At the end of that suicide call, the first of many, I asked if he’d talked to Mom about this and he got angry, saying of course not in a familiar tone of contempt. The following day I called Mom and told her to unload the shotgun. She didn’t ask why. For the last twenty-five years I lived with the understanding that at any moment I might receive the news that Dad had killed himself. I wondered where the family would bathe when we gathered for his death. As the oldest, I’d have to use the shower first. To prepare myself, I imagined the act in great detail, down to my own post-traumatic hallucination of seeing the soapsuds run pink from traces of blood embedded in the grout.
After he died, I found the old shotgun hanging on hooks above a door, the metal pitted, the action rusty, the barrel filled with grime. It was a break-action single-barrel .410, forty-two inches long. I placed the barrel against my face and could easily reach the trigger. Dad was taller, with much longer arms than mine. Either he’d lied to me on the phone or he’d traded in a twelve-gauge for one with a shorter barrel.
The .410 was ideal for snake, and I brought it back to Mississippi. A pack of coyotes travels a wide territory here, showing up every few weeks and disturbing my wife’s dogs with their chilling howls. Firing the old .410 makes enough noise to send the coyotes elsewhere. Every time I shoot, I think of my father’s dismal talk of suicide, and how he drank himself to death while the shotgun rusted on the wall.
Chapter Twenty-nine
DURING THE heart of Mississippi winter, I missed the purity of fresh snow but not the northern cold. Still, the days were short, with gray skies and a barren tree line. My house lacked insulation. The pipes froze. Fetishized sex became a white noise that surrounded me, invading every aspect of my life. In order to interact objectively with porn, I had to deliberately repress any salacious response to the material, which was like going to a comedy club and trying not to laugh. Months of immersion in pornography had reversed its intended purpose. Instead of arousal, I became sexually numb. I didn’t even want to be touched. Marital relations waned, ebbed, and vanished. I felt guilty.
My life consisted of a house full of porn and a gorgeous wife—but the two were unconnected. I became afraid my wife would go elsewhere for sex, seek a man who’d inherited money and land instead of mountains of porn. She said that was crazy talk, suggesting my disinterest was a normal product of grief. But I didn’t feel grief. I’d developed an immunity to sex. I was sick of my involvement with porn. I’d become a useless steer. My wife wouldn’t have to leave. The young bulls would trample me into the mud and take her away.
In A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, the protagonist is subjected to a form of aversion therapy. His eyelids are clipped open by specula, then he’s forced to watch brutally violent images until he is rendered incapable of harming others. My experience was similar. I’d forced myself to interact with so much pornography, I no longer regarded my wife in a sexual manner. Each time I tried, my mind filled with images of fetish porn. I could admire her dress, legs and hips, but the response was aesthetic and intellectual, as if studying art I couldn’t afford.
I got worried and saw a doctor. He inquired if I had erections at night or in the morning. I nodded, embarrassed. In a light, jocular tone, he said it wasn’t the equipment, so there was no need for Viagra. I tried to force a smile that fell apart before reaching my face. The doctor asked if my wife was undergoing menopause, and he seemed slightly surprised that she was younger, as if her age alone should keep me sexually engaged.
In a subtle fashion, he probed about my professional life. After hearing a brief explanation of my current project, the doctor quickly changed the subject to my deviated septum, which affected my breathing. He said the extreme degree of trauma was common in adults who’d had their nose broken in childhood and never repaired. He gently asked if I’d ever been hit in the face as a kid. For the first time in weeks, I started laughing. Of course, I told him, hasn’t everybody? He gave me a strange look and sent me home. Later it occurred to me that in its own way, porn had struck me as hard as the blow that shattered cartilage inside my head. I feared that my desire, like my ability to breathe normally, would never return.