Desire is a curious thing, Margaret thought. I want Lily and Dr. Lipi and Martin. Or do I just want? I want to know. I want to know what I want.
I am sitting reading Aristotle and looking out the window at a high school wrestling team on their way to work out in the park, staring at beautiful bare-chested teenagers in their running shorts. If Rameau's Niece is a philosophical novel, this must be philosophy. Philosophy has a nice hot, dreamy feeling to it, doesn't it?
For some weeks Margaret had been sitting at her desk staring at the wrestling team as they passed, and devouring books of philosophy. It was a feast, a binge, an uncontrollable, necessary carousing debauch. It was an orgy. Forgetting, said Plato, is the departure of knowledge. We are never the same, always changing, as knowledge departs and we study in order to replace what we have lost. Forgetting allows for constant renewal, and so for immortality.
Margaret smiled. The Symposium, a book about drunken, married homosexuals sprawled three-deep on couches, telling stories of round creatures sliced in half, their genitals on backward, running about, trying to reunite. Ah, philosophy! The rising stairs toward the mystery of love, of beauty, of the ideal form. Clump, clump, clump, up we go, "from one body to two and from two to all beautiful bodies." Margaret stared out the window at the beautiful bodies. Ten, twelve of them. At the end, says Socrates, we arrive at beauty "through loving boys correctly." Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, boys.
Margaret watched them pass beneath her window. The only thing we can be certain about, she thought, is what we want. Was that Rorty? It couldn't be Bertrand Russell. Duns Scotus maybe? It had all become a tantalizing muddle in her head. Surely it was Rorty. The only things that are really evident to us are our own desires.
I wish mine were evident to me. The only thing that's evident to me is desire itself, great, galloping desire.
AND HOW are the ivories this morning?"
"Fine, thank you."
Margaret watched as Dr. Lipi pulled the clear yellow rubber gloves on, watched his fingers pushing, sliding, first the left hand, then the right, watched the gloves snap on, pressing onto the hairs that showed through like decorative engraved swirls.
His white shirt, not a dentist's shirt, was opened, unbuttoned quite a ways down. She didn't blame him. One must always present one's good features to their best advantage. But was it hygienic? she wondered.
She put her head back and opened her mouth as he adorned it with this and that—wedges, sheets of rubber, gurgling hoses. Jingle, jingle, went the gold charms on his necklace. She looked at them carefully. They were teeth, gold teeth. His rubber hands approached. She closed her eyes, ecstatic.
As Margaret paid her bill (by credit card; Dr. Lipi was so up-to-date), she thought of Richard's warning: You will fall out of love when the bill comes. Yes, nine hundred and fifty dollars did take the bloom off things.
Dr. Lipi came up and stood at the reception desk beside her. He smiled and patted her shoulder. "Ms. Nathan," he said, "I'm going to miss talking to you."
Well! Margaret thought, as his hand rested on her shoulder. Nine hundred and fifty dollars or no nine hundred and fifty dollars, I must determine what I really feel. Why, it's one of the primary concerns of a human being, a requirement of the human condition. I must sort out what is real from what is simple metaphysical daydreaming; I must discriminate between facts and nonsense. I must establish certainty with regard to my desire to be humped by my dentist.
"You know," she mumbled, suddenly inspired, through her novocaine-heavy mouth. "I'm thinking of writing a book about the history of the image of the dentist."
His eyebrows, beautiful, silky, dark eyebrows, lifted with interest.
"Dr. Lipi, may I interview you?"