CHAPTER NINE

 

There goes another novel.

-- Honoré de Balzac, referring to ejaculation

 

Here on this idyllic little Caribbean island I’ve started making a list of women I’ve had sex with, along with a few details about how it went. Anecdotes, some sordid, some not. Mostly sordid. Here’s one.

In the late 1980s, producer Steve Friedman (The Last Picture Show, Slap Shot, among others) and I were working with actor Jon Voight on a screenplay of mine that Steve had optioned and that Jon loved and wanted to star in. I was living on the oceanfront at Venice Beach, California, just down the boulevard from Hollywood itself. I’d made money writing, had a Porsche. A bachelor on the hunt, big shot Hollywood screenwriter. A real jerk. I get a date with this aspiring actress who lives in the next building. We go out for dinner then I bring her back to my apartment. It’s touch and go, me wanting to touch, she wanting to go. Phone rings. I let the machine pick up. It’s Jon Voight; you can’t mistake that voice.

"Hi, Allan, it’s Jon. Read the new draft. Allan… you’re the real thing." Click. (I remember this verbatim because the timing was so good in terms of my immediate agenda.)

No more touch and go. It was all over but the moaning in my apartment on Venice Beach.

Here’s something about comedy/humor/whatever you want to call it, of which I hope there will be some in this narrative: The root of it is almost always obsession, someone’s obsession. A desire that gets out of hand. A good example is the movie There’s Something About Mary. Holy shit, what a funny movie. Based, of course, on everyone’s obsession with this beautiful woman, Mary. Or A Fish Called Wanda, in which each character has his own oddball obsession. (The image of my demented editor spending red-eyed days combing this book for hyphen-mistakes comes to mind.)

With obsession as the root of humor it almost doesn’t matter what the obsession is, only that you believe; believe in the sense that the character believes. My first book, Cosmic Banditos, is a good example. In it, the protagonist – a mentally unbalanced guy strongly based on me – becomes obsessed with quantum physics. Which sets off a chain of events that alters the lives of everyone he comes into contact with. It’s a very funny book.

The other thing about comedic obsessions is that the obsessed sap is unsuccessful in dealing with his obsession. This was the case with me when I got back from Central America in 1998 and then while I was living with Mom. I was obsessed with sex, with getting laid, and was unsuccessful in dealing with it – nothing I would do had the result I expected and hoped for.

My making a list of women I’ve had sex with is an offshoot of my obsession from back then, I think, and which has surfaced again. It’s surfaced again because of another little sexual fiasco, like the Cat Woman Incident, this one having to do with Lisa. Hold on. Little fiasco? Forget little. Were I to put a title to this one, it’d be "The Horror."

Some backstory. Lisa and I have been together for a total of 57 days, meaning 57 nights, actually. Meaning since we started having sex. Once we started we pretty much never stopped. One reason for this is that Lisa and I have known each other for five years and were attracted to each other that whole time, although we didn’t do anything about it. So the pressure had been building.

For about the first 40 days/nights we had sex an average of once per 24 hour period. (The average would be higher except we had a couple sick days, plus one day when Lisa had to "rest.") A fairly high but not outlandish frequency. The first explosion of passion, all that. But lately we’ve been having sex on average twice per 24 hour period, maybe more. This is not counting "take fives", which is a concept Lisa came up with. Means that if one of us says "Let’s take five," we drop whatever we’re doing and have five minutes’ worth of sex. Or more than five minutes’ worth. According to Lisa, there are no hard and fast rules to take fives, notwithstanding that it sounds like there are. I mean, five minutes should be five minutes, no?

So, counting take fives, we’re now having sex at least three times per 24 hour period. Even since The Horror. Hold on. Especially since The Horror. Not only that, but since the beginning the sex itself has gradually improved in quality. Started out great, even the very first time, then moved on to better than great. An example of how it got better than great is that during the sex we had for the three days immediately after The Horror I didn’t have an orgasm. We had all kinds of sex, all over the place – once surreptitiously in public view – plus several take fives per 24 hour period, and I didn’t have an orgasm. If this doesn’t sound like great sex, let alone better than great, hang in with me and I’ll explain.

I love making love to Lisa so much that I don’t need to have an orgasm. I don’t want to. I don’t want to because I don’t want to have that period of time right afterwards wherein I don’t want to make love to her any more.

Women may think they know about this period of time after a guy has an orgasm but they don’t. If they did know about it, really know about it, they probably would never have sex with us.

There’s a great scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove. (With the possible exception of Tootsie, Doctor Strangelove is the funniest movie of all time. Oh, and Some Like It Hot is up there.) The Sterling Hayden character, who is in the process of ending the world, is telling Peter Sellers (in one of his multiple roles) about when he first became aware of the international communist conspiracy to sap our bodily fluids. "It was during the physical act of love, Mandrake," he says. "A profound sense of fatigue, of loss of essence."

A profound sense of fatigue, of loss of essence.

Yes, that’s it! In Doctor Strangelove this guy-moment-after-orgasm would ultimately result in the end of life on earth. For me, it results in a moment wherein I don’t want to make love to Lisa any more.

The origin of this guy-moment-after-orgasm is an evolutionary one, I’m quite sure, going back to our early ancestors. Once a guy planted his seed, there was no reason to hang in there any longer. His reproductive job was over, immediately, as soon as he went boom. So, evolutionarily speaking, as soon as he went boom he was either up and off to kill his next mastodon, or asleep, in order to rest up to kill his next mastodon. A result of this was that the first thing that came into his mind, immediately after an orgasm (and immediately after a profound sense of fatigue, of loss of essence) but before he actually got up or went to sleep, was something about killing his next mastodon. Where he might find it, how he might kill it. Something like that.

I myself don’t actually think about mastodons after having an orgasm, by the way. What I do think about after having an orgasm is this. I mean literally this, this narrative, this book I’m writing. Or whatever I happen to be writing at the time. I go from some degree of passion and desire and animal lust (with Lisa all three are off the scale) to a profound sense of fatigue, of loss of essence, then quickly to the pondering of something about whatever I happen to be writing at that time. So with Lisa I avoid having an orgasm. Even though I wouldn’t actually get up and leave – or even want to – I don’t want to be thinking about what I’m writing while we’re in bed together, let alone mastodons.

An offshoot of my avoidance of having an orgasm with Lisa is that when I eventually do have one, it’s a doozey. Or even a double doozey. The third day after The Horror, for example, after not having had an orgasm for those three days, I had a double orgasm. I went boom, and then a couple minutes later went BOOM.

At this point you may be thinking – you should be thinking – that this isn’t bad for a 55-year-old guy who has been on the sexual sidelines a while: The Cat Woman period, my time taking care of Mom, and so forth. I read somewhere that women tend to hit the peak of sexual desire at around 40. Lisa is 39, so with her all this screwing makes sense. Guys, according to this same article, hit the peak at about 19 and commence a decline from there.

So what’s up with me?

Please pay attention here, because I’m trying to connect a lot of stuff, tie up loose ends, including the What’s up with me? question, and then get on with the actual The Horror itself.

The Jon Voight-getting-laid-at-Venice-Beach anecdote occurred to me immediately after the double doozey orgasm I just mentioned, while I was lying there with Lisa, cuddling or whatnot, and pretending to be concentrating on her when actually I was working on my mental list of women I’ve had sex with, which I’d already started, and which I figured would somehow fit into this narrative. By the way, this goes to one reason the process of writing is so scary. I mean I have a double doozey orgasm – go boom and then go BOOM – and what results? You’re subjected to an anecdote involving the actor Jon Voight that happened years ago.

What kind of shit is that?

Another thing. Lately it’s been Lisa who calls it quits, sexually. Sort of rolls over and makes it clear we’re done for now. Can’t go on. Sated. A curious reversal of the usual, wherein the guy rolls over and goes to sleep (or gets up to go kill a mastodon). Not that Lisa actually goes to sleep, not right away. She’ll want to cuddle, like guys pretend they want to after they have an orgasm. (She’ll also formally thank me for my efforts. Say, "Thank you very much," or the like. I find this very endearing.)

But how about this business with Lisa, our increased screwing frequency over time and my dearth of going boom? Point being that this stuff has never happened before. I mean I haven’t always been a Sex God, as Lisa has so kindly started referring to me these days, these post The Horror Days.† Which goes to the What’s up with me? question. What’s up with me is that with Lisa I actually am in love for the first time. No more possibly.

This is it, the love of my life.

With my revelation that with Lisa this is it, the love of my life, we’re now all set up. Here we go. I mean with the actual The Horror itself. It’s about time, no?

About a week ago, just a minute or two prior to The Horror, Lisa rolled over, formally thanked me for my efforts, then said, and I’m talking breathlessly here, "That was… otherworldly."

Oh. Another thing women don’t understand is how good a guy feels on the level of being a guy when a woman rolls over and says something like, "That was… otherworldly." As if he’d just killed a mastodon, choked it to death with his bare hands.

So Lisa had just rolled over and said, "That was… otherworldly," and I was feeling like I just choked a mastodon to death with my bare hands. I couldn’t leave well enough alone, though – if there’s a tragic flaw involved in this fiasco, this is it – so while we were after-glowing I started asking Lisa stuff about her sexual history. I’d done this before. Has to do with intimacy, honesty, that two people are so intimate and honest with each other that they will tell each other anything. Pretty soon I asked her this: "What was the best week of your life, sexually?"

To this Lisa said, quickly and with a wistful smile, "That’s easy."

I too smiled. It’d been about a week since my full-blown Sex God act had kicked in. Remember that during that week it was always Lisa who would roll over, sated, formally thank me for my efforts, then say something along the lines of "That was… otherworldly."

"It was 1989," Lisa said with a throaty laugh, referring to the best week of her life, sexually.

In 1989 I hadn’t yet met Lisa.

"In Boston."

Lisa and I had never been in Boston together.

"This guy and I got snowed in at a hotel…"

I have a feeling that what you’re thinking right now will depend on your gender. If you’re a guy you’re probably thinking something like, "Yeah, The Horror is a perfect description of this." If you’re a woman, something more like, "So what’s the big deal?" Or, possibly, "What did you expect, asshole?"

Lisa didn’t go into any gory details about her week with The Boston Snow Storm Guy. She’s not like that. She did mention that he was in the movie business and would eventually be an important figure in the production of Magnolia. Although of relative insignificance, this little detail didn’t help matters, since Magnolia is a successful feature film starring Tom Cruise, and the only feature film I was an important figure on (sole screen credit) is a catastrophe with Loretta Swit, which shall remain nameless.

Keep in mind I hadn’t had an orgasm and theoretically should have been ready to go again at the drop of a hat, or the drop of anything. Well, The Horror having taken place, I wasn’t ready to go again at the drop of a hat, or the drop of anything, and I immediately started worrying that this condition would be permanent, if you get my drift.

Another thing women don’t understand is how fragile the male member is. I mean all a guy has to do is have a miniscule, microscopic thought way in the back of his mind that there just might possibly be a problem, and wham, the next thing you know, no more booms.

Just writing about no more booms right now is making me nervous.

Making matters still worse was that I couldn’t say anything. Because of certain other things that had recently happened in our relationship, I’d been harping on the point of honesty. That there could be no secrets between us. That was number one. No secrets. Honesty. I couldn’t keep my stupid trap shut on this.

So what could I say?

I let Lisa finish her story about The Boston Snow Storm Guy. (I would eventually shorten this, start thinking of him as The Snow Storm Guy, then finally just The Snowman.) I started to tell Lisa about a woman named Maria, with whom I was going to claim that I had had the best week of my life, sexually. The truth was that the best week of my life, sexually, had just occurred, with Lisa. But under the circumstances no way was I going to admit to that. Being a nonfiction writer, I was well-trained to diddle with facts a little. Or a lot.

I hardly got a word out about Maria when Lisa said, "I don’t want to hear it."

Trying to keep my voice calm, I said, "Whaddya mean, ‘You don’t want to hear it?’"

"I’ve told you I don’t want to hear about the other women in your life."

This was true. Lisa had made this plain a couple of times. If asked, she didn’t mind talking about her sexual history, but if I started in she’d stop me.

"This is not fair!" I screamed. Mentally. In reality, I didn’t say a word. I just lay there, pretending everything was just fucking great.

"I love you, Allan," Lisa said a little while later, then sighed and went to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep so I started making the list of women I’ve had sex with. One of them wasn’t the aspiring actress who appeared in the Jon Voight-getting-laid-at-Venice Beach anecdote. Not yet. Again, I would think of her three days later, after my double doozey orgasm.

Aside from obsession, another thing about comedy/humor/whatever is that it generally is based on some sort of pain, usually the pain other people cause.

Come to think of it, the same could be said of tragedy.

Obsession and pain. There you have it.

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A Question Excerpt: On Getting Raped by the Alpha Whore in a Panamanian Whorehouse