Chapter 11: July 23-29, 1988. Part i.

It was 4:30 P. M. July 23, Ellen's twenty-eighth birthday, and I was a little more than a mile from home waiting for a bladder spasm to peak and pass. I'd been spasming off and on for more than 24 hours and would have had anyone who'd changed a catheter change mine yesterday had he or she been around. Faith had never done a change but soon would. I was on the road now partly to prove to myself I shouldn't go to a restaurant tonight. I'd be all right at the restaurant if the catheter didn't come all the way out, which had happened a few years ago in Tucson, or get completely blocked (either by gunk or by the balloon deflating just enough to let it enter and occlude my urethra); if it did either, though, I would feel and look as though I might have a stroke, as, in fact, I might. I shouldn't go; if I insisted on doing so, I should at least have Faith first put in a new catheter. I wondered what I'd do. I turned back toward the house, the earliest I'd turned back all year. I knew I would probably do nothing and go out in spite of my concern; the catheter would probably be okay.

Taking Ellen to a restaurant for her birthday was my idea. She and Brian were to be my guests and the party was to be Dee and Joe, Angus and Hettie, Steve, and three others. My ride was to be Angus' pick-up, me in the back with Joe as Faith had been coming from the airport in Syracuse. Faith and Throck weren't going because after the restaurant we were going to the bar next door; they were eighteen and nineteen, and the legal-drinking age was twenty-one.

At the restaurant, the catheter unchanged, I only wanted the evening done. Dee, I thought, knew how I felt, and Hettie might too, but neither they nor anyone else inquired, for which I was grateful. "Maybe we should skip the main course and get right to dessert," Joe said.

I assumed that by dessert he meant sgurd. "Sounds about right to me," I said, but we ordered. I had a raspberry daiquiri before dinner and another with it, felt as lousy as I had but no worse.

It had been another hot, humid day and I was too warm in the restaurant, dipped my fingers in my ice-water glass and daubed my face and neck. Outside afterwards I was hotter still and doubted cocaine would help. Those of us indulging huddled in and around the trucks in which we'd come, did our dips, and crossed to and entered the bar. Joe had prowled here fifteen years ago and, as he remembered it, had had a different woman whenever he wanted one--till he had met Dee and for a few minutes been a 1-woman man. Dee was still the one, but he again never saw a pretty woman without wanting to bed her, which he now and then did. Tonight he felt old, jumpy, and irritable. He imagined himself collapsing and going into convulsions. He didn't want to be in the bar any more than I did.

When the band started I could feel its beat in my already-aching head, but after my second shot of tequila I felt better and even danced once. The band took a break immediately after I danced and Steve, Angus, and I again snorted lines by the truck, then wandered the few blocks to the St. Lawrence and chatted four feet above the water at the end of a dock. I handed my towel to Angus to soak in the river so I could wear it wet around my neck. When he accidentally dropped it we watched it slowly sink and disappear; we laughed and shrugged. The breeze off the river was comfortably cool, but I knew that back in the bar I would miss having a wet towel.

And so it proved. Indoors, even when positioned directly in front of a large fan, I was badly over-heated and at risk of spiking a serious fever. Dee rubbed ice on my chest and back, but, while her touch soothed me, her help barely kept my temperature tolerable. She and I both guessed Joe minded her touching me but hoped he didn't mind too much since, the towel lost, there was no reasonable alternative except to leave; I was relieved when, before midnight, all of us outside for the second break, Joe said he was calling it a night.

"You don't have to go unless you want to," he said, but only Ellen and Brian chose to stay.

A thunderstorm that had been approaching as I was being loaded into the truck reached us as Angus pulled out of the parking lot, Joe again in back beside me. I was doubled over because the roof of the camper back didn't allow me to sit straight. I also hurt, but I knew I'd soon be home and lying down. I wondered whether Joe was seriously angry about Dee and the ice. Whatever the cause, he was upset; he said nothing on the ride home and, a non-smoker, chain-smoked four cigarettes. The rain had stopped by the time we got to the farm.

Several hours later, my friends gone, I wrote in my notebook. Ellen's birthday: Should be written funny, my tale a comedy. I knew that I would have to include some version of tonight in Love Note if I ever wrote it. (Nineteen months were to elapse before I first drafted July 23, 1988.) On the painful and sweaty ride home, I'd hoped bed and a pipe would help me feel better. They had, but I still hurt and admitted that I did to the others. I did lines and lay with two pillows propping me at the angle at which I'd be were the mirror up, which it wasn't. Joe, still moody and irritable, stood in the door leaning against the wall; Dee sat next to me on the edge of my bed; Angus leaned against the bureau at the foot of the bed; and Hettie sat in my wheelchair near Dee. My fan was on.

"Has Faith changed your catheter before?" Hettie asked.

"Not by herself but she's seen it done. I guess she’ll do her first tomorrow. I knew before we went out tonight I should have her change it but I put it off."

"I'd like to learn," Hettie said.

I was covered by a sheet nearly to my shoulders, my arms and hands under it; I reached between my legs with my left hand and discreetly, I intended secretly, touched my penis. In moments the pain vanished. My penis didn't grow, and I wondered whether, were my painlessness to turn to pleasure, I would uncover myself. The bedroom was a sick room, not a love chamber, but I still recognized my fantasy of touching myself in the company of my Jamesville friends in the event; I exulted at how far the scene was from the one I had imagined. What a delicious turn of the screw! Another turn was Joe's seething mood.

My penis remained small, I remained covered, and Joe and Dee soon went home. Angus and Hettie left shortly after them and Faith came down to see what I wanted. I uncovered myself and she put the mirror in place and left. I wasn't small now and felt as good as I'd earlier felt bad. Hettie, I was thinking, could hear me speak of my feeling as she drew, and would, hearing, respond--differently than Faith, but with the same ardently protective simplicity. It was I was ambivalent about my behavior. If I could accept myself as I was accepted, I'd know I wasn't duplicitously manipulating anyone into an unwanted sexual relationship.

Faith returned and gave me two more lines. "You can stay up one more half hour," she said, conspiratorial, knowing how much I liked what I was doing. She leaned over and kissed me, then hugged me. I realized later that, if she had had her eyes open when she hugged me, she'd been looking in the mirror, seeing what I usually see. An overwhelming truth about one's own erotic fantasies is that they can be as boring to everyone else as they are interesting to oneself. Faith was interested, though I still only guessed to what degree. I'd not said over and over again to her, “I feel love with you; this is love you help me feel." She'd not said “Feel your love, feel your love,” nor had she encouraged me to speak of what I felt. We acted naturally with one another, as though civilized. There had never been any indication from her I aroused her, nor would there ever be. Had her eyes been open?

I felt. I wrote. The day's pain had turned to pleasure, but it seemed likely that I’d pay for it. He was greedy for feeling. He was disgusting! Reckless. Stupid. Loved what he was doing.

My imagination was more explicit than usual: Joe was masturbating in the next room, his eye to the hole he had made in the wall. Dee was over Arthur, her sex against his face as he tasted her and nuzzled her clitoris and vagina with his nose, her face over his cock and balls. She had paused from sucking his erection and was looking into her glazed eyes in the mirror; a line of glistening drool connected her lips to the swollen red head of his stiff penis.

Hettie. Hettie too.

Greedy. He might again hurt soon. And, writing it, I did! Oh! The energy too much! The pain returned in a searing rush and I cried out and lay back with a groan. What had I expected? I'd expected no such waves of love and feeling as I'd felt. The pain had subsided some before Faith returned for the last time. She was annoyed because the tape of the movie she and Throck had been watching had broken several minutes short of the end, and she was tired. It was ten to four, not, as I'd unreasonably thought, two or two thirty, and I scribbled a few last notes in my notebook and had her help me lie back with just one pillow.

"Night, Babe," I said. "I love you."
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