ON E OF YOU
251
"He is sterile. S-T-E-R-I-L-E. Sterile."
I thought of Murray, wavy-haired, graying at the temples, the
image of Jeff Chandler, poor guy, as a psychoanalyst. I didn't believe
Ben either.
"But he is," Ben said. "He told me so at the White school. Why
do you think he was interested in asking those questions about per–
versity? He is capable of intercourse, but he knows the guilt-anxiety
of the act, and he chooses wayward acts as a kind of self-mutilating
penance to
his
libido. I think those were
his
exact words to me."
Dinner went along aimlessly and I left shortly after. Ben had
put on a John Cage record, and
Lil
was in the kitchen washing the
floor.
As
I closed the door I heard him come into the kitchen. "Come
on,
Li~
get off the floor."
The next week I met Merle at Lerner's fourth lecture on Ameri–
can pluralism, this time the dichotomy between our Puritan adherence
to monogamy on the one hand, and the new culture's rampant extra–
maritalism on the other, a split which carried directly into the political
arena. Lerner explained that the only way our statesmen could exorcise
private guilt is by being supermoral in our foreign policy. He called
it the Dulles syndrome. I wanted to pursue the point over a cookery–
split, their ice cream special, but Merle broke in. "I wasn't listening.
I broke up with Tibby last week."
"You don't look like you're collapsing over it," I said.
"I'm not. I'm puzzled more by an eerie feeling I have. I might
as
well tell you because you'll find out soon enough. A few days after
the break I ran into
Lil
at the 8th Street Bookstore. She was looking
haggard. The thing with Ben was over, but she said what disturbed
her was the fact that she had been riding on the wings of a new idea,
and her wings had been clipped. She did look like a fallen bird.
She wanted a baby. That was the answer. She knew it. She spoke to
her doctor and all he could say was, 'Do you really want it?' 'I don't
know what I want,' she answered, and he said, 'Tell me what you
think.'
She talked a lot. She lies down now, you know, but she came
out depressed. I told her about Tibby and me, and a strange, desperate
look came over her. 'Come up to my place and we'll talk,' she said,
and before I knew it, although I really knew it, we were in bed.
'I want a baby. I want a baby,' she kept repeating. She was too
hysterical for any honest screwing, and we ended up drinking coffee
