I returned to the matter at hand, which I hoped to prolong, having already pictured a virtual afternoon of foreplay. But Jocelyn seemed to be in a rush — I suppose “eager” might be a better word and throughout my leisurely fondling seemed bent on pulling me atop of her and getting it over with. By forcing her to slow down, I thought I was being provocative, but she expelled air through slightly parted lips in a way unmistakable for anything but impatience. It seemed advisable to get down to business. Jocelyn performed her part with exemplary animation, crying out as I came but falling still abruptly thereafter and staring at the lamp. We lay beside each other without speaking in the dim light of the room. My mind wandered briefly and then I remembered the nose. I remembered that I couldn’t picture Jocelyn’s nose. I turned my head until her profile came into view, and experienced a shock: her nose appeared to be almost, well, less a nose than a… snout. I jumped up and lifted the blinds. Jocelyn had raised herself on her elbows to watch my sudden activity. I came back to bed, where I snuggled up to her warm body and reexamined the nose, which was, in this light, quite normal after all. In my not easily understood relief, I told Jocelyn that I loved her. Without turning her head in my direction, she said, “Puh-leeze.” I was shocked. I waited, hoping there was time for one more erection. I was down to that.
Like I said, I’m only reporting this.
The ancient truism that a stiff prick has no conscience is misleading. It would be better to say that a stiff prick arouses unreasonable hope. Or, as the late Throckmorton once said, “No erection should be allowed to go unattended.” Many a fine man has been led by one into a morass of emotional entanglement, unfulfillable dreams, and unworthy or inglorious fates like bankruptcy. In today’s political climate no one would have the nerve to say that a moist vagina has no conscience, but the case can be made; and in fact a good many candid and enlightened women are prepared to acknowledge as much. It’s not just my hat that’s off to them.
The fact of the matter, the matter of Jocelyn, is that I simply could not be rebuffed. I found her every attempt to lower my expectations just one more thing to find either A. ravishing or B. adorable. That’s love and I freely declared it in the face of “puh-leeze.” Jocelyn was always honest.
Jocelyn was not at her father’s old place and neither was her airplane. I really didn’t know where to start. Meanwhile, Jinx was driving me crazy by arbitrarily booking patients for me to see right in my own disordered house, ones she claimed were not exactly pediatric. I saw them in the front room, which I’d turned into something of an office. These were routine cases, but I was at least back to looking at people, worrying about them and writing a few scripts. I have to admit that I would have been pretty happy if I hadn’t been stewing about Jocelyn and daydreaming about combining our skills in flying and medicine for some sort of wilderness thing or other. Alpine sort of backdrop, lonely rivers, etc.
But then she called me on the telephone. “Is this you, Berl?” I said it was. “Berl, you got my ass in a world of hurt.”
I was somewhat startled by her tone, not exactly creamy with longing. She was snapping at me. I said, “Oh?”
“When you turned Womack in. I know you went down there and talked to those people.”
“I didn’t turn Womack in. Womack got picked up.”
“Thanks to your description of the attacker. You’re a damn fly in the ointment.”
Now I headed for shakier ground. “I was stabbed, understand? I did the best I could to describe the assailant.” I was still wondering what in my consciousness had caused me to describe Womack to a T. Squeamishly clinging to my imaginary attacker wasn’t fortifying the tone of conviction I needed at this moment. “Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m back at my dad’s place with the plane.”
“I know that, but you—”
“Room in Harlo. At the Corral. You could come see me. I mean, the choice is yours. They’ve got Womack locked up in Texas all over again. Mission accomplished, sport.”
Outrageous really, but all I could come up with was, “Well, yes.” Good God. Was this the gruesome tug of my childhood and youth? To what else did I owe my lack of character in the face of such a quandary? I wasn’t working enough; I was not being useful. When hard at work I knew what to do about such things. Maybe that was why Jinx was putting me back to work. She seemed to know what I needed. I was grateful that she couldn’t hear my obsequious “Well, yes.” And really I knew better, but Jocelyn was my vision and my craving; when she spoke to me I watched her lips with rapture and didn’t hear a word. Without her before me — that is, with her on the telephone — I had a chance to take in a certain hardness in her demeanor, but I passed it up. I had only one thing in mind and that thing was laying a cold trail for me, one foot in front of the other. Did anyone ever rise above it?
We met at the Corral Motel in Harlowton and went straight to bed. It was most unsatisfactory. I had so long anticipated this moment that I made something of a fetish of foreplay, and it was clear that Jocelyn got nothing out of it. She said — joking, I assume—“Stick it in. Pull it out. Repeat. Keep it simple.” I found it nearly impossible to rise above this “joke,” but stupefied by adoration, I managed to carry on despite Jocelyn’s finding everything I did funny. I’m quite aware of how abject I must have seemed, but one look at Jocelyn would clear that up for anyone. She was such a gorgeous woman, and the fact that she administered her beauty with coolness and perhaps calculation didn’t seem to detract from it. I don’t think anyone has quite understood the merciless power of women at their apogee. We are reduced to worship — and I do mean reduced. I wasn’t sure brains and character added much at all. Look at Jinx: smart, good, pretty — she just didn’t work it like Jocelyn did. Jinx was a goddess and Jocelyn was a tart — but where did knowing that get me?
“You’ve never been in my plane, have you?”
“No, no, I haven’t. Maybe some—”
“Let’s go now. Let’s crank that baby up. Get dressed.”
I did and watched her do the same. As I observed her flesh disappear into her panties, then her jeans, then her bra, then the bright checkered cowboy shirt I particularly liked, and finally the yellow North Face Windbreaker, I had a fleeting sense of seeing these ravishing objects of my attention for the last time.
In the end, the gooberish demeanor of the supplicant, whether it was someone working me for prescription pills or me trailing Jocelyn to the airplane, was remarkably consistent. Even when angry and demanding, the goober was still an addict. That’s all an addict was, a goober. The long road to terminating exposure to the abused substance was littered with heartbreak. It was part of the training. Oddest of all, it greatly improved the survivors once you acknowledged the many who didn’t make it.
Jocelyn was at the controls, and I sat beside her, cautioned to avoid contact with the parallel set of controls in front of me. The back of the plane was filled with all sorts of things, groceries mostly, but also a big-game rifle and a short-barreled shotgun. I didn’t know she hunted. We both wore headsets and I quickly grew infatuated with the sound of Jocelyn’s voice, slightly distorted as though heard from a faraway place we could both go where our voices would have a slight electronic buzz and all would be renewed. Jocelyn sang into her microphone, “Off we go into the wild blue yonder!” and I felt her excitement at flying even as we rumbled down the rough airfield at her father’s old ranch. I watched her hand with its bright red nail polish on the stick, and it seemed to bespeak her remarkable mix of glamour and ability.