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PARTISAN REVIEW
body should be the morality: listening to what it wants . I understand
one thing only: life or death. But a sense of well-being after a certain
age, like twenty-five , is a good thing too. I don't hold out much hope
for a future of more of myself. The point is that I don't think it's easy
to find love, and you have to be careful before you let it go, because
that can be the most serious mistake. All of a sudden life is becoming
oddly discernible to me - simple . I don't want to go to parties, I don't
want to go to movies, I don't want to go out for dinner. I hate parties,
you hate parties, if we have to go to any parties it'll be agonizing as
all parties are, but I won't ask beforehand who's going to be there,
because what the hell difference will it make? I'll just sit near you
and you'll tell me all about everyone, and the food'll be great and
then, best of all , WE GET TO GO HOME. Released from parties .
Christ could bring no greater prize to earth. And no more shoes from
Paris. How many dresses can I buy? I don't care about them either.
I'll be a volunteer with a little hat and a chiffon scarf. I'll be a wife in
a hideous gray row house, Christmas lights, fake reindeer, big glass
stars in the windows all year round, macaroni salad for the kids and
grilled cheese for me. The house costs eleven thousand dollars, the
neighborhood is awful, but anything, anything, as long as I don't
have to go to any more parties and blow the D.A. Quit him and get
that house on the ugliest street on Long Island . So it's boring.
If
you
don't feel like getting fingered under the table at the Perigord Pare or
fucking a goat by some chance one day, if you're tired or have a head–
ache, then you can go home and just sit down and be with someone
nice and boring. You can call it boring or you can call it peaceful. All
in your attitude . Sit around filling the vacuum together. Marriage as
morphine. Boring is just the lack of destruction involved. My hus–
band in his T-shirt and underwear lying beside me in bed reading the
ball scores ; standing in the foyer in the spring with daffodils and a
baby; the husband who smiles and is reliable and is very loving, even
if he puts you out for the count at the table; chatting with the lights
out under the blankets in bed, icicles on the window, and around me
insulating walls of goldfish and children and him . Everything we own
making it all less worrisome . Like holing up with your booty in a
Swiss bank vault. Tomorrow as predictable as ten years ago . The
husband whose presence doesn't let things get worse . Whatever it is ,
he doesn't bat an eyelash, doesn't change expressions - just puts his
arms around it and contains it so it doesn't feel like it's spreading. It
snows and that's the big news. My wildest erotic pleasure is taking a
bath. We have friends . These people invite us, we invite them , we all
