Second Marriage

Which I think brings me to my main...conclusion here, that is that I got married, that's the biggest thing that's happened to me over the last... I got married for the second time, incidentally. I should have known something was wrong with my first wife, when I brought her home to meet my parents, they approved of her, y'know, - my dog died, that's what happened. I got to be careful what I say about her publicly now, 'cause she's sueing me. I don't know if you read that in the paper or not, but I'm getting sued because I made a nasty remark about her..she. She didn't like it, she lives on the upper west side of Manhattan, and she was coming home late at night, and she was violated. That's how the put it in the New York papers: "She was violated", and they asked me to comment on it, and I said "Knowing my ex-wife, it probably was not a moving violation." Let me tell you how I met my second wife, which is really...romantic. I read an article in Life magazine saying there was a sexual revolution going on on college campuses all over the country, and I reregistrated at New York University to check it out, 'cause I used to go there years ago, I was a history of hygiene major at NYU, and I was thrown out of college, and when I was thrown out I got a job. My father had a grocery store in Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, and he hired me to work for him. I was a delivery boy for my father, that was my first job, and I unionized the workers and we struck and drove him out of business. He's always been touchy about it. Now, when I went back to school, suddenly everybody wanted to fix me up with women. And I have had a very bad history with blind dates. You must not misunderstand me - believe it, sex is a beautiful thing between two people. Between five it's fantastic. I was very depressed about that for a long time. I was gonna kill myself, but as I said, I was in a strict freudian analysis, and if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss. So I accept this date. First blind date in years, I go to a fourth floor walk-up, and then knock on the door, and this girl comes to the door, and she is absolutely beautiful, but really terrific, great long blond hair, and a short skirt and boots and a sleeveless jersey, and she is packed into it. When I see her look that beautiful, I wanna...cry, write a poem, jump on her. I'm very sensitive, y'know. She asked me what I wanted to do, and I'm not a swinger. My idea of a big evening is go down to the corner roticimat and watch the chickens revolve, y'see. I take her to a party on McDougle Street in Greenwich Village. We go into a smokedfilled room, and I do not use - you should know this about me, too - any sort of consciousness expanding material. My body will not tolerate that. Y'know I took a puff of the wrong cigarette at a fraternity dance once, and the cops had to get me, y'know. I broke two teeth trying to give a hickie to the Statue of Liberty. The party begins to move downstairs now, unto the street, and everybody is playing bongoes and guitars, and a cop on horseback comes up to me, and he puts his arm around me. He says to me "Are you one of those draftcard burners?" And I say "No, I'm not. I never registered, I don't have a draftcard." Now a little girl feeds, what look like a cube of sugar, to the policemans horse. The horse showed up at a sit-in in Georgia. Now I decide to strike. I get my date, and I jam her into my Hertz. I have a rented car, which is a flat rate 12 cents a mile, in an effort to cut down on the mileage charge, I back up every place. So I'm backing over the George Washington Bridge. That was two o'clock in the morning, and I get my date back to her apartment, and the two of us are alone, and we're going pretty good. I have to explain this very delicately, 'cause it's really tentative. As I... as I am an inordinately...passionate...man. Volatile. Sensual. In general a stud. When making love...when making love...in an effort...to prolong...the moment of ecstacy...I think of baseball players. All right, now you know. The two of us are making love violently, she's digging it, I figure I better start thinking of ballplayers quickly. So I figure it's one out, the ninth, the Giants are up. Mays lines a single to right, he takes second on a wild pitch. Now she is digging her nails into my neck. I decided to pinch-hit for McCovey. Alou pops out. Haller singles, Mays holds third. Now I got a first-and-third situation. Two out, the Giants are behind one run. I don't know whether to squeeze or steal. She's been in the shower for ten minutes, already. This is too...I can't tell you anymore, this is too personal. The Giants won. And I married the girl, incidently, and had a very good wedding, except for my father, who squatted down and did one of those russian dances, see, and tore a leg muscle and froze in that position. Walked down the aisle like that, y'know.