John will look in on these nurses after hours in their studios and boardinghouses, in their chambers and parlors, but it’s only the very special nurses who in any way establish themselves at his attractive address. With the very special nurses John adopts a markedly different amatory style. This style I would designate as above all thorough. You could say it’s a return to his earlier mode, but ramified by increased stamina. There is a kind of duty roster of the things he needs to do. All that can be done will be done—generally right away, too. He seems to search their bodies. He seems to search their bodies, for undivulged openings, new incisions.
And guess who’s started showing up, intermittently to begin with but now on a twice-monthly basis. Irene. John took it coolly enough, but for me it was the tenderest agony, particularly at first. And the funny thing is: I thought I was more or less over Irene. I hadn’t been thinking about her that much, just a few times a day, and seldom imagined that I’d glimpsed her here or there on the street, on a bus, in the Superette, in the hospital, on a passing airplane five miles high. Over Irene? Fine chance. Maybe you’re doomed in the heart, as they say, and you’re never over your first love. And then this nightmare complication: I can’t stand the way he treats her. To him she is—how can I put this?—soon assimilated. She is instantaneously assimilated. The tiredest glance, the flattest smile assimilates her. It’s an impossible situation. John isn’t thorough with Irene. She should get so lucky. It’s one of those triangular things. I love her but she loves him and he loves no one. At night she lies there blinking with neglect. John lies folded over the other way. I burn for her.
The years have been kind to Irene, though she’s still a lot more tired and worn than even the roughest of our nurses. I note this, and harp on her imperfections, as a defense mechanism. Yes, I am always hopelessly trying to poison myself against her. She could certainly be tidier around the apartment, which is usually so spick-and-span when she arrives. I’m at one with John on this. We do abhor dust and dirt, and stains on the bathtub, and any kind of filth.
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Time passes. Cars are fatter and fewer, and imitate animals with their fins and wings.
Syringes are no longer disposable. At the hospital there’s generally a greater emphasis on make-do and catch-as-catch-can. We even use pipettes: so unhygienic. And they’ve phased out cottonoid, which is a drag.
The standing of doctors in society is higher than ever. We walk tall, no longer cowed by writs.
You don’t see cyclists wearing those doctor’s masks. There are no more warnings, on polleny days, for asthmatics and hay-fever sufferers.
Everyone smokes and drinks and messes around. No one works out.
Last week they came and took away my color TV. They gave me a black-and-white one. I made on the deal, but when I switched it on my first thought was: uh-oh. There goes world opinion.
But world opinion, as a force, went long ago, really. You can’t say exactly when it happened. After the moon shot, I remember, a little light went out in everybody’s head; suddenly the world seemed cozier, more local, fuggier. World opinion, on the other hand, disappeared slowly. Like dental self-consciousness. You see ogreish smiles all over the place these days, and nobody minds. People don’t mind so much what other people are like. So people can be what they are, not minding if others mind.
Clothes everywhere become more innocent. Everyone becomes more innocent, constantly forgetting. Central Park is cleaner but no safer. We are fewer.
Picture me now in the operating room, on the black tile floor, under the kettle lights, with a mild headache and half a hard-on, spooning tumor into the human body. I rest for a moment, availing myself of the leather bike seat on its stiff chrome stand. The scrub nurse, Nurse del Puablo, is giving me the eye. This is all she can give me, in her surgical yashmak. I have slept with her. So have Byron and Witney. Nurse del Puablo is widely and justly celebrated for her skilled hands, hot thighs and soft lips, her pretty belly, bad ass and good tits.