“Here you’re silk, oiled silk. I love the way your ribs and hip bones press through your skin, the deep curve from chest to waist, and then the flare of your hips. You’re so strong and hard, so soft and yielding. Look how long your arms are, and how wide your shoulders. And still, nipples like buds and your sweet, smooth ass. How dear your flesh is to me. Oh!”
She murmured, still touching him, and almost against his will he responded and moved against her. Then he lay on his back, pulled her over atop him, spread his legs, raised his knees.
“How lovely if you could come into me,” he whispered and, knowing, she made the movements he desired. “If you had a penis, too…Or better yet, if we both had both penis and vagina. What an improvement on God’s design! So that we both might be inside each other, simultaneously, penetrating. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
“Oh yes,” she breathed. “Wonderful.”
He held her weight down onto him, calling her “Darling” and “Honey” and saying, “Oh love, you feel so good,” and it seemed to him the fabric of his life, like a linen handkerchief laundered too often, was simply shredding apart. Not rotting, but pulling into individual threads; light was coming through.
In her exertions, sweat dripped from her unshaven armpits onto his shoulders; he turned his head to lick it up, tasting salty life.
“Will you kill someone for me?” she gasped.
He pulled her down tighter, elevating his hips, linking his ankles around her slender back.
“Of course not,” he told her. “That would spoil everything.”
2
He grew up in that silent, loveless, white-tiled house and, an only child, had no sun to turn to and so turned inward, becoming contemplative, secretive even. Almost all he thought and all he felt concerned himself, his wants, fears, hates, hopes, despairs. Strangely, for a young boy, he was aware of this intense egoism and wondered if everyone else was as self-centered. It didn’t seem possible; there were boys his age who were jolly and out-going, who made friends quickly and easily, who could tease girls and laugh. But still…
“Sometimes it seemed I might be two persons: the one I presented to my parents and the world, and the one I
“But from my earliest boyhood-from my infancy, even-I have dreamed in my sleep, almost every night: wild, disjointed dreams of no particular meaning: silly things, happenings, people all mixed up, costumes, crazy faces, my parents and kids in school and historical and literary characters-all in a churn.
“Then-oh, perhaps at the age of eight, but it may have been later-I began to lose myself in daytime fantasies, as turbulent and incredible as my nighttime dreams. This daydreaming had no effect on my outward life, on the image I presented to the world. I could do homework efficiently, answer up in class, label the stones I collected, kiss my parents’ cold cheeks dutifully…and be a million miles away. No, not away, but down inside myself, dreaming.
“Gradually, almost without my being aware of it, daytime fantasies merged with nighttime dreams. How this developed, or exactly when, I cannot say. But daytime fantasies became extensions of nighttime dreams, and it happened that I would imagine a ‘plot’ that continued, day and night, for perhaps a week. And then, having been rejected in favor of a new ‘plot,’ I might come back to the old one for a day or two, simply recalling it or perhaps embellishing it with fanciful details.
“For instance, I might imagine that I was actually not the child of my mother and father, but was a foster child placed with them for romantic reasons. My true father was, perhaps, a well-known statesman, my mother a great beauty who had sinned for love. For various reasons, whatever, they were unable to acknowledge me, and had placed me with this dull, putty-faced, childless Indian couple. But the day would come…
“There was something else I became aware of during my early boyhood, and this may serve to illustrate my awareness of myself. Like most young boys of the same age-I was about twelve at the time-I was capable of certain acts of nastiness, even of minor crimes: wanton vandalism, meaningless violence, ‘youthful high spirits,’ etc. Where I differed from other boys of that age, I believe, was that even when caught and punished, I felt no guilt. No one could make me feel guilty. My only regret was in being caught.
“Is it so strange that someone can live two lives? No, I honestly believe most people do. Most, of course, play the public role expected of them: they marry, work, have children, establish a home, vote, try to keep clean and reasonably law-abiding. But each-man, woman, and child-has a secret life of which they rarely speak and hardly ever display. And this secret life, for each of us, is filled with ferocious fantasies and incredible wants and suffocating lusts. Not shameful in themselves, except as we have been taught so.
“I remember reading something a man wrote-he was a famous author-and he said if it was definitely announced that the world would end in one hour, there would be long lines before each phone booth, with people waiting to call other people to tell them how much they loved them. I do not believe that, I believe most of us would spend the last hour mourning, ‘Why didn’t I do what I
“Because I believe each of us is a secret island (‘No man is an island’? What shit!) and even the deepest, most intense love cannot bridge the gap between individuals. Much of what we feel and dream, that we cannot speak of to others, is shameful, judged by what society says we are allowed to feel and dream. But if humans are capable of it, how can it be shameful? Rather do as our natures dictate. It may lead to heaven or it may lead to hell-what does ‘heaven’ mean or ‘hell’?-but the most terrible sin is to deny.
“When I fucked that girl in college, and later with my wife, and all those in between, I found it exciting and pleasurable, naturally. Satisfying enough to ignore the grunts, coughs, farts, belches, bad breath, blood and…and other things. But a moment later my mind would be on my collection of semi-precious stones or the programming of AMROK II. I had enjoyed masturbation as much, and began to wonder how much so-called ‘normal sex’ is really masturbation
“Celia Montfort was the most intelligent woman I had ever met. Much more intelligent than I was, as a matter of fact, although I think she lacked my sensitivity and understanding. But she was complex, and I had never met a complex woman before. Or perhaps I had, but could not endure the complexity. But in Celia’s case, it attracted me, fascinated me, puzzled me-for a time.
“I wasn’t certain what she wanted from me, if she wanted anything at all. I enjoyed her lectures, the play of her mind, but I could never quite pin down who she was. Once, when I called for a dinner date, she said, ‘There is something I want to ask you.’
“‘Yes?’I said.
“There was a pause.
“‘I’ll ask you tonight,’ she said finally. ‘At dinner.’
“So, at dinner, I said, ‘What did you want to ask me?’ “She looked at me and said, ‘I think I better put it in a letter. I’ll write you a letter, asking it.’
‘“All right,’ I nodded, not wanting to push.
“But, of course, she never wrote me a letter asking anything. She was like that. It was maddening, in a way, until I began to understand…
“Understand that she was as deep and moiling as I, and subject, as I was, to sudden whims, crazy passions, incoherent longings, foolish dreams…the whole bit. Irrational, I suppose you might say. If I didn’t lie to myself-and it’s extremely difficult not to lie to yourself-I had to recognize that some of my hostility toward her-and I recognized I was beginning to feel a certain hostility, because she
“But once I stopped lying to myself, I could acknowledge that she upset me because she had a secret life of
