Thirty

by Lawrence Block

  On the other hand, if he called I would be glad of it, and I would go to him. Unquestionably.

  April 6

  How could I have thought that there was something so unmasculine (if there’s such a word, and if not, there is now) about a man having sex with another man? Maybe I would feel differently if Dave and Arnold acted like homosexuals.

  Huh? What does it mean to act like a homosexual? Faggot is as faggot does, n’est-ce pas? Well, if they act effeminate, then. Campy. Like caricatures of women.

  Dave and Arnold don’t.

  Last night I sucked David while Arnold screwed him in the ass. And later I was tired, and off on a thought trip and very stoned, and I watched the two of them eat each other. Two good healthy studs with their cocks in each other’s mouths, gobbling greedily. And I got all involved in this great voyeurism trip, I really found myself getting all involved with watching, and they knew I was watching, and occasionally watched me watching them, and I played with myself, and I came that way.

  You know what? Playing with oneself is very enjoyable. It really is. And it’s nicer still to do it right out in the open, not in one’s own room behind locked doors.

  You can even turn masturbation into a togetherness thing. We talked about it and I said I would like to watch them do it sometime. Sometime in the future, because by then we were all sexed out for the night.

  Arnold said that Philip Roth has opened the whole thing up. That jerking off is In this year. That everybody has always done it, but that they thought for years they were the only ones who did. Now everybody knows everybody does it. So they can start doing it with a clear conscience.

  When you realize that we were still pretty high when he said this, you can imagine the depth it had. Logical wheels within wheels.

  Out of sight, as we freaked-out hippy weirdos say. Hippie weirdos, that is. Hippy I’m not. I never entirely was, and I’ve lost twelve pounds in the past month.

  Must be clean living.

  April 10

  It has been so long since I saw him that I answered the phone without even thinking that it might be him. He. Him. Who cares?

  I’m rattled. It’s not a familiar sensation. I’ve been in such good shape lately and now I’m uptight again.

  It was between two-thirty and three, and the phone rang, and I didn’t even think it might be Eric. I picked it up and said hello with bells in my voice.

  “Jan? I want you this evening. Come at eight.”

  “I—”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I have been out of town.”

  “I see. Uh, I have a date, sort of.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you—”

  “With the two queers.”

  “They’re not exactly—”

  “They are not expecting you tonight, Jan.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I broke your date for you. To simplify things.”

  “How could you do that.”

  “I’ll expect you at eight.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  End of conversation.

  And I suppose if I don’t go two huge men dressed in black will come here and lead me to him in chains. And I suppose if I go right now and grab a plane for Timbuktu I’ll get off the plane and step into his arms.

  I tried to reach David to break the date. No answer. Arnold would be working now, but I tried his phone to be sure. No answer.

  He says he broke my date for me. How?

  April 11

  Of course I was there at eight.

  Just now, sitting here in my own apartment a few hours after dawn, sitting here and trying to get the words flowing from the pen, it occurred to me how utterly changed I am once more after seeing him. I went back and read the entries describing the times with David and Arnold. I was, when I wrote those few pages, a girl I had never been before.

  I am not that girl any longer.

  I just now got up and went to look in the mirror. And a girl with my face looked back at me through frightened eyes. I had trouble forcing myself to look back.

  Have I written yet that I understand the mirror superstition? Or have I had that thought while gazing into a mirror, not while scribbling in this book. Let us put it down in either case. It is simply that, if The People Who Run This Zoo hadn’t decided that breaking a mirror is seven years’ bad luck, everyone would break mirrors until there were none left. Hence they invented the superstition to keep the world from running out of mirrors.

  I must have just had the thought and not written it out before. When you write it out you see what a dumb thought it is, and here I had felt myself rather clever.

  I went there last night, appearing at his door on the dot of eight. He opened the door just as I was about to knock on it. He does that sort of thing all the time.

  “Come in, Jan.”

  I went in. He closed the door.

  (No, damn it. I want to write about him in the present tense. Why?)

  I walk in. He closes the door. When it shuts my mind fills with a vision, a thick nail-studded castle door being swung shut and bolted.

  He turns to me. “Coffee?”

  “All right.”

  The coffee things are on the table in front of the large white couch. He pours, fills two small handleless cups. It is black, very strong and very sweet.

  “You enjoyed yourself with the boys?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  “You told me I should see anyone I wanted.”

  “You do not have to tell me what I told you.”

  “I thought you disapproved.”

  “No. It was a step, an important one. I am glad you enjoyed yourself.”

  “I was always at the phone from two-thirty to three. If you wanted me, I was available.”

  “Why do you justify yourself? I have not criticized you.”

  “You seem hostile.”

  “Oh?”

  “Perhaps I am mistaken.”

  “Indeed, I think you must be, Jan.”

  He sits beside me on the couch, drinks his coffee, pours himself another cup. I sense and share his tension. I look at the hairs on the backs of his hands. Of course he wears no rings on his fingers, no jewelry of any sort.

  “Jan.”

  “Yes?”

  “You won’t see the boys anymore.”

  “If they call—”

  “They won’t call.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “But—”

  “I know.”

  Fear, in the actual physical form of a chill, is upon me. I see David and Arnold broken and dead, their heads at impossible angles, their arms and legs broken, as if dropped from a great height.

  “What have you done to them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then how can you say—I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.”

  “You had a pleasant week with them. Be satisfied with that. There was no future in it, Jan.”

  “Future?”

  He gets to his feet, walks to the fire, warms his hands over the coals. He turns, looks intently at me.

  “I like your dress.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I haven’t seen it before.”

  “It’s new. I had to buy a lot of new things. I’ve lost weight.”

  “You look very nice.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Take the dress off.”

  I am not even surprised by the casual abruptness of the order. He might have been asking me to pour him another cup of coffee. I stand, strip. He looks at me appraisingly.

  “Yes, you have lost weight. You looked good before, but I think you look better now. Leaner, trimmer. No extra flesh.”

  “My breasts are smaller.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like them as well?”

  He looks at me as if the
question is inane. He tells me to sit down again. I sit and reach for my cup of coffee, drink it down, pour another.

  “You bought new clothes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Charged them to your husband.”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.” He fixes his eyes on mine, holds my gaze to his. It is uncanny how he does this.

  “I believe it is time for you to make a change, Jan. Time for a change in your life. I don’t think you should be able to depend on your husband anymore. You have some money of your own. Live on it.”

  “And when it’s gone?”

  He does not seem to have heard the question. “You have your purse with you? Let me have your credit cards, please. All of them, please. Anything that ties you to him.”

  “Nothing ties me to Howard.”

  “Then why retain the ropes?”

  I go through the purse searching for credit cards. Here’s an oil company card, here’s Diner’s Club, here’s Master Charge, here’s Bloomingdale’s, here’s Saks, here’s Lord & Taylor—

  He places them one by one on the coal fire. The cardboard ones burn, the plastic ones melt. They all go.

  “You will see no one unless I tell you to. You will stay in your apartment as much as possible or walk to the park if you are not here. Do not speak to people.”

  “Why?”

  “You may go now.”

  “Don’t you want to—”

  “Go now.”

  He is obviously out of his tree. What other explanation is there? I read somewhere once that certain types of maniacs have extremely strong and compelling personalities, and you find yourself following them through hell before you finally realize that they are certifiable. Does Eric require more explanation than that?

  What does he want with me? Sometimes I have the feeling that when he’s all done with me, when he has made me jump through the last of the hoops, when my possibilities are quite exhausted, he’ll run a spit through me and roast me over the coals and literally consume me, hair and teeth and bones and all, so that there is nothing left of me.

  Quel ridiculous. He’d do no such thing. When he’s bored with me he’ll just sell me to North African white slavers, that’s all. And let me end my days in some filthy Arab whorehouse.

  He must never find out about this diary.

  April 12

  I’ve been calling David and Arnold more or less constantly. No answer. I’m a little worried, which I suppose is not rational, but what is rational and what isn’t and how does anybody tell the difference? I had to take an antidepressant yesterday. I had been promising myself not to take them, not to need them, and for a while this was an easy promise to keep. No one feels compelled to take antidepressants when she’s walking on air. I wasn’t depressed and I didn’t need them, but yesterday I had to take one, and it didn’t do all that I hoped it would, I was still down.

  Rational. Is it rational that he should know everything I do? Does he have spies? Detectives? Or is he some comic-book hero who can see through walls?

  I hope they’re all right. I don’t know how I know this, but I’m positive he has killed people. And that he’s capable of anything.

  He owns me.

  Lock, stock and barrel. He really does.

  Oh, crap. The hell he does. If he owned me this book would not exist. I wouldn’t be writing these entries. They preserve my independence. You could even say that they constitute my independence. What independence I’ve got.

  The thing this diary does besides is to keep me together. Not keep me sane, although maybe it helps do that, or helps toward that end, I don’t know. But I keep being different people and my life keeps finding new forms and this book, “Dear Diary,” is the only constant.

  April 13

  They have disappeared into thin air.

  This isn’t funny! I keep starting to laugh, but God, there’s nothing funny about it. Nothing at all. They have absolutely fucking disappeared from the face of the fucking earth, and the obscenity is there for dramatic effect, not that the circumstances would not be sufficiently dramatic without such emphasis.

  I went to their apartments. First Arnold, then David. I sensed that this was not what my keeper would have me do, but I decided to hell with him, because I kept calling them and getting no answer and I kept imagining the worst—what else?—and finally I said the hell with it and went over there.

  And they have moved. Both of them, to parts unknown. No forwarding address. Nada.

  Now of course it is perfectly possible that this had nothing to do with me. Or with Eric. That they simply folded their tents like Arabs and disappeared into the night. It is possible, and I do not believe it for a moment.

  God, what did he do to them? Snap his fingers? Utter a magic incantation?

  I wonder why I let him destroy my charge cards. I have been thinking about that scene, how theatrical it was and at the same time how ridiculous it was. The stench of the plastic cards melting on the coal fire! Why did he want to do this, and why did I let him?

  I have to go there now. He just called, and when the strings are jiggled the puppet must dance. Au revoir.

  April 19

  It is like going to college. A tutorial course in sexual technique. He has been teaching me the most extraordinary things. Oriental accomplishments, bits of business I never believed people actually did.

  Like things from those murky books by Burton. The long ago Richard Burton, not Elizabeth’s mad Welshman. I read those books over the years, and there were certain things therein to inspire one in fantasies and other things to add a soupçon of curry powder to one’s married life (I’d like two soupçons of curry powder, s’il vous plait, and a partridge in a pear tree.)

  But I always thought Burton was a big put-on. Sir Richard is sending us up, I thought. The dear boy’s having us all on. People can’t really dangle from the chandeliers and bugger one another while drinking glasses of spiced tea and masturbating pet dogs with their toes.

  Well, we haven’t done precisely that, but I couldn’t swear that it’s not on tomorrow’s agenda. Already there are things I never dreamed I was capable of. There are ways of controlling one’s responses, of developing muscular control and physical agility. According to Eric, it is all a matter of discovering oneself, of making the acquaintance of one’s body.

  All of this sounds desperately clinical, does it not? Like a class in karate or something. And at times it does seem quite cold and austere, and would be literally ridiculous but for the particular personality of this man and its effect upon me. I suspect that, were I not so completely his property whenever I am in his presence, there are moments when I would laugh. But the impulse never even occurs to me at the time.

  And there are enough times when the passion is real enough and the classroom turns back into a bedroom like Cinderella’s coach at midnight. (Why did I put it that way, Doctor? Not at all like Cinderella’s coach at midnight, I don’t properly think. Verrrry interesting.)

  He can set me on fire with a touch, a kiss, a glance. And when we fuck it is a shaking, shattering experience. Always. There does not seem to be such a thing as a casual take-it-or-leave-it fuck with Eric. Always starbursts, always mountain peaks, always the usual purple metaphors apply.

  There’s often some pain, but I don’t seem to mind it at all these days. In fact—

  Oh, well. Yesterday there was no pain, and I missed it.

  It bothers me to write this.

  April 20

  I thought I saw Arnold on the street. A comic moment, I suppose. I ran up for a closer look, and the man turned and gave me a what-seems-to-be-wrong-with-you-little-girl look, and of course on second glance it did not look like Arnold at all, not at all. I muttered something and turned away, feeling out of sorts.

  The two of them have entirely disappeared. No trace. I only hope, well, that nothing happened. Would he do anything awful?

  I am positive he has killed people. I think he would kill people as people kill flies.
<
br />   No, wrong. He’d take some pleasure in it.

  April 24

  “You’re a sadist,” I said.

  “DeSade was a bore,” he said. “A madman with a single preoccupation and an extremely limited grasp of logic. I can’t imagine anyone reading him except for titillation, and there are so many more effective pornographers of that sort.”

  I looked at him.

  “A sadist? A disciple of his? Could you honestly believe that of me?”

  “I meant you take pleasure from inflicting pain. Sadomasochism. That bag.”

  “Everyone does,” he said briskly. “It has nothing to do with that French idiot.”

  April 27

  He tied me up and spanked me on the bottom with his bare hand. Spanked me.

  As hard as he could. It wasn’t a game, and it still hurts hours later.

  I came, just from that. A completely different type of orgasm from the usual. It burst upon me rather without warning. Very strange.

  May 1

  Another month.

  Four of them gone in this my thirtieth year. Eight of them yet to go.

  I haven’t felt much like writing in this book. (Or in anything else.) In the past couple of weeks my world has closed up. Or closed in on me. There are great stretches of time in which nothing seems to happen. When I am not with him I hardly seem to exist.

  I force myself to eat, but still continue to lose weight. I have never been really thin before. Thin in the sense that another would look at me and say, “That girl is too thin, she ought to gain a few pounds.” Thin enough so that, if the present trend continues, I will begin to look like something out of Dachau, and not long out of Dachau at that. I think I like being thin, actually. I think I like my body very much. There is nothing superfluous about it.

  How do I spend the hours? The odd thing is that I hardly seem to know myself. When I am not with him—and I only see him every few days, and only for several hours at a time—life loses its color and becomes a black-and-white movie, colorless and lacking in dimension.