Free Sugar in My Bowl by Erica Jong Page A

picked me up like a new bride—a bride who couldn’t stop sobbing—and carried me through the front door. I don’t know how he managed the lock.
    He laid me down on the white sofa our other comrades had given him when he moved in two weeks ago. It had Top Ramen, pizza, and cum stains from the last ten years adding to its luster. He went to get me one of his extra work shirts to change into. I heard him take off the gun and holster. No more clicks. He came back with a bottle of povidone, the shirt, and a steaming wet towel. I had some bloody scratches on me, plus snot and sweat—not as bad as it seemed. The warm towel felt so good.
    “What do you drink?” Stan said. I could hear him opening his kitchen cupboards.
    “Ginger ale?”
    “Yeah, right,” he said and came back with two jam jar glasses and a bottle of something that said Jack Daniel’s in flowery script on the front of the label, like an old western. “Drink up,” he said, handing me the glass like it was medicine.
    I took a sip. Worse than medicine! It was almost as bad as Ny-Quil. But I’d never tasted whiskey.
    I gagged, and he laughed.
    “Don’t laugh at me; this is horrible.”
    “The horrible part is over—we’re lucky to be alive. You’re going to be okay, baby.”
    Baby.
    “You think I shouldn’t have been there,” I said, “because I can’t handle it, because I’m not part of the new macho Teamster campaign and I don’t have a six-shooter to wave around, like I’m some freak girlfriend diaper baby.”
    The Jack was giving me something to talk about.
    Stan said no. He said it was his fault. He said Ambrose and Ter and Aaron and Robin worshipped the ground I walked on; he said he’d been a bastard to me. Temma was right; I was sweet as pie. He tucked me in, found more blankets and a couple of pillows. I slipped on his shirt and kicked off my pants. Was he watching me? I didn’t care. I passed out on his sofa like it was the middle of the night.
    I woke up with a start; I had to pee. Had it been hours or minutes? The streetlight poured in through Stan’s bamboo blinds. I could see a blue clock in the corner that Ambrose had donated to our new branch organizer’s furnishings. 3 A.M . It’d been twelve hours since we were in the parking lot.
    Stan’s apartment was two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. One bedroom was the production room, with the mimeo, ditto machines, and paper supply. I crept into the bathroom next to it, the tile floor cold under my feet. Stan’s shirt barely covered my ass; everything in the bathroom was icy. I thought about my warm waterbed back at my dad’s house, and my fluffy cat Pooki making her nest in the middle of my quilts.
    Stan appeared at the doorway.
    “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I whispered, from the toilet.
    “I’m not asleep,” he said, “You say ‘sorry’ too much. I’ve been awake the whole time.”
    “Why?” I said, not whispering anymore. I grabbed one of his white duck hand-towels and wiped my face, getting a glimpse in the medicine cabinet mirror.
    He stepped behind me and looked into my reflection. He must have been over six feet tall. Blue eyes, drooping lids. He braced his arms on the sink’s edge, so I was caught in the middle between the fixture and his chest. If I moved one inch I’d be in his arms.
    He spoke to me in the looking glass. “You’re driving me crazy, you know that, don’t you.”
    He said it, he didn’t ask. But I still shook my head. I couldn’t breathe.
    “Yes, you are, the way you walk around this place, the way you smell . . .”
    I could smell myself too; I could smell him, like gunpowder and Mr. Daniel’s—but I couldn’t speak. My legs shook a little, my knees still stinging from where the flesh had been scraped off in the parking lot. Stan felt me shiver too. He put his long hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him so my bottom was pressed against the sink.
    “You know what you’re doing to