The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [30]
"I'll light two candles. And they're Italian and scented. I knew this was going to happen. Till tonight I was going to the zoo. Thinking about it all week and you. Can I watch you?"
"Yes."
Warmed in candle light. Her dark eyes big.
"Now turn around. I thought you were thinner. A businessman's paunch. You don't exercise."
"My hands refuse to labor"
"Help me put the mattress on the floor. On the papers. You look so funny. Both of us. How strange a man is. I feel absent and naked there"
"Sweet suffering Christ"
"What's happened?''
"I've stubbed my toe. Cut it"
"I'll fix it. We'll bathe it."
Water running in the pan, swilling on the sides and she puts his feet in.
"Better?"
"Much."
"Now we'll dry them and put some talc on. Nice? It's so funny and curious, men and women and everything, it must have something to do with the meaning of positive and negative. Aren't the veins blue. I read somewhere that it's the smoothest part of the body, there's no part of a woman so smooth"
Her fingers rubbing up through the hair of his leg. Dumping the pan. Waiting secret and shy, loosening her skirt.
"My nylons now. I'm embarrassed now. Horrid garter belts."
She held each breast in each hand, squeezing the blood, veins full, and the dark lip flesh a long cylinder and eyes syrup of cool white and warm gray. Moving against him. Telling him it was her expression and tears of soundless happiness and I want to dance for you. She stood and pressed her breasts together and then her hands above her head and swung her chest and flesh. And touch his skin again with her. Slide her body into his and said she was ready and she somehow knew, I'll tell you, that each day she stood waiting for the tram so cold, intolerable, alone, hungry for love for weeks, damp body and Sebastian and tonight all the laundry steam has come out of my heart, I'm ready and juices in my groin. Dear Chris you're full of soft love spilling on your dark lips. Outside and down that road by St. Patrick's Cathedral I hear the Gregorian chant. It's not far away. She fur- rowed her tongue and blew a warm moist air into his ear. I feel that the warm air you blow into my ear is like the still sultry summer air that was in the afternoon of a Westchester day in America, in Pondfield Road and I lay on my back listening to music coming in the window from a back garden. I was young and lonely. Are you cold Sebastian, I like it slower, we fit so well, keep you from coming out so much like a disappearing sun, so much my female pumping body milking gold. See the olive trees and rivers, a thousand O Sebastian a thousand, I feel and feed and push and heart and pump. Because, dear Chris your neck lies in my arm. Hear the bells of Christ. O Sebastian now, good gracious God, now O now, tighten me taste me O good gracious God I love it Her head hanging back, words moving her chin in his nook of shoulder, have you come, I can't care but you're so funny, could I have a cigarette. Sweat drying on their skins, and blowing smoke to watch it winding on the ceiling.
"Funny man."
"Me?"
"Yes. And what do you feel now?"
"The good things."
"As?"
"Joy. Relief."
"Some men feel disgusted."
"Pity."
"Yes. And I feel better. I need it. What's she like?"
"Marion?"
"Yes."
"An enigma, not getting what she expects."
"And what does she expect?"
"She wants it both ways. Dignity and me. She's got me. One way, you know. But she's not to blame."
"What's she like when you're—"
"Making love?"
"Yes."
"Likes it. Not as creative as you. She has great latent sexuality."
"And don't you make use of it?"
"It comes out Worry doesn't help"
"I wonder if there is any such thing as a perfect sex life among married people"
"Waxes and wanes"
"Yes. It's such a complicated thing. Always frightened me. You feel funny there. Does it tickle. Gets me thinking and it's so smooth. Must be an instinct to kiss smooth things. When I was fifteen I thought my nipples were like the skin on lips and I kissed them and when my mother knocked on the bathroom door I was terrified that she would ask me what happened to them. I got a thing about it. Parents' sex is" so different. At seventeen I got an awful shock seeing my mother and father making love."