witness her and Joe, but it also occurred to her that she did not care. The sensations were delicious, far more so than they ever had been. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut, and every square inch of her tingled with the joy caused by his wonderful, marvelous hands.
“My sweater, Joe,” she said. “Take it off. Touch me, touch me, it feels so good, so fine, so wonderfully fine, and I’m high, I’m way up in the air, way way way up in the air—”
Joe took off her sweater, the air cool on her bare breasts.
The air.
Then his hands.
She even imagined she could sense the pattern of his fingerprints as he fondled her warm breasts in his warm hands.
It felt divine.
After several eternities he released her. And, her eyes still clenched tightly shut, she felt him spin her lazily around to her back.
Then, as he crouched over her, her mind reeled. This is vulgar, she thought. This is common, not ladylike at all. What would Grandma think? She would disapprove.
But her sensations were so overwhelmingly exhilarating…
Anita knew what was happening. Joe was removing her slacks. Not ladylike at all, but so nice…
And then Joe was really making her, through and through, and it wasn’t right because there they were in a roomful of people and everybody could see them, movement by movement.
But it felt so good, so velvetly good, and her hips were humming like a dynamo and trying to behave like a centrifuge, whirling, swirling with her good man who felt so good, good, good!
And it got better and better and better until the sky fell in and the world blew up in a shower of stars—you hear me? Stars, stars all over so your body could smile all over at the sight of all your secrets flowing out…
“Let us consider the semantics of Hip,” Lee Revzin said. “Let us take the words apart and see the interior of the star-spangled world. Let us probe the quintessence of hipness and reduce a subculture to words.” He was seated in an armchair. His eyes were closed, his head angled back. He spoke in a loud, clear voice and did not pause for breath.
“The Hip does not make love,” he went on. “The Hip makes it. To make love implies a dualism of motive, a double effort involving two people. So the Hip does not make love. He makes it. It is individual. It is coeducational jazz with an organic goal in mind. It is Reichian, Wilhelm Reichian. Let’s all have an orgasm, boys and girls. Let’s make it.”
The girl put a cigarette in his mouth, struck a match for him. Without opening his eyes he accepted the cigarette and took the light. He inhaled, then blew out the smoke without removing the cigarette from his mouth. He left it there while he spoke.
“Consider the verb make. It will reveal unto us, boys and girls, the constructive illusion in a destructive subculture. Make. The universal verb, the inevitable. I can’t make it, baby. Let us make another scene. Let us make it. Make, make, make. It means everything, anything. A universal. A perfect universal. The unfortunate fact is that it also means nothing at all. Because, boys and girls, nothing is made, created, constructed, built. Make all day and make all night and make nothing. Lord, we fished all night and caught nothing. Lord, we made it all night and we didn’t make a mother-loving thing.”
The cigarette burned down to his lips while he went on talking and smoking. The girl took the cigarette from him and put it out. She replaced it with a fresh cigarette.
“Then there is the nomenclature of Hip,” Lee Revzin said. “Man first, then Baby. Call everybody man and remember no names. Then call everybody baby. Strangers and afraid in a world we just can’t make. Where are you, Housman? Where is everybody?”
He coughed and the girl took the cigarette away from him. He smiled gratefully.
“I will recite a poem,” he said. “A poem to the world. A panegyrical paean for the poor peons. A poem, for the love of the lord, a poem.”
He said:
The girl applauded wildly. “There’s more,” he said. “Then you may applaud. Beat your hands together with passion. The ego needs it. Also the id. We will of course omit the super-ego. We will always omit the super- ego.”
He went on in an Epicene and passionless frog-croak:
