The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it. — Thomas Wolfe
Chapter 51: Thomas Wolfe’s home town
My father’s wish for a Christmas visit gave me an excuse to flee the Northwest as if pursued by the hounds of hell. My wife was too involved in therapy to object. I did not give my father a specific arrival time. Mournful poetic justice, using the old philanderer as cover for dalliance.
Before incest revelations blew my world apart, other women had been my antidote for pernicious depression. Like a bird dog returning to a thicket where he flushed game, I was repeating past behavior. I flew into Louisville, rented a car and called the North Carolina teacher from my writing seminar to confirm I was on the way. I fortified myself at a Steak ‘N Shake with protein, a lime shake and a Thermos of coffee for the road, and started for Thomas Wolfe’s hometown. The maps say it’s 360 miles from Louisville, a genuine road trip through Tennessee into the Tar Heel State; estimated drive-time six hours. Memory gives me the night-time bulk of the Smokey Mountains, the road rising and falling past surprising strings of dark semis parked along the shoulders like sleeping elephants.
Plenty of time to sink into the old rhythm of a road trip, where spinning thoughts surface and drift away without engagement. A meditation trick that always worked best on the road.
See the thought, accept it, release it. Acknowledge something like nostalgia for years of familiar depression before this incest shock. Proof no matter how bad things were, they could always get worse. Focus on the unwinding pavement in headlights until your mind is calm: no tomorrow, no yesterday, no regret, no anticipation, no real sense of self-identity. Just an awareness afloat in time and space.
Almost on its own the big Buick found its way to Asheville as a pale streak in the east heralded dawn. Innate caution dictated two separate motels, a fleabag to provide a location if required, the other quite nice. At the second I said “two” when the clerk said how many. The teacher’s drive was nearly as long as mine, from a different direction. I went across the street for grits, eggs and ham. Home-folks food; it was comforting to be back South. Breakfast made me drowsy. I told the desk I’d be napping, just give Di a key when she got there.
Maybe her key in the lock penetrated sleep. When I slowly surfaced and opened my eyes, she stood at the foot of the bed, absorbed in just watching me. Dark sweater and slacks, short dark hair in a pixie cut around her wide face. Which lit with a happy smile, and made her lovely. Online she had resisted for some time showing a photo, fearing her bulk would militate against her sexy writing. Being fat was a major issue for her.
Within her undoubtedly overweight body burned the soul of a sensualist. The internet had freed her from the aridity of frustrating marriage sex with an essentially unimaginative spouse, and honed her cravings. A fledgling writer as well as teacher, her sexual flights of fancy were the equal of Anais Nin. She had accumulated many bemused males behind the safety of her computer screen.
Only one other had she met in person, and her account was bittersweet. He was rangy and fit and handsome, and she undressed and relished him while refusing to disrobe and reveal her fat body. He had to settle for a blow job. She’d been unwilling to go further — perhaps channeling humiliation when her college fiancée, after a farewell fuck, said you really need to lose some weight. She was fragile about such rebuffs as I had ever been about feminine rejection, and determined again to stay behind the screen.
But she trusted me enough to meet six months after our first online encounter. I held out my arms. With absolutely no self-consciousness she knelt onto the bed and crawled across to me. Her eyes were a striking azure, the color of sunlit Bahamian seas. Her lips on mine were Babylonian in instant eroticism. She was an armful of woman all right, thicker than any Renoir or Rubens in the Louvre. But at six-two and 250, I was up to the task.
None of that fully clothed nonsense. I had her naked quickly. She repeated an online plaint her breasts were too small, saying a fat chick should at least have the luxury of big boobs…gasped and shut up when I nibbled rock-hard nipples. Small but highly charged with erotic nerve endings.
It was as if I had been reborn on that night highway. Reinvented. The slate wiped clean of past regret and future fear. There was only this moment, and I lived in the moment. John Thomas was on deck with almost virginal intensity. We had my old difficulty fitting a condom. She was more supple than she looked. Rode me easily as a woman fifty pounds lighter, taking me all the way deep. Her convulsions and my thrusts overtaxed the condom. Only after my climax, when I withdrew, did we realize it split and came loose. Had to fish for it, comedy after passion. She said it was okay. She was on birth control, the condom was just precaution.
A new woman in the flesh scoured all trace of the new ugliness back home. As Hemingway once said about a different pleasure, if you say that this is wrong, never say we did not tell you that we liked it. Later I discovered in person her first online lover to visit had no cause for complaint. She was more than a natural at fellatio, she was a sensualist devoted to phallic worship, even authored an online Instruction for Fellatio. She positively had followed the writer’s creed: write what you know.
It was close to Christmas. We agreed we were our gift to each other. But as well as sensual she was sentimental, so she brought along a tabletop artificial tree complete with ornaments and lights. We set it up in the room. Motel maids found it romantic. Hell, it was romantic.
After six months of correspondence and phone conversations, we knew each other pretty well. She knew about the shock of the incest revelations. I knew what she faced, from impending divorce to going back to school for another degree; from teaching convicts in a creative-writing class to trying to keep a rebellious son evidently hooked on pot out of jail. Separate lives full of ugly or difficult things put on hold, and almost forgotten, for an erotic vacation together in Thomas Wolfe’s hometown.
We had good Southern-restaurant meals and talked about writing and literature — and of course sex. It was a continuing relief not to discuss or even think about the incest ugliness. I told her about the leggy older woman on a Florida seawall telling a virginal youth I should read Wolfe. She talked about discussing sexy writers like Henry Miller and Anais Nin with her college roommate, each masturbating in her own dorm bed — and her secret yearning, unfulfilled, to take their relationship further. I thought about the bisexual woman with Elizabeth Taylor’s violet eyes.
We walked past Wolfe’s childhood home, a museum with posted hours. Did I want to take a tour? I did not. Years ago I had seen Hemingway’s Idaho grave and Steinbeck’s bust on Cannery Row. Walking past the Wolfe house was enough. I wanted us back in bed making love by Christmas-tree glow. She happily concurred.
It was strange but comfortable to know someone so well while still new to her physical touch and rhythms. To see her sleeping peacefully beside you, face relaxed and open in the twinkle of Christmas-tree lights. To wake up with her mouth on you. All too soon our interlude was over.
She had nearly 300 miles to drive. My drive north was even longer. We lingered over goodbye — always the worst part — her dramatic blue eyes brimming with tears. I was a bit choked-up. We parted with the hope we’d see each other again if our real lives remained too much to bear.
