LOVE NOTE Chapter 11: July 23-29, 1998. Part iii.

The day after the catheter change Faith waked me for chores about eleven.

"Ready for the day?" she asked.

"Mmm," I said doubtfully.

"I have your coffee," she said, and came around the bed to sit on its right side, as she often did.

I used the trapeze to pull up so I could lean on my right elbow. "You're good," I said, and as she put the coffee next to me on the bed I ran my left hand appreciatively over her breasts.

"My god," I said. "What am I doing?"

"Touching me inappropriately, I think," she said.

"Well said," I said, and we laughed.

I'd never touched her this way before and had liked it. I knew that I would make love to her if she wanted me to, but I also knew that she didn't want me to, had never wanted it, and probably never would. I'd been barely awake when I had surprised us both with my caress. I wanted very badly not to abuse her, but not so badly, it seemed, that I wasn't becoming ever more sexual with her. I didn't trust myself. Too, I did. I did not want to seduce her, willing as I was for her to seduce me. (When, August 26, two days after this book ends, I for the first and also last time asked her to sleep with me, she declined. Over the next twenty-seven months she took an increasingly active role in my love play, but we never did lie down or get naked with one another, nor would I touch her again as I had this morning.)

I was certain that I wouldn't write about the caress and had no sense that I was guiltily hiding what I'd done. I thought were I to sense guilt or shame, my certainty of silence would disappear; of guilt or shame, I knew I'd have to write. After chores were done I stayed in bed, read twenty pages of Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, and slept till three. When I waked, Faith and Throck were talking in the kitchen. I remembered my relief at my certainty I wouldn't write about this morning's caress. Didn't omitting the scene Bowdlerize Arthur's character? I knew I would write of it; my relief required it.

As I listened to Faith and Throck they excited me. I could never, I thought, characterize them as well as they were characterizing themselves as Peewee stood by the stove and Faith, cooking, wandered from sink to counter to refrigerator to stove. Their pleasure in each other's company reminded me of Jane and me when we had lived here.

"They lie because there's money to be made," said Throck.

They were talking about the politics of nuclear energy. Throck reminded me of myself, his earnestness, his anger at mistruth, his self-righteous tone.

I realized I was famished. "Will you make me toast?" I called in to the kitchen.

"Oh, you’re awake! What kind of toast?" Faith responded.

I felt a flash of annoyance. What kinds of bread did we have? Since I hadn’t said what kind I wanted, why didn't she just give me what came to hand? My annoyance was habitual and I despised it. Faith wanted to please me and I was lucky she wanted to; I bloody well ought to be willing to try to tell her how. Today the pause before my answer was undetectable. Sometimes it was prolonged. Bladder trouble and not enough sleep made me prone to being petty and unkind, and had I expressed my annoyance it would have been to imply her question stupid. I knew who was stupid here, and it wasn't her.

"Rye," I said energetically.

"Two?" she asked.

"Two," I said.

Done with my toast I got up and ate some of a home-made cherry cobbler that Hettie had dropped off while I was sleeping. Throck had gone upstairs and Faith and I were alone in the kitchen when without warning she lifted her dress above her waist and then, after a flash of legs and panties, let it fall back.

"That's the first time you've done that," I said.

"I can surprise you," she said. I wondered if what she had done was a response to how I had touched her in the morning; I guessed it was.

I still wasn't at my best but the catheter change had helped. In the evening Hettie came alone to continue working on the rattan rocker. The night before I'd (accurately?) noticed for the first time how much she looked like Anne. I'd always thought Hettie attractive, even pretty, had not thought Anne so, though she had certainly attracted me. Watching Hettie weave, I missed Anne.

Hettie got out a joint and as we were smoking the phone rang. It was my mother, calling to discuss arrangements for a visit I planned to make to Godwin August ten to fifteen. My inclination was to jib at some of her preparations, but, reminded of my annoyance when Faith had asked me what kind of toast I wanted, I caught myself; Florence's plans were good and though I was not glad that she'd gone to the trouble of making them, I was grateful. After the call, my penis/bladder pain suddenly intensified; I'd smoked too much and was uncomfortably high. I knew that for me marijuana intensified pain as often as it lessened it.

"We have something to finish," Hettie said as I returned from the phone. She held up the joint.

"I can't," I said.

"It does that," said Hettie, agreeing it was good pot. "Mothers do too," she added.

"She was planning travel arrangements," I said. "Clarence turns 40 in January but there’s going to be a birthday party for him while I’m there and there's a big poker game scheduled for the night before the party. The party and the game are gonna both be at his house. I’ll be staying at my sister Ruth’s about four miles away and Florence thinks we should hire a van to get me to and from the game and the party."

"My mother worries so much about how people will get where they have to," said Hettie. "When I was there last year she had it all planned out to the last detail." Probably, I reflected, both mothers remembered times detail had been neglected and they'd wished it hadn’t been.

I heard urine flow into the drainage bag hanging at my chair's side and reflected that I should get my urine checked to see if I had an infection brewing. I knew that the symptoms that had led me to have Faith change the catheter could have been caused not by a failing catheter but by a urinary tract infection (UTI). I had had a half-dozen violent, sweat-inducing spasms falling asleep last night. Such spasms, which had been relatively rare in recent years, weren't reassuring, but they also might mean nothing dire, just as my present pain might not be a sign I was due for trouble. I'd stayed up two hours, erect the whole time, after last seeing Faith last night; that alone, especially given my pre-existing tenderness, might have left my penis sore. Was my body telling me to leave my cock and sgurd alone for a while? Was I ignoring signs I should be heeding? Absolutely.

Sitting with Hettie I was relieved I'd not talked to her and Angus about her drawing me. I'd known I could have but I was glad I was under no pressure tonight to talk about my secret life. As Hettie was putting away her rattaning materials getting ready to leave, Faith and Throck, who had been off getting movies, were driving up. A day off, I thought, Hettie gone; another whole day without cocaine! I slept well.
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When it rained even a little the water at the farm came from the tap muddy. ("It doesn't get muddy compared to ours," Joe had said.) Last year Louie, Bert and Colleen's older son, had been sick one week, and Bert had criticized Colleen for letting the boys drink the well water; I'd then had it tested and it had flunked, though not by much. After we'd tried the recommended treatment, bleach in the well, the result of a re-test had been the same. Colleen and I, and now Faith and I, had started getting water from a local spring, but the Pattersons had drunk the water from the well all along with no ill effects; a third test, this spring, had revealed the coliform concentration remained marginally too high.

Stephens was Brian's boss (and teacher, Brian hungry to learn), a skilled 38-year-old carpenter who had done extensive work on the house; he had been one of the first locals to visit Wurts Farm the year it was established. This summer Brian had helped him connect the front and back decks with a deck that ran the whole west side of the house. It was functional and handsome. At the new stretch's back-porch end it was five feet off the ground, at the front, two, and I had had a trap door built above the well in case it ever had to be dug out. This morning and afternoon Angus and a friend had dug down to the top of the well, and tonight Angus and Joe and Brian and Steve were pulling the foot valve. I didn't understand exactly what they hoped to learn but didn't feel my understanding necessary.

An hour before sundown I was on the new stretch of deck. I'd put in a full day at the typewriter and now was drinking an Old Vienna short. The 60-foot black well-pipe lay to the west in the tall grass and Joe was inspecting the valve. "Looks pretty clean to me," he said. "Guess you'll just have to keep investigating." He laughed at the failure to find a correctable problem.

"Let's get it back down," said Angus.

"First I think I'll have a glass of water," Brian said.

Stephens and I soon moved indoors and talked about several small jobs I needed done, including some painting.

"I can do all that," he said. "Brian'll do the painting."

"He doesn't have much professional experience painting," I said, raising my voice in the hope Brian would overhear.

"I'm a good painter," Brian shouted from upstairs.

"Four bucks an hour's good enough for a guy like him," I added, now sure I was speaking loudly enough.
_____

I was still hurting and had gone to bed after a few lines. Angus and Hettie stayed a while and when they left I had Faith set me up. Alone, I held my scrotum stretched over my erection in a feminine position, my vulvar lips the delicate line where my scrotum's halves met. I imagined asking Faith to try to tape my scrotum to my belly, thus freeing my hand. I was curious to see myself so, as Violet. I did ask Faith, and as she tried (unsuccessfully), she said, “I know girls who get paid about $200 an hour to do this.”

I did not respond, neither protested nor inquired. Had she implied I was using her as an underpaid sex provider? It seemed to me she had, but I wasn't sure.

The next morning I thought "$200-an-hour" as soon as I waked. Throck was planning to leave in mid-August and I thought of Faith here alone, hammered at by my insensitivity, insulted by my dumb blind erections. I felt the fun had turned sour and knew I should ask her before I was up this morning about what she’d meant by what she'd said. I didn't but, hugging her, soon joked of her being underpaid, meaning her to refer it to her $200-an-hour remark. She seemed not to, but I kept worrying the edges of the subject, and a bit past noon she confessed that my yelling I'd only pay Brian $4 an hour because Brian wasn't an experienced painter had irked her.

"Four dollars an hour is more than I get paid and I think I do a damned good job," she said.

I was uncomfortable but glad that we were talking about it; to have merely let it pass without acknowledgment would have been wrong

"I only paid Colleen 150 a week last summer and she thought it was good pay," I said. "I'm giving you 200. You do do a damned good job. Do you think I should pay you more?"

"I hadn't thought so," she said, "but then I heard what you said and started thinking."

Reassured I valued her, she told me to relax and not to worry.

My urethra hurt all day and I went to the Alex Bay hospital to see the doctor again. I did no coke.

7/29. Tried to work on side A 7/21 tape. My voice again too small! AHLF disgusts me today.

Urethral pain has eased some but I’m determined to rest another day. My 4 did sgurd 8:30 to 11 tonight. I didn't but wanted to badly. I want to want my touch. I’ll do pot tomorrow, and my continued sgurd abstinence seems right now unlikely, though preferable medically. Two full "clean" days, no coke or alcohol--my longest abstinence in weeks!
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