Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/510
I don’t have the patience to retrace my weekend, but what applies most directly is that Adele[1] and I had a great fuck on Sunday night, just when each of us were beginning to worry about losing desire. And it was that—for we entered new territory, we shifted gears—which made me realize how so often in a couple who are right for each other sexually those little temporary slackening periods of a week or two (neutral) are invariably the coasting, the building up for an entrance into a new kind of sex. She was radiant yesterday, and indeed so was I.
Dinner at my folks was again a genuine pleasure, and to my amazement Adele brought them a box of candy. Nothing she could have done would have been better proof to me that she loved me, for giving presents is still not natural nor easy for her, and especially to my folks. Barbara and Larry, however, did show up.[2] They’re scared of me now. I know it. But so guilt-ridden. Larry had to call me to ask for some guy’s address. It is the trap of their lives. They can’t do anything the way they would like to. Aggression has to be smothered in the propitiatory act, love pinched by the gnawing doubt.
notes
- ↑ Adele Morales (1925 – 2015), who he married in April 1954, was Mailer’s second wife. The mother of his daughters Danielle (b. 1957), and Elizabeth Anne (b. 1959), she separated from Mailer in early 1961 a few months after he stabbed her with a penknife, just missing her heart. He pled guilty to felonious assault and was given a suspended sentence. They divorced in 1962.
- ↑ Mailer’s sister, Barbara Mailer Wasserman (b. 1927) was married to Larry Alson (1920-2016), a writer and editor, from 1950-1962.