Francis Levy - Erotomania - A Romance

"You wanna go back to The Golden Cock? I actually liked the food."

I myself felt ambivalent about The Golden Cock, but my anxiety and apprehension had made me go blank. Besides The Golden Cock, the only other restaurant that came to mind was Domino's Pizza. I said, "That's too fussy"

"You want a steak?" She frowned.

"Too greasy."

"How about Japanese?"

"I don't feel like raw fish."

As we were discussing where to go for dinner, arguing and not being able to agree on something that could never be as enjoyable as our moments of ecstatic sexuality, 1 realized this is what iti like to have a mature relationship. This is what General Shapiro has been talking about.

We decided on Frank's, a cute little place on Chapel Street, around the corner from the bus station. There were cheery waitresses with little white aprons on their gray uniforms, a maitre d' with a blue blazer, and a bathroom with one urinal and one stall, expressly designed to eliminate the possibility of extracurricular activities. There was barely room enough for an adult's knees between the toilet bowl and the stall door. I thought back fondly to the bathroom of The Golden Cock, which was larger and more spacious than the main dining room. When I'd first looked in through the large window, with Frank's painted on it in elegant script, I'd seen gray-haired men and women who seemed in many cases to be more intent on studying either the menu or the food on their plates than in paying attention to each other. Frank's provided its customers a mixture of comfort and subdued isolation. The candlelight on each table was less a prelude to romance than a memento to something that'd passed, like the candles you light in a church in memory of the dead. We were never going to fit in with this staid older crowd, but the first thing that Monica said when we were seated was, "Isn't this nice? It's pleasant, eh?" There was one tense moment when she was drawing on a pad and actually got turned on enough to stick her hand in her pants, but we'd finished dessert and were getting ready to leave anyway.

As we walked out of the restaurant, a portly matron with a cane, whose face was covered by a big red hat, ambled passed us.

"Cocksucker, I've been looking for you." I would have recognized the high-pitched voice of Heather Tnapsack anywhere. I didn't know how she'd found me, and I didn't want to know.

"Let's get out of here." I pulled Monica by the arm just as Heather started to come after me with her cane, quivering, "Duck me already, you son-of-a-bitch; I can't stand it." Monica didn't even ask what the commotion was all about. Sex-crazed old ladies were just the latest consequence of El Nino.

US

In the past, we started fucking before Ting came with the food and we were all over each other before I had finished my chow mein. By the second fuck of the evening, Ting would have already shot his load all over the window. We were no longer able to see him or he us and there were times when Monica was so turned on that she would stick the egg roll in her cunt, and I would end up finishing dinner between her legs. But recently, since we had been seeing General Shapiro again and were trying to build a real relationship, we had started watching television after dinner-something we never had time for before-and instead of fucking before dinner, we talked. Sometimes we talked about theories of art, and my homework was to avoid criticizing her, slapping her around, or pulling her hair, even if it did turn her on. I was no longer a sit-in for Pollock or DeKooning. I was just James Moran.

After we got home from Frank's, Monica flipped on the tube and we sat on the sofa and watched. One of our problems was that as we became ourselves-which happened more every daywe began to have different interests. I liked "Sixty Minutes," and Monica, "Survivor." She gravitated to reality television while I sought out the old news-magazine format. When we had just been a hot cock and wet cunt, our tastes hadn't mattered, but now we were two separate people and I had to deal with the fact that Monica could be a pain in the ass when she didn't get to see the programs she wanted.

The couples counseling seemed to be winding down, not because Monica and 1 wanted it to stop, but because General Shapiro had begun to schedule other patients for our hours. We were both confused by this behavior, though this had been his way from the start. One day he would refuse to see you unless you were coming three times a week, and a month later he would simply refuse to see you. Try as we might, we failed to come up with any explanations for these changes. We'd assumed that patients would discuss these matters with a therapist, but then again, Shapiro was a military man. During one of the last sessions, I candidly talked about my complaints and fears. When it came to his own erratic behavior, General Shapiro was uncooperative-as I knew he would be-but when I brought up the matter of our declining interest in sex, he was more forthcoming.

"Yes, you're not as sexual. You're experiencing your limits. You can't have everything. If you want to become real people you have to experience boundaries. That's reality, James. Before, you were living in a state of polymorphous perversity, but you didn't have any selves. Now you have well-defined personalities. You have likes and dislikes. You argue over what foods you like and what to watch on the tube. That's what marriage is for most people. That's love. From my perspective, you folks love each other very much."

Shapiro crossed his arms after gently running his fingers through his phantom hair. We had a half an hour to go in our session, but he looked like a man who didn't need to say another word. I kept thinking about the hunting metaphor and the stuffed heads on the walls. If he was going to be truthful, he'd have to be our taxidermist rather than our couples counselor; then he'd have true renderings of the creatures he'd subdued. There was no doubt he was satisfied with his work.

We'd always driven or called for a taxi to take us back and forth from Shapiro's office, but since Monica was no longer compelled to run home to roll in paint and play Eliza Doolittle to my latterday Henry Higgins, Helen Frankenthaler to my bullying Clement Greenberg in abstractionist terms, we had started to walk. Our town is full of little bits of late Victoriana-many of the old mansions have turrets-that were fun to study and talk about on the way home. But after that penultimate session, Monica insisted we call a cab, and once we were in the cab, she was sullen and unforthcoming.

"I thought you would want to celebrate."

"You don't get it, do you? He wants to give our hour away to someone else."

"We pay our bills."

"He realizes we're on the way out and he spotted some new prey on the horizon. If he doesn't snare them quickly…."

"Hold on a second. General Shapiro made it very clear he wanted to help us."

"He wanted to help us, and now that he's helped us, he wants to get rid of us. Love indeed!"

"You don't think we love each other?"

"Well, what's your opinion, James?"

"I asked you."

"I don't call it love when you refuse to even watch one episode of `Survivor' with me."

"Lots of couples watch different television programs."

"Okay, fine. Let's buy two TVs. You go in the bedroom, and I'll watch in the living room." Our changing interests clearly dictated new design options. The bedroom would be decorated with a "Sixty Minutes" news magazine decor while the living room would be the more lived-in reality-television environment.

C99

Our last session with General Shapiro was devoted almost entirely to our problems watching television. Monica wanted me to be something 1 wasn't-a lover of reality television. Again the problem of limits was coming up. Monica's inability to accept the imperfection of the universe was causing her unhappiness. But General Shapiro was distracted, even bored. He kept looking at his door, as if anticipating some new arrival-some inchoate bit of matter, the unformed clay of the maladaptive relationship that he could mold into a new trophy, a new testament to his talents as a healer.