Джозеф Хеллер - Something Happened

"Let's go into the bedroom now," I will say (or they will say).

"All right."

I think it was better the other way with me and my wife when we were both so much younger. "Hurry, hurry," she would urge, beg, moan, pant, demand, murmur, pray, implore frantically as she lay and churned in my grasp, doing everything she could think of to help bring me to an end quickly before we were discovered. And I would work away at her, sometimes grinning when she couldn't see me, and have the time of my life.

That was fun we used to have together. It was fun then (more for me than for her), and it is fun now for both of us to recall and laugh about (when we are laughing). We often reminisce together warmly about some of the crazy times and places I did get her. My wife enjoys looking back even more than I do and has a better memory for separate occasions.

("Remember the time in that boathouse when my father —»

"And your kid sister was doing it all summer —»

"You sound envious."

"She probably got more than I did."

"You had no complaints."

"I did when I found out about her."

"Were you hot for her?"

"Only when I knew about her."

"Are you hot for her now?"

"Don't be crazy. She's a God-damned reactionary bitch now."

"You don't ever say anything to her about —»

"I hardly ever talk to her."

"Remember the time on the lake in that rowboat?"

"Do I!")

I remember the time I once tried to do it to her right on the bottom of a rowboat, far out on a lake. (I remember dead Virginia from my automobile casualty insurance company, and I bet I could do it now also in a canoe to a carefree young coed like Virgin-for-Short, but I don't think I would want to anymore, not at my age, not in a canoe.) I did almost everything else to her that day while she wriggled and kissed and fought and hugged and fretted against the bottom of that rowboat, but when it came to the nudeness of it, to the pulling of her things off and my things down, she was terror-stricken by the thought that people might be seeing us from the houses along the shore and, almost weeping miserably, made me stop. So I rowed furiously to a small island a little farther out (I think I must have broken the speed record for rowing that day) and laid her on the ground just inside the woods. She rolled her head from side to side with wide-open eyes flashing in anguish and fear, pleading with me desperately please to stop or please to hurry up and finish before someone came trudging up through the trees and caught us. We were already married then.

It was fun, even though we often fought about it bitterly: she would cry, and I would rage if I could not have my way with her in matters of sex and just about everything else. (My feelings were easily hurt.) I used to want to jump her everywhere. We are both glad now that I did. I was always throwing her halters off then or shoving her blouses and sweaters up to go for her breasts and lips like someone starved, suffering the aching, compulsive need and joy in my heart and head and mouth and throat and in the palms of my hands. (What a nutty kid I was, even then.) "Not now," she would say, or "Do you love me?" she would ask. And I would say anything, or nothing, as I pushed and forced myself upon her. It took very little to get me excited then, usually nothing more than the sight of her, or just the thought, when I had been away, that I would be back with her soon. (Then I knew what being horny really meant.) When we were alone indoors and knew we had time, I could be different, and so could she; but there were many times when we could not be alone. And the trouble with my wife then was that she did not like to make love anywhere outdoors. She did not like to screw in parks, or on beaches, or in bushes, or standing up against walls, doors, or trees (and I did). She did not want to screw in the back of my car (or the front), and I always had to force her. (There was frequently no better place we had for it then; and when there was, I often did not want to wait.) My wife was something of a lady then, and I liked her for that (more than I like her drinking and flirting now, or her raucous tones when she is having a good time at parties and dinners). But I also liked getting laid. There was one whole summer at the lake when she did not want to make love at all because we were sharing the house with her mother and father and sister, and one person or another was always around. That was the summer, I remember, that her sister got knocked up near the end and almost drove her mother and father insane before she would agree to the abortion (it was not that she wanted the baby; she was afraid of surgery), although it could have happened at college the first week she went back. My wife and I were married then, and what was clear (at least to me) was that her kid sister had been making out effortlessly all summer long, while I was having so much trouble, which made me wonder if I had not wasted the better part of that summer trying to get into the wrong sister, my wife. Once I found out about her sister, I wanted to lay her too, even though I didn't like her.

Later, when we had our own place, my wife didn't want to make love until she was certain all of the children were sound asleep and the door to the bedroom was locked and the door to the apartment was double-locked. (God knows who she imagined might sneak in and catch us at it then. Burglars?) There was a long, long period, even when we had our own place, when she did not want to screw any time during the day, even before we had children, and when there was no one else around. (Nowadays, she'll do it with me just about any place, any time, especially if she's had a drink or two.) She needed darkness, even at night; she wanted to be hidden; the lights had to be out, the shades drawn, the doors closed, even the closet doors. She would rather I did not watch her undress and did not gaze at her when she was walking or lying naked; often she came to the bed with her nightgown already on, having removed her clothes privately in the bathroom or closet, even though she knew I would slip it up and off her immediately. Then, though, when conditions were exactly right, once she had made certain she was safe from interruption and concealed from watching eyes, when everything around us was just the way she wanted it, she could be absolutely fine in just about every way and feel proud of herself and me afterward and in between. And she wasn't so bad all those other times when I had to force her and we had to do it fast (she learned rapidly that the more zealously she pitched in to give me what I wanted, the sooner it would be over), although she was never nearly as good at age twenty-eight as my Cuban whore was this afternoon. ("Do you like to be teased?" she purred, and I can hear her purring again. Of course I do. Maybe I never left my wife enough time to tease me then, or even to learn how.)

Nowadays, my wife is much better. Nowadays, my wife is completely different about this whole matter of sex; but so am I. She is almost always amorous nowadays, it seems, and ready to take chances that horrify even me. I can usually tell when she's been thinking about it the instant I walk in, by a bold, questioning, determined look in her eyes and a funny, self-satisfied, slightly twisted smile. I know I am right if she has left her girdle off. (Her girdle is off tonight. I remember when she didn't need a girdle and wouldn't wear one; now she'll seldom go out of the house without a girdle, even though she still doesn't need one.) When she is in the mood, I have only to grip her elbow or nudge her gently toward a couch or bed and I can have her any time I want to and just about anywhere. Or she will come after me. She is always in the mood when she drinks (unless she is sick), and she drinks almost every day now. I have only to pass within arm's reach of her in the kitchen when she is cooking or meet her by accident in one of the hallways and she moves right up against me and is ready to sink down on the spot (she has even had me do it to her on the kitchen floor), in the dark or in brilliant daylight. She lifts her own skirt now, and fumbles impatiently with my pants if I am not removing them quickly enough. (I'm not sure I like her this way, although I would have liked it back then, but I'm not so sure about that, either. I'm really not sure I want my wife to be as lustful and compliant as one of Kagle's whores or my girl friends, although I know I am dissatisfied with her when she isn't.)