Wordsmoker

Noon: Have you read this article? It’s diabolical! Elise slapped it down on the little table we were sharing in this dingy, off-campus coffee shop. We were here because Elise didn’t want to be seen. I glanced down at the photocopied bundle that had nearly knocked over my gritty iced espresso. Oh right, that one. “Adultery,” by Laura Kipnis. I strove to be sympathetic when I spoke. Oh, Elise, Why Are You Torturing Yourself Like This? I Thought You Decided To Just Focus On The Text In Your Ulysses Class This Year, No Articles. I know, and I have, but I just can’t get this thing out of my head, I needed to exorcize it by talking about it. Besides, isn’t this what Molly’s monologue is all about? I feel like I need to confront it head-on, get it all on the table, try to defend fidelity, you know? How is this not literature and theory being deployed in the name of selfishness, of heedless disregard for responsibility, for other people’s feelings, for a privileging of fleeting bliss over lasting bonds? You know, Buddhists say that—What Has Barry Done To You Now, Lise? I cut in, desperate to avoid the cavalcade of New Age bullshit that was about spill from her mouth along with her wicked coffee breath. And Anyway, You Can’t Let Some Bitch Who Got Famous Bragging About How Preferring Hustler Over Playboy Makes Her Some Kind Of Working-Class Hero Get You Down. But this last was probably said in vain, because Elise had started to cry. Good lord, that bastard did something else? He’d already left her for that sanctimonious moral philosopher, he’d already sued for custody of their kid, he’d already spread rumors that she was frigid, maybe even a lesbian – one of the reasons we were meeting here in this crappy café with its chipping tables and rickety chairs was because she couldn’t risk being seen with me, an idea that I found pretty insulting as I sat there across from her overwhelming dowdiness. But as loathsome as I found her ex and his Kant-y paramour, it was hard to sympathize with her new crusade against cheating in all its forms, her insistence on putting one’s partner’s needs over one’s own, on devaluing pleasure and overvaluing security and structure. And it was hard to ignore the lingering memory my fingers held of the fleeting pleasures they’d encountered the previous night, the supple folds and satiny surfaces, the secret curls and tufts, the slippery scent of their moistening. Read the rest of this entry →