Sex Wars

by Marge Piercy

  He rose, the armchair tipping over, and rushed across the room, throwing himself on his knees and clasping hers, his head landing on her thigh. “Darling Victoria, precious Victoria!”

  She stroked his fine flyaway hair. “Theo, what is it?”

  “I’ve fallen in love with you. The more I know you, the more I must know of you. To be near you is driving me half mad.”

  “I don’t need you to go mad, Theo. Do you want me?”

  In answer he rose and pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her. His mouth was full and soft. His tongue was agile in her mouth. He pushed her back onto the love seat that stood next to her chair and fell upon her, his mouth still pressed against hers, one hand clutching her left breast through the stuff of her gown. She kissed him back, enjoying his passion, enjoying the skill of his mouth. But the door stood open and any of the members of her family or her staff could pass by.

  She freed her mouth. “Patience, Theo, patience a moment.”

  He was contrite. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to force you.”

  “No force needed.” She smiled, looking at him. He was indeed handsome. She had not thought of him in that way, but now she was interested. “We need some privacy. This way.”

  She led him to a linen closet where she handed him a couple of pillows and took out a feather bed. Told him to wait a moment in the hall. She slipped into her bedroom and prepared herself. Then she motioned him to follow her up a steep flight of steps to the roof. It was a warm night and the stars were huge overhead. They spread the feather bed on the flat tar roof, where they lay together kissing, rolling to and fro, touching what was bare to touch until they were both seething. He stepped out of his trousers, peeled off his loose shirt and then helped her out of her dress, crinoline, and with practiced fingers undid her corset. After all, he was a married man. He had to be quite used to undoing women’s clothing. As he bared her shoulders and then her breasts and lastly, letting her drawers drop to the roof, her buttocks and legs, her whole body bare at last to him, he kissed what he uncovered.

  His body was lean and almost hairless, excitingly smooth. She could feel his muscles, not huge but firm. He was well made. She would like to see him in gaslight, but not now. Not right now. She could feel him hard against her, not a thick penis but long and slightly canted to the right with a full hood. His hands were strong but long-fingered. One of those long fingers slipped into her. Ah, he knew something about exciting a woman, he did. Two fingers now probed her, sliding in and out. She parted her thighs wide for him, to indicate she was ready. He slid his weight over her and pushed in. Slowly he moved at first, then picked up the tempo. He was keeping himself high against her, so that she got maximum pressure against the seat of her pleasure. He was good, this poet, he was exactly what she wanted.

  “I want you, I have you,” he was blurting out as he pumped into her. “We’re bad, we’re bad, Victoria. I want you, bad, bad Victoria.”

  She did not consider herself bad in the least, but who cared what nonsense he muttered when he was riding her into such excitement that she bit his shoulder and plunged up to meet him, her ass banging on the roof through the feather bed. Then she was up and over, and a moment later she felt him gush into her.

  They lay on the roof in the balmy night air, sleeping in each other’s arms until something woke him and he rolled over onto her and began again. Then they both slept. She woke to the sun already burning down on their bare skin. She opened her eyes, yawned and tried to slip from his arms. He woke. He was amazingly handsome in the orange light of the morning sun, his hair loose and wild, his eyes half closed, his lips swollen. He pulled her down on him, kissing her passionately and keeping her on top. He was firm again. This time she rode him, rode him hard with her hair swishing, her breasts bouncing. She was a little sore by now but she wanted him too badly for that to matter. Finally they descended the steep stairs from the roof and she went off to draw a bath. They bathed together, facing, the water scented lavender. In the tub he played with her, sliding his fingers into her as she faced him and she came again.

  When he had finally left and she put herself together, she reflected on the night. He was an amazingly resilient lover. She felt enthralled. She could not wait to see him again. She felt as if she had met the lover she had always craved. He was sensitive, he was a fine writer everyone said, he had good politics, he was helping her in her campaign for president, and most importantly, the sex was unparalleled.

  She forgot all about her intention to quiz him, but after their third night of passionate sex on the roof, he told her the story of Beecher and his wife over breakfast. He still felt overly sorry for himself.

  “You must have a passionate relationship with your wife. Why become furious if she supplements your pleasure with a close friend?”

  “Lib is, Lib was a good woman. She was pure. She was my angel.”

  “No women are angels, Theo. We all have our own needs. Surely you tried to awaken her?”

  “I would never have corrupted her. Only that traitor Beecher would dare.”

  She began to understand he believed in good and bad women. The bad women were sexually responsive; the good women were cold. She knew herself on the verge of falling in love with him; surely she could teach him what she knew about men and women. Theo was passionate but not that intelligent. He knew a great deal about local and national politics, but ideologically he was naïve. She could fix that; she would. He was patient with Zulu Maud, making her laugh until she fell out of her chair. His ego was a bit fragile and he needed frequent praise. But he was an energetic and tireless lover. Their summer nights on the roof or in her bed were sensual and exhausting in the best way. He had the ability to make love several times a night; she had never felt so satisfied. She felt bound to him sexually to the point where she did not really desire even her husband or Pearlo. He stirred her to the point of obsession. When she looked at him she felt her spirit yearning toward him. Did he love her? Or did he only crave her? The sex and her campaign biography marched on together. When he spoke of himself and her as bad, she withdrew emotionally. Yet when he touched her, she burned. She had only to look at his long-fingered sensitive hands and she grew hungry all over again. If only she could educate him out of his nonsense about women, he would be a perfect mate.

  In the meantime, he introduced her to other sorts of pleasure. They did silly things, a kind of playing she had never experienced. They went rowing in Central Park, they went to the seaside and picnicked at Coney Island, they went riding together. Victoria loved riding, as fast as possible. It thrilled her. Never had she done so many things with a lover that were not either directly sexual or intellectual. He took her to see P. T. Barnum’s lions and tigers and midgets and bought her cotton candy. They went to the horse races together, as she had in Saratoga that wonderful week. They watched a game of baseball and yelled for the team he chose as theirs. She had never had a childhood, but Theo was giving her one. She was besotted with him.

  Theo had gone off to Washington when a parade was scheduled. The Orangemen had got a permit to march on July 12 to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne when they had defeated the Catholics in Ireland. Since the Catholic Irish far outnumbered them and both sides hated each other, not only were the police ordered to protect the march, but the National Guard was called up. It sounded exciting, so Tennie and she put on men’s clothing to go watch it. They told no one where they were going except for James, who quickly took his heaviest cane and accompanied them.

  The Orangemen had gathered in midtown and now they were marching down Eighth Avenue to Twenty-third, then to turn east and down Broadway to Union Square. Only seventy Orangemen braved the heat and the hostile crowds, but thousands of soldiers were in full gear to protect them, with mounted policemen ahead, platoons of policemen on foot, the Seventh Regiment deployed behind them, the Twenty-seventh to the right, and behind them, the Eighty fourth and Sixth Regiments, and then still more police. Victoria thought it a ridiculous
sight, that handful of marchers and all those escorts, rank upon rank. She was surprised to see the Ninth Regiment flanking and protecting the marchers on their left, Fisk in his resplendent colonel’s uniform marching at their head. The Ninth was famous for its band, but most of the men had as much fighting experience as Fisk himself. Still, Fisk was there to lead them in his glittering white uniform, waving his sword like a baton. The day was hot, in a hot summer. The sun drummed on their heads. The masses along the sidewalks and crowding the rooftops were in an ugly mood and threw rocks and garbage at the marchers. Marchers and hecklers shouted insults at each other.

  “Don’t you think we should go?” James suggested.

  Tennie said, “Oh, just a little longer. Let’s see what’s going to happen.” They were standing on the corner of Twenty-seventh and Eighth. The Orangemen had passed them, all seventy, and the rear regiments went clumping past with rifles on their shoulders. “It’s fine to see a parade,” Tennie said, “no matter how stupid the pretext. I do like men in uniform—to look at, anyhow.”

  “I’ve seen rather too many of them,” James said. “Living and dead, whole and in pieces.”

  Victoria squeezed his hand. “We can go. Just wait till the parade passes us.”

  A loud noise startled them. James said, “Now! That was a shot.”

  They turned to make their way home, but they could not buck the crowd, which was swarming toward the noise.

  “I think it came from the roof,” James said, and that was all he had time to say before a great fusillade of shots rang out. James grabbed both of their arms and began to fight against the current of the mob pressing toward the battle. It seemed to be one-sided now, as every regiment began to fire at will, wildly into the crowds on the sidewalk, at folks leaning out windows, at the rooftops. Now people were screaming and running away from the firing instead of toward it. James yanked them both bodily up onto a stoop where they could see what was happening. Bodies lay on the sidewalks, a man with his head half blown off, his brain exposed; a little girl lying facedown in a pool of blood; a woman dragging herself along with her thigh smashed. The bodies lay faceup, facedown, faceless, blood pooling on the cobblestones and the planks. A woman passed screaming, carrying a baby crushed by the fleeing mob.

  It was over as they watched. The soldiers drew back into their columns, the band commenced playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and the parade resumed. As the soldiers marched on and the entire parade turned the corner of Twenty-third Street, people poured back into the street to carry off the dead and wounded. A great sound of keening arose.

  “Let’s get out of here”—James wiped his forehead—”before worse happens. The next time you two get it into your heads to attend a riot, I’ll lock you in the cellar.”

  Tennie was white with shock and stumbled as she went. Her auburn hair had come loose. Victoria told her to shove it under her cap lest they cause another riot. Women in men’s clothing were likely to be stoned in the street. It broke all of society’s rules—as, Victoria thought, did so many of the things Tennie and she enjoyed. Tennie had not said a word since the shooting. She stepped in a puddle of blood and kept stopping to try to rub her boots on the curb.

  When they were two blocks away and out of the press of bodies—although people were still running toward or away from Eighth Avenue and a horse ambulance clattered by—she stopped James for a moment. “Thank you, my dear. Thank you for getting us safely out of there. You have, as always, a cool head, and I want you to know how much I value that.” The smell of gunpowder still hung in the air and the wounded were screaming where they lay.

  At Annie’s the next day, Josie filled them in. Fisk’s ankle was trampled by a horse. He was caught flat-footed in the riot. He hopped into a bakery. When he was spied through the bakery window, people began to call for him to come out and be hanged from a streetlamp, for his regiment shooting down unarmed civilians in cold blood. He went out the back, over a fence and then into a basement window and up on the next street. He fled through basements, between buildings, through yards and alleyways until a piece of amazing luck—or, Josie said, because the devil had informed his friend—he found Jay Gould in a hansom cab, who took him in and carried him to safety. “Imagine that fat hog leaping over fences!”

  The papers reported forty-seven civilians dead, two soldiers and one policeman, and eighty-three wounded, many seriously. The papers played up the heroism of the soldiers in the face of the unruly and violent Irish. Most newspapers also published caricatures of Jim Fisk trundling his bulk through yards, running for dear life in his fancy uniform, fake medals and bright buttons flying.

  “Frankly,” Josie said, “I’m ashamed to be seen with him. The time has come to end this farce. I’m going to live with Edward openly. He wants to, I want to. Jim Fisk can eat his epaulets.”

  When Josie had gone, Victoria and Annie consulted. “I can try to fix him up with another mistress,” Annie said, “but he has a whole theater company to run through first, and I’ve heard he’s made a good start.”

  “Perhaps he won’t even notice Josie’s defection.”

  “No luck there. The chorines are just sex. He loves Josie. Don’t ask me why. Sometimes a man fixates on a woman, and the less she loves him, the more he wants her. He keeps her and beds her, but she’s aloof and he must realize she doesn’t love him. He’s hooked on making her love him. He always thinks it’s about to happen.”

  Victoria sighed. “We will miss him.”

  ISABELLA WAS AT JULIUS’S in Tenafly when next Victoria visited. She was depressed because Congress had refused to agree that women already had the right to vote. Victoria said, “Never mind. We will bypass them and claim the White House ourselves.”

  “It was only the first step with Congress,” Julius said. Victoria was pleased that Isabella had never been treated to a nickname for Elizabeth, and in Isabella’s presence she used the more formal “Elizabeth.” It showed that Cady Stanton had accorded her a degree of intimacy beyond that given to Isabella, in spite of her social position.

  “I really had my ears burned off by my sisters at Nook Farm.” Isabella flung herself on a chaise lounge. She was wearing a white satin dress with large check weave, trimmed with emerald green satin ribbons, with a double row of little satin bows down the front and at the wrists. On a chair lay a huge pale green silk crepe hat with mauve artificial lilies and a real dead bird. Julius, by contrast, wore a blue serge walking dress and no bustle. Isabella complained, “Catherine knows so much, of course. She writes at length about proper motherhood, who has never borne nor raised a child. She writes about marriage and the complete satisfaction that housekeeping should bring to a woman, who has never married and never had to care for a house. Harriet and she attack you constantly, Vickie, my dear Queen. They don’t know you and they refuse to meet you. I will not give up, however. I am convinced that if Harriet or Catherine were to meet you face-to-face, you would win them over completely!”

  “I’d appreciate the opportunity. I’m aware the Boston contingent gossip about me constantly. You know that I am a free lover, that I espouse the doctrine of affinities. That shocks them.”

  “It shocks a great many people,” Elizabeth said. “You have to stick to your guns. You can’t trim your ideas to suit anyone else. I never do. I won’t lie out of cowardice or to please the hypocrites and the mealymouthed. It doesn’t work in the long run to conceal your ideas, because they will out.”

  “Do you believe that, Isabella?” Victoria caught her gaze and held it. She was thinking of what she had heard about Henry, Isabella’s brother, who practiced free love but refused to acknowledge it. He simply preached a mushy gospel of Love, careful never to define what he meant. Out of curiosity, she had gone with Theo to hear the great man in Plymouth Church. It was a rather plain brick building, looking more like a gymnasium or a theater than a church, but it held three thousand. He was certainly a dynamic speaker, highly theatrical, acting out parts, causing his audience to l
augh, to weep, to groan. As Roxanne would say, a lot of froth but not much milk.

  “I believe we must speak out for what we believe in. The spirits come to me also, Vickie, and I—like you—take instructions from them and attempt to carry out their advice. My mother appears to me whenever I am in crisis and gives me counsel.” Isabella’s mood changed in an instant and she laughed. “Better now than when she was alive, I mean when she was on this plane of existence.”

  VICTORIA WAS PREPARING for the weeklong National Woman Suffrage Association meeting at Apollo Hall to formally launch her campaign. Pearlo had been helping her—until his wife died suddenly and he retreated into mourning. Julius took his place, moving into the Woodhull house for convenience until the convention. However, a disgusting commotion developed.

  Tennie came running to her, her hair loose and wild, her face flushed so that a spot as if she wore rouge stood out on her cheeks. “Vickie, we’re undone!” Buck, Mama Roxanne, Polly and her husband, Dr. Sparr, had decided to blackmail Vanderbilt, claiming he had corrupted Tennie. Mama had come to her only after the letter had been sent but no reply received. Tennie was hysterical. “He’ll cut us off completely. He’s proud of never paying a penny of blackmail. He’ll never forgive us.”

  “Why did they do such a thing? We’ve given them everything they wanted.” Victoria clutched her heart.

  Tennie collapsed in a chair. Two large tears rolled down her cheeks and she blew her nose loudly into a handkerchief. “Mama has this notion of taking us back to Ohio and beginning our old life again. Vickie, I don’t care if we lose every last penny. I will not go back there! I won’t be hauled from town to town selling patent medicine that can half kill people. I will not go to bed with random men so Buck can tear ass into the room and blackmail them.”

  Victoria took her sister in her arms. “We’ll never return to that life, I promise. But they must leave the house at once. We’ll set them up on their own. We must get them packed and out of here before worse damage is done.”