A Matter of Love in da Bronx

by Paul Argentini

  As a black-plagued, unmoving mummy would speak, Lincoln Jackson made quick work of it. He had done in barely a pint, but it was enough. His wife, Cleopatra, in the midst of making funeral arrangements, and tending a houseful of children and chores, and singlehandedly scrounging for cash to pay for the funeral in the midst of ponderous grieving had to stop all her doings while he assaulted her body sexually for nearly an hour. When he was through with her, he allowed her to leave. Whereupon, he fell asleep, and she went into the kitchen, brought a pan of water to a boil, added all the sugar it wouldtake, and addressed him with the supersaturated solution which would stick and burn like molten lava: first his face, then his genitals. Naturally, his fingers and hands got it when he tried to wipe off the scorificating impiastro. In between his blasting screams of agony, she lectured: Even though in his condition he might not give up pissing, he would think very hard on fucking.

  --Sam, I doan blame no one but me; is be ma fault; but doan you think someone who be dat close for all the years be knowin how bad the hurt got to me? Ma pecker be ma hurtstation all ma life. And he explained as a youngster, when the tension of the world got to him: anxiety, fear, frustration; he would jerk off, and feel better. Sex his refuge, surpassed only by a drunken stupor.

  When Sam mentioned hospital, Lincoln Jackson told him to get back to where he belonged, to stop trying to be so fucking white.

  --Like to be your counselor, Sam, but it cost you everything I owe you so I quits this place square with you, leastways. And didn't Sam understand for all the misery he suffered for all his years, he had more of a life in one day than Sam has had in all of his? He was going to die; he didn't give a shit; he would tell him--Sam! Go fuck the devil and grab life by the balls ...jes one time, for me. No additional charge for the secret of life. Ready? Sam?

  --I'm ready. What shall we call this secret you're about to reveal? The Lincoln Jackson Theorum?

  --The Lincoln Jackson Theorum put a fancy title on a simple 'splenation on the mystery of life. It be: Happy fucking!

  --Happy fucking? Is there any other kind?

  --Oh! Sure! Only other kind is the kind when you be doing it, and you be wishing you was not. Anything else be happy fucking. My idea go like this: If you be into happy fucking then whenever you run into life's miseries, they be just plain life's miseries, nothing more. But, if you not into some happy fucking, then everything else you run into--miseries or not--in this world be just so much shit. Remember, there be nothing more, that be the whole and entire secret of life: Happy fucking.

  Wow! What a world! if it were a Happy Fucking World! Sam considered raising a resolution requiring Happy Fucking before anyone considered anything of any consequence: Congress, the United Nations, World Peace Organization, the Parent Teachers Organization, the Syrian Terrorist Amalgamation.

  Lincoln Jackson started rewrapping himself, stopped, nodded his head in a way that was fraught with wisdom, eyed the white man, and said:--Take one last look at what you get with unhappy fucking.

  Sam. Homebound. Seconds later. --Shit! He had been taken in. He heard what he expected from a man in black skin. Gallmouthed, he turned his attention to Lou and Louisa.

  Marriage. That was the subject.

  A surprise.

  Not in general. In particular.

  Lou in particular.

  Lou walked into the shop earlier that evening needing a shave. Needing a shower, fresh clothes. Needing to talk.

  Which he did, in long, rambling dissertations on politics, the environment, television, fate, lasers, hunger, automobiles. Doing the length of the shop, he changed his pace from long, purposeful strides, to stomping, to sidestepping, to trudging until he arrived at the subject of his destination.

  Fucking.

  Not just fucking, but fucking Louisa.

  With his legs spread apart, he anchored himself in front of Sam who had perched atop the cutting table, legs dangling, hands gripping the edge, hunching forward.

  --Now! Now! I understand why a man would give up the world's riches for a woman. For some men it may be her charm, her manner, her look, her personality...whatever...and for others, like me, her lovemaking. Sam, I have never felt more like a man in my life than when Louisa and I are together. I reach such heights of ecstasy; there has never been anything that can describe it if I combined every bit of literature ever written on the subject. I don't know how it happens, but it does, right from the instant I know I'm going to be with her. The sensation starts in my balls, and spreads out from there. The moment I see her, and I know we're going to have sex; I lose contact with the earth. The way she looks at me, the way she walks, the way she reaches out to touch me. I have a hundred orgasms even before we're in bed. Then! Then! Blow my mind a million times a minute! Sam, she has me develop such a hard-on it seems made of stress-tested molybdenum. My cock gets so rigid it's painful, couldn't drive a nail in it. I look at it, and don't recognize it. The veins pop out; it's neon red, and enormous. It strains even more hurtfully so when she touches me, when she kisses me, when she breathes on me. God! She urges me to take her, time stops somewhere in all this, and I sink into her tight, muculent slip with my cornified messenger, and the magic begins. To really explain all of this, I must tell you I've been fucking for a long time. Pussy. That was the be-all, end-all of my waking day. Do whatever had to be done during the day or night, but be certain only of one thing: That somewhere, somehow before the next dawn I had at least a good shot at a piece of ass. So, I've greeted a lot of comings. If I could join all the juice I've ejaculated it would overflow a three-acre pond. I'd trade it all for just one spurt with Louisa. See what I mean about confronting overwhelming desire? But, to go on. I have never been embraced as I have been in Louisa's incomparable arms. What specifically? You ask. I can tell you specifically. It's a lot of things. The way we know things between us. The way we warm up to what we're about. The way we're sensitive to each other's heat. I can't speak for Louisa, but I can tell you in a rather offhand fashion what happens to me. As I feel myself burrow deeper and deeper into her; I can feel every atom in my body wake up; and respond in a sort of sympathetic vibration that's like the chord I use to climb a cliff of love, and it takes me three times to fulfill and complete our lovemaking. Do you know, last night, we were asked to leave our motel room because we were disturbing the neighborhood? And that was just the first step. The first time is so unbelievable; it's hard to think anything could be better. But, it comes. Mind you, we're all set for this: physically, psychologically, emotionally; but, it's more than that: It's what Louisa does. I can't describe it. It's not one part of her. It's all of her. The way she breathes, the way she looks when her eyes are closed, her fingertips raking my skin, her toes pulling me in tighter, and then, that place! There is no other like it. Somehow, her little love bump pushes down against mine, hard onto my penis which really makes it thrust and strain upwards and inwards into her palace of pleasure. What happens next is of such extreme ecstasy I find I'm completely unable to control these cries of delight. She says they sound like someone laughing and crying at the same time. I believe her because the pleasure is so excruciating as I drive to push the harder and deeper into her when suddenly it feels as if she has a penis inside her--don't laugh, really--which is fucking in the hole in the end of my engorged cock! At the same time, she has managed to clamp a band around the base of my penis which she forces tighter and tighter, at the same time milking my near-exploding hard-on higher and higher when suddenly, this hot...no!...this blazing hot spear seems to rocket down into my penis as her suction stretches out my inflamed organ, and before I know it, I'm ramming the holy, bejesus shit out of her vagina; my balls pound her ass as I come, and come, and come, and come with gushing spurts and explosions! I die! I just die! I never felt anything like it before--no coke, no smack, no freebasing; and each time it gets better and better! That takes about a century and a half to complete; and, then, we're right back at it because I don't remember any in and out! No fucking movement! Just her
pussy at play! So, although psychologically the orgasm is magnificent, there is no satisfaction! I miss the humping! Do you get it? A male misses the motion! An orgasm alone is not enough! So, the second time, we do it slow and easy. There is a lot of feeling, sensation, know what I mean? I register every fraction of an inch my cock rides in or out, and my mind scoots from the head of my penis to her lips kissing me, her heels kicking hard into my ass; her fingernails anchored in my skin slowing me down; as I search again for penis inside to electrocute me again which it does but now only now and then. When I know I can't hold back any more, I let her know, and she cranks herself up, Ka-BOOM! Total release and we gush and scream and writhe for minute after minute. ...but that's not the end. We look for a subtler contentment. So, before long and I don't know how she does it, I've got another monster hard-on, and we begin again. But this time, there's nothing more than plain venality. The crashing, bumping, humping fucking for fucking's sake; no holds barred; no waiting; just the physical rodeo; hard, deep-driving thrusts; pure selfishness is the theme; the focus of our brains never leaving the head of the cock; the clit. I understand the last time we got to that state, Louisa had been coming for my last six or seven thrusts when I screamed, --I'm coming! Darling, I'm coming! Oh! My God! Am I coming! And then I think I passed out. You know what I regret? That I didn't make a tape of that so when I become an old man unable to concentrate on the routine of fucking, I can play it and remember what it was all about. Never thought I'd need any such thing. But, Ole Pal, you know what's going to ruin all this wonderful romance? Bet you'll never guess. Let me tell you--marriage. Can you believe? Marriage has reared its ugliness. It wants to convert two uncontrollable lovers into two responsible adults. So ends making love, so enters fucking. The moment spontaneity exits, so enters duty. --Instead, can I give you a handjob tonight, darling? Love takes its place on the agenda along with mowing the lawn, fixing the car, grocery shopping, dishes and douches. Sam, my friend, I just don't know what to do. Tell me. You tell me what I should do, and I'll do it.

  --About marriage?

  --Yeah.

  --You and Louisa?

  --Yeah.

  --You have three choices.

  --How do you know that?

  --There are always three choices: This, that, or neither. In your case it's get married, don't get married, or shack up.

  --Jesus Christ Almighty, Sam! I don't know! I just don't know about you!

  Jesus Christ Almighty, Lou, all you have to do is shift your vision from the end of your cock to what you see before you: me. I'm a person. See? A real, living, breathing, needing, wanting, desiring, feeling human being. But, you see me as your marble column. A support. About a needful as a jockstrop...prized but not valued. Don't misunderstand. I'm flattered. You wouldn't speak this way if you didn't feel I had the wisdom to come up with the answer to your dilemma. As if you were Alexander The Great's father, King Phillip of Macedon, visiting the Oracle at Delphi where the king was told: Beware the chariots! The king unaware the caution was for the former queen's dagger which she called Myrtalis and was engraved with chariots indeed was aimed at his heart for an assassination that was successful and made Alexander regent. Just as the king didn't want to hear what he didn't want to hear, you don't really care what I have to say, but in your self-centered callousness you're also not aware of what you present to me as an everyday event to the everyday man which I've yet to experience. How do you think I feel? To know of how you achieve the heights of ecstasy when I try to teach myself, unable to get out of the pits? Do you want me to understand gushings, and comings, and screams of delight, and fleshy doings hour after hour and also understand the more subtle exigencies of whoring and fucking complicated with love, and as one friend to another I have the strong urge to tell you to take your miserable, rotten, picayune problems and go fuck yourself. --Lou?

  --Yeah! Yeah!

  --Go fuck yourself.

  --I did it again, right? Look, Sam, don't make me feel guilty for talking about things I know you only dream about. They're a reality for me, and I'm sorry for your luck for not tasting a bit of what I'm talking about, but you have the misfortune also of being my friend. And I must talk to you as a friend. Don't you understand a friend is not seen as more or less; as smarter or dumber; as richer or poorer; as deprived or spoiled--just...merely...only...as a friend. A friend can borrow my soul. A friend can have my heart. A friend is me. If I misunderstand you it's only because I don't know myself. If I mistreat you, it's because I can't take care of myself. If I hurt you, it's because my wounds hurt me, too. If you weren't my friend, I would have to explain...I would have to apologize...I would have to beg forgiveness...I would have to commit suicide. Sam...?

  --Lou? Please tell me, what the fuck are you talking about?

  --You miserable son-of-a-bitch.

  --You want my answer?

  --Try me.

  --If I loved a girl as much as you did, and she wouldn't have me--have me! Not just marry me--I would take a walk on the Verrazano Bridge, and spew the color of my emotion in the seas of this disgracefully managed world.

  --You would?

  --Not a doubt in my mind. Fait a compli. It would be so from the moment she said "No." Why the fuck would anyone put up with anything less? That would be more of a miserable hell than any hell invented by any Pope. Don't you understand, in this life, you are on one side of the tracks, or the other? One side is ignorant, puts up with all the shit delved by all the shitty people and their rules and laws and ways as shitty as they are--like landlords, lawyers and freelays; and the other side are those who can see the shining virtues worthwhile in their attainment, denying themselves anything less. Once they have known the best, how can they be satisfied with the counterfeit? They can't. After these mighty orgasms with Louisa, would you really want to survive a day longer with the bitch who reads the funny papers while you're a-humping? That's what happens with ninety-percent of the marriages in this world--one or the other is phantasizing about something sexually exciting just as when they were jerking off as a kid. Nothing is forever, Lou, even our friendship; so fuck Louisa for love and glory as long as you can doing whatever you can to do it; or, fuck you! Go jerk off, and stop breaking my hump.

  --How did you know she's the one that doesn't want to get married? That she says we shouldn't spoil a wonderful thing? How do you know?

  --Because you don't both have the same to gain. Louisa is thinking the charm will wear off, then she's just stuck with a schmuck, who worries more about meeting bills than getting it up. The idea of perpetually being on a search for the perfect piece of ass is more appealing than becoming one of life's surrenders, and accepting the bland dissatisfaction and disaffection of the mediocre middle class. Who looks for the perfect orgasm with two kids, an appearance to maintain, detergent to select, bathrooms to clean, payments to make, vacations to do, holiday to endure? She's saying, Lou, take your fucking worn-out values and shove them up your ass, she neither wants them, nor needs them. If you do, join the piles of shit in the world similar to you.

  --Do you agree?

  --Lou, if I agreed I'd be humping Louisa.

  --Tell me what to do!

  --Don't waste my time.

  --Why?

  --Especially by a friend, I don't like to be used. You make me out to be a dishrag.

  --No! How do I do that?

  --Tell me, I'll do whatever you say, then do it, and it's worth my consideration. Otherwise, I'd become a money-grubbing professional person, charge for my advice and not give a shit if you followed it or not.

  --Okay, I'll do it!

  --You're a liar, Lou, like the rest of the world. You just want to hear what I have to say, at no charge.

  --No! Really, tell me. I'll do it.

  --Okay. Lou? Go fuck yourself.

  --Sam!

  --It's your life. You go spend it. That's the best advice this friend can give you.

  --Sam, you've gotta help. Tell me something. I've never been anywhere clo
se to this spot before. It feels so awful. No one's ever described it before. Never. Not even close in all the books I've read. It's like foreplay for death. I don't think I'll make it. I'm going to splinter. Sam, your blind guidance is better than my blind ignorance. Help me.

  --You listening? Then listen close. This is where women have it all over men. Where they get tougher than a two-dollar steak. They can cry. You feel like crying, right? I know you do. Lou, if you can only do one thing listen. Don't cry. If you bawl, you're done with. If you feel you can't hold back, get some garlic and eat it raw with a tumbler of whiskey.

  --What does that do?

  --You stupid shit, if you can do that it tells you don't want to die!

  --Don't cry...

  --Right. Don't cry. Don't die.

  Explaining he had to get to the wake of Lincoln Jackson's son, Sam left Lou: full of anguish, sterilizing pain, hollow desires. Free of malice, leaving him thus calmed Sam to know he need not envy his dear but thoughtless friend who constantly reminded him of what he'd been missing. It wasn't so bad for Lou: Who would trade oblivion for pain? Compared to the lobotomizing frustrations Sam used to feel. He thought as he entered the kitchen at home that if we all got everything we wanted when we wanted it life wouldn't be worth a half-fuck, and not getting anything worthwhile at all wasn't worth half a rotten shit. And in between? Naturally, Mankind.

  --Hi! Ma. You okay?

  --Yes, I'm fine. Why you concern?

  --Sitting in here at the table, drinking tea instead of taking in thirty-year-old re-runs of I Love Lucy on the television.

  --It's over. I watch the news a few minutes with your father. Just more misery they show. Figlio, c'hai famme?