by Rhys Hughes
Cuntlock
It always disturbed him, or maybe it was amusement he felt, when the act of penetration was described as an entry. The man entered the woman; he entered her. That’s not how it seemed to him at all, when he did it himself with an obliging female, because he didn’t pass through anything. He just remained in the same place as before, in this world, in his familiar reality, and his spatial displacement after the deed was always zero. That’s not an entry by any true definition of the word.
On the bed he lay, staring at the ceiling, the sweat cooling on his body, the soft form of Monique next to him, pressing into his confusion. Surely the very notion of an ‘entry’ indicates there’s somewhere to actually go, a destination? But how can you arrive if you never depart in the first place? To enter a country, a room, a wardrobe: that makes sense. But a woman? It bothered him constantly, though he knew he shouldn’t let the question take priority over more significant issues.
But he was helpless in the ramifications of the inaccuracy. He wasn’t a man who could simply ignore details, certainly not when they concerned the things that gave his life its richest meaning. Entering a woman. It was common usage, to say that; and he had read Wittgenstein and knew that a profound truth can be found behind, or within, every example of standard human speech; that the way a word is actually employed reveals its spirit more succinctly than any logical analysis.
He stirred uneasily, felt a bedspring ping beneath him, then another. If it was acceptable to talk about entering a woman, and it clearly was, then who was he to dispute the validity of the claim? Men entered women. Yes they did. But he still couldn’t believe the statement. Perhaps it came down to simple percentages. When the majority of your matter remains outside whatever you are attempting to pass through, you have not entered. By no stretch of the imagination have you entered.
He sighed and Monique responded to his agitation, stretching her arm around his neck, rubbing his firm leg with her soft foot. Her hair smelled exotic, but that wasn’t enough to soothe him. She opened one eye, brown and liquid. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing. I’ll go down and make breakfast.”
“Say what’s wrong first.”
He shook her off, swung his legs out of bed, started dressing. “I can’t. Too absurdly trivial for your ears.”
“Shouldn’t I be the judge of that, Knut?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Come back. You can tell me anything.”
But no, he refused to listen to her, as he had refused to listen to anyone in recent weeks, and he walked out of the bedroom into the passage, then shuffled down the stairs. At the bottom he paused and stared at his sullied reflection in a hallway mirror and frowned. Knut was his name; cunt was his obsession. It sounded puerile stated that way, yet he wasn’t a bad man, not an opportunist; it was merely the case that he lived for erotic exploits and cared little for any other experience.
Monique matched his desires perfectly. She was sensual, permanently lustful, greedy; they were utterly faithful to each other and would remain devoted and loyal for as long as stamina lasted. They both knew this and had no illusions. It wasn’t exactly a business arrangement, but sentimental considerations weren’t in the forefront of the relationship. He turned from the mirror and went to look for his shoes. They were under the sofa in the lounge, one mounted on top of the other.
He put them on, straightened and glanced around the room; there were too many books on the shelves, some volumes were balanced horizontally on vertical columns of less accessible titles. The shelves sagged. So with careful fingers he extracted one, to lessen the weight just enough, and idly flicked through the pages. It was the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The illustrations were amusing, quaint, strange. He wondered if it belonged to him or to Monique; he couldn’t remember.
He read a passage at random about an island of women with snakes in their vaginas. The snakes bite the penises of the men who enter; to ensure safe entry the lovers hire other men, immune to the venom, as testers and decoys. The men who enter. He slid the book under the sofa, possibly for later reference, he wasn’t sure. Then he slipped his thick coat on and went out. A chill wind was whistling down the street, stirring litter; gelid drops of rain struck his forehead. He shuddered.
At the corner shop he selected a bottle of milk, a newspaper, a loaf of bread. The shopkeeper made a comment about the weather but not for its own sake; apparently a parade had been arranged for the afternoon by the council, in aid of what nobody seemed to know. Drummers, dancers and acrobats in sleet. The dancers would be girls in skimpy outfits, bare legs, bosoms, but the shopkeeper didn’t mention this. It was deduced. After the parade, their boyfriends might enter them.
Clearly they would. Men enter women all the time. Yes, enter. He paid for his items, left the shop and walked home. Surely the phrase expressed a yearning that was more than a description of orthodox penetration? But when you enter something willingly, you are supposed to be able to turn around inside and come back out facing forwards. Enter a woman. What did it signify truly? Was it a straightforward desire to return to the womb? He hated that idea: he was claustrophobic.
Regression to foetus: insufficient rationale. He pushed the key into the lock of his front door, turned it slowly. The door opened. Then he had the answer; or rather he knew how to finally solve the enigma. He closed the door, left the milk and bread in the hallway, kicked off his shoes, scurried up the stairs and burst into the bedroom. Monique was in the act of rising, a pair of knickers in her hands, one foot held aloft ready for insertion. In a fury of impatience he gasped, “Not yet!”
She sat back on the bed. “What do you mean?”
He rubbed his jaw savagely. “I want you, Monique. I want to try a new kink with you, a game. An experiment.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t object. He undressed hastily, pushed her down on the pillow, moistened her with his rough fingers, guided himself into her without words. Then he lay on top of her, unmoving, thoughtful, perhaps reluctant, ashamed, a dead mass.
“Just this, Knut?” she frowned.
“No. Wait,” he said. There was no passion in his snarl, no cruelty; just concentration, the working out of the mechanics of a trick. He licked his lips, nodded to himself and grinned.
Remaining inside her, he began rotating in an anticlockwise direction, his hands grasping clumps of bedsheets, the edge of the bed, anything to help pull him in that direction. She waited as he revolved; the friction of his penis was negligible; this sexual act was original but not stimulating. Worth a try anyway, she supposed. Now he was facing her feet and she wriggled her toes to amuse him, but he paused only a second, drew a deep breath and continued the manoeuvre.
Like the needle of a compass swinging gradually to the magnetic north of her disappointment, he dutifully closed the full circle. A useless stunt, was her initial reaction, as proper alignment was resumed. Just one more degree of arc and both bodies would be parallel again. He was listening as he finished this ludicrous exercise.
Something deep inside her clicked. She felt it.
“It’s a key, you see,” he said.
Still on top, still inside, he arched his back, contorting himself to loom above her like a seal. His knees took his weight. With his hands free from supporting duties, he cupped her breasts. Then he twisted. The right one turned smoothly but remained silent; the left one too. So he turned them together, outward. Nothing. Then he turned them inward. Better. Another click. More like a safe than a door, a woman, evidently. Gentle, slow, he pulled her and Monique swung open.
There were no hinges, nothing of that kind. He was still inside her, so he swung with her, ending up on his back. He couldn’t withdraw from this position, so he pushed firmly, shutting her again. Then he pulled out and worked her breasts a second time. Monique sighed. She realised now that he wouldn’t stay. “Goodbye then, Knut.”
He swung her open fully and looked down, looked through. The other side. There it was. Ye
s, he wanted to enter. “Goodbye, Monique.” Was he in love with her, he wondered? The golden view beyond the doorjambs of her identity compelled his attention. This was what all men really wanted, the formerly unknown reason why they fumbled so eagerly in the dark of alleyways, on cinema seats, in brothels.
He brushed the golden light with his fingertips. Then he stood upright on the bed and stepped through. Like entering a pool. He dropped into the depths, ripples of warm glow rebounding off her inner corners like waves of unspecified emotion, undefined but intense. Knut had gone. Inevitable at this stage of the affair. It seemed nothing more would happen, then an object broke the surface of mellow illumination. His hand. It reached out and safely closed the woman behind him.
The Sickness of Satan
The sickness began with the leaflet that was pushed under my front door on a damp Thursday morning. It was one of those glossy propaganda sheets used to announce the opening of a new restaurant. I detest unwanted mail and was on the point of compressing it into a sphere and kicking it into the nearest wicker bin when my nose was distracted by the peculiar smell of the paper. I raised it to my nostrils and inhaled. My mind swam under the onslaught of a myriad exotic aromas and I cried out in alarm. It was necessary for me to sit on the floor.
Odette came down to see what the fuss was about.
“Have a good sniff of this,” I croaked.
She took the leaflet and her nostrils quivered. “Forty nine billion Pork Vindaloos, twenty three million Shashlik Kebabs, seventeen thousand Orange Duck Curries, eight hundred and sixty two Chilli Chicken Hotpots, fifty seven Veal Jerks and a pint of lager.”
“There’s a Frog Moussaka in there as well, I believe.”
“No, it’s Toad. With a wart sauce.”
“Rotten salesman. It’s a stinking trick. I’m going to wire the door up to a generator. He’ll fry if he returns.”
Odette brushed her red hair back over flawed ears and chuckled. “It wasn’t a deliberate insult, Donald. How was he supposed to know you’re a vegetarian? He’s just doing his job.”
“I admit it’s a neat piece of advertising.”
“And it’s come just in time for our first anniversary. You promised to take me for a meal. This place is local.”
I sighed. Despite my basic apathy concerning morals, I rarely break a pledge. The execution of an oath, the display of its rotting corpse in the gibbet of my swagger, has little to do with conspicuous virtue. What I enjoy is the pleasure of contrast. When the burden of an obligation is eased off, like a pinching shoe, I am suffused with profound relief, the freedom of irresponsibility. Let us say my addiction to making vows must culminate in its cure — with the promise never to make another promise. Until then, Odette will suck my wallet.
“Very well, we shall feast in an abattoir.”
She pecked me on the cheek and I trembled. Despite twelve months of marriage, our relationship was still viable. Odette loved me in the same way a circle adores its circumference. She needed to be restrained by my embrace or else she would explode into emotional nothingness. I held her against my stomach, that basilica of rumbling egoism. The tenderness was interrupted by Billy, our lodger, who paused at the top of the stairs on his way to the bathroom. His face, with its divergent eyes and the frown of an athlete who smokes, annoyed me intensely. Odette twisted out of my clutch in embarrassment and vanished.
Billy smiled timidly at me and resumed his voyage to the sink. This violation of my grope seemed an evil augur for the remainder of the day. We both disliked sharing our home with a stranger but the revenue gained from renting the spare room was crucial to our solvency. Since losing my job at the hospital, our combined income had been reduced by a third. It was unfair to criticise the idiot student for his presence — he was not unreasonable in his habits — but his shambling gait and scratched vinyl giggle presented an easy focus for resentment and I was unable to resist radiating disgust over his footsteps.
I listened to the flushing toilet and scrape of brush on teeth, two sounds I had forsaken. Picking up the telephone in the hall, I jabbed at the number printed on the leaflet. As I waited for the connection, which seemed to take ages, as if I was dialling across an interstellar gulf, I studied the sheet more carefully. The lettering writhed over the surface like mangled hot pokers on a frozen lake. Impregnating the laminate with an excess of cooking scents was a whisk of genius. I wondered how it had been accomplished. I was still debating when the connection was made and an attenuated ringing tickled my ear.
The voice on the other end was faint: “Yea?”
I cleared my throat. “Is that the Stately Pleasure Dome?”
“It has been decreed as such.”
“I wish to book a table for two on Saturday night.”
“Divulge your appellation.”
“Donald and Odette Saunders.” I paused while a distant pen wandered across an invisible register. “Tell me, do your serve vegetarian food? I mean, there was nothing on the menu.”
The silence was gratuitous, like a nun’s ovulation.
My discomfort grew as the passing seconds became minutes. Was there a fault on the line? I bit my tongue.
“I’m quite happy with a simple salad.”
Again there was no response. Desperately, I continued, “So we’ll be there at half past eight. Thank you.”
And hung up. I had a feeling the call was going to prove enormously expensive despite its brief duration.
Later, after Odette had left for work and Billy for college, I went up to the attic and stared out of the window at the urban mistake called Swansea. A tedious life I led, moping through rooms, licking books that no longer intrigued me, because they were full of reality. Even my taste in pompous music had dulled — the stereo now belonged to silence. There was only one activity left which was wholly mine — isolation. And every recluse knows that the best way of widening an ache in a soul to abyssal dimensions is to spy on happier folk.
Our house catches its breath on the steepest hill in the city. Down toward the grainy sea, with its burden of rusty ships shaving the waves, innumerable filthy streets staggered. The windows of most buildings were bleary, lapped by mist stale as the breath of a donkey that drinks cider. There was little movement on the cambers and slabs. A solitary figure in a remote avenue stooped to slide something under a door. I grappled with my binoculars and focussed on his form. He was sheathed in a cassock and the bag of leaflets slung from his shoulder was actually a giant censer. For a halo he wore a garlic poppadum.
It never occurred to me to check out the exact location of the place. On Saturday night, after Odette and myself had performed the common rituals with soap, brush and mirror, we set off up to the summit of Constitution Hill. The Stately Pleasure Dome supposedly lurked at the junction of two ugly roads, Penygraig and Terrace, where litter brewed in fumes like the tea of a liar. Although the location was less than five minutes from our habitation, neither of us was familiar with it. We preferred to tramp in the opposite direction, to Cwmdonkin Park, unloading our stale loaves on vermin and mallards. I wore my purple shirt for the occasion and stubble brutal enough to impale spare crumbs.
We strolled to the address, confident of finding a typical licensed ethnic eatery, with a Mughal facade and a flock of doormen to match the gaudy wallpaper. Instead, to my bewilderment, we approached a church, St Jude’s, a Gothic edifice with those depressingly asymmetrical towers one associates with Welsh Catholic architecture. The opaque windows throbbed with a sticky effulgence, like lemon curd spread on sacred hosts, and an excited muttering issued from the open portals. I compared the number on the iron gate with that on the leaflet. They were identical. We were not alone in our alarm — two other couples lingered outside the entrance in parallel dismay, hairstyles curdling.
Odette shrugged. “It’s a typographical error.”
I shook my head scornfully. “No, it’s deliberate deceit. I observed a priest deliver the things. A recruitment drive for a flagging diocese. I find this a
bsolutely outrageous!”
“Do you really think they’d pull such a desperate stunt to increase their congregation? Maybe it’s a believer’s theme night? I’ve heard what can be done with fish and a few rolls.”
“Well I’m not eating in there. Papist cheats!”
I craned my neck to peer inside, in the unlikely event it was all a joke, but what little of the interior I could see was resolutely church. Shaking my fist at the gargoyles dribbling oily water onto the railings, I snatched Odette’s hand and pulled her away. The other couples followed our example, dispersing along secular sidestreets. We cantered back down Constitution Hill, the Mumbles lighthouse winking slyly at us across the bay like a headmaster with an erection.
“We’ll feed in the Bengal Brasserie instead. Or that Austrian place next to it, Mozart’s. How does that sound?”
“Look, Donald, I know you don’t really want to spend money on me. I realise you’ve become a worthless miser. That’s fine. I don’t expect any charity from a misanthrope. We’ll go home.”
“Curse your mature womanly sentience!”
I fumed and blustered but gratefully took the opportunity of saving cash. Odette wanted too much from my pocket — I had already treated her to the cinema the previous month. We returned to the house and because I usually weaken when I triumph, I offered to make her a special meal with my own hands. She accepted without a smile and I raided the refrigerator for pugilist celery, fussy lettuce, cucumber, radishes, beetroot, yellow peppers bigger than cowardly hearts, avocados, watercress and coriander. Then I plundered less frigid regions of the kitchen for onions, parsley, pumpkin seeds and olives. This was going to be the mother of all salads, a denial of the flesh of the world.
Tarragon oil and rosé wine vinegar splashed the pageant. I shredded miscellaneous herbs over the bowl with a pair of broken scissors. As the central rivet worked loose, the blades pulled away from each other, like the legs of a newt employed as a wishbone. I tossed the result with fork and spoon, tuning the roughage to the pitch of a rabbit’s tooth. Thunder rumbled in my gut and elsewhere. Casabel chillies are testicles scorched by lightning in any raw dish. I cast them in whole, as if to fertilise a womb of chicory positioned alluringly on the vegetable bed. Beckoning my spouse to table is a tricky recipe in itself — she is always performing mysterious chores in the furthest corners of our abode. Lighting candles and dimming the bulbs, I waited.
