by Paul Theroux
Before I left, Frasso came over to me. “Thank you for your advice,” he said. “Where I come from, in Naples, no one reads a book or writes a poem. But here is different. And so—” He shrugged, the noncommittal Italian lift of the shoulders, then went to the door, where Ubaldini was waiting for him.
Voices of Love
Cheating for Love
I was a graduate student, twenty-three, living in Princeton with my boyfriend. We were very friendly with a couple, Greg and June, and we spent a lot of time with them—maybe too much. Greg was always after me, calling me and slipping me notes. He said that June was frigid and so on. He was very hungry, and I had to admit I liked his attention. One day we ended up in bed, and that was the beginning of our affair. The odd thing was that the four of us were still friends, even though Greg and I had this secret.
We had plans for dinner at our place one night, the four of us. Greg called me and asked me to come over—“It’s urgent.” When I got there he was naked, and we were soon in bed. In the middle of it the door banged open. It was June, screaming at him, “You bastard!”
He had been on top of me in a tangle of sheets. He covered me with a sheet and began screaming back at June: “Get out of here! How dare you come in here!”
I was dying with shame under the sheet. June was my best friend.
I was still cowering under the sheet when Greg got up and pushed June out of the room. She went away sobbing. I got dressed and left. That night the four of us had dinner, as we’d planned. Greg and June were a little quiet, but were holding hands. My own boyfriend didn’t know anything—he was cooking. We all remained friends. June never knew I was the other woman. But being discovered that way made me realize what a terrible thing I had done in cheating on her, and cheating on my own boyfriend too. I thought of it as the worst day of my life, taking that risk. But I had done it for love, and within a year Greg and I were married.
The First Move
I had been married about two months when I took a trip to Singapore for a series of high-level meetings. I was thirty-two, a field organizer for a development project in Asia, based in Kuala Lumpur. At one of the dinners I met a man who flirted with me and was quite frank about wanting to sleep with me. I fended him off, though he was very persistent. He knew I was married. He was married too. I let slip the fact that I had been married only two months.
He said, “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” He explained that if he had known I was a newlywed he would not have been so persistent. He wished me well, and he became very sweet and even protective over the next few days of our meetings. I began to regard him as a good friend. He also laughed at his earlier wooing of me and kept apologizing for his behavior.
But I kept thinking how, inevitably, my husband and I would be unfaithful. I imagined the day when he would come to me and say, “I’ve got something to tell you,” or perhaps I would accidentally discover his infidelity. And then I would be unfaithful to him, but with whom? We loved each other, yet I knew that it would happen—because it so often does. I thought, I don’t want him to be first. I was very sad thinking of these realities, especially in this lovely city.
I had dinner with the man in his hotel. I asked if we could go upstairs to his suite so I could use his bathroom. He was, as usual, very kind, now like an old friend.
When I came out of the bathroom I asked him to turn off the lights. Then I took off my dress and sat next to him on the sofa, wearing only my panties.
I said, “Don’t be shocked.” He said, “But I am!” I told him about the decision I had made. “I want to be first.” I was afraid he might reject me, but we made love and I stayed the night. The Singapore trip ended and I never saw him after that. My marriage has been very happy and I was never unfaithful again. When my husband confessed to an indiscretion, I forgave him.
The Unsuitable Woman
As soon as I met Rita, I knew she was unsuitable: not my type. And the odd thing was that she was completely willing—an agreeable companion, resourceful, submissive sexually, and game for anything. She was pleasant, but after one night with her I wanted her to leave. When sex was over I found nothing to say to her. A month later she called me and asked why I had rejected her. She said, “You hurt my feelings.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. She seemed a bit obtuse, unfunny, yet wanted desperately to please me. She was attractive, athletic, about thirty, a landscape architect. I felt that on some level she was incompetent and slow, but she was very good-natured. Afterward I hardly thought of her, and when I did I became anxious, because I could not imagine her with any man I knew.
I met her twenty years later. She had married a graphic designer, who was about her age, very intelligent and talented, and she was still a landscape architect. He loved her madly. It was obvious in everything he did—he adored her. They were a wonderful couple. He admired her talent and praised her. What had he seen that I hadn’t? They had no children, they were devoted to each other, they seemed very happy and well suited to each other.
Their happiness made me think that I had judged her wrongly before, that the selfishness and incompetence I had seen in her had been in me—my faults.
I had been suspicious all those years ago when she had been so willing. But she’d been sincere. She’d found someone who appreciated her, needed her, loved her, and his love had improved her too.
No Strings
I met a woman in the local supermarket who said to me, “Are you the architect?” I had just done a big handsome building in town, and a piece about it in the newspaper had used a photograph of me.
“Yes,” I said, and looked at her closely: attractive, about forty, with piercing blue eyes that were fixed on mine and a fearless, upright, almost defiant posture, which seemed boldly welcoming.
“I’m a huge admirer of your work,” she said with a lovely smile. “I’m an interior designer myself. I feel I could learn so much from you, spending time with you. No strings.”
I was on the point of giving her my address when my wife came up to us and said, “Let’s go, Walter, or we’ll be late.” Not even a glance at the woman. She had sensed something.
Well, so had I. About a week later a letter appeared in my mailbox. In this rather long letter the woman said that as she was a decorator and I an architect, we might work together. “No strings.” There was no stamp on the letter. This worried me: she knew my house. Somehow she had found out my address. She had written her telephone number under her signature.
I was sorely tempted. “No strings” sounded like the recipe for a guiltless adultery, and when a woman is offering herself in such a casual way she always seems to me more attractive for being so easily available. Yet, more out of procrastination than indifference, I didn’t reply or call her.
One day at the local library, crouched down looking for a book, I was aware of a woman looming over me. It was she. “Why didn’t you answer my letter? You didn’t even call.” She was hurt, she said. But she mentioned that she was “hooked up with a wealthy lawyer.” Then: “He’s so uptight. I love to give oral sex—my lips are so sensitive—but he says it embarrasses him. He thinks it’s a big deal. It isn’t. I love pleasuring men. But he’s going to be history. I’ve told him, ‘No strings.’”
Soon after that, I got another letter from her. She’d left the lawyer. She wanted to see me. We can work something out. No strings. I’m free most afternoons. And again she wrote her telephone number.
I began to dial her number, thinking, My lips are so sensitive, but before I finished I heard the front door open. My wife. “Walter, give me a hand with the groceries,” and the spell was broken. I wrote a short note: I don’t think I can help you.
That was not the end of it. Months later, I heard a loud knock at my door. It was the woman.
“I’m being evicted! I have no place to stay! You’ve done well—look at your nice house. I can’t get any work. You owe me. People have helped you—you have to help me. I’m going to be on the street! Don’t just stand there gapi
ng at me. Do something, you bastard!”
Screaming, crazy, demanding. I was shocked, and as I closed the door on her ranting, I thought, What if I had acted on my temptation? And that night I wept in my wife’s arms, though she had no idea.
Embassy Wife
My husband, Byron, was a terrible diplomat. He quarreled with his colleagues, performed his work badly, drank too much at parties, and neglected me and the kids—and yet he got a promotion. This was in Germany, where he was a public affairs officer. The head of his department was a man named Jay, who was very dapper and good-looking and devoted to his wife, Marina. He and his wife went everywhere together, which made me feel bad, because I spent so much time at home looking after our three small children. My husband said that if I showed up at the embassy parties, his professional life would be easier.
One night we went to dinner at Jay and Marina’s. I sat next to Jay. It was quite a large party, but after the other guests left, Jay kept filling my glass. He was very solicitous and complimentary. I must have had a lot to drink because after a while I realized that I was sitting alone with Jay. We were talking about Germany, and children, and the weather, and then he put his arm around me.
“Please don’t,” I said. “What if Byron sees us?”
Jay laughed. “Where do you think he is?”
I had no idea. I didn’t know what to say.
“He’s upstairs with Marina!”
In my drunken state it took me almost a full minute to work this out. Byron was with Marina, therefore it was permissible for me to go with Jay, and somehow Byron’s job depended on my agreeing to this.
But I sat there coldly until Byron appeared. “Let’s go.”
“They’re swingers,” Byron said, as though that excused his behavior. Some months later, after Byron had been demoted for a petty infraction, I had a brief affair with the nineteen-year-old son of some embassy friends. Byron and I have been utterly faithful since.
Split-up Revelation
After my wife and I split up, when we had nothing to lose by being truthful, she told me that she had suspected that I had a mistress, because I no longer made love to her with any passion or desire. And what convinced her was that I was so kind to her, as though because I was guilty of infidelity I was trying to cover it up with displays of kindness. I just smiled.
“Were you ever unfaithful to me?” I asked.
She shrugged and said that when she was sure I was being unfaithful, she went one night to a bar alone. Naturally a man came over to her and asked her if she wanted a drink. They talked awhile. She did not go home with him, but she agreed to meet him again. That was the night they made love. “He was very rough with me,” she said somewhat dreamily. He tied her to a bed, forced her to perform several extreme sexual acts, and then spanked her.
We had never done anything like this. Her describing it (in more detail than I expected) aroused me.
I said, “He sounds like an animal.”
She said, “He knew how to please a woman.”
I thought, What? And there was more, she said. He had a girlfriend. He made no secret of her. Sometimes they went out together, my wife, the man, his girlfriend. One night while drinking at his apartment, the man demanded that my wife and his girlfriend make love while he watched. My wife got into bed with the woman.
“What did you do?” I said.
“We cuddled. What women do.”
“And then what did the man do?” The anguish in my voice terrified me.
She smiled but wouldn’t tell me any more. “It was a couple of years ago. You had your own girlfriend. It was retaliatory.”
But it wasn’t. I had no girlfriend. My feeling had been that my wife had lost interest in sex. How I longed to be that man. And my wife—now my ex-wife: I had never believed this respectable schoolteacher capable of such debauchery.
My Lover’s Friends
I had arranged to meet Susan on a particular evening. She was a successful advertising executive, highly intelligent and yet easygoing. “I’ve been too busy to get married,” she said. But she seemed perfect to me. We had been going out for a few months and she gave me to understand that tonight would be special—in fact, that she was going to let me stay the night. Sex at last. And not only that, but the sex would be passionate. She wasn’t subtle: she conveyed this to me by various expressions, by touching me, the look in her eyes, the tone of her voice—the wonderful anticipation of lovers.
“Let’s meet at my conference and we can go on from there.”
This was, she said, a weekly meeting at a colleague’s house. I said, “Fine.” I went to the house at the appointed time. The conference was all women, six of them. They were business types. At first they were polite to me, and then I could see that they disagreed with everything I said. It was just before a state election. They supported the most right-wing candidate. We talked about capital punishment. They were in favor of it—electrocution. “All murderers are men,” one said. To change the subject I asked what they did for work. “I’m involved with start-ups.” “I design websites.” “I do marketing.” Susan just smiled and mentioned an advertising campaign she was doing on behalf of a man. “People talk about his wealth, but he earns every bit of it.” They talked about money, venture capitalism, interest rates.
On the way home, Susan and I got into an argument about her friends. I hated them. She defended them. But at her house, when she said, “Coming in?” I said no, made an excuse, and never saw her again.
My Graduate Student
I am sixty-two and know I look my age, but I am also the head of a well-respected department of political science at a famous university. I brought some of my foreign students to Washington, D.C., for a few days, to meet lobbyists, senators, and bureaucrats; to give these young people a notion of the political process firsthand; and to do some sightseeing. One of the students, Klara, was Polish, about twenty-four, rather small, with the classic Slavic look: clear skin, good cheekbones, a pouty mouth, and a slyness in her blue eyes. She stayed near me throughout the trip, was always friendly and respectful, but spoke to me only when no one else was around. She had read my work, she said; she was an admirer.
We were alone one of those days, walking along the Mall after visiting the Washington Monument. She said, “What if I told you I wanted to get you into my room and—”
And with a twinkle in her eye she described in detail one of the most extraordinary perversions I had ever heard. She was quite matter-of-fact, yet it was something altogether new to me and almost unimaginable.
This shocked me, but I managed not to show it. All I could say in reply (my mouth very dry) was “I suppose I’d ask you why you wanted to do this.”
She said very seriously, “I want to do something to you that no woman has ever done to you before.”
“Maybe we can talk about it,” I said. Back at the hotel later that evening, I called her room. She said, “Are you ready?”
Of course we didn’t do exactly what she had suggested, but we approximated it. From the moment I entered her room I was in her power. I long to relive that night, but what she did was so extreme I cannot imagine even mentioning it to any other woman, much less repeat the act. She was a virgin. She remained a virgin, but I think I lost my virginity that night.
Twenty-Year-Olds
In a way, I have been preparing myself for this event, this feeling, for years. As a painter, I know many older painters, sculptors, photographers—say, artists in my position. Something happened in the late 1950s and early ’60s. They met younger women, always the same sort of woman. Maybe I’m wrong, but I know of very few exceptions.
This woman was in her twenties. A woman of twenty doesn’t know if she has a place in the world, something about her age or our age. What will happen to her? Will she find a job? Will she find a husband? Will she ever have a child? Where does she belong?
She has no idea where she is going. She is anxious. She needs someone to intervene.
Here’s whe
re the artist comes in. A painter or a photographer at sixty has either made it or stopped trying. If he has made it, he looks powerful—more than powerful, as indestructible as his art. But one thing he does not have: his youth. And he certainly questions the diminishing of his virility, what the Dutch call “the shutting of the door.”
He meets a twenty-year-old and is immediately smitten. She is so relieved to be rescued, like someone plucked from a deep sea, she believes she is in love with her rescuer. Not long after they meet, she is secure and happy, having been brought to safety, on shore at last.
Perhaps she has his baby, perhaps he leaves his wife, perhaps they live together and he paints her. Never mind, no matter—it is always a disaster. She leaves him. She has a life. He is destroyed by this love. And even if you know in advance what the consequences will be, you still pursue her, as I did. Her name was Lucy, and I was wrecked.
The Dancer
Years ago, I had been a waiter in Provincetown. My life changed when I met Ken and we moved to the far north of Vermont. People in the village accepted us as a gay couple. Twenty happy years passed. Ken died suddenly of heart failure. I spent two years being lonely. Then I decided to go back to Provincetown, just to see.
