We wandered up the hill to the Cliff House, still hand in hand, watching the glow of wood bonfires on the beach, puffs of light against the dark sky. The world was a small, warm closet which divorced us from reality, and I finally knew the feel of love for a woman-. My insides were warm, as from a fine wine.
We entered the Redwood Room bar and took a table overlooking Seal Rocks, which were lit a brilliant white against the night sky by floodlights. I ordered us each an Irish coffee and the waitress asked Susan for her ID, which she produced, sighing in resignation, as if to say, "See? I told you so."
We watched the rocks until our drinks were brought, looking for seals and finding none. The horizon blinked with the lights of ships voyaging to and from the Golden Gate from all over the world. The only light in the bar came from a huge fireplace built into the north wall.
"Susan by firelight," I said. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?" She smiled, a contented, honest smile. I reached across the table and took both of her hands into mine. "I love you," I said softly. It was the first time I had ever said it.
She took a sip of her Irish coffee, drawing the cream off the top. "I know. I've known for a long time that you think you're in love with me, but I wonder if you know what love really is?"
"The first person who defines love beyond doubt will win a Nobel Prize, at the very least," I said.
"Well, what I mean is that maybe your personal definition of love and mine are not the same. I'm not asking for any universals, but there are so few people today who define the word the way I do, and unless we both mean the same thing when we speak of love, then we're both lost before we begin.
"The physical attraction between us is overpowering, I know that. And we get along well together, we're harmonious, I know that, too. And we share the same interests and passions. But you're almost six years younger than I, and you're a student of mine, and there are so many problems caused by that, "
"Look, baby," I interrupted, "you asked me what I think love is. So before you go any farther, I'll tell you, okay?" She nodded. "It's true that I'm younger than you are, but far more mature in so many ways. I've seen more and done more in the last five years than you'll do or see in the rest of your life. I'm very protective of you. I think of you as something precious to me that should be shielded from hurt. I've got this consuming desire to take care of you. So maybe the best way for me to tell you what I think love is would be to tell you what I think it is not.
"It's not Madison Avenue and it's not Hollywood. It's not Vogue, or Harper's Bazaar, or Redbook romances. It's not TV ads. It's not beautiful people riving beautiful carefree lives, using the right deodorant and the right toothpaste and the right mouthwash. It's not fuzzy-hued lovers going slow motion into each other's arms on a grass hilltop, or the smell of perfume or cologne. It's not wearing the right clothes to create the right impression. It's not candlelight dinners and romantic bars overlooking Seal Rocks.
"Love is just two people making a life together, with all of its problems and trials, two people who have a deep caring for and understanding of each other.
"That's why I argued with Mrs. Wiggins in the family-living class. Because she's teaching a lie, that -you will find your perfect mate and get married and live happily ever after. Well, it doesn't work that way, not even after all the romantic novels and movies and magazine stories, not by a. long shot.
"So what you get is a whole nation of people who grew up on this myth, the myth of love at first sight. Girl meets boy, falls in love, saves her precious virginity, and gets married in white, with relatives beaming in pride. It's got to be a perfect marriage, made in heaven, because they're both good kids and they've both been brainwashed by a lifetime of romantic bullshit.
"But it doesn't take long for the magic spell to wear off. If they're normal people, they know little or nothing about sex, they only think they know all about it. Good old Prince Charming lasts about two minutes in the saddle, if he's lucky, and whether she feels like it or not, gives his princess a good night smack, rolls over, and in five minutes he's snoring. She lies there wondering why the books and movies made such a big deal about sex, thinking that at least she's done "her duty," as her mother instructed her to do, and vaguely aware that maybe she-ought to be getting more out of it.
"And so their dream is shattered; the myth explodes in their faces like a storm of dirty diapers. They sit home and watch TV, resenting each other because they should be running barefoot and carefree through soft, green glens, and cavorting around in ethereal brooks.
"The dream disappears for both of them and pretty soon Cinderella starts looking around for another Prince Charming, and the old Prince Charming begins screwing a little stray stuff on the side. They might stay together and continue to hate each other's guts for the next fifty years, or they might get divorced; it really doesn't matter, because they blew it the day they got married, and everything else was just anticlimax. They bought the romantic dream and couldn't stand the strain when ugly reality slugged it to them.
"I love romance. I love to make love, and I've done a lot of it. I love sunsets, and sunrises also, when I can get my ass out of bed early enough. I love candlelight and soft music and quiet places like this with beautiful views and roaring fireplaces. I love beaches and parks and trees and flowers and children playing. I'm eighteen years old and I've seen some of the worst of life and some of the best. I want to live with you, love you, take care of you, and have you take care of me. And if we can make it, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, growing old and fat and probably bald, because it's in my family. A lot of people make fun of the marriage vow, but the cat who wrote, "… in sickness and health, for better or worse," knew what he was writing. He knew what it takes for two people to be able to spend a lifetime together.
"I want you, Susan. And I don't care if you're lying naked in bed or sitting on the John. I want your intellect because it can keep up with mine, and grow with mine. I want our music and our art and the things we love around all the time. I want your brightness, your joy in just living, just breathing air and seeing sights and doing things. I want that quality you have of making me want to hold you so badly sometimes it hurts physically, and I don't mean between my legs.
"I want you. And if all of that's love, then I love you."
Susan pushed her chair closer and slipped her arm under mine, taking my palm from the inside with her soft hand. I was staring out the window at the rocks below, afraid to look at her, afraid of what I might see in her face. I felt the caress of soft hair on my cheek as she lay her head on my shoulder.
We sat some time in silence. My mind seemed dull. Random, meaningless thoughts kept flashing through my head.
"And if all of that's love, then I love you," she whispered, crying softly. She squeezed my hand tightly and we didn't speak until the waitress carne over to hustle us for another drink.
After we were served, Susan turned and looked at me intently. I could feel the love from her touch, from her eyes. I could feel it pouring out of her and over me, bathing me in a flow of blessed warmth. God it felt good, better than the best cunt, better than anything I had ever known, the feeling of real love received from a woman and the feel of love given from yourself. I wished that I could have sat there like that with her forever.
Susan rubbed her eyes, drying them with the back of her hand. I reached to smooth away the tears with my finger but she stopped me. "Don't. I'm not going to live with you or marry you or anything else. You want to know the truth? Okay, I'll tell you the truth. I don't know what you've got or what you did to me, but I love you so much I can't even think straight anymore. I go out on dates with men old enough to be your father and I can't stand them because I'm thinking about you all evening. Their conversation bores me and their pawing hands annoy me and I can't wait for the evening to be over so I can go home and get into my bed and think about you in your bed and masturbate myself to sleep, because that's the only way I've been getting any sleep lately. And if I've shocked you it's just too bad, damn you.
"My life was all set. I finally got what I wanted, what I worked so hard for all these years, and then you come along and screw it all up just as it's starting to make sense, just as I'm starting to be happy on my own. Because I'm not giving it up. I've worked too hard for too long and I'm not going to lose it all now, just when I've almost got it. You're not worth it, no man is worth it.
"There's a whole world full of men out there, and when I find one he's going to be the right age and have a good position and I'll be able to teach as long as I want without complications, and loving him isn't going to cause me trouble, like loving you would.
"I don't want you to drive me any more and I don't want to see you outside of class. I don't even want to talk to you, not even in class. I want you to get out of my life and get out of my dreams and stop turning me upside down." She started to cry again.
The elation of love that I had felt instantly dissolved into bewildered panic. Susan was here, with me, loving me, and telling me that she wanted to break it off; it had the sense of the unreal. I could hear what she was saying but my brain refused to digest the words.
When she got up to leave I grabbed her arm and pulled her back into her chair. "Do you realize what you're doing?"
"I think so," she said. "But I'm going to do it, anyway."
"I don't think you really do realize," I said. "Look, the insurance companies say we'll both probably live to be around seventy years old, give or take a few. Right now you're twenty-four and I'm eighteen. Do you think the difference in our ages will matter when you're fifty-eight and I'm fifty-two? Or when you're a broken-down old broad of seventh-three and I'm still a young stud of sixty-seven? What the hell difference could it possibly make then? Or even next year, when you'll be just one of thousands of young teachers who are working while their husbands go to school on the GI Bill, or whatever? Nobody would even think twice about it, especially if you kept your maiden name for work. If we had any problem at all, it would just be from now until next June, when I graduate.
"Think about it, Susan, just think. We're two people who have found each other in a world full of people who are searching and searching and finding nothing. I'm not saying that I'm the only man in the world for you. Almost everything in life can be turned into mathematics, even love, because it's all probability.
"Given all the qualities we have that brought us together, there must be 'at least a few dozen other men in San Francisco who you could love the way you say you love me. Figuring a population of eight hundred thousand, there must be about sixty or seventy thousand men in the right age bracket for you. So all you have to do is find one of those few dozen among the seventy thousand, and you've got it made. And if you dated ten guys a week for the next twenty years, your chances would still be zilch of finding a man for whom you could feel the way you feel for me.
"Of course, you could always compromise. You could find somebody who was close, somebody with whom you could be reasonably happy. And that's all we can ask in life, to be reasonably happy, right? But if you did that, if you didn't find the perfect replacement, you'd still spend the rest of your days thinking about me and about what could have been, wouldn't you?
"Christ, Susan. I'm asking you to live with me, and if things work the way we both know -they're going to, I'm asking you to marry me. I'm proposing to you."
I couldn't think of any more to say. We watched the lights accentuating the foaming white of the ocean swirling about the base of the rocks. The sound of her chair sliding back on the wooden bar floor grated at my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. "Good-bye," Susan said quietly.
I didn't turn to watch her leave.
The weeks that followed were hell.
For the first time in my life I felt really depressed. There was a sense of loss that kept with me constantly, devouring my insides and gnawing at the wall of well-adjusted solidarity that I had so painstakingly built for myself. I sat in class and watched Susan gallop around the room, fresh and challenging, seemingly unperturbed by my presence, except for possibly being a bit snappier with the kids.
As for myself, I never raised my hand, never spoke, never offered an opinion. I suddenly became the class dummy, turning in written work, coming and going. I tried to catch Susan's eyes, to tell her with mine how much I hurt, but she refused to look, even for an instant. I filed in and out of the room, passing her at the desk as though she weren't there. On my papers I made no personal notations, although once I wrote, "We're both committing suicide but we're too stupid to lie down and be buried." But I tore it up.
If the days were bad, the nights were agony. I asked Terry to come sleep with me several times, not because I wanted sex so much but because I didn't want to be alone. We would fuck and talk, -and I would find myself lapsing into long periods of silence, my thoughts in Susan's apartment a block away. Terry said that she still loved me, and gave me such comfort as she could, but I couldn't accept it. I didn't want to start with her again.
The sex that had seemed so satisfying months before was now empty and sterile. When Terry wasn't around I raided the bars or picked up clucks at the club. I performed like a fucking machine. That's what they all used me for anyway, wasn't it? I might just as well be honest with myself. All those stupid broads, it wasn't my great character or charming personality that made them keep calling me back, keep ringing my doorbell. All they wanted was what hung between my legs and a few good orgasms when they were horny. It wouldn't have mattered to them if I had been the hunchback of Notre Dame. They came to get it off, to use the fucking machine and come back again some other time, when they felt the need of physical release that their old men or their fingers couldn't give them.
Drop a quarter in the slot and insert, girls. I got so detached and mechanical that I began to feel like the machinery in the old song:
There once was a maiden with twat so wide that she could never be satisfied so they fashioned a shaft made out of steel and on it they put a great, big wheel
Around and around went the great, big wheel in and out went the shaft made of steel Until at last, the poor maiden cried I do believe I've been satisfied
But the fucking machine wouldn't tarry a bit in fact, there was no way of stopping it It tore the poor maiden from asshole-to tit and the whole damn thing blew up, blew up
And the whole damn thing blew up, in shit.
Like the machine, I felt that I was about ready to blow. I did what Mora had trained me for, I serviced. The body under me might be humping and bucking, impassioned fingernails raking my back and arms, erotic screams of release piercing my ears, it made no difference; I felt nothing. It was like fucking life-sized plastic balloons in the shape of women.
I wandered aimlessly into the Tenderloin, picked up a •John, led him to a remote men's room, and beat the shit out of him. Then I spent an hour in the shower trying to wash off my guilt for making the poor jerk suffer for my frustration. I saw Susan once at the symphony and once at the club, each time with a different man, and each tune I burned with impotent rage and jealousy. She didn't even miss me, I thought.
Our separation had dragged out to seven weeks and I was at the breaking point, starring glumly out the window at four in the morning when the door buzzer sounded. I didn't think much about it. It had happened before that some chick, bombed out of her mind and horny for a screw, would decide to crash my place for the night. But that night, and from then on, I wanted none of it.
I pushed the talk button. "Who is it?"
There was a short silence. "It's Susan," said the voice.