I'm going to read something that is a short story,
but in fact, when it next appears,
it will be the opening section of a novel.
It appeared in Esquire, and it's called, "The Men's Club."
Women wanted to talk about anger, identity, politics, et
cetera.
I saw posters in Berkeley urging them to join groups.
I saw their leaders on TV.
Strong, articulate faces.
So when Kavanaugh phoned and invited me to join
a men's club, I laughed.
Slowly not laughing, he repeated himself.
He was six foot nine.
The size and weight entered his voice.
He and some friends wanted a club,
a regular social possibility outside our jobs and marriages.
Nothing to do with women's groups.
One man was a tax accountant, another was a lawyer.
There was also a college teacher like me
and two psychotherapists, solid types.
I suppose there could be virtues in a men's club
a regular social possibility.
I should have said yes immediately,
but something in me resisted.
The prospect of leaving my house after dinner.
Blood is heavy then, brain is slow.
Besides, wasn't this club idea corny?
Like trying to recapture high school days, locker room fun.
Wet, naked boys snapping towels at each other's genitals.
It didn't feel exactly right.
To be wretchedly truthful, any social possibility
unrelated to wife, kids, house and work
felt like a form of adultery.
Not criminal, not legitimate.
Kavanaugh, I don't even go to the movies anymore.
I'm talking about a men's club, good company.
You talk about women's groups, movies.
Can't you hear me?
When the phone rings, it's like an attack on my life.
I get confused.
Say it again.
Look, you're one of my best friends.
You live less than a mile away.
Do we see each other three times a year?
I lose over a month every year just
working to pay property taxes.
Friendship is a luxury, unless you're
so poor it makes no difference how you spend your time.
A men's club, good company.
I hear you.
But I was thinking about good company.
Some of my married colleagues had love affairs,
usually with students.
You could call it a regular social possibility.
It included emotional chaos, gonorrhea, even guilt.
They would have been better off in a men's club.
What do you say?
Can we expect you?
I'll go to the first meeting.
I can't promise more.
I'm very busy.
Yeah, Yeah, said Kavanaugh and gave me an address
and the Berkeley Flats.
The night of the meeting, I told my wife
I'd be home before midnight.
She said take out the garbage.
Big, sticky bag felt unpropitious.
And my hands soon smelled of tuna fish.
After driving five minutes I found the place.
The front of the house vine covered,
seemed to brood in lunatic privacy.
Nobody answered when I knocked, but I heard voices,
took hold of the wrought iron handle
and pushed, discovering a large Berkeley living
room and six men inside.
I saw dark wood paneling and potted ferns
dangling from exposed beams.
Other plants along the window ledges.
The potted tree in a far corner.
Skinny, spinsterish looking.
Nervous, yellow leaves filled its head.
Various ceramics, bowls on tabletops and plates
on the walls beside huge acrylic paintings.
Abstractions like glistening viscera
splashed off a butcher block.
There was an amazing rug, but I couldn't take it in.
A man was rising from a pillow on the floor coming
toward me, smiling, I knocked, I said.
Come in, man.
I'm Harry Kramer.
I'm Kavanaugh's friend.
Who isn't.
Really, I said, giving it the LA inflection
to suggest sympathetic understanding, not wonder.
Kramer registered the nuance and glanced at me
as at a potential brother.
His heavy black hair was controlled
by a style parted in the middle, shaped
to cup his ears with a feeling that once belonged
to little girls and now was common among TV actors and rock
musicians.
It was contradicted by black force
in his eyes, handshake like a bite and tattooed forearms.
Blue, winged snake, blue dagger amid roses.
They spoke for an earlier life, I suppose,
but Kramer wore his sleeves rolled to the elbow.
It was impossible to connect him with his rug, which
I began to as spongy and sensuous, orange.
I felt myself wading through it as Kramer led me
toward the men.
Shaking hands, nodding hello, saying my name.
Each man was a complex flash.
Eyes, hand, names.
But one had definition.
Solly Berliner.
Tall, wearing a suit, dead white hair and big greenish
light in his eyes.
The face of an infant surprised by senility.
His suit was gray polyester, conservative and sleazy.
Kramer left me with Berliner beside the potted tree,
a beer in my hand.
A man about five foot six with an eager face
came right up to us.
Care for a taste?
In his palm lay two brown marijuanas slick with spittle.
I declined.
Berliner said thanks, thanks with frightening gratitude
and took both cigarettes.
We laughed as he dropped one back into the man's palm.
The little face turned toward the other men.
Anybody care for a taste?
The sound of Berliners voice lingered after the joke.
Maybe he felt uneasy, out of his natural environment.
I couldn't guess where that might be.
He was a confusion of clues.
The suit wasn't Berkeley, the eyes were worlds of feeling.
His speedy voice flew from nerves.
Maybe the living room affected him.
A men's club would have been more authentic, more properly
convened elsewhere.
What did I have in mind?
The cold ditch?
I suppose Kramer's wife exiled for the evening
had cultivated the plants and picked
the orange rug and the luscious fabrics on the couches
and chairs.
Ideas of happiness.
Berliner and I remained standing as if the fabrics
heavy velvets, beige tones were nothing
to violate with our behinds.
It was a woman's room, but the point of the club
was to be with men not to escape from women.
So I turned to Berliner and asked what he did for a living.
Real estate, he said, grinning ferociously
as if extreme types were into that.
Wild Fellows.
I drove in.
[LAUGHTER]
I drove in from San Jose.
He spoke with rapid little shrugs
as if readjusting his vertebrae.
His eyes were full of green distance
after two drags on the cigarette.
He was already driving back to San Jose, I figured.
But then he said forgive me for saying this,
but a minute ago when Kramer introduced us
I had a weird thought.
His eyes returned.
You did?
I'd seen the look before.
It signaled the California plunge into truth.
[LAUGHTER]
A conversational style developed in encounter groups
where sensitivity training occurs.
I hope this doesn't bother you, but I
thought you had a withered leg.
[LAUGHTER]
You did?
I see that you don't.
Weird.
He giggled.
His mouth was tense.
Weird that I don't have a withered leg?
I thought your leg was all screwed up, like withered.
I wiggled my legs more for my sake than his.
He stared as if into unusual depths waiting for a truth
to rise, perhaps leap into the air like a fish.
I said nothing.
He said, I'm 47.
You look much younger.
This was true, but with the white hair.
He also looked older I stay in shape, he answered,
marijuana smoke leaking from his nostrils.
Nobody, he said, sucking the leak back
with crackling sheets of snot.
Nobody else in this room is 47.
I'm oldest.
I asked the guys.
He gagged a little then released the smoke, knifing it
through compressed lips.
Kramer is 38.
I wondered if conversation had ever been more
like medical experience.
So rich in gas and mucus.
I'm always the oldest, ever since I
was a kid I was the oldest.
He giggled and intensified his stare.
I giggled too in a social way, then the door opened
and Kavanaugh walked in.
Excuse me, I said, intimating regret but moving quickly away
to greet Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh, big and good-looking, had heroic charisma.
He'd once been a professional basketball player,
now he worked at the University in
special undergraduate programs, matters of policy and funding,
9:00 to 5:00, jacket and tie.
To remember his former work, the great naked shoulders
and legs flying through the air was saddening.
In restaurants and airports, people still
asked for his autograph.
Things felt better, more natural, healthier,
with the big man in the room.
Kramer reached them before I did.
They slapped each other's arms, laughing.
Pleased at how they felt to each other.
Solid, real.
I watched, thinking I'd often watched Kavanaugh ever
since college, in fact, when he'd become famous.
To see him burn his opponent and score
was like a miracle of justice.
Now in civilian clothes, he was faintly disorienting.
Especially his wristwatch.
A golden complicated band.
A symbolic manacle.
Kavanaugh's submission to ordinary life.
He'd once said, I don't want my kids to grow up like me.
Necks thick as their heads.
He wanted his kids in jackets and wristwatches.
He stopped slapping Kramer's arms,
but Kramer continued touching /.
Kramer looked as though he might soon pee in his pants.
People love athletes.
Where else these days do they see such mythic drama?
Images of unimpeachable excellence.
I was infected by Kramer's enthusiasm.
When Kramer left to get Kavanaugh a beer,
we shook hands.
He said, I didn't think I'd see you here tonight.
There was mockery in his smile.
It's not so easy getting out of the house.
Nobody but you could have dragged me to this.
You open the door, you're out.
Tell me about it.
I'm glad you're here.
Anything happen yet?
I'm late because Sarah thinks the club idea is wrong.
I'm wrong to be here.
We argued a little at dinner.
He whispered then, maybe it isn't easy,
and looked at his wristwatch frowning
as if it were his mind.
Kramer returned with the beer just
as a phone started ringing.
I'll be right back, said Kramer, turning toward the ringing.
Sarah's word wrong made me .
If something was wrong with Kavanaugh,
it was wrong with the universe.
Men could understand that.
When Kavanaugh needed a loan to buy his house,
the bank gave him no problem.
You could see his credit was good.
He was six foot nine and could run 100 yards in 10 seconds.
The loan officer, a man, recognized Kavanaugh
and felt privileged to help him with financial negotiations.
He didn't ask about Kavanaugh's recent divorce, his alimony
payments, men's clubs.
Women's groups, they suggest incurable disorders.
I remembered Socrates how the boys not his wife adored him
and Karl Marx running around with Engels while Jenny
stayed home with the kids.
Maybe men played more than women.
A men's club compared to women's groups
was play, frivolous, virtually insulting.
It excluded women.
But I was thinking in circles.
A men's club didn't exclude women.
It also didn't exclude kangaroos.
It included only men.
I tried to imagine explaining this to Sarah.
You see, men love to play.
It didn't feel convincing she had strong opinions
and a bad temper.
When Kavanaugh decided to quit basketball,
it was his decision.
But I blamed her anyway.
She wanted him home, the King became the Dean.
Kramer shouted from another room,
is anybody here named Terry?
His wife is on the phone.
She's crying.
Shouting again more loudly as if to make
sure the woman on the phone would hear him,
Kramer said, is anybody in this house named Terry?
Nobody admitted to being named Terry.
I heard Kramer still shouting say, Terry isn't here.
If Terry shows up, I'll tell him to phone you right away.
No, I won't forget.
I'll tell Terry to phone you right away.
When Kramer returned, he said, you guys sure none of you
is named Terry?
Kavanaugh muttered, we were all named Terry.
We made a circle, some men sitting on the rug.
Kramer settled into his pillow, legs folded and crossed.
He began talking to us in a slow, rational voice.
The black eyes darkened his face.
His words became darker, heavier because of them.
What is the purpose of this club?
To make women cry, I thought.
Kramer's beginning was not very brilliant,
but he looked so deep that I resisted judgment.
Some of us, Solly Berliner, Paul, Kavanaugh
had a discussion a few weeks ago.
We agreed it would be a good idea.
Paul was the short marijuana man with the eager face.
Kramer nodded to him when he said his name.
He went on about the good idea, but I wasn't listening.
I thought again about the women.
Anger, identity, politics, rights, wrongs.
I envied them.
It seemed attractive to be deprived in our society.
Deprivation gives you something to fight for.
It makes you morally superior.
It makes you serious.
What was left for men these days?
They already had everything.
Did they need clubs?
The mere sight of two men together suggests a club.
Consider Damon and Pythias, Huck and Jim, Hamlet and Horatio.
The list is familiar.
Even the Lone Ranger wasn't lonely, he had Tonto.
There was Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas,
but generally, two women suggest gossip and the kiss goodbye.
Kramer, talking, meandered in a sea of non-existent purpose.
I said, why are you talking about our purpose?
We're all here.
Let's just say what we want to do.
I stopped him mid meander.
He looked relieved, a little surprised, not offended.
Can you offer a suggestion, he asked?
I glanced at the other faces, particularly Kavanaugh's.
I didn't want to embarrass him.
I was his guest, and I'd been too aggressive, maybe.
He said, go on.
I suggest each of us tell the story of his life.
The instant I said it, I laughed as if I'd intended a joke.
What else could it be?
I didn't tell the story of my life to strangers.
Maybe I'd lived too long in California,
or I'd given too many lectures at the University.
Perhaps I'd been influenced by Berliner becoming like him,
a confessional person.
Nobody else laughed.
Kavanaugh looked at me with approval.
Berliner grinned, his rigid ferocity.
He loved the suggestion he could hardly wait to begin.
Kramer, however, said, I'll go first.
You want to?
You do like the idea?
One of us can talk at each meeting
I have listened in this room to numerous life stories.
Kramer apparently was a psychotherapist.
It will be good for me, he said, to tell the story of my life,
especially in a non-professional context.
It will be a challenge.
I'm going to put it on tape.
I will tape each of us.
Suddenly, I imagined him sitting among his plants listening
to life stories, his tape recorder going, his dark face
and tattoos presiding over everything.
Oh, come on.
Let's talk to one another, Kramer.
No machines.
To my dismay, Kramer yelled, why the hell not?
I have so much talk on my tapes, friends, clients, lovers,
that I don't even know what I have.
So much I don't even remember.
Apparently, I'd struck at something he cherished.
I didn't know him well enough to do that.
But I heard myself yelling back at him, a man who
looked angry, even dangerous.
If you didn't put it on tape, you'd remember.
Everyone laughed, including Kramer.
He said, that's good, that's good.
No anger at all.
I was strangely pleased by this violence.
I liked Kramer for laughing.
That's good, he said.
I'm going to write that down.
Yes, said Kavanaugh.
No tape recorder, but I want an idea of what this life story
business is like.
Berliner said, you know what it's like, Kavanaugh.
It's like in the old movies.
Lauren Bacall tells Humphrey Bogart about herself,
who she is, where she's been.
Then they screw.
A blonde man with plastic framed glasses
and a pastel blue sweater strained forward in his chair,
saying, I saw that movie on The Late Show, right?
He looked youthful, exceptionally clean.
He wore cherry red jogging shoes.
The faces became silent.
He retreated.
Maybe it was another movie.
Berliner's face seemed to swell with astonishment
and tighten into eerie skreeing, tortured noises,
skreeing, skreeing.
Oh man, what is your name?
He pointed at the blond.
Kramer, hugging himself, contained his laughter.
The blonde said, Harold.
Tears, like bits of glass formed in his eyes as he smiled.
Oh, Harold, shouted Berliner.
That name is the whole story of my life.
My mother used to say, Solly Berliner,
why can't you be like Harold?
Harold Himmel was the smartest, nicest kid in Brooklyn.
My name is Harold Canterbury.
Right, man.
Forgive me.
A minute ago when you were talking, I had a weird thought.
I thought, forgive me, man.
I thought you had a withered hand.
[LAUGHTER]
Harold raised his hands for everyone to see.
Kramer said, don't listen to that jackass, Harold.
Nothing wrong with your hands.
I'm getting more beer.
As he walked toward the kitchen, Kavanaugh followed, saying,
I don't know what this life story business is about,
but it sounds good.
Kramer said, I'll show you what it's about.
You get the beers.
Kavanaugh returned with the beers,
and Kramer with a metal foot locker,
dragging it into the center of our circle, a padlock banged
against the front, Kramer squatting,
tried to fit a key into the lock.
His hands began shaking.
Kavanaugh bent beside him.
You need a little help?
Kramer handed him the key, saying do it.
Kavanaugh inserted the key, and the lock
snapped open as if shocked by love.
Kramer removed the lock, heaved back
the lid of the foot locker, then withdrew to his pillow,
quickly lighting a cigarette, his hands still shaking.
This is it, my life story.
His voice slower than before, labored against feeling.
You guys, can see my junk.
My trinkets, photos, diaries, papers of every kind.
If Kramer left the room, it would have been easier to look,
but he remained on his pillow, a dark Pasha, urging us to look.
Paul suddenly scrambled on hands and knees to the foot locker,
looked, then plucked out a handful
of bleary, cracked snapshots and fanned them across the rug.
We could see inscriptions.
Paul read aloud, Coney Island 1953, Tina.
Party at Josephine's, New Year's 1965.
Holiday Inn, New Orleans 1975, Gwen.
He looked from the photos to Kramer, smiling.
All these pictures in your box of women?
Kramer in the difficult voice, answered, I have many photos.
I have my Navy discharge papers, my high school diploma,
my first driver's license.
I have all my elementary school notebooks, even spelling exams
from the third grade.
I have maybe 25 fountain pens, all my old passports.
Everything is in that box.
Paul nodding, smiling, said, but these photos, Kramer.
All these photos, women?
I have had 622 women.
Right on, shouted Berliner.
His soul projecting toward Kramer
through the big green eyes, dog like, waiting for a signal.
Paul took out more photos and dropped them among the others
on the rug.
Over 100 now.
Women in bathing suits, in winter coats, in 50s styles,
60s style, 70s styles.
Spirits of the decades.
If men make history, women wear its look.
Even in their faces and figures.
But to me, Kramer's women looked fundamentally the same.
One poor sweetie between 20 and 30 years
old forever, on a beach, leaning against a railing,
a tree, a brick wall with the sun in her eyes,
squinting at the camera.
One hundred fragments, each of them
complete if you care to scrutinize.
A whole person who could say her name,
maybe love Kramer that she squinted touched me.
Kramer with his meticulously sculpted hair,
cigarette trembling in his fingers waited.
Nobody spoke.
Not even Berliner.
Looking at the pictures, I was reminded of flashers.
See this?
It is my entire crotch.
Have a screen.
Berliner suddenly blurted, great, great.
Let's all do it.
Let's all talk about our sexual experience.
His face jerked in every direction,
seeking encouragement, as if he'd heard nothing.
Kramer said, I was born in Trenton, New Jersey.
[LAUGHTER]
My father was a union organizer.
In those days, it was dangerous work.
He was a communist.
He lived for an idea.
My mother believed in everything he said,
but she was always depressed, and she sat in the bedroom
in her robe smoking cigarettes.
She never cleaned the house.
When I was six years old, I was shopping and cooking
like my mother's mother.
I cannot remember one minute which I can call my childhood.
I was my mother's mother.
I had a life with no beginning, no childhood.
Right, said Berliner.
You had your childhood later, 622 mother's, right?
The women were women.
Eventually, I'll have another 600.
I don't know where my father is, but when
I hear the word workers or the word struggle, I think of him.
If I see a hard hat carrying a lunch pail,
I think he's struggling.
My mother now lives in New York.
Twice a year I phone New York and get migraine headaches,
blindness and nausea.
Just say the area code, 212, and I feel pain in my eyes.
I'd been looking at Kramer all evening,
but now to my surprise, I noticed that his eyes didn't
focus steadily.
The right eye was slightly askew.
He blinked hard and brought it into line with the other eye.
After a while, it drifted away.
He'd let it go for a moment, then blink hard again.
His voice was trancelike, compulsive,
as if he'd been trying to tell us something
before he would be overwhelmed by doubt and confusion.
Kavanaugh said, what about Nancy?
What about her?
Kramer sounded surprised, as if unsure who Nancy was.
Nancy Kramer.
These are her plants, aren't they?
Kavanaugh was looking at the photos on the rug
not the plants.
You mean the women?
What does Nancy think about my women?
That's right, we have a good understanding.
Nancy goes out, too.
Its cool.
The plants are mine.
[LAUGHTER]
Yours I said?
Yes.
I love them.
I've even got them on my tape recorder.
I could play you the fig tree in the corner.
Kramer said this to me with a sly, dopey look
as if trying to change the mood, trying to make a joke.
Too much, too much, Kramer, said Berliner.
My wife and me are exactly the same.
I mean, we also have an understanding.
I said, let Kramer talk.
Kramer shook his head and bent what Berliner is saying.
That's all right.
Do you want to say more, Solly?
Berliner looked at his knees.
No, you go on Kramer.
I'm sorry I interrupted.
Kavanaugh imitating Kramer bent toward Berliner.
Solly, aren't you jealous when your wife
is making it with another guy?
Berliner raised his face toward Kavanaugh.
Jealous?
Yeah, jealous.
No man, I'm liberated.
What the hell does that mean, I said?
Looking at me now, Berliner said as if it were obvious,
I don't feel anything.
Liberated means you don't feel anything.
Yes, said Berliner.
I'm liberated.
Harold, with a huge stare of pleasure began repeating,
you don't feel anything, you don't feel anything.
Berliner shrugged.
Once I felt something.
Writhing in his creamy slacks, Harold
said, tell us about that please.
The little tears were in his eyes again.
Tell us about the time you felt something.
Does everyone want to hear, said Berliner, looking at me.
I said, Yes.
He smiled.
His voice was full of accommodation.
We had a weekend in the mountains
with another couple, a ski cabin near Lake Tahoe.
The first night we became a little drunk
after dinner and somebody, maybe me, yeah, yeah me.
I said, let's trade partners.
It was my own idea, right?
So we traded.
It was OK.
It wasn't the first time we did it,
but then I heard my wife moaning.
I couldn't help hearing her.
A small cabin.
And that was OK.
But she was not just moaning, you know what I mean?
You know, it was love, love.
Said Kramer.
Yeah, I didn't like it.
She was moaning with love.
Moaning is OK, but she was going too far, you know what I mean?
She was doing love.
I wanted to kill her.
Kavanaugh reached over and squeezed Berliner's elbow.
Berliner was still smiling, the big green
eyes searching our faces for the meaning of what he'd said.
Is that what you wanted to know, Harold?
Did it ruin your weekend?
It was horrible, man.
I lost my erection.
Berliner began skreeing again, and I heard myself
doing it too just like him making that creepy sound.
It was horrible, horrible.
I was ashamed.
I ran out of the cabin and sat on a rock.
My wife started calling through the door, Solly, Solly, Sally
Berliner!
Then she came outside laughing and found me.
I showed her what she'd done to me.
She said it wasn't her fault. She said it was my idea.
I hit her and said that was my idea too.
She started crying.
Soon as she started crying, my erection came back.
Kramer said, what happened next?
But you were talking, Kramer, I said.
You know what happened next.
She hit him, and then they made it together.
It's a cliche.
You should finish telling your story.
You should have a full turn.
I wanted things done according to my idea, one man at a time.
Berliner, incoherent with excitement, shouted at me.
How the hell do you know?
I'm telling what happened to me, me, me.
All right.
What happened next?
She hit me, and we made it together.
Kavanaugh with two fists began hammering the rug
until everyone quieted.
Then he said, look at Kramer.
Kramer was slumped in his pillow, elbows on his knees,
the dark face hanging, glancing vaguely,
vaguely back at Kavanaugh.
Let's let him alone, said Kavanaugh.
Maybe he will want to go on later.
I want to hear about the childhood he didn't have.
But we're talking about love tonight.
I'll tell you guys a love story OK?
I said, Kramer tells us he made it with 600 women.
Berliner says he traded his wife then beat her
up and had an erection.
You call that love?
Kavanaugh gave me a flat look as if I'd become strange to him.
Yeah, why not.
Oh God.
Hey man, what do you want to hear about?
Toothpaste and deodorants.
You're right, Kavanaugh.
I give up.
I'll bet your story is about how you made it with 10,000
high school cheerleaders.
Kavanaugh stared at the place in the rug.
It just hammered, the big body and big face were immobilized.
Getting things in order, remembering his story.
And then his voice was simply there.
About three months after we got married,
my second wife and I started having arguments.
Bad scenes.
We would go to bed every night hating each other.
There were months with no sex.
I didn't know who was more miserable.
I was making a lot of money playing ball,
and I was playing good.
It should have been good for us all together.
The marriage should have been fine.
In the middle of a game with the crowd screaming I think,
this was no fantastic deal because I had no love at home.
Soon there was nothing in my body but anger.
I got into fights with my own teammates.
I couldn't take a shave without slicing my face.
I was smoking cigarettes.
I had something against my body and wanted to hurt it.
When I told my wife I was moving out she said, great.
She wanted to live alone.
I moved out and stayed with a friend
until I found an apartment.
One day in the grocery store, I was throwing every kind
of thing into my shopping cart.
I was making sure nothing I needed
would show up later as being not there,
and this woman I notice is pushing her cart
behind me, up and down the aisles, giggling.
I knew she was giggling at me.
When I got to the cashier she was behind me in line
still giggling and she says, very sweet and tickled,
you must have a station wagon waiting for you.
I said, I have a pickup truck.
Do you want to ride?
A man buying so much food, she figured, has a family.
Safe to ask for a ride.
She didn't have a car.
I carried her groceries up to her apartment.
A little boy was sitting on the floor watching TV.
She introduced us and offered me a drink,
and we sat in another room talking.
The boy took care of himself.
Just like in Kramer's story.
He cooked dinner for himself, he gave himself a bath,
then went to bed.
But his mother wasn't depressed like Kramer's.
She laughed and teased me and asked a lot of questions.
I talked about myself for five or six hours.
We ate dinner around midnight, and then at 4:00
in the morning, I woke up in her bed
thinking about my ton of groceries
rotting in the pickup.
But that wasn't what woke me.
What woke me was the feeling I wanted
to go home, back to my apartment, my own bed.
I hadn't left one woman to sleep with another.
I didn't know what I was doing in this woman's bed.
I got up and dressed and left as I was about to drive away
She comes running to the window of my pickup naked
where are you going she says I told her she had nothing on.
She says, where are you going at this hour?
I said I wanted to go home.
She says, Oh OK.
I'll come with you I told her no and said I would phone her.
She said OK and smiled and said good night.
She was like that little boy, or he was like her, easy, OK.
OK good night.
I didn't think I would phone her.
Now this is my story.
I woke up the next afternoon I liked it, waking up alone.
I liked it very much, but I felt something strange.
I wanted something.
Then I remembered the woman, and I knew what I wanted.
I wanted to phone her.
So I went to the phone and I realized
I didn't know her number.
I didn't even know her name.
Well, I showered and got dressed and stopped thinking about her.
I went out for something.
I didn't know what.
I had everything I needed in the apartment,
but I started driving and right away I
was driving back to the grocery store
as if the car had a mind of its own.
I was just holding the wheel.
I didn't get further than the grocery store
because I didn't remember where she lived.
I remembered leaving the store with her,
driving toward the Bay and that's all.
She said turn right, turn left.
And go straight.
But I never noticed street names or anything.
Now I wanted to see that woman more and more.
The next day, I went back to the grocery store
and hung around the parking lot.
I did that every day for a week at different times
I thought I remembered how she looked,
talking to me through the window of my pickup.
How she smiled and said OK.
I wanted to see her again badly but it wasn't sure
that I could recognize her in the street looking normal.
She was wearing gold loop earrings, jeans and sandals.
What if she came along in a skirt and heels?
Anyhow I never saw her again.
Kavanaugh stopped.
It was obvious he had no more to say, but Kramer said,
is that your story?
Yes.
Kavanaugh smiled, leaning back, watching us.
That's your love story I asked?
Right, he answered, nodding.
I fell in love with the woman I couldn't find the next day.
She might live around the corner, man.
You still love her, asked Paul, tremendous delicacy
in his voice.
The slight, small body poised full of tenderness and tension.
Kavanaugh smiled at him with melancholy eyes,
the whole expression of his great face and body
suggested that he'd been humbled by fate.
Paul said, that can't be it.
That can't be the end.
The end.
Kavanaugh, Paul said, pleading.
I've known you for years.
How come you never told me that story?
I never told anyone.
Maybe I'm not sure it happened.
You did go back to the grocery.
So what?
I said Paul means if you looked for her.
It happened.
I still look when Sarah sends me out to do the shopping,
she doesn't know the risks she's taking.
Kavanaugh, I said, do you think you ever passed her
in the street and she recognized you
but you didn't recognize her?
Immediately, Kramer said, not recognize Kavanaugh?
I'd recognize him even if I never saw him before.
How would you recognize me?
From your picture in the papers.
She didn't read the sports pages.
Hey, said Berliner.
I have an idea.
We can all look for her.
What do you say?
Paul said, shut up.
Why is everyone telling me to shut up?
I drove here from San Jose and everyone tells me to shut up.
Berliner was sighing in a philosophical way.
He had just seen into the nature of life.
Looking for Kavanaugh's woman.
To me, that's a good idea.
Hey man, I have a better idea.
Kavanaugh, take a quick look through Kramer's snapshots.
[LAUGHTER]
Kavanaugh smirked.
She wasn't one of them.
She was a queen.
Queen of what, shouted Kramer.
My women have names.
What did you call her?
You call her queen?
Berliner, give me my telephone directory.
I'll find her.
How many women in Berkeley can be named queen?
I'm sorry Kramer.
Take it easy.
I didn't intend to crap on your 600 women.
He thinks I crapped on his harem.
I said, let me talk.
I want to tell a love story.
Great, said Berliner.
Everybody shut up.
Go man.
Sing the blues.
You don't want to hear my story?
I listened to yours, Berliner.
Yes he does, said Kramer.
Let him talk, Solly.
I didn't try to stop him, Kavanaugh said, just begin.
Yes, said Berliner, grinning in an animal way.
Brilliant, stiff with teeth.
So far, I said, I've heard three stories about one thing.
Kavanaugh calls it love.
I call it stories about the other woman.
By which I mean the one who is not the wife.
To you guys, only the other woman is interesting.
If there wasn't first the wife, there
couldn't be the other woman.
Especially you Berliner.
Especially in your case, moaning, just
moaning in the other room, your wife is only your wife,
moaning with love.
She's the other woman.
And Kramer with the snapshots.
Look at them.
Kramer spent most of his life trying
to photograph the other woman, not
knowing that every time he snapped a picture,
it was like getting married.
Like permanently eliminating another woman
from the possibility of being the other woman.
As for Kavanaugh, why can't he find his woman?
Because he doesn't want to.
If he finds her, she won't be the other woman anymore.
This way, he can protect his marriage.
Every time he goes to the grocery store
and doesn't see the other woman, which is every single time,
his marriage is stronger.
Kavanaugh frowning at me said, what are you trying to tell us?
What's all this business about the other woman?
Why don't you just say it, man?
Kramer then said, you're trying to tell us you love your wife?
You think I don't love mine?
You think Solly doesn't love his wife?
Berliner cried, if that's all you think, you're right.
I hate my wife.
Tell your story, said Kavanaugh.
Enough philosophy.
I don't know if I can tell it.
I never told it before.
It's about a woman who was my friend in high school
and college.
Her name is Marilyn.
We practically grew up together.
She lives in Chicago now.
She's a violinist in a Symphony Orchestra.
I spent more time with her than with any other woman
except maybe my mother.
She wasn't like a sister.
She was like a friend, a very close friend.
I couldn't have had such a friendship with a man.
We'd go out together a lot, and if I brought her home late,
I'd stay over at her place in the same bed.
Nothing sexual between us.
It would have been a crime.
We would fight plenty, say terrible things to each other,
but we were close.
She phoned me every day.
We stayed on the phone for an hour.
We went to parties together when neither of us had a date.
I liked showing up with her because she was attractive.
Showing up with her increased my chances of meeting some girl.
It gave me a kind of power, walking in with Marilyn,
feeling free to pick up somebody else.
She had the same power.
Anyhow, we never analyzed our relationship,
but we joked about what other people thought.
My mother would sometimes answer the phone.
And if she heard Marilyn's voice she would say,
it's your future wife.
She used to worry about us.
She used to warn me that any woman I was serious about
would object to Marilyn, or she'd say it wasn't nice me
and Marilyn being so thick with each other
because I was ruining her chances of meeting a man.
That wasn't true.
Marilyn had plenty of affairs, all of them ended badly,
but I had nothing to do with it.
One of her men scissored her dresses into rags,
and another flung her Siamese cat out the window.
She would manage to find some man who
was well-educated, had pleasant manners
and turned out to be a brute.
She suffered, but nothing destroyed her.
She had her violin.
She also had me.
When I was out of a job and not going to school,
she loaned me money and let me stay at her place for weeks.
I didn't have to ask, I just showed up
one day with my suitcase.
One weekend while I was staying at her place,
she came home with a friend, a girl who looked something like
her, lean with curly brown hair with beautiful skin,
faintly olive colored like Marilyn's.
Before dinner was over, Marilyn remembered something
important she had to do.
She excused herself and went to a movie.
Her friend and I were alone in the apartment.
It was glorious.
Two weeks later, when I was talking to Marilyn
about this and that, I mentioned her friend.
Marilyn said she didn't want to hear about it.
She said that friendship was over
and it was something she couldn't discuss.
Furthermore she said I had acted badly that night at dinner,
driving her out of her own apartment.
I said, I thought you left as a favor to me.
I thought you did it deliberately.
She said she did do it deliberately,
but only because I made it extremely obvious that I
was hot for her friend and I acted like a slob.
Now I began to feel angry I told her
she didn't have to leave her apartment for my sake,
and it was rotten of her to make me feel guilty about it
two weeks after I had started having very strong feelings
about her friend.
So strong, in fact, we'd been talking about marriage.
I thought this would change everything.
Marilyn would laugh and give me a hug.
Instead, she lights a cigarette and begins smoking
with quick half drags, flicking ashes all over her couch.
Then she says, why don't you just say
that you consider me physically disgusting and you always have?
This was my old friend, Marilyn, speaking,
but it seemed like science fiction.
It looked like her.
It sounded like her.
It was her, but it wasn't.
Some weird mongoose had seized her soul.
Then she starts telling me about what is inside my head.
Things she's always known, though I
tried to hide them from her.
Her voice is getting bitter and nasty.
She says she knows I can't stand her breasts,
and the birthmark on her neck sickens me.
I said, what birthmark?
She says, who are you trying to kid?
I've seen you looking at it 1,000 times when
you thought I didn't notice.
I sat down beside her on the couch.
She says, get away from me, you pig.
I felt confused, ashamed and frightened at the same time.
Then, she jumps off the couch and strides out of the room.
I hear her slamming around on the toilet, bottles
toppling out of the medicine cabinet into the sink,
smashing.
I said, Marilyn are you all right?
No answer.
She finally comes out wearing a bathrobe with nothing
underneath, and the robe is open,
but she's standing there as if nothing has changed since she
left the room, and she talks to me
again in the same nasty voice.
She sneers and accuses me of things
I couldn't have imagined, let alone thought about her as she
says I did every day, all the time,
pretending I was her friend.
Suddenly, I'm full of a new feeling, a feeling
I've never had before.
Not what a normal person would call sexual feeling, but what
does a penis know?
It isn't a connoisseur of normal feeling
[LAUGHTER]
Besides, I was a lot younger, still
mystified by life, especially my own chemicals.
I leap off the couch and grab her.
No!
I find myself leaping, grabbing her,
and she's twisting trying to hit me really fighting.
I feel she's seriously trying to hurt me.
But there's no screaming or cursing.
There's nothing but the two of us breathing and sweating
and then she begins to collapse, to slide toward the floor.
Next thing, I'm on top of her.
I'm wearing my clothes, she's lying on her open robe.
It's supernaturally exciting.
Both of us are shivering and wild.
We fell asleep like that and slept at least an hour.
I woke when I felt her moving, the lights were on.
We were looking at each other.
She says, this is very discouraging.
[LAUGHTER]
Then, she went to her bedroom and shut the door.
I got up and followed her and knocked at the door.
She opens it and lets me kiss her.
Then, she shut the door again.
I went home.
Six months later, she phoned me from Chicago
to tell me about her new job and to give me her address.
After a while, she asked about her friend.
I told her it was finished between her friend and me.
I was seeing somebody else.
She changed the subject.
Now, every few months I get a letter.
I write to her also.
Someday if I happen to be in Chicago, I'll visit her.
In the silence following my story,
I began to regret having told it.
Then, a man who had said nothing all evening
asked, did you make it that night with Marilyn?
No, nothing changed.
I don't think it ever will.
I could show up tomorrow in Chicago with my suitcase
and move into her place.
The man shook his head softly and started to say something,
then stopped.
Go on, I said.
Do you have a question?
He smiled.
We waited.
It was clear he was a shy man.
Then he said, was it a true story?
Yes.
He shrugged and smiled and said, I liked Marilyn.
I said I like her too.
Maybe I can fix you up with her.
What's your name?
Terry.
[LAUGHTER]
Terry, shrieked Berliner!
Terry, you're supposed to phone your wife!
Grinning at Berliner, Terry seemed less a shy man
than a man surprised.
It's not my wife he said, intimating complexities,
old confusions.
As if to forbid himself another word,
he shook his head, long and bald.
Sandy tufts of hair beside the ears like baby feathers.
His eyes were light brown.
His nose was a straight, thick pull.
I mustn't bore you fellas with my situation.
He nodded at me as if we had a special understanding.
We are enjoying ourselves, telling melancholy stories
about love.
He continued nodding for no reason.
I nodded back.
Kavanaugh said, talk about anything you like, Terry.
You say the woman who phoned isn't your wife?
He grinned.
I'm a haunted house.
For me, yesterday is today.
The woman who phoned was my former wife.
A strange expression, but what else can I call her?
Ex-wife?
Call her by her name, I said.
Her name is Nikki.
How long have you been divorced, asked Kavanaugh?
Usually, one asks how long you've been married.
Nikki and I have been divorced 10 years.
Nikki, it's better, said Berliner
if you say former wife.
Nikki, Nikki.
You sound like a ping pong game.
All right.
After 10 years of divorce, we're closer than
during our marriage.
If you don't remarry, this is natural.
She phones me two or three times a week.
Listen to how personal I'm becoming.
Why is everything personal so funny?
Who's laughing, said Berliner.
Do you sleep together?
To sleep with your former wife I think, I mean just to me,
it is immoral.
I couldn't do it.
You couldn't do it?
I said, who asked you to?
He's right.
I'm sorry, Terry.
Go on.
It doesn't happen often.
Nikki has a boyfriend.
His name is Harrison, but they don't live together.
Nikki can't get along with kids.
She doesn't like kids.
More complicated, yet Harrison's daughter, 11 years old,
is a very sad, fat girl.
His boy, six years old, has learning problems.
Harrison phones me too.
I meet him now and then to talk about his kids.
He wants to talk to you, I said?
I'm a doctor.
Even at parties people come up to me for an opinion.
Terry, I shouldn't discuss professional matters
in these circumstances, but my Asian aunt Sophie
has a black wart on her buttock.
She wants you to know.
So what about Nikki?
She was crying on the phone, Kramer said.
She always does.
Your Marilyn story reminded me of a fight
we had when I was in medical school in Montreal.
We lived in a two room flat above a grocery store.
It was Saturday morning.
I was studying at the kitchen table.
Can I tell the story?
Berliner said, only if it's miserable.
Anyhow, a blizzard had been building for days.
I watched it through the kitchen window as it attacked the city.
The sky disappeared.
The streets were dead.
Nothing moved but wind and snow.
In this deadly blizzard, Nikki decided to go out.
She had been saving money for a particular pair of boots.
Fine, soft leather.
Tight, knee high.
They had a red brown tone like dried blood
but slightly glossy, totally impractical, too elegant.
The wind would tear them off her legs.
Nobody in our crowd owned such boots.
Our friends in Montreal were like us, students, poor, always
working, worried about money.
Nikki had worked as a Secretary all that year,
and she never bought presents for herself.
The salary paid our rent and food.
I had a tiny scholarship that covered books
and incidental tuition fees.
We were badly in debt, but she wanted those boots.
I don't know how she saved a penny for them.
I pleaded with her not to go out in the blizzard.
Something in my voice maybe suggested more anxiety
about the price of the boots than her safety.
The more I pleaded, the more determined she became.
Why didn't you go with her, I asked?
I wanted to, but the idea of the boots, so trivial,
such a luxury, and her wanting to go get them
that morning made me furious.
I could sympathize with her desire for beautiful boots.
She deserved a reward.
But why that minute did she have to get them?
I was trying to study.
My papers and books were on the kitchen table,
also a box of slides and a microscope
I carried home from the laboratory.
Today, though I own a house with 10 rooms,
I still use the kitchen table when I read medical journals
or write an article.
Anyhow, I was trying to study.
I needed the time.
It's difficult for me to memorize things,
but I can do it if there's peace and quiet and no bad
feelings in the air.
You don't have to be a genius to be a doctor.
But now I was furious.
I yelled, go on.
Do what you like.
Buy the stupid boots.
Just leave me alone.
She slammed the door.
For a while, I sat with my papers and books.
Outside, the blizzard was hysterical.
Inside, it was warm and quiet.
I worried about her, but my fury canceled the worry.
Soon, I began really to study to forget about Nikki.
Maybe three hours passed, and suddenly she's home.
Pale and burning and happy.
I didn't say hello.
My fury returned.
She had a big shoe box under her arm.
She had returned with her boots.
While she put them on, I continued trying to study.
I didn't watch her, but I could tell she needed help.
The boots were tight.
After a while, she managed to get them on by herself.
Then she walked up to my table and stood there
in blood colored legs waiting for me to notice.
I could feel her excitement.
She was trembling with pleasure.
I knew what expression was in her face.
Every muscle working not to smile.
She waited for me to look up, collapse with approval,
to admit she was magnificent in those boots.
But the blizzard was in my heart.
I refused to look.
Suddenly, my papers, books, slides,
microscope, everything on the table
was all over the kitchen floor.
Nikki is strong.
She plays tennis like a man.
I jumped up.
I felt I had been killed, wiped out of the world.
She still claims I hit her.
I don't remember.
I remember rushing out into the blizzard with no coat or hat.
Why?
To buy a gun.
[LAUGHTER]
I didn't really know what I wanted until I
happened to pass a pawn shop.
I saw guns in the window.
I had a pocket watch that my father gave me
when I left for medical school, a Waltham
premiere worth about $200, gold case, Gothic numerals.
A classic watch.
Also a heavy gold chain.
In exchange for that watch, I got a rifle.
Then I asked the man for a bullet.
I couldn't pay for it, but I told him
[LAUGHTER]
But I told him the deal was off unless he gave me a bullet.
[LAUGHTER]
He said, one bullet?
[LAUGHTER]
I screamed, give me a bullet!
[LAUGHTER]
He gave it to me.
If I'd asked for a ton of bullets,
he would have thought nothing.
But ask for one bullet and there's trouble.
[LAUGHTER]
The police were waiting for you, said
Berliner, when you got home.
I noticed the police car in front of the house,
it's light blinking through the storm.
So I entered an alley behind the house and went up to the roof
and loaded the rifle.
I intended to go to the flat and blow my brains out
in front of Nikki.
I thought you were going to shoot her, I said.
Her?
I'd never shoot her.
I'm her slave.
I wanted to make a point about our relationship.
[LAUGHTER]
But the police were in the flat.
I was on the roof with a loaded rifle, freezing in a storm.
I aimed into the storm toward the medical school and fired.
How could I shoot myself?
I'd have been on that roof with a bullet in my head covered
by snow and nobody would have found me until spring.
What comes to mind when you commit suicide is amazing.
Listen, I have a question.
My story made me hungry.
Is there anything to eat?
Kramer rose from his pillow with a brooding face.
Man, he said, Terry is hungry.
I believe him because I too am hungry.
I suppose all of us could use a little bite.
Any other night I would suggest we send out for pizza or I
myself would make us an omelet, but not tonight.
You are lucky tonight.
Very lucky.
Tomorrow in this room, Nancy is having a meeting of her women's
group, so the refrigerator happens
to be packed with good things.
Let me itemize.
In the refrigerator there is three different kinds of salad.
There is big plates of chicken, turkey and salmon.
There is also a pecan pie.
I love pecan pie.
There are two pecan pies and there is two lemon pies.
There is a chocolate cake which even as I speak of it
sucks at me.
I'm offering all this to you men.
Wait Berliner.
I have one more thing to say, Berliner.
In the alcove behind the kitchen rests a case of Zinfandel.
It is good, good California.
Men, I offer you this Zinfandel.
Berliner was already in the kitchen.
The rest of us stayed to cheer Kramer.
Even I cheered despite his tattooed arms which reminded me
of snakes, I cheered.
His magnanimity was unqualified.
No smallest doubt of a reluctance troubled his voice.
Every face in the room became like his,
an animal touched by glee.
We were lucky, said Kramer.
Lucky maybe to be men.
Life is unfair business.
Whoever said otherwise.
It is a billion bad shows, low blows and number one
has more fun.
Nancy's preparations for her women's group
would feed our club.
The idea of delicious food taken this way was thrilling.
Had it been there for us, it would have been pleasant,
but this was evil.
Like eating the other woman.
[LAUGHTER]
We discovered Berliner on his knees before the refrigerator,
door open, his head inside.
We cheered again, crowding up behind him
as he passed things out to us.
First, the long plate of salmon.
The whole pink fish intact/ then the chicken,
then a salad bowl sealed with a plastic sheet through which we
saw dazzling green life.
It would be a major feast, a huge eating.
To Kavanaugh standing beside me, I said, I
thought you had to leave early.
He didn't reply.
He pulled his watch off, slipped it into his pocket and shouted,
I see pate in there!
I want that too.
The cheers came again.
Some of the men had already started
on the salmon, snatching pieces of it with their fingers.
Kramer, who had gone into the alcove,
reappeared with black bottles of Zinfandel, two under his arms,
two in his hands.
He stopped, contemplated the scene in his kitchen,
and his dark eyes glowed.
His voice was all pleasure.
This is a wonderful club.
That's it.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]