Human Sexual Response
bitterly disappointed Mortimer in failing to answer yet another question, the one which troubled him most deeply. How big was big? How small, small? What he had hoped for was comparative charts, rather like those in doctors’ waiting rooms or insurance company pamphlets, which gave the recommended weight as set against a man’s body shape, years, and height. What he had wanted was a penile chart which would give average limp length
and expansion when stiff, as set against age, height, and race. Yes, race. For surely it was the empirical business of objective liberal scientists to confirm or demolish once and for all the myth (or fact) that Jewish cocks were thicker, Negro ones longer.
Rachel Coleman, Mortimer had reflected, putting down the book, could tell him at a glance. Rachel, he had sensed, had a vast knowledge of pricks. And so, at the New Year’s Eve party when Mortimer felt that upspringing between his legs, once so familiar, now rare, he immediately decided to chance it with Rachel, his purpose two-pronged. He would, hopefully, prove to himself that his impotence was limited to his relationship with Joyce and he would inquire point-blank how she would grade him for size. Probably, he thought, if please God I can get it up, I will not even have to ask. Her reactions will suffice. If (O happy, blessed day) she takes one peek and retreats against the wall Fanny Hill fashion, muttering about my monstrous machine, this incomparably fierce engine, etc., etc., then I will know that I am,
pace
Harold Robbins, very well endowed. But if, if more likely, she yawns (would she dare laugh in my face?) and suggests other games, anything but straightforward penile penetration, then I will know, as I have feared all these years, that I am puny indeed.
Rationalizing, he decided in advance, excusing himself through loss of foreskin by circumcision, was out. Such loss, he knew, was minimal. I want the truth, he thought, as he followed after Rachel’s swinging bottom into the living room … the upspringing between his legs escalating beyond mere excitement, above the plateau, to a veritable throbbing and, alas, seepage.
Watch it. Don’t lose it
.
“Would you care for a drink?” Rachel asked.
Mortimer pulled her to him on the sofa, his hands flying up her skirt. Rachel broke free, laughing. “Aren’t you going to say sweet, flattering things to me first,” she asked, her eyes taunting, “like you would to a white girl?”
To a white girl
. Could it be, Mortimer thought, terrified, that this precious erection of his was impure, not sexually motivated, but
politically inspired? Was it possible that the throb-throb-throb was not, as he desperately hoped, his virility returned, but only a lousy liberal gesture? The stiffening no more than white condescension? No, no. Even as he began to wilt, he looked up to see Rachel unzip and wriggle out of her skirt to stand before him in her deliciously diaphanous underthings. She put on a record, Satchmo at Carnegie Hall, and handed him a drink. “Cheers,” she said, lifting him to his feet.
“Cheers.” Up up up. Thank God, he thought, dancing with her, his hands squeezing her bottom.
“You have no idea what a sexy chap you are, Mortimer.”
“We can talk later,” he said, struggling with the straps of her bra.
Once more her expression was scornful. “Nothing works you guys up like coon music, does it?”
“Now look here.”
“You look here,” she said, coolly opening a side-table drawer and bringing out a pen and a blank check. “What’s your bank, baby?”
“Lloyd’s. Why?”
“Branch?”
He told her. Thrusting against him, rubbing, she handed him a check made out for twenty-five pounds. “Sign this first.”
“What the hell for?”
“Because this world being imperfect, this world being what it is, no ofay is capable of balling with a black girl without paying for it.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’d feel guilty in the morning.”
“You’re too touchy, Rachel.”
“Sign, baby.”
“But it runs counter to my political principles. It’s not the money –”
“Good,” she said, thrusting the pen and check at him.
“– but –”
Rachel smiled lasciviously at him, running her tongue over her lips, squeezing her breasts, rotating her pelvis.
“Why, you’re nothing but a whore!”
“Didn’t I tell you?” she said, satisfied. “In the end, you’re all the same. You feel your racial superiority is being compromised if you hump a poor little, uninhibited colored girl without paying for it.”
Still, he hesitated.
“Don’t you see, honey? I’m taking the bread for your sake.”
“All right, then,” Mortimer said, signing. “But you’re going to earn it, see?”
“Didn’t I know it? Didn’t I call the shot? Underneath, you’re all bigoted.”
“Look here, Rachel –”
“This,” she said, blowing on the signature, “doesn’t cover specialties. The bigger the guilt, baby, the higher the cost.”
“I do not go in for … specialties. It’s information I’m after. I’m going to want your objective opinion on a couple of things. About me, um, in comparison to other men. I’ll show you what I mean in a minute,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt.
“But I can already tell you something about little old you. I keep my ears open. Dino Tomasso’s not going to be with us much longer –”
Too true, Mortimer remembered, briefly sad.
“– and you’re number-one candidate for his job, white boy. Hy Rosen hasn’t a hope.”
Inexplicably, the anger rose in him. “Incidentally, how much did Hy make out
his
check for?”
“Rosen? Don’t think he didn’t try, but this pussy doesn’t cream for Jew boys.”
Migod.
“Which reminds me,” she said, “I hope it isn’t true what Jake Shalinsky says.”
“What does Jake Shalinsky say?”
“That secretly you’re a Yid yourself.”
“The hell I am. What ever made you even suspect –”
“Well, Jews often change their names, don’t they? They try and pass, the worst of them. But in the buff, there’s no mistaking a Jew man, is there, honey?” Laughing, Rachel pulled him to her. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”
But Mortimer, his trousers lying in a pool at his ankles, hastily whipped them up again.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” But he ripped a nail zipping up his fly.
“Baby,” she said, coyly covering her bosom with one hand and lowering another between her legs, “I’m getting a chill, just standing here.”
“Get me another drink, you filthy black whore.”
“Yassah, boss. Right away, massah.”
She returned to find him dressed.
“You going?”
“That’s right, Beulah. Good night.”
24
M
ORTIMER LET THE PHONE RING. RING AND RING
. Finally somebody answered.
“Jewish Thought
here.”
“Shalinsky?”
“Mr. Shalinsky is in Manchester. I’ll have him get in touch with your office the minute he returns.”
“Shalinsky, it’s you.”
“Ah, it’s you, Griffin. Happy New Year, as they say.”
“The same to you.”
“Sorry. I thought it was Levitt the printer. He’s the only one who ever phones me so early in the morning.
Wei geht’s?
”
“Pardon?”
“How are you?”
“Oh, fine.
Just fine
. Look here, Shalinsky, I’ve got some papers I’d like to show you.”
“Good.”
Taken aback, Mortimer said, “What do you mean, good?”
“I was hoping you’d want to talk.”
“Can I come over now? Right now?”
“Absolutely.”
It was seven thirty in the morning, New Year’s Day. An hour earlier, Mortimer, his head throbbing, his step uncertain, the drink
rising in his stomach, had slipped into his own house while everyone was still asleep, and gathered the necessary papers together.
Mortimer had amassed all manner of personal documents. His birth certificate, his passport, marriage license, University of Toronto graduation certificate, a Rotary Club public speaking award, his unemployment insurance card, vaccination certificate, Bo-lo Champion (Junior Division) Award of Merit, three library cards, a parking ticket and his Barclaycard. On all these documents was the name Mortimer Lucas Griffin. Seething with suppressed anger, he watched as Shalinsky fingered each document pensively. At last Shalinsky looked up, pinching his lower lip between thumb and index finger. “Facts,” he said. “Documents. So what?”
“So what? God damn it, Shalinsky, you must stop going around telling people that I’m a Jew. All this goes to prove that I was born a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant named Mortimer Lucas Griffin.”
“To think that you would go to so much trouble. What are you afraid of, Griffin?”
“Afraid? Me!”
“Am I a chatterbox?”
“Yes. But there’s nothing to chatter about. Are you mad, Shalinsky?”
“I’m not mad. Neither do I wish to make problems for you. We should stick together, Griffin.”
“What do I have to do to prove to you that I’m not Jewish?”
Shalinsky began to sift through Mortimer’s papers again, as if to soothe a bad-tempered child. “And what about your father?” he asked. “Couldn’t he have changed your name without your knowing it?”
“Or my grandfather. What about him?”
“You’re so excited.”
“You’re ruining my life, Shalinsky.”
“Mr. Griffin, please. I hardly know you.”
“Look here, Shalinsky, do you think
everyone
is Jewish?”
“Certainly not,” he said, offended.
“Well, that’s something. There are lots of people, you know, upstanding types, who just happen to have been born Gentiles. Like me.”
“Mediocrities, the lot.”
“Oh, my God, Shalinsky.”
“Isn’t it a proven fact, Griffin, that most of the world’s great men are Jews?”
“Like hell it is.”
“Take your own age,
par exemple
. This age of angst,” Shalinsky said, lowering his eyes. “Sigmund Freud, he was a pork eater, I suppose. Karl Marx,
alavah sholem
. Well? There you have it, Griffin. The two greatest influences on the twentieth century.”
“And what about Stalin?”
“Trotsky had more bloody brains in his little finger than –”
“That’s not the point. Stalin triumphed and he was a Gentile, wasn’t he? A priest.”
“His wife wore the pants.”
“I have no interest in stale Kremlin gossip.”
“Her maiden name was Epstein.”
“What am I going to do with you, Shalinsky?”
“You want to be one of them? I don’t understand you, Griffin.” Shalinsky stood up.
“They killed Marilyn Monroe.”
Then, as an afterthought, he added, “One of ours by choice. By choice,
chaver.”
“Give me Ingrid Bergman any time.”
“Beautiful women you want to talk about? Elizabeth Taylor, there’s another acquisition to our faith.”
“And what about … Audrey Hepburn?”
“That one, with her little boy’s body? Mr. Griffin, please. Among us we like something – well, that you can get your teeth into.”
“Oh, what’s the use!”
“Literature you’re worried about. Kafka. Proust. Pasternak. Herman Wouk.”
“Tolstoy!”
“It’s the exception that makes the rule. There are rumors and reports, mind you. I. M. Sinclair has a theory –”
“André Gide. I suppose he was a rabbi’s son.”
Shalinsky was indignant. “Gide was a pederast,” he said. “Among them, you know.”
“Just what do you mean, ‘among them’? Are there no Jewish queers?”
“Mr. Griffin, I thought this was a serious discussion. An exchange of ideas.”
“Never mind, skip it.”
“And furthermore did you know that behind the discovery of America there was a Jewish financier?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t surprise me for a minute.”
“Luis de Santangel. And with Columbus there sailed at least three Jews. The ship’s surgeon, the interpreter and the map maker, Abraham Zacuto.”
“Sure. All the soft jobs … Shalinsky, this is getting us nowhere. The fact is I’m not Jewish, as these documents plainly show.”
“One thing,” Shalinsky said, after a long pause. “Among all these documents, no army discharge papers. Why, I ask myself.”
In a flash, Mortimer gathered up his papers and was gone. Outside, he was gratified to find a taxi waiting.
“Where to, guv?” Dr. Laughton asked in his best Cockney.
Mortimer gave him his home address and leaned back, his eyes shut.
25
I
T WAS ALMOST NINE IN THE MORNING WHEN MORTIMER
returned wearily to his house and found Doug eating corn flakes in the kitchen.
“Happy New Year, Doug,” Mortimer said warmly.
“Same to you, Dad.”
Mortimer ran his hand through his son’s hair. He managed a grin. “I’m bushed. Would you excuse me if I didn’t join you and went right to sleep?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go in there, Dad. You’d be on a sticky wicket, rather.”
“How come?”
“Uncle Ziggy’s in bed with her.”
“In our bedroom?”
“Just so.”
“Oh, you poor kid, when did you find out about them?”
“Why, I’ve known from the beginning. Mother told me everything.”
“Everything? You mean about my, um, illness too?”
Doug lowered his eyes. Mortimer found the brandy and poured himself a stiff one. “Did she have to tell you that?” he asked, tears in his eyes.
“Don’t cry. She explained it wasn’t hereditary. She said I needn’t worry, actually.”
“How could she?” he said, sinking into a chair.
“It wasn’t exactly her fault. She didn’t want to tell me. But I couldn’t help noticing how cross she’s been … and, well, how absolutely super she’s felt since Uncle Ziggy’s come to stay with us.”
“Good old Ziggy.”
“Naturally they wanted me out most afternoons and Mother wasn’t going to be dodgy with me about that. I couldn’t respect her any more if she wasn’t completely honest with me.”
“I see.”
“It could have given me a trauma.”
“Your mother is so considerate.”
“I don’t blame her. Do you? I’ve read that women need it rather more as they grow old and wrinkly while chaps pass their peak early.”