Stories

by Susan Sontag

  She never regretted her departure. Her apprenticeship was over. Strictly speaking, her chosen career of venery could only be practiced on the outside, in the world proper. It all worked out handsomely. Because the life of a woman not drawn to this profession either by breeding (remember her impeccable white Protestant descent) or by background (Jim, the three children, the League of Women Voters, the trading stamps) is a hard and lonely one, she might have faltered. As it was, she had reason to court solitude. She knew those two would not give up easily.

  Pursued by Mr. Obscenity and Inspector Jug, Miss Flatface traversed the length and breadth of the United States, carrying her warm treasure between her legs. Wherever she went, she spied replicas of her former self—pale, greedy, self-denying women fortified by pop-up toasters with infrared rays and boxed sets of stainless-steel steak knives made in West Germany. Miss Flatface, penitent for her former life, traveled light. Of course, she sold herself for money. The spirits of William Jennings Bryan and Leland Stanford chided her when she didn’t get a good price.

  Her mentor, Mr. Obscenity, first caught up with her in a lumber camp in the Northwest, somewhere near the Canadian border. He was not wearing his monocle or his knickers. His plaid shirt was carelessly stuffed into a pair of faded blue-jeans. Miss Flatface, plying her trade in front of the town’s only movie theatre, did not at first recognize him. His recent exertions seemed to have aged him. He had grown a little fat and was less well groomed.

  What rang a bell was the low mocking bow he made as she ambled seductively past him.

  “Come near me and I’ll scream,” Miss Flatface retorted with surprising aplomb.

  “Don’t panic. I’m not going to force you. Did I ever force you to do anything?”

  Miss Flatface remembered. The answer was no.

  “Just come back,” he said. “We’ll forget everything that’s happened.”

  “You sound like Jim,” she said.

  A sulky, coquettish expression passed across Mr. Obscenity’s features. He had decided to ignore her last remark. “I’m not as spry as I used to be,” he mused aloud. “I don’t know why, but I’m tired.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “At least not yet.”

  “Well just tell me one thing. Has that rat Jug found you yet?”

  Miss Flatface slowly began to appreciate this new, unearned power she had over Mr. Obscenity.

  “Because if he does,” he snarled, “and you listen to him, I’ll kill you both. Listen to me! Don’t you realize he’s the undoing of all that you and I have done?”

  Miss Flatface considered that this was possibly so, but she wouldn’t give Mr. Obscenity the satisfaction of letting him know she agreed with him.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s get it over with. On the house, of course.”

  “Certainly not,” said Miss Flatface with great severity. “I’m not a charitable institution.”

  “I was,” said Mr. Obscenity.

  His irony, intended to arouse sympathy, backfired. Miss Flatface laughed. Mr. Obscenity’s lips became foamy, and he parted them in a sinister smile that disclosed a set of razor-sharp teeth. He advanced gruesomely, inexorably.

  Miss Flatface made the sign of the cross. It didn’t work. But, opportunely, a tree toppled and grazed him on the skull, leaving Miss Flatface plenty of time to slip down an alley and make her escape.

  Her suppliant, Inspector Jug, first accosted her some months later while the roof of her mouth was burning from an impetuously gobbled slice of pizza-with-pepperoni. They were squeezed side by side in an all-night eatery in Times Square.

  “Gee, Laura,” he sighed, wheezing. “It’s been a long time catchin’ up with yer.”

  “I’ve nothing to say to you,” she said, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin.

  “You don’t hafta say nothin’ to me. Just clear me with my boss. That guy’s awful mad at me.”

  “How’s your shoulder?” asked Miss Flatface with routine sympathy.

  “Poorly, Laura.”

  “Well, I can’t help you. I’ve got to think of myself first. Anyway, stop passing the buck. Be a man! What do you care what he thinks? Don’t you know this is a free country? You’re free. So am I. And I intend to make use of the liberty granted me by God and the Constitution.”

  Inspector Jug looked distinctly crestfallen at this militant declaration.

  “Are you on the level?” inquired Miss Flatface. “I mean, is this the real reason, the only reason you’ve been following me around? I did get that smutty wire in New Orleans, you know. I just didn’t see any reason to answer it.” She ordered another slice of pizza.

  “Well, little lady—I reckon not. I really like yer. For yerself. You’ve got spunk. I sorta thought we might team up, Laura, maybe start a little agency with yer as a full partner. Lots of divorce cases, stuff like that. A lady investigator does even better than a man. How about it?”

  “You mean you’ve been following me all over the country to make me a business proposition?” The spirits of John Brown and Dashiell Hammett whispered hoarsely in her ears, beckoning and forbidding.

  “Well, maybe it isn’t just that I’m attracted to yer, I admit it. Why don’t we go to my hotel now and—”

  “Look,” said Miss Flatface. “I meant it when I said this was a free country. It took me a long time to find my freedom and I’m not giving it up. At least not until it’s my idea, not somebody else’s.” And after these forceful words, she abandoned her uneaten second slice of pizza and marched out into the turbulent street. Looking back, she saw that Inspector Jug did not follow her.

  Miss Flatface’s brave words to Mr. Obscenity and Inspector Jug were sincere. She did love her freedom. But that did not mean she was not occasionally lonely.

  To stave off loneliness, Miss Flatface indulged a newfound taste for disasters. Not political disasters (in Times Square she rarely looked up at the streaming news); the private, domestic ones. Between tricks, for which she used a convenient hotel on Tenth Avenue, she would buy and pore over all the weekly scandal papers, finding the headlines irresistible. “My Milk Killed My Nine Babies.” “For My Husband’s Sake I Was Blind For Forty-Two Years.” “I Looked Like This Until I Had Plastic Surgery.” “Cooked Alive!” “I’m A Member Of The Fourth Sex.” “My In-Laws Drove Four Nails Into My Skull.” “I’m Not Ugly, I’m Just Funny-Looking.” “They Left Me Outside For Seventeen Years.” The stories were often less vivid than the headlines, but no matter. From the headlines alone Miss Flatface received sufficient and vicarious pleasure. For she had decided that she herself was perfectly normal-looking. Never did she meet the slightest reluctance from clients because of her flat face.

  But although men generally found her attractive, she had to admit that she was not drawn to every man. A total sensual thrill was not always forthcoming. Yet her ardor might flare up simply at the sight of someone whom she thought at first was Mr. Obscenity or even the insipid Inspector Jug.

  Miss Flatface tried to humor her occasional discontents by keeping on the move. That way she got to know this country extremely well—its unlimited human resources, its majestic natural setting. From time to time she would take a vacation, travel just for the sake of traveling (this also helped to throw her mentor and her suppliant off the track), saving a little money and hitchhiking or taking a bus to the Grand Canyon or Yosemite National Park or Carlsbad Caverns. Once, she spent two whole weeks in a little cabin in the Ozarks, catching up on back issues of The Saturday Evening Post, sleeping twelve hours a day, and occasionally yielding to the advances of George, the proprietor of the nearby Friendly Ed Motel.

  She knew some other work would be less strenuous than hustling. A telephone operator or a clerk at J. C. Penney’s or a waitress had it easier than she. It was not just the risk of disease but the standing, and even worse, the walking; her feet swelled and it was hard to find attractive heels that didn’t pinch her corns. But really she wouldn’t have changed her life for any other. It had brought her a peace of mi
nd and a vitality she’d never known before. She who had often flagged in her daily tasks as a fully mechanized suburban housewife with only three children, two of them school age, now found herself always on the go, full of pep. Truly the power of sex, even when discovered late in life, is a magical one.

  So great was her energy that when she first encountered both Mr. Obscenity and Inspector Jug at the same time—it was a deserted street lined with warehouses, on the near north side of Chicago—she had the mother wit to call the police and have them arrested for molesting her. Actually, they hadn’t gotten around to that yet. Mr. Obscenity, monocled, clad in a parka, corduroy pants, and high rubber snowboots, was leading Inspector Jug by some sort of harness. That’s what I call a sick relationship, she thought.

  The Chicago police are not noted for their courage or their incorruptibility, but they did not seem in the least fazed by the odd-looking pair that Miss Flatface consigned to their care.

  “I bet that’s not the last of them,” Miss Flatface reflected aloud as she left the station after the disreputable twosome had been booked. Mingled with anxiety there was a wistful note in her voice.

  Mr. Obscenity and Inspector Jug, usually singly, rarely in tandem, accosted Miss Flatface no less than one hundred seventy-four times within the next five years, by telephone, telegram, and personal appearance. Often the interruption was embarrassing, and Miss Flatface lost her composure. Gradually, however, her strongest emotion toward the pair became condescension, touched with alarm. Would they never give up? Didn’t they know the meaning of rejection? Had they no pride?

  While eating in a diner outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Miss Flatface finally fell in love for the first time in her life. He was a sailor named Arthur; seated next to her at the counter, his feet twined around the bar stool, he was bulldozing his way through three hamburgers doused with ketchup and relish. Miss Flatface longed to reach out and touch his smooth, healthy cheek. The spirits of Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy whispered hoarsely in her ears, beckoning and forbidding. For Arthur looked a little like Jim. Something in the eyes, in the shape of the head, the way the hair curled at the nape of his neck. Watch out! the spirits cried. But he’s not Jim, said Miss Flatface to herself. Nor am I I.

  He’s a man, that’s the resemblance, Miss Flatface observed after a few nights in Arthur’s tireless arms. Like Jim, he isn’t very interested in sexual variety. But who needs that, she said to herself, sternly repressing all memories of the unpredictable Mr. Obscenity. The main thing is that he loves me. And he won’t sit on me—a figure of speech—as Jim did, because now I know my own mind.

  She went with Arthur to San Diego, where a wedding ceremony was performed. They rented a room at the Magnolia Arms with cooking privileges, but Miss Flatface no longer liked to cook. When Arthur was away—he regularly shipped out for weeks at a time—she lived on canned ravioli, which she ate cold, and sardines, and spiced ham. In the morning, after going down to get the mail, she would wander over to the local Bowl; in the afternoon there was bingo. Needless to say, she was faithful to Arthur—sealing her fidelity by wearing loafers and white socks, an ungainly fashion from her high-school days. And Arthur, when he returned home, was as affectionate as ever.

  “Laurababy,” he would shout as he burst in the door, his tanned face beaming. “Boy did I miss my baby! Boyoboyoboy.” Miss Flatface loved the boy in Arthur even more than the lover. When she undressed him upon his return from a voyage, it was first to see if he had new tattoos. That was a game between them. Arthur’s forearms and biceps were already printed with colorful designs; now he made sure to get them in less likely places. He would fall on the bed squealing—he was ticklish too, another one of his charms—as Miss Flatface examined his armpits, his navel, the folds of his groin, and other secret zones. “Just wait till I get hold of you,” he would mutter with mock fierceness, between his giggles. Miss Flatface would insist on continuing to look carefully for the tattoos. This game was a lovely part of their joy. In her happiness with Arthur Miss Flatface began to forget her former lives.

  She had a reminder, though, after one evening while he was in port and out with some of his seamen buddies. On such evenings Miss Flatface knew better than to ask to come along, but she allowed herself to question Arthur afterward. “Aw, you know,” he said this particular evening. “A lot of booze. And chasing after girls—not that I’m interested in any other girl when I got my baby here at home waiting for me. And talking to a couple of funny fellows at the Blue Star.”

  “What fellows?”

  “Oh, just some guys.” He laughed and slapped his chest. “The weirdest dudes you ever laid eyes on, honey. One had a monocle and some kind of crazy outfit, like he was English or something. Like one of them polo players. Real stuck up. But the other guy, he was real friendly. Got me to talking about myself. I told them all about you, what a great little wife I got.” He smacked his lips appreciatively, then planted them on her neck.

  “Arthur,” Miss Flatface cried shrilly. “You just stay away from those two men. Don’t ask me to explain. Just stay away from them. Promise me! You hear?”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Arthur’s spirits drooped, for he was not accustomed to being berated by his wife. A mean thought, one of the few ever to cross his mind, came without ado to his lips. “I guess I understand. I know you got a pretty wild past—”

  “Arthur!”

  “Aw I’m sorry.” Kiss. “Let’s forget about it. Come on, let’s watch some TV and get to bed, huh?”

  Throughout the night Miss Flatface could not rid herself of the suspicion that Mr. Obscenity and Inspector Jug, at separate windows, were watching her and Arthur making love. She longed to get up and look. But she was unwilling to alarm Arthur. She doubted—since he was groggy with beer—that his potency could have survived such an interruption.

  At dawn, with Arthur curled up on one side of the bed, Miss Flatface made her way outdoors. It was as she’d suspected. Her two pursuers were nonchalantly sitting on the curb, near the bus stop.

  “I thought you two hated each other,” she said irritably.

  “We’ve made up,” said Inspector Jug. “Joined forces.”

  “Pay no attention to him,” said the familiar imperious voice of Mr. Obscenity, tinged with silver mockery. “You know your place, my dear. And it’s not at the side of that—boy.” He spat the word out with something less than contempt. “Was it for this childish purple, red, and green Arthur that I rescued you from Jim, taught you all you know? Good God, woman, do you realize how much older you are than he? Does he realize it?”

  “We’ve never talked about it,” said Miss Flatface tearfully. “He loves me.”

  “But does he know you?” persisted Mr. Obscenity. “Does he know you as I do?”

  “Mr. Obscenity—sir,” interjected the ever apologetic Inspector Jug.

  “Quiet, you moron!”

  “But shouldn’t we tell her the dope I’ve got on him? I got this whole dossier.”

  “What dossier?” she cried.

  “Well, Laura,” began Inspector Jug in a confidential tone, “yer Arthur wasn’t always a sailor. Before that he was a—”

  “You shit!” screamed Mr. Obscenity, losing altogether for the first time in Miss Flatface’s knowledge his splendid self-control. “Don’t you see that’s no way to get her back!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Miss Flatface, growing firmer in the face of Mr. Obscenity’s disarray. “You can’t spoil Arthur for me. I need him. And I won’t give him up.”

  “And when he’s thirty? Do you realize what an old bag you’ll be?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Miss Flatface. “Let me be, both of you. I’ve done my duty, I had my pleasures. Now I want to be.”

  Suddenly Mr. Obscenity’s knickers looked wrinkled and absurd in the bright sunshine. His monocle seemed grotesquely affected. And no one, but no one, wears a hat in Southern California, least of all on a sunny early morning. Miss Flatface began to laugh.

&nb
sp; After only a few more months of second marriage, Miss Flatface, still in the flower of her womanhood, became mortally ill. It began as ptomaine poisoning, contracted just over the border, in Tijuana. As she had approached the aged vendor’s cart, and even while she was chewing the tacos, a food she had never particularly liked, the spirits of Margaret Fuller and Errol Flynn screamed warnings in her ears. But she hadn’t heard them. Ever responsive to the American spirit in its broader manifestations, she had never been particularly attuned to its more direct signals. Arthur, who never heard voices, had settled for a Pepsi.

  Two weeks after she took to their Castro Convertible, sustained by the best medical care the seamen’s union could provide, she became delirious. Eyeing the grieving man slumped nearby in a chair, she cried, “Jim, I didn’t know that you were here!” Then, with just the slightest touch of insincerity: “It was grand of you to come!”

  But it was not Jim. It was still Arthur, who faithfully nursed her through the endless hours of bedpans and cups of consommé and damp washcloths laid on her still far from prominent features. And although he was the one romance in her life, Miss Flatface barely acknowledged Arthur’s care. In a lucid interval between deliriums she called for a lawyer and dictated her will. Even here, Arthur wasn’t mentioned. Miss Flatface did not take the present at all into account. Her mind as she approached death was unexpectedly preempted by effusions of a patriotic nature and by thoughts of her former husband and children. In the end we all return to our beginnings.

  Miss Flatface’s Last Will and Testament.

  “To America—I salute you, especially those parts of you which are not beautiful: your new banks; your candy bars; your parking lots. I have tried always to see the best in you and your people who while friendly and full of fun on the outside are often rather mean on the inside. But no matter. My life has been spent in the discovery of you—that is, of myself. I am what I am because I am a citizen of this country and a votary of its way of life. Therefore, let my body be cremated and my remains scattered among the cigarette ashes next to the potatoes which lie uneaten (because you are dieting) on your dinner plates.