Free Going Too Far by Robin Morgan

me. Except that that’s a lie, too—I enjoy it.
    Ah, K., I’m scared, I’m scared. So much that I thought I’d won out over in myself is blossoming forth again like some parasitical evergreen. I don’t mean that I thought I’d conquered forever; not quite that naïve or self-deluding. But that I’d learned to watch for, to combat, to deal with and not submit to in a delicious indulgent loosening of mind and spirit. And not because of Jim himself. Poor guy, he’s really fairly simple, and very confused by you, me, and us together. I mean by the situation: his “love” for me, my entrapment of him, your reaction to both. And suddenly, slowly, steadily, it is easier to tell a half-truth, or to exaggerate again, though I have so far stopped this side of an outright lie. And suddenly, slowly, steadily, the sado-masochistic fantasies return. And the nightmares. And the plotting: how I will sit, what I will wear, what expressions my face will speak while my words speak other, innocent meanings. And dear god, how can I even use my poems: to lure him, reassure you, and lull myself into thinking I’m really being honest in my work? Even that.
    I dreamt a little while ago that Jim who, as you know, once wanted to be a priest, was Father James as a young man, except that he took the path away from where poor Father Jim wound up. And in my dream, I tore open Jim/James’ flesh with my nails and lifted out his heart, still trailing veins and arteries, and gave it to my mother, who neatly clipped off the dangling lines and hung it on a chain around her neck with other charms. She thanked me for it, and said he (both J.’s, I assume) was grateful, too. I tried to believe her, but I didn’t, I didn’t. I can’t remember the rest. Mercifully blocked.
    Obvious enough, I suppose. And I had made a conscious connection between the two J.’s earlier. Sort of getting my own back at the nympholeptic Franciscan who was such a surrogate father in my non-Catholic girlhood. But what I hadn’t connected was the role my mother played in the whole Father James thing, and my own actions in the present situation. So she rises, again and again, with her flirtation and her lies and her hoarded guilt and her martyr’s revenge. And I play herout to the full of my ability. Except that even that’s a lie—nobody rising like some hidden personality in me—no hereditary or even environmental traits working in me that I’m powerless to control. Lie upon lie. Like your onion skin.
    K., I’ve been more honest with you than with any other person in my life, including, at times, myself. Yet I’ve lied to you, as you know (that memorable day in Pippin’s), and I’m prevaricating now, in some way. I don’t even know how. I do know this: that though I’ve finally begun to believe you’re a human being, not a god, that you’re a hypocrite and you’re intolerant, lazy, weak, and vulnerable as the rest of us, you somehow do try and do trust and do commit yourself on some level I’ve yet to reach, and I never will without you.
    We’ve both said that if we were to break up tomorrow we’d each walk away having gained something. The only thing I’d have gained would have been a glimpse of what I’d lost. I used to think that what I’d learned living with you had cleansed me of many, if not all, of the old crawly cunning patterns that clothed me like tattoos. These last weeks, and my behavior over Jim, have taught me differently. Even knowing this, I am not able to say firmly to myself how I will proceed now. Perhaps even deeper back into the old ways. Perhaps into fresh, more cunning, slimier ones. Perhaps to some kind of freedom from all of them.
    But whatever happens, and despite our having settled all such questions in our long talks—having vowed to stick to each other no matter what, now, now, in the middle of the night