by Nic Kelman
And you realize that right here, right now, in this case, this has nothing to do with anything other than being delighted with the idea you could be a corrupter. That you could just reach out and pluck something from the sky and drag it down. That you could snatch this perfect thing up and watch it wilt in your hand. Yet not, like a Mongol, taking pleasure in the destruction for its own sake (as you sometimes think you would enjoy doing in your darkest, most angry moments). But instead taking pleasure in the destruction because the act that causes it also happens to be an act that makes you feel good. As if the actual act of cutting flowers to decorate your house was just as pleasurable as looking at them once the fresh-cut blossoms were in place. You are delighted by the idea that if you were to make this girl dance for you, while the act was giving you pleasure, it would be consuming something in her that could never return. As if on a cold, cold night not only the warmth and dance of the fire gave you pleasure, but also the fact that the wood must be burned to produce the fire. For some reason, the fact that the thing is used up in the process, the idea that no one else can ever have exactly what you had, is tremendously exciting. It is precisely the same feeling you have had whenever you and you alone have consumed a unique bottle of precious wine. Anyone can understand that, can’t they? That this makes you feel special, set apart from all other men even if in only a very small way?
And as you recognize this, you understand why when you have shared a girl like this with one or even two of your closest friends, it has brought you even closer together, because you have shared a pleasurable experience that no one else has ever had or can ever have again.
Then you have a wonderful idea. You could get her and her friend to dance together for you. You could get these two eighteen-year-old, Shirley Temple-drinking freshmen to press their bodies together, to grind their pussies on each other’s thighs as they danced, to kiss. That would be even more depraved, even more degrading, and thus even more destructive. That would leave even less behind for those who came after you.
And that is exactly what you do. You have her call her friend over to the table and you tell them what you want. At first they are reluctant, they’ve never done anything like that before, which is of course exactly what you want. But it turns out, like almost everything in your experience, to be only a question of money. You agree to pay them double the normal rate each to dance for you for an hour. But they still have to check with a manager, they are delightfully ignorant of the club’s policy regarding something like this. The girl you sent your friend off with wouldn’t have been. Naturally the management has no problem with it.
As you make your way back into the depths of the corridor you pass your friend but he doesn’t even see you. He is dead to the world, anesthetized.
When they first start dancing, they are a little awkward, they look at each other more than they look at you, a little embarrassed by each other’s flesh, suddenly aware of the nakedness they only recently shared together in the dressing room without a second thought. It is the girl who has been dancing longer who finally takes the lead, who at last slips one thigh between her friend’s legs and pulls her close, crushes their breasts together. And with that, as if they had finally taken the dive into a pool they knew was cold, they are suddenly relaxed. They begin to look at you more than each other as they rub their bodies together, slide up and down each other. And as the hour progresses you are pleased to see that towards the end the situation has reversed again, that towards the end the girls are paying so much attention to each other’s bodies, are so involved in their long, open-mouthed kisses, that they have stopped looking at you altogether. Towards the end you note with satisfaction that when one’s thigh rubs between the other’s legs, it comes out glistening.
When you went down the corridor, they had looked a little sick, as if they were getting on a roller coaster they weren’t sure they wanted to ride, they weren’t even holding hands. But now when you pay them, when you count out the hundred-dollar bills, when you give them 30 percent extra for a job well done, they look flushed, happy, as if they’re glad they did it after all. They stand next to each other, naked, with their arms still around each other’s waists. They only stop touching each other to count their money.
While you wait for them to count it, before they thank you and smile at you and tell you they hope you’ll come back (which you won’t — not for them — they have nothing to offer you now), before they put their clothes back on, you think about how if either of these girls moved in with you and asked you for a dog, you would never have the problems your friend had. If one of these girls lived with you and asked you for a dog and you agreed, from the beginning you would no more assume she would share responsibility for the animal than you would a six-year-old. If she asked you for a dog, you would know what you were getting into.
Your friend is done too and you leave. Outside, breathing the fresh night air in deep, he says, “God I feel great! I don’t know — like I’ve had something painful removed, like something heavy is gone. I mean, I know I’ll feel worse in the morning, I know that, but it won’t be as bad as this morning I don’t think. It’s like she reminded me there really are other things out there.”
As you both get in your limo he adds, “She’d be furious if she knew I’d been here tonight.”
“Why?” you ask. “She left you, you’re through, what business is it of hers?”
He nods. Looks out the window, taps the tinted glass with the index finger of one hand. It makes a little tinking sound. “She’d still be furious,” he says. Then he looks at you and adds, “Especially at you. Boy, would she be pissed at you.”
“I know,” you say. “I know.” Then, “What happened to the dog?”
And what if we don’t do any of this? What if we don’t have the opportunity or the time or do have too much integrity to lie to our wives or too much self-control to indulge ourselves at another’s expense, whether hers or her parents’? What then?
Then we go out and buy ourselves a motorcycle. We buy a black leather jacket to go with it. Then we sell all our antiques and buy expensive furniture made by some Finnish designer, start listening to music that is more popular (with who?) than the music we used to listen to but is still six months out of date. Then we start collecting expensive comic books. Then we make fools of ourselves anyway but with nothing to show for it. Certainly nothing that could make other men look at you with lasting envy, that could make them think about you, a stranger, later that day or week and think “that lucky bastard,” that could make them lash out at their wife or girlfriend later that day over something they would otherwise have been patient about. Certainly nothing that could make older women look at you, a stranger, with rage rather than amusement or pity. Certainly nothing about which you could say with tremendous satisfaction, “Laugh all you want, perhaps I am making a fool of myself. Perhaps this is, for some reason, undignified, beneath me. Perhaps, for some reason I should know better. But it’s worth it. It’s worth it because when I go home tonight, I get to fuck her as much as I want, this girl, this fast, young thing.”
You will be standing on the shoreline of a river where you played as a child, drank as a teenager. You will stand there with your daughter and stare out over the water, over at the other side. She will insist on lipstick and on earrings but will still hold your hand when it’s cold, sometimes even when it isn’t.
“Daaaad,” she will whine, “what’re we doing here? It’s cold.”
“I don’t understand,” you will say, “there used to be a factory over there across the river. A run-down abandoned factory. You could look at it for hours. It had all kinds of machines running into it and coming out of it. No one ever knew what it did — but that was why it used to be so fascinating. This used to be a really cool spot to just hang out.”
“Dad,” she will say with a withering look, a look you will not catch as you look out over the water at the new yacht club on the other side, “Dad, nobody says ‘hang out’ anymore . . . an
d nobody cares about how things used to be.”
When did the embassy succeed with us? When did we take up our shields in spite of our rage?
And when did that which was offered disfigure us? How does glory make us rot? How does something we cannot touch, or see, or even define, do so much damage, make us so miserable?
How did we get so ugly?
I would like to thank Mark Rudman, Loren Fishman, and my editor, Judy Clain. Without them, this never would have happened. Dan Degnan, Jim Higdon, James Tierney, Carole Maso, Meredith Steinbach, and Bob Coover were also tremendously helpful. Claire Smith and Sarah Burnes have my gratitude for their patience in answering all my questions, while Steve Lamont has it for his unwavering eye. Nick Mills and Edward Baron Turk should know they have always been inspirations to me. Finally I would, of course, like to thank Alfred and Janice for their support and belief through all the years.
Although the rules for punctuation, capitalization, and grammar are well established, in this book I have chosen to experiment with their limitations. For example, punctuation in girls reflects narrative rhythm rather than grammatical convention, while capitalization frequently reflects the tone of a word rather than the ordinary mechanics of typography. Any perceived “errors” along these lines are entirely intentional.
Other Serpent’s Tail titles of interest
Taming the Beast
Emily Maguire
Sarah Clark’s life is irrevocably changed at the age of fourteen when her English teacher, Mr Carr, seduces her after class. Their affair is illegal, erotic, passionate, and dangerous - a vicious meeting of minds and bodies. But, when Mr Carr’s wife discovers the affair, he has to choose between them and moves to another city with his family.
Sarah is devastated and from that day on her life is defined by a series of meaningless, self-abasing sexual encounters, hoping with each man that she will experience the same delicious feelings she had with Mr Carr. Seven years later Daniel Carr walks back into Sarah’s life and she is drawn once again into the destructive relationship. Is Sarah strong enough to ‘tame the beast’?
‘Maguire’s very readable prose treads a fine line between porn-lite and a more serious exploration of young desire’ Independent
‘Like Susannah Moore’s In the Cut and Barbara Gowdy’s We So Seldom Look on Love, this is an uncompromising look at sex, desire and unrequited love. . . Carefully narrated, this is a brilliant meditation on sex and power’ City Life
‘A disturbing and dark examination of obsessive love, with ferocious, unflinching sex and troubling, intense and bloody violence’ Bookmunch
Emily Maguire was born in Canberra in 1976, but has spent most of her life in Sydney, where she now lives. When she is not writing, Emily studies Literature at the University of New England, New South Wales, and tutors English. Her next novel, The Gospel According to Luke, will be published by Serpent’s Tail.
One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed
Melissa P.
One very hot Italian summer, a schoolgirl sits alone in her bedroom, staring at posters of Marlene Dietrich and listening to classical music. She strips before her mirror, examining her adolescent body pleasurably, yet without desire. She writes: ‘I want love, diary. I want to feel my heart melt, to see the stalactites of my ice shatter and sink in the river of passion, of beauty.’ The narrator searches for love but the men she meets only want sex. With the pain of unrequited love comes the excitement caused by her discovery of the sexual power she has over men (and women).
This diary of a teenage girl’s sex life is a work of deceptive innocence. Influenced by Nabokov and Anais Nin, it is both erotic and literary. When the book was first published, it was assumed that this could not be the work of a teenager. In fact, it is the first novel of a young writer of great literary talent.
‘Melissa’s candour regarding her extreme experience offers an apprehension, however fleeting, of modern adolescence’ The Times
‘A frank and vivid account of sexual rites of passage’ The Telegraph
‘A literary sensation’ Sunday Times
Born in 1985 into a middle-class family, Melissa P. lives in Aci Castello near Catania in Sicily. Since 2002, she has been keeping a diary which she converted in 2003 into One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed An admirer of The Ages of Lulu by Almudena Grandes, Melissa P. has always been a great reader. When writing, she listens to opera, another love which marks her out from other Sicilian high-school kids.
The Scent of Your Breath
Melissa P.
Melissa, the Sicilian girl from One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed who was desperate for love and willing to do anything to find it, is now a successful writer in Rome, living with her new lover, Thomas. He is sensual, patient, and comforting - the antithesis of all the men who came before. But as soon as she meets Viola, a young woman from Thomas’s past, sexual passion and insecurity grow in tandem, and Melissa is consumed with jealousy. Written as a confessional letter to her mother, the story is one of dark obsession, violent lust, and soul-destroying talent, teeming with the ghosts and dragonfly-women Melissa is convinced are trying to steal her man and bring about her ruin.
Driven by Melissa’s singular voice - that unique and compelling combination of impetuous naÏvete and poetic sophistication that has mesmerised readers around the world - The Scent of Your Breath blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy and delves deep into the disturbing yet strangely familiar mind of a teenage girl terrorised by love.
Sexual Healing
Jill Nelson
Lydia Beaucoup and Acey Allen are two childhood friends who’ve grown up to become successful mid-career professionals. But, turning forty, their career success far outstrips their romantic and sexual contentment. They hatch a plan to turn the world’s oldest profession on its head: why not develop a new businesss aimed at meeting the needs of women, in an environment that’s discreet, safe, and more important, completely focused on their pleasure?
Thus is born the idea for A Sister’s Spa - a ‘full service’ facility that supplies handsome men willing and able to fulfil their clients’ every desire. But launching their enterprise is a struggle: even as their customer base grows, they face attacks from grandstanding church and community leaders, and a hostile media.
‘It’s like “chocolate” Sex in the City!’ Missy Elliot
‘A post-feminist fable of sexual empowerment that’s smart, explicit, and side-splittingly funny Ebony
‘As a social commentator, Jill Nelson is pretty fearless. She also knows how to construct a compelling narrative. Happily, she scraps neither of these talents as a novelist’ New York Times Book Review
Jill Nelson is the author of the bestselling Volunteer Slavery, which won an American Book Award, and Straight, No Chaser. She also edited the anthology Police Brutality. She is a regular contributor to US media, including Village Voice and MSNBC.com, and her work has appeared in Essence, the New York Times, The Nation, and USA Today, among many other publications. She currently teaches at the City College of New York.
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Nic Kelman, Girls
