Thirty

by Lawrence Block

  Nor do I remember taking the pills, but it’s evident that I did. I suppose I must have thought I was taking sleeping pills. I don’t own any sleeping pills, and after last night I think it might be a good idea never to own any sleeping pills. I had never considered myself as potentially suicidal before. I thought about suicide the way anyone with a sense of reality is apt to think about it, but it was like Mark Twain and the weather, I thought about it but never did anything about it. (Like Mark Twain and the weather, Gracie?) But last night I was not only stupid enough to try to kill myself but stupid enough to go about it wrong. Judging from the empty bottles on the bathroom floor, I must have swallowed about fifty aspirins and a dozen antidepressants. I have no idea what the cumulative effect of antidepressants might be—I suppose they could just sort of lift you off into euphoria or something. Except they aren’t exhilarants (if there is such a word, I bet that’s not how you spell it) but just antidepressants that neutralize a bad mood.

  Well, none of this matters. Judging from the little pill-studded pool of vomit by the side of the bed, which I will have to feel much better than I do now before I can bring myself to clean up, I might as well have taken sleeping pills or even cyanide for the amount of time it stayed with me.

  So you have to call it a bona fide suicide attempt, but whether or not you call it a close shave I do not know.

  I haven’t been writing in this book much lately. I haven’t even been thinking much lately. I see Eric, I see Susan, I see the two of them together.

  I think I’m coming unglued. I can be flip here today, I have to be flip here today, if I am less than flip here today I might try walking out the fucking window (or fucking out the walking window? Heh-heh, heh-heh), but I do not feel flip. What I feel is sick, awfully sick, sicker than I remember ever having felt before. Sick in mind and body. A sick mind in a sick body.

  I have to go out and have something to eat. I absolutely have to eat. And the thought of food turns my stomach. Absolutely turns my stomach. There’s a word for this but I don’t remember what it is. A medically recognized condition in which the poor schmuck gets nauseous at the thought of food and simply doesn’t eat, getting thinner and thinner until he or she either recovers or dies, I think.

  Those would seem to be the two logical alternatives.

  I wonder if I have it, whatever the hell it’s called. I don’t suppose I can get very much thinner without dying. Except that’s not exactly true. Maybe it’s all in my mind, the way I perceive myself. I don’t think I’m really as scrawny as I think I am.

  I will go out now and have a big plate of spaghetti (ugh!) and somehow eat it all. Well, maybe not spaghetti, now that I think about it. But something, somewhere.

  Everything will be all right, she said bravely.

  June 21

  “Jan, you ought to go out more.”

  “Go out more?”

  “Yes. You should meet people. You should talk to men, get acquainted with them.”

  “But you told me otherwise, Eric.”

  “Times change.”

  “So it seems.”

  “One reaches a new stage in one’s development.”

  “And have I reached a new stage?”

  “You are about to.”

  “You know, I never understand what this is all about. What the point of all this is. You know that I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

  “Yes.”

  “Though sometimes I wonder why that is.”

  “Because you want it that way, Jan.”

  “Do I?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  “Don’t be oblique.”

  “I—”

  “You have to be owned and directed. That’s very obvious. And you’ve come a long way, you know.”

  “I’ve certainly come a lot, anyway.”

  He turns, walks to the window, addresses his remarks in its direction.

  “I think you should move about more. Go to some bars and cocktail lounges. Dress attractively. Affect an open personality. Smile warmly.”

  “You mean let myself get picked up.”

  “If the opportunity arises, why not?”

  “You told me you didn’t want me to go with any other men.”

  “That was at another stage in your growth.”

  “Eric, what happened to those boys?”

  “Boys?”

  “David and Arnold.”

  “Oh, your two fairies. Why, I don’t know what happened to them. Why do you ask?”

  “They disappeared.”

  “Fairies have a propensity for disappearing. They do it all the time.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Did you . . . do something to them?”

  He looks at me, stares into my eyes until I turn from him. Then, briskly, “I’ll be unavailable for a while. I’m leaving town, I may be away for some time.”

  “And Susan—”

  “Susan is also unavailable.”

  “I see.”

  “So you might find it profitable to develop some other contacts. With men or women, as you prefer.”

  “Profitable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean I’m supposed to fuck men for money?”

  A raised eyebrow, more of the smile. “Is that what you think you want to do, Jan?”

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what he wants of me, what he really wants of me. I don’t know . . . anything.

  Oh.

  June 24

  I thought, oh, that it would be completely mechanical. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could do it. Not at all. I knew I could do it.

  I can do anything, can’t I? All the things I thought I couldn’t do. There was a time when I didn’t think I could sleep with anyone but Howie. (Sleep with—what a strange euphemism! And yet I really have not slept with anyone but Howie. I had this thought a few days ago. It’s absolutely true. I have never slept with any of these people since Howie. I screw, I suck. I receive them in all the orifices of my body, but when the sex part is over for the time being I then go home to my own apartment and sleep, at last, alone. Ah, Howard Kurland, I have slept with no one since leaving your home and hearth. Fidelity of a sort, my sweet. Make of it what you will.)

  No, there’s nothing much I can’t do. Perhaps that is the message of this education that Eric has so often spoken of. That I am to be educated. Of course there has been a certain purely physical education; there are things I can do now that would qualify me to be a two-dollar whore in Port Said. I don’t have to sit around reading Sir Richard Burton any more. I could write a book of my own.

  But the true education, perhaps, is the realization of my own potential for, well, for this sort of thing. I thought I could never permit my asshole to be penetrated, that I could never willingly swallow sperm, or embrace two men at once, or enjoy sex with a girl, or be spanked into orgasm, or any of those things. And each time I found I was wrong, that I was capable of more than I knew, until now I find myself at the point where I know in advance that anything is possible, that there is nothing I am too good for.

  I didn’t do it simply because he told me to.

  Not that I wouldn’t have done it for that reason, had he given me specific directions. If he had told me to go to a certain place at a certain time and do a certain thing I would of course have done it. But he was vague, purposely vague I don’t doubt, and after a day or two had passed with no further word from him I more or less decided that he could go to hell—i.e., I was not going to go around picking up strangers on his say-so, especially in view of the fact that he had not said so in any strong unequivocal terms.

  I decided to take things a little easier, to let this whole sex thing ride itself out a little. My life has been getting as thin otherwise as I have. I don’t do anything.

  So I decided that, if both he and Susan were going to be out of town for a while, it would at least give
me a chance to get myself together. To repackage my life and make it work on an overall basis. So that I live twenty-four hours a day, not just during those moments when I am in someone’s arms.

  Or legs, or what you will.

  I began planning. It’s surprising in a way that I didn’t write it all down in here. It was that sort of mood, overflowing with the desire to make lists, to draw up plans, to systematize this new approach to life. Sex—oh, sex would play a part, but the whole point was that sex would be kept in its proper perspective. One has to be in a very ebullient mood in order to talk about keeping sex in its proper perspective. What in bloody hell is the proper perspective of sex? And who knows? And who cares? And what difference does it make?

  Oh, the hell with it. I just want to get this down and on paper before I finish. Then I’ll go out and get something to eat, maybe that Chinese place on Waverly whose name I never remember. I feel hungry enough to eat two from group A and three from group B, which I suppose is a good sign—I haven’t felt this hungry in ages.

  So. Yesterday I went to the Museum of Modern Art and walked around looking at paintings. Then I went and had lunch, and then I went to a movie, and then I stopped for a drink at a place off Third Avenue in the high fifties, and then I promptly got drinks bought for me by a marketing exec who just happened to know an understanding neighborhood hotel, and he bought a bottle of Scotch and we just happened to go to that hotel where I just happened to give him the time of his life.

  Not because I was told to, but because from the minute I walked into that fucking museum early in the afternoon I began to feel this twitching in my groin every time a man looked at me, which happened rather often. And in the movie I couldn’t keep my mind on the picture. And when the clown made his play for me I wanted him. I didn’t like him, I didn’t think he was attractive, all jowly and wolfish and popeyed, but I wanted him.

  Okay. Acceptable, no? And so easy to do. Nothing to it. Nothing at all. Part of the whole female independence bit, right? A girl should feel free to ball somebody if she decides she wants to. Steady sex, after all, is healthy.

  Right?

  He gave me twenty dollars.

  Can you believe it?

  Can I believe it, for that matter? That’s the real question. And I would have been really infuriated by the gesture if he hadn’t been so cool about it, and actually rather nice. We screwed ourselves into a lather, we really did, and I guess he’s used to doing it once and then rushing off to catch the 6:04 to Westport, but I fixed him so he missed his train and a few more besides. I gave him a balling he will not quickly forget, and it was sort of delicious as we left the hotel to see the expression on his face, as if he was trying to convince me that he made out in the hay like this all the time.

  He was really turned on by my scrawniness, which he of course did not call that. Slender, sylphlike. His very words. He probably has a wife who takes a size 56.

  He tucked me into a cab and pressed cab fare into my hand. We were halfway home before I opened my hand to see what he had given me, and it was a twenty. I hadn’t asked for money. I don’t think I gave the impression that money was what I was after. I’m sure I didn’t behave like a whore. Like a whore morally, but not like a whore in attitude, I don’t think. I behaved like someone who just enjoyed balling.

  Did he think I was a whore? I would say no. Maybe he just wanted to give me a present, or maybe he felt he had to give me money so that he wouldn’t feel he had received more than he’d given, or something. I don’t know. For all I know he wanted to give me two bucks for the cab but he didn’t have anything smaller than a twenty.

  Meanwhile I was wondering how I was going to get the cabdriver to change a twenty.

  And then I remembered that I had other bills in my purse.

  And then—how did this happen? I don’t know. But I opened my purse and put the twenty inside and closed the purse, and when we got to my place I leaned forward and told the cabbie that I didn’t have any money.

  The meter read a dollar thirty-five, a dollar eighty-five, something like that. Under two dollars.

  He said, “Oh, Jesus, lady, you’re breaking my back. Now, what kind of shit is it to take a cab and when you get there you tell the cabby you got no money?”

  I said, “Can’t we work something out?”

  He looked at me, getting the message.

  He said, “Look, I don’t know about this.”

  “Do you like to be Frenched?”

  “Jesus, honey—”

  “I’ll French you. How about it?”

  “Where? In the fuckin’ cab? Sure, and we all wind up in jail. I don’t need it.”

  “Oh.”

  “How about your place?”

  “My husband’s home.”

  “You got a husband?”

  “But I’d rather suck your cock than ask him for two dollars. In fact I want to suck your cock.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  He drove to the West Side warehouse district below the Village. All the way there I kept getting him hot with words. He parked the car between a couple of huge empty trucks. I got in the front seat and went down on him.

  His penis was long and thick, the vein very prominent. He wasn’t circumcised. He had an odd generally unclean smell. I felt odd myself, and generally unclean.

  He didn’t take long. Nor did he show tremendous enthusiasm. He sat there, behind the wheel, and he shuddered lightly as he popped, and then he sank back in his seat for a moment or two, getting his breath, and then he tucked himself in and zipped himself up. I would have done that for him if he’d asked.

  He said, “You want to open the door so you can spit it out on the street.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Huh?”

  “I swallowed it.”

  “You’re some crazy broad.”

  “Why, is it fattening?”

  “You really got a husband?”

  “Yes, and I’m late. Why don’t you drive me back to my place?”

  “Oh, sure.” He started the motor. “Maybe you ought to get in back. Oh, the hell with it, I’m leaving the flag up anyway. The hell with it, they won’t stop me around here. The hell with them and you stay right where you are.”

  “Thanks.”

  And, as we neared the apartment, “You do that to your husband?”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. Like what you did to me?”

  “You mean suck his cock?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean all right.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “No. He had it shot off in the war.”

  “No shit.”

  “It was a tragedy.”

  “You’re just giving me a lot of crap.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  I think there was even more to this inane conversation, but I see no reason either to remember it or to record it. I got out of the cab and went into my apartment and kept bathing and gargling. Why? Because I was disgusting? Neither soap nor mouthwash would change this.

  My first two experiences in prostitution, one for twenty dollars, one for two.

  To tell you the truth, with the flipness held in abeyance, and with all the cool cooled down, I am, frankly, a little bit worried about me.

  June 27

  Three days in a row without balling anybody. I’ve even started to look for a job!

  Not that I expect to find one. Or that I’m positive I want one. But it is good play therapy, looking at the employment listing in the Times and trying to decide what would be fun and what I might be qualified for.

  June 30

  I went to pick up my shoes from the Italian who was endeavoring to make them as good as new when a girl gave me a real up-and-down look followed by one of those soulful gazes, as if to say that she adored and respected me and wanted to put me on a pedestal and eat my box.

  I resisted the temptation. Now I’m almost sorry.

  I wish I could see David and Arnold
again and have that kind of scene. That crazy lazy sex. Why does everything have to be all one way or all the other. I just don’t understand it.

  July 3

  Edgar Hillman, for the love of God!

  I was standing on Forty-second Street between Sixth and Seventh, trying to get up the courage to climb a flight of stairs to one of the employment agencies, and Guess Who came out of one of the Dirty Books and Peep Shows places? None other than Edgar Hillman, the Lothario of Eastchester. Husband of Marcie, father of her children, and Dry Humper and occasional Finger Fucker of one Jan Giddings Kurland.

  I didn’t notice him at first, being at the time lost in a reasonable facsimile of thought. A voice said, “Jan? Jan Kurland? Is that really you?”

  I turned, and it was really me, just as it was really Edgar.

  “Edgar,” I said, as if I were pleased to see him. Oh, stop the bitchiness—I was pleased to see him, the first familiar face since I had taken myself away from all those familiar faces.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Now there’s a compliment. In there?” With a nod of my head for the peep show parlor.

  He blushed interestingly, then saved it with a wink. “Oh, just like to keep an eye on what they’re publishing these days. But you look great, Jan! Though you do look about half-starved. Have lunch with me?”

  “I just ate.” A stand-up hamburger and malt just after I got off the subway.

  “A drink, then.”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Because it’s really good to see you. Marcie was saying—”

  So he told me what Marcie was saying, and what was new with who, and this and that, none of it memorable. I’m afraid I didn’t pay quite as much attention as I might have. Not that I wasn’t interested. I wanted to hear about these people, this life I had for so long belonged to, but at the same time the specifics were not particularly interesting because these were not very interesting people, nor did they do very interesting things. So I kept finding myself tuning out great hunks of the conversation, listening to Edgar the way you will sometimes listen to a song on the radio, hearing the tune but not paying any attention to the lyrics.