Free Seducing the Demon by Erica Jong Page A

few handwritten notes and you fall into bed? Or onto the floor? What’s the matter with you?”
    “But isn’t he cute?”
    “Cute and a token will get you on the subway. Besides he’s not cute enough for all the trouble this will cause! You and Jonathan may have an ‘open marriage’—if such a thing exists—but the Stewarts are thoroughly bourgeois. He cheats and she pretends not to know. They live in Westport, after all. Wait and see! You just wanted to show her who’s boss. But she’ll get you.”
    This demon sounds suspiciously like my father, but he is always, alas, right.
     
     
    Right before I left for summer school in Florence, when I was nineteen, my father said, “I have one piece of advice for you: Never drink grappa with an Italian man.”
    Of course that was the very first thing I proceeded to do after Italian literature class at the Torre di Bellosguardo. In fact, I defiantly drank grappa with every Italian man I met. I drank grappa on trains, on motorcycles, in little bars along the Arno. Later on, when I was older, I drank grappa on vintage sailboats and in grand hotels. I am not sorry for my defiance—only grateful I survived it without catching any communicable diseases. And what was I looking for in that glass of grappa? An old-fashioned cordial: love. I never found it there.

    In the morning I crept out of Stewart’s room hoping not to be seen by anyone. But the deed had been done. My one-night stand must have gone home and immediately told the wife he’d slept with me—which was apparently the whole point of the exercise.
    From then on she never lost an opportunity to tell the world: ERICA JONG RUINED MY MARRIAGE. ERICA JONG RUINED MY LIFE. She told mutual friends, trashy journalists, Barnard alumnae who had gathered to celebrate her. Sometimes she said, “That woman ruined my life!” Whenever she saw me, she gave me a killing look.
    And who could blame her? I was wrong. My demon made me do it. Sleeping with married men is always trouble. I have forsworn it.
    If I could take this incident back, I would. My regret is Dantean—and not just because Martha keeps telling tabloid journalists about this twenty-six-year-old gaffe and denouncing me as if she had no faults herself. But I accept the blame. I was always besotted by books and anyone who made them. Remember the story of Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s Inferno ?
    Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse
    That book was our panderer and him that made it ...
    Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover. Whitman knew that.
    I pick up my facsimile edition of Leaves of Grass, given to me by the previous publisher. This is the same edition Whitman sent to Emerson.
    I read:
    The English language befriends the grand American expression . . . . It is brawny enough and limber enough and full enough . . . it is the powerful language of resistance . . . it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth faith self-esteem freedom justice equality friendliness amplitude prudence decision and courage. It is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible.... The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
    The writer’s job is to absorb. Plenitude and amplitude are our watchwords. We are “hankering, gross, mystical, nude.” We know that mistakes are part of wisdom and wisdom is made of plenty of foolishness.
    If you learn to loaf and invite your soul, you will make mistakes you wish you could cancel with a