Carlos Fuentes - Adam in Eden

Lie to me

Lie to me some more

Because your wicked ways make me so happy. .

I listen to L and congratulate myself on my own political discretion. Start adding up what you already know: I live in my father-inlaw the King of Bakery’s house; I have a long marriage with Priscila, the deposed Queen of Spring; I go from the house to the office and from the office to the house; I rarely attend social events. .

I extend this discretion to my love life with L — private, satisfying, unmentionable — despite the occasional oddities that threaten to affect it but turn out to be no more than passing swallows.

“Why don’t you shave under your arms?” L asked.

“What?”

“You could shave your armpits.”

“What for, L?”

“To be just like me.”

“But I want to be different.”

“You mean you don’t want to be like me?”

“I like you, understand? That’s enough for me.”

“But you don’t want to be like me.”

“No, I totally prefer the difference.”

“It’s a whim of mine. A tiny whim. This small.”

“I can just picture myself with shaved armpits and then shaving my hairy chest, arms, legs. .”

“And your back, bear cub, don’t forget your back.”

And then we kiss, and the argument is done.

Other times the fault is mine, usually a result of my legal training, which seems to confuse as much as to clarify. A surgeon cannot make a mistake: if he operates for appendicitis on a man with a toothache, his license is revoked. A lawyer, on the other hand, can lie in the sense that he knows his arguments are based on a fallacy that is useful to win a case, to deceive a fool, or to confuse an enemy.

“Where were you on Friday the ninth at six o’clock?”

“Friday the sixth at nine o’clock?”

“You’re lying. .”

“I mean, Friday the ninth at six?”

“You’re contradicting yourself.”

“You’re confusing me, counselor.”

“Why are you confused all of a sudden? What are you trying to hide?”

“Nothing, I swear.”

“Keep your story straight. Why are you trying to deceive me?”

“I. .?”

That is why I can say to L, when I stand up for my right to ejaculate, that semen retention is toxic. I don’t even abstain from saying it in Latin:

Semen retentus venenum est.

L doesn’t care about my Latin expressions. L believes that the retention of semen causes an intense internal orgasm that is far more satisfying than my external spurt.

“Besides,” L ventures, “to retain semen is a mark of sanctity.”

I make a face of feigned surprise: “How would you know that?”

“Saints have semen, but they restrain themselves.”

“You and I are no saintly couple, L. And about saints one can—”

“We can aspire to—”

“You’re so boring.”

“Humor me.”

“Okay. Although I assure you that. .”

I mention these little spats so that you’ll understand what a good relationship I have with L and how we overcome all our differences without ever fighting. Have we done something wrong? Are arguments between couples the spice of love, the prelude to making up? Sex can either free or imprison the eternal savage that we all carry within.

I sometimes think that we are born savages who, if left to our own devices, would act like animals who want nothing more than to survive and to satisfy our instinctive, immediate desires. The philosopher of nature tells us there is no such creature, because natural man lived a life of kindness, whereas every step forward in society is a step toward crime, sin, and the need for prohibitive rules of conduct designed to tame the natural savages that we have been since our beginning.

It seems to me that as soon as he leaves behind the sylvan life to enter society, the savage murders his father and fornicates with his mother. Oedipus usually symbolizes this passage, which, regardless of what happens, imposes on us rules of conduct that we accept with heads hung in shame, because to break those rules would lead us to jail, the gallows, or at least social ostracism.

This myth, though, does little to explain the vicissitudes of love in society and its relationship to such dissimilar aspects as fashion, feelings, aesthetics, or aspirations. With Priscila I cater to the first and last of these requirements. When I go out with her (rarely, as you already know), I submit to fashion and to social aspirations. When I stay in with L, feelings and aesthetics prevail. With L, first I see , and I like and am excited by what I see. Sometimes I am first seized by excitement, and only later do I surrender, gratified, to the contemplation of L’s beauty, tranquility, and beatific gaze, glowing with satisfaction.

The little savage inside me is thus tamed by the pleasure I experience with L. I believe that I also control the intimate beast when I live with Priscila in her father’s house or when we — very, very rarely — attend some high-society event as a couple.

Judge me if you must. Perhaps I was inspired by the freedom of expression allowed to the liberated part of my being (which coexists with L). I might also have been spurred on by the political aspects of another side of that same liberated part of my being (which I use among my business associates — why did they greet me in sunglasses?). For whatever reason, at a seated dinner of twelve people, I reacted impulsively when Priscila, always inappropriate, took advantage of an angel’s passing — an awkward silence at the table — to disturb the peace with a wind of her own.

That release of intestinal exhaust was a single wind in three distinctmovements. Priscila first let out a thunderous fart, as if to attract attention, followed by the sound of a succession of bubbles, and ending with a — silent but deadly — gas that reached every nose and spoiled the red snapper that we had just been served. Priscila’s odors were stronger than those of the capers, onions, tomatoes, and fish.

I broke the awkward silence that followed the fart attack by repeating aloud a secular mantra:

“Shut up, Priscila. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The conversation resumed. Tom talked about the fluctuations of the exchange rate. His wife, about the rising costs of groceries. Dick said that he’d covered the Mexico City-Acapulco highway in record time — two hours and fifteen minutes — though nobody noticed and he was awarded no trophy. Mrs. Dick said she’d just returned from Houston with all the latest fashions you just can’t find in Mexico. Harry complained about the price of gasoline, and Mrs. Harry about the vicissitudes of finding good domestic help.

That’s how, among opinions about money earned and money spent, Priscila’s unwelcome airs were dispelled. She didn’t realize I had been responding to her, and answered my statement, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” with a lively, “Tomorrow is Sunday, a day of observance. Hooray!”

I wonder why I said what I said after my wife’s olfactory and aural attack? To divert people’s attention from Priscila’s noticeable passing of gas in a way that would bring us back to the conversation initially interrupted by the proverbial passing of the angel?

My mantra was something of an unforgivable sequel, here and now, to my free and playful conversation with L, making use of the conversational style that I always save for our time together. I don’t usually reveal in public, as I just had, my sense of humor. Likewise, as a reflection of my regular bureaucratic habit of bringing a situation to an end with a sentence that is at once abrupt, gracious, and indisputable, I said, “The sun rises every day.”