotte’s fleshy thighs part, then moistly close, Corky now kneeling clumsily between, a boy’s supplicant gesture, so embraced, enclamped. He’s sucking a fat goosebump of a nipple, face mashed yearning against a breast both softly flaccid and milky-stolid, you’d swear there was a milky liquid inside, fleshing out the contours of the organ as blood flushes out the contours of Corky’s penis. Did you ever want to fuck your own mother like they say you’re supposed to, Corky’s roommate that brief semester at Rensselaer once asked him, with a look of bemused disdain—I sure never did! and Corky’s wise-guy grin froze and after a moment Corky too laughed, in derision—I sure never did, either!

  Discovering the little tinfoil packet of Trojans under their mattress, rubbing the imprint of the circle wonderingly with his thumb. Always, dirty-minded Corky seemed to know, sniggering with his friends in the boys’ entryway at Our Lady of Mercy, words of precious filth fuck cock cunt cocksucker blow-job like the words of the rosary, if you’re a Catholic kid you seemed always to have known them. Jerking off after confession, after mass. Into the toilet. Corky’s milky-filmy semen. A tearing sensation like flame, then the release, the shock of it, you’re never prepared. Bless me Father for I have sinned.

  Corky has moved into his old rhythm making love to Charlotte with his instinct for what she needs, he’s a good lover to any woman seeming to know what the woman needs, attentive to the subtlest exertions, responses. But he’s annoyed discovering Charlotte less wet than, for all this passion, you’d think she’d be, and tighter too, that coyness that’s a matter of vaginal muscles held in and resisting, or seeming to resist, inviting him to force her—just a little. Oh! oh darling. Every fuck a rape. But not every rape a fuck, they say it’s not sex but the desire to hurt, to humiliate, to kill. But why isn’t that sex, too? Women like it, slammed smacked punched kicked fucked until they scream, sometimes you’d swear they’re bleeding, so soft in there, a silky-rosy glove; something to tear. Coming like dying: the heart kicks, stops. Then starts again, racing. That first time, in Corky’s bed in his bachelor apartment, the rich man’s daughter screaming, sobbing. The rawness of it, the terrible need, a woman could break your spine if she was strong enough, madness rushing through her. Praying mantis, chewing the male’s head off. And the male continuing to copulate, faster and more efficient than before. Love love love oh Corky yes like that: oh!

  The thick-rooted stem of his penis nudging her clit, the rest of him deep inside her, buried to the hilt. Deep in the womb. Sucked in. His heart expands in tenderness for her—nothing this good between the two of them for years. Or is he drunk. The Red Label’s a warm sweet mist in his brain within minutes of his having finished his drink as if hours of steady drinking had been economically, practicably condensed. Rarely has Corky Corcoran made love to any woman or girl without this comforting mist in his brain. Stone cold sober you see too clearly, everything’s magnified, nerves spine ganglia glans cease functioning. Praying mantises copulating, their heads chewed off. Nature knows best. You can’t quarrel with Nature. Over the rim of the black hole you’re sucked inside and every molecule of your being destroyed so that the very fact of your extinction is itself destroyed, you’re obliterated so entirely you’ve never been.

  Corky works himself up to a frenzy then stops to catch his breath, this is the rhythm Charlotte seems to need, he’s gripping her soft bunchy ass in both his hands driving himself into her with increasing force then pausing panting for breath Jesus what if he has a heart attack! a heart attack screwing his own ex-wife! but don’t think of that, now’s not the time, again working up his rhythm, like that Nautilus exercise the stair-climber, start slow to build up fast, try to conserve your breath. Mouth-panting, and you’re finished. The trick’s to breathe through the nose exclusively. The male has to be in charge, the male’s at the helm, penis like a rudder. This old rhythm to which they’re shaped like old shoes to the contours of feet: misshapen feet, misshapen shoes. But a good fit. Corky swivelling his hips grinding and pumping and grunting like a monkey, it’s returning to him like tissue-memory in his feet, left jab, tentative right cross when he dreams of boxing or in his fingers striking the piano’s keys without premeditation Glow little glowworm glimmer glimmer no conscious mind intervening: a miracle. Stop to think and you’re finished. And Charlotte too, sheer instinct, hunger. Clutching at him a panicked desperation to her cries Oh! oh! oh! sharp as birds’ cries and her wild white-rimmed eyes flung open blind, pelvis thrusting upward to meet Corky, legs clamped around Corky’s laboring ass, ankles crossed but slipping with sweat, Corky at last feels her coming like the breaking of a great wave, poised for a fraction of an instant at its crest, then breaking, a succession of breaking waves, washing over him, powerful enough to wash him away.

  Love love love oh Corky oh God don’t leave me ever again.

  Hey: it’s O.K.

  Do you still love me?

  Sure.

  Pauses dazed with exhaustion, his heart racing and breath labored, he’s not a kid any longer screwing like a jackhammer, now it’s his turn and he’s a little scared, this tightness in his chest, the way the woman is clutching, caressing him, hands moving up and down his body, reclaiming it, like she’s given birth to him, I love you I miss you you’re my husband, Corky’s cock is the fleshy rod that joins them, without it where’s love? Charlotte kisses him full on the mouth, her tongue nudging his, mouths sucking, Corky responds by instinct, Corky’s all instinct, stop to think and you’re finished and Christ is it flattering, fucking another man’s wife yet sensing the shadowy presence of no other man, no cock to compete with his own after all, he’s the man: Corky Corcoran. What’s the secret of fucking but knowing you’ll never die?—Corky pushing bravely now to his own orgasm, like swimming through a chaos of frothy heaving water, trying to hold his head above the water, his mouth, bared teeth, tendons in his neck and arteries at his temples at the point of bursting, he’s a balloon blown up to the point of bursting, forcing himself forward then suddenly sucked forward, violently: over the rim.

  Over, and out.

  “What time is it?—holy Jesus!”

  Corky stares at his watch. How’s it come to be 11:19 P.M.?

  Wakened from a groggy sleep
entwined with a warm naked sleeping woman not immediately identifiable since their surroundings are wholly unfamiliar. Not the wheezing leather sofa in the “family” room he might be able to recall if he made the effort but a king-sized bed he doesn’t remember crawling into. A bedside lamp, its shade askew, is on. An empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, two empty glasses are on the table. Corky’s naked except for his watch reading 11:20 P.M. The sleeping woman is waking, turning to him, “Oh, Corky—don’t go, yet”—he sees it’s Charlotte, maybe this is a hotel room, they’re still married?—maybe this is a dream, of their still being married? Corky’s hoping that might be the explanation but the effect of the alcohol has waned, this explanation isn’t plausible.

  You shithead, now what’ve you done?

  How’re you going to get out of this, now?

  Charlotte calls after him as hurriedly Corky uses the bathroom, runs cold water and splashes it onto his face, then he’s back in the bedroom that’s wholly unfamiliar to him and that he has no desire to examine, it’s enough to know it isn’t his but another man’s and Corky has never in his adulterous career fucked any woman in a bedroom in a house the property of another man let alone slept with her for hours in a state of alcoholic oblivion, not just the risk of such an act but the insult: on another male’s turf, spilling your semen, it’s one tomcat spraying another’s territory, it’s dangerous.

  Charlotte’s suggesting that Corky stay the night, “Gavin” won’t be home until the following afternoon, but Corky’s adamant, Corky’s insistent upon leaving, mildly panicked recalling he’d undressed in another room, a downstairs room, but where? Charlotte appeals to him as if in an old argument resurfacing, “—I realize you’re involved with another woman, that’s what I’ve heard, and it doesn’t matter to me, I accept it, I should have accepted it while we were married, that was my mistake,” wrapping an ivory silk negligee about herself, not very steady on her feet looking at Corky searchingly, and Corky’s gently pushing her hands off him, what the fuck’s he gotten himself into now, and drinking again, hard liquor, that’s the worst disappointment of all. Panic has made him sober, stone cold sober, not a desirable state when you’re bare-assed naked vulnerable as a crustacean without its shell in another man’s bedroom in another man’s house, the thought crosses his mind that Pierson might have a gun he, Corky, might borrow, but it’s a thought too fleeting to be absorbed, in the face of Charlotte’s alarming appeal that she and Corky see each other at least once a week—“I’ve realized how I miss you, how I love you, I know you but I love you, Corky—that’s a true measure of love.”

  Corky laughs, shocked. Trying to talk sense into Charlotte without hurting her feelings, “For God’s sake, Charlotte! You’re married to another man, you’re in love with another man, you don’t mean what you’re saying!”

  “I’m not twenty-six years old any longer, I’m forty-six, I mean everything I say,” Charlotte protests, as if her integrity has been challenged, “—and lots of things I don’t say. Oh, Corky!”

  “But what about Gavin? He’s so much better for you than I ever was. He’s decent, he’s kind, he’s got money—real money—”

  “Oh he is, I suppose he is,” Charlotte says quickly, her eyes misting over, “—he’s even better for me, as a husband. But he isn’t you.”

  Corky, shivering and sweating at the same time, edging toward the door, says, disbelieving, “Charlotte, look: when you had me, you hated me. And with good reason. Don’t you remember?”

  Charlotte wraps her arms around him and leans her head against his shoulder, clumsy in affection, giddy. “I miss hating you. I miss you,” she says, hiccuping. “Corky, don’t you feel the same way about me? I know you do!”

  Corky thinks, No. Fuck it no but can’t say such words to this woman more open to him now than she’d been with her legs spread, poor sweet Charlotte. He’s been a shit to her in the past and maybe he can make it up to her in the future. Maybe.

  “Charlotte, we’ll talk about it some other time, O.K.? I’ll call you. We can get together. Where are my fucking clothes?”

  “You do love me, then? At least—a little?”

  Corky kisses her roughly, missing her mouth. “Sure.”

  How else to be led back downstairs to his clothes, how else but to utter that word, stone cold sober.

  And in the “family” room Corky dresses hurriedly for the second time in this long day stretching out of sight as to the horizon and beyond to oblivion, throwing his clothes on in undignified haste in the presence of a woman, not the woman he loves but a woman, it might be any woman, Woman. Clothing himself, shielding himself, his limp cock, from her scrutiny. What do they see, seeing us? What do they know? Corky’s hands are trembling but he manages. Doesn’t bother with his socks, fuck his socks, stuffs them in his coat pocket and jams his bare feet into his shoes and let’s get the hell out of here.

  Corky would say goodbye to Charlotte at the door but, in her extravagant mood, she insists upon following him outside to his car, wincing barefoot on the pebbled drive, leaning heavily on his arm. It’s a cold night for May, dampness and mist rising from the earth. And a moon startlingly bright floating atop a crest of gauzy clouds, a pale-glowering lidless eye. Corky and Charlotte stare up at it, for a moment sobered. Charlotte whispers, “The moon’s never been so close to the Earth before—has it?” Corky frowns seeing those thin gauzy strips of cloud so like smoke, pale smoke, a soul turned to smoke and blown by the wind, ascending—where?

  Time for this poor soul to go to Heaven.

  “Don’t exaggerate,” Corky says, “—we’re not that important.”

  Corky climbs into his car, thank God for his car, his, he’s got the key in the ignition even before Charlotte leans voluptuously through the open window to give him a last open-mouthed kiss redolent of whiskey, she’s shivering happily crazy cunt naked beneath her flimsy negligee in the driveway of her $1-million split-level home at 23 Quail Ridge Pass, Chateauguay Falls, New York, forearms crossed beneath her big loose breasts supporting their weight and seeming to offer them too to Corky, to be kissed. It seems impolite to start the motor while Charlotte is kissing him, and the kiss goes on for some time.

  When at last Charlotte speaks, her words seem pointedly slurred in the moonlight, as if amplified. “You will, Jerome? You promise?”

  Corky only dimly registers this shift from “Corky” to “Jerome.” And he isn’t sure what the promise is. But, what the hell—“Sure, sweetheart. I’m your man.”

  Part IV

  Memorial Day 1992

  1

  The Impersonator

  Say this is the last day of your life, asshole: how are you going to spend it? Stone cold sober?

  No. Yes. God damn yes.

  I’m strong enough, I can do it.

  Help me?

  Waking in a shabby Days Inn at exit 14 of I-190 in a no-man’s-land of fast-food restaurants, gas stations, motels, discount outlets approximately six miles north of the Union City city limits where, the night before, that’s to say in the early hours of this morning, Corky’d taken a room for a rock-bottom twenty-nine dollars plus tax. Figuring no one would look for him in such a dump. No one who knew him.

  Had to do it. Why?—don’t ask. Just a premonition. Couldn’t go home. That big echoing house, never really his. A mausoleum. What if the security system’s been disconnected, what if, unarmed, he’d stepped into a trap.

  Man, yo’ sho is gettin parry-noid, ain’t yo’!—Roscoe Beechum’s mocking voice in Corky’s ear.

  Suddenly Corky’s back in the Zanzibar, pleading. Why won’t they serve him food, why not even coffee. He’s a friend to blacks but the fuckers won’t recognize him—they think he’s white!

  His heart’s broken. His civil rights have been violated. He’ll get even, somehow.

  And him with $1000 in his wallet.

  What am I in their eyes, a nigger?

  Like, you could say, anybody who’s fucked is a cunt?

  Corky
shudders, tries to wake up, his heart’s pounding he needs to wake up to protect himself but he’s paralyzed, locked in that stupor not sleep yet not full wakefulness, the side of his face pressed against a cheap chenille bedspread smelling of damp and must and it’s sure to leave sharp red creases in his cheek, Help me? help? this state that’s maybe what stroke victims experience, conscious but not-conscious, helpless hearing their loved ones debate, Should we pull the plug? Or wait? But why wait?

  An organ out of the ceiling thundering Bach. The conveyor belt, the furnace doors. Afterward, smoke lifting skyward. Bone-white, mushroom-shaped.

  Scratching his balls, which feel tender. Cool-clammy, like the circulation’s dead. Do these things shrink? Prostate “trouble,” it’s a matter of time. Hey: a woman was stroking him there just a few hours ago . . . or was that a dream?

  A bad dream.

  How many years of his life he’d used to wake up, that’s to say be awakened, by those violent hard-ons, as a kid. A snake down there growing out of his groin, independent-minded. Urgent as the worst need to piss, jerking himself off in a few deft angry strokes saliva drooling down his chin like jism Bless me Father for I have sinned forever and ever Amen.

  Just those words Bless me Father for I have sinned whispered lewdly among the guys in Corky’s class, even lining up for communion on special Holy Days when the whole school went, would set them off. Wild helpless giggling, choking. Bless me Father!

  Except it doesn’t go on forever. It’s rare now. And wet dreams, rare now. Next birthday he’s forty-four if he lives that long, beyond that fifty which frankly he can’t imagine, not Corky Corcoran. Nobody teaches you how to grow up. By the time you get where you’re going the rest of them are gone, there’s no there.

  Dying for a cigarette!—so he’s in this dream (except he seems to know it is a dream, thus won’t work) lighting up, slow deep drags into his lungs and the tremulous wait for the nicotine to hit. Like the heroin rush: you’re Jesus’ son.