by Erica Jong
“In the mornings,” Adrian finally said, “I never can remember your name.”
So that was my answer. It went through me like a knife. And there I was lying awake every night next to him trembling and saying my own name over and over to myself to try to remember who I was.
“The trouble with existentialism is” (I said this as we were driving down the autostrada) “that you can’t stop thinking about the future. Actions do have consequences.”
“I can stop thinking about the future,” Adrian said.
“How?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. I just can. I feel glorious today, for example.”
“Why do I feel so lousy when you feel so glorious?”
“Because you’re bloody Jewish,” he laughed. “The Chosen People. You may be mediocre at other things, but at suffering you’re always superb.”
“Bastard.”
“Why? Just because I tell you the truth? Look-you want love, you want intensity, you want feeling, you want closeness-and what do you settle for? Suffering. At least your suffering is intense… The patient loves her disease. She doesn’t want to be cured.”
The trouble with me was that I always wanted to be the greatest in everything. The greatest lover. The greatest hun-gerer. The greatest sufferer. The greatest victim, the greatest fool… If I got myself into scrapes all the time, it was my own damn fault for always wanting to be the greatest. I had to have the craziest first husband, the most inscrutable second husband, the most daring first book, the most reckless post-publication panic… I could do nothing by halves. If I was going to make a fool of myself by having an affair with an unfeeling bastard, I had to do it in front of the whole psychoanalytic community of the world. And I had to compound it by taking off with him on a drunken jaunt that might get us both killed. The transgression and the punishment all wrapped up in one neat little package. If undeliverable, return to sender. But who was the sender? Me. Me. Me.
And then, on top of everything else, I began to be convinced I was pregnant. That was all I needed. My life was in an uproar. My husband was God knows where. I was alone with a strange man who did not give a damn about me. And pregnant. Or so I thought. What was I trying to prove? That I could endure anything? Why did I have to keep making my life into such a test of stamina?
I had no real reason to think I was pregnant. I had not missed a period. But I never need a real reason to think anything. And I never need a real reason to panic. Every time I took off my diaphragm I would feel my cervix, searching for some clue. Why did I never know what was going on inside me? Why was my body such a mystery to me? In Austria, in Italy, in France, in Germany-I felt for my cervix and considered the possibilities. I would discover I was pregnant. I would go through the whole pregnancy not knowing if the baby was going to be blond and blue-eyed like Adrian or Chinese like Bennett. What would I do? Who would take me in? I had left my husband and he would never forgive me and take me back. And my parents would never help me without extracting an emotional price so great that I would have to turn into a child again to count on them. And my sisters would think it served me right for my dissolute life. And my friends would laugh behind their false commiseration. Isadora bites the dust!
Or else I would get an abortion. A botched abortion which would kill me. Blood poisoning. Or else permanent sterility. Suddenly I wanted a child with my whole heart. Adrian’s child. Bennett’s child. My child. Anyone’s child. I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted to be big with child. I was lying awake in Adrian’s pup tent and crying. He went on snoring. We were sleeping by a roadside somewhere in France that night and it might as well have been the moon. That was how lonely I felt, how utterly bereft.
“No one, no one, no one, no one…” I moaned, hugging myself like the big baby I was. I was trying to rock myself to sleep. From now on, I thought, I will have to be my own mother, my own comforter, my own rocker-to-sleep. Perhaps this is what Adrian meant about going down into the bottom of yourself and pulling yourself back up. Learning how to survive your own life. Learning how to endure your own existence. Learning how to mother yourself. Not always turning to an analyst, a lover, a husband, a parent.
I rocked myself. I said my own name to try to remember who I was: “Isadora, Isadora, Isadora, Isadora… Isadora White Stollerman Wing… Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing… B.A., M.A., Phi Beta Kappa. Isadora Wing, promising younger poet. Isadora Wing, promising younger sufferer. Isadora Wing, feminist and would-be liberated woman. Isadora Wing, clown, crybaby, fool. Isadora Wing, wit, scholar, ex-wife of Jesus Christ. Isadora Wing, with her fear of flying. Isadora Wing, slightly overweight sexpot, with a bad case of astigmatism of the mind’s eye. Isadora Wing, with her unfilla-ble cunt and holes in her head and her heart. Isadora Wing of the hunger-thump. Isadora Wing whose mother wanted her to fly. Isadora Wing whose mother grounded her. Isadora Wing, professional patient, seeker of saviors, sensuality, certainty. Isadora Wing, fighter of windmills, professional mourner, failed adventuress…”
I must have slept. I woke up to see the sunlight streaming in through the brilliant blue of the pup tent Adrian was still snoring. His hairy blond arm had fallen heavily across my chest and was pressing down on it, making me uncomfortably conscious of my breathing. The birds were chirping. We were in France. By some roadside. Some crossroads in my life. What was I doing there? Why was I lying in a tent in France with a man I hardly knew? Why wasn’t I home in bed with my husband? I thought of my husband with a sudden wave of tenderness. What was he doing? Did he miss me? Had he forgotten me? Had he found someone else? Some ordinary girl who didn’t have to take off on adventures to prove her stamina. Some ordinary girl who was content with making breakfast and raising kiddies. Some ordinary girl of car pools and swimming pools and cesspools. Some ordinary American girl out of Seventeen Magazine?
I suddenly had a passion to be that ordinary girl. To be that good little housewife, that glorified American mother, that mascot from Mademoiselle, that matron from McCall’s, that cutie from Cosmo, that girl with the Good Housekeeping Seal tattooed on her ass and advertising jingles programmed in her brain. That was the solution! To be ordinary! To be unexotic! To be content with compromise and TV dinners and “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” I had a fantasy then of myself as a happy housewife. A fantasy straight out of an adman’s little brain. Me in apron and gingham shirtwaist waiting on my husband and kiddies while the omnipresent TV set sings out the virtues of the American home and the American slave-wife with her tiny befuddled brain.
I thought of how homeless and rootless I had felt the night before and the answer to it all suddenly seemed clear: be ordinary! Be a safe little wife in her safe little house and you’ll never wake up desolate by the side of a road in France again.
But then the fantasy exploded. It burst like the bubble it was. I thought of all those mornings in New York when I had awakened with my husband and felt just as lonely. All those lonely mornings we stared at each other across the orange juice and across the coffee cups. All those lonely moments measured out in coffee spoons, in laundry bills, in used toilet paper rolls, in dirty dishes, in broken plates, in canceled checks, in empty Scotch bottles. Marriage could be lonely too. Marriage could be desolate. All those happy housewives making breakfasts for husbands and kiddies were dreaming of running off with lovers to sleep in tents in France! Their heads were steeped in fantasy. They made their breakfasts, their beds, their brunches, and then they went off shopping to buy the latest installment of Jackie Onassis’ life in McCall’s. They constantly dreamed of escape. They constantly seethed with resentment. Their lives were pickled in fantasy.
Was there no way out? Was loneliness universal? Was restlessness a fact of life? Was it better to acknowledge that than to keep on looking for false solutions? Marriage was no cure for loneliness. Children grew up and went away. Lovers were no panacea. Sex was no final solution. If you made your life into a long disease then death was the only cure. Suddenly, it was all so clear. I lay there in that tent, in that double sleeping b
ag next to that snoring stranger and thought and thought and thought. What next? How do I lead my life? Where do I go from here?
By afternoon, we were drunk and jolly. We were soused on beer. We stopped to buy peaches from a roadside farmer and found that he’d only sell them by the box, so we drove off with the Triumph loaded with peaches. A huge crate of them filling the back of the car. I began eating them greedily and discovered that nearly all of them had worms. I laughed and I ate around the worms. I tossed the wormy peach halves out into the countryside. I was too drunk to care about worms or pregnancy or marriage or the future.
“I feel great!” I said to Adrian.
“That’s the idea, ducks. Now you’ve got the idea.”
But by evening, when the beers wore off, I was depressed again. There was something so aimless about our days, our driving, our drinking. I didn’t even know what day of the week it was. I hadn’t seen a newspaper since Vienna. I had hardly even bathed, or changed my clothes. And what I missed most of all was my writing. I hadn’t written a poem in weeks and I began to feel that I never would be able to again. I thought of my used red electric typewriter sitting in New York, and a pang of yearning went through me. That was who I loved! I could see myself going back to Bennett for the sake of having custody of the typewriter. Like people who stay together “for the children” or because they can’t decide who’ll get the rent-controlled apartment.
That night we found a real campsite rather than a roadside. (Le Camping, as they say in France.) It wasn’t fancy, but it had a swimming hole, a snack bar, a place where you could shower. I was dying for a shower and as soon as Adrian had staked out our parcel of ground, I made off to the shower house. As the dirt was rolling off me, I spoke to Bennett telepathically. “Forgive me,” I said to him wherever he was (and to myself, wherever I was).
When I got back to the tent, Adrian had made a friend. Two friends, in fact. An American couple. She, coarsely pretty, red-haired, freckled, bosomy, Jewish, with a Brooklyn accent. He, bearded, brown-haired, fuzzy, fattish, with a Brooklyn accent. He was a swinging stockbroker who dabbled in hallucinogens. She was a swinging housewife who dabbled in adultery. They had a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, a Volkswagen camper, three kids in camp, and the fourteen-year itch. Adrian was wowing the wife (Judy) with his English accent and Laingian theories (which had already worn thin with me). She looked just about ready to tent down with him.
“Hi,” I said brightly to my compatriots and co-religionists.
“Hi,” they said in one voice.
“Now what?” said Adrian. “Bed first or booze?”
Judy giggled.
“Don’t mind me,” I said. “We don’t believe in posses-siveness or possession.” I thought I was doing a pretty good imitation of Adrian.
“We’ve got a steak we were about to grill,” the husband (Marty) offered nervously. “Would you like to join us?” When in doubt, eat. I knew his type.
“Super,” said Adrian. The man who came to dinner. I could see he was really turned on by the prospect of screwing Judy with her husband looking on. That was his thing. Since Bennett was off the scene, he’d somewhat lost interest in me.
We sat down to steak and the story of their lives. They’d decided to be reasonable, Marty said, instead of getting divorced like three-quarters of their friends. They’d decided to give each other plenty of freedom. They’d done a lot of “group things,” as he put it, on Ibiza, where they’d spent the month of July. Poor bastard, he didn’t look very happy. He was repeating some swinging sexual catechism like a bar mitzvah boy. Adrian was grinning. Converts already. He could just take it from there.
“How about you?” Judy asked.
“We’re not married,” I said. “We don’t believe in it. He’s Jean-Paul Sartre and I’m Simone de Beauvoir.”
Judy and Marty looked at each other. They’d heard those names somewhere, but couldn’t remember where.
“We’re famous,” I said snidely. “Actually, he’s R. D. Laing and I’m Mary Barnes.”
Adrian laughed, but I could see I’d lost Judy and Marty. Pure self-protection. I felt a showdown coming on, and I had to throw my intellectual weight around. It was all I had left.
“Right,” said Adrian. “Why don’t we just swap for starters?”
Marty looked crestfallen. It wasn’t very complimentary to me, but the truth was I didn’t much want him either.
“Be my guests,” I said to Adrian. I wanted to see him hoist on his own petard-whatever the hell that means. (I never have been sure.) “I think I’ll sit this one out. If you want me to, I’ll watch.” I had decided to outdo Adrian at his own game. Cool. Uninvolved. All that crap.
Marty then leapt up to protest his virility. “I think we should swap or nothing,” he stammered.
“Sorry,” I said, “I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but I’m just not in the mood.” I was about to add, “Besides I may have clap…” but I decided not to ruin it for Adrian. Let him do his thing. I was tough. I could take it.
“Don’t you think we should reach a group decision?” Judy said.
Boy, was she ever the ex-girl scout!
“I’ve already made my decision,” I said. I was awfully proud of myself. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to back down. I was saying no and liking it. Even Adrian was proud of me. I could tell by the way he was grinning. Character building, that’s what he was doing. He’d always been interested in saving me from myself.
“Well,” I said, “shall we watch you or just sit near the swimming hole and talk? I’m amenable to either.”
“The swimming hole,” Marty said desperately.
“I hope that’s not a pun,” I said.
I waved cheerily to Adrian and Judy as they climbed into the Volkswagen camper and drew the curtains. Then I took Marty by the hand and led him to the old swimming hole where we sat down on a rock.
“Do you want to tell me the story of your life, or just describe Judy’s affairs?”
He looked glum.
“Do you always take things so casually?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the camper.
“I’m usually a terrific worrywart, but my friend there has been building my character.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s trying to teach me to stop agonizing, and he may succeed-but not for the reasons he thinks.”
“I don’t understand,” Marty said.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m jumping ahead. It’s a long, sad story, and not the most original plot in the world.”
Marty looked wistfully in the direction of the camper. I took his hand.
“Let me tell you a secret-the chances are that not much action is taking place in there. He’s not the stud he thinks he is,” I said.
“Impotent?”
“Often.”
“That doesn’t make me feel much better, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
I looked at Marty. He wasn’t bad looking. I thought of all the times I’d yearned for strange men, strange places, strange enormous cocks. But all I felt was indifference. I knew that screwing Marty would not take me any nearer the truth I was seeking-whatever that was. I wanted some ultimate beautiful act of love in which each person becomes the other’s prayer wheel, toboggan, rocket. Marty was not the answer. Was anyone?
“How’d you get here?” he asked. “Aren’t you American?”
“Those two things don’t cancel each other out… Actually, I left my perfectly nice husband for this.”
Now Marty perked up. A faint shock wave passed over his face. Was that why I had done it after all-just to be able to say brazenly, “I left my husband” and see the shock waves pass between me and some stranger? Was it no more than exhibitionism? And a pretty seedy sort of exhibitionism at that.
“Where are you from?”
“New York.”
“What do you do?”
The odd intimacy of waiting outside a camper while our partners fucked each other called for some
kind of confession, so I gave out.
“New Yorker, Jewish, from a very neurotic upper-middle-class family, married for the second time to a shrink, no children, twenty-nine-years old, just published a book of supposedly erotic poems which caused strange men to call me up in the middle of the night with propositions and prepositions, and caused a big fuss to be made over me-college reading tours, interviews, letters from lunatics, and such-I nipped out. Started reading my own poems and trying to become one with the image presented in them. Started trying to live out my fantasies. Started believing I was a fictional character invented by me.”
“Weird,” said Marty, impressed.
“The point is that fantasies are fantasies and you can’t live in ecstasy every day of the year. Even if you slam the door and walk out, even if you fuck everyone in sight, you don’t necessarily get closer to freedom.”
Wasn’t I sounding like Bennett? The irony of it!
“I wish you’d tell Judy that,” Marty said.
“Nobody can tell anyone anything,” I said.
Later, when Adrian and I were in the tent together, I asked him about Judy.
“Boring cunt,” he said. “It just lies there and doesn’t even acknowledge your existence.”
“How’d she like you?”
“How do I know?”
“Don’t you care?”
“Look-I fucked Judy as one might have coffee after dinner. And not very good coffee at that.”
“Then why bother?”
“Why not?”
“Because if you reduce everything to that level of indifference, everything becomes meaningless. It’s not existentialism, it’s numbness. It just ends by making everything meaningless.”
“So?”
“So you wind up with the opposite of what you wanted. You wanted intensity, but you get numbness. It’s self-defeating.”
“You’re lecturing me,” Adrian said. “You’re right,” I said without apology.
The next morning Judy and Marty were gone. They had packed up and fled in the night like gypsies. “I lied to you last night,” Adrian said. “About what?”
