jerk

"don't get you nowhere, don't make you a man."
--John Lennon

Is forty-three too old to be pulling yourself off in the shower? Married twenty-one years. She is asleep just a few feet away. We literally haven't touched in three, maybe four years. There was a time when I used to keep track -- two months since we had had sex, and so on. Then one day I knew there was nothing to keep track of, because it wasn't a matter of when she might yield again. I would not ask. I no longer wanted her, or at least I no longer wanted to be dependent on her sexually. Years of bitter, brutal verbal attack against my supposed shortcomings had finally worn me down. I had decided, or rationalized, that she had broken the commitment of mutual respect, and I would not have her. If she ever initiated.

So here I am in the shower, hot water pouring down my neck, lathering it with soap, pulling at it, trying to work up an erection. When I was seventeen, if I simply closed my eyes and imagined the curve of a girl's breast, the upper reach of her thigh, the penis would immediately spring up, nodding, searching. If she were here in the shower with me now, it would probably be the same, though I have determined to refuse her if she ever asks. The male is helpless. But the penis is slow to respond to this mechanical, deliberate approach.

I have put a fair amount of study into this business over the years. Fingers wrapped loosely, tightly, fingers open, left hand, right hand, both, the hand turned around with the fingers away, sitting, standing, kneeling, crouching, on one knee, with one foot braced against the wall, fingers of the other hand stroking the pubic bone, the anus. Flexing the knees so the thighs remain loose and the tremble arrives more slowly. In the end, there is only the twitch and the spill and the shrinking. The semen washes down the shower drain.

When I used to put all of my energy into helping her reach orgasm, fingers and tongue, with my penis searching but not finding, I learned to take my pleasure in the intensity of being on the verge. Ejaculation was irrelevant. Often (if she did not fall asleep), she would insist on taking me inside after her orgasm had subsided and she could tolerate touch again, but the twitch and the spill were always an anticlimax (no pun intended) after an hour or two on the edge. Sometimes I would masturbate beforehand, telling myself that the delay not just in achieving a second erection but in building to a second ejaculation would enable me to include insertion (if she wanted it) in the work on her orgasm without running the risk of my coming too early. What would actually happen is that I would lose that intensity of focus that precedes ejaculation, and I was less able to concentrate on building her orgasm.

There is more to the male orgasm than ejaculation. There is delay, and building up, and holding back -- trying to resist the helpless tremble and spill -- and there is variety in stimulation that a vagina alone cannot offer. I suspect that very few males over the age of about seventeen (when petting often edges up to, but then pulls back from ejaculation), certainly very few married men, frequently experience an intense orgasm.

When it used to matter, I used to think that masturbation was an act of infidelity toward her. I have no difficulty living within very definite rules that I set for myself. I stopped smoking at her request more than fifteen years ago. Cold. Five years ago, when I got drunk at a party within a few days after losing my job, and our kids saw me throwing up and stumbling and basically acting like an idiot, I quit alcohol altogether. I had never been a frequent drinker, simply an abuser on the occasions -- once or twice a year -- that I did drink. In the same way, I have never entertained any serious thoughts about having sexual contact with another woman since we have been married. I have put the matter off limits and therefore it is not a problem.

But I have made no rules for myself concerning masturbation. It is not like when I was a teenager, jerking off two or three times a day. This is maybe once or twice a month (like sex used to be). And despite all the techniques I have worked on, it is usually jerk, spill, and shrink, sometimes while I am shaving with the other hand.

Actually, it *is* an act of infidelity. The time I spend masturbating (or thinking about masturbation) is time I have not spent anticipating her needs or the kids' needs or planning somehow to put more bread on the table. But then I think, I am not a very, very bad person. I step and fetch for her all the goddamn time. And still she shrieks at me if I put the wrong load in the washer or forget to start the frozen lasagna. Calls me horrible, horrible names. Accuses me of stealing her life from her, getting her pregnant on purpose (seventeen years ago) so she could not go to graduate school, keeping her from having enough money to have any of the things she wants. As if I had any of the things I want. What is there to be faithful to.

I am telling myself that what I need is a good hand job. The vagina is certainly better than my own hand, but it does not give enough attention to detail. The ridge below the glans, the scar tissue from the circumcision. And the mouth can be too intense, not that anyone is offering. What I need is someone else using her fingers on my penis. In my limited imagination someone much smaller than the woman sleeping nearby, a short, dark-haired woman of maybe twenty-five with very slight breasts, is pulling me off with slender, bony fingers, our mouths pressed together, my fingers playing in the wet hair and lips of her tight, fresh vagina. Not yet, not yet.

But the problem with doing it yourself is that there is no disconnect between the central nervous system that is driving the hand and the one that is responding through the penis. The penis already knows what the hand is doing. Delay and holding back are not the same when it is your own hand.

And the shower is running and you have finished shaving and it is time to just spill and get it over with.

just checking

I want you to imagine that someone is handing you a check. And this check represents compensation for, quote unquote, work you have done over the past two weeks. Work you might not particularly enjoy. Compensation for the eighty or ninety or a hundred hours that you might otherwise have spent . . . reading the great American novel, whatever that might be, or trying to write it -- or, if your taste runs in a different direction, reading about the systematic dismantling of the social welfare state, such as it has existed in rudimentary fragments in this country for sixty or so years, or organizing an effort to oppose this. Time you might otherwise have spent listening to music, or playing it, cultivating your friendships, preparing and eating organic, whole foods. Eating out your girlfriend.

And now I want you to imagine that before you even deposit this check in your bank account, you already know where every nickel of it is going, that the bills are already coming due, that you have already written some of the checks, that you are playing the float. Sure, a lot of it is lifestyle stuff -- the cable bill, the minimum payment on the credit card purchase of Ikea furniture -- but still, you are living, as they say, paycheck to paycheck. And losing ground.

Eighteen or twenty percent interest on the credit cards, the occasional late payment fee. Sometimes you play the float and lose, and end up paying the bank twenty-five dollars on a bounced check.

Or to take it a step further, imagine that the bills that are coming due are not what most of us usually think of as "lifestyle stuff," but rent, groceries, electricity and water bills, keeping the phone in the wall. Liability coverage -- not casualty, just liability -- on the car, because you can't quite give up the car just yet.

Or imagine that you have played the float one too many times and you can no longer maintain a checking account -- that you have to take the paycheck to your employer's bank and maybe pay a fee for turning it into cash. That you have to buy a cashier's check or a money order to pay the rent. That you have to pay the electricity bill by hand. The car is gone, and you are dependent on public transportation.

A lot of people live like this. Maybe some people in this room, certainly some people on the street just outside that window.

And now I want you to imagine that you have somehow gotten past this, that you have found work you actually enjoy doing that pays just enough to cover the rent and the groceries, the occasional bicycle repair, and that allows you time to read and write, to listen to music, to be with your friends.

Imagine there's no heaven.

interrogatory 11

Interrogatory 11:

State whether petitioner intends to claim marital misconduct on the part of respondent, and if so, state in substance and detail each instance of marital misconduct petitioner intends to claim.

Answer:

Petitioner does not allege that the division of marital property should be affected by the conduct of either of the parties, nor does petitioner make any claim for maintenance. Therefore, petitioner would suggest that the details of the parties' emotional life over twenty-odd years are not relevant to this proceeding.

If an issue is to be made in this proceeding on the question of "misconduct" on the part of one or the other party -- and petitioner here reiterates that he does not intend to make this an issue -- petitioner would state

(a) that he was subjected to almost continuous psychological and emotional duress throughout the entire course of the marriage -- literally from day one --, mostly taking the form of respondent verbally belittling petitioner and attempting to persuade him (actually, with considerable success), through constant repetition of the idea -- almost always in direct reference to the fact that petitioner was not producing enough income to satisfy her material "needs" -- that he was a selfish and unloving person, and petitioner would further state

(b) that there were instances of physical abuse -- in particular, an occasion on which respondent required petitioner to sit on a bench in the parties' family room while she struck him repeatedly with a broomstick over the course of about half an hour. The date of this occurrence would have been sometime in the mid- to late 1990s (it seems to petitioner that the parties' daughter was away at college). Respondent gave petitioner to understand that he was not to attempt to defend himself (as, for example, by grabbing the broomstick), because this would be characterized by respondent as abusive behavior on his part, i.e., a threatened attack on her, and in fact, when petitioner attempted to cover his genitals with his hand, respondent struck his hand with the broomstick (bruising his thumb and impairing its mobility for several days afterward), and then struck his genitals at least twice.

Throughout this incident, the parties' son was in his bedroom, immediately adjoining the family room, within earshot. Respondent had instructed him to remain in his room, with the door closed. Occasionally, while she was beating petitioner, she would cry out phrases like "don't hit me."

Petitioner does not allege that the physical aspect of this incident was at all typical, though it was (and is) not at all uncommon for respondent to claim that any expression by petitioner of disagreement with her was (or is) a form of emotional or psychological abuse, and on the rare occasions -- quite early in the marriage -- when the parties would engage in something resembling a mild physical struggle, respondent would shriek and fall to the floor if petitioner made any effort at all to deflect her blows, as by grabbing her wrist.

On the day that petitioner finally left the marital residence, almost three years ago, to begin a separation that both parties had agreed was necessary and almost certainly permanent, with the moving truck already in the driveway, respondent threatened to call the police to report that petitioner was stealing the few items of furniture, etc., that he was taking (and which the parties had agreed he should take) unless petitioner not only provided to her the address and telephone number of his new apartment (which he had already provided to the parties' son), but did so on his knees with an expression of abject apology. Petitioner complied with this demand in order to get out of the situation.

Petitioner does allege that this behavior on the part of respondent was entirely typical.

It is not clear what the phrase "marital misconduct" as used in the interrogatory means, but in any event (if this is what is meant) petitioner does not allege that respondent engaged in any act of sexual infidelity during the time the parties cohabited, nor does petitioner allege that respondent appropriated any marital property to herself or concealed any transactions involving marital property from petitioner. Petitioner would describe the last eight to twelve years of the parties' cohabitation as essentially sexless, and would state that for several years before that the parties had sexual relations much less frequently than three or four times a year, but petitioner does not allege that this in itself constitutes misconduct on respondent's part.

Interrogatory 12:

State whether petitioner has ever engaged in marital misconduct, and if so, state (a) the date of each instance of marital misconduct, (b) the person with whom each instance of marital misconduct was performed, (c) the method and means by which you initiated contact with each person with whom petitioner engaged in marital misconduct, and (d) the whereabouts of the parties' minor children during each instance of marital misconduct.

Answer:

Petitioner objects to this interrogatory on the grounds (a) that the phrase "marital misconduct" is not defined, and thus could conceivably include almost anything, (b) that respondent has not alleged misconduct in her counter-petition, and (c) that misconduct cannot be an issue in the division of marital property, as petitioner has left essentially all marital property in possession of respondent and is making no claim for anything resembling an equal division of marital property.

Subject to this objection, petitioner states that he does not believe that he has engaged in "marital misconduct." Petitioner acknowledges that on one occasion, sometime in the late 1990s, in the course of a verbal argument with respondent, he screamed "shut up" quite a number of times, with his face very close to hers. Thereafter, respondent claimed that petitioner had caused damage to her ear, for which she claimed that she had received medical treatment, but petitioner has seen no documentary evidence of this.

mislaid object spread

L.

So there I was at the cafe, on my way back from the courthouse, coming down, and I thought, why not do a lost object spread -- actually, a mislaid object spread, on that HRC logo singlet I cannot find -- and see what I get. I improvised a three-card spread and had already laid the three cards up

position 2 ace cups/position 1 ace pentacles/position 3 (6) lovers

before I realized that I had not assigned any values to the positions.

I had a fleeting impression, turning up the aces, of our first stay at C.'s in Ann Arbor, after you had been in Canada quite a number of weeks. The separation anxieties between us, the urgent sex.

But I had nothing in this spread to say, for example, this card represents your relationship with the object, this card, what was going on when you mislaid it, and this card over here, how you are going to find it -- though those particular assignments did seem to come forward, so I adopted them. But still I could not make much sense of the spread, so I drew three explanatory cards, and the resulting six-card spread looked like this

ace cups/ace pentacles/(6) lovers

two swords/queen pentacles, reversed/three wands, reversed

The pair of aces connecting with the two of swords, and also suggesting (1) magician and/or (2) high priestess. The net minus one among the pips in the lower row maybe suggesting (-1) magician, reversed, the upper row balancing the lower row in this way. Shadow card, knight of pentacles, reversed, connecting somehow to the reversed queen of pentacles in position 4.

This image had to seep in for several hours before it began to say something like:

The singlet was a physical object to which you had attached meanings connected with your tendency toward impracticalities. What was going on when you mislaid it had to do with an emerging intimacy and with some kind of avoidance. Which could be read somehow as referring to the time in Ann Arbor -- certainly invites me to re-think that time, as it may tell me something about where I am, or we are, now (at this point, the reading almost does not seem to be about the singlet at all).

So then what about (6) lovers and three wands, reversed? ethical issues in an intimate relationship, the sense of forward movement at an ebb. Then or now? or is that the perpetual backward look I am always giving this relationship, impeding spontaneity . . . not necessarily very constructive thinking, but the kind of reverie the cards often put me in. But the benefit is, maybe, you can see the mindfuck itself laid out there in the cards, objectified, as a sort of graphic, lying on the table. Shadow knight pentacles, reversed. I do feel I am learning to look back without regret.

Okay, so where is the singlet?

I am going to e-mail C. and ask her whether it turned up when she was packing to move.

zb