Larry's Party (40 page)
“Because you want the house to yourself. Admit it.”
“All right, I admit it.”
“A man these days is no more than an infrastructure for a penis and a set of testicles.”
“That’s not true! Tell me it’s not true.”
“That’s all that’s required of us. Our bodies are just walking, talking envelopes designed to contain our paltry store of genetic tissue.”
“Who says we’ve come to that?”
“Well,” Beth offers, somewhat irrelevantly, “an apple’s no more than a thickened ovary wall that - ”
“Next time I bite into an apple I’ll remember that.”
“A man today—”
“What we all really want is to marry the men we’d be if we were men.”
“Pardon?”
“Be serious, Ian,” Midge says. She joins her palms to form a basket. An empty basket that wants filling. “You can see we really want to know.” She’s leaning forward so that the candlelight, flatteringly, colors half her face. Larry remembers that his sister is about to turn fifty. Her tone is only mildly mocking.
“All right, then. I’ll be serious. But you ought to be warned that I wouldn’t call myself a typical man.”
“And I’m certainly not one either.”
“And I wouldn’t say that I am -”
“Typical, never.”
“Methinks thou dost protest too -”
“We’re waiting, Ian.”
“All right, all right. Today, and I think you’ll agree, a man’s position has become entirely reactive. We have to take our signals from women or we’re out of the game.”
“Backlash! Hmmm. But go on.”
“Being a man in 1997 means walking on eggshells. I don’t dare tell a woman that she looks nice anymore. That I like the color of her dress or the way she’s changed her hair. They’d have me up for sexual harassment.”
“Whoever they are.”
“But this isn’t what it’s about, is it? Compliments. Courtesies. Whether or not to open a door for a woman.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Partly that is what it’s about.”
“It’s a smoke-screen.”
“I’ve found the most marvelous hairdresser, the nicest, most brilliant little man, I’d be happy to give you the name—”
“I’m a little tired,” Ian says, “of men always being buffoons. They’re buffoons on TV, buffoons in movies, and in books - they’re goofs, they’re weak in the balls, they’re the butt of every joke.”
“But maybe they really are. Buffoons, I mean.”
“What ever happened to men who had dignity and courage?”
“Oh, they’re still around, those men, but they’re ... they’re just a little bit -”
“Corny?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And that’s why,” Ian continues, “I’ve been walking on eggshells since about 1980.”
“But,” Dorrie says, leaning forward, “how much do you
mind
walking on eggshells?”
mind
walking on eggshells?”
“Good point.”
“I agree with Dorrie. You shouldn’t damn well mind at all.”
“That’s not quite what I mean. I mean—”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that walking on eggshells just means - ordinary kindness.”
“And respect!”
“For women—”
“And men.”
“Eggshells all around, you mean.”
“Something like that.”
“It could just be that it’s men’s turn to
major
in eggshells.”
major
in eggshells.”
“Male sensitivity. Hmmmm.”
“I’m not sure I go along with that, Beth. Aren’t you being just a little bit sweeping in your -?”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
“Me too.”
“Maybe you misunderstood me. It’s not a question of minding. It’s a question of confusion. Of being off-balance half the time.”
“What do you think, Garth?”
“I haven’t thought much about it, to tell the truth.”
“I knew you’d say that, Garth. I could absolutely depend on you not to have thought about it. Let me tell you what Garth thinks about. He gets up in the morning and he starts -”
“Easy does it, Marcia.”
“But it’s to be expected,” Beth perseveres. “Confusion is the natural climate - the only climate for the post-feminist age.”
“I wonder why people always talk about the post-feminist age,” Charlotte muses. “As though we’re already there. As though we’ve already got there -”
“Good point, Charlene.”
“It’s Charlotte.”
“Right, sorry, Charlotte. But my point - well, it’s not so much a point as a -”
“I would so very much like to hear your point. In Spain we -” “My point is that we - both men and women - ought to cherish this period of confusion. Our present period of discomfiture — well, it’s a great and ecstatic gift. We’ve had 5000 centuries of perfect phallic clarity. Everyone knew the script. Men buttoned themselves into their power costumes -”
“But at least we all knew who we were and what was allowed.”
“Will you shut up, Garth, for God’s sake. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Lighten up, Marcia.”
“What if I don’t want to lighten up?”
“—the first half of the century was packed with evil, the second half with emptiness—”
“So men stood in their upright posture -”
“Erect!”
“Ha.”
“—and—”
“And womans? What about womans?”
“Women walked around the edges.”
“Very, very quietly.”
“Tell
me about it. Garth always -”
me about it. Garth always -”
“Women
tiptoed
on eggshells.”
tiptoed
on eggshells.”
“Ouch.”
“Is that all you can say, Larry? Ouch.”
“I just meant - ”
“Do you know what my mother told me before Larry and I got married? She said, ‘If you want to keep him from straying’ - I was wife number two, remember ‘don’t gain more than ten pounds. In your whole married life. Ten is the maximum allotment.”’
“Omigod, I’ve already—”
“My
mother - this was before Derek and I got married - she said a wife should send her husband off to work every day with a clean white handkerchief that she’d washed and ironed herself. That was his calling card to the world. And the handkerchief was her contribution to his success.”
mother - this was before Derek and I got married - she said a wife should send her husband off to work every day with a clean white handkerchief that she’d washed and ironed herself. That was his calling card to the world. And the handkerchief was her contribution to his success.”
“And did you? Do the hanky thing?”
“I did. Oh, lordy, I bought all the bromides. There was a steady parade of handkerchiefs until the day Derek died, damn him. And goddamn all those handkerchiefs too. If I had it to do over again I’d do a ritual burning—”
“Bromide! A good Scrabble word.”
“Did you know that if you put all the world’s Scrabble tiles in a row, they’d go twice around the earth.”
“My mother said to me that there was one thing a husband wouldn’t tolerate and that was pantyhose dripping on the shower rail. So when Larry and I got married back in seventy-eight, and bought our house on Lipton Street, I made a trip down to the dark basement every single night, just before bed, so I could hang my pantyhose on the clothesline.”
“Whisked out of sight!”
“I never knew that, Dorrie. I wouldn’t even have noticed if you’d—”
“Maybe not consciously, but Dorrie’s mother knew how these things accumulate -”
“And get added to the resentment that’s already in the bank. The inexorable adding machine.”
“What resentment is this?”
“Yeah.”
“The natural hatred men feel for women once the women have done their reproductive duty. It’s Darwinian.”
“I love women.”
“So do I. Marcia and I -”
“But have you noticed the way men hog the armrest on airplanes? Sorry to be so petty, but it’s like women don’t have an arm that they’d maybe like to - rest.”
“I must say, if you kind people will permit me, that I find the sight of a woman’s, how do you say it? - pantyhose? - I find this sight quite, well very -”
“Erotic?”
“Ah, yes, indeed, e-ro-tic.”
“And so my lucky brother’s virgin eyes were never once assaulted by the nasty and unbearable sight of dripping -”
“My
mother gave me just one piece of advice before Garth and I got married. Don’t ever embarrass your husband in public. No husband will stand for it.”
mother gave me just one piece of advice before Garth and I got married. Don’t ever embarrass your husband in public. No husband will stand for it.”
“Oh.”
“So that’s why we’re in therapy as I speak.”
“Marcia, for God’s sake -”
“I can’t seem to stop embarrassing him. It’s like an addiction. Something I’ve got to do.”
“We all have some form of addiction. Where I work we—”
“But you haven’t heard the worst part. The worst part is that he loves being embarrassed in public. He sort of, you know, solicits it. He thrives on it, as you’ve probably noticed. That’s
his
addiction.”
his
addiction.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well, my mother didn’t give me any pre-marital counseling—”
“Lucky you, Midge.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I might have done a whole lot better with a little sage, targeted advice.”
“More lamb?”
“It’s absolutely delicious.”
“It’s the marinade.”
“All I meant to say is that men and women at the end of our century should treat this period of uncertainty as an experiment. We can try things out. Men can cook up a batch of soup if they want and not have to give up their penises.”
“They can even stir it with their penises.”
“Ouch.”
“I don’t believe this! We’re back on the subject of soup.”
“And penises.”
“I only meant it as a metaphor.”
“If only we could live our lives backwards, taking advantage of our accumulated knowledge. Wasn’t it Kierkegaard who said -?”
“Who?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure, I’d have to look that up.”
“I have to agree with Beth. In the company I work for - we make greeting cards -”
“Dorrie’s being modest. She heads up this company that -”
“ — we’re trying to move toward a less gendered kind of thing. Our baby cards, for instance. The old pink and blue standards are giving way to yellows and greens. A baby’s a person, not a he or she. And as for valentines, we’re attempting to enlarge the market for women-to-men cards. Or cards for the gay sector.”
“Who?”
“More wine, Marcia?”
“Just a little. Just half. I have to be careful not to—”
“That’s certainly the way I intend to bring up this child of mine when it’s born. I hope to treat it like a person right from the beginning. And by the way, it’s a boy. I had the test. A boy who’s going to grow up to be a man, whatever that means. He’s pencilled in for all that raw male aggression and rage - ”
“I don’t know that that’s true, that men -”
“Well, I distinctly remember Larry telling me when we were first married that he spent great swaths of time wanting to punch people in the nose.”
“Swaths? Did I say that? Maybe now and then, but not -”
“I don’t think, as a man, that I’ve ever wanted to punch people out -”
“That’s what you say, Ian, but why is it when you’re at a traffic light and the light turns green, you insist on being the first car off the mark?”
“Not the same thing as a nose punch.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“In my country we never—”
“Is it just testosterone or something even more embedded? I mean—”
“Oh, my God, the secrets men keep from women. And women from men.”
“It breaks the heart.”
“But does it really? I mean really?”
“Maybe it’s better that way.”
“No. No, it’s not.”
“A man’s journey is different than a woman’s—”
“Anyway, this baby of mine is going to be a person first and a man second.”
“Good luck. But let me warn you, it’s like trying to climb up a grass blade to achieve what you’re looking for.”
“What an anxious society we are. Anxious about politics, about gender roles, about—”
“Tell us about — about your - your baby, Beth.”
“You mean who the father is?”
“Well, yes.”
“Sperm bank. I’ve wanted a baby for years, as Larry knows. But, well, it didn’t happen. And so last year I decided to apply for, for technological assistance.”
“Amazing what they do these days - but how, how does one go about choosing?”
“You get a little catalogue with all the donors listed. It describes racial background, height, education, one or two special interests, and so on.”
“Just imagine if we applied for marriage partners like that.”
“Go on, Beth.”
“The first one I applied for was out.”
“Out?”
“Out of stock.”
“Oh.”
“I hope you people won’t mind if I put my head down on the table for a few minutes, I’ve got an excruciating headache.”
“Marcia’s had a rotten week.”
“Don’t give me that suffering squint - pu-lease.”
“Maybe you’d like to lie down. In the bedroom.”
“No, no, the table’s fine.”
“At least let me move your plate out of the way.”
“Out of stock, you said.”
“So I found another donor I liked almost as well.”
“But won’t you always wonder what that other would have produced?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll be too busy to think. That’s what everyone tells me.”
“To bring up a child alone, well, that can not be so very easy. In my country, we -”
“At first I thought I could handle it. I was invincible. Then I started to wonder.”
“Second thoughts. That’s certainly understandable.”
“But I can’t really allow myself second thoughts, can I? I have to think of workable strategies now that I’m getting into the motherhood business.”
“Larry says you’re here for meetings.”
“In a way. But I’ve got an interview on Monday morning. At the University of Toronto.”
“Really?”
“They’re looking for someone in Women’s Studies.”
“So you mean - you mean you’d actually consider leaving England and moving to Toronto?”
“It’s a beautiful city.”
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