Bad Connections by Joyce Johnson Page B

making apologies. Perhaps the shifting fortunes he’d experienced recently had begun to have a humanizing effect.
    I told him I had no hard feelings. “Well, live and let live,” I said. It costs nothing to be forgiving when one no longer loves.
    And yet if Fred had been seeking vengeance, he could not have chosen a more effective form.
    I think Conrad was always a little afraid of me after that. The anger he never expressed remained with him, a secret hidden even from his conscious self. I am guessing, of course. Certainly his behavior was entirely in keeping with his ideology. If he believed in perfect freedom for himself, how could he deny the same freedom to a woman without being sexist? Roberta, I suppose, was as free in his mind as I was. And since she and I and he were all equally free, we all could do as we pleased in respect to each other. From a theoretical standpoint it worked perfectly. Fred, needless to say, never thought about such questions at all. And I am not sure myself that emotions are subject to theory.
    Even in Conrad’s realm of theoretical freedom, there were boundaries as well as a definite hierarchy. Conrad was on top, of course. Just below him there was Roberta and sometimes me—our positions kept fluctuating. There were times when she was what he called “the primary relationship” and times when I was. Or maybe I never was more than secondary. I felt primary in the beginning—if one can trust one’s feelings. Later I felt entitled-to-be-primary—which is not quite the same. Let me see if I can define “primary relationship.” It is the one that is considered the objective rather than the obstacle to the objective. It is the one that is to be worked out in the future, the obstacle having been dealt with and laid to rest. It is the one that is rational, that is consciously chosen, the secondary being considered a neurotic attachment.
    What I had lost forever in Conrad’s eyes, I think, was the peculiarly virginal status of a woman just liberated from marriage. Conrad would be the first to disagree with me on this point, since virgins have no place at all in his theoretical system. An encounter with a real virgin and the responsibilities thereof would almost be too much for him—and I think he would wisely abstain. However, the virgin, rare as she has come to be in our culture above a certain age group, still occupies an exalted place in the hearts of men, still is highly prized, is in fact the ultimate possession, the fulfillment of that masculine desire to go where no man has gone before. I cannot believe that Conrad was that different from men in general, that the mask of the libertarian did not conceal the stern visage of the puritan. How else to explain his consistent passion for the newly separated—Roberta, for example, and then me, and I can recall hearing him speak of other women in that condition with an unmistakable flickering of erotic interest. Was it merely coincidence, was it really nothing more than his attraction to someone’s particular qualities in each case? Was it not that we were all as close as he could come to the real thing, women just out of the convent, our innocence restored by years of separation from the world of casually traded sex, ready for his imprinting.
    Conrad, I am being hard on you. I am not acknowledging your specialness. I am only drawing conclusions from what I have observed—the inevitable rush of masculine attention when a married woman first “comes out.” Later it markedly drops away. Who can explain it?
    I allowed myself to be deflowered. I dragged you into the mud, Conrad. I lost my aura, became less for you. I am sorry.
    Roberta was clearly primary after all that. I receded, dropped to second place.
    I wonder what he told her. He told her something, but I am almost certain it was not the truth. Since she was given, according to Conrad, to Sturm und Drang, I imagine she wept and