On the second night of the showing I stayed at home and babysat the kids. The next morning Clendon told me there had been a light turnout. Then he asked me quite bluntly if I could wrap up the visit and leave. Victoria considered me an “invader,” he said. My presence was provoking migraine headaches. She was up in bed now, wasted with a headache because of me.

“The invader. It’s your fucking house, man. And you’re telling me to go?”

“I don’t remember—you never had such a filthy mouth. Is that how they talk in the hospital?”

“Fucking-A. She’s got you pussy-whipped. I never figured you for a Ph.D. in English—”

“It’s her house. Her parents’ money.”

“Leave her.”

“Right, live in a trailer court. Plastic curtains. Alimony. Child support.”

“Well, it will be your trailer. Home sweet home.”

“No can do—”

“She looks at you and you wither.”

“I can’t explain it. I need her.”

My blood boiled. I didn’t know if I wanted to cock my fist and smash his teeth down his throat or write him a script for some Valium and Elavil.

“Well, fuck it then,” I said. “I’m going back to Los Angeles.”

I got a little loaded. It was late. The kids were in bed. Clendon was at some sort of university function. I went out into the kitchen to make a sandwich and caught Victoria standing over the sink, her platinum hair pinned up to keep her neck cool. I had startled her and when she turned to me, I realized she wasn’t altogether surprised. She was wearing an expensive sheer nightgown and her breasts, just bigger than medium and firm—I mean they were there—large erect pinkish-white nipples. They were just absolutely the most beautiful tits in the whole world.

It was a matter of some ambivalence for both of us. Neither of us liked the other. Yet the physical attraction right then and there was incredible. After I kissed her, she led me into the bedroom. She said, “Oh, my God!”

I really gave it to her. I really let her have it.

You take the gorilla…I suppose there are probably only about forty of them left on the planet, if that many. Point of fact: the reason the gorilla has such a large brain is not because he has to figure out where to find food or how to make a little nest in the grass. In Gorilla Country food is plentiful; enemies, apart from man, are nonexistent. To find food, make the nest, and then migrate along to the next spot, the gorilla needs a brain the size of a Rice Krispie.