Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, book 1)

perhaps a lover again), to be taking what you want of him, calling him when you need him, sharing a warm, passionate secret with him, reliving the old fucks, learning new ones, stealing and yet not stealing, but giving oneself with pleasure and abandon, growing younger again, losing nothing except a conventional tie... yes, it might be ever so much better.

I'm sure something of this sort had been running through her head, had spread its aureole about her. I could see her, in my mind's eye, languorously brushing her hair, feeling her breasts, examining the marks of my teeth on her neck, hoping Melanie would not notice them but not caring too deeply whether she did or not. Not caring greatly any more whether Melanie overheard things or not. Asking herself wistfully perhaps how it had ever come about that she had lost me. Knowing now that if she had to live her life all over again she would never act as she had, never worry about useless things. So foolish to worry about what the other woman may be doing! What matter if a man did let his feet stray now and then? She had locked herself up, put a cage around herself; she had pretended she had no desires, pretended she dare not fuck—because we weren't man and wife any longer. What a terrible humiliation! Wanting it dreadfully, longing for it, almost begging for it like a dog—and there it was all the time, waiting for her. Who cared whether it was right or not? Wasn't this wonderful stolen hour better than anything she had ever known? Guilt? She had never felt less guilty in her life. Even if the «other one» had died meanwhile she couldn't feel bad about it.

I was so certain of what had been going on in her mind that I made a mental note to ask her about it next time we met. Of course next time she might be her old self again—that was only too possible with Maude. Besides, it wouldn't do to let her see that I was too interested—that might only stir up the poison. The thing to do would be to keep it on an impersonal level. No sense in letting her relapse into her old ways. Just walk in with a cheery greeting, ask a few questions, send the kid out to play, move in close, quietly, firmly take out my prick and put it in her hand. Make sure the room was not too bright. No nonsense! Just walk up to her and, while asking how things are going, slip a hand up her dress and start the juice flowing.

That extra last minute fuck had done wonders for me too. Always, when one digs down into the reservoir, when one summons the last ounce, so to speak, one is amazed to discover that there is a boundless source of energy to be drawn on. It had happened to me before, but I had never given it serious attention. Staying up all night and going to work without sleep had a similar effect upon me; or the converse, staying in bed long past the period of recuperation, forcing myself to rest when I no longer needed rest. To break a habit, establish a new rhythm— simple devices, long known to the ancients. It never failed. Break down the old pattern, the worn-out connections, and the spirit breaks loose, establishes new polarities, creates new tensions, bequeaths new vitality.

Yes, I observed with the keenest pleasure now how my mind was sparking, how it radiated in every direction. This was the sort of ebullience and elan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen—not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes, when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pellmell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche—and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a piece of paper in my pocket. Sometimes I would start for the house on the trot, not running too fast because then it would peter out, but easy like, just as in fucking—when you tell yourself to take it easy, don't think about it, that's it, in and out, cool detached, trying to pretend to yourself that it's your prick that's fucking and not you. Exactly the same procedure. Jog along, steady, hold it, don't think about the typewriter or how far it is to the house, just easy, steady like, that's it...

Rehearsing these odd moments of inspiration I suddenly recalled a moment when I was on my way to the burlesk theatre, «The Gayety», at Lorimer Street and Broadway. (I was riding the elevated line.) Just about two stations before my destination the attack came on. This was a very important attack because for the first time in my life I was cognizant of the fact that it was what is called «a flood of inspiration.» I knew then, in the space of a few moments, that something was happening to me which apparently did not happen to everyone. It had come without warning, for no reason that I could possibly think of. Perhaps just because my mind had become a perfect blank, because I had sunk back, deep into myself, content to drift. I recall vividly how the exterior world brightened suddenly, how like a flash the mechanism of my brain began to function with awesome smoothness and rapidity, thoughts telescoping one another, images succeeding and obliterating one another, in their frantic desire to register themselves. That Broadway which I hated so, especially from the elevated line (affording me a «superior» view, a downward look upon life, people, buildings, activities), this Broadway had suddenly undergone a metamorphosis. It wasn't that it became ideal or beautiful or unreal; on the contrary, it became terribly real, terribly vivid. But it had acquired a new orientation; it was situated in the heart of the world, and this world which I now seemed able to take in with one grasp had meaning. Before, Broadway had stuck out like an eye-sore, all ugliness and confusion; now it fell back into its proper place, an integral part of the world, neither good nor bad, neither ugly nor beautiful: it simply belonged. It was there like a rusty nail in a log thrown up on a deserted beach during a wintry storm. I can't express it better. You walk along the beach, the air is tangy, your spirits are high, you think clearly—not always brilliantly—but clearly. Then the log, a phenomenal part of the substantial world: it lies there, full of experience, full of mystery. Some man hammered that nail in somewhere, sometime, somehow. There was a reason for doing it. He was making a ship for other men to sail in. Building ships was his life-work—and his own destiny as well as the destiny of his children went into every stroke of the hammer. Now the log lies there, and the nail is rusty, but Christ, it's more than just a rusty nail—or else everything is crazy and meaningless... That's how it was with Broadway. Hams in the window, and the dreary windows of the glaziers, with lumps of putty on the counter making greasy stains in the coarse paper. Strange how man evolves through the ages—from pithecanthropus erectus to a gray-faced glazier handling a brittle substance called glass which for millions of years nobody, not even the magicians of old, had even dreamed of. I could see the street slowly sinking, fading out in time: time which passes like lead or evaporates like steam. The buildings collapsed; the boards, bricks, mortar, glass, nails, hams, putty, paper, everything receded into the great laboratory. A new race of men walking the earth (over this very same ground), knowing nothing of our existence, not caring about the past nor able to comprehend it, even were it possible to revive it. In the crevices of the earth bugs crawling about, as they had for billions of years: clinging stubbornly to their pattern, contributing nothing to evolution, defying it seemingly. They had witnessed, in their generation, every race of man tread the earth—and they had survived all the cataclysms, all the historical smash-ups. Down in Mexico, certain crawling bugs were a delicacy to the palate. There were men, still alive and walking the earth, separated not by tremendous physical distances but by mental and spiritual chasms, who took ants and fried them, and, while they rolled their tongues around with satisfaction, music played and it was a different music from ours. And like that, over all the wide earth, in the same moment of time, such vastly different things were happening, not only on land but in the air and deep in the sea.

Then came Lorimer Street station. I got out automatically, but I was powerless to move towards the stairs. I was caught in the fiery flux, fixed there just as definitely as if I had been speared by a fisherman. All those currents I had let loose were swirling about me, engulfing me, sucking me down into the whirlpool. I had to stand there like that, transfixed, for possibly three or four minutes, thought it seemed much longer. People passed as in a dream. Another train pulled in and left. Then a man bumped into me, rushing towards the stairs, and I heard him excuse himself, but his voice came from far away. In jostling me he had swung me round just a little. Not that I was conscious of his rudeness, no... but suddenly I saw my image in the slot machine where the chewing gum was racked up. Of course it wasn't so, but I had the illusion of catching up with myself—as though I had caught the tail-end of the re-installation of my old self, the familiar everyday person looking out at me from behind my own eyes. It made me just a little jittery, as it would any one if, coming out of a reverie, he should suddenly see the tail of a comet streaking across the heavens, erasing itself as it passed across the retina. I stood there gazing at my own image, the seizure gone now but the after effect settling in. A more sober exaltation making itself felt. To be drunk! Christ, it seemed so feeble compared to this! (An after-glow, nothing more.) I was intoxicated now—but a moment ago I had been inspired. A moment ago I had known what it was to pass beyond joy. A moment ago I bad forgotten absolutely who I was: I had spread myself over the whole earth. Had it been more intense perhaps I would have passed over that thin line which separates the sane from the insane. I might have achieved depersonalization, drowned myself in the ocean of immensity. Slowly I made towards the stairs, descended, crossed the street, bought a ticket, and entered the theatre. The curtain was just going up. It opened on a world even more weird than the hallucinating one I had just eased out of. It was utterly unreal— utterly, utterly so. Even the music, so painfully familiar, seemed foreign to my ears. I could hardly differentiate between the living bodies cavorting before my eyes and the glitter and paste of the scenery; they seemed made of