Siri Hustvedt - The Summer Without Men

I gave my speech then. “There are no rules,” I told them. “For six weeks, three days a week, we’re going to dance, dance with words. Nothing is prohibited — no thought or subject. Nonsense, stupidity, silliness of all kinds are allowed. Grammar, spelling, none of it matters, at least at first. We’ll read poems, but your poems don’t have to be like the ones we read.”

The seven were silent.

“You mean we can write about anything, ” Nikki blurted out. “Even nasty stuff.”

“If that’s what you want,” I said. “In fact, let’s try nasty as a trigger word.”

After a short explanation about automatic writing, I had them write a response to nasty, whatever came into their mindin a ten-minute stretch. Poop, pee, snot, and vomit appeared under several pencils in short order. Joan included “Period mess,” which prompted giggles and gasps and made me wonder how many of them had crossed that threshold. Peyton discoursed on cow pies. Emma, incapable, it seemed, of letting herself go, stuck to moldy oranges and lemons, and Alice, who obviously inhabited the realm of the incurably bookish, wrote, “sharp, cruel, pointed, like piercing knives in my soft flesh,” a line that caused Nikki to roll her eyes and glance at Joan for confirmation, which quickly arrived in the form of a smirk.

That shared look of disparagement registered itself in my chest, like the briefest stab of a needle, and I noted aloud that nasty was a word that included more than objects of disgust, that there were nasty remarks, nasty thoughts, and nasty people. This went over without objection, and after more talk, embarrassed giggling, questions, my directive to keep their work in a single notebook, and an assignment to do more fast writing at home to the word cold, I dismissed them.

The Gang of Four led the way out with Peyton and Emma fast on their heels. Alice lingered at the table as she carefully, self-consciously inserted her book into a large canvas bag. Then I heard Ashley call to Alice in a bright, brittle voice, “Alice, aren’t you coming with?” ( With is a preposition allowed to hang unaccompanied by a noun or pronoun in Minnesotan.) Looking toward Alice, I saw her face change. She smiled for an instant and, gathering up her notebook from the table, ran eagerly toward the others. Alice’s undisguised happiness combined with Ashley’s tone had for the second time in a single hour touched a raw spot in me, more bodily than cerebral. I had been called back to a young and hopelessly serious self, a girl without the distance of irony or a gift for covering up her emotions. You ARE overly sensitive. The two tiny exchanges between girls lingered into the evening like an old and annoying melody in my mind, one I understood I had never wanted to hear again.

The girls and their blooming bodies may have been an indirect catalyst for the project I launched that same evening. It served as a methodical way to ward off the demons that arrived every night, all of them named Boris, and all of them wielding knives of various lengths. The fact that I had spent over half my life with that man did not mean that there hadn’t been a period Before Boris (from now on to be designated B.B.) There had been sex, too, in that long-lost era, voluptuous, dirty, sweet, and sad. I decided to catalog my carnal adventures and misadventures in a pristine notebook, to defile the pages with my own pornographic history and to do my best to leave it husband-free. The Others, I hoped, would take my mind off the One.

Entry #1. Was I six or seven? I would say six, but it isn’t certain. My aunt and uncle’s house in Tidyville. My older cousin Rufus lounging on the sofa. If I was six, he was twelve. Other family members were around, I recall, moving in and out of the room. It was summer. Sunlight shone through the window, specks of dust visible, a fan blowing from the corner. As I passed the sofa, Rufus pulled me onto his lap, nothing unusual. We were cousins . He began to rub me or, rather, knead me between my legs as if I were dough, and a strange warm feeling arrived, a combination of dim arousal accompanied by a sensation of the not-quite-right. I put my hands on his knees, gave a push, dropped off his lap to the floor, and wandered away. This drive-by groping must count as my first sexual experience. I have never forgotten it. Although it was not traumatic in the least, it was novel, a curiosity that left a definite imprint on my memory. My view of the event, which I never told anyone about, except Boris, surely qualifies for what Freud (or, rather, James Strachey) called “deferred action”—early memories that take on different meanings as a person grows older. If I had not escaped so quickly, if I had not been able to retain a sense of my own will, the molestation might have scarred me. Today, it would be considered criminal and, if discovered, could send a boy like Rufus to jail or into treatment for sex offenders. Rufus became a dentist who now specializes in implants. Last time I saw him, he was carrying around a magazine called Implantology .

Entry #2. Lucy Pumper announces to me on the school bus: “I know they have to do it to have children, but do they have to take off all of their clothes?” Lucy was Catholic — an exotic category: incense, robes, crucifixes, rosaries (all coveted) — and she had eight brothers and sisters. I bowed to her superior knowledge. I, on the other hand, looked through that particular glass darkly and had nothing to say. I was nine years old and understood perfectly that I would discover a reflection of some kind if I looked hard enough, but when I gazed ahead I had no idea what I was seeing. All of their clothes?

A side entry: I promised not to, but I can’t help it. His hair was dark then, almost black, and there was no soft, loose flesh beneath his chin. As he sat across the table from me in the Hungarian Pastry Shop, he explained his research slowly and lucidly, and he drew a model on the napkin with his Bic pen. I leaned forward to look at it, followed one of the lines he had drawn with my finger, and looked up at him. The electric air. He placed his hand over mine and pressed my fingers into the table, but I felt it between my legs. I felt my jaw loosen and my mouth open. It was grand, my love, wasn’t it? Well, wasn’t it?

* * *

I am screaming, All these years you came first! You, never me! Who cleaned, did homework for hours, slogged through the shopping? Did you? Goddamned master of the universe! Phallic Übermensch off to a conference. The neural correlates of consciousness! It makes me puke!

Why are you always so angry? What happened to your sense of humor? Why are you rewriting our life?

I remember pieces, parts,

A chair without the room,

A flying phrase, a shriek, a foggy scene,

hippocampal fits

that summon David Hume,

his I as pale and lean and phantom-like

As mine.

Dear Mom,

I’m thinking of you every day. How is Grandmother? The play closes in August and then I’ll come to visit for a whole week. I love doing Muriel. She’s a pip — a great part and finally comedy! The laughs have been huge. I told Freddy the scripts were awful, but he kept sending me out for those ghastly torture-and-kill-the-girl movies. Yuck! The playhouse is trying to raise money, but it isn’t easy here in off-off-off land. Jason is fine except that he’s hating my schedule.

I saw Dad for lunch but it didn’t go so well. Mom, I’m worrying a lot about you. Are you okay? I love you so much.

Your own Daisy

I sent my own Daisy a reassuring message.

* * *

“He wasn’t an easy man to be married to, your father,” my mother said.

“No,” I said, “I can see that.”