Anatomy of feelings, the column of Eshkol Nevo: “Feeling of the belly”

This article appeared in the 42nd issue of Vanity Fair.

Now you can be sure that I will never betray you, she had told him after the birth of her second child. Look at my belly. What a horror. How many stretch marks. Impossible to let anyone else see them. Now you can rest easy. I am yours for eternity.

It’s not that bad, he’d said. You exaggerate.

And she had thought: no, no, that’s not what you should have told me now.

A few years followed in which sex was the least of her thoughts. There were two small children to raise. Meals. The laundry. Cleaning. The career to restart. They only made love on Saturday mornings. Always faithful to the same sequence of acts. Sometimes she came, sometimes she didn’t. She didn’t care much, but because she felt like she was important to his ego, when she didn’t come, she pretended to.

Then came the invitation to the conference in Berlin. The little boy was already four years old, but she was still uncertain if it was the time to leave.

Go away, he had urged her on, go get some fresh air. She knew that he wanted to see her leave too because in this way she would legitimize his many trips. But that same evening she had booked the plane ticket.

At the airport he had bought the latest issue of the New Yorker. It used to be his little pre-departure ritual. She had been happy to re-establish the tradition.

There was nothing in the magazine story he was holding in his hand that should have turned her on: two gay men from the Midwest were attracted to each other but couldn’t fulfill their passion because they lived in a reactionary city. Yet at the end of the reading she realized she was wet.

He had given a seminar during the convention. He had a heavy Irish accent and was clearly unaccustomed to public speaking. He had stammered several times, and once he had gotten confused between two slides. The end of the speech had elicited a feeble applause and no one had approached to speak to him. She had approached, to say that it had been enlightening.

I hate lectures, he had smiled. But my boss caught Covid the day before the flight and someone had to replace him. He had an amazing smile. Open. Safe. Difficult to associate with the embarrassed man who a moment before he was on stage. Even the invitation that followed had taken her by surprise: would you like to continue the conversation over a cup of coffee?

Yes, she was blushing, or rather, no, or rather, I’m married, in short, I want to clarify. I’m married too, he had interrupted. What does it has to do with it?

After the coffee they’d gone to a bar, then to a second, then walked back to the hotel. She leaned lightly against him, drunk: what an idea, having a fight to see who can hold up better with an Irishman. In the hotel lift he had pushed her against the mirror to kiss her. She tasted like Guinness and had a very strong tongue. They had continued kissing up to her room. When his hand undid the top button on her blouse, it remembered her stretch marks; she was about to screw it up but then she, slipping her hand under his shirt, realized that there was a small beer belly under her.

So how did the conference go? She had asked her husband the next day, on her phone.

Great, she replied. And she had hoped that her voice didn’t leak anything.

Are there any interesting men? He had inquired.

I told you, she retorted stroking her belly and imagining it was the big, warm hand of the Irishman, you can rest easy.