Rafael Yglesias - The Work Is Innocent

“Richard, you’re being crazy.”

“I’m telling you that’s what it amounts to.”

“Okay.”

She sat quietly, stubbornly. “Look,” he said. “Even if you thought I was too upset, then why didn’t you respect my problem? Why didn’t you just wait it out?”

“I can’t answer that. That’s not the way I saw it.”

“Well, goddammit, how did you see it?”

“Babes, do you have to yell at me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I thought you were very upset and I didn’t think you were doing yourself any good arguing with her. I mean, I thought it was silly to fight about it. We just thought it would break up the tension if we came in like that”

“Yeah, it sure broke the tension. I can’t believe you didn’t realize that I would think you were ridiculing me.”

“You thought I was making fun of you?”

Her expression was so incredulous that he suddenly felt foolish. “Of course. What else do you expect me to think?”

She smiled. “I didn’t expect that. You really thought that?”

“Yeah,” he said unhappily.

She looked at him lovingly, but with a mild amusement that he fancied contained a trace of contempt. “I’m sorry you thought that, babes, but I didn’t—I wasn’t making fun of you. I just wanted to stop the argument. So did Sal. He thought Lisa was crazy.”

The conversation had taken on a settled tone; Richard walked away from the bed and then back again. “Yeah, but you see she really wasn’t being crazy. She was just being straight about her arrogance toward people she considers nonpolitical, or nonactivist.”

He watched her reaction to this and it was obvious that Joan merely distrusted the sound of his words and had no understanding of them. “I mean,” he went on, “that’s the way most of those people feel about me.”

“What people?”

“Political people.” He had snapped the word at her.

“Look. I’m not gonna get into this. I don’t know what’s freaking you out about this but I can’t deal with it. If you want me to support you no matter what happens or what you’re saying—I can’t do that.”

“Oh, then fuck off. Go to sleep.” He got into his clothes and she watched him, looking miserable.

“Are you leaving?” she asked plaintively.

He looked at her and laughed. “Boy, do you have an exaggerated sense of the force of my anger! No, you fool, I’m going to read. I just don’t want to be cold.”

He stayed up until dawn. He considered that an appropriate reaction and woke up to an empty apartment refreshed. Joan had left him a note explaining that she was out job hunting, and he was amused by this unusual care she took to explain her absence. He was pleased they had fought. He was especially pleased he had left her on the defensive. She had always been in control of their relationship because of her greater sexual experience, and he had discovered a major weapon to neutralize her.

Richard spent the last month of the summer smoking grass and bickering with Joan. They fucked once and he was perfunctory about it. It didn’t occur to him that Joan might become disgusted with his behavior. He also refused to analyze why he was so depressed.

In September, they spent one weekend cleaning the apartment. It was unbearable to do such work, but, after Richard had vacuumed and straightened vehemently, he felt his thoughts were just as ordered and clear as the apartment.

They settled on the bed and Joan furtively rubbed his groin and, when encouraged, she undid his pants and lowered them. Richard was heartened by his situation: his penis enveloped in the cool of her mouth, his novel coming out in two months. It was fantastic to consider, to add up, the things he had acquired in the last six months: an apartment, a checking account, a lover, a publisher, a summer vacation, a life ordered by no institution. He knew it was cynical to think of it this way but he did, gleefully and triumphantly. How frightening that that was all he enjoyed about them. The fact of their existence.

He loved it when Joan took his penis into her mouth, but there was something ruthless about looking down at her doing it. He felt it was impolite to enjoy it too much. And then the problem it created by bringing him to a climax. So when it became impossible to control his excitement, he stopped her. She lay back ready for him, and it was difficult to overcome the sudden depression that hit him. It was tawdry: the lights on, his pants bunched at his knees, and Joan lying there with her eyes closed, waiting.

“Babes,” he said with a slight tremble.

She opened her eyes, alarmed. “What?”

He got up and put his pants back on. “I don’t want to have sex.”

He expected an explosion but it was silent, internal. He saw its flash in her eyes. “Why?”

“God, this is so fucking tense.” Richard smiled, hoping to get rid of her severe expression. But she only looked more unhappy. “I’m sorry, babes,” he said. “I just feel fucked up.”

She began to cry! He was amazed. Great tears formed in each eye and rolled down her cheeks. He ran over and hugged her. It did something extraordinary to his privacy, his self-indulgence, when confronted with emotion. Even that brief amusement he felt at being in the middle of a classic scene between men and women was broken through. She sobbed in his arms, he felt his eyes ache and tears come. “I don’t know what’s happening,” Joan said. “I just feel so frustrated.” They both laughed at the word. “What’s the matter? You can’t stand my body?” She was so ashamed to ask that he was saying no before she finished the sentence. And he said no several times while she wept. He realized he had to explain his coldness, the anger he had allowed to silence him for the past weeks.

“I’ve been shitty because of that argument with Lisa. Wait,” he said, to stop her from protesting innocence. “I’ve always felt inferior in my family about politics. And I don’t like feeling inferior.” They laughed at this. “Even when Dad was telling us about Padilla, he didn’t address himself to me, he talked to those schmucks.”

“What schmucks?”

“Leo and Louise. What schmucks! Have you got a block about this?”

“Probably.”

“Anyway, I’m tired of it, I’m tired of being patronized. I’m tired of being thought of as a little middle-class kid who has no right to be impressive about politics. Mark telling me in Vermont that he’s a revolutionary! My brother has been parading around like Lenin for the past three years and they are all little snot-nosed kids.”

“That’s silly, babes.”

“That’s what got me angry! Don’t tell me it’s silly. You hurt me badly when you say that. I know it may seem crazy. It isn’t important whether I’m right. I feel attacked about being a writer. Not even that. I feel like I’m being treated as some kind of a freak. At least the publication of my novel will stop that. But unless I jump on people for dismissing me on any political question, I’ll be miserable.”

“Richard, you think about these things in a destructive way. Nobody ignores you. If anything, people are a little frightened of you.”

“You’re frightened of me,” he said, laughing. “The others aren’t.”

“Why should anybody be frightened of you? I mean, why do you want that?”

“Honey, you’re making me sound like a gangster. I want respect, not fear.” He tried to smile at her winningly, but his expression was more like a plea. She looked shyly at him and then impulsively hugged him.

“I respect you,” she whispered. “Even though you’ve given yourself to me.”

He laughed wildly at her joke and was excited by even this pretense that she could compulsively get him to bed. He immediately began to take her clothes off but she took over that task so that they could quickly be naked. He was delighted by the recklessness of their acts and it inspired him to dive toward her cunt. He had always hesitated to put his mouth there; there, at the center of the world—hairy, odorous, full of an unconquerable desire. He thought of it this way while crouched before it: in overwhelming, alienating metaphors.