example-but the specific taste of Rhoda, recalled from ten years ago, and if anything improved, drier like old wine, riper and more pungent like aged cheese.
I rolled her gently over. She lay now on her back, legs slightly parted, pubic bush (that same red-brown shade, almost chestnut, how divine) moistened with her juices, glistening like morning dew on new-mown grass (how I carry on, but I can’t help it, I can’t help it, it truly was like that, it was poetry, it was lush imagery), her eyes lightly lidded, her lips slightly parted, her breasts full, and fully firm, their tips stiffened in excitement.
I pinched my own nipples into excitement, cupped my breasts, squeezed them. I leaned forward, my long hair flowing down in front of my face and over her face like the Modigliani statue of the woman washing her hair, that same liquidity of line, and I brushed my long hair over her face, my blonde hair over her face, and I brushed her breasts with my hair, teasing, and teasing us both, and moved to press my breasts to her breasts and kiss her mouth with mine.
I licked her all over. I sucked her breasts. I was, in turn, a baby at the breast, then Harry making love to me, then alternately Rhoda and my own self receiving these caresses. I was all of us, with space and time in disarray.
Harry and I (How the mind skips, from bed to bed, from lover to lover!) have always been exceedingly oral people, hung on loving by mouth, greedily hungry for either role. And so in eight years of marriage he has eaten me perhaps five hundred times. It is then by no means a pleasure I have had to forego. These attentions of his are usually by way of prelude, but in the sense of a full first course, not a pass-around tray of hot hors d’oeuvres. His tongue would take me to a sharp clitoral orgasm, and after coming divinely I would at once want him inside me, to complete the act.
And yet (I think there is a point to this, if I can find the yellow brick road that leads to it) there was often the tiny frustration in the course of this process, the frustration a retired ballplayer must feel while watching a game in the grandstand. (A game on the field, I mean, that he watches while he himself is sitting in the grandstand. For Christ’s sake, you all knew what I meant, didn’t you?)
The frustration, that is, in watching someone else play a game-however well-at which you used to perform admirably and enjoyably yourself. I could be eaten, and I could dig it, the way it was being done, the way it made me feel. But I also wanted to do it.
I seem here to be proving that Priss is at least as inarticulate and featherheaded as everybody thinks she is. This will never do, friends. Let me see Look. I think a penis is a beautiful thing, no argument whatsoever. But I also think a pussy is a beautiful thing, all convolutions and secret pathways a thousand times more intricate than the inside of an ear, all shades of pretty pink and red. Salt-water mussels are abundantly available here, and reassuringly cheap, and I like to steam a few dozen at a time in fish stock and apple cider until the shells open wide and the little bivalves present themselves for eating.
And not the least wonderful thing about the mussels is that they look like cunts. They really do. Inner and outer labia, and cunning little clitorises, and I always sense that each of them has a secret if you can only think of a way to make it open itself, but the secret must remain forever so. They make me horny, mussels do. Clams have a good deal more taste to them, but mussels have more charm, and are just more fun to eat.
Rhoda, you were more fun to eat than mussels.
Rhoda, I came deliciously, shivering, trembling, the instant I opened your thighs and put my mouth to you. I tasted you, I breathed you in, and without any preparation I quietly exploded and came. And yet my own orgasm, intense as it was, did not really matter much to me; it was as if it were happening to someone else who happened to share my body. (Like having dental work done on nitrous oxide-one feels what’s going on, but it has no immediate personal relevance.) Because the orgasm took place down there in my own loins, and I didn’t live there now. I lived in my head. I was a disembodied head, loving you with my mouth.
I was worried at first that perhaps you would not like it. A stupid fear. It was very important to me, though, that you like this, and I traced your secret parts like a palmist reading a hand, and caught your rhythms, and knew it was all right; it would always be all right.
College days.
It was the big game, it was homecoming week.
I can’t describe any more of it. I don’t really see the point, anyway. A couple of pages back I got myself so worked up that all I had to do was put one hand in my lap and touch myself for a few seconds and I came in my pants. Just like that.
We just didn’t leave that bed, but as far as who did what and with which and to whom is concerned, I don’t suppose it matters. Nor do I have that precise a memory for what followed. If you insist, Rhoda, I suppose I could sort of make things up to extend the scene when we put the final polish on the book. But I would rather leave it as it is.
We did at one point stop long enough to bring in cups of coffee from the kitchen and smoke a few cigarettes. And I said, “Well, I guess we still have it for each other, don’t we?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No, it doesn’t. The only question is where we go from here.”
“Isn’t that up to you, Priss?”
“Why me?”
“Well, to be crude about it, it’s your house. Also it’s your life.”
“Why my life and not yours?”
“Because you’re the only one of us with a stable life. I could go in virtually any direction right now without disrupting anything. You’ve got a good marriage going.”
“So?”
“So you could decide that the best move all around would be for me to pack my suitcase and get the fuck out of here.”
“If you do, you’d better figure on taking me with you.”
“I’m serious, Priss.”
“I’m kind of serious myself.”
“Not really. You wouldn’t leave Harry. Christ, there’s no earthly reason for you to leave Harry.”
“I know.”
“So you could send me on my way-”
“I could never do that.”
“-or we could just see what happens.”
“You mean just keep on keeping on.”
“I haven’t heard that phrase in a while. Yes, that’s what I mean. We were never that exclusive about our love. We went on dating, we had sex with boys.”
“But what I had with you was always so special.”
“Yes, for both of us.”
“The thing is that I really love you.”
“We love each other, Priss. We always did.”
“Yes, we always did. And always will. This isn’t going to wear off, you know. I did think yesterday, it did occur to me in the car, it occurred to me that maybe this was something we were going to have to do just once in order to get it out of our systems. But that’s just not true, is it? I could have you forever and not wear out what I get from you and give to you.”
“And likewise I’m sure.”
“‘Likewise I’m sure.’ I wish I could do accents.”
“Just be glad you can’t do imitations.”
“He’s a sweet man, though, isn’t he? You like him, don’t you? And I know he likes you very much.”
“Yes, I like Harry. Of course.”
“Actually the two of you have a lot in common.”
“Now that’s the kind of line you always come up with that makes him fall on the floor laughing.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, the thing that Harry and I have in common is you.”
“Oh.”
“You nut.”
