c h a p t e r 1 8
The Electric Adventures of
A Novel of Erotic Satire
Chapter 18
It isn’t difficult to figure out where he was aiming. The three big bandages I’ve got, all below the waist, form a triangle around my groin. My new doctor, a tall, bearded black man who went out of his way to tell me that he hadn’t read my book and didn’t intend to, said all three bullets were within a few inches of ``ground zero,’’ as he put it. It would have been ironic if he had hit his target, wouldn’t it? I wonder how the media would have handled that?
Needless to say, it’s all out now, thanks to Beth and her lawyer.
I watched her read my paperback for an hour after dinner that night, as I pretended to watch TV. She smiled a few times, and grimaced a few times (Beth is almost as squeamish as I am about some of the various words for ``vagina,’’ and I assume that’s what she was grimacing at), but mostly her face was impassive. Around page 20, a particularly ``hot’’ section, she shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. I knew it would all start coming together for her around page 40. I finally could stand it no longer and I suggested we go to bed, hoping maybe if I could break her away from the book she would put it down and not get around to finishing it. She told me to go ahead, and said she’d be along when she got to the end of the chapter she was on.
``Is it any good?’’ I asked, weakly, genuinely wanting to know.
``God, this guy’s a pervert,’’ she said, with a little laugh. ``It’s okay, I guess. But I think maybe the Times review took it a little too seriously.’’
Damn right they did, I thought, but I said nothing. The air in the room was suddenly too thin, and I quickly stepped into the bedroom. Before I closed the door, I took one last look at her face. I thought I detected a tiny hint of something, an almost imperceptible creasing of her brow, enough to make my mind tell me, She’s almost there. The waves in my stomach were like no feeling, sexual or otherwise, that I’ve ever had before. It was panic, but hopeful panic, colorful panic, not the black kind I usually feel. This, I knew, could be very bad, but it could also be very good. I lingered for one more moment, allowing myself to imagine it: Her, coming in to me later, kissing me in the dark, telling me it was okay, telling me she understood me now, that she wanted to be part of it now, that there was no more need for secrets; and then making love to me frantically, her inner thighs wet with the words from my book. I didn’t expect it, and I knew I shouldn’t dare think it, but I let myself think it anyway.
She was gone when I woke up the next morning (I hadn’t expected to sleep, but I did, and soundly). The paperback book was on the floor in the corner of the living room, having apparently been thrown there. I flipped the pages through my fingers, gauging their stiffness, and ascertained that about the first half of them had been turned. There was no note.
The next time I heard from Beth was a week later, when I got a copy of the divorce complaint in the mail. That was the same day the story exposing my identity appeared in the
I miss Beth. I miss her more than I thought I would.
There’s not much to do here but watch TV and type on this new laptop computer. Morgan, my black accountant with the disobedient nipples, arranged to have it delivered to my room the other day, after calling to tell me how much money I currently have and suggesting that I probably didn’t have to keep skimping on things like computers. Amazing little device. It’s funny how much of computer technology has passed me by as I’ve pretended to be poor, something I no longer have to do. In other ways, too, being ``out’’ isn’t as bad as I thought it would be (aside from the divorce, the lawsuits and the shooting). I’m actually starting to like celebrity. It’s strange to see yourself on TV, to hear them saying your real name and to see it in headlines. I haven’t granted any media interviews, but I did wave to the camera and smile from my window once. CNN has done two stories about me, one of which has them mispronouncing my name; I was in TIME magazine the other day, a one-page story about the shooting that was vaguely judgmental of me, though no more so than I probably deserve. My tall bearded doctor told me that I made the front page of The New York Times, which is ironic, considering their role in my downfall.
The reporters have mostly dissipated lately, but there’s two crowds of people who still gather outside the hospital every day, below my window. One is a group of protesters, mostly Christians and feminists from what I can tell, carrying signs that say things like ``Just Say `No’ to Porn,’’ and `Alvin’ with a red line through it, and the occasional Biblical quote. The other is a larger group of – well, I guess you’d call them groupies. I like watching them through my window, sometimes sticking my head out and waving, which draws cheers and catcalls from the groupies and boos from the protesters. The Christians and the feminists in the protester group don’t seem to get along with each other very well – I’ve noticed that, at times, they actually appear to be two separate sub-groups, standing a little apart from each other, as if they’re not real comfortable with their little alliance – but they’re certainly united in their hatred of me. Sometimes they get to chanting things like ``
This morning, before the crowds of groupies and protestors had gotten very big, I stuck my head out the window, and one of the groupies – a heavy, brown-haired woman with large pendulous breasts – yelled, ``Hey, Alvin!’’ and lifted her t-shirt, exposing her breasts to me (they were low-hanging, with medium-length, round-topped nipples and wide, notably dark areolae). Of course it stirred me, but I wish she hadn’t done it in front of the feminists.
One of the nurses is a young, pretty, red-haired woman with very white skin. She looks to be maybe twenty-five years old, with a smallish frame and modest bosom but wide hips and thick thighs. I’ve sensed that she knows who I am, though she’s not said as much. She has a shy smile and a demure way of trying, and failing, to make eye contact with me every time she’s here. She can’t quite do it. Still, her internal battle to look me in the eyes is valiant, and impressive, and, well, arousing. Which can be a problem when someone is changing the dressings around your groin.
The first time she came in, last week, and began gingerly changing my dressings, I made small-talk and acted normal and managed to tamp down my Inner Life enough to prevent an erection from blooming. It was a deliberate effort on my part, this normalization of relations between myself and a member of the better sex. It’s something I’d been considering ever since I arrived here: That this would be a good time to bring it under control, to tame it, if only so that I know I can do it. People who end up in the hospital because they eat badly or drink too much might reasonably be expected to use their convalescence to rethink those lifestyles, with their sterile white surroundings serving as their reminder of just how serious it’s gotten. Shouldn’t my own excesses, having proven just as potentially deadly, prompt a similar rethinking?
So as the young red-haired nurse worked, peeling off the bandages and dabbing at the wounds, we talked about the room, and the weather, and the food that she’d brought in with her. ``I know, it’s awful, so bland,’’ she laughed, not quite looking me in the eyes. ``We have to apologize to everyone about how awful it is. What is it about hospitals and food, do you suppose?’’ I laughed with her about the food, and I managed to keep myself soft as foam until after she left, and was so proud of myself for that particular achievement that I got ambitious and made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t even fantasize about her.
That lasted about ten minutes. By the time she returned, half an hour later, to clear the dinner tray for me, I’d already peaked, twice, to a story in which, as part of my therapy, she strips off her white nurse’s uniform before changing my dressings – her nipples, as I imagine them, are dark and rigid, her pubic hair red and lush between her thick soft thighs. She works very slowly to change the dressings, so that I can take in the ivory splendor of her body as she makes her way around the bed.
Finally, to help me over the top – as part of my therapy, remember – she stands before me and smiles that pretty smile of hers and looks down at her own vagina, gently running her fingers through her own hair there, then – finally defeating her own demons – looks me directly in the eyes and says, Gwen-like, but more softly: ``I understand you like bush. Will this one do?’’
Actually, the food here isn’t that bad. It is bland, that’s true, but my hypersensitive nasal condition makes that blandness advantageous. Flavorful food has always been overwhelming to me. I tried to explain my condition to my tall black doctor when he came in to check on my wounds yesterday afternoon, figuring that at least it might break the ice between us. (I think he might be Muslim; in any case, he has made it clear that he is no fan of pornography, and doesn’t relish having me for a patient.) I’m afraid our conversation only confirmed what I already suspected: that medical science is helpless to treat hypersensitive nasal perception, and so has resorted, perhaps out of embarrassment, to denying that the condition exists.
``Are you having any problems? Pain? Discomfort?’’ the doctor asked me, as he peeked under the bandages.
``No pain, but I do have some discomfort,’’ I said. ``It’s my sense of smell – I’m smelling too much.’’
``It’s the floor-cleaner they use,’’ he answered mildly, still examining the wounds. ``It bothers some patients. I’ll ask them to lighten up on it.’’
``No, I mean, I smell everything too much. I smell my own blood.’’
``Are you bleeding somewhere?’’ he asked, suddenly alarmed.
``No, no – I mean the blood in my veins. I smell it. All the time. And I smell all kinds of other things I shouldn’t be able to smell. I have a hypersensitive sense of smell. Always have.’’ He stared blankly, until I felt compelled to add: ``You’ve seen things like this before, right?’’
``Um, ’’ he said. ``No.’’ He stared at me silently for a moment longer, as if trying to determine whether this was some kind of pornographers’ joke. Then he said he’d look into it, and he left.
Beth visited me today.
I hadn’t expected to see her so soon, maybe ever, but there she was, standing in the doorway of my room as I was reading my email on this laptop. We stared silently, stoically for a long moment. Then she grinned her patented grin, the one side of her mouth going up further than the other. ``God, Adam, look at you,’’ she said, softly, shaking her head and smiling and staring at the bumps in my bedspread created by the three bandages between my legs.
`` `The wages of sin,’ ’’ I said, when I found my voice. And we both laughed easily, as we always do when one of us quotes the Bible. And I felt a little twinge of sadness, to be reminded that where we are closest to one another is in our atheism – closeness not in a shared belief, but in the lack of one.
She pulled up a chair and sat in that demure cross-legged way of hers, and she took a breath that seemed to be about composing herself. ``I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you before I filed the papers,’’ she said a moment later, sounding practiced. ``And I’m sorry about all the media stuff. That was the lawyer’s idea, and I went along with it because I was mad, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, okay?’’
``You don’t owe me an apology,’’ I said, and I meant it. ``I owe you one. A big one.’’
``Yes, you do,’’ she said. She smiled as she said it, which softened the sting of it a little.
We talked for awhile, about safe things: how her classes were going; how my recovery was going; how Mrs. James, our remarkably busty, crucifix-massaging landlady, must feel, knowing what she now surely knows about one of her tenants (that one gave us another little laugh together). I told her I’ve continued paying the rent, though neither of us has lived in the apartment lately. She nodded and thanked me. I told her she could take her time about arranging to get her antique rocker and whatever else she wanted from the place, that I wouldn’t claim any of it. ``Half the money’s yours, too, and I’m not going to fight you on that,’’ I added, just to get it out of the way.
I was startled to see her eyes tearing up. ``That’s it, then?’’ she asked.
I wasn’t sure what she meant. When I said nothing, she asked: ``What do you want from me, Adam?’’ She asked it the same way she had all those years ago, on that perfect college day when I’d had Gwen and then had Beth, when I almost lost her and then won her back – asked it as not as an expression of frustration but as a real question, one requiring an answer.
``I want you to stay,’’ I finally said. Then I said it again, because it was the truest thing I’ve ever said, and because I didn’t know what else to say.
``Why do you want me to stay?’’ she asked. ``Can you give me one reason?’’
I couldn’t. I thought about telling her I loved her, but I’m pretty sure she knows that already. I thought about telling her I’d change, that I’d become the person she’d thought I was, that I’d give up everyone and everything else for her, that I’d close off my Inner Life and just live this other one, but it struck me as a promise I couldn’t keep. I am what I am. I even thought about reprising the rest of that conversation, from back on that perfect college day – ``I want to fuck you’’ – but I surmised that, unlike then, it wouldn’t turn out this time to be the right thing to say.
Finally, I answered her, as honestly as I could. ``I don’t know,’’ I said. ``I just want you to stay. I can’t define why. That’s not to say there isn’t a definition; I just don’t have it handy. It’s a big question. An important one. I think maybe I should be allowed a little time to answer it correctly, don’t you?’’
She peered at me as if she was trying to figure out if I was joking (I wasn’t). Then she smiled, and shrugged, and said, ``Well, I guess that’s a better answer than saying you want to fuck me.’’
As soon as Beth left, I went online and found a place that will fully restore the antique rocker. I paid extra to have them go to the apartment do it on-site, immediately. It’s a bundle, and paying it just now was the first time I can remember ever feeling elation at spending money. (Mrs. James will need to let them in, which won’t be a problem; I’m sure that anything that helps facilitate the termination of our lease will be fine with her.)
This afternoon I met Carol, my agent, for the first time. She showed up at my room without calling first. ``I thought you might try to hide under the bed or something,’’ she explained, in her almost-husky voice. It’s amazing how correct I was about how she looks: middle-aged, medium-length brown hair, brown eyes, a body type that’s slightly hippy, a bit busty. She has one of those faces that seems to smile even when she isn’t smiling, indicating a naturally happy person, I suppose. Or maybe she’s just been happy lately, seeing as my shooting, and the rest, has driven sales of
In person, as on the phone, she had that rapid-fire way of communicating, impatiently issuing the necessary small-talk, tossing in unabashed cliches to get it over with, asking questions and then moving on without waiting for the answers. ``So this is the famous `
As she went on about sales figures and Oprah and the rest, I took in the curving lines of her form, the subtle rasp of her voice, the jut of her bosom. So many times I had found pleasure in my imagined first meeting with the woman now standing in front of me, in my concocted bargain between us, me agreeing to sign whatever she wanted, in exchange for her giving me a peek at heaven. Carol, I knew, was all about making deals – it’s what she does, and she’s done it well for me so far. Who knows what other deals are possible?
And here I was, lying in bed, in a private room, my impatient, curvy agent standing there rattling on in her rapid-fire way about all the things she needs me to do for her. How often do we find ourselves in a real-life situation that so closely approximates the setup of a long-held fantasy?
I figured, what the hell?
``I’ll do Oprah for you, Carol. I’ll do anything you want. But first, I want to see you naked,’’ I heard myself say, coolly. ``No sex. No touching. Nothing like that. I just want you to walk over there and lock that door and then come back over here and take off every stitch of your clothing for me. I want you to do it right now.’’
Her response was a little burst of laughter that sounded like balloons popping. ``I’ll have the new paperback contract to you by the end of the week, and I’ll start talking with the Oprah people,’’ she said, after she caught her breath. ``Get some sleep, sweety, we need you back on your feet.’’ And she left, fully clothed and chuckling.
I will be back on my feet, and soon, according to my disapproving doctor, and then some decisions will have to be made, by me and by others. I don’t know what to say to Beth the next time we talk, how I might talk her into staying, whether I should even try. I’m not even sure I know how I’ll answer her last question to me, during her brief visit. Why do I want her to stay? Can I give her one reason? The reasons that I keep returning to are fat with weakness and reliance, with the notion of Beth as an anchor of normalcy in the surreal sea of perversions that my life has become. She deserves to be more than an anchor for a pervert.
If I don’t go home, Clarence has offered his couch. Of course, I have more than enough money to move into a hotel, but I’ve discovered that hotel rooms – even the better ones that I can afford – are gloomy places when you check in alone.
Mindy called me last night, to tearfully apologize and tell me that she hopes I’ll forgive her. For an empty moment, I didn’t know what she was talking about (the shooting). My assumption was – is – that I’m the one who needs forgiving, having devastated not just my own marriage but hers as well with that damned book.
It was the first time I’d heard her voice since high school. Isn’t that funny? ``Adam-ski, I’m so sorry,’’ she said, her voice unsteady. The voice was older, of course, and sad from recent events, but wrapped within the age and sadness of it was the same lilting, girlish voice I remember from high school. The sound of it sent me back to youthful times and made me dizzy, and almost made me cry for the friendship that has been wounded, perhaps mortally.
She said she is trying to work things out with Darrin, a challenge in any case and more so when the working out has be to done from two sides of a security window in a jail. I haven’t pressed charges against Darrin, but the state’s attorney, a graceless male, angrily told me last week that he’s prosecuting anyway. ``As a husband, I’d have shot you, too, but people aren’t going to go around shooting each other on my watch,’’ he said. My pleasantly round lawyer, Lynda, who has been working overtime for me since the lawsuits started arriving, tells me I will have no choice but to take the stand and testify about the shooting. I assume Mindy will be at the trial. I hope so.
An amazing thing just happened.
The young, red-haired nurse came in and changed my dressings just now, after getting my autograph. She was sheepish about it, holding the paperback edition of The Electric Adventures of Alvin close to her, shielding it from my view. I didn’t know what it was until I caught a glimpse of the cover art, the woman’s torso on the computer screen.
She (the nurse) stood there silently for a moment, unsuccessfully hiding a book from its author, looking ready to explode.
``That’s my book you’ve got there,’’ I finally said, after I could no longer stand watching her discomfort. ``Did you have a question about it?’’
Her face reddened, a lovely, almost divine reddening that complemented her fiery red hair stunningly.
``No – I mean, um, yes,’’ she said. ``I was wondering ... um ...’’ She breathed deep and then laughed at her own flustered demeanor. ``Could you sign it for me?’’
My erection was beginning to swell at the thought that maybe she had read the book. Of course, that wasn’t assured; I’ve no doubt that many of the hospital staff and patients and visitors who have sought my autograph on their copies of Alvin lately haven’t read a single word of it, and were merely seeking my signature because of that strange hold that the written word, any written word, has over people. But there was always the chance that this lovely red-haired nurse wasn’t just a celebrity gadfly who would seek the autograph of any author, of any book, who happened to land on her shift with bullet wounds in his groin. There was always the chance she had really read it, that it had made her breathe faster, that it had stirred her.
I had to know.
``Sure, I’ll sign it,’’ I said, ``on one condition: You have to tell me whether you’ve read it. I’ll sign it whether you’ve read it or not, but you have to tell me honestly.’’
She turned an even deeper shade of red, then laughed again and looked down at the book. ``I was afraid you’d ask me that,’’ she said. Another laugh, then: ``Yes, I read it,
``Gem’s purple vibrator?’’ I offered, helpfully. The nurse, still smiling, turned a deeper shade of red than I thought was possible for a human, and said: ``Yeah, that. Those parts were a little too much for me. I mean, I’m Catholic, you know? But some of it, I really liked. The stuff about Minnie – I really liked her.’’
``Me, too,’’ I said.
I took the book and the pen she offered and signed it on the inside cover, after asking her name: ``To Jill; Thanks for your wonderful care at Holy Cross, and thanks for reading. – Adam Alvin Schakowski.’’
Under my sheet, my erection, already at half-mast, swelled more as I wrote it.
Jill. Jill. Jill.
The erection was going to be a problem. Sure, this young woman had read
``Well,’’ she said, reaching for the sheet, ``let’s get those dressings changed.’’
I pulled the sheet tight against me and said, ``Um, Jill, could we – could we maybe do this later? Like, in another five minutes?’’ I could feel my face reddening, even as hers took on a glassy, professional calm; funny how quickly we had switched power positions, now that the subject had turned from pornographic literature to medical care.
``What’s the matter? Are you okay?’’ she asked.
I thought for a moment about what kind of excuse I could make to keep this nurse from pulling down my sheets. Then, almost without even realizing I was doing it, I decided – miraculously – to engage in some honesty.
``Jill,’’ I said, ``I’m just going to say this: I have a huge erection right now. I didn’t want to offend you with it. If we can just wait a few minutes ...’’
She smiled, less embarrassed now than amused. ``I have seen one or two erections in my life, Mr. Schakowski. It’s no big deal.’’
``Really, though,’’ I said, ``I just thought I should ... um ... wait.’’
That’s when the amazing thing happened. In her face, I saw a decision being made. Then, a surreally calm question from a woman who had been so flustered a moment earlier:
``Did I give you that erection, Mr. Schakowski?’’
The question made me so dizzy that, for a long moment, I couldn’t even consider answering it.
Then, like a herd of cattle pushing headlong toward a cliff, I pressed ahead, unthinking, down the path of disastrous honesty I had charted.
``Yes,’’ I said. ``I’ve been having this fantasy about you the past few days, Jill, where you strip naked when you change my dressings, so that I can look at your body while you’re doing it. I’m sorry; I know I have no right to do that – to think that. I’m trying to stop, okay? But it’s hard for me. I’m tired. My wife is leaving me, I think. I’ve lost my closest friends. And I’ve got this problem with my chemical composition . . .’’
I stopped. Jill the red-haired nurse was looking down and laughing softly. I waited quietly for her to finish. Then she looked me in the eyes, still savoring the last wisps of the laugh, and said: ``You’ve been fantasizing about me? You? `
``Um,’’ I answered. My face felt red as blood. ``Yes. I’m sorry.’’
Her amused little smile remained. Then, with no more thought than a person would cross a room, she crossed the room, clicked the lock on the door, and stepped back toward me, casually unbuttoning the top button on her starchy white blouse.
``I’m afraid I can’t strip naked for you, Mr. Schakowski,’’ she said, as she undid the second and third buttons. Her blouse was now open to mid-sternum, her buoyant white cleavage sitting high in her shiny pink bra, with a stitched flower on the front where the two cups met.
She looked down at her own cleavage, then opened her blouse a bit more, ensuring I had an unobstructed view. Then she looked me in the eyes and said: ``I’m afraid this is the best I can do for you.’’
``That’ll be fine,’’ I breathed.
I noticed, immediately, a tiny brown freckle, all alone, on the soft upper mound of her left breast. Much like the one I’d seen twenty-five years earlier, in gradeschool, the day I learned that God doesn’t exist.
I looked at it, the freckle, and I thought, Why, hello there, Mrs. McCormick. How are you, after all these years?
She leaned slowly over me, her white breasts hanging heavily in their cups right before my face, the breast-freckle showcased like art. After she checked to make sure I was staring directly at her breasts (I was), she slowly peeled back my sheet to reveal what may have been the largest erection I’ve ever had.
``Oh, my,’’ she said, still smiling her small smile, still displaying her almost-naked breasts in my face.
She took almost fifteen minutes to change my dressings, working slowly and gently around the pulsing erection, never touching it but staring right at it the whole time. She moved to several positions on either side of the bed as she went about her work, making sure I always had a clear view of her bra and cleavage through her open blouse. At one point, she leaned so far forward, while wrapping the bandage, that the silky left cup of her bra hung down off her breast a little, giving me a clear, close view of her left nipple. I had been wrong about it; it wasn’t dark and rigid, but was soft as foam and light pink, almost white. The brown freckle hovered near it like tiny shadow. At that moment, it was possibly the loveliest nipple I’ve ever seen. As you know, that’s saying a lot.
She noticed where I was staring, and she looked down and she realized her nipple was exposed to me. And she leaned forward further still, giving me a closer and better view it. She made a point to stay in that position for at least a minute as she finished the dressings.
Maybe it’s the antibiotics they’ve got me on, but for a moment, in the whiteness of her breast and the pinkness of her nipple and the delicacy of her tiny freckle, I saw Beth. And Guinevere. Mindy. Mrs. McCormick. Carol my agent. Morgan my black accountant. Lynda my pleasantly round lawyer. My heavy bespectacled philosophy instructor. Janet Jackson and her jewelry-adorned areola. Mrs. James my buxom landlady, and her shiny little crucifix. Rose of Sharon Joad and her life-giving milk. The yuppie woman in the strip club. The nameless women in crowds. The faceless women on-line. Every woman I’ve ever known, and the multitudes I haven’t. All of them. Femaleness. How could anyone not see what I see there?
When she finally was done, she stood before me, still smiling, and held her blouse open wide again, inviting one last, detailed visual examination of her bra and breast-tops. Then she buttoned it closed and stepped toward the door.
``I’ll be right outside,’’ she said. ``I’ll make sure no one comes in for about ten minutes. Will that be enough time?’’
``Yes, that’ll be fine – Jill,’’ I answered, barely audibly. ``Thank you.’’ She smiled long and hard at me one more time, then turned and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her.
What odd places our Inner Lives take us. This lovely, red-haired, Catholic nurse named Jill is out there right now, standing guard in the hallway for me so that I can masturbate to the mental images she has granted me of her almost-naked breasts. I’ve told you that I’ve always found fantasy to be more perfect than reality, but in this case, I may have been wrong. She showed and did so much less just now than she had done in my fantasy, yet the reality of it is so much more powerful.
But, get this: I’m seriously thinking about not masturbating. My whole post-pubescent life has been spent playing with the mental images I have obtained from the women around me, playing with them like precious toys, often without their permission; so, now that this freckle-breasted nurse has specifically given permission, some part of my Inner Life is suggesting that, for balance, I should defer. I’m not sure why; maybe there’s a symmetry to the idea, something that appeals to my desire for an orderly universe. Maybe I could conjure up a few gasps for her benefit, listening out in the hallway, so that she doesn’t think I’ve rejected her gift. Then I’d watch TV or something until the erection goes away. Yes, maybe I’ll do that.
As for this manuscript – well, there being no more secrets in my life, I suppose there’s no reason not to print it out and turn it over to Carol and get it published, perhaps under some shamelessly opportunistic title like, ``The Electric Adventures of Alvin, Part Two.’’ Carol will be ecstatic. She’s been calling me here in the hospital almost every day with suggested story-lines I could use in an
So, there you have it: The past, present and foggy future of The Electric Adventures of Alvin. I don’t know what else to tell you about it. There are no encompassing epiphanies that I’ve gleaned from all that’s happened. I have found no towering truths in sex to replace those I’ve rejected in religion. I wish I did. I wish I could tell you that Guinevere’s lust for carnal adventure, or Beth’s comforting normalcy, or Mindy’s need to know and be known, or Clarence’s tireless search for beauty in an ugly world has had some truth-defining impact on me, but it hasn’t. I want adventure and normalcy and knowledge and beauty, too, but I have no more clue of how to secure those things now than I did before. It could be that there aren’t any central truths to be found. It could be that truth, by its nature, eludes definition. Maybe that’s what religion – and politics, and law, and social mores, and all the other walls that we’ve constructed at the perimeters of our Inner Lives – maybe that’s what they’re all about, feeble attempts to define the indefinable. Nothing we call ``truth’’ feels any more truthful to me right now than the pulse rising in my ears as I picture Jill the red-haired nurse, currently standing outside my door in all her blushing Catholic glory, a small, knowing smile on her lips, her tiny breast-freckle hovering under her silky bra near her left nipple, a lovely little planet orbiting a soft pink sun. It could be that all the truth worth knowing is displayed right there on her creamy white skin.
She opened her blouse for me. Think about that: She opened her blouse for no reason other than to help a tired fellow human leave this gray old world for awhile and go somewhere prettier. She opened it like a gate.
Excuse me a moment.
END
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