And Beth had instantly believed the diary, that was another thing. She hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt, hadn’t asked him for an explanation, hadn’t done anything but stalk off into the night and leave him standing there with egg on his face.
How could she have believed it? Didn’t she know him, hadn’t they been married for six years, couldn’t she have known instinctively that the things in the diary couldn’t possibly be true?
So he’d decided, once he was drunk enough, to be angry. Angry at Beth, both for believing the worst against him without question and for punishing him for something that was actually beneficial to their marriage together. Whether either of these indictments would hold up or not wasn’t the question; he was full of them, full of liquor and righteous indignation, and he had decided that by God he would be unfaithful. If he was going to have the name, by George he was also going to have the game.
So here he was in New York, walking around the Times Square area with only a slight list to betray his drunkenness. He walked up 7th Avenue, and there they were.
This part of 7th Avenue was neither bright nor dim, the lights seeming to illuminate the street while leaving the sidewalks in semi-shadow. And there, along the sidewalks, standing in store entrances or under the dark marquees of theaters, were the whores. Some of them strolled slowly along, but others just stood where they were, almost blending into the buildings behind them, their clothing dark, their eyes containing a cold glitter.
Paul walked for three blocks among them, seeing here and there other men stopping to talk with one of the whores, but it took him a while to build up his courage. He walked past several girls who gave him meaningful glances before he took out his paint can and brush and painted a big round target on his ass. With his funny red nose and his great big yellow bow tie and the huge flappy shoes and the puffs of smoke coming out of the hole in the top of his barber stripe top hat, he was just the cutest little devil in the center ring.
This is not to happen. Start the paragraph again, get swinging again, retype this page when were back in the saddle. And:
Paul walked for three blocks among them, seeing here and there other men with clear plastic balls, inside which the blue and red gears could be seen failing to mesh.
Paul walked for three blocks among them, seeing here and there other men stopping to talk with one of the whores, opening their shirts and skins and cutting out various organs and handing them over, dripping and steaming and oozing maroon goo, to the hookers who dropped them in black shopping bags to be delivered to the beauty parlor early next morning.
I will not. I will not. Paul walked for three blocks, he would have been better off going home and jerking off in his back yard. Or some neighbors back yard. Here, Paul baby, jerk off to this book here, by this fella Dirk Smuff. He isn’t the best of the grubby pornographers, he isn’t the worst, he’s one of the fuzzy brown ones in the endless middle. Show him a filthy book with no name on it, he wouldn’t be absolutely sure whether it was or was not written by him. Maybe one of the early ones, he’d say, musing, thinking it over, trying to remember. Did I write that sentence?
Paul Paul Paul Paul walked those three fucking blocks.
I don’t want to go through it again. I don’t want to describe it again, not even in third person, not even through Paul.
And it would be worse to make Paul win, I’d never respect myself again if I wrote it that way. Or changed the hooker to a different type, it wouldn’t work, she’d keep ripping off the mask and showing she was the same ebony stiletto.
I miss Betsy. God, how I miss Betsy.
What if she was here now? If it hadn’t happened, if she hadn’t gone away, hadn’t read the book, nothing. What would I be doing?
The same thing. Probably the same thing, though maybe I’d be more securely into doing the dirty book by now. But I’d still be in here, she’d be out there in some other room. It’s a little after nine in the evening, the dishes would be done, she might be watching television. Doing something, how do I know what? The point is, we wouldn’t be physically together in the same room. We might not have said more than half a dozen things to each other all day, we might not have been actually together in the same room more than an hour all day long. So why should I miss her so much?
What difference does it make? I do, that’s all.
It was strange, eating dinner alone. I heated up a frozen pot pie and some other stuff, sat there alone in the kitchen eating it. The light seemed dimmer somehow, I don’t know why.
I didn’t read the Sunday Times yesterday, so I read it tonight, during dinner. Trying to distract myself, but of course I should have known better.
Like the first thing I did was the Sunday puzzle, which was full of things like “Woe is me” and “just desserts” and “not up to it” and “fat chance” and “Start it now.” My favorite was “But is it art?” and the whole damn puzzle was called “After the Feast Is Over.”
So much for the puzzle. This week there was a special Jazz Recordings section, full of that recent assumption that jazz is art and should be taken seriously, which makes me very nervous. Reading about people who have learned a craft and consider that makes them artists always makes me nervous, because it makes me wonder if I’m supposed to make noises of similar stripe. After all, may there not be noteworthy bits of business in my various sex books?
There may not.
Reading the news is even stranger, I mean the stuff they call “hard news.” All about the Cyprus crisis, and the devaluation of the pound, and Vietnam, and racial strife, all this stuff that has about as much relevance to me as a dog throwing up in Nairobi. I mean, on page 37 of yesterday’s Times there is the following headline, and I am not kidding:
There. Is that happening in the real world, I mean in your real world? Pinch yourself. Is that headline at the same level of reality as the feeling when you pinched yourself? Of course not.
The Book Review. That’s where it begins to get to me. Starting right on page 2, where there’s a cartoon of a middle-aged man at a typewriter and a muse has appeared with miniskirt and boots and is about to play the lyre for him, and the man is saying, “Are you sure you have the right man, miss? My stuff is pretty square.” It’s signed Interlandi, and what did I ever do to Interlandi?
Or how about page 4, where there’s a review of a book called Writers at Work, which is a series of interviews with famous writers like Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg, and the review is mostly about the characteristics of the writer in the twentieth century, and I keep trying to find myself in there. Is that me, fourth row, third from the left, it looks like I’ve got a smudge on my nose?
I keep doing phantom interviews with myself. I whisper my answers, declaiming on life and love and art and my writing methods.
But I’ve saved the best for last. Way in the back of the Book Review, page 76, there’s a review of a book of photographs of Africa called African Image. Some of the photographs are shown, and do you know what is the main central photograph taking up almost one-third of the whole page? A bunch of female spades with their tits hanging out. Right. In the Book Review of the New York Sunday Times, November 26,1967. Not 1867, and not the National Geographic.
So I guess I am in there after all. No matter what the hard news up front, no matter what the self-image we’re all pushing this week, back in the back of the Book Review there am I. All the grubby old attitudes are still alive, all the sneaky little scatological sniggering nastinesses, all the little-boy-pulling-his-wee-wee dirtiness is still inside your head and mine and the head of the New York Times, and it always will be. Because if those had been white women they would not have run the picture.