Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, book 1)

and beer and wine, especially cheeses and bolognas, she was willing to be my slave. I held the most wonderful moronic conversations with her some times when Maude was absent—usually in the kitchen with a bottle of beer between us and perhaps a little liverwurst and a bit of Liederkranz on the side. Giving her free rein as I would on such occasions, I caught remarkable glimpses of her not uninteresting past. «They» seemed to have hailed from some indolent, semi-constipated region where the Wurzburger flows. The women were always getting caught and the men were always going to jail for some trivial reason. It was a sort of Sunday School picnic atmosphere with kegs of beer, pumpernickel sandwiches, taffeta petticoats, lace drawers” and stray goats fucking contentedly on the greensward. Sometimes I had a mind to ask her if she had ever let herself be fucked by a Shetland pony. If Melanie thought you sincerely wanted to know, she would answer a question like that without the least to do. You could pass from a question like that to a query about the communion service without modulating. There was no censor standing on her subliminal threshold; messengers came and went without the least formality.

It was wonderful to see how she took up the little Jap who was our star boarder. Tori Takekuchi was his name, and a delightful, gracious, princely little chap he was. He had taken the situation in at a glance, despite his inadequate grasp of the language. Of course, being a Jap, it was easy for him to smile and beam at Melanie when she posted herself at his door-sill and prattled like a cracked nannygoat. He smiled the same way at us, even when we informed him of a grave catastrophe. I think he would have given the same smile had I told him that I was going to die in a few minutes. Of course Melanie knew that Orientals smile in this inscrutable way, but she thought Mr. T's smile—that was how she called him always, «Mr. T.»—was particularly engaging. She thought he was like a doll. So clean and tidy too! Never left a crumb of dirt behind him.

When we got more intimate, and I must say that we all became very intimate before a month or two was out, Mr. T. began bringing girls to his room. He had, to be sure, discreetly taken me aside one day and asked if he might be permitted to bring a young lady home occasionally, offering the flimsy excuse (with a broad grin) that he had business to transact. I used his excuse to obtain Maude's consent. I pretended that the little bugger was so unattractive that it couldn't possibly be anything but business which would bring a pretty American girl to his room. Maude consented reluctantly, torn between the desire to keep up appearances with the neighbors and the fear of losing a generous boarder whose money we needed.

I wasn't home when the first intruder stepped across the threshold, but I heard about it the next day—heard that she was «terribly cute». It was Melanie who spilled the beans. She was so glad that he had found a little friend—like himself.

«But she's not a friend,» Maude put in ceremoniously.

«Oh well,» drawled Melanie, «maybe it's just business... but she was awfully cute. He has to have a girl, just like any one else.»

A few weeks later Mr. T. had switched to another girl. This one wasn't so «cute». She was a good head taller than him, built like a panther, and quite obviously not there to talk business.

I congratulated him the next morning at table, asking him point blank where he had picked up such a blazing beauty.

«Dance hall,» said Mr. T.. baring his yellow fangs most amiably, then bursting into a girlish giggle.

«Very intelligent, yes?» I queried, just to keep the ball rolling.

«Oh yes, her very intelligent, her very good girl.»

«Look out she doesn't give you a dose of clap,» says I, calmly swallowing my coffee.

I thought Maude would fall off the chair. How could I talk that way to Mr. T.? It was insulting as well as disgusting, she wanted me to know.

Mr. T. looked puzzled. He hadn't yet learned the word clap. He was smiling, of course, and why shouldn't he? He didn't give a fuck what we said so long as we allowed him to do as he pleased.

Out of politeness I volunteered a definition. Headache, I explained.

He laughed uproariously at this. Very good joke. Yes, he understood. He understood nothing, the little prick, but it was polite to let him think he understood. Then I smiled too, a banjo smile, which made Mr. T. giggle some more, rinse his fingers in the water tumbler, belch and throw his napkin on the floor.

I must confess that he had good taste, Mr. T. No doubt he was generous with his money. They made my mouth water, some of them. To him I don't think their beauty meant very much; he probably was more interested in their weight, the texture of their skin, and above all, in their cleanliness. He had all kinds—red heads, blondes, brunettes, short, tall, plump, lithe ones—quite as if he had drawn them from a grab bag. He was buying cunt—and that was all there was to it. At the same time he was learning a little more English. («How you say this...?» «What that called?» «You like bon-bons, yes?») He was good at making gifts—it was an art with him. I often thought, when I saw him taking a girl to his room, heard him giggle and stammer in that fuckee-wuckee way of the Japs, how much better off the girls were to have got hold of Mr. T. than some young American college boy out on a spree. I felt sure, too, that Mr. T. always got his money's worth. («You turn over, please.» «You suck now, yes?») Compared to the artists in his own country, these dumb American bitches must have cut a sorrowful figure in Mr. T.'s eyes. I remembered O'Mara's description of his visits to the bordels in Japan. They were like opium dreams, to hear him tell. The emphasis was placed on the preliminaries, apparently. There was music, incense, baths, massages, caresses, a full orchestration of seduction and enchantment, making the final consummation a thing of unbearable ecstasy. «Just like dolls,» O'Mara would say. «And so gentle, so loving. They bewitch you.» And then he would go into raptures about the tricks they had up their sleeves. They seemed to have a manual of fuck which began where ours left off. And all this in an ambiance of delicacy, as though fucking was the spiritual art, the vestibule to heaven.

Mr. T. had to make the most of it in his furnished room, fortunate indeed if he could find a piece of punk to burn. Whether he enjoyed himself or not was hard to tell, because to all questions he invariably answered: «Very good.» Now and then, coming in late, I caught him going to the bath room after one of his sessions with an American cunt. He always went to the bathroom in straw slippers and kimono, a short kimono which just about covered his prick. Maude thought it was shocking, his running around in that rig, but Melanie thought it suited him to a T. «They all run around like that,» she said, knowing not a damned thing about it, but always ready to take the other person's side.

«Good time, Mr. T.?» I would smile.

«Very good, very good,» and then a giggle. Perhaps he would scratch his balls while baring his teeth in a grin. «Water hot, yes?» In the bathroom he would go through his endless ablutions.

If he surmised that Maude were asleep he would sometimes beckon with his finger, signifying that he had something to show me. I would follow him to his room.

«I come in, yes?» he would say, frightening the girl out of her wits. «This Mr. Miller, my friend of mine... this Miss Slith.» They were always Smith, Brown or Jones, I noticed. He probably never bothered to ask their real names .

Some of the girls were of surprising calibre, I must say. «Cute, isn't he?» they would often say. Whereupon Mr. T. would go over to the girl, as you would approach a figure in a shop window, and lift her dress. «Her very beautiful, yes?» And he'd proceed to inspect her twat as if he had bought stock in it.

«Here, you little devil, you can't do that!» the girl would say.

«You go now, yes?» That was Mr. T's way of dispatching them. It sounded crude as hell, coming from a little yellow belly. But Mr. T. was unaware of being indelicate. He had given her a good fuck, he had licked her ass, he had paid her in honest coin and given her a little gift into the bargain... what more, for Christ's sake? «You go now, yes?» And he would half close his eyes, look utterly wooden and disinterested, leaving not the least doubt in the girl's mind that the speedier she left the healthier it would be for her.

«Next time you try! Her very small..» Here he would grin, making a little gesture with his fingers to show me how smooth it went. «Japanese girl sometimes very big. This country big girl small. Very good.» He would lick his chops after a remark like this. Then, as if to make the most of the occasion, he would take a tooth-pick and, while picking his teeth, he would look for the words he had written down in his little note book. «This mean what? He would show me a word like «precarious» or «unearthly.» «Now I teach you Japanese word — OHIO! That mean Good Morning!» A broad grin. Still picking his teeth, or else examining his toes.

«Japanese very simple. All words pronounce same way,» and he would rattle off a string of words, giggling as he did so, probably because what they meant were «shit-heel,» «white bugger,» «foreign fool,» and so on. I