FROM A WRITER'S NOTEBOOK:
WHO'S AFRAID OF SIGMUND FREUD?
"I had six honest serving men
--they taught me all I knew:
Their names were Where, and What And When---and Why and How and Who."
Rudyard Kipling.
DUMAS ALL ALONG
Someone always gets hurt in these things.
In all my plans and arrangements for Mr. Ed Noon of Manhattan, I never for a
second dreamed anyone else would get in the way. Funny about that. Funnier still, it
should be someone like Marcel Alevoinne. Someone I've admired ever since I read
Death Of Sweet People. But what is that line of Vonnegut's--? 'so it goes.'
There was no use ever talking to Valerie about Noon. She wouldn't have
understood, much less cared. Poor Valerie. All those brains and all that beauty but she
has inherited all the cliché Proper Bostonian aloofness. She has blood, she has breasts,
she was warm flesh, in ample abundance but all the passion she has ever felt or known
has been the length of a man's penis and what he does or doesn't do with it. I never
considered Valerie an ally in my plot for Noon. All she ever has wanted from me is
homage to that curved pale body of hers. No more, no less.
Unfortunately, she's in the City now and naturally, she is hungry for all the
homage I can give her. She won't be in the way, though. I'll screw her silly and leave
her to shopping sprees and sight-seeing while I do my own thing. Amazing. She can't
see past the tip of my dick whenever her father lets her roam free and wild away from the fieldstone homestead in Boston. Just as well, I'll be too busy from now on. I won't be
Valerie's last lover. No chance. She's good for three bad marriages and fifty affairs
before she cashes in her coupons. What a feeble tribe heiresses really are!
Money didn't spoil them. It ruined them for anything worthwhile in this life.
Worthwhile like an ideal or a plan. Or a dream. Such as my dream. The Beautiful
People are truly skin-deep.
Maybe it is because there is no Dolores Ainsley in their past. No orphanage, no
hunger, no deprivation. No ever wanting for anything materialistic. I don't really know.
Can only guess. It's a cinch, however, that no millionaire's son or daughter would ever
have bothered writing Widows Walk Away. Eisenhower, for all his lack of literacy,
was dead right when he said that affluence had damaged the American way of life. The
kids, too many of them, were spoiled by parental middle class success.
Shrewd thinking, Ike. Well put. You aced Churchill that time, old man. God
bless you, wherever you are now. Wish I remembered the exact words. I'd pass them
along to all future Presidents of the U.S.A.
I don't bless Mr. Noon.
I'm going to kill the bastard.
There's a laugh in that one.
The pot calling the kettle black.
Valerie barged in on me today while I was working on the play. She read me the
riot act for not thinking only of her and good times. "Why are you slaving away anyhow?" she asked in that bitchy Kennedy soprano
of hers. "You've made more money, won more awards, than any three authors I can
name. And you promised. Just me this trip. Nothing and no one else."
"This is a labor of love," I told her. It was the wrong thing to say. She laughed
in my face, snorted in the direction of the Olympia machine and began her usual speedy
strip. Her brain was a bedroom.
She was wearing a Balenciaga, or some such, and her long legs were tucked into
those gruesome platform shoes they're all stilt-walking on these days. Val dragged me
over to the bed. She had come into the room like a bitch in heat, anyway. Panting like a
steam engine, licking those lips of hers that were just a shade too thick for genuine
beauty. To calm her down and throw her off the trail, I banged her. I did pretty well
considering that Sex was the last thing I had on my mind that afternoon. It was
astounding but I couldn't think of anything lately but Noon and the play, and all those
people I had discovered rattling around in the family closet. Somehow I can't laugh at
Freud anymore. I never will.
"Oh, Jo. You make my cunt feel so good."
The more high-born they are, the more lady-credentials they own, the greater the
odds that they will talk like that. Vulgarly, low-class, trying to sound like all the
wanton whores in the universe.
"Why do you use so ugly a word to describe so lovely a place?"
"I don't know. I forget all my Barnard when we're balling. You're a tiger for a
long-haired scribbler of words."
"Sure I am. And you always expect me to growl on cue." "Don't let's argue. Let's fuck some more."
So we did, because if we didn't, she would never leave me alone. It took two
more healthy orgasms for me and perhaps four for her before she finally put the
Balenciaga back on, crept into the green butterfly chair and put her knees up to her chin
and stared across the room at me, trying to be a variation of Audrey Hepburn innocence
and Raquel Welch sensuality. I went back to the desk and the machine. The manuscript
sheet curling up before me was like a red flag. There was nothing I wanted more than to
finish that play. Nothing!
"Why don't you love me, Jo?" she asked suddenly. Never was her Boston accent
more in evidence than when she had just finished having her jollies. The utter birth
mark, the spoon-with-the-silver-plating, volleyed out of her soft throat. The Queen had
seen served.
"Too easy. Answering that one."
"And what does that mean, Jo Malmedy?"
"You don't love me. Simple?"
Her sigh was exaggerated but it was honest. She knew the score.
"You can be awfully creepy when you get like this. Deep and moody. Always
when you're into one of those---creations of yours."
"I know. Same old labor pains, Valerie."
"I suppose I should ask you about it. What it is and what it might be. But
honestly, I'd be only making it up. I never really was interested that much in books.
Fiction, that is." "Don't apologize. Never apologize for anything. You are Miss Valerie Wales of
Boston, Mass. Enough said."
"It's only what we do, you see, what we are to each other that cuts it with me,
Jo. You do something to me---you always did---"
I stopped listening to her. She was on the usual subject of our great sexual
attraction for each other. I could not have cared less.
The Tall Dolores engulfed my mind. Encircled it and overwhelmed my thinking.
Dolores Ainsley, the terrible mother. No earth mother, at all. Mr. Noon of Manhattan.
The hot-shot private investigator.
Writing about my intended victim had mesmerized me. I was in a literal fever of
creation. What Valerie liked calling one of my 'deep and moody' spasms. She was
correct, too. The words were flowing, the scenes racing along. The plot plunging on
toward that inevitable climax. The steps of the Statue of Liberty. The .45 bullet gone
awry, blowing the back of the tall woman's head off. A rather rotten woman, at that.
I had all the facts, of course, thanks to poor Alma Wheeler. Aunt Alma, no less.
What a ghastly laugh. A call girl. A Sex-For-Sale lady. Yet, the most baffling thing of
all was Noon himself.
I mean, my re-action to him.
I
liked the guy. To my everlasting shame and wonder.
He fascinated me, somehow. His quick mind, his bleeding heart, his fast
moves, the bizarre sense of humor, the loner's life he lived and so obviously loved.
Secure with the knowledge that no other man owned him. He did not have the hang-up
of the Twentieth Century. He was a pure throw-back. Perhaps to the gunslingers and pioneers of the Old West. Perhaps, not. Oh, he could be cornball, childish and small
boy dumb and arrogant now and then and he certainly was a hopeless fool when it came
to old movies and his Hollywood-oriented mind. But--ecce homo! I could almost be
sorry I was going to have to kill him. I knew that now as I had never known anything
else. The physical writing of the play, the living so close with the characters and the
situations; the re-lived tall tale of another time in Manhattan---the words in Noon's
mouth and all the truths about Mother---I suppose I should call her that, no matter what
happens---had turned me into something out of an old novel. I could taste the salt in my
mouth. I could feel the hot flow of angry blood in my veins. I was burning inside. I
exulted, whenever I visualized the showdown I was preparing in the theatre of my
writer's mind. Dreamer's Playhouse. Where all things are possible. Even vengeance,
twenty years later.
"Well, Jesus Christ, Jo!"
Valerie startled me the way she roared from the butterfly chair. I had ignored her
completely, as if she wasn't any longer in the room. She uncoiled from the crises-cross
of her splendidly long legs and shot me one of those high-and-mighty glares of hers. The
Royal Lady glare.
"What's the matter now, Val?"
"You tell me, my sweet. What's so all special important about this play of yours?
You're deeper and moodier than usual."
"It's a journey for me. A trip back."
"Don't put me on, Jo. I won't stand for that." "I'm not putting you on. It's a journey to a Disneyland of long, long ago. Kind of
an experimental form of writing for me. I never have tried a musical before, you may
remember."
She relaxed, with the explanation, and shrugged.
"I wish you wouldn't put me in second place all the time. I'm not creative like
you certainly are, Genius. But I have my own special kind of thing, too. You know I
have."
"You certainly do, Valerie."
"Maybe it doesn't mean a whole lot to you that I'd rather ball you than anyone else
I ever met. But it's true. I know you dig me, too. No matter how you like to stand off
and pretend you can take me or leave me. I know how you are in the sack, Jo. Don't you
forget it. You can't see your own face when you're going at me. But I keep my eyes
open. Oh, boy! Tiger, you'd eat me raw if I asked you and you know it."
"I know it," I admitted, "but let's pass on to something more relative. I concede
your special place in my life. Now--what do you think of Freud?"
"Jung," she corrected me. "Freud has been passe for years. You know that as
well as I do. They've stopped blaming the parents for everything the child is and does.
All that sexual nonsense about the formative years after birth---well, gollee----"
"Sigmund is alive and well," I said, "and living all over this world. You'd better
believe it, Valerie. He won't go away. Nor for all the new theories, the debunkers, and
all the fresh experts there are."
"You say. Nobody else does, Jo." "I say," I agreed. "And all the millions lying on head shrinker's leather couches
in all the dimly lit offices proves I'm right. Tell me, Valerie, didn't you ever realize that
all of your particular sexual history is a direct result of the kind of life you've had? And
outcropping of the basic make-up of your parents? Pure Cause and Effect?"
She was shifting uncomfortably in the butterfly chair, wagging her head furiously
at me, now. There were nerves in her that she didn't want me to touch at all. There
always had been. There always would be.
"I do not care to discuss my folks with you. If this is research of some kind for a
book or something---or that damn play over there---you just include me out. I'll stick to
Jung, thank you."
"Valerie, I'm only trying to explain something to you."
"No. Forget it, I said. I mean it, Jo."
"Then I'm sorry for you. Sorry you're afraid."
"I am not afraid!"
"Aren't you? Look at you. A casual reference to your folks and a mention of
sexual history and you're all up-tight."
Now, she really flung me the glare of glares.
"Oh, shut your mouth! It's just that I don't want to talk Freud nonsense with you.
What could be plainer than that?"
I had to laugh at her, feeling stronger and surer than ever. Of my plan, my
scheme, my reason for wanting to get my own back.
"Nonsense, you say. That is funny. Coming from the daughter of a renowned
swinger-father and blue nose matriarch. You were a repressed goody-goody from Boston until you were eighteen and discovered Boston wasn't the only city in the world. Boston
--you walked on egg shells all year round there until the folks allowed you to come
further East. Then you spread out and uncrossed your thighs for anything in pants. And
just offhand, on my own eyewitness evidence, I'd say you were about the best example
of penis-envy I've ever met. In or out of Boston."
Valerie had sea-blue eyes, honey-blonde hair and that mouth that was twice as
voluptuous as Julie Christie's but she acted as if she didn't know what I was talking about.
I expected that, she being the convictionless coward that she was. She was only brave in
bed.
"Penis-envy? I like that! How can you say such a stupid thing to me? Is that my
thanks for being your compliant lover---when I adore your body so much---oh, Jo--
honest to Jesus---"
"Precisely the point. You adore my cock. You adore all cocks. You wish you
had one, too. Because they make you feel so good. I've seen you in action so I know.
You think what's between my legs is just about the greatest form of edifice in the world.
The finest of all man-made things. Don't say I'm crazy. And don't say Freud is crazy,
either. Oh, you're very happy about being female. No doubt about that, either. But it's
safe to say that you've thought more than once about what it might be like to stick
something into somebody rather than to be stuck all the time. Is that a fair assumption on
my part, Val?"
Her face drained of color and she got violently angry with me. "That's simply disgusting, Jo Malmedy. Don't talk like that. It's not decent, and
if you knew anything at all about Women's Lib, you'd know how juvenile and silly that
sort of male thinking is!"
"Sure. Our bag. Male chauvinism. All right. I'll quit. But I'd like you to tell me
something else, though. Would you kill a person who, let's say---hypothetically, of
course---killed your mother when you were a little child?"
She stared at me, baffled. There was no Noon in her gay life.
"I don't see what one thing has to do with the other."
"Nothing, really. Just answer the question. I would like to know."
"Why do you want to know? It's a stupid hypothesis."
"You were right before. I am involved in something. I need some answers. Call
it writer's research. Okay?"
"We
ll---"
"Please, Valerie. This is very important to me. I kid you not."
She sighed, shaking the remainder of the anger out of her face. Then she smiled.
When she smiled, it was pure radiance. Of her own very special brand. I had to give her
that much. She was a knockout.
"Why do I put up with you anyway, Jo? There's a dozen men who'd bust their
buttons to get me where you have me. And you---smart, top rank you, play little funny
games with me. To test my ego or yours. I'm never sure which. Why do you artists have
to be so temperamental?" I walked over to her chair, looked down at her and then took her in my arms and
kissed her. Long and passionately. She liked that, too. She would always like that. No
matter who the man was.
"Pals again, Val?"
"Pals," she breathed deeply, her full bosom rising. Falling.
"Then answer my hypothetical question."
"Honestly---"
"Come on. Don't chicken out. Just suppose."
"Well---yes, I guess so. 'Course, my answer would depend on whether or not I
truly loved my mother. Or whether she herself had forced the man to kill her. You know
how I feel about capital punishment. But, Jo---it's a silly question. Why would I ever
have to consider the hypothesis?"
"Yeah. Why would you? Skip it. But all right---suppose you had no reason to
love your mother. Perhaps, you even hated her. For all kinds of reasons and then
suppose you were still upset enough to want to kill the man who had killed her? Wanted
to in spite of all your training, mental stability, high IQ, moral code---whatever---what
would you say to that?"
"Well, Jung would say---"
"Never mind Jung. What would you say?"
She sighed and smiled, imagining our stormy interlude was over. At least, I was
talking somewhat more sensibly again.
"Then I could only say that subconsciously the child who hated his mother, in
reality, really had loved her. In spite of all the harsh treatment or bad things you mentioned---it's a pure Love-Hate syndrome right down the line. The child fighting for
the love he never had."
"Thank you," I said, calming down and smiling at her myself. She wasn't a bad
sort at all and she still was one of the best lays I had ever had. "And that's why Freud
was not crazy."
The Walking Wounded Page 6
