Erica Jong - Fear Of Flying

“Let’s find a hotel room and go to bed,” I say. Not a strong wave of lust, but just a friendly wish to consummate this romantic giddiness. We might try once more. Just one perfect fuck to remember him by. All our attempts have been somehow disappointing. It seems such a shame that we’ve been together all this time and have risked so much for so little. Or maybe that’s the whole point?

“No,” says Adrian, “we haven’t time.”

“What do you mean we haven’t time?”

“I’ll have to set out tonight if I expect to get to Cherbourg tomorrow morning.”

“Why do you have to get to Cherbourg tomorrow morning?” Something horrible is beginning to dawn through the alcoholic euphoria.

“To meet Esther and the children.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding.” He looks at his watch. “They’ll be leaving London about now, I expect. We’re supposed to have a little holiday in Brittany.”

I stare at him, calmly consulting his watch. The enormity of his betrayal leaves me speechless. Here I am-drunk, unwashed, not even knowing what day it is-and he’s keeping track of an appointment he made over a month ago.

“You mean you’ve known this all along?”

He nods.

“And you let me think we were just being existentialists while you knew all along you had to meet Esther on a certain day?”

“Well-have it your way. It wasn’t as evilly planned as you seem to think.”

“Then what was it? How could you let me think we were both just wandering where the whim took us-when all along you had an appointment with Esther?”

“It was your reshuffle, ducks, not mine. I never said I was going to reshuffle my life to keep you company.”

I felt like I’d been socked in the jaw. It was like being six and having your bicycle smashed by your supposed best friend. It was the worst betrayal I could think of.

“You mean you sat there the whole time talking about freedom and unpredictability and you knew you had plans to meet Esther? I’ve never met such a hypocrite!”

Adrian began laughing.

“What’s so goddamned funny?”

“Your fury.”

“I’d like to kill you,” I screamed.

“I’ll bet you would.”

And with that I began swinging at him and pummeling him. He grabbed me by the wrists and held me.

“I only wanted to give you something to write about,” he laughed.

“You bastard!”

“Doesn’t this make the perfect end to your story?”

“You really are a pig.”

“Come on, love, don’t take it so hard. The moral of the story is the same anyway, isn’t it?”

“Your morals are like roads through the Alps. They make these hairpin turns all the time.”

“I seem to have heard that somewhere before too,” he said.

“Well, I’m going with you.”

“Where?”

“Cherbourg. We’ll just have to drive through Brittany à cinq. We’ll all have to fuck each other and not make any silly moral excuses-as you said way back in Vienna.”

“Nonsense, you’re not going.”

“I am too.”

“You are not. I won’t permit it.”

“What do you mean you won’t permit it? What kind of shit is that? You flaunted everything in front of Bennett. You encouraged me to shake up my life and go off with you and now you’re busy keeping your safe little household intact! What kind of shit do you think I’ll stand for? You were the one who sold me a bill of goods about honesty and openness and not living in a million contradictions. I’m damn well going to Cherbourg with you. I want to meet Esther and the kids and well all just play it by ear.”

“Absolutely not. I won’t take you. I’ll physically throw you out of the car if need be.”

I looked at him in disbelief. Why was it so hard for me to believe that he would be so callous? It was clear he meant what he said. I knew he would throw me out of the car if need be. And perhaps even drive off laughing.

“But don’t you care about being a hypocrite?” The tone of my voice was tinged with pleading as if I already knew I’d lost

“I refuse to upset the kids that way,” he said, “and that’s final.”

“Obviously you don’t mind upsetting me.”

“You’re grown up. You can take it. They can’t.”

What answer could I make to that? I could scream and yell that I was a baby too, that I’d fall apart if he left me, that I’d crack up. Maybe I would. But I wasn’t Adrian’s child, and it wasn’t his business to rescue me. I was nobody’s baby now. Liberated. Utterly free. It was the most terrifying sensation I’d ever known in my life. Like teetering on the edge of the Grand Canyon and hoping you’d learn to fly before you hit bottom.

It was only after he’d left that I was able to gather my terror in my two hands and possess it. We did not part enemies. When I knew I was truly defeated, I stopped hating him. I began concentrating on how to endure being alone. As soon as I ceased expecting rescue from him, I found that I could empathize with him. I was not his child. He had a right to protect his children. Even from me-if he conceived me to be a threat to them. He had betrayed me, but I had sensed all along that this would happen and in some way I had used him as a betrayer just as surely as he had used me as a victim. He was, perversely, an instrument of my freedom. As I watched him drive away, I knew I would fall back in love with him as soon as the distance between us was great enough.

He hadn’t left without offering help, either. We had inquired together about airline tickets to London and found that all the planes were booked for the next two days. I could wait till Wednesday or inquire about boat-trains the following day. Or I could go to the airport and wait to be called as a stand-by. I had options. All I had to do was endure the insane pounding of my heart until I could find Bennett again-or someone. Perhaps myself.

I dragged my suitcase back to the café on. the Place St. Michel. Suddenly, being without a man, I realized how heavy it was. I had not packed with the expectation of traveling alone. My suitcase was full of guidebooks, a small tape recorder for the article I’d never written, notebooks, my electric hair-setter, ten copies of my first book of poems. Some of these were to be given to a literary agent in London. Others were simply carried out of insecurity; badges of identity to put on for anyone I might meet. They were designed to prove that I was not just an ordinary woman. They were designed to prove that I was exceptional. They were designed to prove that I was to be given safe conduct. I clung pitifully to my status as an exception, because without it, I would be just another lonely female on the prowl.

“Do I have your address?” Adrian asked before he took off in the Triumph.

“It’s in the book I gave you. On the last endpaper.”

But he’d lost the book. The copy I’d inscribed for him in shocking-pink ink. Needless to say, he’d never finished it.

“Here-let me get you another.” And I began unzipping my huge canvas suitcase in the middle of the street. Jars of cosmetics rolled out. Loose papers, notes for poems I was working on, tape cassettes, film, lipsticks, paperback novels, a dog-eared Michelin Guide. I shoved all this junk back into the squashy Italian suitcase and dug out one of my own books. I cracked the virgin spine.

To careless Adrian [I wrote]

who loses books.

With love and many kisses,

your friendly social worker

from New York-

And I wrote my New York address and telephone number on the endpaper again, knowing he’d probably lose this copy too. That was how we parted. Loss piled on loss. My life spilling out into the street, and nothing but a slim volume of verse between me and the void.