HAROLD BRODKEY
383
scared, and 1 saw Johnno, 1 did consider Johnno physically- 1 felt a
faint stir when 1 first saw him or in the first moments after Ora left
the table this evening.
But it didn't last. Some sort of wall arose.
His emancipation, I'll call it that, led into conceit, a drunken
conceit, a rigid pattern: grimness in pleasure and vivacity in pain:
he had a handsome unhappiness: part of it was well-rehearsed (or fa–
mous) hatred - a puritan-unpuritan thing.
But how many people are interesting company for anyone per–
son? What will you do in the face of someone else's will if they keep
you from feeling lonely?
J ohnno said, "Bruno is the best lover in the world: he is a great
artist - it is Paradise - "
"Outre paradise," 1 said, as if idly, glancing around with a
superiority that was tactical in nature: it was not what 1 felt. 1 mean,
Johnno's speech worked even if it was obvious; it did make me un–
easily
jealous.
Ora and 1 weren't
paradise.
(She said we were - maybe
we were but how could you tell? She
said,just look at other people
but 1
didn't feel superior to Johnno's life; 1 just didn't want to go to bed
with him, 1 really di9n't want to. To be honest, 1 wanted to want to,
and 1 tried to drum up some
good nature
or whatever it should be call–
ed, some bodily readiness to be fondled, some sense of poetic and ex–
tremely public nakedness as either delicious or as a dirty and sought
after fate.) "I am not physically friendly, Johnno. 1 don't comfort
anyone with
~
body."
That just wasn't true: if you're big, you do it
all the time, with strangers going through a doorway at the same
time you are: a kind of species courtesy.
1 meant sexually - 1 meant 1 couldn't comfort even myself with
my own body: 1 meant that what my body was for sexually was to
entice comfort for itself.
Johnno was staring at me, then at the air, and smoking, and his
disdain for the lie was so palpable to me, so shaming, that 1 said, "I
am already in
love
with someone."
"Fuck that. Fuck her."
"You're a mess, Johnno-"
"You're lying about your feelings -"
"Not by very much -"
"You should leave that bitch with her big tits and come down
here to live: you're an artist."
The price of Ora. The price of the moments with Ora.
"She doesn't have big tits. Pipsqueak. What happens to the
