I was trying to give her the dialectics of the moral dynamism. I twisted my tongue in the endeavor to make her understand the marriage of the animal and the divine. She understood about as well as a layman understands when you explain the fourth dimension. She talked about delicacy and respect, as if they were pieces of angel cake. Sex was an animal locked up in a zoo which one visited now and then in order to study evolution.
Towards evening we rode back to the city, the last stretch in the elevated train, the child asleep in my arms. Mamma and Papa returning from the picnic grounds. Below, the city spread out with senseless geometrical rigidity, an evil dream rearing itself architecturally. A dream from which it is impossible to awaken. Mr. and Mrs. Megalopolitan with their offspring. Hobbled and fettered. Suspended in the sky like so much venison. A pair of every kind hanging by the hocks. At one end of the line starvation; at the other end bankruptcy. Between stations the pawnbroker, with three golden balls to signify the triune God of birth, buggery and blight. Happy days. A fog rolling in from Rockaway. Nature folding up like a dead leaf—at Mineola. Every now and then the doors open and shut: fresh batches of meat for the slaughterhouse. Little scraps of conversation, like the twittering of titmice. Who would think that the chubby little youngster beside you will in ten or fifteen years be shitting his brains out with fright on a foreign field? All day long you make innocent little gadgets; at night you sit in a dark hall and watch phantoms move across a silver screen. Maybe the realest moments you know are when you sit alone in the toilet and make caca. That doesn’t cost anything or commit you in any way. Not like eating or fucking, or making works of art. You leave the toilet and you step into the big shithouse. Whatever you touch is shitty. Even when it’s wrapped in cellophane the smell is there. Caca! The philosopher’s stone of the industrial age. Death and transfiguration—into shit! The departmentstore life—with filmy silks on one counter and bombs on the other counter. No matter what interpretation you put on it, every thought, every deed, is cash-registered. You’re fucked from the moment you draw your first breath. One grand international business machine corporation. Logistics, as they say.
Mamma and Papa are now as peaceful as blutwurst. Not an ounce of fight left in them. How glorious to spend a day in the open, with the worms and other creatures of God. What a delightful entr’acte! Life glides by like a dream. If you were to cut the bodies open while still warm you would find nothing resembling this idyl. If you were to scrape the bodies out and fill them with stones they woud sink to the bottom of the sea, like dead ducks.
It begins to rain. It pours. Hailstones big as bobolinks bounce from the pavement. The city looks like an ant pile smeared with salvarsan. The sewers rise and disgorge their vomit. The sky is as sullen and lurid as the bottom of a test tube.
I feel murderously gay all of a sudden. I hope to Christ it will rain like this for forty days and nights; I’d like to see the city swimming in its own shit; I’d like to see mannikins floating into the river and cash registers ground under the wheels of trucks; I’d like to see the insane pouring out of the asylums with cleavers and hacking right and left. The water cure! Like they gave it to the Filipinos in ’98! But where is our Aguinaldo? Where is the rat who can breast the flood with a machete between his lips?
I bring them home in a cab, deposit them safely just as a bolt of lightning strikes the steeple of the bloody Catholic church on the corner. The broken bells make a hell of a din as they hit the pavement. Inside the church a plaster Virgin is smashed to smithereens. The priest is so taken by surprise that he hasn’t time to button up his pants. His balls swell up like rocks.
Melanie flutters about like a demented albatross. “Dry your things!” she wails. A grand undressing, with gasps and shrieks and objurgations. I get into Maude’s dressing sack, the one with the marabou feathers. Look like a fairy about to give an impersonation of Loulou Hurluburlu. All flub and foozle now. I’m getting a hard on, “a personal hard-on,” if you know what I mean.
Maude is upstairs putting the child to bed. I walk around in my bare feet, the dressing sack wide open. A lovely feeling. Melanie peeks in, just to see if I’m all right. She’s walking around in her drawers with the parrot perched on her wrist. Afraid of the lightning she is. I’m talking to her with my hands folded over my prick. Could be a scene out of the “Wizard of Oz” by Memling. Time: dreiviertel-takt. Now and then the lightning strikes afresh. It leaves the taste of burning rubber in the mouth.
I’m standing in front of the big mirror admiring my quivering cock when Maude trips in. She’s as frisky as a hare and all decked out in tulle and mousseline. She seems not at all frightened by what she sees in the mirror. She comes over and stands beside me. “Open it up!” I urge. “Are you hungry?” she says, undoing herself leisurely. I turn her around and press her to me. She raises a leg to let me get it in. We look at each other in the mirror. She’s fascinated. I pull the wrap up over her ass so that she can have a better look. I lift her up and she twines her legs around me. “Yes, do it,” she begs. “Fuck me! Fuck me!” Suddenly she untwines her legs, unhitches. She grabs the big armchair and turns it around, resting her hands on the back of it. Her ass is stuck out invitingly. She doesn’t wait for me to put it in—she grabs it and places it herself, watching all the time through the mirror. I push it back and forth slowly, holding my skirts up like a bedraggled hussy. She likes to see it coming out—how far will it come before it falls out. She reaches under with one hand and plays with my balls. She’s completely unleashed now, as brazen as a pot. I withdraw as far as I can without letting it slip out and she rolls her ass around, sinking down on it now and then and clutching it with a feathery beak. Finally she’s had enough of that. She wants to lie down on the floor and put her legs around my neck. “Get it in all the way,” she begs. “Don’t be afraid of hurting me . . . I want it. I want you to do everything.” I got it in so deep it felt as though I were buried in a bed of mussels. She was quivering and slithering in every ream. I bent over and sucked her breasts; the nipples were taut as nails. Suddenly she pulled my head down and began to bite me wildly—lips, ears, cheeks, neck. “You want it, don’t you?” she hissed. “You want it, you want it . . .” Her lips twisted obscenely. “You want it . . . you want it!” And she fairly lifted herself off the floor in her abandon. Then a groan, a spasm, a wild, tortured look as if her face were under a mirror pounded by a hammer. “Don’t take it out yet,” she grunted. She lay there, her legs still slung around my neck, and the little flag inside her began twitching and fluttering. “God,” she said, “I can’t stop it!” My prick was still firm. It hung obedient on her wet lips, as though receiving the sacrament from a lascivious angel. She came again, like an accordion collapsing in a bag of milk. I got hornier and hornier. I pulled her legs down and lay them flat alongside my own. “Now don’t move, damn you,” I said. “I’m going to give it to you straight.” Slowly and furiously I moved in and out. “Ah, ah . . . Oh!” she hissed, sucking her breath in. I kept it up like a Juggernaut. Moloch fucking a piece of bombazine. Organza Friganza. The bolero in straight jabs. Her eyes were going wild; she looked like an elephant walking the ball. All she needed was a trunk to trumpet with. It was a fuck to a standstill. I fell on top of her and chewed her lips to a frazzle.
Then suddenly I thought of the douche. “Get up! Get up!” I said, nudging her roughly.
“I don’t need to,” she said weakly, giving me a knowing smile.
“You mean. . .?” I looked at her in astonishment.
“Yes, there’s no need to worry. . . . Are you all right? Don’t you want to wash?”
In the bathroom she confessed that she had been to the doctor—another doctor. There would be nothing to fear any more.
“So that’s it?” I whistled.
She powdered my cock for me, stretched it like a glove fitter, and then bent over and kissed it. “Oh God,” she said, flinging her arms around me, “if only . . .”
“If only what?”
“You kn
ow what I mean . . .”
I unglued myself and turning my head away, I said: “Yes, I guess I do. Anyway, you don’t hate me any more, do you?”
“I don’t hate anyone,” she answered. “I’m sorry it’s turned out the way it has. Now I’ll have to share you . . . with her.
“You must be hungry,” she added quickly. “Let me fix you something before you go.” She powdered her face carefully first, rouged her lips, and did her hair up negligently but attractively. Her wrap was open from the waist up. She looked a thousand times better than I had ever seen her look. She was like a bright voracious animal.
I walked around in the kitchen with my prick hanging out and helped her fix a cold snack. To my surprise she unearthed a bottle of homemade wine—elderberry wine that a neighbor had given her. We closed the doors and kept the gas burning to keep warm. Jesus, it was quite wonderful. It was like getting to know one another all over again. Now and then I got up and put my arms around her, kissed her passionately while my hand slid into her crack. She wasn’t at all shy or balky. On the contrary. When I pulled away, she held my hand, and then with a quick dive she fastened her mouth over my prick and sucked it in.
“You don’t have to go immediately, do you?” she asked, as I sat down and resumed eating.
“Not if you don’t want me to,” I said, in the most amiable state of acquiescence.
“Was it my fault,” she said, “that this never happened before? Was I such a squeamish creature?” She looked at me with such frankness and sincerity I hardly recognized the woman I had lived with all these years.
“I guess we were both to blame,” I said, downing another glass of elderberry wine.
She went to the icebox to ferret out some delicacy.
“You know what I feel like doing?” she said, coming back to the table with arms laden. “I’d like to bring the gramophone down and dance. I have some very soft needles. . . . Would you like that?”
“Sure,” I said, “it sounds fine.”
“And let’s get a bit drunk . . . would you mind? I feel so wonderful. I want to celebrate.”
“What about the wine?” I said. “Is that all you have?”
“I can get some more from the girl upstairs,” she said. “Or maybe some cognac—would you like that?”
“I’ll drink anything . . . if it will make you happy.”
She started to go at once. I jumped up and caught her by the waist. I raised her wrap and kissed her ass.
“Let me go,” she murmured. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
As she came back I heard her whispering to the girl from upstairs. She tapped lightly on the glass panel. “Put something on,” she cooed. “I’ve got Elsie with me.”
I went into the bathroom and wrapped a towel around my loins. Elsie went into a fit of laughter when she saw me. We hadn’t met since the day she found me lying in bed with Mona. She seemed in excellent good humor and not at all embarrassed by the turn of events. They had brought down another bottle of wine and some cognac. And the gramophone and the records.
Elsie was in just the mood to share our little celebration. I had expected Maude to offer her a drink and then get rid of her more or less politely. But no, nothing of the kind. She wasn’t at all disturbed by Elsie’s presence. She did excuse herself for being half-naked, but with a good-natured laugh, as though it were just one of those things. We put a record on and I danced with Maude. The towel slipped off but neither of us made any attempt to pick it up. When we ungrappled I stood there with my prick standing out like a flagpole and calmly reached for my glass. Elsie gave one startled look and then turned her head away. Maude handed me the towel, or rather slung it over my prick. “You don’t mind, do you, Elsie?” she said. Elsie was terribly quiet—you could her her temples hammering. Presently she went over to the machine and turned the record over. Then she reached for her glass without looking at us and gulped it down.
“Why don’t you dance with her?” said Maude. “I won’t stop you. Go ahead, Elsie, dance with him.”
I went up to Elsie with the towel hanging from my prick. As she turned her back to Maude she pulled the towel off and grabbed it with a feverish hand. I felt her whole body quiver, as though a chill had come over her.
“I’m going to get some candles,” said Maude. “It’s too bright in here.” She disappeared into the next room. Immediately Elsie stopped dancing, put her lips to mine and thrust her tongue down my throat. I put my hand on her cunt and squeezed it. She was still holding my cock. The record stopped. Neither of us pulled away to shut the machine off. I heard Maude coming back. Still I remained locked in Elsie’s arms.
This is where the trouble starts, I thought to myself. But Maude seemed to pay no attention. She lit the candles and then turned the electric light off. I was pulling away from Elsie when I felt her standing beside us. “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind. Let me join in.” And with that she put her arms around the two of us and we all three began kissing one another.
“Whew! it’s hot!” said Elsie, breaking away at last.
“Take your dress off, if you like,” said Maude. “I’m taking this off,” and suiting action to word she slipped out of the wrap and stood naked before us.
The next moment we were all stark naked.
I sat down with Maude on my lap. Her cunt was wet again. Elsie stood beside us with her arm around Maude’s neck. She was a little taller than Maude and well built. I rubbed my hand over her belly and twined my fingers in the bush that was almost on a level with my mouth. Maude looked on with a pleasant smile of satisfaction. I leaned forward and kissed Elsie’s cunt.
“It’s wonderful not to be jealous any more,” said Maude very simply.
Elsie’s face was scarlet. She didn’t quite know what her role was, how far she dared go. She studied Maude intently, as though not altogether convinced of her sincerity. Now I was kissing Maude passionately, my fingers in Elsie’s cunt the while. I felt Elsie pressing closer, moving herself. The juice was pouring over my fingers. At the same time Maude raised herself and, shifting her bottom, adroitly managed to sink down again with my prick neatly fitted inside her. She was facing forward now, her face pressed against Elsie’s breasts. She raised her head and took the nipple in her mouth. Elsie gave a shudder and her cunt began to quiver with silken spasms. Now Maude’s hand, which had been resting on Elsie’s waist, slid down and caressed the smooth cheeks. In another moment it had slipped farther down and encountered mine. I drew my hand away instinctively. Elsie shifted a little and then Maude leaned forward and placed her mouth on Elsie’s cunt. At the same time Elsie bent forward, over Maude, and put her lips to mine. The three of us were now quivering as if we had the ague.
As I felt Maude coming I held myself in, determined to save it for Elsie. My prick still taut, I gently raised Maude from my lap and reached for Elsie. She straddled me face forward and with uncontrollable passion she flung her arms around me, glued her lips to mine, and fucked away for dear life. Maude had discreetly gone to the bathroom. When she returned Elsie was sitting in my lap, her arm around my neck, her face on fire. Then Elsie got up and went to the bathroom. I went to the sink and washed myself there.
“I’ve never been so happy,” said Maude, going to the machine and putting on another record. “Give me your glass,” she said, and as she filled it she murmured: “What will you say when you get home?” I said nothing. Then she added under her breath: “You could say one of us was taken ill.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”
“You won’t be angry with me?”
“Angry? What for?”
“For keeping you so long.”
“Nonsense,” I said.
She put her arms around me and kissed me tenderly. And with arms around each other’s waist we reached for the glasses and gulped down a silent toast. At this moment Elsie returned. We stood there, naked as hatracks, our arms entwined, and drank to one another.
We beg
an to dance again, with the candles guttering. I knew that in a few moments they would be extinguished and no one would make a move to get fresh ones. We changed off at rapid intervals, to avoid giving one another the embarrassment of standing apart and watching. Sometimes Maude and Elsie danced together, rubbing their cunts together obscenely, then pulling apart laughingly, and one or the other making a grab for me. There was such a feeling of freedom and intimacy that any gesture, any act, became permissible. We began to laugh and joke more and more. When finally the candles guttered out, first one, then the other, and only a pale shaft of moonlight streamed through the windows, all pretense at restraint or decency vanished.
It was Maude who had the idea of clearing the table. Elsie assisted uncomprehendingly, like someone who had been mesmerized. Quickly the things were whisked to the tubs. There was a quick dash to the next room for a soft blanket which was stretched over the table. Even a pillow. Elsie was beginning to get the drift. She looked on goggle-eyed.
Before getting down to actualities, however, Maude had another inspiration—to make eggnogs. We had to switch the light on for that. The two of them worked swiftly, almost frantically. They poured a liberal dose of cognac into the concoction. As I felt it slipping down my gullet I felt it going straight into my pecker, into my balls. As I was drinking, my head thrown back, Elsie cupped her hand around my balls. “One of them’s bigger than the other,” she said laughingly. Then, after a slight hesitation: “Couldn’t we all do something together?” She looked at Maude. Maude grinned, as if to say—why not? “Let’s put the top light out,” said Elsie. “We don’t need that any more, do we?” She sat down on the chair beside the table. “I want to watch you,” she said, patting the blanket with her hand. She got hold of Maude and lifted her up and on to the table. “This is a new one to me,” she said. “Wait a minute?” She took my hand and drew me to her. Then, looking at Maude . . . “May I?” And without waiting for an answer she bent forward and reaching for my cock, placed it in her mouth. After a few moments she withdrew her mouth. “Now . . . let me watch!” She gave me a little push, as if to hurry me on. Maude stretched out like a cat, her ass hanging over the edge of the table, the pillow under her head. She twined her legs around my waist. Then, suddenly, she untwined them and slung them over my shoulders. Elsie was standing beside me, her head down, watching with breathless absorption. “Pull it out a little,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “I want to see it go in again.” Then swiftly she ran to the window and raised the shades. “Do it!” she said. “Go on, fuck her!” As I plunged it in I felt Elsie slipping down beside me. The next moment I felt her tongue on my balls, lapping them vigorously.