It was around the time that a ban had been placed on the discussion of the penis that, during one of the many terrible fights that Rafi and Dana had, Dana had let something about it slip. She had said it, and once she had, there was no way to take it back. After that, according to Dana, the fights became more violent, and for the first time in their long relationship, the illusion of equality began to break down. Money, which Rafi earned and Dana did not, moved from being something that simply made it possible for them to live to being a source of power, since now Rafi lost no opportunity to remind her that she was dependent on him, that he was the one working a job all day while she was at home trying to write her play. In time, Dana came to feel that the experiment of opening their relationship had only brought pain and confusion, and that whatever growing they had done had only brought misery.

On the other hand, during the many conversations she had with Rafi during that time, he never mentioned anatomy, violence, or money. What he said was that for as long as he could remember in his relationship with Dana, he had been the one who gave more, who gave most willingly and easily, and that he had grown tired of it. That what he wanted was for the exchange between them to be more equal. And yet while he spoke of wanting an equality of giving and receiving, he never gave up on speaking about wanting freedom, though the first concerned how one was treated and valued by another inside a system of relationship that involved compromises and limitations, and the other concerned the destruction or transcendence of that system, of going beyond it to that no-man’s-land where one stood utterly undefended, with nothing that one has promised and nothing that has been promised to one, but with a bright, clear view that goes on and on, all the way to the horizon.

Childhood

My boys are in the back seat, exhausted by the heat and the day-long sun, leaning their heads back and staring with glassy eyes at the passing sea, and either they are driving away from freedom, or toward it. After the difficult months of my undoing—months during which they watched over me with worried eyes, wanting to know how I’d slept, how I was feeling, not wanting to leave me, wanting to know whether my struggle would ever pass—they have been restored to their carefree state: midsummer, joyous, watched over.