Adios, Scheherazade

The point is, Hannah’s a nurse, the kind of a nurse where the starch starts at the forehead and ends at the toenails. The kind of a nurse that you can tell from looking at her she thinks enjoyment is a sin. She’s consecrated her life, you know what I mean? A shriveled-up virgin at twenty-one, probably a hell of a good nurse, one of these tight-lipped efficient bitches you’d like to dip in a vat of lye.

And Hester’s just the opposite. They’ve got the same face, being twins, and it’s amazing the different things they’ve done with it. You look at Hannah, you know she’s a virgin and always will be. You look at Hester, you know right away she puts out because she loves the cock. It’s in her eyes, in a kind of loose blow-job quality in her smile, in the kind of wave she has in her hair, pretty long hair with a long wave over the right side of the forehead that she’s always pushing back with a movement of arm and head that makes her breasts move. Hannah’s breasts have never moved.

Could I talk to Hester? I don’t know, I suppose I could, I suppose she’d be sympathetic. But at the same time, I can’t help thinking what a schmuck she’d think I was. She’d say, “What the hell’s the matter, Ed? You’re all constipated, honey. Relax. Take it easy. Have a ball.”

Have a ball? How can I have a ball? I have responsibilities, I have Betsy and Fred, I have a house full of furniture and a garage full of Buick. I have a deadline I’m supposed to make.

If I don’t get this rotten book done by the thirtieth, Lance will drop me. I know he will, I am positive of it, there is no question in my mind. He told me so, and he doesn’t make idle threats. Besides, he said, “I’m sorry, Ed.” In that mellifluous voice.

I’m on page 14. This is ridiculous, it’s twenty-five minutes after four, I’ve been sitting here all afternoon typing away and I don’t have a goddam thing done. This isn’t a sex novel, this isn’t anything. This is a piece of shit.

What’s the matter with me?

Betsy’s back. I heard her drive into the garage about an hour ago. She’s out there in the kitchen now, moving around, she hears me typing in here, she thinks I’m doing the November book. What am I going to tell her?

I’ll have to come back in tonight. I mean, no matter how you look at it, this isn’t the first chapter of a dirty book. Although there is a kind of a sex scene in it, the fantasy thing with Sabina.

No. In the first place, I’d have to retype it in order to change the names, I couldn’t use everybody’s real names, and that’d be almost as much trouble as doing another whole chapter. And in the second place, even if this was my first chapter where the hell is my second chapter? You couldn’t have an entire book of crap like this. A fantasy sex scene in each chapter. Lovely.

Besides, the sex scene with Sabina isn’t done at the kind of length we need. Two or three pages of sexual description, that’s what we have to have. All the euphemisms. D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller and all those alleged literary types can say cunt, but us dirty book writers have to say “the hot pulsating core of her being.”

How would you like to write shit like that all the time?

Well, I’ve got to write some shit like that, and I’ve got to do it today.

No more fooling around. I have wasted an entire afternoon, I have typed fifteen pages of gibberish, that’s an end on it. Tonight I’ll come back in and start the dirty book.

1

I can’t think of a title.

I’ve been sitting here for half an hour with this sheet of paper in the typewriter, it’s going to come out all wavy, and I’ve been saying to myself, Ed, all you need is a title. Think of a title, then see which of the four basic plots that title makes you think of, then look in the Nassau County phone book on the floor beside your desk, pick a name at random out of it, make that your lead character, and start for God’s sake to write.

But I can’t think of a title.

What I’ve decided is, I’ve got writer’s block. Some of the other guys have talked about it, I’ve heard some wild stories about writer’s block hitting this one or that one, and what everybody says is, when you’ve got writer’s block the only thing you can do to break it is write something. It doesn’t matter what. Sit down at the typewriter and type out names of cheeses, a political speech, anything that comes into your head. It sort of primes the pump, and pretty soon you can go and write the thing you’re supposed to be writing, which in my case is a filthy book.