– Grab it. Pull it out. It’s from our friends.
– Soon.
Dear Friend,
It comes back to me.
I sent you the wrong box of fireworks. I did not include the Pimple Cure in my famous soap and cosmetic collection. I cured Edith’s acne with it, you know. But of course you do not know, because you have no reason to believe that Edith’s complexion was ever anything but lovable to kiss and touch. When I found her her complexion was not lovable to kiss and touch, nor even to look at. She was in an ugly mess. In another part of this long letter I will tell you how we, Edith and I, constructed the lovely wife whom you discovered performing extraordinary manicures in the barber shop of the Mount Royal Hotel. Begin to prepare yourself.
The soap collection, though it includes transparent bars, ghosts of pine, lemon and sandalwood, Willy jelly, is useless without the Pimple Cure. All you will achieve is scrubbed, fragrant pimples. Perhaps that is enough for you – a demoralizing speculation.
You always resisted me. I had a body waiting for you, but you turned it down. I had a vision of you with 19-inch arms, but you walked away. I saw you with massive lower pecs and horseshoe triceps, with bulk and definition simultaneously. In certain intimate embraces I saw exactly how low your buttocks should descend. In no case, when you were squatting in front of me, should your buttocks have been lowered so far down that they sat on your heels, for once this occurs the thigh muscles are no longer engaged but the buttocks muscles are, ergo your rocky cheeks, a very selfish development that gave me no happiness and is a factor in your bowel predicament. I saw you oiled and shining, a classic midsection of washboard abdominals fluted with razor-edged obliques and serratus. I had a way to cut up the serratus. I had access to a Professional Greek Chair. I had the straps and stirrups to blitz your knob into a veritable sledgehammer, mouthful for a pelican. I had a Sphincter Kit that worked off the tap like washing machines and bosom aggrandizers. Had you a notion of my Yoga? Call it ruin, or call it creation, have you a notion of my work on Edith? Are you aware of the Ganges you insulted with a million mean portages?
Perhaps it is my own fault. I withheld certain vital items, an apparatus here, a fact there – but only because (yes, this is closer to truth) I dreamed you would be greater than me. I saw a king without dominion. I saw a gun bleeding. I saw the prince of Paradise Forgotten. I saw a pimpled movie star. I saw a racing hearse. I saw the New Jew. I saw popular lame storm troopers. I wanted you to bring pain to heaven. I saw fire curing headaches. I saw the triumph of election over discipline. I wanted your confusion to be a butterfly net for magic. I saw ecstasy without fun and vice versa. I saw all things change their nature by mere intensification of their properties. I wanted to discredit training for the sake of purer prayer. I held things back from you because I wished you greater than my Systems conceived. I saw wounds pulling oars without becoming muscles.
Who is the New Jew?
The New Jew loses his mind gracefully. He applies finance to abstraction resulting in successful messianic politics, colorful showers of meteorites and other symbolic weather. He has induced amnesia by a repetitious study of history, his very forgetfulness caressed by facts which he accepts with visible enthusiasm. He changes for a thousand years the value of stigma, causing men of all nations to pursue it as superior sexual talisman. The New Jew is the founder of Magic Canada, Magic French Québec, and Magic America. He demonstrates that yearning brings surprises. He uses regret as a bulwark of originality. He confuses nostalgic theories of Negro supremacy which were tending to the monolithic. He confirms tradition through amnesia, tempting the whole world with rebirth. He dissolves history and ritual by accepting unconditionally the complete heritage. He travels without passport because powers consider him harmless. His penetration into jails enforces his supra-nationality, and flatters his legalistic disposition. Sometimes he is Jewish but always he is American, and now and then, Québécois.
These were my dreams for you and me, vieux copain – New Jews, the two of us, queer, militant, invisible, part of a possible new tribe bound by gossip and rumors of divine evidence.
I sent you the wrong box of fireworks, and this was not entirely by mistake. You got the Rich Brothers’ Ail-American Assortment, which claims to be the largest selection offered at the price, over 550 pieces. Let us be charitable and say that I didn’t know exactly how long the ordeal should last. I could have sent you the Famous Banner Fireworks Display, same price as the other, with over a thousand pieces of noise and beauty. I denied you the rocking Electric Cannon Salutes, the good old-fashioned Cherry Bombs, the Silver Rain Torch, the 16-report Battle in Clouds, the suicidal Jap Pop-Bottle Night Rockets. Let charity record that I did this out of charity. The explosions might have drawn malicious attention. But how can I justify withholding the Big Colorful Family Lawn Display, a special package made up for those tuned to a minimum of noise? Musical Vesuvius Flitter Fountains I hid from you, Comet Star Shells, Flower Pots with Handles, Large Floral Shells, Triangle Spinning Wheels, Patriotic Colored Fire Flag. Stretch your heart, darling. Let charity argue that I spared you a domestic extravagance.
I am going to set you straight on everything: Edith, me, you, Tekakwitha, the A——s, the firecrackers.
I didn’t want you to burn yourself to suicide. On the other hand, I didn’t want the exodus to be too easy. This last from professional teacher’s pride, and also a subtle envy which I have previously exposed.
What is more sinister is the possibility that I may have contrived to immunize you against the ravages of ecstasy by regular inoculations of homeopathic doses of it. A diet of paradox fattens the ironist not the psalmist.
Perhaps I should have gone all the way and sent you the sub-machine guns which the firecrackers concealed in my brilliant smuggling operation. I suffer from the Virgo disease: nothing I did was pure enough. I was never sure whether I wanted disciples or partisans. I was never sure whether I wanted Parliament or a hermitage.
I will confess that I never saw the Québec Revolution clearly, even at the time: of my parliamentary disgrace. I simply refused to support the War, not because I was French, or a pacifist (which of course I’m not), but because I was tired. I knew what they were doing to the Gypsies, I had a whiff of Zyklon B, but I was very, very tired. Do you remember the world at that time? A huge jukebox played a sleepy tune. The tune was a couple of thousand years old and we danced to it with our eyes closed. The tune was called History and we loved it, Nazis, Jews, everybody. We loved it because we made it up, because, like Thucydides, we knew that whatever happened to us was the most important thing that ever happened in the world. History made us feel good so we played it over and over, deep into the night. We smiled as our uncles went to bed, and we were glad to get rid of them, because they didn’t know how to do the H. in spite of all their boasts and old newspaper clippings. Good night, old frauds. Someone worked the rheostat and we squeezed the body in our arms, we inhaled the perfumed hair, we bumped into each other’s genitals. History was our song, History chose us to make History. We gave ourselves to it, caressed by events.
In perfect drowsy battalions we moved through the moonlight. Its will be done. In perfect sleep we took the soap and waited for the showers.
Never mind, never mind. I’ve gone too deep into the old language. It may trap me there.
I was tired. I was sick of the inevitable. I tried to slip out of History. Never mind, never mind. Just say I was tired. I said no.
– Leave Parliament this instant!
– Frogs!
– They can’t be trusted!
– Vote him dead!
I ran off with heavy heart. I loved the red chairs of Parliament. I cherished the fucks under the monument. I had cream in National Library. Too impure for empty future, I wept old jackpots.
Now my fat confession. I loved the magic of guns. I sneaked them in under the skin of firecrackers. My old monkey made me do it. I planted guns in Québec for I was hung between free and coward. G
uns suck magic. I buried guns for future History. If History rule let me be Mr. History. The guns are green. The flowers poke. I let History back because I was lonely. Do not follow. Go beyond my style. I am nothing but a rotten hero.
Among the bars in my soap collection. Never mind.
Later.
Among the bars in my soap collection. I paid big cash for it. Argentine vacation hotel week-end shack-up with Edith. Never mind that. I paid equivalent U.S. $635. Waiter giving me the eye for days. He not cute little recent immigrant. Former Lord of few miserable European acres. Transaction beside swimming pool. I wanted it. I wanted it. My lust for secular gray magic. Human soap. A full bar, minus the wear of one bath in which I plunged myself, for better or for worse.
Mary, Mary, where are you, my little Abishag?
My dear friend, take my spirit hand.
I am going to show you everything happening. That is as far as I can take you. I cannot bring you into the middle of action. My hope is that I have prepared you for this pilgrimage. I didn’t suspect the pettiness of my dream. I believed that I had conceived the vastest dream of my generation: I wanted to be a magician. That was my idea of glory. Here is a plea based on my whole experience: do not be a magician, be magic.
That week end when I arranged for you to work in the Archives, Edith and I flew down to Argentine for a little sun and experiments. Edith was having trouble with her body: it kept changing sizes, she even feared that it might be dying.
We took a large air-conditioned room overlooking the sea, double-locking the door as soon as the porter had left with his hand full of tip.
Edith spread a large rubber sheet over the double bed, carefully moving from corner to corner to smooth it out. I loved to watch her bend over. Her buttocks were my masterpiece. Call her nipples an eccentric extravagance, but the bum was perfect. It’s true that from year to year it required electronic massage and applications of hormone mold, but the conception was perfect.
Edith took off her clothes and lay down on the rubber sheet. I stood over her. Her eyes blazed.
– I hate you, F. I hate you for what you’ve done to me and my husband. I was a fool to get mixed up with you. I wish he’d known me before you –
– Hush, Edith. We don’t want to go over all that again. You wanted to be beautiful.
– I can’t remember anything now. I’m all confused. Perhaps I was beautiful before.
– Perhaps, I echoed in a voice as sad as hers.
Edith shifted her brown hips to make herself comfortable, and a shaft of sunlight infiltrated her pubic hair, giving it a rust-colored tint. Yes, that was beauty beyond my craft.
Sun on Her Cunt
Wispy Rusty Hair
Her Tunnels Sunk in Animal
Her Kneecaps Round and Bare
I knelt beside the bed and lay one of my thin ears on the little sunlit orchard, listening to the tiny swamp machinery.
– You’ve meddled, F. You’ve gone against God.
– Hush, my little chicken. There is some cruelty even I cannot bear.
– You should have left me like you found me. I’m no good to anyone now.
– I could suck you forever, Edith.
She made the shaved hairs on the back of my neck tingle with the grazing of her lovely brown fingers.
– Sometimes I feel sorry for you, F. You might have been a great man.
– Stop talking, I bubbled.
– Stand up, F. Get your mouth off me. I’m pretending that you are someone else.
– Who?
– The waiter.
– Which one? I demanded.
– With the mustache and the raincoat.
– I thought so, I thought so.
– You noticed him, too, didn’t you, F.?
– Yes.
I stood up too suddenly. Dizziness twirled my brain like a dial and formerly happy chewed food in my stomach turned into vomit. I hated my life, I hated my meddling, I hated my ambition. For a second I wanted to be an ordinary bloke cloistered in a tropical hotel room with an Indian orphan.
Take from me my Camera
Take from me my Glass
The Sun the Wet Forever
Let the Doctors Pass
– Don’t cry, F. You knew it had to happen. You wanted me to go all the way. Now I’m no good to anyone and I’ll try anything.
I stumbled to the window but it was hermetically sealed. The ocean was deep green. The beach was polka-dotted with beach umbrellas. How I longed for my old teacher, Charles Axis. I strained my eyes for an immaculate white bathing suit, unshadowed by topography of genitalia.
– Oh, come here, F. I can’t stand watching a man vomit and cry.
She cradled my head between her bare breasts, stuffing a nipple into each ear.
– There now.
– Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.
– Listen, F. Listen the way you wanted us all to listen.
– I’m listening, Edith.
Let me let me follow
Down the Sticky Caves
Where embryonic Cities
Form Scum upon the Waves
– You’re not listening, F.
– I’m trying.
– I feel sorry for you, F.
– Help me, Edith.
– Then get back to work. That’s the only thing that can help you. Try to finish the work you began on all of us.
She was right. I was the Moses of our little exodus. I would never cross. My mountain might be very high but it rises from the desert. Let it suffice me.
I recovered my professional attitude. Her lower perfume was still in my nostrils but that was my business. I surveyed the nude girl from my Pisgah. Her soft lips smiled.
– That’s better, F. Your tongue was nice but you do better, as a doctor.
– All right, Edith. What seems to be the trouble now?
– I can’t make myself come any more.
– Of course you can’t. If we’re going to perfect the pan-orgasmic body, extend the erogenous zone over the whole fleshy envelope, popularize the Telephone Dance, then we’ve got to begin by diminishing the tyranny of the nipples, lips, clitoris, and asshole.
– You’re going against God, F. You say dirty words.
– I’ll take my chances.
– I feel so lost since I can’t make myself come any more. I’m not ready for the other stuff yet. It makes me too lonely. I feel blurred. Sometimes I forget where my cunt is.
– You make me weary, Edith. To think I’ve pinned all my hopes on you and your wretched husband.
– Give it back to me, F.
– All right, Edith. It’s a very simple matter. We do it with books. I thought this might happen, so I brought the appropriate ones along. I also have in this trunk a number of artificial phalli (used by women), Vaginal Vibrators, the Rin-No-Tam and Godemiche or Dildo.
– Now you’re talking.
– Just lie back and listen. Sink into the rubber sheet. Spread your legs and let the air-conditioning do its filthy work.
– O.K., shoot.
I cleared my famous throat. I chose a swollen book, frankly written, which describes various Auto-Erotic practices as indulged in by humans and animals, flowers, children and adults, and women of all ages and cultures. The areas covered included: Why Wives Masturbate, What We Can Learn From the Anteater, Unsatisfied Women, Abnormalities and Eroticism, Techniques of Masturbation, Latitude of Females, Genital Shaving, Clitoral Discovery, Club Masturbation, Female Metal, Nine Rubber, Frame Caress, Urethral Masturbation, Individual Experiments, Masturbation in and of Children, Thigh-Friction Technique, Mammary Stimulation, Auto-Eroticism in Windows.
– Don’t stop, F. I feel it coming back.
Her lovely brown fingers inched down her silky rounded belly. I continued reading in my slow, tantalizing, weather-reporting tones. I read to my deep-breathing protégée of the unusual sex practices, when Sex Becomes “Different.” An “Unusual” sex practice is one where there is some greater
pleasure than orgasm through intercourse. Most of these bizarre practices involve a measure of mutilation, shock, voyeurism, pain, or torture. The sex habits of the average person are relatively free of such sadistic or masochistic traits. NEVERTHELESS, the reader will be shocked to see how abnormal are the tastes of the so-called normal person. CASE HISTORIES and intensive field work. Filled with chapters detailing ALL ASPECTS of the sex act. SAMPLE HEADINGS: Rubbing, Seeing, Silk Rings, Satyriasis, Bestiality in Others. The average reader will be surprised to learn how “Unusual” practices are passed along by seemingly innocent, normal sex partners.
– It’s so good, F. It’s been so long.
Now it was late afternoon. The sky had darkened somewhat. Edith was touching herself everywhere, smelling herself shamelessly. I could hardly keep still myself. The texts had got to me. Goose pimples rose on her young form. I stared dumbly at Original drawings: male and female organs, both external and internal, drawings indicating correct and incorrect methods of penetration. Wives will benefit from seeing how the penis is received.
– Please, F. Don’t leave me like this.
My throat was burning with the hunger of it. Love fondled. Edith writhed under her squeezes. She flipped over on her stomach, wielding her small beautiful fists in anal stimulation. I threw myself into a Handbook of Semi-Impotence. There were important pieces woven into the theme: how to enlarge the erect penis, penis darkness, use of lubricants, satisfaction during menstruation, abusing the menopause, a wife’s manual assistance in overcoming semi-impotence.
– Don’t touch me, F. I’ll die.
I blurted out a piece on Fellatio and Cunnilingus Between Brother and Sister, and others. My hands were almost out of control. I stumbled through a new concept for an exciting sex life. I didn’t miss the section on longevity. Thrilling culminations possible for all. Lesbians by the hundreds interviewed and bluntly questioned. Some tortured for coy answers. Speak up, you cheap dyke. An outstanding work showing the sex offender at work. Chemicals to get hair off palms. Not models! Actual Photos of Male and Female Sex Organs and Excrement. Explored Kissing. The pages flew. Edith mumbling bad words through froth. Her fingers were bright and glistening, her tongue bruised from the taste of her waters. I spoke the books in everyday terms, the most sensitivity, cause of erection, Husband-Above 1-17, Wife-Above 18-29, Seated 30-34, On-The-Side 35-38, Standing & Kneeling Positions 39-53, Miscellaneous Squats 54-109, Coital Movement In All Directions, both for Husband and Wife.
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