Sensuous

14 June — Monday

I stopped seeing Bill just about the same time that I began getting very close to Jeff.

(How I hesitated before typing his secret name! I do not really think of him as Jeff, have never called him that except jokingly. He is still Arnold to me. I guess he will always remain Arnold, as I sense that I cannot call him Jeff until he calls me Jennifer, and it is unlikely in the extreme that it will occur to him to do so, as I have not confessed about Jennifer and do not intend to.)

I stopped seeing Bill just about the same time that I began getting very close to Arnold. I suppose there must be a connection. I’m wondering what it might be.

It’s impossible to say which happened first, because both were gradual matters. I gradually came to the end of the road with Bill, and gradually the perfunctory dinners with Arnold turned into something else. I don’t think I mentioned much of this in the diary. The period while most of it was taking shape was also the period when I was avoiding writing in the diary, for one reason or another. There may be a cause-and-effect relationship there, too, for that matter, but I’m not going to examine it too closely.

Bill.

Funny how that wore itself out. In certain ways we got tired of each other like an old married couple gradually having less and less bedtime use for one another. He showed me things, took me on various sexual trips, and I went along with all of them, and bit by bit he tired of his role as I tired of mine.

What was my appeal for him? That of challenge, I guess. The Dark Lady of Shady Lane, coming to him each Wednesday, enjoying those evenings sexually but never delivering the proof of ultimate enjoyment that he could regard as evidence of conquest. My clitoris never became a scalp he could hang from his belt, and he constantly aspired to this conquest, and perversely enjoyed my remoteness, and as long as I remained the carrot just out of reach he would play the earnest plodding donkey.

But the donkey realized, somewhere along the way, that he would never get the carrot, and that it would not taste good if he did. And so he did as donkeys do when they come to this enormous realization. He stopped in his tracks.

And what did I realize?

Easier to attribute thoughts to another person than to tune in upon your own. What I saw, I guess, is that he was a constant in my life and had to mean more to me than a guide through uncharted realms, especially as we inevitably began to run out of such realms. If what we had was going to grow, he had to become a person rather than a role. And he could only become a person if I was willing and able to reveal myself to him.

And I was not.

Nor would it have done any good if I had. Because my mystery was a large portion of my charm — such as it was — and knowing more about me would only make him want me less. We were something important to each other at a particular point in time, and as each of us began to become more nearly real for the other, we simultaneously each became less of what the other wanted and needed.

(How I struggle to make these words make sense. And find myself telling myself, from time to time, that it does not matter whether or not the words make sense. For I am writing only for myself, and if I understand what I am thinking, it is not necessary for me to couch my phrases so that they would be intelligible to another. But I am not sure that’s true. When man evolved, words must have preceded thoughts. The word, renowned as the father to the deed, is surely the midwife if not the parent of thought. One cannot think without the words to think in. And one cannot have one’s mind straight on a subject unless one can fit the words to it. If it doesn’t make sense, one has not yet become sensible about it.)

Bill and I, running out of each other, and hence running out on each other. It is clear to me that I could have made him privy to my secrets. It is something I could have done, and could have done so with the advance assumption that, if it ruined things between us, if it made either of us uncomfortable with the other, we could simply break off and see each other not at all. And, since we were already on the point of seeing each other not at all, there was nothing risked.

But I could not take off those clothes. And did not want to, whether I could or not

And so it stopped for us.

Not all at once. A little at a time. Evenings of mutual boredom, tedium, genteel sexual monotony. We performed, and as we were each of us more conscious in any instance of our individual roles of performer than of audience, we were technically adept enough about it. He tried to please me and I tried to give the appearance of being pleased. I tried to please him and he similarly played the gentleman, taking evident delight in my attentions. But there was nothing there, and in one conversation, less awkward than I would have thought it would have had to be, we agreed that it had been fun, dear one, but it was time to end it.

Another reason: I was becoming, at this stage in time, a creature who could only enjoy people once. Who had no repeat encounters. Bill, the one person throughout this time whom I saw again and again, the one sexual partner who enjoyed my company for more than a single evening, thus jarred with the new turn my life was taking.

Exit Bill.

Enter Arnold.

With whom I have no sex.

Weird, that.

Because the one-sidedness of my relationship with Bill is mirrored by the one-sidedness of my relationship with Arnold. I know he wants to make love to me, and I know that the only thing which prevents him from trying to make love to me is his fear that he will lose me. I wonder if this is true. How would I react?

I enjoy kissing him. I like his looks, feel a warm affection for his body. I suppose, insofar as I love, that I love him.

I oddly trust him.

And yet—

Thought: That our fears are identical. That each of us is keeping the relationship essentially as it is because what we have is too dear to us to be jeopardized. Better to have what we have than to risk it. Perhaps he would hate me if we slept together. Perhaps I would hate him. Perhaps we would, in some chemical way, turn each other off. Why risk what we have for the doubtful paradise of what we might have?

Indeed.

For what could we have? I don’t want to marry him. He has a wife and children, and one set thereof is as much as any man needs. And I have been a wife, and do not want the role again, and prefer my philodendron (which grows in so gratifying a manner) to children (which generally don’t). Better to play our present roles forever, looking but not touching, wanting but not achieving, than to get each other only to discover we did not honestly want each other in the first place.

Two lovers transfixed on a Grecian urn. Forever will Arnold love, and I be fair.

Or am I fair?

Sometimes I feel depressingly unfair.