PHILIP ROTH
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because I hate things left unsettled . The unreasonable need I have
for civility if nothing else . Civility with a man who is insidious and
craven . I would call him back and he would take me to a dirty movie
where I bend over and blow him. Thrilling to be arrested with a D .A .
in my mouth. An officer of the court. I have no feelings that stop
halfway . Savagely captured. Though sometimes I am looking out the
window while waiting for him to come. God, all that choking. Yet
sometimes I don't think I do it
enough,
whatever I am obsessed with
doing. I didn't call him back. There is enough shit waiting for you in
life without this . In a few weeks he'll call me or he won't, but it doesn't
matter. My entire life I've been in a cage, the prey to some panicked
need of my own . But I can honestly say that I see life changing. I see
the rope ladder. To become an old lady who has lived ferociously
and has not gone off her noodle would be worthwhile too, but I am
going to have a husband, thought I, drifting away in my pink freeze.
I'm not necessarily looking forward to it, it's just going to happen
one of these days. Homemade bread. Soup stock. Appliances. His
feet. His shirts . The old-time virgin's dream of ecstasy. I am going to
have a husband and live with him in the way the Bible says . Once
and for all I am going to opt for silence. Babies and breast-feeding.
Cookbooks . Cats. Car pools. The price of eggs and butter. Conven–
tional marriage, which I despise . It horrifies me, but what does it all
mean finally? It's no more stupid than what I've got. Whacking off,
and dirty Polaroid pictures, and episodes in the movies, and baby
fucks, and mercy fucks, and friendly fucks, and everything in be–
tween . My cunt is hollering for a breather . But a husband? Fidelity's
a gigantic lie and sneaking a humiliation and betrayal- how possi–
bly a husband? However. This is a decision, not a compromise .
If
it
were a compromise I'd keep having lovers and I'm not going to. The
natives , they say, get better-looking all the time when you're stranded
on a desert island , so maybe that's the nature of a monogamous mar–
riage . In any event, that's the only thing I have never tried. I don't
know why fucking your husband shouldn't count, at least for one or
two points. A certain kind of sex, the grateful nice homey fuck, like
pot roast and potatoes and just enough gravy to get it down. I keep
thinking, what is the truth , how do you find it, how do you trick
yourself into not fucking everything up, and I think the answer is to
ask yourself WHEN you were happiest; not what makes you happy,
but WHEN. If you find out WHEN you find out WHY. I have no
morality, as you well know. I don't think anything is right or wrong,
coming from where I do . My morality allows for everything. One's
