To ask the purpose of the game, how it is related to life, is idle. As well ask the Creator why volcanoes? why hurricanes? since obviously they contribute nothing but disaster. But, since disasters are disastrous only for those who are engulfed in them, whereas they can be illuminating for those who survive and study them, so it is in the creative world. The dreamer who returns from his voyage, if he is not shipwrecked en route, may and usually does convert the collapse of his tenuous fabric into other stuff. For a child the pricking of a bubble may offer nothing but astonishment and delight. The student of illusions and mirages may react differently. A scientist may bring to a bubble the emotional wealth of a world of thought. The same phenomenon which causes the child to scream with delight may give birth, in the mind of an earnest experimenter, to a dazzling vision of truth. In the artist these contrasting reactions seem to combine or merge, producing that ultimate one, the great catalyzer called realization. Seeing, knowing, discovering, enjoying—these faculties or powers are pale and lifeless without realization. The artist’s game is to move over into reality. It is to see beyond the mere “disaster” which the picture of a lost battlefield renders to the naked eye. For, since the beginning of time the picture which the world has presented to the naked human eye can hardly seem anything but a hideous battleground of lost causes. It has been so and will be so until man ceases to regard himself as the mere seat of conflict. Until he takes up the task of becoming the “I of his I.”
10
Saturdays I usually quit work at noon, lunching either with Hymie Laubscher and Romero or with O’Rourke and O’Mara. Sometimes Curley joined us, or George Miltiades, a Greek poet and scholar who was one of the messenger force. Now and then O’Mara would invite Irma and Dolores to join us; they had worked their way up from humble secretaries in the Cosmococcic employment bureau to buyers in a big department store on Fifth Avenue. The meal usually stretched out until three or four in the afternoon. Then, with dragging feet, I would wend my way over to Brooklyn to pay my weekly visit to Maude and the little one.
As the snow was still on the ground we were no longer able to take our walks through the park. Maude was generally attired in a negligee and bathrobe; her long hair hung loosely, almost to her waist. The rooms were superheated and encumbered with furniture. She usually kept a box of candy near the couch where she reclined.
The greetings we exchanged would make one think we were old friends. Sometimes the child was not there when I arrived, having gone to a neighbor’s house to play with one of her little friends.
“She waited for you until three o’clock,” Maude would say, with an air of mild reproach, but secretly thrilled that it had turned out thus.
I would explain that my work had detained me at the office. To this she would give me a look which signified—“I know your excuses. Why don’t you think up something different?”
“How is your friend Dolores?” she would ask abruptly. “Or,” giving me a sharp look, “isn’t she your friend any more?”
A question like this was meant as a gentle insinuation that she hoped I was not deceiving the other woman (Mona) as I had her. She would never mention Mona’s name, of course, nor would I. She would say “she” or “her” in a way that was unmistakably clear as to whom she meant.
There was also, in these questions, an overtone of deeper implications. Since the divorce proceedings were only in the preliminary stages, since the rupture had not yet been definitely created by law, there was no telling what might happen in the meantime. We were no longer enemies, at least. There was always the child between us—a strong bond. And, until she could arrange her life differently, they were both dependent on me. She would like to have known more about my life with Mona, whether it was going as smoothly as we had expected or not, but pride prevented her from inquiring too openly. She doubtless reasoned to herself that the seven years we had lived together constituted a not altogether negligible factor in this now seemingly tenuous situation. One false move on Mona’s part and I would fall back into the old pattern. It behooved her to make the most of this strange new friendship which we had established. It might prepare the ground for another and deeper relationship.
I felt sorry for her sometimes when this unexpressed hope manifested itself only too clearly. There was never the slightest fear on my part that I would sink back into the old pattern of conjugal life. Should anything happen to Mona—the only threat of separation I could think of was death—I would certainly never resume a life with Maude. It was much more plausible that I should turn to someone like Irma or Dolores, or even Monica, the little waitress from the Greek restaurant.
“Why don’t you come over here and sit beside me—I won’t bite you.”
Her voice seemed to come from far away. Often it happened that when we were left alone, Maude and I, my mind would wander off. As now, for example, I would often respond in a semitrance, the body obedient to her wishes but the rest of me absent. A brief struggle of wills always ensued, a struggle rather between her will and my absence of will. I had no desire to tickle her erotic fancies; I was there to kill a few hours and be off without opening any fresh wounds. Usually, however, my hand would absent-mindedly stray over her voluptuous form. There was nothing more to it at first than the involuntary caress that one would give a pet. But little by little she would make we aware that she was responding with concealed pleasure; then, just when she had succeeded in riveting my attention upon her body, she would make some abrupt move to break the connection.
“Remember, I’m not your wife any more!”
She loved to hurl that at me, knowing that it would incite me to renewed efforts, knowing that it would focus my mind, as well as my fingers, upon the forbidden object: herself. These taunts served another purpose too—they roused an awareness of her power to offer or deny. She always seemed to be saying with her body: “To have this you can’t ignore me.” The idea that I could be satisfied with her body only was a most humiliating one for her. “I’d give you more than any woman could offer,” she seemed to say, “if only you looked at me, if only you saw me, the real me.” She knew only too well that I looked beyond her, that the dislocation between our centers was far more real, far more dangerous, now than it had ever been. She knew too that there was no other way of reaching me than through the body.
It’s a curious fact that a body, however familiar it may be to sight and touch, can become eloquently mysterious once we feel that the owner of it has become elusive or evasive. I remember the renewed zest with which I explored Maude’s body after I learned that she had been to see a doctor for a vaginal examination. What gave spice to the situation was that the doctor in question had been an old suitor of hers, one of those suitors whom she had never mentioned. Out of the blue one day she announced that she had been to his office, that she had had a fall one day which she had told me nothing about, and, having lately run into her old sweetheart, whom she knew she could trust (!), she had decided to let him examine her.
“You just walked in on him and asked to be examined?”
“No, not quite like that.” She had to laugh herself at this.
“Well, what did happen exactly?”
I was curious to know whether he had found her improved or otherwise in the interval of five or six years which had elapsed. Hadn’t he made any advances? He was married, of course, she had already informed me of that. But he was also extremely handsome, a magnetic personality, she had taken pains to let me know.
“Well, how did it feel to get on the table and spread your legs open—before your old sweetheart?”
She tried to make me understand that she had grown absolutely frigid, that Dr. Hilary, or whatever the devil his name was, had urged her to relax, that he had reminded her that he was acting as a physician, and so on and so forth.
“Did you succeed in relaxing—finally?”
Again she laughed, one of those tantalizing laughs which she always produced when she had to speak of “shameful” things.
&nbs
p; “Well, what did he do?” I pressed.
“Oh, nothing much, really. He just explored the vagina”—she wouldn’t say my vagina!—“with his finger. He had a rubber over his finger of course.” She added this as though to absolve herself of any suspicion that the procedure might have been anything more than a perfunctory one.
“He thought I had filled out beautifully,” she volunteered, to my surprise.
“Oh, he did, did he? He gave you a thorough examination, then?”
The recollection of this little incident had been stirred by a remark she had just dropped. She said she had been worried about the old pain which had reappeared recently. She re-described the fall which she had had years ago when she believed, mistakenly, that she had injured her pelvis. She spoke with such seriousness that when she took my hand and placed it above her cunt, just at the ridge of the Mons Venus, I thought the gesture one of complete innocence. She had a thick growth of hair there, a genuine rosebush which, if the fingers strayed within striking distance of it, immediately stood on end, stiffened like a brush. It was one of those bushy things which are maddening to touch through a film of silk or velvet. Often, in the early days, when she wore attractive flimsy things, when she acted coquettish and seductive, I used to make a grab for it and hold on to it while standing in some public place, the lobby of a theater, or an elevated station. She used to get furious with me. But, standing close to her, blocking the sight of my groping hand, I would continue to hold on to it, saying: “Nobody can see what I’m doing. Don’t move!” And I would continue talking to her, my hand buried in her muff, she hypnotized with fear. In the theater, as soon as the lights were lowered, she would always spread her legs apart and let me fool with her. She thought nothing of it then to open my fly and play with my cock throughout the performance.
Her cunt still held a thrill. I was conscious of it now, my hand resting warmly on the edge of her thick sporran. She kept up a continuous flow of talk in order to postpone that embarrassing moment of silence when there would be nothing but the pressure of my hand and the tacit admission that she wished it to remain there.
As though vitally interested in what she was relating, I suddenly reminded her of the stepfather whom she had lost. As I anticipated, she thrilled immediately to the suggestion. Excited by the very mention of the name, she placed her hand over mine and pressed it warmly. That my own hand slipped a little farther down, that the fingers became entangled in the thick hairs, she seemed not to mind at all—for the moment. She carried on about him gushingly, quite like a schoolgirl. As my fingers twined and untwined I felt a double passion stirring in me. Years ago, when I first used to call on her, I was violently jealous of this stepfather. She was then a woman of twenty-two or three, her figure full-blown, mature in every sense of the word; to see her sitting on his lap before the window, at dusk, talking to him in a low, caressing voice, used to infuriate me. “I love him,” she would say, as though that excused her behavior, for with her the word love always meant something pure, something divorced from carnal pleasure. It was in Summer that these scenes occurred, and I, who was only waiting for the old duffer to release her, was all too conscious of the warm naked flesh beneath the filmy, gauzelike dress she wore. She might just as well have sat naked in his arms, it seemed to me. I was always conscious of the weight of her in his arms, of the way she settled down on him, her thighs rippling, her generous crack anchored firmly over his fly. I was certain that, however pure the old man’s love for her was, he must have been aware of the luscious fruit he was holding in his arms. Only a corpse could have been impervious to the sap and the heat generated by that warm body. Moreover, the better I knew her, the more I thought it natural for her to offer her body in this furtive, libidinous way. An incestuous relationship was not beyond her; if she had to be “violated” she would prefer that it be done by the father she loved; the fact that he was not her real father, but the one she had chosen, simplified the situation, if indeed she ever permitted herself to think about such things openly. It was this damned, perverted relationship which had made it so difficult for me to bring her out into any clear, open sexual relationship in those days. She expected of me a love which I was unable to give her. She wanted me to fondle her like a child, whisper sweet nothings in her ear, pet her, pamper her, humor her. She wanted me to embrace and caress her in some absurd, incestuous way. She didn’t want to admit that she had a cunt and I a prick. She wanted love talk and silent, furtive pressures, explorations with the hands. I was too forthright, too brutal, for her liking.
After she had had a taste of the real thing she was nearly beside herself—with passion, rage, shame, humiliation, and what not. She evidently had never thought it would be so enjoyable, nor so disgusting. What was disgusting—to her—was the abandonment. To think that there was something hanging between a man’s legs which could make her forget herself completely was exasperating to her. She did so want to be independent—when not just a child. She didn’t want the in-between realm, the surrender, the fusion, the exchange. She wanted to keep that little tight core of self which was hidden away in her breast and only allow herself the legitimate pleasure of surrendering the body. That body and soul could not be separated, especially in the sex act, was a source of the most profound irritation. She always behaved as if, having abandoned her cunt to the exploration of the penis, she had lost something, some little particle of her abysmal self, some element which could never be replaced. The more she fought against it the more complete was her abandon.
No woman can fuck as savagely as the hysterical woman who has made her mind frigid.
Playing now with the stiff, wiry hairs of that bush of hers, letting a finger stray down occasionally to the tip of her cunt, my thoughts roamed vagrantly deep into the past. I had almost the feeling that I was her chosen father, that I was playing with this lascivious daughter in the hypnotic dusk of an overheated room. Everything was false and deep and real at the same time. If I were to act as she wished, act the part of the tender, understanding lover, there would be no doubt of the reward. She would devour me in passionate surrender. Only keep up the pretenses and she would open those thighs of hers with a volcanic ardor.
“Let me see if it hurts inside,” I whispered, withdrawing my hand and deftly slipping it under the filmy shift and up her cunt. The juices were oozing from her; her legs slipped farther apart, responsive to the slightest pressure of my hand.
“There . . . does it hurt there?” I asked, piercing deep within her.
Her eyes were half closed. She gave a meaningless nod, signifying neither yes nor no. I slipped two more fingers inside her cunt and quietly stretched my length beside her. I put an arm under her head and drew her gently to me, my fingers still deftly churning the juices that were seeping from her.
She lay still, absolutely passive, her mind thoroughly absorbed in the play of my fingers. I took her hand and slid it into my fly which came unbuttoned magically. She grasped my prick firmly and gently, caressing it with a practiced touch. I stole a quick glance at her and saw an expression almost of bliss on her countenance. This was what she loved, this blind, tactile exchange of emotions. If she could only really fall asleep now and let herself be fucked, pretend that she had no watchful, waking part in it . . . just give herself completely and yet be innocent. . . what bliss that would be! She liked to fuck with the inner cunt, lying absolutely still, as in a trance. With semaphores erect, distended, jubilant, twitching, tickling, sucking, clinging, she could fuck to her heart’s content, fuck till the last drop of juice was exhausted.
It was imperative now not to make a false move, not to puncture the thin skin which she was still spinning, like a cocoon, about her naked, carnal self. To make the transfer from finger to prick required the adroitness of a mesmerist. The deadly pleasure had to be increased most gradually, as though it were a poison to which the body became only gradually accustomed. She would have to be fucked through the veil of the cocoon, just as years ago, in order to take her, I had
to violate her through her nightgown. . . . A devilish thought came to my mind, as my cock twitched with delight under her skillful caresses. I thought of her sitting on her stepfather’s lap, in the gloaming, her crack glued to his fly as always. I wondered what the expression on her face would have been had she suddenly felt that glowworm of his penetrating her dreamy cunt; if, while murmuring her perverse litany of adolescent love in his ears, if, unconscious of the fact her gauzelike dress no longer covered her fleshy buttocks, this unmentionable thing which was hidden between his legs suddenly stood bolt upright and climbed inside her, exploding like a water pistol. I looked at her to see if she could read my thoughts, exploring the folds and crevices of her inflamed cunt meanwhile with bold, aggressive palps. Her eyes were tightly closed, her lips parted lasciviously; the lower part of her body began to squirm and twist, as if trying to free itself from a net. Gently I removed her hand from my cock, at the same time gingerly lifting a leg and slinging it over me. For a few moments I let my cock jump and quiver at the mouth of her crack, letting it slide from front to rear and back again, as if it were a flexible rubber toy. An idiotic refrain was repeating itself in my head: “What is this I hold over thy head—fine or superfine?” I continued this little game for a tantalizing spell, now and then nosing the head of my prick in an inch or so, then running it up against the tip of her cunt and letting it nestle down in her dewy bush. All of a sudden she gave a gasp and with eyes wide open she swung full round; balanced on hands and knees, she strove frantically to catch my prick with her slimy trap. I put my two hands around her buttocks, the fingers doing a glissando along the inner edge of her swollen cunt, and opening it like you would a torn rubber ball, I placed my cock at the vulnerable point and waited for her to bear down. For a moment I thought she had suddenly changed her mind. Her head, which had been hanging loosely, the eyes helplessly following the frantic movements of her cunt, now thrust itself up taut, the gaze suddenly shifted to some point above my head. An expression of utter selfish pleasure filled the full, roving orbs, and as she began to rotate her ass, my prick only half inside her, she began to chew her underlip. With that I slid a trifle lower and pulling her down with all my force I jabbed it in up to the hilt, so deep that she gave a groan and her head fell forward on the pillow. At this moment, when I could have taken a carrot and shoved it around inside her for all the difference it would have made, there came a loud knock at the door. We were both so startled that our hearts almost stopped beating. As usual, she recovered first. Tearing herself from me, she ran to the door.