by Mario Puzo
“I didn’t know you read Graham Greene,” I said. “That crack about the leper without his bell, that’s very pretty. You saved that one up just for me.”
She squinted her brown eyes over the cigarette smoke. The blond hair was loose down over her delicately beautiful face. “It’s true, you know,” she said. “You can go home and screw your wife and that’s OK. But because I have other lovers, you think I’m just a cunt. You don’t even love me anymore.”
“I still love you,” I said.
“You don’t love me as much,” she said.
“I love you enough to want to make love to you and not just fuck you,” I said.
“You’re really sly,” she said. “You’re innocent sly. You just admitted you love me less as if I tricked you into it. But you wanted me to know that. But why? Why can’t women have other lovers and still love other men? You always tell me you still love your wife and you just love me more. That it’s different. Why can’t it be different for me? Why can’t it be different for all women? Why can’t we have the same sexual freedom and men still love us?”
“Because you know for sure whether it’s your kid and men don’t,” I said. I was kidding, I think.
She threw back the covers dramatically and sprang up so that she was standing in bed. “I don’t believe you said that,” she said incredulously. “I can’t believe that you said such an incredibly male chauvinistic thing.”
“I was kidding,” I said. “Really. But you know, you’re not realistic. You want me to adore you, to be really in love with you, to treat you like a virginal queen. As they did in the old days. But you reject those values that surrendering love is built on. You want us to love you like the Holy Grail, but you want to live like a liberated woman. You won’t accept that if your values change, so must mine. I can’t love you as you want me to. As I used to.”
She started to cry. “I know,” she said. “God, we loved each other so much. You know I used to fuck you when I had blinding headaches, I didn’t care, I just took Percodan. And I loved it. I loved it. And now sex isn’t as good, is it, now that we’re honest?”
“No, it isn’t,” I said.
That made her angry again. She started to yell and her voice sounded like a duck quacking.
It was going to be a long night. I sighed and reached over to the table for a cigarette. It’s very hard to light a cigarette when a beautiful girl is standing so that her cunt is right over your mouth. But I managed it and the tableau was so funny that she collapsed back onto the bed, laughing.
“You’re right,” I said. “But you know the practical arguments for women being faithful. I told you women most of the time don’t know that they have venereal disease. And remember, the more guys you screw, the more chance you have of getting cervical cancer.”
Janelle laughed. “You liaaarr,” she drawled out.
“No kidding,” I said. “All the old taboos have a practical basis.”
“You bastards,” Janelle said. “Men are lucky bastards.”
“That’s the way it is,” I said smugly. “And when you start yelling, you sound just like Donald Duck.”
I got hit with a pillow and had the excuse to grab and hug her and we wound up making love.
Afterward, when we were smoking a cigarette together, she said, “But I’m right, you know. Men are not fair. Women have every right to have as many sexual partners as they want. Now be serious. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” I said just as seriously as she and more. I meant it. Intellectually I knew she was right.
She snuggled up to me. “That’s why I love you,” she said. “You really do understand. Even at your male chauvinistic pig worst. When the revolution comes, I’m going to save your life. I’m going to say you were a good male, just misguided.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
She put out the light and then her cigarette. Very thoughtfully she said, “You really don’t love me less because I sleep with others, do you?”
“No,” I said.
“You know I love you really and truly,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you don’t think I’m a cunt for doing that, do you?” Janelle said.
“Nope,” I said. “Let’s go to sleep.” I reached out to hold her. She moved away a little.
“Why don’t you leave your wife and marry me? Tell me the truth.”
“Because I have it both ways,” I said.
“You bastard,” She poked me in the balls with her finger.
It hurt. “Jesus,” I said. “Just because I’m madly in love with you, just because I like to talk to you better than anybody, just because I like fucking you better than anybody, what gives you the balls to think I’d leave my wife for you?”
She didn’t know whether I was serious or not. She decided I was kidding. It was a dangerous assumption to make.
“Very seriously,” she said. “Honestly I just want to know. Why do you still stay married to your wife? Give me just one good reason.”
I rolled up into a protective ball before I answered. “Because she’s not a cunt,” I said.
One morning I drove Janelle to the Paramount lot, where she had a day’s work shooting a tiny part in one of its big pictures.
We were early, so we took a walk around what was to me an amazingly lifelike replica of a small town. It even had a false horizon, a sheet of metal rising to the sky that fooled me momentarily. The fake fronts were so real that as we walked past them, I couldn’t resist opening the door of a bookstore, almost expecting to see the familiar tables and shelves covered with bright-jacketed books for sale. When I opened the door, there was nothing but grass and sand beyond the doorsill.
Janelle laughed as we kept walking. There was a window filled with medicine bottles and drugs of the nineteenth century. We opened that door and again saw the grass and sand beyond. As we kept walking, I kept opening doors and Janelle didn’t laugh anymore. She only smiled. And finally we came to a restaurant with a canopy leading to the street and beneath the canopy a man in work clothes sweeping. And for some reason the man sweeping really faked me out. I thought that we had left the sets and come into the Paramount commissary area. I saw a menu pasted in the window and I asked the workman if the restaurant was open yet. He had an old actor’s rubbery face. He squinted at me. Gave a huge grin then almost closed his eyes and winked.
“Are you serious?” he said.
I went to the restaurant door and opened it, and I was really astonished. Really surprised to see again the sand and grass beyond. I closed the door and looked at the workman’s face. It was almost maniacal with glee as if he had arranged this trip for me. As if he were some sort of God and I had asked him “Is life serious?” and that’s why he had answered me, “Are you serious?”
I walked Janelle to the sound stage where she was shooting and she said to me, “They’re so obviously fake. How could they fool you?”
“They didn’t fool me,” I said.
“But you so obviously expected them to be real,” Janelle said. “I watched your face as you opened the doors. And I know that the restaurant fooled you.”
She gave my arm a playful tug.
“You really shouldn’t be let out alone,” she said. “You’re so dumb.”
And I had to agree. But it wasn’t so much that I believed. It wasn’t that really.‘ What bothered me was that I had wanted to believe that there was something beyond those doors. That I could not accept the obvious fact that behind those painted sets was nothing. That I really thought I was a magician. When I opened those doors, real rooms would appear and real people. Even the restaurant. Just before I opened the door, I saw in my mind red tablecloths and dark wine bottles and people standing silently waiting to be seated. I was really surprised when there was nothing there.
I realized it had been some kind of aberration that had made me open those doors, and yet I was glad I had done so.
I didn’t mind Janelle laughing at me and I didn’t min
d working with that crazy actor. God, I had just wanted to be sure; and if I had not opened those doors, I would have always wondered.
Chapter 42
Osano came to LA for a movie deal and called me to have dinner. I brought Janelle along because she was dying to meet him. When dinner was over and we were having our coffee, Janelle tried to thaw me out about my wife. I shrugged her off.
“You never talk about that, do you?” she said.
I didn’t answer. She kept on. She was a little flushed with wine and a little uncomfortable that I had brought Osano with me. She became angry. “You never talk about your wife because you think that’s dishonorable.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“You still have a good opinion of yourself, don’t you?” Janelle said. She was now very coldly furious.
Osano was smiling a little, and just to smooth things over he played the famous brilliant writer role, caricaturing it ever so slightly. He said, “He never talks about being an orphan too. All adults are orphans really. We all lose our parents when we grow into adulthood.”
Janelle was instantly interested. She had told me she admired Osano’s mind and his books. She said, “I think that’s brilliant. And it’s true.”
“It’s full of shit,” I said. “If you’re both going to use language to communicate, use words for their meaning. An orphan is a child who grows up without parents and many times without any blood relationships in the world. An adult is not an orphan. He’s a fucking prick who’s got no use for his mother and father because they are a pain in the ass and he doesn’t need them anymore.”
There was an awkward silence, and then Osano said, “You’re right, but also you don’t want to share your special status with everybody.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. Then I turned to Janelle. “You and your girlfriends call each other ‘sister.’ Sisters mean female children born of the same parents who have usually shared the same traumatic experiences of childhood, who have imprints of their same experiences in their memory banks. That’s what a sister is, good, bad or indifferent. When you call a girlfriend ‘sister,’ you’re both full of shit.”
Osano said, “I’m getting divorced again. More alimony. One thing, I’ll never marry again. I’ve run out of alimony money.”
I laughed with him. “Don’t say that. You’re the institution of marriage’s last hope.”
Janelle lifted her head and said, “No, Merlyn. You are.”
We all laughed at that, and then I said I didn’t want to go to a movie. I was too tired.
“Oh, hell,” Janelle said. “Let’s go for a drink at Pips and play some backgammon. We can teach Osano.”
“Why don’t you two go?” I said coolly. “I’ll go back to the hotel and get some sleep.”
Osano was watching me with a sad smile on his face. He didn’t say anything. Janelle was staring at me as if daring me to say it again. I made my voice as cold and loveless as possible. And yet understanding. Very deliberately I said, “Look, really I don’t mind. No kidding. You two are my best friends, but I really feel like just going to sleep. Osano, be a gentleman and take my place.” I said this very straight-faced.
Osano guessed right away I was jealous of him. “Whatever you say, Merlyn,” he said. And he didn’t give a shit about what I felt. He thought I was acting like a jerk. And I knew he would take Janelle to Pips and take her home and screw her and not give me another thought. As far as he was concerned, it was none of my business.
But Janelle shook her head. “Don’t be silly. I’ll go home in my car and you two can do what you want.”
I could see what she was thinking. Two male chauvinistic pigs trying to divvy her up. But she also knew that if she went with Osano, it would give me the excuse never to see her again. And I guess I knew what I was doing. I was looking for a reason really to hate her, and if she went with Osano, I could do it and be rid of her.
Finally Janelle went back to the hotel with me. But I could feel her coldness, though our bodies were warm against each other. A little later she moved away, and as I fell asleep, I could hear the rustle of the springs as she left our bed. I murmured drowsily, “Janelle, Janelle.”
Chapter 43
JANELLE
I'm a good person. I don’t care what anybody thinks, I’m a good person. All my life the men I really loved always put me down, and they put me down for what they said they loved in me. But they never accepted the fact I could be interested in other human beings, not just them. That’s what screws everything up. They fall in love with me at first and then they want me to become something else. Even the great love of my life, that son of a bitch, Merlyn. He was worse than any of them. But he was the best too. He understood me. He was the best man I ever met and I really loved him and he really loved me. And he tried as hard as he could. And I tried as hard as I could. But we could never beat that masculine thing. If I even liked another man, he got sick. I could see that sick look on his face. Sure, I couldn’t stand it if he even got into an interesting conversation with another woman. So what? But he was smarter than I was. He covered up. When I was around, he never paid any attention to other women even though they did to him. I wasn’t that smart or maybe I felt it was too phony. And what he did was phony. But it worked. It made me love him more. And my being honest made him love me less.
I loved him because he was so smart in almost everything. Except women. He was really dumb about women. And he was dumb about me. Maybe not dumb, just that he could live only with illusions. He said that to me once and he said that I should be a better actress, that I should give him a better illusion that I loved him. I really loved him, but he said that Wasn’t as important as the illusion that I loved him. And I understood that and I tried. But the more I loved him the less I could do it. I wanted him to love the true me. Maybe nobody can love the true me or the true you or the true it. That’s the truth-nobody can love truth. And yet I can’t live without trying to be true to what I really am. Sure I lie, but only when it’s important, and later, when I think the time is right, I always admit I told a lie. And that screws it up.
I always tell everybody how my father ran away when I was a little girl. And when I get drunk, I tell strangers how I tried to commit suicide when I was only fifteen, but I never tell them why. The true why. I let them think it was because my father went away, and maybe it was. I admit a lot of things about myself. That if a man I like buys me a real boozy dinner and makes me like him, I’ll go to bed with him even if I’m in love with somebody else. Why is that so horrible? Men do that all the time. It’s OK for them. But the man I loved the most in the whole world thought I was just a cunt when I told him that. He couldn’t understand that it wasn’t important. That I just wanted to get fucked. Every man does the same thing.
I never deceived a man about important things. About material things maybe I mean. I never pulled the cheap tricks some of my best friends pull on their men. I never accused a guy of being responsible when I got pregnant just to make him help me. I never tricked men like that. I never told a man I loved him when I didn’t, not at the beginning anyway. Sometimes after, when I stopped loving him and he still loved me and I couldn’t bear to hurt him, I’d say it. But I couldn’t be that loving afterward and they’d catch on and things would cool off and we wouldn’t see each other again. And I never really hated a man once I loved him no matter how hateful he was to me afterward. Men are so spiteful to women they no longer love, most men anyway, or to me anyway. Maybe because they still love me and I never love them afterward or love them a little, which doesn’t mean anything. There’s a big difference between loving somebody a little and loving somebody a lot.
Why do men always doubt that you love them? Why do men always doubt you are true to them? Why do men always leave you? Oh, Christ. why is it so painful? I can’t love them anymore. It hurts me so and they are such pricks. Such bastards. They hurt you as carelessly as children, but you can forgive children, you don’t mind. Even though they both make
you cry. But not anymore, not men, not children.
Lovers are so cruel, more loving, more cruel. Not the Casanovas, Don Juans, the “cunt men” as men always call them. Not those creeps. I mean the men who truly love you. Oh, you really love and they say they do and I know it’s true. And I know how they will hurt me worse than any other man in the world. I want to say, “Don’t say you love me.” I want to say, “I don’t love you.”
Once when Merlyn said he loved me, I wanted to cry because I truly loved him and I knew that he would be so cruel later when we both really knew each other, when all the illusions were gone, and when I loved him most, he would love me so much less.
I want to live in a world where men will never love women as they love them now. I want to live in a world where I will never love a man as I love him now. I want to live in a world where love never changes.
Oh, God, let me live in dreams; when I die, send me to a paradise of lies, undiscoverable and self-forgiven, and a lover will love me forever or not at all. Give me deceivers so sweet they will never cause me pain with true love, and let me deceive them with all my soul. Let us be deceivers never discovered, always forgiven. So that we can believe in each other. Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time. Deliver me from goodness, let me not regress into innocence. Let me be free.
I told him once that I had fucked my hairdresser and you should have seen the look on his face. The cool contempt. That’s how men are. They fuck their secretaries, that’s OK. But they put down a woman who fucks her hairdresser. And yet it’s more understandable, what we do. A hairdresser does something personal. He has to use his hands on us and some of them have great hands. And they know women. I fucked my hairdresser only once. He was always telling me how good he was in bed and one day I was horny and I said OK and he came up that night and he fucked me just that once. While he was fucking me, I saw him watching me turn on. It was a power thing with him. He did all his little tricks with his tongue and his hands and special words, and I have to say it was a good fuck. But it was such a coldhearted fuck. When I came, I expected him to hold up a mirror to see how he did the back of my head. When he asked me if I liked it, I said it was terrific. He said we had to do it again sometime and I said sure. But he never asked me again even though I would have said no. So I guess I wasn’t too great either.
