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Maybe it's a mistake to admit this, but a good deal of my early sexual worldview came
from Caligula. When I say Caligula, I don't mean the Roman emperor, or
the film about the emperor starring Malcolm McDowell, but the novelization of Gore
Vidal's screenplay for the film, written by a man whose name is lost to me. The book has
been out of my possession for many years, but I remember certain sexual scenes from it
intimately. If you're ten, eleven, Caligula, the novelization, is a hell of a read, and
maybe it was more so because of the way I got my hands on it. Where I grew up in New Jersey, some Sundays my father would take me to a used bookstore to browse for books. He would tell me to pick one out for myself, Johnny Tremain, maybe, which was a favorite of mine, or something about Alexander the Great or Napoleon. I was fixated, at the time, on the exploits of Alexander and Napoleon. Caligula caught my eye because it had something ancient or Roman on the cover, a coin, maybe, with blood streaking down. The look of the book, the feverish tilt of the jacket copy, the fact that it all seemed to have something to do with the same antiquity that had sprung the ravening Alexander, all of this made me certain that this was the book I needed my father to buy for me. The lady at the counter told my father I should pick another book. She said it was "inappropriate." I could tell my father secretly agreed, but there was another, more profound issue at stake than whether his son got his hands on a smutty book based on a bloated, misguided movie. It was a question of free speech. I have never been so proud of my father as when he lectured the lady on this topic in loud, abrasive tones, and then paid for the book. "Nobody is going to decide what my son can and can't read!" he shouted from the 
door. Then, in the parking lot, he handed me the book, quickly, without further comment,
and we never talked about it again. Caligula, and later Napoleon and Alexander (and now Clinton), all came to represent something similar to me, something formative in my early ideas about sex, power, and desire. It's the same simple notion that everyone arrives at eventually, namely, that powerful men fuck whomever they want whenever they want. Whomever they want whenever they want. It might not even be true. But it was one of the first of the mighty ideas that ever held sway over my conscious, reasoning life. Later, sure, I would grapple with formulations concerning art, language, and capitalism. But that was fluff compared to what I learned in the otherwise forgettable novelization of Gore Vidal's screenplay for Caligula. Caligula fucked his sisters. Caligula fucked his captain's wife. Caligula fucked Roman brides before the bridegrooms did. Caligula's predecessor, Tiberius, fucked little children in glittering pools. Tiberius orchestrated massive fuck-shows in the middle of forest glens which he and Caligula witnessed and then, in an almost reverse-Brechtian sense, stepped into and became actors themselves. Don't tell me about Jack Kennedy, a later, sadder Caesar. Or Bill Clinton, a sadder one still, and running his empire into the ground. They impeached Caligula, in manner of speaking, but not before he had enacted over and over again the dictum of the ruler: Whomever I want whenever I want. Or this, at least, was how I saw it, in post-gas-crisis New Jersey once I came into possession of said novelization. Around this time I overheard my father say something very interesting to my mother. He told her, apropos of the supposed sexual appeal of Henry Kissinger (this had been the subject of countless pieces of idiotic journalism), that truly powerful men had no interest in 
extramarital affairs, that their power itself was a much headier form of conquest. It
sounded ingenious at the time, but I wonder why I believed him. I was, after all, getting
quite a different message from the novelization of Gore Vidal's screenplay of
Caligula. The novelized Caligula had the resources of the greatest empire in the world
at his disposal, but all he cared about was which of his sisters he was going to fuck that
day. Later, I would realize just how ingenious my father's statement was.
Unbeknownst to me, he had already had several affairs. When he finally left my mother
for another woman, I was Chelsea Clinton's age. Whomever he wants whenever he wants. My father had a Monica. Maybe yours did, too. Or does now. Don't be heartbroken. Don't stamp your feet. He probably still loves you. I'm sure of it, in fact. The President still loves you, too. Don't you want his love? I do. You have to have a Monica. Any run-of-the-mill power player needs a Monica to give him assurance that he's still in the game. Bill had a Monica. Caligula had a lot of Monica. Think about it. Stop thinking about trust, virtue, democracy. Those are nice ideas, but as people like to say about Communism and upholstery cleaner, they only work in theory. And also, on a less analytical note, there's something about a blowjob that feels good. Can you imagine yourself, if you are a man, maybe, or a woman, maybe, but maybe not, can you imagine yourself there, in the Oval Office, in the library off the Oval office, in the hallway there? Of course you can. Of course you want her breasts first. I want her breasts first. I want her in the blue-black dress and I want her breasts first. I am the President. I've been doing this shit all my life, and I want her breasts first. I can tell what they will look like already, round and full and pale with a tiny beautiful vein 
like a quiet river running to her heart. I want to squeeze and suckle. That's all I ever really
ever ever wanted. The suits, the speeches, sure, the airplane, sure, but those fuckers are
always after me for more and more of me and this is all I ever wanted. I want her ass and her belly and her hair and her lips. Those fuckers. Whomever I want whenever I want. Maybe not wherever. Those democracy-sucking parasites. Her hair, I can see it spread out on a glittering pool. We'll give them a fuck-show, those bastards. Her mouth on me. The wife, the smart wife. Smarter? Poor Chelsea. Poor kid. Poor me. I was a poor kid. My Daddy . . . no Daddy. Vernon? Monica's mouth on me. Her hair. No dumb letters, baby, okay? This is your letter, okay? Give me your letter. Give it to me. Her hair. Monica's hair. Beautiful hair. Jewish hair? Like Virginia's hair. Baptist hair. Virginia's hair, with that skunk streak through it. No daddy, bad daddy, just me and Virginia, may she rest in peace, her mouth on me . . . NO! Stop. Please, no, stop. I can't. Not this time. Not this time, baby. I just don't trust you yet. |
