The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  “Are any of your books about dance?”

  So now, while I am writing this, he is reading my copy of Havelock Ellis’ The Dance of Life. That won’t tell him anything about the modern dance, but it’s a good beginning on dance in general. I hope he notices my notes and underlinings (I’ve a long habit of “talking back” to my books) and I hope he notices those places where Ellis discusses the relationship between dance and sex.

  Yesterday he consented to listen to a playback of several of Daniel’s tapes. Before, he had been resistant, had said he didn’t want to. I don’t think it was because he wasn’t interested in Daniel. I’m not sure just what it was. Perhaps he was afraid of finding that Daniel’s life had been so exciting in contrast to his. Anyway, he listened with full attention, and I watched him with full attention. Day’s blushes are a sight to behold. If, as I am never completely able to discount, Daniel is only the creation of Day’s imagination, or of his subconscious, then he is a beautiful dreamer. But I can’t conceive how he could fabricate some of that language. For instance, those sex words—“perkin” and “vale” and “funicle” and all that. I’ve read a lot of historical fiction, and I’ve read some of the so-called pornographic stuff too, Fanny Hill and My Secret Life and the Life and Loves of Frank Harris and all that, but I’ve never seen any of those words before. I wish I could find some scholarly study of Connecticut Yankee colloquialisms and try to check out some of his expressions.

  “Got an early start, didn’t he?” was Day’s only comment about the tapes.

  “Early start, late finish, they always say,” I said.

  I’m sure he envies Daniel, there’s no question of that. On reflection, this might reinforce the idea that Daniel is the creation of Day’s fancy. Maybe Daniel in some ways is what Day would have liked to be.

  I see I’ve neglected to mention what we had for supper tonight. Well, just for the record, it was….

  I have to stop now, Diary. It’s past bedtime. Just now Day turned in. Before he went into the tent he stood a moment behind my chair with his hands on my shoulders, and to my back he said in a low and funny voice, somewhat hoarsely, “Diana, do you know what I want to do?”

  I nodded.

  “All right?” he asked.

  “All right.”

  9

  She turned off the Coleman lanterns. Then she went into the tent. She She blows out her hurricane lamp. Now she comes into the barn. could not see in the dark, whether he was on his mattress or hers. She She cannot find me in the dark; she whispers “Danny, where are knelt at her own mattress and gently touched it; he was not in it. She did you?” “Over here,” I say, and she gropes her way through the hay not like it that he expected her to come to him, but it didn’t matter. Slowly to me. She says, “I didn’t know as how you’d really be here, as how she removed her leotard. Then she knelt at the other mattress and put out you’d dare.” Now she lifts her dress up over her head. “Are all your her hand; it touched his chest, which was bare, and trembling as if chilled, folks fast asleep?” she asks me. “Long since,” I say. Now she drops though it was hot. She stretched out alongside him, crowding him over so down and lies beside me in the hay. We wrap our arms about one that she could lie upon the air mattress too, then she embraced him, but another. She is trembling. “Are you cold?” I ask her. “No, just a bit his shivering increased. “Are you cold?” she asked him. He shook his head skeert, sneakin’ off from home of a dark night like that,” she says. but went on shaking. “Then what’s the matter?” she asked. His answer “Nothing to be skeert of,” I say, bold and brave though scared some was a choked whisper, “Just sort of nervous, is all, I guess.” “Relax,” she myself. Now it occurs to me she might be scared of what she’s getting said. But he didn’t, and her gentle stroking of his back only seemed to make into, or what’s going to get into her. “Didn’t you and Zadock it worse. “Haven’t you ever done this before?” she asked. “Oh sure,” he never do it?” I ask her. “He never tried to,” she says. “He never said, but he didn’t sound convincing. She asked, “Then why have you asked me.” I wonder why that is, but Zadock’s a kind of hidebound waited so long to ask me?” He replied “I thought you might be off ended. fellow. “Do you know what we’re supposed to do?” I ask her. “Do I mean, I didn’t want to spoil a good thing by making the wrong move.” you know how it’s done?” She says, “All the girls in the club know His talking seemed to slow his trembling. “I wondered if perhaps Daniel that. Violate told us. She told us it hurts the first time, a little, so was holding you back,” she said, and impishly added, “Do you think he I’m a bit uneasy about that, I guess.” would approve of this?”

  Oh, certainly I approve. Let’s get on with it. All this gab takes the fun out of funicle.

  “Funny you should mention him,” Day said. “I was just wondering how you were taking the idea of going to bed with your grandfather.” “Don’t say that!” she said. “Are you trying to make me nervous too? After all, it’s not his body. It’s your body.” And as if to reinforce these words, she put her hand on his penis. It was not, she discovered with some surprise, in sufficient condition, and her touch seemed to start him shivering again.

  Now in my hand, the hand that first held hands with hers, I cup her warm vale, and fondle it. Violate’s is much larger, I think. The touch of my hand makes her shiver. I am eager and ready, near to bursting with impatience. I pull her up onto me where Violate had been.

  “Well,” she sighed, “you don’t seem to be very much in the mood.” She found his mouth and tried kissing him. She held him tightly to her and mashed her mouth all over his, and wiggled against him. She thrust her tongue between his teeth. I hate myself for doing all the work, she said to herself. But he was beginning to respond. He crawled over her, on top.

  Now that’s a notion, it is. To be on top. More likely to get somewhere. Odd I never thought of it. Violate’s way seemed natural. I ease her off, and down, and now I mount her. The neb of my perkin prowls her vale in search of the flume. But finds none. I’d like to strike a light and have a look, I can’t find it. My fingers are better for feeling and I grope in the dark. Is this it? No, too far back. Then this? Is this the right place?

  She had, finally, to guide him with her hand. She was convinced now that he’d never done it before, he had no idea where to put it. She guided him home. He was still shaking, and once he was inside at last his shaking grew worse than ever. She reflected wryly that it was a novel sensation, being laid by a vibrator.

  She moans, and trembles. “Am I hurting?” I ask. “Some,” she says. I try to be gentle, but gentleness doesn’t get me in. Now I must shove, but when I do, she shrieks. “Shhh,” I say. I hope she’s not roused the whole house. Now she is crying, and I still haven’t made a dent in her vale. “Stop,” she tells me. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to.”

  Then it was all over. He didn’t even need to begin moving. The tremors of his convulsion merged with those of his nervous shaking, but she could separate them, and knew that he was having his. She sighed, and salvaged some small pleasure from the pressure of his throbbings inside her.

  “Aw, Hattie Rose Pearl,” I say, “is it all that bad?” “I want to go home,” she says. “Aw,” I protest, “if you could jist stand it a little bit longer….” She is shoving against my shoulders. “Get off en me,” she whines. “I’ll tattle,” I say. “I’ll tell Violate and she’ll tell the others in the club that you couldn’t do it.” “I don’t keer,” she says, “you’re killing me this way.”

  But he went on shaking. Wouldn’t anything calm him? “Now what’s the matter?” she asked. He didn’t answer, at first. Then he said, “I’m scared.” “Of what?” she asked. “You might get pregnant,” he said. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she told him. But he kept on babbling. “You could, you know,” he said. “Do you want to?” “No, it’s all right, don’t you worry about it.”

  “Are you scairt you’ll have a baby?” I ask her. “No,” she says, “th
at don’t bother me. Violate says you have to wait until the right time a month, and it’s that time, but I never dremp it was going to hurt so. Please get off me.”

  He seemed to quit worrying about that, but he went on worrying. He lay beside her, still shivering (maybe, she thought, it was the air mattress that magnified his vibrations), and went on babbling. “Oh, hush,” she said. “No,” he said, “I lied to you. I’ve never done it before.” “All right,” she said, “forget it.” “I guess you didn’t enjoy it much, did you?” he asked. “Hush,” she said. “Let’s just lie still and relax.” “But I don’t want you to get the impression that—” “Oh, go to sleep, Day!” she said, and “Oops!” she said, but he was already under. She started to bring him back, but suddenly she was struck with a wild idea. Perhaps, if she had not been still so heated up and left with her unfinished desire, she would not have done this, she would not have brought Daniel into it. Perhaps it was some tantalizing curiosity, more than simple desire, which made her do it. At any rate, she made him into Daniel, and with her hands she reincarnated his perkin.

  Well, how come you’re cosseting it so, if you don’t want it?

  What? Why do you think I don’t want it?

  You just said ye didn’t, you nonny!

  I did?

  Hattie Rose Pearl, are you befooling me again?

  I’m Hattie Rose Pearl? Oh. I thought perhaps I was Violate.

  Huh? What’s got inte ye, girl?

  Nothing, yet.

  Ha! Aren’t you the sauce, though! Did Violate put you up to trifling with me? Have you jist been holding out, of a purpose?

  Am I holding out? Here I am, Danny.

  Now you’re talking. Well, here goes. I wish you hadn’t frittered away till now. How’s that? Hurt still?

  No. Go on.

  Well I’ll be blest! You sure loosened up awful fast.

  You talk too much, Danny.

  I aint going to be able to say a word, in the twinklin of a bedpost.

  Then don’t. Hurry.

  And she, this suddenly willing fickle funicler, enfolds me, arms and vale alike enfold me, I’m held round and swallowed, the shaft of my back in the clench of her arms and legs alike, the shaft of my shaft in the clench of the strong valves of her vale, and we are balmed and bathed in the wets of our sweating and the damps of our clamping, the dew of her slew and the drip of my tip, we slip and we skid in the sluice of our juices and I’m happy as a frog in his bog or a hog in her wallow, a fish in its swishes, a snake in a lake, or a planetree in the rain. I want to ask her how she feels, but she’s told me not to talk, and I needn’t ask, the way she moans and moves.

  She was not thinking about grandfathers, at all. As a mere point of logic, Danny could not be her grandfather, at least not at this time, because he did not exist, and not at that time either, for she was not born then. What then was she thinking? Oh, that was just it, that she was not thinking, of anything at all. That was what was so nice about it, to have such pleasure without any interference from the mind. If any thought ever crossed her mind, in the minutes and minutes following, it was only a brief bemused reflection that a thirty-year-old well-known writer was being put to shame by a twelve-year-old Connecticut farm boy.

  She’s far better than Violate, she is, is Hattie Rose Pearl, she is, oh. And I know she’s going to be my girl again, oh. With a hey in the hay and a hey nonny no, oh. Her throes don’t startle me as Violate’s did, for I know what they are. “You’re fetching,” I tell her, whisper in her ear. “It’s called fetching.”

  Oh hush, and fetch yourself. She says, in her long sigh.

  I try. Oh, I try to, and I’m fast as a jackrabbit in a forest fire, fast as the foam-flakes drift on the river, fast as music from a trumpet, fast as a thunderbolt, as a hawk, as a shadow, as a thought, as a falling star. I’m fast as time.

  It’s taking him, she reflected. But that could be simply a matter of body chemistry. It was, after all, Day’s body, and she knew from her brief affair with her don that the second time takes longer. But good Lord! how he was going on! Now she was ascending again. She tried to hold back, out of fear he would get there before she did, and leave her. But he didn’t get there.

  It’s news to me, girls can fetch twice. And nice. Nay, more than nice. And yea, more than twice. But she says I’m going to make her sore. Soon, soon, I say. Yea, more than twice: thrice, and thricest is nicest, her throes so mighty they tear my fetch right out of me at last. I think I’ll die. I’ll die right out of myself. Nice to die, knowing you can come again.

  In his arms she drifted off to sleep, forgetting to retrieve Day.

  Now I find she’s gone to sleep on me, and I didn’t even get to ask her if she’ll be my girl again. But I think she will. I would wake her, but I’m terrible sleepy myself, and her head’s on my chest. It’s still a long way to dawn.

  10

  Hypnotized subjects, if left in their trances, will eventually fall into deep sleep, and eventually awaken, themselves again. But Diana did not know this. Thus, when sunrise woke her, and she saw that she was beside Day, and began slowly remembering, she wondered if he, in deep sleep still, was still Daniel, and, if so, what he would do when he woke up and saw that she was not Hattie Rose Pearl. She woke and wondered this idle wonder in a state of warm and dreamy euphoria. She felt good and happy and cozy, and she snuggled closer against him. In doing this, her bottom wiggled, and the dull ache there told her that she was going to be sore all day, but she didn’t care.

  She fell back into sleep, and came out of sleep, several times, one time thinking or realizing, I am in love with Daniel.

  Then she was finished with sleeping. She lay there and looked at him. He was sleeping on his back. Day always slept on his stomach. His penis—his perkin was not limp; it canted in a long tough curve; if she could bear it she could have it again. But she was too sore. She could only hold it, and did.

  It even had his pulse in it, which the tip of her forefinger could feel and take in the dimple of the ogival arch on the underside of the crown’s rim. She tried to time it, without a watch. It seemed to be slow, not the pulse of Daniel, but then of course a pulse is slower in sleep. It was quickening, though, beneath her touch.

  Then he woke. She didn’t see him wake, because her head was on his stomach and her eyes on his perkin, which she was giving her full contemplation. In the light, in the daylight, she had not seen one so close before. Nature study, she said to herself. Part of my education. But she’d not seen anything in nature with quite the resemblance. Not red like rhubarb, nor green like asparagus or okra, nor gray like a stallion’s, nor pink like a cat’s, nor vermillion like a dog’s. The closest resemblance was to a certain mushroom she’d seen recently while exploring the woods with Day. “What’s that?” she had asked, pointing, and then, joking, “Did you drop something?” He had blushed scarlet. “Mutinus,” he’d said. “Just a worthless mushroom.” “That means it’s a fungus, doesn’t it, Fungus?” she’d twitted him. Oh, she oughtn’t to tease him so. Besides, the mutinus had a rather sharp-pointed tip, whose flesh color made it all the more formidable and suggestive. His tip wasn’t sharp at all, just pleasantly pointed, enough for entrance. It looked like a soldier’s helmet, no, a fireman’s hat, with a dent in the top. It was cute as a popsicle, cute as a—

  “I’ll make you a present of it. It’s yours.”

  Her head snapped back so suddenly she bopped him on the chin. She said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and stroked him lightly on the chin and looked sympathetically into his eyes. But he wasn’t hurt; he was smiling. She “replayed” his words in her head, and tried to decide if they were Day’s or Daniel’s. She couldn’t tell. The expression on his face wouldn’t help her; he just looked dreamy and a little lascivious, a little bedroom-eyed.

  She couldn’t very well ask, straight out, “Who are you?” so she just tried to make conversation. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Like a log,” he said. But Daniel could have said that.


  “What would you like to do today?” she asked.

  His eyes got bedroomier, and he put his arms around her. “Funicle,” he said.

  So then he was Daniel! She was both delighted and a little nervous. But he could see her plainly; wasn’t he able to see that she was neither Violate nor Hattie Rose Pearl?

  Now he was pressing her down and clambering upon her. She resisted. “No,” she said. “Really. I can’t. I’m much too sore. You really used me up last night.”

  He looked at her strangely. “You’re being sarcastic,” he said.

  Was this actually Daniel, after all? Well, maybe he was Day. Or a little of both? “If you’re not used to it,” she said, “if you haven’t done it in a long time, then you have to get used to it.” She added, by way of consolation, “I’ll get used to it. But not now.”

  He fell off of her and lay beside her, a pout on his mouth like an eleven-year-old boy’s. “But look what you did,” he said, pointing at his still stiff perkin. “I saw you playing with it.”

  “It was already up,” she said. “I didn’t make it do that.”

  “Well, you can’t go off and leave it looking like that.”

  She knew he was Day, and somehow, because he was Day, his perkin lost its handsomeness. It was not a perkin but just a penis. She wished he’d cover himself.

  She crawled over him, getting up from the air mattress and looking for her panties.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “It’s time to start breakfast, Fungus,” she said.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t go.”

  “What do you want me to do?” She tried to sound patient, but her words came out irritably. She found her panties and stepped into them, as if to close off what he could not have.

  “You could…you could come and…and play with it some more.”

  She hesitated, half-willing, half-repelled. Then she unzipped the mosquito netting in the tent door and stepped out. She turned and said through the tent door, “Play with it yourself.”