But he did call her again a few days later. This time they went to a Mozart concert, and when they got back to her place he said he thought a little coffee might be pleasant.
He sat on the sofa-bed her mother had helped her buy at the Salvation Army outlet, and as she fussed around the kitchenette she didn’t know whether to sit beside him or in the chair across the coffee table. She chose to sit beside him, but he seemed not to notice it. When she leaned back he leaned forward, stirring his coffee, and when she leaned forward he leaned back. All this time he was talking, first about the concert and then about the war and the world and himself.
She reached for a cigarette (she needed something to do with her hands) and she had just lighted it when he made a lunge for her. Sparks flew into her hair and down the front of her dress; she was on her feet, brushing herself off, and he was all apologies. ‘God, I’m sorry; that was clumsy; I’m always doing things like – you must think I’m—’
‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘You startled me, that’s all.’
‘I know; I – I’m terribly sorry.’
‘No, really; it’s all right.’ She got rid of the cigarette and sat down with him again, and this time his reaching arms went smoothly around her. His face was pink when he kissed her, and she noticed too that he didn’t grope for her breasts and her thighs right away, as boys usually did; he seemed to enjoy just hugging and kissing, which he accompanied with soft little moans.
After a while he pulled away from her mouth and said ‘When’s your first class in the morning?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’
‘It does, though. Look at the time. Really, I’d better go.’
‘No; stay. Please. I want you to stay.’
And only then did he begin making love to her. Moaning, he tore off his coat and tie and dropped them on the floor; then he urgently helped her to unfasten her dress. In a few quick, awkward motions she made the sofa into a bed and they were deep inside it, writhing and gasping and clinging together. His warm, heavy torso was soft to the touch, but he was strong.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh, Emily, I love you.’
‘No, no; don’t say that.’
‘But it’s true; I have to say it. I love you.’
He lay mouthing and sucking one of her nipples for a while, stroking her with his hands; then his mouth went to the other one. After a long time he rolled partly away from her and said ‘Emily?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry, it’s – I can’t. This happens to me sometimes. I can’t.’
‘Oh.’
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am; it’s just one of those— Does it make you hate me?’
‘No, of course not, Andrew.’
With a great deflating sigh he heaved himself up and sat on the edge of the bed, and he looked so dejected that she put her arms around him from behind.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s nice. I like to have you hold me that way. And it’s true: I do love you. You’re delightful. You’re sweet and healthy and kind and I love you. It’s just that I can’t seem to – demonstrate it tonight.’
‘Sh-sh. It’s all right.’
‘Tell me the truth. Has this ever happened to you before? Has a man ever failed you this way before?’
‘Sure.’
‘You’d say that even if it wasn’t true. Ah, God, you’re a nice girl. Listen, though, Emily: it’s a thing that only happens to me sometimes. Do you believe that?’
‘Of course.’
‘The rest of the time I’m fine. My God, sometimes I can screw and screw until—’
‘Sh-sh. It’s all right. It was just tonight. There’ll be other nights.’
‘Do you promise? Do you promise me that?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s marvelous,’ he said, and turned around to take her in his arms.
But for a week, including several afternoons as well as nights and mornings, they tried and tried again without success. Afterwards, what she remembered best about that week was the heat and sweat of their struggle and the smell of the bed.
Several times she said ‘It must be my fault,’ and he told her if she talked that way it would only make things worse.
Once he almost accomplished it: he worked his way inside her, and she could feel him. ‘There!’ he said. ‘Oh, God, there; there—’ But it wasn’t long before he slipped out and lay heavily on her, panting or sobbing in defeat. ‘I lost it,’ he said. ‘I lost it.’
She stroked his damp hair. ‘It was wonderful for a minute.’
‘That’s kind of you, but I know it wasn’t “wonderful.” It was only the beginning.’
‘Well, it was the beginning, Andrew. We’ll do better next time.’
‘God. That’s what I always say. Every time I leave you and go back into that miserable, brutal, screaming world I think “I’ll do better next time.” And it’s always the same – always, always the same.’
‘Sh-sh. Let’s just sleep now. Then maybe in the morning we’ll—’
‘No. It’s even worse in the morning. You know that.’
During a warm February thaw he called her to announce he had made a decision. It couldn’t be discussed on the phone; could she meet him at the West End at four-thirty?
She found him alone at the bar with a stein of beer, one foot cocked on the rail, and he walked with long strides as he led her to a booth, carrying his shoulders in an easy slouch. That was something she’d noticed before: when she met him somewhere, in a bar or on a street corner, he always moved with the demeanor of an athlete at rest.
He sat close beside her in the booth, holding one of her hands between the beers, and told her he had decided to see a psychoanalyst. He had gotten the man’s name from someone ‘in the department’; he had arranged for his first session and was willing to go as often as necessary – twice, three times a week; he didn’t care. It would take all of his savings and much of his salary – he might even have to borrow money – but there was no other way.
‘Well, that’s – very brave of you, Andrew.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘It’s not brave; it’s an act of desperation. It’s something I probably should have done long ago. And Emily, this is the difficult part: I don’t think we ought to see each other while I’m in therapy. Let’s say for at least a year. Then I’ll look you up again, and of course you’ll probably be involved with another man; I can only hope you’ll still be free. Because the point is I want to marry you, Emily, and I—’
‘You want to marry me? But you haven’t even—’
‘Please,’ he said, closing his eyes as if in pain. ‘I know what I haven’t even done.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that. I was only going to say you haven’t even proposed to me yet.’
‘You’re the sweetest, healthiest, kindest girl I’ve ever met,’ he said, and put his arm around her. ‘Of course I haven’t – how could I, under the circumstances? But as soon as this year is over, as soon as I’m – you know – I’ll come back and offer you the most heartfelt proposal of marriage you’ve ever heard. Do you understand, Emily?’
‘Well, yes. Except that I – well, yes. Sure, I understand.’
‘That’s marvelous. Now let’s get out of here before I burst into tears.’
It was a pleasant day – young couples crowded the sidewalk, out to enjoy the false spring – and he led her quickly to a florist’s shop on the corner.
‘I’m going to put you in a cab and send you home,’ he said, ‘but first I’m going to buy you flowers.’
‘No, that’s silly; I don’t want any flowers.’
‘Yes you do. Wait.’ He came out of the shop with a dozen yellow roses and pressed them into her hands. ‘Here. Put them in water; then you’ll remember me at least until they die. Emily? Will you miss me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Just pretend I’ve gone off to war, like all the other, better men you’ve known. All right. No long goodbyes.’ He kissed her cheek;
then he loped into the street, still moving in the athletic way that wasn’t natural to him; he flagged down a taxicab and stood there holding the door open for her, smiling with bright eyes that looked a little out of focus.
As the cab pulled away she turned around in the heavy scent of roses to see if he would wave, but she caught only a glimpse of his back heading into the sidewalk crowd.
Except that she wanted to cry, she didn’t really know what she felt. She tried to figure it out all the way home until she discovered, climbing the stairs, that she felt a great sense of relief.
Soon after the war ended in Europe, a young merchant seaman came into the bookstore and began talking to her as if he’d known her all her life. His fingernails were broken and black, but he could recite long passages of Milton and Dryden and Pope from memory without seeming to show off: there was, he said, plenty of time for reading aboard ship. He wore a black sweater that looked too warm for the season, and he had a big, blond, handsome head that she described to herself as ‘Nordic.’ He stood talking, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, holding a stack of books against his hip, and she felt a powerful urge to put her hands on him. She was afraid he might leave the store without asking her for a date, and he almost did – he said ‘Well; see you,’ and started to turn away, but then he turned back and said ‘Hey, listen: what time do you get off work?’
He was staying in a rundown hotel in Hell’s Kitchen – she soon came to know everything about that hotel, from the smells of piss and disinfectant in the lobby to the slow cage of the elevator to the raddled green carpet in his room – and his ship was undergoing extensive repairs in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which meant he would be in New York all summer. His name was Lars Ericson.
He was as hard and smooth as ivory, and beautifully proportioned; at first she thought she could never get enough of him. She liked to lie in his bed and watch him move naked around the room: he reminded her of Michelangelo’s David. There were small carbuncular knobs on the back of his neck and out across his shoulders, but if she squinted very slightly she didn’t see them.
‘… And you’ve really had no education at all?’
‘Of course I have. I’ve told you; I went through the eighth grade.’
‘And you really speak four languages?’
‘I never told you that. I’m only fluent in French and Spanish. My Italian’s very sketchy, very primitive.’
‘Ah, God, you’re wonderful. Come over here…’
She hoped he might want to be a writer or a painter – she had a vision of him working in a windswept beach cottage, like Eugene O’Neill, while she waded thigh-deep to gather clams and mussels for their supper and the wheeling gulls screamed overhead – but he was perfectly content to be a seaman. He said he liked the freedom it gave him.
‘Well, but I mean, freedom to do what?’
‘Not necessarily to “do” anything. Freedom to be.’
‘Oh. I see. At least I think I see.’
She thought she saw a great many things in that voluptuous, invigorating summer with Lars Ericson. She thought she saw that her time in college was a waste. Maybe anybody’s time in college was a waste. And maybe that had something to do with the tragedy of a man like Andrew Crawford: he had given his life to academia – not just his mind, but his life – and it had shriveled his manhood.
In any case, there was certainly nothing wrong with Lars Ericson’s manhood. It grew from him like the sturdy limb of a tree; it prodded and thrusted and plunged in her; it drove her slowly and steadily into a long-sustained delirium for which the only possible expression was a scream; it left her weak and panting and feeling like a woman, waiting for more.
One night as they lay exhausted in his bed there was a knock on the door, and the voice of an adolescent boy called ‘Lars? You home?’
‘I’m home,’ he called back, ‘but I’m busy. I have a guest.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Marvin,’ he said. ‘Or maybe not tomorrow, but you know; I’ll see you around.’
‘Okay.’
‘Who was that?’ she asked when the footsteps went away.
‘Just a kid from the ship. He likes to come in and play chess sometimes. I feel kind of sorry for him: he’s all alone here, doesn’t have much to do.’
‘He ought to get out and find a girl.’
‘Oh, I think he’s too shy for that. He’s only seventeen.’
‘I’ll bet you weren’t too shy at that age. Or no, wait – I’ll bet you were shy, but the girls wouldn’t leave you alone. Not just girls – older women. Chic, sophisticated older women with penthouses. Right? And they’d get you up in their penthouses and take off all your clothes with their teeth, and they’d run their tongues all over your chest, and they’d go down on their knees and beg for you. Right? Isn’t that the way it was?’
‘I don’t know, Emily. You’ve got quite an imagination.’
‘You kindle my imagination; you feed my imagination. Oh, feed me. Feed me.’
One afternoon he showed up at her apartment wearing a cheap new gas-blue suit with padded shoulders – no Columbia boy would be caught dead in a suit like that, but that only added to its charm – and said he’d borrowed a car for the evening. Would she like to drive out to Sheepshead Bay and have a shore dinner?
‘That’d be lovely. Who’d you borrow the car from?’
‘Oh, a friend. Man I know.’
On the long drive through Brooklyn he seemed preoccupied. He steered with one hand and used the other to play with his mouth, repeatedly pulling out his lower lip and letting it go back against his teeth, and he scarcely talked to her at all. She had hoped they might sit side by side in the restaurant, so he could put his arm around her and they could murmur and laugh together throughout the meal; instead they were across from each other at a big table in the middle of the sawdust-sprinkled floor.
‘Is there a place out here,’ she inquired, ‘where we could go dancing after dinner?’
‘Not that I know of,’ he said around a mouthful of lobster.
The food rode heavily in her stomach all the way home – there had been too much grease on the fried potatoes – and Lars didn’t break his silence until he’d found a parking space near her building. Then, sitting in the stilled car and looking straight through the windshield, he said ‘Emily, I don’t think we ought to see each other any more.’
‘You don’t? Why?’
‘Because I have to be true to my own nature. You’re very nice and we’ve had some good times, but I have to think of my own needs.’
‘I’m not tying you down, Lars. You’re as free as—’
‘I didn’t say you were tying me down. I simply said I have to be true to my own – Emily, the point is there’s someone else.’
‘Oh? What’s she like?’
‘It isn’t a girl,’ he said as if that would make it easier, ‘it’s a man. I happen to be bisexual, you see.’
All the moisture went out of her mouth. ‘You mean homosexual?’
‘Of course not; you ought to know better than that. I said bisexual.’
‘Doesn’t that amount to the same thing?’
‘No; not at all.’
‘But you like men better than women.’
‘I like both. I’ve enjoyed one kind of experience with you; now I feel I’m ready for the other.’
‘I see,’ she said. And when would she ever learn to stop saying ‘I see’ about things she didn’t see at all?
He walked her to her door and they stood facing each other on the sidewalk, a few feet apart.
‘I’m sorry it has to end this way,’ he said. He put one hand low on his hip and gazed off down the street in order to let her admire his profile, and he looked more than ever like Michelangelo’s David, even in that awful suit.
‘So long, Lars,’ she said.
There would be no more sex, she promised herself as she drove her fist repeatedly into the pillow upstairs. She would meet men, she
would go out with them and laugh and dance and do all the other things you were supposed to do, but there would be no more sex until – well, until she was absolutely sure of what she was doing.
She broke her promise in November with a haggard law student who said he was a communist, and broke it again in February with a witty boy who played the drums in a jazz combo. The law student stopped calling her because he said she was ‘ideologically impure,’ and it turned out that the drummer had three other girls.
Then it was spring again. She was about to graduate from college with no idea of what to do with her life, and it was almost time for Andrew Crawford to end his psychoanalytical exile.
‘Emily?’ he said on the telephone one evening. ‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes. Hello, Andrew.’
‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started to dial this number and quit on the seventh digit. But you’re really there, aren’t you. I’m really talking to you. Listen: before I go any further I’ve got to know this. Are you – do you have a man?’
‘No.’
‘That’s almost too good to be – I hardly dared hope for that.’
She met him at the West End the following afternoon. ‘Two beers,’ he told the waiter. ‘Or no, wait. Two very dry, extra dry martinis.’
He looked about the same – maybe a little heavier; she couldn’t be sure – and his face was bright with nervous tension.
‘… Nothing’s more boring than hearing about someone else’s analysis,’ he was saying, ‘so I’ll spare you that. Let me just say it’s been a tremendous experience. Difficult, painful – God, you can’t imagine how painful – but a tremendous experience. It may go on for several more years, but I’ve turned the first corner. I feel so much better. The world isn’t filled with terrors for me any more. I feel I know who I am for the first time in my life.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful, Andrew.’
He took a greedy sip of his martini and settled back in the booth with a sigh, dropping one hand to her thigh. ‘And how about you?’ he said. ‘How was your year?’