His & Hers

Part III: Seeing Things

by Bill Bowler

The end of a cigarette,
the end of a little epoch,
an interregnum or interval
or entr’acte as it were

Sex had become
detached from loving,
transformed into a tool, a weapon
in the struggle for domination
that raged between them.
And the truth was, he was being
too hard on her.

HE: (as if a big confession) I guess I don’t really trust you, deep down, I expect you to betray me.

SHE: But why? Have I ever said anything or done anything to make you distrust me?

HE: I guess not really.

SHE: Then what is it?

HE: (The wall goes up inside him, coldly) I don’t know.

The more he thought about her
rejecting him sexually, the more
he thought about her reasons for
rejecting him, her methods of
rejection, the more he realized that
it was he who was rejecting her and that
it comforted him to imagine
the fault lay with her.

The phone rang at his office. It was her and she was upset. She had gotten a letter from the State Banking Dept.: her case was closed. Now she was really mad. If he hadn’t cut her off at the meeting at the bank, hadn’t undermined her like he always did, if he had helped her instead of ruining what she was trying to accomplish! So she didn’t expect help from him now! She’d take care of it herself, like she had to take care of everything because he was too busy getting stoned and drunk every night and hanging out with his friend, who wasn’t his friend at all, who actually treated him like garbage, like all his so-called friends did, and his family, too. Because he never stood up to them, just took whatever they said or did lying down and let them trample all over him and over her, too, because he wouldn’t stand up for her either. No wonder he had no friends. No one in his family had any friends.

He was stone silent and held the receiver away from his ear. She kvetched on and on about the bank and what a screw-up he was and he half-listened in silence, having heard it all before, over and over.

Eventually, she paused for breath. There was a moment of silence.

HE: (Clears his throat) Anything else?

SHE: No.

He slams down receiver

She hated him, his mother, his sister and his whole family. They were so damn condescending! It was bizarre. Who did they think they were?!

He was cold as stone. It was like living with a stone, a rock! And he never supported her, never had sympathy for her. He was always undermining her.

HE: But what do you want?

SHE: Why does it always have to be me?! What do you want?

HE: Me? What do I want? (pause) I just want a loving wife, a happy marriage, for you to be happy and us to be happy: (he realized what utter drivel he was spouting).

He was driving her over the edge, but
it wasn’t his fault. He had begun
to fantasize about life alone, without
her. Independence, solitude, masturbation
and massive doses of pot. Not a pretty picture.

And the backdrop of Brooklyn, which
she hated. The crazy patchwork
quilt of a borough. The world
in a borough.

HE: Judaism is sexist. All religions are.

SHE: You’re sexist.

HE: Do you know what ad hominem means?

SHE: Don’t start lecturing me!

He had superior intelligence
though dulled now by his vices.
He was still good looking
though getting paunchy and a little wrinkled,
some age and laugh lines, and crow’s feet
when he smiled. His thick
lustrous brown hair belied the few
grey threads at the back edge of
his beard. He had
broad shoulders, like a
former jock, and was
covered with hair, like a bear.

She was big boned, broad shouldered,
green eyes with high cheek bones,
long, curly strawberry blond, long
arms and long shapely legs,
full bosomed:

Why couldn’t he “share intimacy” (her words)?
Why couldn’t he express his feelings?
Why was that “behaving improperly” (his words)?
At a counseling session, he remembered
two incidents from his earlier life
which were associated in his mind
at that moment, but said nothing.

Ought we not touch upon their sex life?
It’s irregularity.
His coldness and distance.
Her alienation.
Her soft and his hairy body,
Their making love and her crying and him sleeping.
Their not making love, warfare, and
their periods of animal sex (in the past now?)
Her profound desire to talk love
and his inability to utter a syllable
or, when able, always the wrong thing.

They began to make love after a long abstinence,

SHE: You don’t get breasts like these in Penthouse.

HE: No you don’t: (Lusting, fumbling) You better put your thing in before I put my thing in.

SHE: No-o. Not yet. (Angrily) I’m not ready yet!

She pouts and rolls over, her back to him.
He can’t stop trying, rubbing her
breasts, grabbing her, rubbing her stomach:
He notices she’s become stiff, holding her
arm straight and her hand clenched in her crotch.

HE: “What’s wrong?!”

SHE: (Angrily) I’m not very turned on now.

He rolls over, turning his back to her.

SHE: You can’t pretend nothing happened! Our sex life is lousy!

Afternoons, the brick wall
across from their window
was nicely illuminated by the
afternoon sun, though he sat in front
of the glimmering screen, in semi-darkness
in the apartment, like a caveman
in his cave, his skin pale and white, blemished,
untouched by the sun’s rays for years.

His outlook had grown more
sober (in principle), more realistic, less
introspective than it had been
in the 60s, that epoch which
haunted his daydreams. The
truths or myths of that decade -
Free Love, government as
raging monstrosity, everybody on
drugs — the legacy of that
mythology cast its long shadow
over his current struggle with
the mundane and necessary, with
growing up, with making money and
buying a house, raising a family,
all those concepts so distant
and familiar:

With a Herculean effort he
switched off the TV, snapping
his mind back to the room
and his surroundings as the
screen went blank.

THE IDEA

He had thought at first the idea was a good one, workable into full length, but he struggled all the next day to elaborate and had nothing to show for it and began to doubt whether there was anything to it in the first place aside from his own misplaced expectations. And yet, he thought, perhaps it is there, in this idea, waiting.

He felt he had nothing to say
and so concealed his thoughts

He wondered
what to do?
Iron out wrinkles?
Show his feelings?
He felt obliged to
examine his options
very carefully. Surges of
something gave him
a headache, but he
breathed it off, almost,
most of it.

It was incredible how much
of his own life he had forgotten.
He was forgetting his own past,
his own youth, fled like a dream.
It was shocking, the major events
he could not recall — he was fuzzy
about things like how old he was,
when he had gotten his degree,
the date of their wedding anniversary.
Major facts of his own sexual history,
the names of girls and women he
had loved, the first time he had done it,
were now lost to him, and their faint
images flashed through his mind at
odd moments. He couldn’t
believe the extent, the profundity
of his forgetting. It was as if
there were only today — one long today:

After he did her wash Saturday afternoon but pulled all her things out of the dryer damp and not just the items she told him, and

after she yelled at him for it, accusing him of passive aggression and deliberately undermining her and refusing to do things right from laziness so she wouldn’t ask him again,

after he had done her wash and that was the thanks he got,

he gnashed his teeth and thought, it was highly questionable how long the present situation could go on. He supposed it was inevitable, in retrospect. The pot smoking thing was becoming the major issue at the marriage counseling sessions. The two of them, she and the counselor, were both ganging up on him, pressing him to quit on his own or join Pot Smokers Anonymous. But he didn’t want to get involved with a bunch of drug burn-outs from the back section of the Village Voice. He could probably stop if he tried. The counselor gave him three weeks to go cold turkey. But why the hell wasn’t the counselor making HER give up cigarettes?! Why wasn’t the counselor making HER stop yelling at him all the time and stop bad mouthing his family?

So he had had a rough session. When he and she walked out afterwards, he clammed up as usual. He was feeling a burst of hostility towards her for harassing him at the session, she and the goddam counselor.

What lay ahead, he knew not. No one knew, least of all him. Whether sulking and pouting were the most powerful tools at his disposal or whether submission to her insistent demands that he wake up or grow up or whether his notebook contained any of the answers, none of this was known.

He sat at home
on the soft floppy couch
at midnight, in the still
and quiet, sipping
fifty-year old sherry.

Later that night, as he
stumbled off, she asked him
what he was feeling. The wall rose
inside and he was unable
to speak.

* * *

EPILOG I

Towards the end of a particularly boring movie-of-the-week, she asked him,

SHE: Do you mind if I turn off the TV?

HE: No!

Though he had been fuming to himself as to why the goddam TV had to be on all the time, he marveled for a moment that she had thought to ask his permission, since she had the right to turn the TV on or off whenever she pleased.

She flicked it off with the remote,

SHE: I have something to tell you

HE: (Uh oh, he thought) What? (Here it comes)

SHE: I’ve retained an attorney. He’ll be contacting you or your attorney. I’m filing for divorce.

(Whaaaaaaaaaaattttt!!!!!????, he thought.)
And with these softly spoken words,
she steamrolled his delusions,
popped his bubble,
Rip Van Winkle woke from his sleep,
and the ostrich, hearing a faint rumble,
pulled his head from the hole in the ground
to be run over by a diesel.

HE: What? I mean, what do you want? You want me to move out? You want me to keep paying for this apartment?

SHE: (Deeply hurt) Talk to my lawyer.

He realized how
terribly wrong it all was,
how he sounded.

Did he beg her to take him back?
Was it too late?
Was the damage done?

SHE: You know, I’m 32 years old, I have a uterine medical history, my family has immune deficiency problems — if I’m going to have children, I have to start giving it serious thought, I don’t have forever:

This was rather shocking to him,
the heretofore presumed father,
The Pretender: But
should he throw himself at her feet
and beg forgiveness,
or run screaming from the apartment,
which he strongly felt like doing,
fleeing the scene,
should he accept and let go and
enter the pain again?
He went into the bedroom,
lay down in the darkness,
and for the first time
since he was eight and his kitten died,
he wept.
She came in and
went to turn on the light.

HE: (Sobs) Please don’t.

But she had come to him!
She was comforting him!

SHE: You’re making this an over-melodramatic scene.

HE: (Sobs) Well, what did you expect?

SHE: (Holds him, comforts him, gazes up) Oh, what a mess we’ve made.

He realized with a jolt
that his version of
all that had happened before
was a complete joke.
Yet, was he surprised?
Was this not the logical outcome
of all that had come before?

* * *

EPILOG II

J*** & R***
Attorneys at Law
1*** Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 1****

June , 19**

Dear Mr. ***:

This office has been retained by your wife in connection with the present marital difficulties and the various issues arising from the relationship.

It is our client’s desire to seek an amicable and expeditious dissolution of the marriage by reaching an agreement that adequately provides for your respective rights and obligations to one another. Therefore, I request that you have your attorney communicate with me within the next twenty days, so that we may explore the possibility of such a settlement.

We trust that we may look forward to a response within this time from either your counsel or you, and that it will not be necessary for us to proceed in any other manner to advance our client’s interests.

Thank you for your anticipated courtesies.

Very Truly Yours,

V*** R***