process undisturbed. That basically, I'm the cake that just came out of the oven, and itstill needs some more time to cool before it can be frosted. I don't want to cheat myself
out of this precious time. I don't want to lose control of my life again.
Of course Felipe said that he understood, and that I should do whatever's best for me, and
that he hoped I would forgive him for bringing up the question in the first place. ("It had
to be asked, my lovely darling, sooner or later.") He assured me that, whatever I decided,
we would still keep our friendship, since it seemed to be so good for both of us, all this
time we spent together.
"Although," he went on, "you do need to let me make my case now."
"Fair enough," I said.
"For one thing, if I understand you correctly, this whole year is about your search for
balance between devotion and pleasure. I can see where you've been doing a lot of
devotional practices, but I'm not sure where the pleasure has come in so far."
"I ate a lot of pasta in Italy, Felipe."
"Pasta, Liz? Pasta?"
"Good point."
"For another thing, I think I know what you're worried about. Some man is going to come
into your life and take everything from you again. I won't do that to you, darling. I've
been alone for a long time, too, and I've lost a great deal in love, just like you have. I
don't want us to take anything from each other. It's just that I've never enjoyed anyone's
company as much as I enjoy yours, and I'd like to be with you. Don't worry--I'm not
going to chase you back to New York when you leave here in September. And as for all
those reasons you told me a few weeks ago that you didn't want to take a lover . . . Well,
think of it this way. I don't care if you shave your legs every day, I already love your
body, you've already told me your entire life story and you don't have to worry about
birth control--I've had a vasectomy."
"Felipe," I said, "that's the most appealing and romantic offer a man has ever made me."
And it was. But still I said no.
He drove me home. Parked in front of my house, we shared a few sweet, salty, sandy
day-at-the-ocean kisses. It was lovely. Of course it was lovely. But still, and again, I said
no.
"That's fine, darling," he said. "But come over to my house tomorrow night for dinner,
and I'll make you a steak."
Then he drove off and I went to bed alone.
I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love
fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone,
but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I
have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man,
rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long
time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many
times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.
I married young and quick, from a place of love and hope, but without a lot of discussion
over what the realities of marriage would mean. Nobody advised me on my marriage. I
had been raised by my parents to be independent, self-providing, self-deciding. By the
time I reached the age of twenty-four, it was assumed by everyone that I could make all
my own choices, autonomously. Of course the world was not always like this. If I'd been
born during any other century of Western patriarchy, I would've been considered theproperty of my father, until which time he passed me over to my husband, to become
marital property. I would've had precious little say in the major matters of my own life.
At one time in history, if a man had been my suitor, my father might have sat that man
down with a long list of questions to establish whether this would be an appropriate
match. He would have wanted to know, "How will you provide for my daughter? What is
your reputation in this community? How is your health? Where will you take her to live?
What are your debts and your assets? What are the strengths of your character?" My
father would not have just given me away in marriage to anybody for the mere fact that I
was in love with the fellow. But in modern life, when I made the decision to marry, my
modern father didn't become involved at all. He would have no more interfered with that
decision than he would have told me how to style my hair.
I have no nostalgia for the patriarchy, please believe me. But what I have come to realize
is that, when that patriarchic system was (rightfully) dismantled, it was not necessarily
replaced by another form of protection. What I mean is--I never thought to ask a suitor
the same challenging questions my father might have asked him, in a different age. I have
given myself away in love many times, merely for the sake of love. And I've given away
the farm sometimes in that process. If I am to truly become an autonomous woman, then I
must take over that role of being my own guardian. Famously, Gloria Steinem once
advised women that they should strive to become like the men they had always wanted to
marry. What I've only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own
husband, but I need to be my own father, too. And this is why I sent myself to bed that
night alone. Because I felt it was too soon for me to be receiving a gentleman suitor.
That said, I woke up at 2:00 AM with a heavy sigh and a physical hunger so deep I didn't
have any idea of how to satisfy it. The lunatic cat who lives in my house was howling
mournfully for some reason and I told him, "I know exactly how you feel." I had to do
something about my longing, so I got up, went to the kitchen in my nightgown, peeled a
pound of potatoes, boiled them up, sliced them, fried them in butter, salted them
generously and ate every bite of them--asking my body the whole while if it would please
accept the satisfaction of a pound of fried potatoes in lieu of the fulfillment of
lovemaking.
My body replied, only after eating every bite of the food: "No deal, babe."
So I climbed back into bed, sighed in boredom and commenced to . . .
Well. A word about masturbation, if I may. Sometimes it can be a handy (forgive me)
tool, but other times it can be so acutely unsatisfying that it only makes you feel worse in
the end. After a year and half of celibacy, after a year and a half of calling my own name
in my bed-built-for-one, I was getting a little sick of the sport. Still, tonight, in my
restless state--what else could I do? The potatoes hadn't worked. So I had my way with
myself yet again. As usual, my mind paged through its backlog of erotic files, looking for
the right fantasy or memory that would help get the job done fastest. But nothing was
really working tonight--not the firemen, not the pirates, not that pervy old Bill Clinton
standby scene that usually does the trick, not even the Victorian gentlemen crowding
around me in their drawing room with their task force of nubile young maids. In the end,
the only thing that would satisfy was when I reluctantly admitted into my mind the idea
of my good friend from Brazil climbing into this bed with me . . . on me . . .
Then I slept. I woke to a quiet blue sky and an even quieter bedroom. Still feeling
unsettled and unbalanced, I took a long stretch of my morning and chanted the entire 182Sanskrit verses of the Gurugita--the great, purifying fundamental hymn of my Ashram in
India. Then I meditated for an hour of bone-tingling stillness until I finally felt it
again--that specific, constant, clear-sky, unrelated-to-anything, never-shifting, nameless
and changeless perfection of my own happiness. That happiness which is better, truly,
than anything I have ever experienced anywhere else on this earth, and that includes salty,
buttery kisses and even saltier and more buttery potatoes.
I was so glad I had made the decision to stay alone.
97979797
So I was kind of surprised the next night when--after he'd made me dinner at his house
and after we'd sprawled on his couch for several hours and discussed all manner of
subjects and after he'd unexpectedly leaned into me for a moment and sunk his face
toward my armpit and pronounced how much he loved the marvelous dirty stink of
me--Felipe finally put his palm against my cheek and said, "That's enough, darling. Come
to my bed now," and I did.
Yes, I did come to his bed with him, in that bedroom with its big open windows looking
out over the nighttime and the quiet Balinese rice fields. He parted the sheer, white
curtain of mosquito netting that surrounded his bed and guided me in there. Then he
helped me out of my dress with the tender competence of a man who had obviously spent
many comfortable years getting his children ready for bathtime, and he explained to me
his terms--that he wanted absolutely nothing from me whatsoever except permission to
adore me for as long as I wanted him to. Were those terms acceptable to me?
Having lost my voice somewhere between the couch and the bed, I only nodded. There
was nothing left to say. It had been a long, austere season of solitude. I had done well for
myself. But Felipe was right--that was enough.
"OK," he replied, smiling as he moved some pillows out of our way and rolled my body
under his. "Let's get ourselves organized here."
Which was actually pretty funny because that moment marked an end to all my efforts at
organization.
Later, Felipe would tell me how he had seen me that night. He said that I seemed so
young, not in the least bit resembling the self-assured woman he'd come to know in the
daylight world. He said I seemed terribly young but also open and excited and relieved to
be recognized and so tired of being brave. He said it was obvious I hadn't been touched in
such a long time. He found me teeming with need but also grateful to be allowed to
express that need. And while I can't say that I remember all that, I do take his word for it
because he seemed to be paying awfully close attention to me.
What I mostly remember about that night is the billowy white mosquito netting thatsurrounded us. How it looked to me like a parachute. And how I felt like I was now
deploying this parachute to escort me out the side exit of the solid, disciplined airplane
which had been flying me during these few years out of A Very Hard Time in My Life.
But now my sturdy flying machine had become obsolete right there in midair, so I
stepped out of that single-minded single-engine airplane and let this fluttering white
parachute swing me down through the strange empty atmosphere between my past and
my future, and land me safely on this small, bed-shaped island, inhabited only by this
handsome shipwrecked Brazilian sailor, who (having been alone himself for far too long)
was so happy and so surprised to see me coming that he suddenly forgot all his English
and could only manage to repeat these five words every time he looked at my face:
beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and beautiful.
98989898
We didn't sleep at all, of course. And then, it was ridiculous--I had to go. I had to go back
to my house stupidly early the next morning because I had a date to meet my friend
Yudhi. He and I had long ago planned that this was the very week we were going to leave
on a big cross-Balinese road trip together. This was an idea we'd come up with one
evening at my house when Yudhi said that, aside from his wife and Manhattan, what he
most missed about America was driving--just taking off with a car and some friends and
going on an adventure across those great distances, on all those fabulous interstate
highways. I told him, "OK, so we'll go on a road trip here in Bali together,
American-style."
This had struck us both as irresistibly comic--there's no way you can do an
American-style road trip in Bali. There are no great distances, first of all, on an island the
size of Delaware. And the "highways" are horrible, made surreally dangerous by the
dense, mad prevalence of Bali's version of the American family minivan--a small
motorcycle with five people crowded on it, the father driving with one hand while
holding the newborn infant with the other (football-like) while Mom sits sidesaddle
behind him in her tight sarong with a basket balanced on her head, encouraging her twin
toddlers not to fall off the speeding motorbike, which is probably traveling on the wrong
side of the road and has no headlight. Helmets are rarely worn but are frequently--and I
never did find out why-- carried. Imagine scores of these heavily laden motorcycles, all
speeding recklessly, all weaving and dodging across each other like some kind of crazy
motorized maypole dance, and you have life on the Balinese highways. I don't know why
every single Balinese person hasn't been killed already in a road accident.
But Yudhi and I decided to do it anyway, to take off for a week, rent a car and drive all
over this tiny island, pretending that we are in America and that both of us are free. The
idea charmed me when we came up with it last month, but the timing of it now--as I am
lying in bed with Felipe and he's kissing my fingertips and forearms and shoulders,encouraging me to linger--seems unfortunate. But I have to go. And in a way, I do want
to go. Not only to spend a week with my friend Yudhi, but also as a repose after my big
night with Felipe, to get my head around the new reality that, as they say in the novels: I
have taken a lover.
So Felipe drops me off at my house with one last passionate embrace and I have just
enough time to shower and pull myself together when Yudhi arrives with our rental car.
He takes one look at me and says, "Dude--what time'd you get home last night?"
I say, "Dude--I didn't get home last night."
He says, "Duuuuuuude," and starts laughing, probably remembering the conversation
we'd had only about two weeks earlier wherein I'd seriously posited that I might never,
