by Robin Morgan
I asked Hektor if the leech didn’t know, didn’t understand what this scene meant, that our love was part of you, that you would have approved, that in some way you were even participating in our love-making yourself. I began to move toward the shoes to explain, to make the leech see this. But Hektor would not let me. He said, in a terrible voice, that others will see evil where they will, through their own distorted view of good; that one can never assume any act, no matter how pure, will not be misunderstood—nor should one then, knowing that, cease to act.
Overhearing this, the leech expanded in anger to half again his size, left my shoes, and approached us. He said he would touch us even on our protective mat, killing us and freezing us in our sexual position so that the proof of our infidelity would be there for you to see when you returned.
“But he will not care!” I cried. “He would not feel betrayed, don’t you understand? He would not see evil in this, he would understand the love we have for him, expressed in the love we have for each other!” The leech still approached, and then Hektor sprang at him. I fled to the safety of the cottage, but looked out the window to see their battle. It was over almost instantly, the leech dead, and Hektor alive but frozen in a horrible, crouched position: mouth open, fangs bared, claws spread, muscles straining in rage, terror, agony. I knew now I could not touch him either, so infused was he with the poison. His paralyzed eyes looked back into mine through the window, as if to warn me away.
Then I had left the cottage and the woods, still dark and overgrown around the sunny clearing, and I was in a spaceship hurtling through the star-splashed black to join you. Somehow, I felt that Hektor would survive the poison, and would join us, too, in time. But I also felt that the leech was not really dead either, that he would crawl back into the jungle to recover, let his poison fill his veins again, and then emerge to cry his evil morality against the world once more.
Whatever else the dream meant, I really believe that Hektor’s words are a profound truth. He seemed to be a symbol for you in the dream (I’ve often commented that I think you and he look alike!), and he spoke with your voice, I remember. The feeling was that he, being an animal, albeit a tame one (not completely so; remember he lived in the woods, too), could understand the true nature of the leech more quickly and thoroughly than I, and could do battle against it with some hope of survival. Perhaps it is the civilized element, the moral element in the human being that is more easily converted to evil without recognizing it, that thinks sex is wrong, that sets up mores and then lives in terror of them. Certainly people are more “bestial” than any beasts which have ever existed. We are the only creatures who kill for pleasure, beyond food or survival.
In any case, before I dig this line of reasoning into a Rousseauean trap for myself, I will stop here and get to work. Dreaming, I survived the leech, and went off to join the other part of Hektor (you) on a distant star. But awake, I have not forgotten the leech’s eyes, or his hiss, or what that hiss said.
R.
4
“The rains came” refers to a Swiss-cheese leaky roof in our apartment which, during one particular rainy season, left us vulnerable to the deluge and to a consequent indoor flood. We were months repairing the damage. “D.” was a neighbor, one of those persons who are overly generous about music—he played Puccini operas ceaselessly on his phonograph, and at a volume which made it all but impossible for anyone within hearing distance to work. Fortunately, he finally moved away. “T.” was a male acquaintance who seemed to think he was Tristan and Don Juan in one miraculous combination.
1 August 1965
DEAR K.:
Tonight I must write you, as tonight is an Occasion.
You sit at your desk now (ten in the evening, August first, a Sunday), finishing the last chapter of your first full-length novel. Wearing only white undershorts, the broad expanse of your back, slightly tanned from our two times at the beach so far this summer, hunches over your typewriter. You sit with your chair tipped back but your body leaning forward (that funny old oak desk chair!), and you’re typing very fast now and not even smoking and I love you.
Later a few close friends will come over and we will celebrate and you will type the last period with a flourish, like a ritual, a ceremony. Oh, yes, and there’s much revising to do but the main body of the work, the foundation, will be done as of tonight. You began the novel before we were married, and began it in your mind years before that. And that first summer of our marriage, you worked on it, and I worked, quietly, happily, before “the rains came” and then D. began his assault with sound. And now, just about a month ago, you picked up again, and it will all be completed in a matter of minutes now, a short while. So much struggling, this past year and a half, so much angst and unnecessary suffering, while that novel lay gathering dust in its uncompleted state. Some of the first pages of the manuscript are slightly yellowed already, as you write the final pages now. (T. just called and would adore to come by, but could he bring a new girlfriend, one of the Radio City Rockettes, with him?—God, novels get finished after all, but some things never change!)
And it’s a good novel, by God, it’s right and good. It frightened me sometimes, reading it hot off the typewriter, chapter by chapter, even in rough state, by its power and rightness and painful lyricism. Dear God, it makes me proud. And having just completed a six-months’ affair with Faulkner, every one of his novels, and having just a day or so ago finished reading The Rainbow and tonight completed Women in Love, I’m not merely rhapsodizing about my husband. The Beholding will stand up. It will be around for a long time.
But very soon now you will be finished and then people, albeit dear friends, will be here. I wanted to say in this letter what I may not have time to say, shortly, to you, though God knows I will try (despite Rockettes). How deeply happy I am, how gratified, how worth it it all has been, how this seems only the beginning—but if it were the end, tonight, even so, we have lived more and crammed more life and work and spirit into our days and nights so far than most people have in whole lifetimes; how remarkable a man you are, dancing a little jig of excitement in your undershorts just before beginning the last chapter, lying above me last night in our bed, straining now over your writing; how stunningly free our relationship seems (especially after Women in Love), a clean, frank, uncompetitive, comradely working together, loving each other’s work more than each other, loving our own work more than each other’s, proudly, strongly. All fine, so fine.
About five years ago in a chrome luncheonette on Third Avenue, a funny, plump young girl, with dyed blond hair fizzing over the mink collar of a pearl beaver coat, told you earnestly (while ripped to shreds of despair internally, since you were something she could never have, somthing denied to her forever) that she loved you because you were a great writer. Tonight, I sit in our lovely dark-beamed study, walled round with books, pools of light encircling our two huge desks. And my hair is natural, a dark green-gold, and my body is inhabited by me in every limb and pore, supple and light, your touch still warm upon it under my white summer shorts and avocado sweater, and I look across at your back and neck and proud head, and I bless this night, this moment, and that long-ago despair that brought me here. I bless this study, I bless our bed, I bless the past year of anguish that proved we would endure, I bless the absurd sound of our typewriter keys clacking together, I bless myself for my courage and wisdom in fighting for all this, I bless you, oh, I bless you for all that you are.
But one thing has not changed, the seed of my salvation years ago and the flowering of my pride tonight. I know that you are a great writer.
R.
5
The phrase “We have a conflict of life-styles here” and, indeed, this entire letter could serve as a classic example of the confused search of a woman, in pre-feminist consciousness, to find a personal solution for those problems she thinks of as uniquely her own. The pain is not yet recognized as being political; it is felt as individual, her problem, her fault. Guilt, self-co
ntempt, and feelings of unworthiness—all inevitable responses of the depressed oppressed person—are stunningly manifest in the accompanying Various Failures of Me list. This was written, of course, before most women, myself included, knew that the vaginal orgasm was a myth, that housecleaning and cooking standards did not after all have to bear a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, and that being a size five (while standing almost six feet tall) did not necessarily constitute being beautiful. The self-loathing so evident here was at its peak during the very periods when I thoroughly cleaned house twice a week, baked quiche Lorraine and whipped up soufflés, and also dieted furiously—none of which made any difference to my self-hatred. Something else would be needed to give me glimpses into my own real worth. Something else would be needed to give me the tools by which to struggle with the man I loved.
1 July 1966, 1:00 a.m.
DEAR K.:
I’ve just reread the previous letters and noted, with interest, that it has been almost a year now since I’ve written another. I do so tonight out of a very different spirit than that which prompted the others. Again, you are out, gone on a summer walk and to get something to eat and read the Times, because you are angry and depressed and want to get away from me. Fine. There’s a peace in the house at the moment because only one depressed and angry person is here—not two, competing in their misery.
And quite a year has passed. Sally dead; three months of my intensely renewed existential duel with that death, any death; your revising and typing of your novel; your second book of poems sold; the big party in celebration; our redoing the bedroom and painting the downstairs and putting finishing touches on the apartment; our month-long joint poetry-reading tour; and our return—to this.
And now all at once it seems that the weaknesses in our personalities and our relationship appear more exposed than ever before. No one thing new, all problems we know and have talked about and worked on and even joked about. But not now, not this time, not with this sudden weariness and hopelessness we both seem to feel on being confronted with them. Last night we had the long talk I had so longed for and then begun not to care about, after almost two months of being dazed, rather than depressed, and quite depersonalized about my immense failings. We hadn’t talked earlier because of the exhaustion of the trip; then your fall from the library-ladder and the pain-killing drugs which put you out for weeks, it seemed; then because it appeared to be too late to talk. But it wasn’t. Or was it? Because we didn’t “solve” or really get to a damned thing. We sort of faked a solution, a communication, an understanding, but we have after all had the real thing in the past with each other, and we both know the difference. And now, tonight, your inevitable delayed reaction has set in, further prompted by what I meant to be a short, casual, practical talk about money affairs earlier today.
My, but you plummeted quickly. A bad headache, a sick feeling, a hostile depression, total noncommunication. I went and did errands, housework, felt that I had (for the first time in days) accomplished something practical, felt refreshed by the manual labor, returned to find you worse. Sleeping on the floor in the study, huddled by the air conditioner, a reproach (or so I take it) that I have not managed the money well, haven’t saved enough for the bedroom air conditioner we had planned. And you’re right, too. Oh, always right. That supposedly is what we talked about last night. Various failures of Robin Morgan, listed on the attached sheet which I made up for my own sick amusement. You had reassured me, oh, yes, and explained that you criticize only to urge further improvement on my already astounding successes. Then today you went and huddled by the air conditioner. Today you looked at me out of eyes that, far back, said “You are destroying me.” Now just where does my guilt come from? Yes, yes, we know I have a pattern of it from having lived with my mother, we know I have (your words) an acute “critical faculty” where my work and my life are concerned, but does no one encourage this? Does no one play into it? I asked if I could get you anything, help somehow, cook something, or should we take a walk together. You went out alone. Ah, does no one play into it?
Well, and are you destroying me? More, that is, than any person living with another does, than any human being inevitably tries to do to another. You try not to, God knows, I try not to, we talk about it sensibly all the time. We are aware, perceptive, articulate. And if I make you pay for my guilt, don’t you perpetuate the cycle with more criticism? I don’t mean ordinary criticism, I mean the myriad tiny reproaches every day, said and glanced and subtly communicated.
Something, at any rate, has gone wrong. How irreparably? I don’t know. I do know that for some weeks now we have not been really sexually attracted to each other. Sex has been mechanical. I half-dread it, half-hope for it on the chance that this time things will really come off successfully. Nobody’s really getting any work done. You wrote a few poems. I wrote one. You are behind on final revisions for the novel and the book of poems, behind on your office work (two weeks to write the synonymies you do in thirteen hours), behind in your correspondence. Your desk is a holy mess. You always tended to work in this belated, procrastinating manner (I remember snowdrifts of uncorrected papers on your desk when you used to teach, and that was before we were married), and you know it. But it is more convenient to say that my moods, or my household interruptions, or my something is responsible.
Yes, I’m reeking with self-pity, my dear, as I plod through laundry and cleaning and cooking and bills and bank accounts and insurance and ordering books and theater tickets and keeping up with your correspondence as well as mine and running the errands and making the telephone calls. Yes, I seem to fuck them all up. Yes, I am filled with self-loathing as well as self-pity. Poor K., what did he ever do to deserve this? Of course he shares the burden, does his part, except that there are hundreds of little things he doesn’t even think of, doesn’t foresee, couldn’t care less about if he did. But this daily business of living is a full-time job and has to be seen to.
We’ve got a conflict of life-styles here. I know that I work best when my life is cleared away, things in order, no bills or errands or laundry on my mind. So I do them. It’s not easy when I’m also trying to drift along with your schedule instead of ignoring or fighting it, and am therefore up all night and sleeping all day. You, of course, also work best when things are in order, except it will never be you who orders them, by God.
I’m tired of all this, K. Tired of doing the things I actually love to do: cook, clean, etc. Tired of your constant criticism, tired of failing and feeling it myself and from your alternating condemnation and condescension. Tired of your god-like manner, all the while you’re complaining that people cast you as an oracle. Tired of your equality-in-our-marriage talk, which I’ve always heartily seconded, silently planning the dinner or how to get to the bank on time meanwhile. Tired of your moods, which you indulge in freely (mine, of course, are unfortunate—you can’t help being sensitive to them, and they upset you and you can’t get your work done). Tired of the way you come to a mutual project late, reluctantly, and then take it over completely. Tired and ashamed that I so pled my unworthiness before you last night, until you had to concede it—a little. My God! Has the fight been broken out of me completely? If so, then you, not meaning to, have succeeded where others, meaning to, have failed.
I like our home, our life together. It’s the two of us I can’t stand. I feel I’m giving more, far more, to this marriage than you are, and such self-pity combined with guilt that I’m still not giving enough: I feel, shall we say, uncomfortable. Oh, Christ, I’m tired of this letter, too. I’m tired of waiting for you. I’m tired of you.
I’m going for a walk.
R.
VARIOUS FAILURES OF ME
EDUCATION
Don’t know my own field, literature, sufficiently.
WRITING
Ignorant of basic, classic terms, let alone complexities.
SEX
With ease clitorally, with more difficulty vaginally; perhaps basically asexual? An
indifferent, unexciting partner.
HOUSEKEEPING
Cooking
Some things decently, not very adventurous, fairly unchallenging.
Cleaning
Sporadic, undisciplined yet obsessive, never quite “on top of things”; laundry usually late, buttons unsewn, etc.
Sewing
Zero, and hopeless about learning.
House repairs
Have learned to do some things, but ridiculously incompetent.
SWIMMING
Learned, sort of tries, pretends to, can’t well.
FRENCH
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PIANO
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DRIVING A CAR
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EXERCISE
Sedentary.
BUSINESS
Officious but not very efficient, bad in math, procrastinates.
MONEY
Panics when overdrawn, low, or when bills mount up, yet irresponsible and lives high (cabs, etc.) when money is there. Unplanning. Unrealistic. Unprepared.
APPEARANCE
Overweight, short; hair never quite in a neat or flattering style for the round, rather low-foreheaded face. Eyelids puffy, nose too large for features. Dresses more fashionably than used to but due to height and weight often still looks out of place or “dowdy.”
