Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

Too simplistic, no doubt, but during the spring of 1967 the parallels seemed uncanny.

Sarah had the touch.

Her generalship was impeccable. Her demands were unqualified.

In public, but also in bed, she was a born leader.

“Passion,” she’d say. “Make me squirm.”

She’d use the bed like a trampoline. She’d lock her legs around me, tight, keeping the pressure on until I begged her to ease off.

Then she’d snort.

“Caution-caution,” she’d say. “No zip or zing. Can’t cut loose.”

“It’s not that.”

“It is that. I mean, here I am—perky Sarah—show me some sizzle, man. A girl wants to feel wanted .”

“But I can’t just—”

“Sizzle!”

She’d kneel beside me. Coyly, without shame, she’d do a little trick with her breasts, an expanding-flattening thing.

She might smile.

“Now that ,” she’d say, “is what I call perkiness. Mona Lisa with muscles. And besides, I’m fond of you. God knows why—opposites attract, I guess—but it’s all yours. Everything. The entire perky package.”

“Nice,” I’d say, “it’s a nice package.”

“So what’s the holdup?”

“Nothing. Time, that’s all.”

“I’m loyal , William. I won’t desert you. I’ve got sticking power, you know? High fidelity.”

“I know that.”

“So?”

I’d shake my head and say, “Give it time.”

Sometimes she’d nod, sometimes not.

“Well, that’s very prudent,” she’d finally say, “but see, here’s the problem. Life has this weird quality called shortness. Places to go, minds to blow. It’s love I want. Worship.”

And then she’d straddle me.

She’d twirl her tongue against my throat.

“Don’t be bashful,” she’d whisper. “Yank out the cork, man, let’s go steady.”

The human heart, how do you explain it?

I was gun-shy. I didn’t trust her. Too temperamental, I thought. Too flashy.

A campus celebrity, wasn’t she?

That whole aura—the rattlesnake eyes, the pink polish on her toenails, the plucked and penciled eyebrows—an exhibitionist, a compulsive show-off. In the warm weeks of late spring, it wasn’t uncommon to find her sunbathing out in front of the student union, oiled up and elegant, flaunting her assets in a string bikini and high-heeled sandals. She’d come to class in spangled red shorts; she’d show up for dinner in pearls and mesh stockings and a fake fox coat. When I asked about all this, Sarah would only shrug: “The Age of Image,” she’d tell me. “Project or perish, it’s that simple.”

But it wasn’t simple. The psychological contradictions were stunning. An intelligent girl, she played the coquette; a dignified girl, she played vulgar. And yet she was also oddly vulnerable, even little-girlish at times. She could be gentle; she could be vicious. It wasn’t a split personality, it was fractured.

How could I take the risk?

In part, no doubt, I was held back by the old doomsday principle, an unwillingness to expose myself. But it was more than that.

Politics, too—she was aggressive in the extreme. True, she had a conscience, and tremendous charisma, but even so I could detect the intimidating shape of things to come. In May, I remember, she led a midnight raid on the ROTC offices in the basement of the humanities building—no damage done, just a statement of intent, but a day or two later she began pushing for even more drastic measures. She had no interest in compromise. She knew where the screws were.

“Either you’re serious about this,” Sarah told me one morning at breakfast, “or you’re a twit. There’s no halfway. Like your poster says, real bombs, you can’t hide your head. Pain leads to pain. Ask the kids in Saigon.”

I nodded.

“Fine,” I said, “but sometimes it seems just a little excessive.”

“You think so?”

“A little.”

Sarah gazed at her coffee cup. Complicated events were occurring along the surfaces of her eyes.

“Well, that’s a pity,” she finally said. “Excessive. Tell it to the White House. Go lay it on the Joint Chiefs, I’d be real interested in some professional feedback.” Then her voice went low. A husky, mocking tone. “You’re something else, pal. You want this nice happy world, all roses, except you get all squeamish when somebody goes out and tries to make it happen. The jellyfish mentality.”

“Forget it. You win.”

“I do,” she said softly, “I win.”

She finished her coffee and stood up.

“And one more thing. So far you haven’t seen diddly. Excessively speaking, I mean.”

An unpleasant tone, I thought.

Culottes to sansculotte—a radical realignment. The question, though, was why. There were many such questions: Why politics? Why so sudden? Why so rabid? And why me? Why stick with a jellyfish?

Except in the most superficial sense, I didn’t really know her. Even the facts seemed unsubstantial.

A cheerleader, of course.

But why?

A history major. Pre-law. Brains, obviously, but not legal brains.

A birthmark below her right breast.

Thick blackish brown hair freshened by modern chemistry.

A small, recurring fever blister at her lower lip. I’d often catch her toying with it, applying ointments. “It’s a fatal flaw,” she’d say, “for the femme fatale.”

Flippant.

Sarcastic to the point of wise-ass. But it was almost certainly a kind of camouflage, like her cosmetics, the gaudy nail polish and lipstick and mascara. At times, I thought, it was as if she were hiding herself, or from herself.

Reticence, maybe.

Maybe fear.

A splay-footed way of walking, like a deer. A certain stiffness in her posture. As a kid, she told me, she’d had polio, a mild case. But no details. When I pressed her about it, Sarah smiled and tapped her chest. “Nothing serious,” she said. “Iron lungs.”

Her mother was dead.

Her father was a mortician.

Does it matter? She wasn’t gloomy, and she rarely talked about it, but I often found myself imagining what it must’ve been like to grow up in that big white funeral home on Main Street. How did it feel? What was the emotional residue? I was curious, of course, but she wouldn’t respond to even the most basic questions.

“Don’t be a ghoul,” she’d say.

Or she’d say, “No big mystery. Luscious me, sugar and spice. Don’t analyze it, William, just adore it.”

A playful, uninhibited girl.

And yet there were also moods of complete withdrawal. It could happen instantly. In bed, she’d peel off her clothes, clowning, then suddenly her whole face would freeze. She’d slide away. She’d pull a pillowcase over her head and crawl up on my desk and squat there like a statue. Tempting, I’d think. Not lewd, not immodest, just the white pillowcase and that awesome nakedness. “Sarah,” I’d say quietly, but she wouldn’t budge. There was something chilling about it, something desperate. Why the mask? Why, sometimes, would she clamp the pillowcase at her throat and whisper, “I want to be wanted . Get reckless, William. Go for broke— love me.”

And in my own way I did.

Granted, it was a judicious sort of love, one step at a time, but over the spring of our junior year I discovered the great pleasures and bondings of a political romance. I was part of something. I belonged. At our Committee meetings, I was perfectly content to let Sarah take charge; I admired her poise and control; I got a kick out of watching how she kept Ollie and Tina under tight rein. I liked the closeness. I liked being seen with her. In the geology lab, late at night, I liked it when she’d come up behind me and turn off my microscope and say, “For Christ sake, man, stop playing with your rocks .” Endearment, I liked that, too. How she held my arm walking to class, how she always stood beside me during our noon vigils at the cafeteria. Many things. The times I’d wake up to find my hands tied to the bedposts. The way she’d sleep with one knee hooked tenderly around my neck.