Darling Clementine
Andrew Klavan
New York
“She has come amorous it is all she has come for
If there had been no hope she would not have come”
Ted Hughes
One
My cunt, to begin with, is an orchid. A gigantic orchid in a miniature wood. Sometimes. Other times, it is a gap, an abyss, a gaping scar, still bleeding from when the rabbis held me up, helpless, and sawed off my cock and my balls and laughed because they had made me into a girl, and I was screaming in helpless rage. Then, I hate all men, and especially my father and I dream of having my cock back again and having them all tied over chairs in a row before me, and going down the row quite calmly while they all beg for mercy, fucking each one up the ass in turn so the next one has to watch, begging for mercy. But sometimes, my whole body blossoms out of my cunt, and I am entirely an orchid, receptive, but also complicated, the whole world flowing into me passionately and sweetly and running over my hundred different petals and curves and spaces, taking the shape of all my turns. Then men are like the bearers of the world and I love them, love them in an aching, awestruck and yet haughty way, like the Christ child must have loved the magi when they came to him with gold and frankincense and myrrh—all the gifts of the world—and he was dazzled by all these grand grownups and yet knew it was he, the infant-god, to whom they came. Oh, I love them so much, and the world which they put on the tips of their penises and bring into me so that it can run off my hundred petals, taking my form.
I was in that mood when I married Arthur. Don’t get me wrong. I am not one of these modern women you read about in books. They are so detached and wry and rueful. I have never met one—only read about them in books—and I am not like them and do not really believe anyone is. I love Arthur. We have been married for one week, and it is like waking up every morning and knowing there is something wonderful and new about your life, and it is Arthur. He is like a new toy, and I want to play with him like a doll, set him naked on my lap like a doll, and feed him and scold him and turn him over and spank him until his white bottom turns pink, and then stick my finger into his ass until he bucks and cries out and comes onto my thigh. Then I want him to become monstrous, to slap me and say, “Now, you’re in for it, Samantha,” and turn me over roughly and take off his belt with a broad, sweeping motion of his arm (why he is wearing a belt at this point in the proceedings is something of a mystery, but there you are) and run his cock up me like a flagpole, slashing and slashing at my backside with his belt.
Arthur is a lawyer, and so there may be some difficulty in bringing all this about. So far, in the week we’ve been married, and the month of living together before, it’s been pretty tame—very sweet, very gentle, even expert, and I come enormously and he is positively enthralled, but still: when your ambition is to be pan-sexual, to come not just with men and women, but at the touch of a raindrop on your arm, at a song, over a cup of coffee, marriage is only the second best thing—an admission of defeat, of being pan-sexual manqué, but a way to ignite your freedom, too, by constructing an intimacy we would naturally have if our parents, if life, did not rob us of our first free selves and use the offal to build its cities on. I love marriage—so far—and I love Arthur. I trust to my instincts, and to something smoldering about him that led him to marry a poet in the first place. Oh, we shall see. There is more, I think, to Arthur than meets the eye.
Sometimes I think that Hitler had a point—Adolf, not Mark who runs the wonderful bread shop on MacDougal Street where I used to buy my rolls, and who can be very flamboyant (“Let him do it!”) on the subject of changing his name. But what I mean is: the world is so fucked up with its murderers and banks and churches and exhausts and newspaper articles and so on that maybe it would take something, anything—even evil—that was complete, whole, internally and externally committed, to rescue it from what is obviously its mortal illness. I would feel a lot more sanguine about Hitler’s losing the war and all if he had been defeated by something as complete as himself. But all it was was an upping of the ante—more soldiers, more generals sending them here and there, looking at maps, more patriots, more empires, and, finally, the big atomic bargaining chip, and all to stop one little man who was whole, wholly committed. If only the good guys could have come up with something new—something as real as he was. If, for instance, they could have locked Hitler in a room with Walt Whitman for forty-eight hours. Odds are, when the time was up, Walt would have dashed off to catch the nirvana ferry leaving Hitler to stagger out, moments later, with his asshole dripping and a beatific smile on his face to return to Vienna and paint landscapes.
All of which I mention by way of explaining how I felt about what happened to Lansky, who is a Jew, which resulted in my meeting Arthur, my beloved, my sweetikins, my guy.
Now, the way I feel about Jews is this: they know everything and they are always right. (Another reason to respect Hitler: imagine the sheer, Nietzschean will of a man who sets out to exterminate the whole truth.) It is no wonder, anyway, that they worry all the time, but this can make it very hard on those of us who, like myself, would just settle for finding out what the truth is. This is what was so frustrating for Pontius Pilate.
“What is truth?” he wanted to know.
“Don’t ask,” said Jesus.
Which really does remind me of many of the conversations I’ve had with Lansky. Lansky is a playwright, and a very funny one, too. He is tall and thin, belligerently Semitic with a beaked nose and deep, fiery brown eyes, and a black goatee as sharp as his widow’s peak. He is one of the gentlest, sweetest men I know and is therefore always worried that he is a wimp. As far as that goes, I myself have never made love to Lansky because I knew I would never truly love him and that made him worry that it would be too superficial, but my friend Elizabeth, who has been living with him for the past six months, says he is wonderful and attentive in bed as long as she continually reassures him that he is not having as good a time as he thinks. As you might guess, women, including myself, are frequently telling Lansky, “Don’t worry, Lansky,” which Lansky enjoys enormously.
Anyway, Lansky and I were sitting—38 days, thirteen hours, and seventeen minutes ago—at a table in the Black Coffee Shop, which is on MacDougal Street, a few doors down from Hitler’s. Lansky’s play, “The Glass Pond,” had just finished a month-long engagement in a Chelsea showcase, and had actually gotten reviewed in The New York Times. The reviewer had compared Lansky to George Bernard Shaw, and Lansky was worried that this was so complimentary that the reviewer would feel compelled to attack him next time just to get even.
“Lansky,” I remember saying, “don’t worry.”
“It all depends on where I open next,” Lansky figured. “If I’m still off-off-Broadway, it might be okay. They usually like to really get you up there before they light into you.”
Two things are on my mind while we talk, besides the conversation, in which I pretty much have one line which I have already delivered. First of all, there’s some big, blond shithead giving me the eye from the table by the window. I know he is a shithead because of the way he leers as he ogles me as if to say, “What couldn’t I do to that broad?” (answer: anything); because he is sitting alone when the place is crowded and the window table seats six; and because he is probably an NYU student and he is wearing an NYU sweatshirt.
Second of all, there is Arthur. My first impression of Arthur is that he would like very much to be part of the scene at the Black Coffee, and tell all the boys back at Gapejaw, Malevolence and Hook or wherever he works (I didn’t know at that point) how he hobnobs with the student/artist set by night even though he is a straitlaced Gold Coaster by day. The trouble is: he’s hopeless, and so he is sitting there
—at a two-seat table against the wall—in his polo shirt, crisp new blue jeans, white socks, and Harvards, staring shyly into his coffee cup and probably cursing the wealth of his forbears. I, while Lansky worries and Shithead stares, am repressing a powerful urge to walk across the room and stick my tongue in Arthur’s ear. He is very handsome, I think, with his long, serious face and his bashful blue eyes, his strong, yes dimpled, chin, and the fine, dark-brown hair trying not to looked styled on top.
“Do you think he meant ‘Major Barbara’?” Lansky is saying. “I’ve never liked ‘Major Barbara.’ It’s really a terrible play: maybe he meant that one.”
I am about to tell Lansky not to worry when Shithead stands up, tugs at his sweatshirt, runs his fingers through his hair—and now I am sure he is a shithead—and swaggers toward us. I pull a Zacharias: my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, and I am mute with guilt and fear. Not for me, because before this mutt lays hand one on me I will teach him new meanings of the word “arrested.” But for Lansky, who is already depressed about getting a rave in the Times and needs nothing less than to be humiliated in your basic antler-butting contest.
Shithead reaches our table in the center of the room, leans over me and gives me a good blast of beery breath. (This last is not true: he smelled fine, even nice, but he was the type.)
He says: “I saw you were alone and thought you could use some company.”
It’s a touchy situation: a line like that leaves no room for politeness, but if I tell this frog to fuck off and he retaliates, Lansky’s next up with: “The lady said fuck off.” Then Lansky dies which, I have a feeling, is what S.H. is after in the first place, at least subconsciously. All I can think at any rate is: “Don’t get witty, Lansky,” because Shithead is a big shithead and he looks like he lifts weights.
Lansky covers his eyes with his hand. “A living fart,” he says. “I’m getting creamed by the critics, and a living fart has walked over to my table.”
Shithead—proving my theory—is prepared for this, though the script has skipped a couple of lines, which momentarily throws him. But, finally, he manages to turn and lour over poor, sweet Lansky.
“Listen, Big-nose,” he quips, “why don’t you go get yourself a prayer shawl and pray somewhere?”
“And miss this repartée?” says Lansky. “This exchange of ideas? Mercy, no.” Noble Lansky.
“All right, Limpdick,” says Shithead, and he steps back from the table.
I swear on the madness of Roethke that under other circumstances I would have torn this gentleman’s eyes out with my own, cute little passion-red nails. But this is what I mean about Hitler: Shithead is purely, wholly, completely, one might say beautifully committed to humiliating Lansky because—I would guess—he is a Jew and knows everything and is always right and he is chatting and for all Shithead knows sleeping with a pretty girl, whereas Shithead knows nothing and is always wrong (witness the sweatshirt) and has about as much chance of fucking this baby as he has of learning to read in time for midterms. Now, if I scratch his eyes out—especially with me being a girl and Lansky being a boy—Lansky is duly humiliated: Shithead wins. This is also true if anyone else steps in for Lansky, and if Lansky stands up and gets creamed. In short, Shithead, through the completeness of his intention, has forced the entire universe as he knows it into conformity with himself: no matter what happens, it will happen according to his rules, unless someone comes up with something creative in a big hurry. Now, if I possessed free, body-electric, full-membership, card-carrying, amoral, radiant enlightenment, I might be swept away by the purity of Shithead’s will, fall to my knees, and worship his mighty erection with my slavish tongue. Unfortunately for him, I still have my principles and if the joker comes near me, I’ll slit his throat. Lansky, it seems, is on his own.
Enter the fellow in the polo shirt and Harvards who later turns out to be my Arthur, and is now walking briskly to our table, slipping between the chairs of the customers, smiling and excusing himself like the perfect gentleman I later find out he is. Arthur steps between Shithead and Lansky, glances at the former briefly, smiles, says, “Pardon me,” then hands Lansky a business card.
“My name is Arthur Clementine,” he says, in a deep, dare I say melodious voice that makes my nipples tingle. “I’m with the Manhattan D.A.’s office. Just make sure you don’t swing first or anything, and after he beats you up, we can pretty definitely send him to prison.”
Arthur smiles and says “Excuse me,” to Shithead again, bows his head to me like a cowboy tipping his hat, and strides back to his chair by the wall.
Suddenly, Lansky is beautiful; Arthur has made him beautiful. As Shithead stands dumbfounded, Lansky slips Arthur’s card into his shirtpocket, leans back, folds his hands on his concave stomach, and smiles—smiles—at him.
“I just want to tell you,” he says, “that I’m a psychiatrist, and I think you’re a latent homosexual.”
I laugh as loudly as I can.
Shithead, red-faced, sputters: “All right, Jew-boy, go ahead: hide behind the law.”
At which, Lansky lets out a peal of wild, high-pitched laughter which I have no doubt will reverberate in Shithead’s ears as he jerks off in his lonely dorm room that evening. After a few more curses, Shithead slinks away and I think it is then that I know I am going to marry Arthur. Because Arthur made Lansky beautiful; because Arthur wields the law against villainy, which means that he knows and accepts the world-as-it-is, which I do not, and because he made Lansky beautiful which means he understands that beauty transforms everything, even evil, into itself; and I am determined that I, and I alone, am going to be made beautiful by Arthur and give him the power of my beauty in return.
As soon as I get Lansky to stop trembling, I stand up and walk across the room to where Arthur is sitting; quickly, before I lose my confidence. He looks up: blue eyes. I extend my arm firmly.
“Allow me to shake your hand,” I say, “and give you a blow job.”
I am a little concerned about this approach because Arthur, as I say, is an attorney, but he laughs outright and takes my hand and within an hour I am gleefully gulping down the chances of millions of potential Clementines to inherit the family fortune.
That’s what I mean about Arthur: hidden depths.
Today is Monday, January 7th. In the newspaper, the president says he will not compromise on the military budget, the arms talks have broken down in Geneva, the governor proposes a tax cut, a rebel in El Salvador tells his story, a fundamentalist group is pocketing the money they’re supposed to be sending to the starving people in Ethiopia.… That’s all I can do. I have never been much for reading the paper, but when I said that to Arthur, he raised one lush eyebrow at me and said, “You should.”
All day, I walk around repeating it to myself over and over so I will still have it when he gets home from work: “Budget, Breakdown, Tax Cut, Rebel, Fundamentalist. Budget, Breakdown, Tax Cut, Rebel, Fundamentalist. Budget, Breakdown, Tax Cut, Rebel, Fundamentalist.”
When Arthur comes through the door, I run into his arms, crying, “Did you read about that big tax cut for the rebels? And how about those fundamentalists?”
But he has already hoisted me over his shoulder and is carrying me to the bedroom.
First I will tell you about my therapist, and then I will tell you about God. My therapist is named James—Doctor James—Blumenthal. About a year ago, I walked into his office, which is on Park Avenue and 86th Street, and sat on the brown easy chair, facing him.
“My name is Samantha Bradford, and I am 24,” I said to him. “My usual sexual fantasy has to do with being branded.”
“Please don’t smoke in here,” said Dr. Blumenthal—I had just put a cigarette in the corner of my mouth. “I have a problem with ventilation,” he said. I put the cigarette back in the pack (that night, I had a dream about that: trying desperately to stuff the cigarette back into the pack, but it was too big) and went ahead.
“Usually,” I said, “I fantasize that I
am walking down the street when a black limousine pulls up beside me, two men jump out, drag me inside and drug me. When I wake up, I’m on an island—I don’t know where, but it is a place immune to international law. A handsome millionaire has bought the island—he’s a dark, bearded man in his fifties but in good shape, though sometimes—” I added, “he’s someone I’ve met or seen or a movie star, but anyway, he’s assembling a seraglio and he wants me to be in it. He commands me to take my clothes off or be killed so I have to do it, and then I have to bend over this sort of bench contraption and just lie there while he takes a red-hot brand and burns his initials into my ass. Usually, if I’m masturbating or having sex, I come then—with the image of me kicking and screaming and being branded, and then, as I’m coming down from the orgasm, I see myself lying across my master’s lap or at his feet, all tamed and passive while he fingers me or fucks one of his other odalisques.”
Then, I stared Dr. Blumenthal directly in the eye—sort of defiantly, you might say. Dr. Blumenthal is in his late forties. He has a broad, mushy face, all pockmarked as if he had a bad case of acne when he was young. His hair is kind of grayish yellow, and very fine and falls over his forehead. Whenever he talks, just before he does, he always shifts his body in his chair as if to get more comfortable. He has a shapeless body, I guess: just a rumpled gray suit growing out of the chair.
So I look him in the eye, and he shifts a little and says:
“So what seems to be the problem, Samantha?”
I start to cry. Elizabeth told me I would and I swore not to, but there it is. I think it was the way he said my name, as if I were a friend who had come to him for help.
“I tried to kill myself a while ago,” I say, choking and sniffling.
Dr. Blumenthal shifts, looking concerned. “Did you succeed?”
“What?” I start to laugh at the same time I am sobbing and sobbing. Then it comes rushing out of me: “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die, I’m so afraid. Can you help me?”