Good Trouble

by Joseph O'Neill

  “Yeah?” Johnny said.

  “I have a friend,” William said deliberately, “who’s an artist—a painter. There isn’t anyone with a greater appreciation and understanding of art than my friend.”

  Johnny said, “I hear you, buddy. I’m an artist myself.”

  “This friend once told me something that I’ve always remembered. In a museum, he said, you could be looking at the world’s most interesting, most celebrated painting—a Picasso, say, or a Vermeer—but, if an attractive woman stands next to you, she’s what you look at. The Vermeer is just a bunch of color and paper.”

  William sensed that this insight hadn’t produced in his companions, as it had in him, an aesthetic breakthrough. He elaborated, “His point was that not even a great work of art can compete with the feelings triggered by the everyday spectacle of a woman.”

  Johnny said, “So you’re saying I’m right. You’re saying that men are programmed to suffer.”

  “Um, I suppose so,” William said. “In a sense.”

  And it was true, William admitted to himself, that in springtime he was mugged by spasms of longing caused by the appearance of certain women walking down the street. But William could in all honesty commend himself for the fact that, post-Elisa, these involuntary physiological reactions had never turned into temptation. This achievement, William believed, rested on the notion of the Great Love with which he’d consciously—and, so far as he was aware, reciprocally—mythified his relationship with Elisa Ramirez. The myth, formalized in due course by marital vows, meant that any threat or adversity (even death, William could sometimes bring himself to think) could be withstood by a willfully romantic adjustment of perception. Like Islam or Marxism, the Great Love was an all-embracing narrative that, as William pictured it, rooted fast commitment’s tree against the wind and rain of erosive time and the odd lightning bolt of third-party allure. On this last score, William was helped by items of empirical self-knowledge: first, that he would take little pleasure in an isolated or treacherous sexual encounter; second, that nothing liberated and excited him more “in bed”—he had always found this metonym hilarious—than the profound closeness and consent that a faithful marriage stimulated, all being well.

  But was all well? For some time, his and Elisa’s lovemaking efforts had been marred by procreative effort. The problem wasn’t simply the interference of thermometers, ovulation charts, copulation schedules, and ejaculatory precautions. The problem, according to William, was the calamitously teleological nature of the sexual act. To be any good, sex, like art, had to be first and foremost an exploration of pleasure.

  When he’d shared this satisfying thought with Elisa, she was in the bathroom, getting ready to go to Hunter College, where she worked as a history professor. She snapped, “What?” with a tone of pure revulsion. This small moment injured and bewildered him. For weeks he visualized Elisa’s loveless expression and stung himself with the contempt in her voice. He saw himself as she had at that moment: as a pedantic (“You mean ‘finicky’ ” was the joke William liked to make to people who accused him of being this) and ugly bore. William—a tall, blond man with baggy jowls, a baggy physique, and baggy eyes (Gucci eyes, Elisa used to call them)—had always assumed that, absent clear evidence to the contrary, he was repellent to all women except for Elisa. Now this exception no longer applied. His self-loathing became so acute that one weekend, when Elisa was on the West Coast visiting her parents, he lay down on a mirror and maneuvered his face into positions that yielded grotesque reflections reminiscent, in his mind, of Francis Bacon’s squashed visages. His torment had further symptoms. In Elisa’s company he found himself very tired and, to her obvious irritation, oddly hard of hearing. He was hampered by a strong sense that his wife was, in substance, submitting to his fleshly trespass for reproductive purposes, and as a result her naked body—that of a small, boyish, dark-haired woman—was horribly emptied of erotic significance. It was only with a lot of eye-shutting and gritty concentration that he was able to do his cyclical coital duty.

  After several months, William began to feel better. He’d been depressed and irrational, he decided, and in all likelihood the victim of some chemical imbalance. He did not speak to Elisa about what he’d been through; and she, who during his gloom had been subdued and preoccupied, did not throw him any more looks of detestation.

  Around this time, back in the fall, the couple decided to consult a world-famous fertility specialist, a Dr. Nico Hildenberg, whose services happened to be covered by Elisa’s health insurance. Hildenberg was a languid, well-groomed man in his forties who looked a lot like the golfer David Duval. He ran a clinic on the Upper East Side that processed huge numbers of patients in furtherance of a vast research project. Immediately after examining Elisa, Hildenberg prescribed a regime of tests and treatments that exposed her to gynecological peering and scraping, to perpetual “blood work,” and—just thinking about it made William angry and loving—to injecting herself about fifteen days a month with figure-bloating and mood-disturbing hormones.

  William’s role was to produce semen samples from time to time. Listening to Johnny’s speech about the sexual victimization of men, William remembered that he had an appointment scheduled for later that week. How he dreaded it.

  He dreaded, first of all, walking into the building that announced itself, in huge lettering posted on its front elevation, as THE SAMUEL P. SCHLOSSBERG CLINIC FOR REPRODUCTIVE HOPE. This mode of public humiliation, William noticed, seemed to be common in this corner of Manhattan, where medical facilities adopted designations that, in trumpeting their benefactors’ generosity, were horribly specific and loud about their patients’ diseases and difficulties. William dreaded the waiting room full of barren couples, but most of all he dreaded the room where the semen producers waited for the signal to proceed, as nonchalantly as possible, to the masturbation chamber. The chamber contained a sink, hand wipes, soap, lubricant, a pile of pornographic publications, a video-TV set, and a leatherette chair that seemed to have been removed from the business class section of an airplane.

  On entering for the first time, William was confused by the expectations generated by the amenities. Was the chair compulsory? Should he watch a video? What was the significance of the lubricant? He was also troubled by the perennial question of time: if he emerged from the room after a minute or two, he would be marked down as a premature ejaculator and erotic pubescent; if he lingered much longer, he would be suspected of enjoying himself. Setting aside these uncertainties, William dropped his trousers and got down to the job at hand, aided not by the available pornography but by imagining Elisa and himself in historic and fantastic situations of ardor. (That was the most exciting fantasy: the fantasy of himself as an object of desire.) Just as he reached the moment of emission, he realized that he was unsure about exactly what to do with the receptacle he was holding; and, fumbling and panicking, he watched in horror as his semen—three days’ worth, in accordance with the “abstinence instructions”—spat into, and then escaped out of, the downward-tilting glass tube. Almost all of it ended up on his leg. For a minute or two, William sat on the leatherette chair in a state of anguish. A whole month of injections and drugs and anxiety had been wasted. Opening his eyes, he glanced again at the tube and its negligible contents. “Oh, no,” he said.

  He fastened his belt and placed the useless sample into a compartment in the wall. Overcoming an impulse to emigrate forthwith to a distant island—Micronesian scenes actually flashed through his mind—he wretchedly presented himself to a female laboratory worker. It was decided, after a short, shameful discussion, that William would try to produce a second sample in an hour or two, after he’d “relaxed.”

  William collected Elisa from the waiting room and went with her to a coffee shop across the street from the clinic. He told her the bad news.

  To his amazement, Elisa laughed. “Oh, Will, you’re so clumsy. I shoul
d have guessed this would happen.” She said, “Look, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll go back in there and do it again, this time properly, and everything will be just fine.”

  “The quality won’t be the same,” William said. He added, “I’m not sure that it’s going to be that easy. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make it happen.”

  “Sure you can,” Elisa said. She reached over. William felt the small, warm shock of her grip on his hand.

  He shook his head. “It’s no fun in there, Elisa. I’m not sure I can face it again.”

  His wife got up from her seat across the booth and sat down next to him. “Why don’t I go in there with you?” she whispered. “Let me help you.”

  “No way,” William said. “Absolutely not. No.”

  “Why not?” she said. As she stroked his inner thigh, William recalled her astonishing libidinousness during their early months together. It was almost incredible to him, now, that one night in SoHo she’d dropped to her knees on the wet cobbles and he’d been forced, out of embarrassment and fear of arrest, to restrain her from undoing his zipper. “I’m sure it happens a lot,” Elisa said, tugging at his earlobe with her teeth. “Nobody’s going to mind. Besides, I’d like to be there. It’ll make it special.”

  He saw that she was trying to bring into the world a romantically sustaining event. He said, “No, I can’t do that. Stop. Stop that.”

  Not noticing her husband’s anger, she persisted in kneading his thigh with her stout, freckled hand.

  “I said stop,” he hissed.

  “OK, fine,” Elisa said. She smiled courageously.

  William decided not to say what was on his mind: that this show of passion was too late, and wrong, and certainly fraudulent, that she had at some unidentifiable moment forfeited some right he couldn’t immediately name. “I’ll take care of it on my own,” he said, picking up the menu. “Don’t worry about it.”

  A short while later, William returned to the clinic and, embroiled in a movie about lesbian sex and with no thought of Elisa, successfully produced a sample.

  * * *

  —

  The conversation at the Starlight had picked up again. Now Johnny was telling a story about something he’d seen in a restaurant in his hometown, New Haven. “So this guy came crashing into the joint with blood all over him. He just came barging in through the door and started lurching against the chairs and tables. Everybody started laughing. They thought it was a stunt. They thought he was clowning around with ketchup. His so-called blood was dripping everywhere. It was falling on my shoes, in my beer, in my girlfriend’s coffee. He fell to the ground, bang, right by my feet. I saw that he had this gash in his neck, a long, skinny kind of gash, like a mouth.” Johnny shook his head. “Just awful. Meanwhile, get this: everybody kept on laughing. The poor son of a bitch was lying there in a pool of blood, fighting for his life, and all he could hear was fucking laughter.”

  “What happened to him?” George asked.

  “I assume he died, George,” Johnny said.

  “You assume?”

  “Well, we didn’t want to get mixed up in anything,” Johnny said. “We took off.”

  There was a silence. Then the magician spoke up. “Something happened to me that was almost exactly the same thing. This is almost fifty years ago, now. I was living in Newark. The only reason I’d go into the city was if I was going on a big date. You know: show them the sights, maybe catch a movie, act like a big shot. I was a real Romeo. I had it down pat. Although it got to be confusing, because I couldn’t remember which landmark I’d shown to which girl.” The magician chuckled. “Anyhow, one day I take this young lady to a fancy place near Times Square. Ruby Silverman. We’d been seeing each other for a good while, and I took her to this restaurant to break it off with her.”

  “You’re going to finish with her in a restaurant?” Johnny said.

  “Well, maybe not in the restaurant, but certainly on that date,” the magician said. “I figure I’m going to do it with class, because I like this girl a lot, I respect her, and she deserves to be treated right.”

  “I like your style,” Johnny said.

  “So we’re eating. Suddenly, she puts down her knife and fork and says, ‘Stanley, are you going to marry me?’ And I say, ‘I can’t say yes, so you’ll have to take that as a no.’ ”

  “Pretty smooth,” Johnny said.

  “Ruby Silverman. Jesus, I sometimes wonder what became of her.”

  Johnny said, “So what happened?”

  “Sitting next to us is a black man who’s having dinner with his two grown-up daughters. He’s kind of a heavyset guy. Fat. He’s wearing a nice suit, and he has a napkin around his neck so that the spaghetti sauce won’t stain his shirt. Can you believe I remember that napkin? Right as I’m telling Ruby it’s not going to work out, I hear this shuffling sound. It’s this guy, and he’s having a heart attack. His face is all swollen and he’s kind of bent over the table, very still. But his daughters are just eating their food. They’re eating as if nothing has happened. They seem annoyed that their father is having a heart attack. They wish he’d quit having a heart attack and quit embarrassing them.”

  How alone we are! William thought with anguish. He remembered how Elisa and he had left the coffee shop across from the clinic and gone their separate ways. He watched her walk down the street with her back turned to him. She wore her tasseled leather poncho. Rain was falling, and she held a dark umbrella low over her head. It occurred to William, as he sat in the Starlight, that she had been cloaked in a pluvial poncho, too, what with the umbrella canopy and the tassels of rain dropping from the tips of the umbrella spokes.

  The Poltroon Husband

  ◇

  Five years ago we sold the Phoenix house and bought land in Flagstaff and built a house there—our “final abode,” I called it. Jayne objected to this designation, but I defended myself with what I termed an “argument from reality”—which was also objected to by Jayne, who said I was using “an argument from being really annoying.”

  “Are you saying this isn’t going to be our final abode?” I said. “And don’t talk to me about hospices or nuthouses. You know what I mean. This is the last place you and I will call home. This is our final abode.”

  I looked up “abode.” It refers to a habitual residence, of course; but it derives from an Old English verb meaning “to wait.” The expression “abide with me” can be traced back to the same source. An abode is a place of waiting. Waiting for what? Not to be a downer, but I think we all know the answer. When I shared my research with Jayne, she said, “I see that your darkness is somewhat useful to you, but it’s a bit intellectually weak.” This delighted me.

  The final abode is in a wooded, intermittently waterlogged double lot on South San Francisco Street, near the university. The neighborhood was quite ramshackle when we moved in, and to this day it hosts a significant population of indigent men. They come to Flagstaff with good reason, in my opinion: the climate is lovely in this desert oasis seven thousand feet above the sea, and there are good social services, and the townsfolk are kind-hearted, I would claim, although it must be noted that the city only recently decriminalized begging. I took part in the protests against the law. Jayne, whose politics on this issue are the same as mine, was disinclined to man the barricades, so to speak. We, the protesters, chanted slogans and held up placards and marched along Beaver Street, where some of us got into good trouble, to use the catchphrase: we sat down in the middle of the road and symbolically panhandled. I was among those sitting down but not among those randomly arrested and dragged away by the cops, much to Jayne’s relief.

  Our house, the very clever work of a local architect, consists of five shipping containers raised several feet above the ground. Half of one container functions as a garden office and the other half functions as a covered footbridge over the stream th
at runs through our land: previously you had to negotiate a pair of old planks. The covered bridge was my idea. It makes me stupidly proud when visitors pause to enjoy the view through the bridge’s window: the small brown watercourse, the translucent thicket. How fortunate we were to find this magical overgrown downtown woodland. Road traffic is imperceptible from the house; and when the maples and river birches are in leaf, we cannot be seen by anyone walking by. It is a wonderfully private, precious urban place.

  One night, Jayne grabs my wrist. We are in bed.

  “Did you hear that?” she says.

  “Hear what?”

  Jayne is still holding my wrist, though not as tightly as before.

  “Shush,” she says.

  We listen. I am about to declare the all-clear when there’s a noise—a kind of thud, as if a person had collided with the sofa.

  Jayne and I look at each other. “What was that?” she says. She is whispering.

  We listen some more. Another noise: not as loud, but also thud-like.

  “It could be a skunk,” I say. We have a lot of skunks around here. Skunks are born intruders.

  “Is it downstairs?”

  It’s hard for me to give an answer. Although the house has two stories and numerous dedicated “zones,” to use the architect’s word, only the bathrooms are rooms, that is, spaces enclosed by four walls and a door. Otherwise the house comprises a single acoustical unit. This can be confusing. Often a noise made in one zone will sound as if it emanates from another.

  Now there is a sudden louder noise that must be described as a cough. Something or someone is either coughing or making a coughing sound. It’s definitely coming from inside the house, I think.

  “I’d better take a look,” I say. A little to my surprise, Jayne doesn’t disagree. I turn off my bedside light. “Let’s listen again,” I say.

  For several minutes, Jayne and I sit up in bed in the darkness and the quiet. We don’t hear anything. Actually, that’s incorrect: we don’t hear anything untoward. If you listen hard enough, you always hear something. The susurration of the ceiling fan. The faint roar of the comforter.