She squeaked something—because I was strangling her.
“What?” he said. “What did you say?” He looked at her nearsightedly. Our struggle must have imparted an unusual intensity to her expression because he seemed extraordinarily flattered by what he saw; he turned his head away coyly, sneaked a look out of the corner of his eye, and then whipped his head round into position very fast. As if he had been a bird.
“You’re a good conversationalist,” he said. He began to perspire gently. He shifted the pieces of his napkin from hand to hand. He dropped them and dusted his hands off. Now he’s going to do it
“Janet—uh—Janet, I wonder if you—” fumbling blindly for his drink—“that is if—uh—you—”
But we are far away, throwing coats out of the coat closet like a geyser.
Is that your method of courtship!
“Not exactly,” I said. “You see—”
Baby, baby, baby. It’s the host, drunk enough not to care.
Uh-oh. Be ladylike.
She showed him all her teeth. He saw a smile.
“You’re beautiful, honey.”
“Thank you. I go now.” (good for her)
“Nah!” and he took us by the wrist “Nah, you’re not going."
“Let me go,” said Janet.
Say it loud. Somebody will come to rescue you.
Can’t 1 rescue myself?
No.
Why not?
All this time he was nuzzling her ear and I was showing my distaste by shrinking terrified into a corner, one eye on the party. Everyone seemed amused.
“Give us a good-bye kiss,” said the host, who might have been attractive under other circumstances, a giant marine, so to speak. I pushed him away.
“What’sa matter, you some kinda prude?” he said and enfolding us in his powerful arms, et cetera—well, not so very powerful as all that, but I want to give you the feeling of the scene. If you scream, people say you’re melodramatic; if you submit, you’re masochistic; if you call names, you’re a bitch. Hit him and he’ll kill you. The best thing is to suffer mutely and yearn for a rescuer, but suppose the rescuer doesn’t come?
“Let go, -----,” said Janet (some Russian word I didn’t catch).
“Ha ha, make me,” said the host, squeezing her wrist and puckering up his lips; “Make me, make me,” and he swung his hips from side to side suggestively.
No, no, keep on being ladylike/
“Is this human courting?” shouted Janet. “Is this friendship? Is this politeness?” She had an extraordinarily loud voice. He laughed and shook her wrist.
“Savages!” she shouted. A hush had fallen on the party. The host leafed dexterously through his little book of rejoinders but did not come up with anything. Then he looked up “savage” only to find it marked with an affirmative: “Masculine, brute, virile, powerful, good.” So he smiled broadly. He put the book away.
“Right on, sister,” he said.
So she dumped him. It happened in a blur of speed and there he was on the carpet. He was flipping furiously through the pages of the book; what else is there to do in such circumstances? (It was a little limp-leather—excuse me—volume bound in blue, which I think they give out in high schools. On the cover was written in gold WHAT TO DO IN EVERY SITUATION.)
“Bitch!” (flip flip flip) “Prude!” (flip flip) “Ball-breaker!” (flip flip flip flip) “Goddamn cancerous castrator!” (flip) “Thinks hers is gold!” (flip flip) “You didn’t have to do that!"
Was ist? said Janet in German.
He gave her to understand that she was going to die of cancer of the womb.
She laughed.
He gave her to understand further that she was taking unfair advantage of his good manners.
She roared.
He pursued the subject and told her that if he were not a gentleman he would ram her stinking, shitty teeth up her stinking shitty ass.
She shrugged.
He told her she was so ball-breaking, shitty, stone, scum-bag, mother-fucking, plug-ugly that no normal male could keep up an erection within half a mile of her.
She looked puzzled. ("Joanna, these are insults, yes?")
He got up. I think he was recovering his cool. He did not seem nearly so drunk as he had been. He shrugged his sports jacket back into position and brushed himself off. He said she had acted like a virgin, not knowing what to do when a guy made a pass, just like a Goddamned scared little baby virgin.
Most of us would have been content to leave it at that, eh, ladies?
Janet slapped him.
It was not meant to hurt, I think; it was a great big stinging theatrical performance, a cue for insults and further fighting, a come-on-get-your-guard contemptuous slap meant to enrage, which it jolly well did.
THE MARINE SAID, “YOU STUPID BROAD, I’M GONNA CREAM YOU!”
That poor man.
I didn’t see things very well, as first off I got behind the closet door, but I saw him rush her and I saw her flip him; he got up again and again she deflected him, this time into the wall—I think she was worried because she didn’t have time to glance behind her and the place was full of people—then he got up again and this time he swung instead and then something very complicated happened—he let out a yell and she was behind him, doing something cool and technical, frowning in concentration.
“Don’t pull like that,” she said. “You’ll break your arm.”
So he pulled. The little limp-leather notebook fluttered out on to the floor, from whence I picked it up. Everything was awfully quiet. The pain had stunned him, I guess.
She said in astonished good-humor: “But why do you want to fight when you do not know how?”
I got my coat and I got Janet’s coat and I got us out of there and into the elevator. I put my head in my hands.
“Why’d you do it?”
“He called me a baby.”
The little blue book was rattling around in my purse. I took it out and turned to the last thing he had said ("You stupid broad” et cetera). Underneath was written Girl backs down—cries—manhood vindicated . Under “Real Fight With Girl” was written Don’t hurt (except whores) . I took out my own pink book, for we all carry them, and turning to the instructions under “Brutality” found:
Man’s bad temper is the woman’s fault. It is also the woman’s responsibility to patch things up afterwards.
There were sub-rubrics, one (reinforcing) under “Management” and one (exceptional) under “Martyrdom.” Everything in my book begins with an M.
They do fit together so well, you know. I said to Janet:
“I don’t think you’re going to be happy here.”
“Throw them both away, love,” she answered.
III
Why make pretensions to fight (she said) when you can’t fight? Why make pretensions to anything? I am trained, of course; that’s my job, and it makes me the very devil angry when someone calls me names, but why call names? All this uneasy aggression. True, there is a little bit of hair-pulling on Whileaway, yes, and more than that, there is the temperamental thing, sometimes you can’t stand another person. But the cure for that is distance. I’ve been foolish in the past, I admit. In middle-age one begins to settle down; Vittoria says I’m comic with my tohu-bohu when Yuki comes home with a hair out of place. I hope not. There is this thing with the child you’ve borne yourself, your body-child. There is also the feeling to be extra-proper in front of the children, yet hardly anybody bothers. Who has the time? And since I’ve become S & P I have a different outlook on all this: a job’s a job and has to be done, but I don’t like doing it for nothing, to raise the hand to someone. For sport, yes, okay, for hatred no. Separate them.