Sol Stein - Other people

"We don't want Steve with us, Cossack. Just you and me. Like a private date. Friends. Fucking good friends."

Badger has talked himself into one big hard on. Holding it he says, "Would you like to suck it?"

I shake my head.

"I didn't think so," he says quietly. "So just turn around and put your hands on that bench and spread."

"I don't want to."

" I don't want to, " Badger imitates me in a squealing voice. He grabs my hair, twists so hard I thought my neck was going to snap. "I don't care if you want to or don't want to. I want to, understand!"

I'd kill this guy if he wasn't so big.

"Steve!" he yells. "You want seconds?"

"No," I say. "Just you. Just once."

"That's a nice pussy," he says, and puts his hand on my cock, all of his fingers stroking, and I don't like the idea. His thing is purple now, looks bigger than anything I ever saw, then he grabs my hips and twists me around.

"Hands on the bench," he orders, and then I feel him, it can't get in, it hurts like anything, he's shoving, shoving, and then he's in and moving in and out, and I'm thinking never again, never again, and he yells, "Hey, Steve, this virgin's got a real tight ass, come look," and I shake my head no, and Badger's saying, "Cossack, you're so good you're going to be my steady pussy, real regular," and I know when I get out of here I'm gonna find Widmer wherever she is and I'm going to kill her dead for ratting on me!

I am lying on the familiar couch, listening to the familiar sound of Dr. Koch breathing, waiting for me to continue talking. I'd been telling him about the botched weekend, about Bill and Thomassy. I don't want to talk any more, to him or to anybody. Finally, I tell him I'm fed up, I don't want to be in therapy, I want to be back in life.

"You do not stop living," he says, "when you take time to stop and think."

"You just want the money."

"What money?"

"The money you get for listening to me."

"If you want to attack me," he says, "that is your prerogative. But right now you are not attacking me."

"Who am I attacking?"

"Yourself. Perhaps you do not like the way you have used that boy."

"Bill can take care of himself. He's my age."

"Here you have always talked of him as a boy."

"I didn't rape him."

"That's an interesting choice of word."

"Oh come on now. Dr. Koch. I didn't even seduce him."

"You make it sound as if rape and seduction are part of the same thing."

"Rape is force. You know that."

"Yes. Is seduction never a kind of force?"

"I didn't seduce Bill."

"You tempted him."

"I told him it was there and he took it."

"It. It. Inanimate. We are talking about people. Perhaps this Bill is like ninety percent of humanity, a weakish man you turn to as a pot to cook something in. Perhaps he does not seem very individual to you. Someone else will find him so. Perhaps someone less complex than you are. If you tempt him, he cannot resist. You are taking advantage of him. It is not the same as rape perhaps, but akin to it. Not as dangerous, but possibly, in this case, a bit inhumane also, don't you agree? Perhaps you should leave him alone."

I sat up. "I know what you'd prefer," I told him.

"Please lie down."

"You'd prefer that I give him up and Thomassy up and anybody else except you."

"I am not your lover," he says.

"You wish you were!"

He hesitated only a moment. "Yes," he said.

That "yes" was perhaps the most emotionally expensive word I have ever uttered, for now, as is just, I can no longer continue as her analyst. I have admitted a personal feeling of such consequence she cannot continue her transference. I have lost her. Perhaps it is to the good. What is there possible between us? Even for my own sake it is to the good. I must redirect my libido. I cannot be so impractical. I, too, still have life to live.

I couldn't bear the eye contact, so I lay back down on the couch, hoping he would speak, and, after a time, he did.

"There was a period not too long ago, Francine, when the young tried to revolutionize our conception of eros by pretending that one could live successfully in a commune in which one can turn to the left or the right at night, to a man or a woman, and it would make no difference. If there were no differences, we would not need all the complex physical paraphernalia God has provided, eyes to differentiate, hands to differentiate, but most importantly a mind and sensibility that makes us feel differently about different people. Anyone who is not us is different, but it is the mind-boggling differences among all the rest that lead to our pursuit of simplicity, do you follow me?"

"I am trying to," I said. "I'm not sure."

"To say one likes all trees is less meaningful than to recognize that one likes this or that tree better than some others. We are differentiating. We are expressing preferences. And so with people. We cannot commune with all people. We will never know enough of them in a lifetime. We select from among those offered to us those few whose chemistry interests us, whose looks please us, and finally whose minds and character are such that they will continue to satisfy one's emotions, even eros, when the decline begins. This is not an argument for monogamy or exclusivity or morality, it is an assessment of experience. We prefer. If we have no preferences, we are mindless idiots. You do not prefer your Bill, or your father, or me. And so we come by theoretical circumlocution to George Thomassy, a man I have just begun to know. A Maccabee. Does that mean anything to you?"

"I hate him!"

"All right, you love him, but what I want to know—"

"I said I hate him!"

He sighed as if to a misbehaving child. "You are not listening."

I listened.

"Your Maccabee is defending me also. I trust him because he does his work so well. He is reliable. I wish my work with you was as skilled. Your friends who are revolutionaries might—"

"What revolutionaries?"

"The ones you went to college with. The ones who talk brimstone where you work. They should prize a man like Thomassy."

"He's just a damn lawyer."

"Can you see him kowtowing to brownshirts?"

"No."

"To anyone?"

"No. Not if he can help it."

"We could have used a few of him in Europe not so long ago. Have you wondered, Francine, why so many of the young public defenders are Jews here?"

Was Thomassy a reaction to the Armenian massacres? Not wanting to be in anyone's power?

"You are quiet," said Dr. Koch.

"I was thinking."

"That can be an advantage in life, surprisingly." He waited a moment. "Were you thinking about this Maccabee you hate?"

"I don't hate him."

My sentence hung in the air awaiting execution. I could feel it coming. Finally, Koch spoke again.

"Francine, you know this is not an analysis any more. We are just talking now."

"Anything wrong with that?"

"No. But I cannot charge for tutorials. We must discontinue these sessions. If you need me again, you can come again. Life is better. Go."

"What should I do?"

"What do you think you should do?"

"I should telephone him."

"Then telephone him."

It was quite possibly the most difficult telephone call I ever made in my life.

"This is Francine," I said.

"Who?"

He must have known my voice.

"Francine," I said.

"Well," he said, and was silent.

"Reasonably well," I said. "How are you?"

"I'm okay. How are you?"

"I'm alive," I said.

"I'm sure your young man will be pleased."

"Don't be stupid, George."

"Did you call me up to call me stupid?"

"I called you up to say I enjoyed the extremely brief period in which we ostensibly lived together sort of."