Sexus (54 page)

No, I was thoroughly disillusioned in my god. I purposely reread some of his books and, naive soul that I was, I wept again over certain passages. I was so deeply impressed that I began to wonder if I had dreamed the letter.

The repercussions from this “miscarriage” were quite extraordinary. I became savage, bitter, caustic. I became a wanderer who played on muted strings of iron. I impersonated one after another of my idol's characters. I talked sheer rot and nonsense; I poured hot piss over everything. I became two people—myself and my impersonations, which were legion.

The divorce trial was impending. That made me even more savage and bitter, for some inexplicable reason. I hated the farce which has to be gone through in the name of justice. I loathed and despised the lawyer whom Maude had retained to protect her interests. He looked like a corn-fed Romain Rolland, a
chauve-souris
without a crumb of humor or imagination. He seemed to be charged with moral indignation; he was a prick through and through, a coward, a sneak, a hypocrite. He gave me the creeps.

We had it out about him the day of the outing. Lying in the grass somewhere near Mineola. The child running about gathering flowers. It was warm, very warm, and there was a hot dry wind blowing which made one nervous and rooty. I had taken my prick out and put it in her hand. She examined it shyly, not wishing to be too clinical about it and yet dying to convince herself that there was nothing wrong. After a while she dropped it and rolled over on her back, her knees up, and the warm wind licking her bottom. I jockeyed her into a favorable position, made her pull her panties off. She was in one of her protesting moods again. Didn't like being mauled like that in an open field. But there's not a soul around, I insisted. I made her spread her legs farther apart; I ran my hand up her cunt. It was gooey.

I pulled her to me and tried to get it in. She balked. She was worried about the child. I looked around. “She's all right,” I said. “She's having a good time. She's not thinking about us.”

“But supposing she comes back . . . and finds us . . .”

“She'll think we're sleeping. She won't know what we're doing. . .”

With this she pushed me away violently. It was outrageous. “You'd take me in front of your own child! It's horrible.”

“It's not horrible at all. You're the one who's horrible. I tell you, it's innocent. Even if she should remember it—when she's grown up—she'll be a woman then and she'll understand. There's nothing dirty about it. It's your dirty mind, that's all.”

By this time she was slipping her panties on. I hadn't bothered to shove my prick back in my trousers. It was getting limp now; it fell on the grass, dejected.

“Well, let's have something to eat then,” I said. “If we can't fuck we can always eat.”

“Yes,
eat!
You can eat any time. That's all you care about, eating and sleeping.”

“Fucking,'”
I said, “not sleeping.”

“I wish you'd stop talking to me that way.” She began to undo the lunch. “You have to spoil everything. I thought we might have a peaceful day, just once. You always said you
wanted to take us out on a picnic. You never did. Not once. You thought of nothing but yourself, your friends, your women. I was a fool to think you might change. You don't care about your child—you've hardly noticed her. You can't even restrain yourself in her presence. You'd take me in front of her and pretend that it was innocent. You're vile . . . I'm glad it's all over. By this time next week I'll be free . . . I'll be rid of you forever. You've poisoned me. You've made me bitter and hateful. You make me despise myself. Since I've known you I don't recognize myself any more. I've become what you wanted me to become. You never loved me . . .
never.
All you wanted was to satisfy your desires. You've treated me like an animal. You take what you want and you go. You go from me to the next woman—any woman—just so long as she'll open her legs for you. You haven't an ounce of loyalty or tenderness or consideration in you. . . . Here, take it!” she said, shoving a sandwich in my fist. “I hope you choke on it!”

As I brought the sandwich to my mouth I smelled the odor of her cunt on my fingers. I sniffed my fingers while looking up at her with a grin.

“You're disgusting!” she said.

“Not so very, my lady. It smells good to me, even if you are a hateful sourpuss. I like it. It's the only thing about you I like.”

She was furious now. She began to weep.

“Weeping because I said I liked your cunt! What a woman! Jesus, I'm the one who ought to do the despising. What sort of woman are you?”

Her tears became more copious. Just then the child came running up. What was the matter? Why was mother crying?

“It's nothing,” said Maude, drying her tears. “I turned my ankle.” A few dry sobs belched from her despite her efforts to restrain herself. She bent over the basket and selected a sandwich for the child.

“Why don't you do something, Henry?” said the child. She sat there looking from one to the other with a grave, puzzled look.

I got to my knees and rubbed Maude's ankle.

“Don't touch me!” she said harshly.

“But he wants to make it better,” said the child.

“Yes, daddy'll make it better,” I said, rubbing the ankle gently, and then patting the calf of her leg.

“Kiss her,” said the child. “Kiss her and make the tears go away.”

I bent forward and kissed Maude on the cheek. To my astonishment she flung her arms around me and kissed me violently on the mouth. The child also put her arms around us and kissed us.

Suddenly Maude had a fresh spasm of weeping. This time it was really pitiful to behold. I felt sorry for her. I put my arms around her tenderly and comforted her.

“God,” she sobbed, “what a farce!”

“But it isn't,” I said. “I mean it sincerely. I'm sorry, sorry for everything.”

“Don't cry any more,” begged the child. “I want to eat. I want Henry to take me over there,” and she pointed with her little hand to a copsewood at the edge of the field. “I want you to come too.”

“To think this is the only time . . . and it had to be like this.” She was sniffling now.

“Don't say that, Maude. The day isn't over yet. Let's forget about all that. Come on, let's eat.”

Reluctantly, wearily, it seemed, she picked up a sandwich and held it to her mouth. “I can't eat,” she murmured, dropping the sandwich.

“Come on, yes you can!” I urged, putting my arm around her again.

“You act this way now . . . and later you'll do something to spoil it.”

“No I won't. . . I promise you.”

“Kiss her again,” said the child.

I leaned over and kissed her softly and gently on the lips. She seemed really placated now. A soft light came into her eyes.

“Why can't you be like this always?” she said, after a brief pause.

“I am,” I said, “when I'm given a chance. I don't like to
fight with you. Why should I? We're not man and wife any longer.”

“Then why do you treat me the way you do? Why do you always make love to me? Why don't you leave me alone?”

“I'm not making love to you,” I answered. “It's not love, it's passion. That's not a crime, is it? For God's sake, let's not start that all over again. I'm going to treat you the way you want to be treated—
today.
I won't touch you again.”

“I don't ask that. I don't say you shouldn't touch me. But it's the
way
you do it. . . you don't show any respect for me . . . for my person. That's what I dislike. I know you don't love me any more, but you can behave decently towards me, even if you don't care any more. I'm not the prude you pretend I am. I have feelings too . . . maybe deeper, stronger than yours. I can find someone else to replace you, don't think that I can't. I just want a little time . . .”

She was munching her sandwich halfheartedly. Suddenly there was a gleam in her eye. She put on a coy, roguish expression.

“I could get married tomorrow, if I wanted to,” she continued. “You never thought of that, did you? I've had three proposals already, as a matter of fact. The last one was from . . .” and here she mentioned the lawyer's name.

“Him?”
I said, unable to repress a disdainful smile.

“Yes,
him,”
she said. “And he's not what you think he is. I like him very much.”

“Well, that explains things. Now I know why he's taken such a passionate interest in the case.”

I knew she didn't care for him, this Rocambolesque, any more than she cared for the doctor who explored her vagina with a rubber finger. She didn't care for anybody really; all she wanted was peace, surcease from pain. She wanted a lap to sit on in the dark, a prick to enter her mysteriously, a babble of words to drown her unmentionable desires. Lawyer what's-his-name would do of course. Why not? He would be as faithful as a fountain pen, as discreet as a rat trap, as provident as an insurance policy. He was a walking briefcase with pigeonholes in his belfry; he was a salamander with a heart of pastrami. He was shocked, was he, to learn that I
had brought another woman to my own home? Shocked to learn that I had left the used condoms on the edge of the sink? Shocked that I had stayed for breakfast with my paramour? A snail is shocked when a drop of rain hits its shell. A general is shocked when he learns that his garrison has been massacred in his absence. God himself is shocked doubtless when He sees how revoltingly stupid and insensitive the human beast really is. But I doubt if angels are ever shocked—not even by the presence of the insane.

I was trying to give her the dialectics of the moral dynamism. I twisted my tongue in the endeavor to make her understand the marriage of the animal and the divine. She understood about as well as a layman understands when you explain the fourth dimension. She talked about delicacy and respect, as if they were pieces of angel cake. Sex was an animal locked up in a zoo which one visited now and then in order to study evolution.

Towards evening we rode back to the city, the last stretch in the elevated train, the child asleep in my arms. Mamma and Papa returning from the picnic grounds. Below, the city spread out with senseless geometrical rigidity, an evil dream rearing itself architecturally. A dream from which it is impossible to awaken. Mr. and Mrs. Megalopolitan with their offspring. Hobbled and fettered. Suspended in the sky like so much venison. A pair of every kind hanging by the hocks. At one end of the line starvation; at the other end bankruptcy. Between stations the pawnbroker, with three golden balls to signify the triune God of birth, buggery and blight. Happy days. A fog rolling in from Rockaway. Nature folding up like a dead leaf—at Mineola. Every now and then the doors open and shut: fresh batches of meat for the slaughterhouse. Little scraps of conversation, like the twittering of titmice. Who would think that the chubby little youngster beside you will in ten or fifteen years be shitting his brains out with fright on a foreign field? All day long you make innocent little gadgets; at night you sit in a dark hall and watch phantoms move across a silver screen. Maybe the realest moments you know are when you sit alone in the toilet and make caca. That doesn't cost anything or commit you in any way.
Not like eating or fucking, or making works of art. You leave the toilet and you step into the big shithouse. Whatever you touch is shitty. Even when it's wrapped in cellophane the smell is there.
Caca!
The philosopher's stone of the industrial age. Death and transfiguration—into shit! The departmentstore life—with filmy silks on one counter and bombs on the other counter. No matter what interpretation you put on it, every thought, every deed, is cash-registered. You're fucked from the moment you draw your first breath. One grand international business machine corporation.
Logistics,
as they say.

Mamma and Papa are now as peaceful as
blutwurst.
Not an ounce of fight left in them. How glorious to spend a day in the open, with the worms and other creatures of God. What a delightful entr'acte! Life glides by like a dream. If you were to cut the bodies open while still warm you would find nothing resembling this idyl. If you were to scrape the bodies out and fill them with stones they woud sink to the bottom of the sea, like dead ducks.

It begins to rain. It pours. Hailstones big as bobolinks bounce from the pavement. The city looks like an ant pile smeared with salvarsan. The sewers rise and disgorge their vomit. The sky is as sullen and lurid as the bottom of a test tube.

I feel murderously gay all of a sudden. I hope to Christ it will rain like this for forty days and nights; I'd like to see the city swimming in its own shit; I'd like to see mannikins floating into the river and cash registers ground under the wheels of trucks; I'd like to see the insane pouring out of the asylums with cleavers and hacking right and left. The water cure! Like they gave it to the Filipinos in '98! But where is our Aguinaldo? Where is the rat who can breast the flood with a machete between his lips?

I bring them home in a cab, deposit them safely just as a bolt of lightning strikes the steeple of the bloody Catholic church on the corner. The broken bells make a hell of a din as they hit the pavement. Inside the church a plaster Virgin is smashed to smithereens. The priest is so taken by surprise
that he hasn't time to button up his pants. His balls swell up like rocks.

Melanie flutters about like a demented albatross. “Dry your things!” she wails. A grand undressing, with gasps and shrieks and objurgations. I get into Maude's dressing sack, the one with the marabou feathers. Look like a fairy about to give an impersonation of Loulou Hurluburlu. All flub and foozle now. I'm getting a hard on, “a personal hard-on,” if you know what I mean.