The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village

by Samuel R. Delany

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Do you think he would?”

  “Probably,” I whispered. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  She raised up on her elbow and spoke out in the dark bedroom. “It’s silly you being down there in the cold on the floor. Why don’t you get in with us?”

  “With the two of you?” Bob asked, obviously and clearly not even sleepy.

  “Sure,” I said.

  In a moment he stood up beside the bed, in the only light from the alley that came through the gates on the back windows. He kneeled on the bed beside me, feeling with one hand.

  Marilyn said, “You better take your clothes off first.”

  “All of them?” Bob chuckled. “Well, okay.”

  He shrugged out of his shirt, dropped his jeans, and again kneeled on the bed. I put a hand on his arm to steady him. He put one hand on my shoulder. “Man, it’s cold …!” he whispered, while with the other he reached for Marilyn. He lowered himself over us—while I held back the covers—pulling the three of us together.

  (For the first ten minutes, it was very much two men taking turns making love to one woman. But once, after Bob rolled away from Marilyn and his side hit mine and we lay that way, quiet a while (I was holding Marilyn’s hand above Bob’s head), I whispered to him, “Are you still horny?” (I sure was!)

  In the dark, he took my other hand, and pressed it between his legs, where he still arched, hard, against his belly.

  Then it was very much three people making love to each other. I remember a moment, lying on my back, while Marilyn lay on her back on top of me, my hands sliding up over her breasts; and while I moved within her, and her hips arched and tilted down, Bob dropped his head between her legs and mine. Or, later, while she, beneath him, thrust up at him and his back and buttocks moved slowly, they both held me, on my side, so that, engorged, I slid between them in the warm and shifting crevice they made. I remember Bob holding me in his rough hand in the dark and asking, sleepily, “How come it feels so good to grab hold of one of these, especially when it’s hard and bigger’n yours?” And, Marilyn, drowsing against his shoulder, answered, “I don’t know. But it certainly does,” which started Bob, then Marilyn, then me laughing—because he’d been talking to me. Or, someone asking, “Hey, whose elbow is this?” and two others answering, together, “Mine …” Even later, when dawn had begun to gray the bedroom’s back windows, Marilyn kneeled over us, as we lay with an arm around each other’s shoulder, turned toward one another, and, holding both of us in one hand, she rubbed us against one another awhile before going down, till one or another of us reached down between her legs.

  50.01. Did Bob bite his nails? No. There is always room for another column.

  50.1. The next morning, I got up first, sleepily pulled on my underwear, and went out in the kitchen to make coffee.

  While I was standing at the stove, Bob came out of the bedroom, barefoot. He’d put on his jeans, but his belt was open and the fly still hung wide. “Do I get to stay and have a cup—or do you put me out now?”

  “Stay,” I said, as Bob went to sit on the bench. “I’m glad to have you.”

  Marilyn got up a few minutes later. When she came out, she’d put on a slip. Bob was up from the table in a moment. “Hi, there, sleepyhead!” He stood up to give her a hug. “Good mornin’!”

  “Hi,” Marilyn said, sleepy, surprised, and perhaps a little short—as she could be in the moments after waking. As we sat around over the first coffee, Bob said, “That was fun last night—I guess—but you … probably want to get rid of me, now. Right?”

  Marilyn looked surprised—and disappointed. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Back out into the cold, I guess.”

  “Well, you could stay for a few days,” she said, “if you want. I mean, if you don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  “I don’t,” Bob said.

  “Well, then—you could stay with us,” she replied. “Chip wouldn’t mind you here.”

  “Mind?” I said. “That’s the best sex I’ve had all year.”

  “The year’s—what?” Bob said. “Six weeks old?”

  “Stay if you want. I’d like to have you,” I told him. “I’m sure not putting you out.”

  Bob grinned. “It was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Then he frowned at Marilyn. “You know, your old man’s got a big dick on him. We should put him to work!” I don’t know if Marilyn got the reference, at least then. “It’s nice to be here,” Bob sighed. “And I sure ain’t got no place else to go.”

  I think we went back to bed, the three of us, just after breakfast. Some time that day, when we were all three in the kitchen, back in clothes, about to go out together, Marilyn said, “I’ve always wondered if three people could all kiss each other. At once. I mean really. At the same time. Or do the noses get in the way?”

  I put an arm around her and beckoned to Bob.

  “Well, let’s find out,” he said, came over, and put his arms around both of us. All three of us stood in the middle of the room holding one another.

  Three people can.

  For a long time.

  50.2. Once, later on that afternoon, Bob and I went out to the store together. I gave him an old jacket of mine. Marilyn chose to stay in. As Bob and I went down Avenue C, there was a kind of hectic discussion, very quickly, between us.

  Bob’s first question:

  Was I really black?

  Yes.

  “I’m doin’ this shit with a nigger?” He shook his head. “You know, my wife, down in Florida, is half Seminole Indian. And people think I’m a crazy fool, just for that! Well, I ain’t gonna lie about it. Niggers always did turn me on. ’Specially with white women.” Did I think Marilyn really liked him, he wanted to know.

  Yes, obviously.

  Did I mind?

  I said: “What do you think, cocksucker?”

  “I think you’re both crazy. Or I’m one lucky son of a bitch to fall into something like this!” Then he grinned at me and gave me a nudge with his arm. “After the blow job you gave me last night, you’re calling me cocksucker?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t know which one of you is better at it.”

  “I do,” I said. “You ever do it before? I mean with three?”

  “No. But I sure thought about it enough. What about you?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” I said. “A lot.”

  That night—the second night Bob stayed—the sexual play followed a different pattern. Marilyn remained at its center—and enjoyed being there.

  The next morning, at coffee time, I got up again.

  And, again, while I was at the stove, Bob came out in his pants. Rubbing his hair, he went to sit down.

  “Hey,” I said, “if you’re going to stay here, you’re going to have to be a little more affectionate in the morning. I need some reassurance.”

  “Aw, shit.” He stood up and came over. “Come here.” He put his arms around me, dropped his face in my neck, then, after a minute, looked up and gave me a kiss. “I ain’t changed the way I feel. Good mornin’. Now we’re startin’ all over again.”

  I smiled. “Okay.”

  Marilyn came out, while we were still holding each other. “The two of you look so cute together—,” she yawned, “—you remind me of two Boy Scouts I just want to rub together and start a fire with.” This tickled Bob, who went over to the bench now, laughing. “My God,” Marilyn said, reaching over to give me a hug, “what got into the two of you last night? I don’t think I’ve ever even thought about having that much sex before!”

  “I’ll tell you,” I said, grinning at her, “six times—that’s a lot for me in one night … but—” I looked back at Bob—“I guess I was trying to keep up with you.”

  Bob started for the bench, frowned back at me—then began laughing and shaking his head. “Man, I was trying to keep up with you!”

  Marilyn sighed. “And I’m not even sore!”

  But on
ce Bob knew that the sex between him and me not only didn’t bother Marilyn, but that she found it erotic (in much the way many males find lesbian activity erotic), he grew as easy with it once more as he’d been under the excitement and newness of the first night.

  50.3. Marilyn went out with Bob for the afternoon. I stayed home to study. When they came back, both of them were laughing. Bob’s hair was cut. He had a new longsleeved winter shirt.

  “Tell ’im what you did!” Bob said. “Go on, tell ’im.”

  “I can’t,” Marilyn said. “I’m laughing too hard.” She sat down at the table. “You tell him.”

  “You know what she did?” Bob declared, pointing at Marilyn, till he started to laugh again. “You know what? She took me in this barber shop. And when the guy asked us what we wanted, she took me by my collar, pushed me out to arm’s length, and tells him, ‘Groom this!’ How do you like that? ‘Groom this. …’” They both broke up all over again.

  50.4. The third night—the single passage of macho competitiveness behind—we alternated between easy three-way lovemaking and conversation. Midnight passed. Finally the sky outside the back window gates began to lighten. Marilyn developed a yen for orange soda. I got up and volunteered to get some.

  At least once in the day, when Marilyn had had to go off somewhere, Bob and I had had sex by ourselves. Without entering him I’d come in the crevice between his tensing buttocks while he grasped my hands tightly beneath his chest, then blew him while he held my head and gasped. So I felt it would be a good idea for him to spend some time alone with Marilyn and she with him.

  I pulled on my jeans, my sneakers (no socks), Bob’s denim jacket (no shirt), and went downstairs, emerging on the stoop expecting to be hit with an icy February dawn. It was a cold, but otherwise windless morning. As I hurried down the street and then the two blocks along on Avenue C to the all-night grocery, I wasn’t even uncomfortable—though blackened ice scabbed the curbs.

  With two large bottles of orange soda in a paper bag, I started down a silent sidewalk, the scorched-aluminum sky not quite fully light. The street was empty of cars and people. Halfway across Seventh Street, I glanced up to see that the light was red.

  I was crossing against the signal!

  I halted. My mind went back to the hospital. For a moment I was afraid. Was I so preoccupied with my own thoughts I wasn’t even looking at the traffic light! Maybe I was still sick. Maybe I was still out of touch and didn’t know it. Maybe I ought to be back in …

  Then I looked around.

  There was no traffic. The street was empty. I’d seen that perfectly well before I’d started across. For the first time in a while, I realized there was nothing wrong with me. Nothing at all! The hospital had gotten me to the point where I’d found myself questioning everything. Realizing that, in the cold, quiet dawn, I was free of it.

  I went upstairs, took some glasses into the bedroom, and we all drank orange soda. And made love.

  50.41. Later that day, crossing Cooper Square at Astor Place, I heard someone call: “Hey! Hello? Hey—Chip!”

  I looked back, to see Hank, from Mount Sinai, waving at me with a large brown mitten and hobbling from the curb.

  “Guess what!” was the first thing he said when he reached me. “It’s physical, Chip! They found some goddamned pinched nerve—that’s why my feet hurt me all the time! So I’m not crazy after all! Isn’t that something? Can you imagine, after all that, it turns out to be physical?”

  “That’s great!” I said.

  He was a very happy young man, happy to be telling me about it; and I was, yes, happy for him.

  50.5. The Monday after Bob started staying with us, we called Dick and Alice, told them we had a houseguest, and asked if we could bring Bob over that evening when we came to dinner.

  Certainly, they said. (Two years before, Sue, when she’d been with us, had become one of their favorite people.) They were looking forward to meeting him.

  In memory the evening wasn’t the greatest success. It wasn’t a disaster, either. But the general level of literary discussion was far over Bob’s head. And when he tried to display his own considerable anecdotal talent, the particular rough-and-ready stories he had to tell more bewildered our friends than entertained them.

  When dinner was done, they were gracious. If Bob were still staying with us next week, he must come over again. Actually I think they rather liked him, even if they wondered what in the world we were doing with him.

  As we walked home, Bob told us, “You know, when I was in jail, I used to do a lot of reading. I read Moby Dick over, five times—from one end to the other. Every page of it, too. I really did. And I liked it. And I can still tell you everything that happens in it. So I always thought of myself as somebody who liked to pick up a book and read—I was about the only one in my family who did. But that’s nothin’ to the way you guys read and go on about it, is it?”

  The next week, an hour before we were getting ready to go over to Dick’s and Alice’s again, the phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello …?”

  “Is Bob there?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Who’ll I say’s calling?”

  There was a pause. “Tell him it’s Artie.”

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece and called Bob. “Bob, Artie’s on the phone.”

  Bob took the receiver. “Hello … Yeah … Just a second—” He went scrambling over the kitchen table for a pencil and a piece of paper. “Okay. Go ahead.” He began to scrawl something. “Okay … eight o’clock. Thanks.”

  When he put the phone down, he looked up at Marilyn and me.

  “Well, I’m working tonight. I guess I won’t be able to come to your friends’ after all. Sorry.”

  Marilyn looked at me curiously, but I didn’t say anything till we were strolling through the cold. As we talked about Artie and Bob’s hustling, she frowned. “Do you think it’s a good thing for him to be doing?”

  “Well,” I shrugged. “He’s been doing it since he was thirteen.” But both of our views of hustling came largely from John Rechy’s City of Night—and the little first-hand experience I had of it in cruising hadn’t much leavened that.

  Marilyn and I got home about midnight. Bob was already back, sitting on the bench, leaning against the wall, drinking a beer. “Hey,” he said, “you guys have a good time?”

  “Yep,” I said. “What about you?”

  “Good enough.” He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a twenty and a ten. “Here,” he said to Marilyn. “You want some money?”

  “What’s that for?” Marilyn asked.

  “Rent, groceries, electric—whatever you wanna do with it. I been stayin’ here for over a week. I thought I better give you somethin’. I made forty, but I bought myself somethin’ to eat. And some beer. You want one, there’s more in the icebox.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that—” Marilyn began.

  “Yes, I do,” Bob said. “Why don’t I?”

  “I’ll take it if you don’t want it,” I told Marilyn.

  “He’ll take it,” Bob reiterated; now he held the money out to me, still looking at her.

  “Are you sure?” Marilyn asked.

  “Sure I’m sure,” Bob said. “Go on.”

  Generally Marilyn was the money handler in the household.

  “All right,” she said. And took it. “Thank you.”

  51. Bob stayed with us and slept with us through the end of winter and into spring. Those weeks still remain with me as one of the happiest times of my life. By the end of February I had started to work on the new science fiction novel.

  I’d named it Babel-17 and drafted the opening scenes, but soon I’d realized the concentration it needed made my college studies almost impossible. “I’m going to drop school,” I told Bob and Marilyn at dinner, “again. The book really wants to be written. I know this is what I can do and do well. I’ve published four others already. It seems silly not to write it just for the classes.”

  Marilyn
’s response: “Well, you know what you want to do. You probably should.”

  Bob’s: “Aw, don’t quit school, again, man! Goin’ to school is really important. And you just started.…”

  But I did.

  “You shouldn’t a’ done that,” Bob said, when I came back and told them. “I always wanted to go to school. And I never could.”

  Marilyn said: “I really like what you’ve written on the book so far.”

  51.1. Artie’s calls were infrequent, and Bob wanted to make some kind of steady money. Once Dave took him up to Bob’s Bargain Books to see about working a shift in the store—but it didn’t come to anything. The first time the weather broke, Bob went poring over the want ads in the Times—“Jesus, how does anybody get a job out of this thing!” So the next morning Marilyn took him to the state unemployment agency and dropped him off. The day after that, he came home with a pink paper slip to report—on the next day—to a tool-and-die shop in the Bronx.

  It was right across the river. Bob didn’t know the city very well at all, so the morning after I went with him to the subway, rode with him up to 155th Street, and went to the door of the shop with him. Outside the dirty white industrial building, he asked, “You gonna come and pick me up this evening?”

  “Sure,” I said. That night at five o’clock, I walked into the loud office to ask a heavy woman in glasses behind a desk near the door where Bob was. She looked at me and said, “I don’t know who Bob is,” but a minute later, in a pair of grimy mattress ticking coveralls and happy as a clam, he loped out from among the machines. He stripped out of them, hung them up in a locker against the wall, and we left the building to walk back up the hill to the subway.

  “You need me to come up here tomorrow?” I asked when we were riding down.

  “No. I can find it myself, now.”

  Soon Marilyn got another editorial job, this one at a men’s magazine—devoted to hunting, backpacking, wrestling, and war—called Saga.

  Now I spent the days working on the opening movement of Babel-17, while Marilyn and Bob were off at work. Evenings I fixed dinner. And at night we slept together in the wired-together beds.