Any
old
way,
things really are
looking
up
for
Your
Caius
Aquilla
P.S. How do you like my little poem qua endnote, Lora? Very silly, I know, but it’s just me feeling my oats. Oats with maybe blueberries and fresh honey and opaque goats’ milk. How little there is to be enjoy, how much there is to be endured, surely, in this sad vast vale of tears we call the world. I wonder if I am the only person in history who’s ever thought that, or put that thought that way. Nevertheless, it seems to ever-contemplative me (at your service, madames et monsieurs) that we must catch-as-catch-can at whatever felicitations, jollities, citations (in the positive sense), and paens from august generals and other mortals that come our drab, unmerry ways. Ah, philosophy. For all its bedevilments and vicissitudes, its drudgery and boredom interlarded with intense violent sudden-swift excitements (battle, that is), the Roman Imperial does have its compensations, however minor, however rare. The comraderie sometimes, for instance. It’s exquisite. The friendships that last a lifetime sometimes—or till death on the valorous battlefield. I must say I’m tickled pink and simply very happy right now—as happy as I could or can be without you by my side. I should sign off saying Your Caius Aquilla Who Couldn’t Be More Pleased Right Now, Who Couldn’t Be Happier. Your right chuffed, tip-top, hunky dory, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, truly insouciant, living the life of Riley (whoever that is—I must ask around to see if anyone knows him!), an’ it please your Lordships, top o’ the mornin’, never better, best pleased, pleased as punch, punch drunk on good will, over the moon, basking in the glowing captations of nearly the entire bally garrison, super-duper, sitting in the catbird etc., sitting pretty, etc., Caius Aquilla. Well, not sitting exactly as I can’t really sit down very well and probably won’t be able to, the apothecaries and solicitous surgeons say, for the next couple of days, despite the fact that they managed fastidiously to extract most (not all) of the wasps’ stingers. When I sleep—if I sleep—I’ve got to do it on my stomach like a woman! I can’t sit down to save my life! I’ve been writing this entire missive in fact, the entirety of this melancholic correspondence, with my papyrus propped upon a portable plinth, and me standing, itching and beefing and sedulously scribbling, painstakingly. Wait! Don’t wasps keep their stingers so as to sting again? Were those bees and hence my ineluctable death knoll? If I die tonight, and this is my last epistle, know, Lora, that I loved you more than honey. Farewell, my love, my dear Lora dear. But if I survive, if I should live, please charcoal the aforewritten lines out so as not to be preserved for posterity—except the bits about me loving you more than, etc.
P.P.S. Please write soon. Am in sore (pun—albeit a painful one!) need of cheering news/hearing from you. Love you.
P.P.P.S. Had a dream t’other night I forgot to tell you about. Was being chased (me) by a bear. Well, first a bear, then a camel, then a wolf, then a squirrel. A squirrel? Well, a rather giant one. Why doesn’t it occur to one, one wonders sometimes, to stop in the middle of such dreams and turn to the chasing animal and ask, “Excuse, me? Mr. Bear, Wolf, Camel, or Giant Squirrel? Just why, may I ask, if I may be so bold, are you after me?” But one never does. One runs. And wakes up sweating. Or screaming, then sweating. Hmmm. They say in dreams are prophecies. Dear gods, let us hope not.
P.P.P.P.S. Oh! It just occurred to me that I might provide you with a bit of physiognomy, in terms of the chaps. A grand idea, wot; and good practice for me in terms of typecasting people for my putative stand-up act—if I ever have the gumption to do it, which as I’ve said I probably won’t. It’s only a sort of phantom thing, a pipe dream, a reverie, something wonderly pleasant to think on. Latterly, I realized I’ve been writing away here, merrily or unmerrily anecdoting-down-the-lane, and sort of neglecting to clue you in as to some of the characteristics of my personages, my “subjects” and interlocutors, brother soldiers, fellow fellows, etc. Let’s see: you know how almost everyone on gods’s green, flat earth resembles an animal of some type? Facially speaking? You yourself, as you know, look a bit like a bunny, a very pretty bunny, I should say—to me at least you do! Well, windy Beefy, for instance, was kind of a fish-faced fuck, with great goggly eyes and perpetually pursed fish-lips; laddish Marcellus had a rather ovine visage, sad eyes, a big, aquiline nose, but with a wine-colored mark on his neck in the shape of a sea-star; Joc (my pal, who is known to you, of course, but I’ll go ahead anyway and describe him) is such the vulpine type—intense red eyes, giant teeth, leering-like, pointy wolf-face, widow’s peak; fey Domitus had a sort of egghead, his countenance accordingly sorrowful, as though his features couldn’t stop thinking about how they were affixed to (ensconced in?) an egg. Who else? I’m thinking, I’m thinking… Hmmm. Oh! Of course! The little general I saved (the other Caius—at least I think he’s the only other one—you can’t meet everybody in an entire Legion or even regiment, surely)—he evokes a preoccupied cormorant. Or perhaps a Cornish Game Hen. Very birdlylike, that’s certain. Rather avian. Beaky, yet somehow simian as well; so then you’d maybe say he’s an ape-bird or bird-ape. Orangey-carroty Brutus you can already picture as an animated fruitstuff. And of course there’s good old Lt. Optio whom I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned is quite the frog-faced fellow. It really doesn’t help that his neck sort of bulges and throbs when he gets in a wax. But that doesn’t happen too often, really. Weirdly, the only one who seems to get on his last nerve is, um, yours truly.
IV Aprillus
Dear Friend:
Hail, Caius. I have something sorrow-making to tell you & it’s not going to be easy to disburthen myself of this heavy load, open up, tell you straight up, straight out, lay it on the line, & get down to the nitty-gritty; so I’m just going to come right out & say it. I muck or fucked up. I really did. Oh this is bad. This is not good. This is a major faux pas & a half. I don’t know where to begin. Certainly, I never ever thought the day would come—the saddest day, coming where & when I never thought it would come; the day in which I would have to deliver news to you that would perhaps be most unwelcome if not excruciating to you, but, well, how can I put this? & now it’s here. There’s no getting round it—it’s happening. Obviously discombobulated, I’ve let my syntax wax jumbled as a retarded child’s alphabet blocks, & my thoughts are scattered like the tempest-tossed ships in The Odyssey. I’m sure you can guess what I am about to confess: so here goes nothing. That unutterably smiling, smug, unctuous, & attractive bastard Marius was here last night, mooning round, making moony eyes and kissy-mouths at me & so forth, after the kids were well bathed then put down & a glory story read to them of an against-all-odds Roman triumph over some pesky Egyptians. He’d brought his harp over: he wanted some pointers gratis from yours truly. Or so he said. What a sham. The ruses people resort to sometimes! Well, one thing lead to another as they say & we smiled & laughed & played & had a spot of wine &… I feel such a swine telling you this, writing like this—perhaps it’s better if I don’t tell you, better left unsaid, but I’ve started this halting confession so I may as well follow through with it, & plus with the outrageous price of papyrus these days I don’t want to waste an entire sheet of it, you know, papyrus prices being inextricably linked to the granary stock market, as any fool knows… Well, as I was saying we had some wine, & some more, then a bit more, then just one more tumbler, & some deal of fresh cheese, a bit of black pudding, plus a wedge each of sugar-dusted bread loaf dipped in extra virgin olive oil, plus some pig leftover from the second luncheon time, with a bit of choice cold cow, thin-sliced of course, from a couple of nights ago &—hmm—some dabs of pate of duck, a plate of sautéed sand dabs, quail sliders, roasted new potatoes, a rasher of liver, plump red and golden delicious apples, grapes both purple & white, a lovely burnt cherry tart, toasted honey-&-nut paste bars, some manna morsels in milk & a wedge each of yesterday’s moist
-baked cream tea cakes from when I had Drusilla & two other women friends whose names I can’t recall now over for a bit of chess & a deliciously vicious spate of gossip-mongering, the usual hen-centric get-together kind of thing, chitchat about this & that, a scandal here, a divorce there, banishments, sentences of death, who got the worst of it this week gladiatorwise, etc., etc. After we (Marius & I) got back from visiting the vomitorium (me) & the bog (him) & were settling down to make some music, we had a bit more wine & a bit more cheese & whatnot, a drop of cider or two—& well, I don’t know how to say this so I’ll just say this… we canoodled. He kissed me. We kissed, okay? Just a friendly kiss. At first, that’s what it was: a peck only. Then a not-so-friendly bunch of them if you know what I mean. Full tongue & all the rest of it. What was I thinking? We were sitting across from one another with our respective harps, working out something in the Mixolydian vein, this diatonic workout or raga? The one that goes dum dum deedle dee, dum dum deedle dah. Plink, plink, plink, plink. You’d recognize it. & after a particularly good go-through, one where we were really in sync & meshing, getting along like cakes & jam, he stops & gives me that unmistakable, meaningful look men give when they’re about to do something, take you & ravish you or go in for a gently genteel kiss: that melty-soft look they get when they get all mushy, or if their eyes glaze with frank, thoroughgoing lust. Blushes he & quite lamely goes: “Oh, Lora!” “What?” I says, quite sharply, me knowing something was up. “Lora! You have something on your face… Here…” & I guess I had a truant, dead eyelash on my cheek & he licked his index & reached over and brushed it ever so delicately away with the one then another of his treacherous fingers, tracing, at last, the lines of my quite high cheekbones with the soft back of his hand. “Make a w-w-w-w-wish,” he says & blows the lash into the very air, as the tension, the atmosphere inspissates. Then he grabbed me, pulled me to him. “What are you driving at?” I says. “My w-w-wish,” says he, “is that you… would be my d-d-dish!” he says & laughs, smiles like he’s said something uncannily funny. “Ha, ha, ha,” I says, all dry, “very funny, Marius. Nice one. Hilarious.” He tried again. To kiss me, that is. He seems keen to embarrass himself howsoever he can; it’s almost a goal with him, a guerdon. What a fool. What a prat. It’s amazing. He’s amazing. Never met the like, I’m telling you. At once terribly flattered here & disgusted beyond all comprehension. Quite at a loss with respect to what to do. “You are ho-ho-ho…” he said. “Hopelessly beautiful?” I sallied. “Ye-ye-yes,” said he. “I know that,” said I. “Tell me something new,” I said. “I la-la-love you,” said he, the fool. He made a play for my supple waist. I wriggled and skipped away, giggling. He followed, faintly. I feigned fainting. He caught me. I scratched him. He gripped me. I parried his thrust, as it were. He clutched at me. I slapped him. He bit me. I bit him. He clasped me to his huffing chest. I got a good, solid handful of testes & clutched them. He yelped then swooned with pain. I broke away. He broke away. Came back & clouted me upside the head. He grabbed me. I clutched him. He kissed me. I kissed him. Full tongue, full on. He nibbled then bit my neck—quite hard. I his. He clamped his right hand right smack on the wettest bit of my sex. I pulled his hair (well, what’s left of it, the straggles in back, pardee). He embraced me. Cupped my bum for all he was worth & buried his mouth in my cleavage. It was like mad dancing, two people drunk on one another. Plus drunk on plonk. Then we looked at each other with that look that comes over you when—you know: the way people do when they’re about to… you know. Then the harps went down—I mean, just right over. His did that is; I just kind of set mine aside, but it slipped & toppled anyway. & he took me by the back of the neck with his small, strong hands & kissed me very sweet then very rough & then sort of pulled himself together & made his lips, his mouth quite soft & of course I slapped him hard, but not like “hard”—you know; I don’t know how to explain it. & then I said all the obligatory feminine things one says that one doesn’t really mean really, like, “You can’t do that!” &, “I’m a happily married woman!” &, “What do you think you’re doing, you unabashed cad & unmitigated bounder?” &, “Who do you think you are, coming on to me like this, in this horatory & most inappropriate & flattering way?” &, “Just you try that again!”—all that rot that’s obviously just flummery & folderol. In earnest I did say this, admonishing him sternly, firmly: “Stop playing the rake, Marius. It doesn’t suit you one iota.” He laughed at that, all right. “Ha,” laughed he. “Ha. Ha. Ha.” Then he grabbed me, pulled me to him. I slapped him. Mortifying. Blood bloomed from the cut on his cheek I’d made. Tears welled in’s eyes. In mine as well, I imagine. He bent over, huffing & puffing, like an anchorman at the end of a relay race or someone who’s been punched in the gut with a battering ram or the fist of a small but powerful & crazy child. Rose he, came forth, collared me (just an expression, of course; women don’t wear collars), bit my neck again. I his. He licked my face. I licked his. I hissed at him, he blew a kiss at me. I feigned scratching him, then boxed his ear. He bled. I laughed. I spat in his face. I took him by the throat. He jigged a bit & brushed my raking fingers away, like a circus tumbler rounding off a tricky flip with a flourish. Then pulled me to him encore: “I l-l-love you, L-L-L-Lora,” he said. “Oh, do you, lecher?” I countered. “I l-l-love you & I’m going to r-r-rape you,” he breathed. “I’m going to rape you!” I panted. “Oh, are you, sauce box?” he said. “Ha! Chance’d be a fine thing! How do you reckon that one out?” said he. He took me, held me gingerly, kissing me sweetly on my neck, my ear, my cheek, my chin. Worshipfully, I knelt before him, his willing slave & concubine. He knelt as well. He touched me “there.” Pressed his lips to my willing breasts. Toothed them (not hard, a love bite only). I him (his cheek). Next thing you know we’re snogging like anything, making out like naughty children playing nurse & surgeon. Then one thing lead to another, & another, & then he took me & I was slept with him. I suppose that’s kind of a euphemism, if not a full-blown one—plus a wicked & unsightly & gross use of the passive voice. We—how to put this?—fucked, Caius. Scrogged like mad dogs or rutting goats rutting. Fornicated. Made what I like to call the beast with two backs. & not just the once. Oh, no. But repeatedly. Hungrily. Ravenously. Perhaps that’s unveiling/detailing too much? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, dear friend. He fucks like a stoat, though. Really it’s true. I’ll say that much for him: knows what he’s about, friend Marius. Marriage, by hymen, is really hard, isn’t it? Not super easy. There are so many rough spots, challenges, my dear. Obstacles (there’s one called Marius, in fact) to faithfulness & happiness and continued ignorance-as-bliss & all that rubbish. I wonder now: should I call you dear? Ought I, after what you’ve just been apprised of? Is that not going only to add flagitious insult to undeniable injury? Gods know. I mayn’t be so dear to you now, I realize—not just this minute, & vice versa. In the wake of the fact that this kind of changes the dynamic between us, doesn’t it? I mean, how could it not? As I said, I don’t know what to say here & I am very confused & upset right now (plus hungry) & don’t know what to think except that part of me believes (& I could be wrong except I seldom am) that in part you are somewhat perhaps maybe to blame in me lapsing sexually? I don’t mean to demonize you & be a real cliché about this stuff, going projecting, but let me ask you: why aren’t you here, Caius? Were you here, with me, this never would have happened! Surely Marius would never have dared make such a flagrant pass; & surely I would never have countenanced it, acquiesced, and given him my naked body, my tingling & quivering & yearning lips, & then gone a-romping with him, deliciously. I do hate to expostulate with you, husband/bastard, but you are, as usual, as has happened so woefully often in our marriage, away campaigning for the glory of old Rome while I’m being…while you let someone, a next door neighbor no less, conquer me—conquer me & take me in a way that I’ve never been taken before & that’s left me wondering if… I can’t even write it! Were you not away & fighting all these hordes of admittedly superfluous barbarians (why can’t we just lea
ve them alone, I wonder sometimes—what good’s killing them in order to civilize them, & isn’t that just a shade ironic?), it would have been you & me practicing playing music together, not me & him, him who’s now my lover I suppose you’d call him or maybe paramour’s more like it. Yes, that’s a much more apt if not romantic epithet, n’est-ce pas? I cannot help but think it would have been you & me making love in all those rooms (if you were up for it, id est, and not too tired from slaying half the known world; also as a way to ring the changes, in terms of let us say the banality of our matrimonial couplings!). I’m a mess. I never thought I would in a million years be the sort of woman who…you know—what I just told you. “O, O, O, O,” I cry like a redundant personage in a minor drama. What do I do now, Caius Aquilla? I have no idea what to think or do! It’s not like I’m really blaming you, but kind of? I can’t take all the blame here. I mean, I could take it if I had to, but I don’t want to. & besides, I sort of never had a chance. He had my shirt off before I could get a shirt on, as the saying goes. You know what I mean—women in shirts: a preposterous image! Caius! Woe is me or I. Oh, dear. Gods help me, I really am as forlorn & forsaken (I almost wrote “foreshaken”) as a heroine in one of those terribly melodramatic melodramas your basic Greeks were so good at back in the days before we smashed them to bits & crippled their reach-me-down empire, taught them who’s boss & the new kid in town. Caius! He started running his hands through my hair like he was washing it or something, plus conditioning—with almond milk & spun honey. Then he goes cupping my lifted-to-him face, & massaging my head like an expert Cretan or maybe Macedonian masseuse. Then (I really kind of hate you right now, love; I am so mad; hate him as well, if that’s any consolation, & I know it isn’t, couldn’t possibly be) he began to whisper sweet nothings of just the sweetest nothingness & telling me how young & beautiful & nubile & desirable I was, how he liked my plump rump & fine proud breasts & bigger women in general. I’m not that big, a size nine, godsdammit—how dare he typecast me like that! What woman on gods’s green etc. wants such a thing as that?! Then he told me how he’d always thought I was so pretty & unique & bright & fun & sexy & fetching & voluptuous; how he’d always fancied me & not just because he fancies gingers (“But I’m not really a ginger,” I keep telling him—but he’s just not having it, you know?). Then, nimbly, he started in on my neck. You know how my neck’s so my not-so-secret weakness. They should make a chastity belt or I guess you’d say choker for the neck, for young, gullible girls & for godsforsaken, fallen, faithless women such as I, they should. It was like being kissed by the sun, repeatedly. Like eating a dish of fresh snow sweetened with plopped drops of orange honey. Before I could stop him or even wonder if I wanted to—I’m pretty sure I was very very drunk by this point, really just wrecked & giddy-as-Hades, though I’d only had nine or so good full goblets all told; not even an entire jug—before I could stop him, stay his I daresay wonderful, wandering hands & go. “Wait, what are you doing?” (like what every girl says when she knows exactly what he’s doing: what do you think he’s doing, you bloody ninny; he’s fucking seducing you, you silly, shamming cow), he had my fresh white low-cut & most flattering evening dress down off my golden shoulders & he was lovingly cupping & fondly fondling & quaintly grazing & smoothing & tinglingly brushing the backs then the fronts of his soft-soft fingers against them, my panting/heaving/swelling breasts, & palpating the separate sides of my buxom bosom & then suckling them, my firm, pert (as he says “proud”) tits, so sweetly & tenderly, one then the other, then both as he bunched them together & was able to get at each nipple in one “go,” so to speak. I wonder what that’s called, that technique, by the way? Well, no matter. It was quite pleasing & I hope you learn to do it one day. & gods almighty if he didn’t keep murmuring, as he was clawing at my clobber, to try to get my dress off, that he loved me madly, that he couldn’t live without me, that he’d wanted me for ages (from ever since we met, two months ago, when he, a widower and jumped-up nobody, moved next door to us), & like a true Roman would fall upon his sword right there (though he’d have to go back to his house to get it; he didn’t come armed, if that’s what you’re thinking—just brought his harp over, as I told you) if he couldn’t have me, if I wouldn’t give myself to him instanter & gratify his hot lusts & most heartfelt desires & blah, blah, blah. Pawing at me thusly, he was; & I all confusion. Ardor & vulgarity personified was he, playing the romping, passionate swain come to the lascivious city; me the quintessential tempestuous, giddy maiden. Such picayune pageantry. Stuff & nonsense. “I love you, Lora,” said he. “& have done e-ever since I m-m-met you. Oh, Lora, g-g-give m-m-me some task & I will p-p-perform it—j-j-just so it takes me not so very f-f-far from you. Let me br-br-bring you s-s-some candied violets or some such treat. Please, L-l-lora! H-h-have you n-n-n-n-n-never been so very s-s-smitten yourself? ’Tis terrible, truly. Will you, won’t you take pity on one who su-su-suffers for your s-s-sake? I’m s-s-sorry to g-g-give you any p-pain, but I am in mortal p-pain here m-m-myself, you s-s-see. I your very sw-sw-swain. Oh, Lora! & I must have you wa-wa-once before I d-d-die or I will surely, uh, d-d-die. P-p-please, Lora. W-w-words (w-w-which are the bane of my ex-ex-ex…life, Lora): how they f-f-fail me now m-m-more than e-e-ever when the o-o-o-object of my af-af-af-affections is right here b-b-before me. I l-love you with all my d-d-desperate heart. S-s-say you w-w-will be m-m-mine just the wa-once, & I will leave you in p-p-peace & w-w-worship you till my very own d-d-dying day & may it come s-s-soon, by Cupid & all the gods of love.” Oh, Caius—his murmuring was murmuring much like you murmur, Caius darling, when you’re in a libidinous sex-frenzy & can’t control yourself. His eyes watered like the mouths of an hundred camels crossing three thousand waterless deserts. Or something. He wrung his hands clichely, he wrung mine also. In short, he wrung my heart as well, poor Marius. I was reeling. Never did a sweeter, randier confusion traverse my every sense; & though I can’t say for sure, our sex often remaining oblivious to what goes on with our most vexatious bodies, I must have been sopping-dripping wet down you-know-where. Super sticky. Well, I of course protested a little bit, & squirmed some, impudently objected & stiff-armed him a bit as if to say “not so fast, Orpheus” or “take it easy there, Mr. Pyramus.” To my credit, I should add. Going, as I mentioned, “We can’t be doing this, etc.,” he came forth all bold just then & bid me rise. Took me in his manly, beekeeping arms & kissed my turned-away then turned-to-him head & his lappings & bussings & little teasing lickings & salivating slaverings on my by-now fully firm & dilated nipples got more ravening & ravenous, him full-on gobbling now, just kind of honking down on, working his way round the hollow of my so-plump, heaving cleavage. He had them, my nipples, pointing toward Caelus, the azure heavens, standing at attention, saying, “How d’ye do?” & all of that. Then he sort of turned me expertly, like we were dancing (why don’t we ever dance, my dear non-terpsichorean husband?) & lowered me once again & expertly, dashingly onto the divan where I had been sitting. I now found I was really getting wetter by the instant. & I knew he really really wanted me. (Girls can tell, you know.) I mean, say what you will about him—short guy, dufusy, goofy, obsequious, absurd, losing his hair, nerdy hobby, stammering like a stock character in a bad comedy, halitosis galore, etc.—but he really knows what he’s doing when it comes to in-the-sack technique. I mean, he’s kind of a love-Druid or fuck-wizard. A real ace-and-a-half in the art of seduction. Kneeling now in front of me, prayerfully-like, worshipfully, as though I were the goddess he makes me out to be, he got my dress up, hoisting it, so that it only looked like my middle & my middle alone was covered. Then he parted my legs very slowly & gingerly & took me by the hips, like some sort of madly excited & favored Pomeranian anticipating a meaty treat. Ever so tenderly putting his moist mouth on me, he proceeded to lick my wet essence, not neglecting the clitoris, the pudendum, the lips of the labia, & the softest skin a woman proffers, i.e., the insides of her thighs. In other words, he knows well how intense cunnilingus is, & how a woman nee
ds a bit of suspense, a bit of a break in the midst of it, & that licking & kissing the inner thigh is a terrific way of teasing her & making her want him (& to want him to make her climax, orgasm, etc.). All this, & performed so passionately-leisurely, really meaning it, each luxurious thrust-lick of his long tongue—till at last of course I couldn’t stand it any longer (you know how sometimes when we are coupling & you are going down on me I just want you to come up, as it were—come up, come up, & mary-come-up—come up & stop trying to make me climax with your uxorious & rather amateurish-by-comparison-with-old-what’s-his-name’s tongue, just go & put your doting self inside me & have done with it). So, thus, & therefore, to cut a really kind of out-of-control, dirty, wonderful, rare, & long sexy sex story short, I let him have me right there, quietly, right there on that fateful divan in the central room, the one (the divan, id est) that wants reupholstering real bad (perhaps zebra this time—cheetah’s soft & everything but I am so bleeding sick & tired of that tired motif, I can’t tell you). My by-now doubtless goosefleshed & stippled back arched in unalloyed pleasure; I was just ecstatically mouth agape from riding waves upon waves of unalloyed, undulating pleasure, my emotions haring all over the shop, my arms thrown over the back of the divan like I was doing some sort of swim stroke while bathing in the bluest & clearest of crystalline, baby-blue & chrysanthemum-colored oceans, letting the soft waves roll over me, caress me, swish me round. Mmm. He had me there—oh woe is me, Caius—then in my bedroom, then in yours, then the hallway (standing up, astraddle), then the bath, then in the laundry room (on top of the tipped-over laundry tub), then back in my chambers, him sitting on the arm of an easy chair, me bobbing up & down on his quote-unquote knob, his scepter, then in the kitchen (the servants being asleep in their quarters, oblivious to this marathon of concupiscence, this juggernaut of coupling, incomparable rapture, joy of joys). He finished (I finished) as we tripped or skipped (laughing, jiggling) back again to the central room for a while (him standing, me hoisted by him, almost balletically, certainly athletically). He’s incredibly strong & agile for someone who’s a near-dwarf, in fact! One wondered which thing to marvel at most: his prowess or his power. Then faired we forth outside to catch our breaths—& quietly so as not to wake the slaves dreaming in the courtyard with all the animals giving us something of a wide berth. M gave me a look that seemed to signify he would have me again, that his julius was up & ready once more to make the beast with two et ceteras. I smiled. He smirked. Dove we then back inside, got down on the floor (I never knew till just the now how much I love floor-rutting!), then he took me from behind, pulling my hair the way I like & roughly, like I was some sort of horse a-breeding, some wild coital Pegasus girl, him eagerly taking my rhythm, giving me his best (when that slap-slap-slap sound starts & you know the bucking gent’s about to throw back his head & start in on his love-cries & sex-grunts, then shudder & come like a deified Caesar—all this with the greatest, most full & giant gleaming golden moon blazing in the sky outside). I wish I could say that it wasn’t good, that it didn’t mean anything, that it was just something that happened, two amorous ships passing in the etc., & that, by Zeus, we might or may easily have just been shaking hands or playing at taws or dice or hopscotch or hide-&-seek or something. But that wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be precisely the truth. That would be a bloody lie, in fact. I mean, I felt like baying. At the moon. Like some sort of animal. It felt so good, so right, so real, unreal. & now I feel so bad, so wrong, so false, unreal. I can’t pretend to deny it. That I liked it & a lot, I must say. Now remorse is my only friend, dear friend. Remorse & gobs of candied pineapple & bottomless goblets of wine, wine, wine. How could I have done that to you and so thoughtlessly, effortlessly, readily, willingly, keenly? Noble you who’ve except for that one time with the slave boy when you accepted his offer to fellate you…you who’ve been so faithful to me & true? Are you sure about that, by the bye? That it was only the one time & that you didn’t…reciprocate? I don’t know that I could ever forgive you for that, Caius, were you to tell me you sucked a male catamite of a Greek slave’s “j” until it spurted. The thought of it turns my stomach, it does. Anyway…fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuckity fuck. Damn it all & fuck a duck. Fuck two or three of them. Sideways. What can you do? What can I say? Some kinda real sweet billet-doux this is, eh? Nice letter, really lovely. Well at least you know the truth, the worst—unless Marius has some sort of venereal infection & has given it to me as a little “present.” Horrors & perish the thought. Let’s keep our fingers crossed & a few animals in mind that we might easily spare for a Venereal sacrifice. I suppose I should just sign off & shut up now & take a long, long bathe. Why do I keep writing, I wonder? Is it mere obsessiveness, a kind of graphomania, or do I want something from you now, husband? What could I possibly want? Atonement? Possibly. Forgiveness? Absolution? A kind word or two when I know I don’t deserve such. Not in a million moons. With much love & no little chagrin from
Your Caius Aquilla Page 6