The Schopenhauer Cure(103)
36
* * *
Where are there any real monogamists? We all live for a time and, most of us, always, in polygamy. And since every man needs many women, there is nothing fairer than to make it incumbent upon him to provide for many women. This will reduce woman to her true and natural position as a subordinate being.
* * *
Pam opened the next meeting. “I’ve got something to announce today.”
All heads turned toward her.
“Today is confession time. Go ahead, Tony.”
Tony bolted upright, stared at Pam for a long moment, then leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. If he had been wearing a fedora, he would have pushed it down over his face.
Pam, surmising that Tony had no intention of commenting, continued in her clear bold voice, “Tony and I have been sexually involved for a while, and it’s hard for me to keep coming here and be silent about it.”
After a short charged silence came stuttered questions: “Why?” “What started this?” “How long?” “How could you?” “Where is it going?”
Quickly, coolly, Pam responded, “It’s been going on for several weeks. I don’t know about the future, don’t know what started it; it wasn’t premeditated but just happened one evening after a meeting.”
“You going to join us today, Tony?” Rebecca asked gently.
Tony slowly opened his eyes. “It’s all news to me.”
“News? You saying that this is not true?”
“No. I mean confession day. This ‘go ahead, Tony’—that was news to me.”
“You don’t look happy about it,” said Stuart.
Tony turned to address Pam: “I mean, I was over at your place last night. Being intimate, you know. Intimacy—how many time have I heard here that broads are more sensitive and want more intimacy than plain old sexual intimacy? So why not be intimate enough to talk to me, to run this ‘confession day’ by me first?”
“Sorry,” Pam said, without sounding sorry, “things weren’t sitting right with me. After you left I was up much of the night brooding and thinking about the group, and I realized time was too short—we’ve got only six more meeting left. Am I counting right, Julius?”
“Right. Six more meetings.”
“Well, it just hit me how much I was betraying you, Julius. And my contract here with everyone else. And betraying myself, too.”
“I never put it all together,” said Bonnie, “but I’ve had a feeling that something wasn’t right the last several meetings. You’ve been different, Pam. I remember Rebecca sensing that more than once. You rarely talk about your own issues—I have no idea what’s going on between you and John or whether your ex-husband’s in the picture or not. Mostly what you’ve been doing is attacking Philip.”
“And Tony, you too,” added Gill. “Now that I think about it, you’ve been real different. You’ve been hiding out. I’ve missed the old free-swinging Tony.”
“I’ve got some thoughts here,” said Julius. “First, something Pam touched off with her use of the word contract. I know this is repetitious, but it bears repeating for any of you who may be in a group in the future”—Julius glanced at Philip—“or even lead a group. The only contract any of us have is to do our best to explore our relationship with everyone in the group. The danger of an out-of-group relationship is that it jeopardizes the therapy work. How does it do that? Because people in a tight relationship will often value that relationship more than the therapy work. Look, it’s precisely what’s happened here: not only have Pam and Tony hidden their own relationship—that’s understandable—but as a result of their personal involvement they’ve backed off from their therapy work here.”
“Until today,” said Pam.
“Absolutely, until today—and I applaud what you’ve done, and applaud your decision to bring it to the group. You know what my question’s going to be for both you and Tony: why now? You’ve known each other in the group about two and a half years. Yet now things change. Why? What happened a few weeks ago that prompted the decision to get together sexually?”
Pam turned to Tony, raising her eyebrows, cueing him to answer. He complied. “Gentlemen first? My turn again? No problem; I know exactly what changed: Pam crooked her finger and signaled ‘okay.’ I’ve had a perpetual hard-on for her since we started, and if she’d crooked her finger six months ago or two years ago I would’ve come then too. Call me ‘Mister Available.’”
“Hey, that’s the Tony I know and love,” said Gill. “Welcome back.”
“It’s not hard to figure out why you’ve been different, Tony,” said Rebecca. “You’re getting it on with Pam, and you didn’t want to do anything to screw it up. It’s reasonable. So you hide out, cautious about showing any of your not-so-nice parts.”
“The jungle part, you mean?” said Tony. “Maybe, maybe not—it’s not all that simple.”
“Meaning?” asked Rebecca.
“Meaning the ‘not-so-nice part’ is a turn-on for Pam. But I don’t want to get into that.”