The Men in My Life

by Patricia Bosworth

  That particular evening I was seated at the bar sipping a rum and coke when suddenly a drunken customer pinched my butt—hard. I screamed, whereupon a tall, burly young man wearing a beret, who’d been lounging at the far end of the room eyeing me, charged forward and socked the man in the jaw. He toppled over in the sawdust, out like the proverbial light. Everyone in the bar stopped talking and there was dead silence in the place, interrupted by the train whistling below us. With that, my rescuer took off his beret with a sweeping gesture and ambled over to me. “Thank you,” I said. “You didn’t have to go that far.”

  “I always go too far,” he rumbled back in his gloriously deep basso profundo voice, and put on a playful French accent. “That ees my problem.”

  I laughed, and then we all watched a waiter drag the knocked-out customer into the men’s room. The atmosphere returned to normal; people began drinking and smoking and laughing. Someone put a nickel in the jukebox and Rosemary Clooney sang, “Come-on-a my house . . .”

  That’s when the young man sat down beside me at the bar and ordered me another rum and coke. He said he liked my outfit. I was wearing a beige cashmere sweater, a cardigan buttoned up the back, and a tartan pleated plaid skirt fastened by a big safety pin. It was the latest fashion. He went on to compliment my hair, which was curly reddish brown. (I thanked God I’d just washed it.) “I’m Jason Bean,” he told me. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Patricia Bosworth,” I said, feeling sort of funny because this wasn’t my real name. I mean, Bosworth was my middle name, and I was trying it out as my stage name. My real name was Patricia Crum, but my father had said, “If you become an actress and you get a bad review, critics will say, ‘Crummy performance by Patricia Crum,’ so take your mother’s maiden name.”

  “Patricia Bosworth,” Jason repeated slowly, as if he were tasting something delicious. “I like the sound of it.” And then he turned quiet but kept on staring at me and I kept staring back at him because he was like nobody I’d ever met before.

  He had shaggy blond hair combed into an absurdly glossy, greasy pompadour. His sleepy bedroom eyes and slow, lazy voice made me feel weak. But I kept on talking, trying to find out who he was. Well, he was taking classes at the Art Students League; he planned to be a painter. When my questions got too personal, such as what does your father do or where do you live, he asked me to the movies. We left the bar and headed to the Cinema Theatre in Bronxville, which was showing An American in Paris. The film had just started when we entered the darkened auditorium, the gorgeous Gershwin music enveloping us. “’S wonderful . . . ’S marvelous . . . that you should care for me.”

  Soon Jason put his arm about my shoulders. Our bodies touched. He smelled of tobacco and BO. I kept waiting for him to kiss me and eventually he did, slobbering wet fierce kisses, his tongue touching mine. His breath tasted sour, but I didn’t care. I felt my breasts arching, tensing toward him. My heart pounded. Perspiration streamed down my armpits as his fingers began tickling my crotch.

  After the movie was over, we walked out of Bronxville and up the steep hill to campus. The street was dark and calm. We didn’t say a word. I felt exhausted, drained; my panties were moist. I wanted to fall back into his embrace and stay there forever. When we reached the wrought-iron gate on the hill, the dormitories loomed up ahead. Only a few lights were on. I’d missed curfew, so I had to climb in with some difficulty through a hole in the fence. Jason chuckled, watching me pulling the bushes aside to make my way. He said he’d be in touch and then disappeared down the hill into the darkness.

  THE NEXT DAY he dropped by the student lounge bearing flowers. He was wearing his beret, and he murmured a few words to me in French as a greeting. That did it. He would be my artist lover. I didn’t listen when a couple of the other students warned me about Jason. He was well known on campus as a fortune hunter, they said, an operator; he glommed onto girls who came from rich families. “I’m not rich,” I would tell them. “My father is actually going broke.”

  “It doesn’t look that way with the kind of clients he has,” another student commented.

  I started cutting classes; I’d hop on the train to New York, where I’d pick Jason up after his drawing sessions at the Art Students League on West Fifty-Seventh Street. Then he’d take me downtown and introduce me to Greenwich Village, its streets and bars filled with artists and writers. We’d stroll through Washington Square Park hand in hand; there was the sound of guitar music; couples played chess under the great old trees off Bleecker. We went to the San Remo Café and drank whiskey sours; another time we sat in a coffeehouse called Le Figaro and I tasted bitter espresso for the first time. All the while Jason would fill my head with impossible dreams. Next summer we would go to Mexico or Paris, where he would attend art school; he would paint and I would write and act and dance. We never got beyond the talking stage.

  So far Jason had painted only one painting (which he’d refused to show me). He sketched a lot and made drawings on a pad, but he admitted he had no idea what to paint—just that he wanted to paint. His teachers had told him they could teach him only how to draw. This frustrated and angered him, and caused him to drink too much beer. Then he’d sink into a depression and I’d spend too much time trying to cheer him up.

  When we weren’t in the Village, we would spend hours necking in Jason’s brother’s car. Long hours kissing and dry-humping. At first I felt awkward and dissatisfied as he gave me lessons as to how to go down on him. He’d say, “Lick it like a lollipop,” and I’d hold his swollen penis in my hand and lick it and suck on it until he came in my mouth, and then I would gag because I hated doing that. Sometimes Jason would spank me if I didn’t do exactly as he wanted. Once that roused me to orgasm and my entire body shuddered and quivered like a dying bird.

  I became absorbed in the physicality of my responses. My belly would heave; the nipples on my breasts would get hard as nails. After a while I decided I loved being dominated. I’d read about being dominated in True Confessions magazines; in the beginning, it was thrilling and mindless to surrender to Jason. But I would go only so far. I refused to go all the way, even though he’d tease and paddle me, but I fought him off. I wouldn’t put out; I couldn’t—didn’t—want to surrender to sex, to lose myself totally yet. He would finally give up. I would let my body go limp and he would tell me he loved my body, so white and freckled. “You are so goddamn hot.”

  JUST AFTER THANKSGIVING I brought Jason home to our rented brownstone on East Sixty-Eighth Street. My father was away in Hollywood. Bart was away finishing his senior year at Stockbridge. I knew Mama was home, but she was about to leave for some dinner party. When she heard me call up to her, she answered from the third floor, “Oh, lambie-pie! Why didn’t you let me know so I could have something to eat for you? But what a pleasant surprise.”

  Then I heard her high heels clicking on the stairs and she appeared, very blonde, elegant in black lace and fake diamonds. She stopped when she saw Jason. He had not taken off his beret; his jean jacket was paint-smeared.

  “Now who are you?” she demanded very grandly, trying to size him up and intimidate him. (I could tell she was thinking, He is still wearing his beret inside . . . Rude!) She dared him to answer, and of course he did in his own time and in his lazy, laconic, basso profundo voice.

  “I’m Jason Bean. You are Mrs. Bartley Crum.” He bowed mockingly and they shook hands, but then he held on to her fingers and wouldn’t let go. She tried to pull away, but he continued to hold her hand in his big paw, squeezing it and laughing his lazy, seductive chuckle. He often did this with people when he first met them, invariably throwing them off-balance, which both surprised and annoyed them.

  “Well, I never!” Mama exclaimed indignantly when he finally released his grip. She gave him an angry look. Then, pausing, she pecked my cheek and swept out, calling over her shoulder, “I think there are leftovers in the fridge.”

  AS SOON AS we were alone in the brownstone, Jason began wandering around
investigating the living room and den, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves that contained hundreds of books from our library in San Francisco.

  “Jeez, who reads all this stuff?” he marveled. “You can’t tell me your parents have read all these books.”

  “Yes, they have, and I’ve read a lot of them too,” I told him. I loved books. I’d grown up with books. Mama gave me love sonnets for Valentine’s Day; my brother received a biography of Einstein for his birthday. But Jason wasn’t listening. He had gone over to the mantel, where a green marble bust of my mother as a young college graduate stared out into the room. “Is this your mom?” I nodded.

  “Your folks must be loaded,” Jason continued.

  “Actually my father has had a lot of trouble earning a living ever since he represented the Hollywood Ten.”

  “Is he a commie?”

  “No, he is left-liberal and a practicing Catholic.”

  “That doesn’t sound too good to me. Me and my brother are gonna vote for Eisenhower.”

  With that, Jason wandered away and began investigating Daddy’s well-stocked bar. The fridge was filled with wine and Jason pulled out a bottle of champagne.

  “Shall we?” He grinned.

  In the next hour we drank the entire bottle. I began feeling uncomfortable as soon as Jason started kissing me, because I knew that he wanted to go all the way.

  I told him to “Please don’t!” but I really didn’t mean that and he could tell. I was curious about sex. I’d been fantasizing about it for so long. I relaxed my body. Then he was inside me, pushing his penis in and out, and I whimpered that it hurt. He came convulsively. When it was over, I lay there with him heaving by my side. It was not as I’d expected it to be.

  All around me were the books from my parents’ library. I could recognize their titles upside down—collections of Shaw and Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Hemingway. A profound sadness washed over me. Was this what all the excitement was about? Sex hadn’t been ecstatic or even arousing. I enjoyed kissing much more, and now I’d lost my virginity. Did I have to go to Church and confess it? I thought about that a lot—but I never went to Confession.

  WHILE I WAS putting my clothes on, I heard a noise.

  “It’s just me, Attepe.” I whirled around to see my brother standing in the doorway, pale and skinny in blue striped pajamas. “I didn’t know anyone was here,” he said in a dull voice.

  “Neither did I.”

  Bart shuffled into the room to observe Jason zipping up his fly and slapping his beret onto his head.

  “Why are you wearing a beret in the house?” my brother demanded.

  Jason chuckled. “Dunno . . . Guess I feel like it. Say, who are you anyway?”

  “Bart.”

  “Oh—the brother.” I had mentioned Bart’s depressions, his moodiness, because I was so worried. Now I was terrified Jason would say something inopportune, but he made no comment and I rushed in with, “This is Jason Bean. We met at Sarah Lawrence.”

  “Tell the truth, baby, you picked me up in a bar. Or maybe I picked you up. Either way we are having ourselves a ball.” Jason stuck out his hand and Bart took it. They shook hands, and once again Jason attempted to hold on to his fingers as he had with my mother, but this time it was my brother who squeezed so hard that Jason let go with a yelp. “Jeez! You got some grip, kid. You work out?”

  Bart eyed him coolly and shook his head. “Don’t call me kid.”

  “How old are you? I bet no more than thirteen.”

  “I’m almost sixteen,” he answered, then turned to leave. “You better clean up the living room before you go,” he told me.

  “I will! I will,” I cried, and I immediately started picking up the sofa pillows from the floor, the crumpled napkins and overturned empty champagne bottle.

  Jason was following me around as I placed the glasses onto a tray. “Don’t you guys have maids?” His deep, mellifluous voice was teasing. Bart looked back at me from the doorway, waiting for my answer. His face was stony.

  I ran to him. “Please don’t tell Mama about this.”

  “What would I possibly tell her?” He gazed at me with his huge sad eyes and then disappeared up the stairs to his room on the fourth floor.

  Now it was late and we had to make the last train to Bronxville, so we ran for a cab to take us to Grand Central. We didn’t say much on the trip back. Jason seemed thoughtful. “Your brother is strange,” he murmured at one point. “Maybe I should paint him. I like him, and I like few people.”

  THAT NIGHT, AS we were walking up the steep hill to the college campus Jason proposed to me. We had known each other just six weeks. I hadn’t planned to be married yet, but as a Catholic I believed I had committed a mortal sin by giving myself to him, so I had to get married. I told him yes. But I felt ambivalent; I wasn’t sure I wanted to have someone else define my future for me. Like most girls in the fifties, I had been taught that my ultimate destiny was marriage and a family. Back in the fifties women acquiesced, accommodated. Mama used to quote Clare Boothe Luce: “Women are compromised from the day they are born.”

  I’d been fantasizing that Jason and I might be able to transform ourselves into an artistic team like Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, or Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. I didn’t know these women overlooked the flaws and often exaggerated the achievements of their lovers. I hadn’t considered that I might soon find myself belittled, threatened, and subdued.

  I told Jason that marriage wasn’t going to stop me from finishing college or from pursuing my grandiose dreams of becoming an actress and a writer. He assured me our marriage would in no way affect my plans. But how I would achieve my goals was another question. He had no answers. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. It was funny; although our life together would turn out to be a disaster, Jason did have a crazy faith in me just the way my father did. That helped to raise my spirits.

  THE ONLY PERSON I confided in was Bart. The following weekend I came in on the train from college and burst into his room to tell him that I was getting married. My brother had been lying facedown on his bed listening to Bach. He rolled over and turned off the record player. “Say that again, please. Maybe I didn’t hear right.”

  “I am going to elope tomorrow to Mount Vernon and I want you to be the best man.”

  My brother’s huge, protruding eyes, so like Mama’s, grew even bigger. “You’ve got to be joking,” he murmured softly. “I realize you want to get away from home, but this is too extreme.”

  “I love him!”

  “No you don’t, you’re hot for him.”

  I wouldn’t answer.

  “Stupido, moronico, imbecilito . . .” He launched into a scathing monologue in our private language about how I could ruin my life if I married this man, this Jason . . .

  “Bean,” I finished for him. “How can you possibly know this? You spent only a few minutes with the guy.”

  “My instincts are always correct about people,” my brother answered. “Jason is a faker, a poseur, and he isn’t very intelligent. You may be risking your sanity if you marry this—Jason.”

  I argued back weakly that Jason was an artist and I was going to be one too, an actress and a novelist.

  With that, my brother broke in sharply. “Your dreams and ambitions are nothing but clichés!”

  “We plan to live in Paris next year,” I went on, feeling slightly ill.

  “On whose money?” Bart fired back.

  I didn’t have an answer for that. I hadn’t thought anything out and childishly assumed that all would be well. So far it had been. I had been raised privileged and spoiled rotten, a combination that gives you a weird perspective about life, as well as an unrealistic confidence and sense of entitlement.

  My brother told me that eloping was idiotic, foolhardy, that I would regret it immediately, but I wouldn’t listen to him. Everything that is so difficult about becoming a woman—the ambivalent nature of choices between career and family, between romance and
responsibility, between recklessness and restraint—I didn’t consider all these elements that are so much a part of a woman’s life. I was virtually unconscious back then. After I got a taste of sex, that’s all I thought about. I confused sex with love because not only had I thought I loved Jason but I had somehow convinced myself that he was also the most unique character I’d ever met. Yes, he was scary, but I was turned on by my fear, not put off by it. He was such a mass of contradictions: loving and hateful, smug and doubting, arrogant yet withdrawn, suspicious and yet needy, trusting, boastful and woefully insecure. I saw us as an unconventional couple, Jason in his blue jeans and beret, me in my leotards. We’d agreed we didn’t want a traditional wedding with all the trimmings—bridesmaids, reception, lots of gifts. We didn’t even want a honeymoon. He would go right on painting; I would continue with college. Hopelessly naive and irresponsible, we didn’t talk about how we were going to support ourselves.

  At our wedding ceremony, which was performed by a very bored Mount Vernon judge the following week, I decided to forgo the leotards and wore my favorite fuzzy purple angora sweater and a dress embroidered with silken butterflies. That night in the motel room Jason pretended the butterflies were real and he made me stand in front of him while he pulled them off one by one, crushing them in his hand. Then he made fierce love to me and fell fast asleep.

  I lay awake most of the night, spending part of it wondering why I’d allowed Jason to pull those silken butterflies off my dress. It was downright creepy. Then I wished Bart had been best man and maybe he would have told Jason to stop—but he couldn’t have because he wouldn’t have been in the motel room with us. My brother’s words rang in my ears: You are being idiotic, foolhardy . . . You’ll regret eloping immediately . . .

  I turned over and lay back on the pillows, gazing at the hulking creature snoozing beside me. He’s my husband! I said to myself, not quite believing it. And I’m his wife. Then I thought, Maybe I’ve done the wrong thing. Maybe I should have listened to Bart. But now it was too late. Now I had to see it through.