Something Happened by Joseph Heller
"I wouldn't let him get away with it. That's why I threw Don out."
She is glad that John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were killed and that the girls in the family have crooked teeth. She wants my wife to agree with her. She wants me to put in a swimming pool. I feel rivalry between us. (I used to feel rivalry with her mother.) I didn't let my wife know how much it pained me to see her undress that way. (How often I cursed her and swore to get even. I do get even. We Slocums have our family honor.) It was a matter of high principle (as well as of low prurience. I cherished seeing her in ungraceful positions. Still do). She never guessed the effect it had on me (she is not mean), and I was too sensitive and proud to complain. (I did not want to beg. While she did not even know what was going on.) "Don't you ever dream I'm dead?" she likes to ask.
"Did you dream I was dead?"
"I think so. I think that's what was happening."
"Thanks."
"I was sorry."
"I don't remember. My dreams are about me, and you're not me."
"I dream about you."
"You're in my dreams. Do you want me to return the favor? To promise?"
"You couldn't keep it."
"Then why bring it up?"
I'm grateful she doesn't ask me if:
I ever dream about her and another man, because I do, and that dream is about me also. (They are coming together in sexual union for the sole purpose of denigrating me.) And I don't like it. I don't want my wife to commit adultery. I don't think she wants to, either, ribald and vulgar as she sometimes gets at large parties now (although she may think she wants romance. I'd like some too. Where do you get it?); more likely, she is reacting against being the kind of old-fashioned person who doesn't want to (while so many other women we hear of do want to and are). She would have to be drunk and more stupefied than she's ever been (that I know of) and fall into very bad, greedy hands. She would have to be led away without knowing it to someplace remote and be overcome in silence by somebody wicked and unmerciful. (Conversation would eliminate his chances. She'd recognize he wasn't me.) I hate that man (all of them who've ever calculated their chances with her) and want to kill him, especially with this foreknowledge I have that she would probably enjoy it more with him than she ever has with me.
"Oh, darling," she exclaims to him over and over again in sighing adoration. "I never knew it could be this way. I will do everything you ask."
She would have no real need for me after that except to pay certain bills. (She does not like to write checks for things like insurance premiums and mortgage payments.) I hang within earshot at parties (unless I am off on my own taking soundings of somebody else's drunken wife. I prefer them comelier and better-tempered than my own) to lead her away before an insult or assignation becomes inevitable.
("Come along, dear. Come on now. This way, dear. There's an elegant man here who wants to meet you."
"Who?"
"Me."
In these dreams of mine in which she abandons me for somebody else, I seem to dissolve while dreaming them and am left with nothing but my eyes and a puddle of tears.) Divorce, however, is a different matter. We like to try each other on that.
"Do you want a divorce?" she will ask.
"Do you?"
(I've thought about it. What happily married man of any mettle hasn't?)
"What would I do?" she speculates with a long face. "I couldn't find another man. Who would want me?"
"Don't be too sure."
"I'm too old."
"Nah. I'm older."
"It's different for you."
"Yes, you could."
"It's too late."
"No, it isn't."
"You're eager, aren't you?"
"You're the one who brought it up."
"You're the one who's always thinking about it. I can tell. You get so happy every time a marriage breaks up. Why don't you come right out and say so?"
"Why don't you?"
"You're the one who's unhappy."
"Who says so?"
"I know how you feel."
"Aren't you? You do a lot of complaining. You're complaining right now."
"Don't you want a divorce? You can tell me if you do."
"No, I can't."
"You can."
"I can't even tell you if I don't."
Almost from the first week of our marriage we have been jostling each other this way over divorce. (Almost from the first week of our marriage I have found these squabbles sexually arousing, and I am in haste to hump her and reconcile. She always gives in.
"Say you're sorry."
"I'm sorry.")
She would like me to say:
"I love you."
I won't.
I can't.
I shouldn't. This is a matter of principle (and manhood) too. (I can say it easily enough to other girls if I have to, when it does not mean I will have to give up anything. It means I will get, not give.) I couldn't even say Sure to Virginia when it would have gotten me a great deal; instead, I would twist away from her sideways, recoiling lamely with some face-saving wisecrack, and slink out of sight miserably like an exiled dog.
"Come outside," I could say.
Or:
"Meet me downstairs," I could propose like a carefree buccaneer (when I knew we would not have much time).
But never:
"Yes."
When she said:
"Get a room."
And always when I began inching back to her tremulously (that's the perfect word) I did not know if she would let me back into her voluptuous and smutty good graces. (I would have felt penniless without them.) She always did. She could have cut me off at the knees with a single, slicing sentence (she could have told people about me); and I might have remained like that forever, no legs, just stumps. (Somebody would have had to move me about, lift me up from one spot, like a chess piece or checker, and place me down in another.) She liked me. She was not impressed by Tom.
"You're better," she told me.
"Then why doesn't she do it to me?"
"Do it to me like you did to Marie on Saturday night, Saturday night."
Tom had no sense of humor. (What he did have was a handwriting I wanted and took from him.) He was getting laid, but I could make Virginia laugh. (Ha, ha.) I was pleased with myself when I did. (I told stories about her to teen-age friends back in my neighborhood.) We teased each other lubriciously all day long. I leaked (lubriciously. Lubricious is a lubricious word). Nobody teases me now. They say Yes if they come along at all and are out of their clothes before I can even get my shoelaces unknotted.
"That was good," they sigh afterward.
"I really needed that," they declare.
As if I believe them. Or even care. All I'm thinking about is when I ought to leave or how I'll be able to get them out of Red Parker's apartment in time to take a nap before returning to the office or catching my train. They're as obtuse as my wife in her naive good moods, still trying to work out ground rules for a happier marriage, while I am wondering how much longer I will have to remain with her before I pack my bags and get my divorce. That sanguine stupidity of hers (that utter lack of connection with my deeper feelings) is maddening.
"I'd like to know," she'll sometimes say, "what you're really thinking."
(No, she wouldn't.)
"About my speech."
"I mean all the time."
"My speech. I may have to make a much different one if I get the promotion."
"All of us think you're angry when you get so quiet. We try to guess what it is."
Virginia would tilt her head backwards and to the side, eyeing me lewdly with a knowing, taunting look, a festive leer, her powerful breasts (girls with big breasts sometimes wore very tight bras then too) elevated like artillery pieces on weapons carriers and thrust out brashly just for me. She knew what I was thinking.
"These," she'd announce proudly, "are what Mr. Lewis likes about me." The tip of her tongue would glide for an insta
"Come outside."
"Come inside."
"You're a tease."
"You're a tease. You keep a girl all hot and bothered all day long and then won't even take her to a hotel."
"I don't know how."
"I'll tell you."
"You do it."
"They'd lock me up. They'd lock me up as a prostitute. We'll do it together. Register as Mr. and Mrs. Bang."
Today, twenty-one is too young for me, childish, pesty. I wouldn't lay one like that on a bet now if she worked in the same office. The whole company would know. (They talk about you now to their friends. They talk about you to their parents!) I don't even like them working for me that young or hearing their strident gibberish (with defective pronunciations that give their neighborhoods and working-class background away). They lack refinement. Most of those that don't wear bras have pendulous breasts that look awful. I don't often envy youth. I detest it. Kids don't hear noise. They make so much. I wish they'd all keep their mouths shut in public and turn down their phonographs and transistor radios. My daughter will soon be the same age as Virginia. She looks older now, because she's taller, when she stands up straight. I wish she'd realize that and wear more than just a nightgown when she comes out of her room. I wish my wife would tell her. It's hard for me to say anything about it to either one. (I don't think I will ever be able to sleep in a double bed again with a male. I would choose the floor or a chair. And that would be equally suspect.) I am not a fanny patter. There are times I don't even want to handle my wife. I just want to put it in and get it over with. Or I don't want sex at all. I make excuses. There is a barrier of repugnance. It's shelter. It dissolves when I want it to. They've got nothing there but something missing. I think filthy. That's shelter too. (Other times I want it and my wife doesn't, and it's like receiving a blow across the forehead, eyes, and the bridge of my nose.) Virginia was twenty-one and older than I was (and that's the way I will have to keep thinking about her if I want to be able to keep thinking about her with romantic nostalgia and devotion).
She would have lapped me up, turned me topsyturvy (as Penny can do), spilled me head over heels into a sea of winy, rippling vibrations, whirled me backwards quivering into a hailstorm of palpitating infancy and insanity, sent me scrambling up the walls with sensation and rocketing through the ceiling like a surface-to-heaven missile with the flaming tip of her crimson, naughty tongue. I would have begged for mercy as soon as I recollected who I was and found myself able to speak again. (I do that with Penny now. I do it with my wife.) And she would have looked lovingly at me with sated sweetness afterward, resting on her knees between my own, satisfied herself by how beautifully she had done, how prodigiously she had pleased me. I'd like that now.
"Isn't he jealous?" I had to ask. "He can see us right now."
"He wants to leave his wife and marry me. We go to empty restaurants and have drinks and dinner. He likes the way I kiss."
"So do I."
"So do I. It took a lot of practice for me to get it just right. You should try me when I'm all naked and really feel in the mood. I don't know what you're waiting for."
I lowered an accident folder over my groin (in case another one took place).
"Come outside."
"I see, said the blind man. Something's happening."
"Is this case yours?" I inquired boldly.
"I bet I know the cure."
"Meet me?"
"Did you ever go to bed with a stiff problem and wake up with the solution in your hands?"
"You made it hard for me but I can't hold it against you."
"Go first. I'll meet you."
"I'm coming, Virginia."
"Do it to me like he does to Marie," she sang back softly, as I moved past her out into the hallway.
I was Captain Blood the pirate on that staircase, a dauntless freebooter. I bore the accident folders before me prudently like a gallant shield. (I had something to hide.) I was carrying hot pellets.
I always yearned to take it out and ask her to hold it a little while. I didn't dare. Mrs. Yerger was in charge before I was able to, and I quit soon after. I practiced the words but couldn't say them; interchangeable first ones jammed in my larynx and pharynx; there was a multitude of syllables with which I might have begun: "Will--"
"Take--"
"Would--"
"How about--
"Don't be--"
"I--"
"Please."
I could not speak any of them. I did not know what pose to adopt. (I had no choice.) Now I know it would not have mattered. (She either would or wouldn't. The thing to have done was to whip it right out, mumbling anything. Please would have done fine.) How I wanted her to. It would have been laden with need almost beyond endurance, swollen to bursting with tenderness, gone lunging off rabidly like an epileptic relative I would soon attempt unsuccessfully to repudiate, self-centered, an embarrassment, a connection of some distance I might have to mutter an apology for. I don't get that hot anymore. Apathy, boredom, restlessness, free-floating, amorphous frustration, leisure, discontent at home or at my job--these are my aphrodisiacs now. I never got that far. It ended before I learned how. "All that's required is one or two years of specialized training," say the military recruiting posters. I got that specialized training in the armed forces. I came out of the army a handsome captain, and Virginia was dead. I was glad. (I was surprised I was glad, but that's what I was.) I tried to make a date with her from a telephone booth in Grand Central Station and failed. It's hard to succeed that way with someone who's dead. I liked hearing her tell me about sex. (It was like watching a dirty movie.) It was hard picturing someone as gentle, moderate, and considerate as Len Lewis being incited by her in a restaurant, movie, or automobile.
"I make him," she boasted. "I lead him on slowly. I know how."
"How?"
Her father had killed himself too. "We never knew why. We had lots of money. He was a quiet man. Like Mr. Lewis."
"What does he do to you?"
"Whatever I ask him to. Or show him. He isn't sure how far he can go with me yet. He can't believe it," she praised herself with a grin. "He's very sweet. I like to make him happy. He's easy. You're easy too."
"I'm hard."
"Easy."
"See?"
"I see, said the blind man."
"You're making things very hard for me."
"Should I meet you?"
"Hurry up."
"I can only stay a second."
"Hurry up."
Her face wreathed in pink, blissful smiles of contentment whenever she saw me get an erection. (I think I got more hard-ons from her in my twelve months at that automobile casualty insurance company than I've had in the twenty or thirty years since.) I wish I had her smooth, round cheeks in my hands right now. I would stroke them languidly with pinky and thumb, stimulating her slowly, instead of grabbing and racing. (I know how to do that now.) It would be I who picked the mood and did the delectable tantalizing.
"Cover up," she'd say.
"Come outside," I'd beg.
"You won't have time," she'd laugh. "Better shoot to the men's room."
"Meet me there."
"I've got no key."
"I'll sneak you in."
"I've never done it in a men's room."
"You did it in a canoe once at Duke University."
"I did it in a men's dormitory once also at Duke University. With five football players. They made me. I was expelled. The one I liked so much brought me there. They sent me home. I was afraid to go. I never found out if they told my father."
"Did they rape you? Is that what happened?"
"No. They didn't have to. I didn't want to. But they made me. They just held me down and kept talking. I knew them all. But it was fun once we started and I stopped worrying about it. I would have told the other girls. I think I hoped we'd get caught. I think I'd like to do something
"It's exciting me right now."
"I see, said the blind man."
"Come outside."
"For a minute."
"On the staircase?"
Sometimes she'd give me about three and one third seconds.
"Someone's coming!" she'd hiss with vehemence, and tear herself away. "Let me go."
I should have guessed from her educational curriculum at Duke that she was a little bit nuts and would probably kill herself sooner or later. I am able to spot propensities like that in people now (and I keep my distance). A friend in need is no friend of mine.
I envied and abominated those five football players at Duke. They thought so little of her. They treated her like crap. And she did not mind. There were days I found myself detesting her on my long, drab subway rides back and forth. There were mornings I would not talk to her and could not force myself to look at her, she seemed so foul. (I was betrayed. She was trash, that fatal kind of trash that can make you want to die. I'm glad I didn't die. I'm glad I outlived her.) I felt--and knew I felt correctly--that she still would have preferred them to me.
I am gifted with insights like that and able to prophesy with conviction in certain morbid areas. I know already, for example, that my wife (as she foresees also) will probably die expensively of cancer (she'll need a private room, of course, and private nurse) if she doesn't outlive me and we do not divorce because of drunkenness or adultery (hers, of course). If we're apart, or if I'm already dead, who cares what she dies of? (I'll probably miss my boy every now and then for a little while if I do move out for a divorce. I like it so much when he smiles. I'll have to leave so many things behind. My golf clubs. How can I rationally make time and room for my golf clubs and new golf shoes when I am breaking away from home and family in an irrational rage?) Will I be happy when my wife is dying of cancer? No. Will I be sorry for her? Probably. (Will I be sorry for myself? Definitely.) Will I still be sorry for her after she's gone? Probably not.
I am especially good on suicides and breakdowns. I can see them coming years in advance. Kagle is close to his breakdown now; his God won't save him, but maybe his boozing and whores will (supplemented by fortifying compounds of vitamin B-12 and self-pity mixed with self-righteous claims of mistreatment. If nothing else, everybody will agree he has been a nice guy). Kagle won't kill himself; he'll enjoy his wronged status too much for anything like suicide (he'll enjoy smiling gamely, forgiving generously). I'll have to get rid of him. I try to help him now. He grins incorrigibly (and I want to kick him in his leg). I know something he doesn't know, while Green, Brown, Black, and others watch mistrustfully and theorize (I feel. I know I don't feel honest with them). I want Arthur Baron to note my efforts to aid Kagle. Kagle's job will be given to me; it's all but inevitable now. Kagle welcomes my criticism (and ignores it. It's the attention he welcomes. If I threw spitballs at him he'd be just as grateful). He thinks I am a doting parent fussing over an appealing child. It does not cross his mind that I am a zealous heir grown impatient to supplant him. (I'd like to spit in his face. Won't he be surprised?) Martha, the typist in our department, will go crazy eventually (probably in my presence. I'll get rid of her deftly and be the talk of the floor for a few days), and I won't lay Jane, although I'll continue to flirt with her (fluctuate and vacillate, hesitate and saturate) and ferry the prurient interest she stimulates in me home (like melting ice cream or cooling Chinese food) to my wife in Connecticut or uptown to old girl friend Penelope, my weathering, reliable Penny, who still studies music, singing, and dance diligently (while working as a cocktail waitress in one place or another) and still likes me better than any of the younger men she successively falls in love with for a few months three or four times a year. (She should like me better. I am better. They're jerks.) My wife loves doing it with me in Red Parker's apartment in the city, and I like doing it there with her too. It's different than at home. We go at each other full force. I have grim premonitions now for Penny, who traveled through her thirtieth birthday still unmarried (with much deeper emotional changes than she seems to recognize) and is not as jolly as she used to be. I've known and liked her now for nearly ten years. I don't know what will become of my daughter. I make no firm predictions for teen-age girls today. (The boys, I know, will all fail. They've failed already. I don't think they were given a fair chance.) She'll want to take driving lessons even before she reaches sixteen. Then she'll want a car. She'll have duplicate keys made and steal one of ours. I wish she were grown up and married already and lived in Arizona, Cape Kennedy, or Seattle, Washington. Someone older will advise her to steal our car keys and have an extra set made. She steals money now from my wife and me to chip in with friends for beer, wine, and drugs on weekends. I don't think she uses the drugs. I think she's afraid, and I'm glad. I'm glad they seem to be going out of fashion in our community, along with spade boyfriends. I'm glad she's afraid of Blacks too.