Now women are different. Women will also tell each other sex things, but in a very different way. They’ll tell each other things about their relationships with their husbands, personal details that not one man in a thousand would tell another man about his wife. And men, on the other hand, will talk to each other about the screwing they do outside of their marriage, while the women who play around keep their mouths shut about it.
I know it’s a sweeping generalization. But what’s the point in objecting to a sweeping generalization if it also happens to be true?
There is, impossible as it may seem, a point to all this. And that is that this book of ours is serving different functions for each of us. Of course it’s everybody’s psychoanalyst, that goes without saying, but for me it is also a male ear into which I can whisper all the sex stories I want.
You may recall a Jules Feiffer cartoon-you may recall a hundred Feiffer cartoons, he’s so fucking great I could cheerfully strangle him-in which Bernard, his favorite alter ego, is distraught because his best friend is getting married. The last frame is something like, “Look, there are women all over the place. But at the age of thirty where am I going to find a buddy?”
Too true. One has passed the point of forming those intense friendships, and if one lives on a hill surrounded by woods and farms, one never talks to anybody, let alone develops a buddy.
What was it like? There’s a question a buddy would ask, an envious expression on his face (I Am Curious-Green) and a catch in his throat.
What was it like?
Well, let me tell you, buddy, it was great. It was Ace-high all the way, it was king of the mountain, top dog, the whole schmear.
That doesn’t say diddly-do, does it?
Well, let’s back up and start over. Let’s see. First of all, what we’re talking about right here is what it was like right at the beginning, from the time we three walked from the shed to the house and got into bed together for the first time. For about the next, let me see, I guess two weeks, or maybe even a month, there was a freshness, a newness to the whole thing. So that’s what I’m talking about now, that first month.
How to describe it?
To begin by saying that we were entirely involved in one another. There was a war going on, the economy was in a state of chassis, the world was going to hell in a hand car, the Mets were doing surprisingly well in spring training, and in all other spheres of human and inhuman activity the world was doing any number of things, some good and some bad, and for all we were concerned none of this was happening at all.
You know, it’s hard now to remember exactly what that month was like. Not because things have changed radically but because the changes have been on the subtle side. We are still very much ingrown and self-contained, not much concerned either with other people or with cosmic events. But then the mutual self-absorption was total, all-encompassing. Nothing got through the shield.
It was not merely that we spent an astonishing amount of time in bed together. We did. It was not merely that we invented an incalculable number of ways for three people to make love. Again, we did.
But when we were not actually balling, either two of us or all three of us would be wrapped up in some verbal unfolding of self. We did not merely talk, but, as the children say, we rapped.
Magic days, old buddy. The years melted off like fat in a steam room. Overnight, we became young again. There was an innocence to us, an openness about us, that was probably in any objective view at least a little ridiculous. But, see, there was no one around to view us objectively. There was just our holiest of trinities, self-contained and utterly complete, and we did not find ourselves absurd in the least.
This is slow going, this chapter. The work went poorly this morning, and the girls left the house together after lunch, and I’m alone with the typewriter, addressing remarks to a mythical old friend. And trying to describe a mood, an ambiance, which I can barely get exactly right in my own mind, let alone render in words. This writing is easier, it seems, when one knows exactly what one wants to say.
Is a picture really worth a thousand words? That’s what it says in those tables on the backs of children’s notebooks. Twelve inches to a foot, sixteen ounces make a pound, and one thousand words equals one picture.
Let us try a picture or two.
The bedroom at early evening. The last of the sunset barely visible through the window. The closet door slightly ajar and the closet light on, a yellow bulb that throws a soft diffused glow over the room.
Rhoda lies on her back on the bed, eyes closed, breathing slowly, gradually returning to normal. Her body is glossy with perspiration. On her left Priss is curled up with an arm flung across Rhoda’s waist and her head pillowed on Rhoda’s belly. I lie on Rhoda’s other side, but further up on the bed, so that my waist is almost even with her shoulder. I have propped myself up on one elbow. My eyes move back and forth between Rhoda and Priss. I have an erection, which I hold in one hand and brush idly to and fro against Rhoda’s breasts.
Rhoda says, “I love you both so much.”
“And we love you,” I say.
“And we love you,” Priss echoes.
“I came so beautifully. I came in beautiful colors, all red and green and blue. Like a Mexican flag exploding.”
“What an unusual image-”
“Ah, senior, senora, my Mexican flag, she is exploding.”
“Beautiful, beautiful.”
“Harry, you’re going to turn me on all over again. You’re waking up my sleeping tit. What are-oh, for the love of God, that’s your cock! ”
“What did you think it was, my elbow?”
“I didn’t really know. I guess I-oh, hey, wow!”
Priss, grinning sleepily, moves her head from Rhoda’s belly. Her tongue darts out and begins drawing insistent circles around Rhoda’s other nipple. I lower myself on the bed so that I can suck Rhoda’s breast instead of nuzzling it with my cock. Priss throws a leg over Rhoda’s lower body, and my prick is happily trapped between each of their thighs. Rhoda’s body trembles as we suck her beautiful breasts.
“God, it’s like nursing twins.”
We stay at her breasts for a long time, happily free of sibling rivalry, drawing special nourishment from these fountains. Then Priss abandons her post and turns neatly around. On hands and knees she straddles Rhoda’s body. She places a kiss on the pit of Rhoda’s stomach, at the very top of the curly auburn triangle. Rhoda beams, and raises her head slightly, and breathes warmly between Priss’ thighs.
Priss lowers herself slowly, gently, and Rhoda’s tongue finds her.
I wean myself, abandoning the breast and getting up from the bed for the moment. I walk to the foot of the bed, then back to the head again, watching them eat each other. I feel as though I have watched this game a thousand times, and that I will never grow bored with it. It has for me a beauty I cannot entirely comprehend, a beauty and balance that seems to transcend sex and verge on symbolism.
Each feeding the other, each feeding on the other, each becoming the other, yin and yang, day and night, past and future, all the oriental world of opposites that are the same.
My penis is so huge and hard that it hurts, my balls weigh twenty pounds apiece. And yet there is no great urgency, no mad rush either to start fucking or, once started, to finish. A magic element of these magic days-I have been uncannily transformed into Superstud, the Man with the Steel Prick, able to leap high up women in a single bound, able to fuck all night without coming and to come all night without stopping.
The American dream, right? And it’s all there waiting for you, all that capacity, and the magic times, if you find them, if you let it all out.
I walk to the head of the bed. Prissy’s thighs frame the top of Rhoda’s head. Rhoda’s tongue slides in and out of Priss, then moves to nibble at the clitoris.
The bed groans familiarly as I get on it, kneeling over the two of them. I rub my cock around in Rhoda’s silky hair. I raise myself up a little and take h
old of Priss’ buttocks with both hands. I spread them, and press my cock briefly between them. There is a sharp intake of breath, a very exciting sound.
I work myself patiently a little way into her but she is very tight there and the contact, while exciting, is mutually uncomfortable. I hesitate, and then a hand grips the shaft of my penis and withdraws it from the rear entrance, pumps it once or twice for luck, and tucks it home in front.
Priss shudders and sighs.
And, thus tucked into one another, we begin the game. I slide in and out of Priss in long lingering timeless strokes while Rhoda eats us both, fastening her mouth to the point where we are joined and fitting her mouth love to our rhythms. Priss’ mouth remains glued to Rhoda, Rhoda’s thighs clenched tight around her head. Somehow I get a hand over Priss’ shoulder and touch the two of them where they are joined, then press fingers alternately into Priss’ mouth and Rhoda’s cunt and asshole. Miles away Rhoda’s fingers return the favor.
Space and time are stretched out to a point where they no longer apply. They hardly exist. When we come, all separately and yet all together, our comings seem to last for hours. I feel spasmodic contractions, Rhoda’s with my fingers, Priss’ around my penis. My seed spurts from me like blood from a slashed throat, leaping deep into Priss, nourishing Priss as it enters her, nourishing Rhoda as it flows finally out again.
I looked back on that last scene, that picture, and counted the words. There are surprisingly close to a thousand of them, so once again the wisdom of the ages seems to have been proven. A picture equals a thousand words, and a thousand words equals a picture.
Get the picture?
“We’ll be together forever,” someone said.
Who said it? Each and every one of us, at one time or another. Almost all the time, actually. That was one of the recurring themes of that month, of the magic days. That this was something which got better for us every day and that it would last for us as long as we ourselves lasted. For after all we loved each other with a pure and unselfish and genuine love, and we made each other happy in ways we literally had not known existed. So why shouldn’t this continue to get better every day, and why shouldn’t it go on forever?
For a lot of reasons, which I will mostly let others write out for you, old buddy, because it was a rotten morning and it has now been a rotten afternoon at the typewriter, and I have got neither the pep nor the desire to write more of this just now.
“We’ll be together forever.”
Did we believe it? Some of the time we did, I think. Part of the idyllic charm of that month (was it honestly only a month?) was that we believed what we wanted to believe, so that life was as good to our heads as it was to our bodies.
But perfection is limited by definition, I think, and mountain peaks must be pinpoints in order to be what they are-an endless plateau thirty thousand feet above sea level would boast thin pure air and all that, but it wouldn’t have a view. You have to have a view to be at the top of the mountain. It’s part of the concept.
You couldn’t fall off a plateau, either. With mountain peaks, whatever their nature, there’s always the chance of falling.
RHODA
One morning I awoke fairly early. Harry had already left the bed. Priss was still asleep.
I came awake slowly, being torn from a dream which I can no longer remember, although it did stay in my mind beyond the point of making the transition from sleep to wakefulness. I remember that it was Kafkaesque, and involved my being imprisoned by some monolithic authority. I don’t recall much beyond that. Not important. I don’t suppose.
I groped for cigarettes, lit one, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Priss was breathing noisily through her mouth. Sometimes she looks quite beautiful when she sleeps, but this was not one of those times; we had all had far too much to drink the night before, gaily drinking while we gaily chattered and as gaily made love, and the drinking had left Priss’ face puffy and blotchy. There seemed to be a pimple forming upon her chin, too.
(Poor Priss-how unfair in the extreme of me even to have noticed this, much less to have carried the memory around and now to commit it to paper. Our sleeping selves should not be subjected to this sort of treatment, should they?)
I smoked the cigarette all the way down. I felt possessed by an excess of nervous energy, part of it no doubt a matter of having a hangover, but more to it, it seemed, than just that. I stubbed out my cigarette, got up, put clothes on. A pair of skintight dungarees, a sloppy flannel shirt.
I felt-it took me a moment to know how I felt, and then I realized that this house was imprisoning me just now, that I had to be out and away, free of it for long enough so that the feeling could go away. I tucked my feet into a pair of Priss’ loafers-our shoe size is the same, which annoyed me no end in college, as it would have been handy to be able to exchange other clothes occasionally, whereas who in hell wants to wear somebody else’s shoes?
I lit a second cigarette. Smoking is a great cure for depression, reassuring one that, however unpleasant life may be, one is doing something to shorten it. I took a few drags on the cigarette, then started to leave the bedroom.
“Rho?”
I turned.
“Where you goin’?”
“Nowhere. Go back to sleep.”
“Come back to bed.”
“Later.”
“Mmmnnn. Timezit?”
“Early. Go back to-”
“S’Harry?”
“Out Back.”
“Where you goin’?”
“For a walk.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Go back to sleep, Priss.”
She said something but it came out in a total mumble, and I waited until she had slipped off to sleep again. I went to the kitchen and hurried through breakfast, making do with instant coffee in spite of strong feelings against it, and then let myself out of the house and started for the woods in back.
Of course Harry had picked that moment to decide that he couldn’t stand looking at his sketch pad. He was having a cigarette break in the garden, pacing back and forth, smoking furiously, and examining flowers.
“Hello, there,” he said, too heartily. “You’re up early, aren’t you?”
He was as unfortunately wide awake as Priss was sleepy. This morning both of them seemed to me to be carrying things to extremes. The nervousness, which I now knew was more than a matter of a hangover, did not seem to be going away.
“Thought I’d go for a walk,” I said.
“Oh?”
“In the woods.”
The property backs up on some woods, which constitutes a barrier of no little size between our place (our place?) and the estate to our rear. (Estate is perfectly justified in this context. The owner made several million dollars in scrap metals during the Second World War, multiplied this a few times over in other fields, and then retired to a couple of hundred acres in the Berkshires, where he maintains racing horses and fattens Black Angus cattle.)
“You’re not supposed to walk in his woods,” Harry said.
“I’m not?”
“Well, not you personally. Nobody’s not. He has signs up. No hunting, trespassing, or spitting. Violators will be torn apart by mad Alsatians. Incidentally, what is an Alsatian?”
“A native of Alsace.”
“No, it’s some kind of a dog I always encounter in English novels. They’re always guarding property. Just the right sort of a dog for it, one gathers, but I’ve never heard of the breed outside of English novels.”
“They’re German shepherds.”
“They sound sort of similar, but they always-”
“Not similar. They are German shepherds.”
“Then why not call them that?”
“For a long time, if you called anything German in England, nobody bought it.”
“Oh. So they just-”
“Changed the name.”
“Fantastic,” he said. He flicked ashes at an azalea. “How come you know all th
ese things?”
How come you don’t,, I very nearly said. Why, I wondered, am I so fucking hostile this morning?
Instead I said, “I think I’ll chance the slavering Alsatians. That’s probably just to keep hunters off his property, wouldn’t you think?”
“Probably.”
“And I feel in the mood for a walk in the woods.”
“Maybe I’ll lock up my pen and come along.”
“No, don’t do that,” I said. It was absolutely maddening-all I wanted to do was go for a walk and now everybody on earth wanted to keep me company. I felt like a character in a Gothic novel whom nobody wants to let out of the forbidding old manse.
“To protect you from the mad Alsatians.”
“Oh, I’ll manage,” I said. “I’ll insist I lost my way. That I am a stranger in these parts, kind sir-”
“Some kind sir. Bloody old robber baron.”
“A stranger in these parts, kind baron-”
“You want to go for a walk by yourself.”
“Yeah, kind of. A walk by myself, she explained, lowering her eyelashes bashfully at the handsome young cartoonist. Yeah, that’s it, I guess.”
“You vhant to be alone,” he said, not too much like Greta Garbo. And he looked at me oddly, but just for a moment, and then he laughed it all away.
“Take care, kitten,” he said. “I’ll get back to the serious business of mining salt. Watch out for bear traps.”
“Oh, I will, kind sir.”
“For that matter, watch out for bears.”
“They prevent forest fires.”
“They also eat Boy Scouts. Where else do you think they get those hats?”
“Well, fella, I ain’t no Boy Scout.”
“Don’t worry, honey. Somebody’ll eatcha.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“Well-”
I laughed and he laughed, and I was only laughing to get to the end of the scene, and so was he, and he went back to the shed while I walked on to the back line of the property and climbed over a couple strands of barbed wire that were strung from tree to tree at the property line.
Threesome Page 9
