GILBERT SORRENTINO
547
often find that a book will do that? Wait? My emotions swirled and
churned, beat and blended , until I was taken in memory to a windy
afternoon on some dunes somewhere . I can see him now, a film critic,
painter, short-story writer , novelist, and all-around sport, deshabille
behind the shifting sands while I attempted to perform an unspeak–
able and unnatural act upon his supine frame . Yet his manhood was
recalcitrant . God! My shame was such that I felt like sinking right
through the dune. Think, then, of my position . Of course, the oven
beckoned like an old friend. And, in a way, though I lived, I did not
live . Can life, true life, be honestly thought ofas just a bunch of things
put together daily that you do or not? How foolish these quick are!
Great storms of conflicting emotions ripped and punched their
way through me, my hat , that I had somehow forgotten to remove,
flew from my head, my trousers seemed strangely torn, my head
pounded and ached .
It
was true , so! Of course it was true. I knew, with
a knowledge surer than death , closer than whatever you might care to
espouse, knew that I had betrayed Tom Buchanan , Ned Beaumont,
and even the pure and simple love that I had had for Daisy. The cruel
lust that oft will prove not to be denied had triumphed and I had
sullied something fine and good . In her innocence she had opened like
a clam to me and I had witlessly plucked her naive gift with no more
care than a beast .
. . . oh , so many things I did to save it. Often I walked around in a
fog . I even tried Mrs . Ashby, the famed seeress, but she got sick when
she looked at my soul in her ball. "Bring me a hopeless alcoholic! " I
remember her keening. And all this time, Tom malingered on the
edge of total despair, rich and handsome though he was and , by the
by, still is, as a cursory examination will prove. My dream in those days
was to work in a garden somewhere , say in New England, Vermont was
my dream . I would bend gracefully among the flowers, all in shapely
black , plucking or cutting or whatever you do, pruning, I love gardens.
And Tom would be sitting nearby, working on a novel about the
platinum business-what really goes on behind the scenes-the joy
and heartbreak, the greed and jealousy, and the terrible , constant fear!
But it was not so ordained to be thus as I came to comprehend acutely
and to to my great chagrin, annoyance, and black despair. And now,
Martin , my poor, dear Martin, although I can ' t blame you as can no
full-souled woman blame any man who loses the fight to the lusts that
