Thirty

by Lawrence Block

  He smiled at something. “You might say she is my psychic daughter. Not my biological daughter, more’s the pity.”

  “Why?”

  “One ought to be able to make love to one’s daughters, one’s sisters, one’s mother. But I have no family.”

  “No one at all?”

  “I’m totally unrelated. Did you ever have sex with a relative, Jan?”

  “Only if you count my husband.”

  “I don’t think we should count your husband.”

  “Then the answer’s no. I’ve told you about everything I’ve ever done.”

  “But you’ve done so little.”

  “I know.”

  “You never sucked off a loving older brother? Or fingered a sister?”

  “I was an only child, really, Eric—”

  “Or warmed your father’s bed? Never fucked your father, dear?”

  “He’s dead. I would really like it a whole lot if we talked of other things.”

  “Sometimes those things which make you uncomfortable do you the most good.”

  “Even so.”

  “Yes.” He lit a cigarette, smoked in deep thoughtful drags. “You’ll have to meet Susan sooner or later,” he said at length. “You’ll enjoy her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “A girl.”

  “She’s only a child, isn’t she? She can’t be more than, I don’t know, seventeen?”

  “She’s fifteen.”

  “That’s so desperately young.”

  “Half your age.”

  “I was thinking that, of course.”

  “They grow up faster now, you know. This new generation is an interesting one. Their entire biological clock is different, you know. Speeded up. Their minds work differently, their eyes see differently.”

  “Television children.”

  “Atomic children, acid children, rock children. I met Susan two and a half years ago. She was twelve. For two weeks she never left that room. I brought her meals there. Then for some time she lived here.”

  “My God!”

  “She is half your age, but the things she knows now, the things she has done—”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No, I don’t think you can.”

  He poured more wine into my glass. I sipped it. I had never had plum wine before. It has a rather haunting taste.

  I asked him how old he was.

  “I’m ancient,” he said.

  “We’re all ancient.”

  “No, I truly am.” He grinned richly. “I was middle aged when they built the pyramids. I was old when they tacked Christ to the Cross.”

  “And you were there.”

  “Who’d miss a good show?”

  “Sometimes I think—”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  What had I been about to say? That he is the devil incarnate? Something like that? Probably. The obvious line.

  Why didn’t I say it?

  Arnold just called, while I was writing. Was I free tomorrow night? Eric has made it plain that I am to see other men whenever I wish, that I am only obliged to be available for him when he wants me. (White of him.) Even so, I almost told Arnold I was going to be busy. Something makes me want to limit myself to Eric, to exist only while I am with him.

  I decided to fight this impulse. Especially since this was the first I had heard from him since the fight I started, and if I brushed him off now I would probably never hear from him again. I told him I would like to see him. He was pleased, said he would pick me up. We arranged a time.

  I said, “Arnold—”

  “Yes?”

  “I was awfully bitchy. Tons of unwarranted hostility.”

  “Oh, everybody’s entitled now and then.”

  “No. I was a bitch. I was afraid of certain things and I was being defensive. I don’t want to go into it now. Listen, I was thinking that maybe I would like to smoke tomorrow night, if you’ll have anything.”

  “I always do. I thought that wasn’t your scene.”

  “Well, I’d like to try again.”

  “Sure.”

  “And you were talking about, oh, how to put this, about three not being a crowd.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I think so. Yes, yes, I am.”

  A trenchant pause. “Look, uh, Jan, don’t force yourself. I mean, we all of us have our little hangups, and maybe I was trying to sell mine a little too forcefully. Don’t rush into something you don’t want.”

  “I think I want it.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then I know a fellow whom I think you would like. You and I could have dinner first and then meet him, or it might be more comfortable if the three of us went out for dinner together.”

  “You decide.”

  “All right.”

  “There’s only one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Tomorrow’s the twenty-eighth? I might have to meet with my lawyer and my husband’s lawyers to work out the separation agreement. It’s a nuisance the way it keeps being postponed. If they do see it for tomorrow I’ll try to get out of it. I’ll know by three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Then I’ll call you around three-thirty just to make sure?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  You’re such a calculating bitch, Giddings.

  March 28

  Eric didn’t call. The phone rang promptly at three-thirty. Arnold, checking to see if the coast was clear. I told him the meeting with the lawyers had been indefinitely postponed. Did this mean I was running out of bread? I told him I was all right. Because if I needed any money he might be able to help. I told him thanks but not for the time being.

  It’s all arranged, he said. He and David will come by for me at six-thirty.

  What a strange feeling this is. A date with two men. Tonight I will meet them and we will presumably relax and talk together, all of us silently thinking ahead.

  I just called Howard’s office. Just now, after writing that last paragraph. Why? I guess I had been thinking about him, after using him as a potential cop-out in case Eric had wanted me this evening.

  Of course there is no separation agreement nor will there be one. I charged some clothing the other day. And a handbag on his Mastercharge card. I wonder if he will stop those charge accounts. It might not occur to him. Sometimes it takes months for a purchase to show up on a statement. Except that it would be typical for Howard to go to a lawyer the day I left him, just to touch all the bases as he would say it, and the lawyer would probably tell him to close the accounts.

  Why should I worry? I haven’t had any trouble using the cards yet. And they’re never going to arrest me. The worst that could happen is that they tell me they can’t accept the cards or something along those lines.

  I have plenty of money anyway.

  I didn’t talk to him. I dialed the office and asked for his extension and his secretary answered. I wonder if he’s fucking her. She’s a real honey-voiced thing. I asked for Howard. She asked who was calling. I said Gloria Steinem. God knows why. It was the first name that came to mind. The stupid girl got it wrong anyway. “One moment, Miss Stein.” Dumb bitch.

  When Howard came on I let him say hello a few times. I didn’t say anything. He said, “Nobody on the line,” and hung up.

  Why did I want to hear his voice? A genuine puzzle. To convince myself that he still exists?

  I did love him once. I know I did. And he me. I wish I knew what happened. Somewhere along the way we must have started being different people. I stopped being me and I became very boring, and so did Howard, and we were two boring people leading a boring life. That’s what happened to us.

  Why?

  I don’t know. Happens to everybody.

  Any way for people to avoid it?

  Probably not. Or maybe yes. Don’t get married, don’t get in ruts, fuck constantly. That might do it.

  I feel wonderful. Really
wonderful. Groovy and all that stuff. Happy and loose and free.

  March 29

  I almost feel too good to write.

  In fact I do. More later. Like tomorrow.

  April 2

  The last entry was supposed to be about what happened with Arnold and David.

  I think I’ll sort that out now.

  They picked me up at six-thirty, the two of them. Arnold was wearing a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches and dungarees. David wore a leather maxi coat, one of those German-officer jobs with acres of lapels. He had a slightly Prussian look about him, longish blondish hair, finely chiseled features. The well-spoken SS man who loves chamber music and likes to burn girls with cigarettes.

  He didn’t exactly look like a faggot, but then neither does Arnold. But when you saw them both together it was not hard to believe it of them. Maybe this is simply because one is conditioned to believe it of any two men seen together, especially if they look any more sensitive than total clods.

  I was all prepared to be very uptight at the first meeting. Surprise—everything is very cool and easy. They come to the door, I invite them in for a drink. We each have glass of wine, then across town to a Korean restaurant that David likes. Ginseng cocktails before dinner. Fried seaweed, other weird things. Everything tasted so great it didn’t bother me to think about what I was eating. We had a second round of ginseng cocktails. They were like daiquiris but with an aftertaste. Of ginseng, one would assume. They’re supposed to be very yang, which means something if you understand the macrobiotic diet, which I don’t. They’re also supposed to be aphrodisiacal, which they may be, and then again they may not be. Who could tell?

  We went from the restaurant to David’s apartment, which was mildly slummy but a much better proposition than Arnold’s, much less depressing and better furnished and not all those fucking flights of stairs to climb. We were really beautifully relaxed with one another. You could actually feel a three-way love thing developing, a bond uniting me with David, me with Arnold, and Arnold with David.

  Not love.

  What, then? Call it a moral equivalent for love.

  (Not my phrase. David used it.)

  We talked. I don’t remember what about. Not about things, really, but just loose bubbling talk. We were already high, a little from what we had had to drink, and more from being high on each other. Arnold and I sat on the floor on pillows while David got the grass ready. There was music playing. Mozart. David likes only classical music, has no interest whatsoever in the new sounds. Mozart played. Arnold kissed me. I sucked his tongue, put my hand on his leg. David came back, holding a little brass water pipe, Indian or Ceylonese, I forget. There was a discussion about that at some point, whether the water pipe was Indian or Ceylonese, and we established tentatively that it was one or the other.

  David sat on the floor with us. He touched Arnold’s cheek, twirled Arnold’s moustache. David is clean shaven with a schoolgirl complexion. He leaned across Arnold and kissed me. I reached around so that I could hug them both at once. “I love you both,” I said. “Oh, I love you both.”

  The grass was a mixture of Panama Red and hashish. Panama Red is a particular kind of marijuana which is supposed to be particularly good, I guess. No one explained, just announced the composition as if stating a premium brand name. Panama Red. Gee, Dad, a Wurlitzer.

  I hid my ignorance under a bushel.

  The little water pipe passes from hand to hand. I suck gently on the mouthpiece, take the smoke directly into my lungs. (At least I remember that much.) The smell is of course familiar, not only from college days but because you smell grass all over New. York, constantly. People smoke in the streets, not hiding in closets as we just about did in college. But the taste is also familiar. I remember it from that far back.

  It is very mild in my throat and lungs. I remembered it as being harsh and hot but this is milder than a cigarette. Very much so. And the pipe passes, with no urgency, no need to get high too quickly, and we talk.

  I remember none of the conversation. Or maybe it’s that what I remember isn’t worth recording. It was all in and of that particular moment but doesn’t wear well.

  The truth is that I was high before I realized it. At one point I was sitting there, not at all conscious that I was high yet, and I got up and started to move to the music, and it came to me that I wanted to be naked, that my clothes were confining me, choking me. I stood there swaying to Mozart—and why had I never before realized that Mozart could be danced to, that Mozart did everything but demand to be danced to? And in time to Mozart I removed every stitch of clothing, brandishing each piece gaily before me, then tossing it away like a stripper flipping garments into the wings.

  Somewhere in the course of this performance I realized, with a cheerful little giggle, that I was absolutely stoned out of my head.

  David pulled his turtleneck over his head. Arnold unbuttoned his shirt. Time and space were all grass-distorted. They undressed all the way and glided smiling toward me. I kissed one and then the other. I closed my eyes and went back and forth, from one to the other, kissing them, and I didn’t even know who I was kissing. David was clean shaven and had no hair on his chest but I was stoned and seemed to be simultaneously kissing a man with a moustache and pressing my breasts against a hairless chest.

  I singsonged, “Georgie, Porgie, we’re gonna have an orgy!”

  And we fell down laughing.

  I sat on the floor and they sat on either side of me and we necked. I took David’s cock in one hand and Arnold’s in the other. They were both nice and hard. I leaned one way to kiss the tip of one, leaned the other way to kiss the other.

  Everything felt so clean.

  They carried me to the bed. Lifted me and carried me, one at my head and one at my feet, swinging me gaily as they walked. They put me on the bed and got on the bed with me. I lay with my eyes closed and I floated. Off in space, spaced out, weird, I don’t know all the words for where I was, so stoned, so utterly stoned on grass and hash, and I don’t have the experience or the vocabulary to convey the state I was in.

  And they began to make love to me.

  The foreplay must have gone on for an hour. Both of them busy at once, and me the apex of the triangle, all their attentions focused entirely upon me. Kisses here and there, hands ever busy, two mouths and four hands and the special perception of grass and hash making me feel everything separately and yet everything together.

  Interesting, this. I had thought that group sex would be, well, confusing. Hard to follow.

  Strange.

  How to put it?

  Well, I had thought that it would be complicated by the difficulty of relating to more than one person at a time. And on a more physical level, by the difficulty of paying physical attention to more than one set of caresses. If you were really enjoying having your breast sucked, how to contend with the simultaneous assault of another tongue upon your clitoris?

  Hah!

  Take my word for it, Mirror Girl. If you tried it, you would find a way to enjoy it.

  Oh, wow!

  I think the grass makes a tremendous difference. Although since that first time I’ve seen them again and we haven’t always smoked although we usually do, and you can get almost the same effect without the grass. Not as strong but you can do it. David says that the grass is abeacon, it shows you the way, and then you can make the same trip later or in the darkness once you know the route. I think it’s a particularly good metaphor, it says it all.

  I wonder if there isn’t a major connection, though, between grass and group sex. The big use of the one and the big new thing for the other. They all come out of the same new openness, I know that, but maybe there’s more. Group sex is psychedelic, I guess.

  The first time, on David’s bed, everything was for me, everything. They did not touch each other at all. It was not really three-way sex but a woman being loved by two men. And it was, oh—

  After those subjective hours of foreplay, after a
n endless coming, hours of coming, after taking them in turn into my mouth and hands, after feeling all of them everywhere, they put me on my side. Arnold’s long slender penis skewered me from behind, shishkebabed my bottom (The pain that had been there when Eric did this was not present now. I had learned—from Eric’s teaching—to relax the sphincter and enjoy it. And Arnold was somewhat slimmer, and I think used a lubricant in the bargain.) And then, while my bottom held Arnold nicely in place, David came at me from the front and touched my breasts and kissed my mouth and slid his own nicely curved penis into my cunt.

  Sheer heaven. They remained relatively still at first and I rocked back on Arnold, then forward at David, and on each stroke there was the double sensation, the sensation of the one ever-so-gently withdrawing and the other ever-so-gently attacking, and then as we were more comfortable and secure in the position they began to take up the movements, double-fucking me and at the same time using my body to fuck each other. I could never describe this effectively, I could write about it forever and not get it all down. There was so much going on! Perception so acute, all that grass and hash going for us, all that sweet control, that ability to slide one’s concentration into any part of one’s body, and God, God, it was wonderful.

  Afterward I lay with utter rivers of sperm dripping out of me fore and aft and feeling like a goddess, a goddess.

  Since then we’ve done everything, everyone doing everything to everyone, and it’s been great, but the first time was somehow special. First times are supposed to be special, aren’t they?

  Everything is so nice and free and easy these days.

  April 3

  Eric still hasn’t called.

  I am of two minds about this, she said deliberately. No, I really am. On the one hand I would just as soon he never called. He had his fun with me, she said grimly. And I with him, as far as that goes, and it did open me up, no question about it.

  But.

  But he scares the shit out of me, to be both crude and accurate about it. So on the one hand I would as soon stay with what I’ve got, that being David and Arnold and the sun in the morning and the moon at night.