“I remember late one afternoon we were taking a bath together and he was complaining about his body. ‘Nobody wants to get old,’ I finally said to him. ‘But Ireally don’t don’t to the point that I don’t think I can survive it,’ was his reply. ‘We have to survive it. It’s selfish not to, Benton,’ I said. ‘And besides, we survived being young, didn’t we?’ Ha! He thought I was being ironic. I wasn’t. I asked him how many days of your youth were spent waiting for tomorrow? Because somehow tomorrow is going to be better? He thought about mis for a moment as he pulled me closer in the tub, touching and fondling me beneath the steamy cover of hot water scented with lavender. He knew exactly how to play me back in those days when our cells came alive instantly on contact. Back then, when it was good. ‘Yeah,’ he considered, ‘it’s true. I’ve always waited for tomorrow, thinking tomorrow’s going to be better. That’s survival, Kay. If you don’t think tomorrow or next year or the year after that will be better, why bother?’ ”
I stop for a moment, rocking. I tell Anna, “Well, he stopped bothering. Benton died because he no longer believed what was ahead was better than what was past. It doesn’t matter that it was another person who took his life. Benton was the one who decided.” My tears have dried and I feel hollow inside, defeated and furious. Feeble light touches my face as I stare into the afterglow of fire. “Fuck you, Benton,” I mutter to smoking coals. “Fuck you for giving up.”
“Is that why you had sex with Jay Talley?” Anna asks. “To fuck Benton? To pay him back for leaving you, for dying?”
“If so, it wasn’t conscious.”
“What do you feel?”
I try to feel. “Dead. After Benton was murdered… ?” I consider this. “Dead,” I decide. “I felt dead. I couldn’t feel anything. I think I had sex with Jay…”
“Not what you think. What you feel,” she gently reminds me.
“Yes. That was the whole thing. Wanting to feel, desperate to feel something, anything,” I tell her.
“Did making love with Jay help you feel something, anything?”
“I think it made me feel cheap,” I reply.
“Not what you think,” she reminds me again.
“I felt hunger, lust, anger, ego, freedom. Oh yes, freedom.”
“Freedom from Benton’s death, or perhaps from Benton? He was somewhat repressed, wasn’t he? He was safe. He had a very powerful superego. Benton Wesley was a man who did things properly. What was sex like with him? Was it proper?” Anna wants to know.
“Thoughtful,” I say. “Gentle and sensitive.”
“Ah. Thoughtful. Well, there is something to be said for that,” Anna says with a hint of irony that draws attention to what I have just revealed.
“It was never hungry enough, never purely erotic.” I am more open about it. “I have to admit that many times I was thinking while we were having sex. It’s bad enough to think while talking to you, Anna, but one shouldn’t think while making love. There should be no thoughts, just unbearable pleasure.”
“Do you like sex?”
I laugh in surprise. No one has ever asked me such a thing. “Oh yes, but it varies. I’ve had very good sex, good sex, okay sex, boring sex, bad sex. Sex is a strange creature. I’m not even sure what I think of sex. But I hope I’ve not had the premier grand cm of sex.” I allude to superior Bordeaux. Sex is very much like wine, and if the truth be told, my encounters with lovers usually end up in the village section of the vineyard: low on the slope, fairly common and modestly priced nothing special, really. “I don’t believe I’ve had my best sex yet, my deepest, most erotic sexual harmony with another person. I haven’t, not yet, not at all.” I am rambling, speaking in stops and starts as I try to figure it out and argue with myself about whether I even want to figure it out. “I don’t know. Well, I guess I wonder how important it should be, how important it is.”