All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Champagne was nice, and chocolate-covered strawberries were nice, but after that lovely dinner at the reception, all Angela really wanted was to hop into bed right away. Corwin, however, had already eased the cork out of the bottle and was filling both champagne flutes.

  “Wish me good fortune,” he said with an awkward smile, “on la nuit des amateurs.”

  “Only if you wish me the same.”

  “To wish you good fortune, my love, is to wish the same for myself. And, hopefully, vice versa.”

  “Oh, Cory!”

  They touched their flutes together with a tiny, crystal ping, then lifted them to their lips and sipped, searching one another’s eyes over the rims. “Have you heard,” he said, as they lowered the flutes, “the reason for serving chocolate-glazed strawberries with champagne? The flavors are adjudged mutually enhancing.”

  Why, she thought, he’s procrastinating! So it’s really true: men are more bashful than women.

  “I really couldn’t eat another bite,” she told him. “In fact, I can’t even finish this lovely champagne.” She set her flute down on the silverwood dresser. “Cory, let’s feel a little naughty! Let’s take our wedding rings off and leave them over here.”

  He gulped down half his champagne and set his flute beside hers. “Our engagement rings, also?”

  “Not that naughty. We’ll pretend we’re just jumping the gun by a night or two.”

  He slipped his wedding band off and set it carefully in the shadow of the flutes. She slipped hers off and balanced it on end in the circle of his. Their engagement rings, they replaced on their fingers. “But we’re really married, of course. We’re really, really married, and it’s all right!”

  “Indubitably.” He caught her and kissed her, careless whether they were beneath one of the mistletoe sprigs or not. A long, sweet kiss that warmed her triangle to a glow.

  “Cory,” she murmured, as they surfaced and stood fast in a tight hug. “Do you think maybe we should try it with…with our tongues?”

  “With our tongues?”

  “So many people seem to say that’s the very best way to do it.”

  So they tried it with their tongues. His was slidy, sweet, and sort of nappy, but…After a moment they pulled back and stared at each other.

  “I wonder why that’s supposed to be so great?” she said.

  “You relieve me,” he replied, “for I wondered the same. I…trust our mutual reaction does not augur ill for the…whole point of the matter.”

  “Let’s try this, then: we’ll undress each other, garment by garment.” She began by pulling off his neck-scarf.

  “I am grateful you changed out of your bridal gown for the drive across town.” He undid her belt and tossed it on a chair. It slithered off to the floor.

  “Who would guess we’re spending the bridal night just on the other side of Forest Green?” She groped for the buttons of his tunic. “Did Dave tell you where he and Julie were going?”

  “I believe that is one of those things gentlemen refrain from mentioning, even to one another.” He eased off her scarf as if her neck were blown glass.

  “We’re all alone, only the two of us, and, oh, Cory! We’re really, really married! Lift your arms so I can pull your tunic off.”

  Garment by garment, they undressed each other until finally they stood stark naked on the deep-piled carpet, rubbing their hands up and down each other’s bare skin, starting with her birthmark and his new tattoo. She hoped her touch was thrilling him as much as his was her. By the stirring of his pointer against her thigh, she guessed it was.

  At length he observed, “Even the best-heated of rooms may suffer stray drafts in the month of December.”

  “Let’s get under the blankets.”

  “Which side would you prefer?”

  “What difference does it make? Aren’t we both going to end up in a tangle in the middle?”

  So they both hopped into bed on the same side, bunching up into a cozy knot between the sheets.

  Eventually, after several very enjoyable moments, they pulled just far enough apart to straighten the covers, lie down on their backs with sides touching, and tab the room lights off by means of the master switch just reachable over the headboard.

  She knew she would never forget the thrill the first time his masculine hand landed in the hairs of her naked nest.

  “Angela,” he whispered, “take mine into your hand and squeeze.”

  It was her turn to feel a little bashful, but she bravely groped, closed her fingers around his pointer—how big and round and firm it felt!—and tentatively squeezed.

  “More forcibly—I won’t break.”

  “Neither will I, Cory. Rub! Rub hard!”

  How long they lay there, working and massaging one another’s privates, she didn’t know and didn’t care. Eventually, relaxing to lie quiet and pant for a few moments, she said, “You get so firm, and I get so soft and wambly.”

  “Even as nature intended.” He rolled over almost on top of her and they found new ways of weaving their limbs together for another half-hour or thereabouts.

  But.

  “This is preposterous!” he exclaimed at last. “We know where everything is supposed to fit, we are young, energetic, and—I think—both of us fully prepared in every fiber of our being, and yet nevertheless…”

  “It’s supposed to be so easy in the missionary position… We are in the missionary position, aren’t we?”

  “Perhaps if I had ever studied the Kama Sutra—which ought perhaps to be mandated as prerequisite reading for matrimony…”

  “Corwin… I can’t be…what’s that word?… I can’t be frigid, can I?”

  At that, he laughed. “Love, if you are frigid, the ice must be melting and boiling away at both poles of our planet! Perhaps it is I who…”

  “Never that! Why, I’m not sure I could even get my hand around it by now.”

  “Could it conceivably be the excitement of the day? Long as it has been, and filled with tension—glorious, pleasurable, ecstatic, but inevitably draining…”

  “Maybe we’d better try to fall asleep now? And go at it again when we’re fresh?”

  It took them a long time, but eventually they slept. Side by Side. Like the Raggedy siblings.

  * * * *

  Julie lay on top of Dave in the lightly jiggling Pullman bed, tracing their fingers by memory over one another’s dragon tattoos, his old and hers so new that the top layer of freshly disturbed skin had barely finished flaking away.

  “A full frontal Dupont and O’Toole original!” she mused. “And only a few months ago, my highest dream was just one little design by them—my prince’s choice—by my left breast, balancing the symbol on my right side.”

  “They did themselves proud. Almost a pity…” Dave added…“for my eyes alone. Maybe someday we’ll have ‘The Naked Julie’ done in oils for posterity.”

  “When we’re rolling in tridols and can afford to commission it ourselves.”

  “When we’ve got our house remodeled to where we want it.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I’m guessing,” he added after a while, “Sam and Corwin and Angela were the big contributors.”

  “It was my wedding gift from everybody who pitched in, Dave. Sweet Jesus doesn’t measure contributions by the dross amount, and neither will we. Only by the love of the giver.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Next time they surfaced, Dave pointed out, “And where would a giver be, without a happy receiver?”

  * * * *

  Angela woke in the drapery-filtered light of dawn. Rolling on her side, she gazed at his face. He was still asleep, of course, breathing softly. Oh! she thought, emphatically if less than realistically. Anyone who tries to annul it on grounds of non-consummation, I’ll fight them all the way to the Supreme Court!

 
; She imagined running her finger gently along his profile, forehead to chin, then maybe a tiny little tap. She didn’t quite venture to do it, but his eyes opened anyway, of themselves. He rolled toward her, looked into her eyes.

  “Awake already?” she said. “How uncharacteristic of you!”

  “This is hardly a characteristic morning, gauged against the past. It may perhaps grow less atypical as our days glide by. Oh, Angela, even if there were never to be more than…than there was last night…I would live and die contented.”

  “So would I! But…let’s try again, shall we?”

  “Excelsior!”

  First, they got out of bed, threw on the hotel’s terrycloth robes against the winter chill of the room, breakfasted on champagne—he had worked the cork back into the bottle’s neck last night, so the beverage was still sparkly—and chocolate-dipped strawberries, feeding each other and laughing when a bite went crooked and left a chocolate smear on lips or cheeks or chin, which each enjoyed licking off the other. When all the strawberries were eaten, they held one another close in a long, kissing embrace.

  “Have you that lubricating ointment handy?” he inquired. “The tube Aunt Sally gave you?”

  “In my suitcase. Don’t you think it might make us a little too slippery?”

  “We may as well try the experiment. It can hardly de-prove on last night. At worst, we can remove it again with a wash cloth.”

  She found the tube of intimate lubricant and brought it back to the bed. Then off with their robes and back under the covers, bare naked between the satin sheets, rubbing their hands over and over one another.

  “Skin is so lovely!” she whispered.

  “Mmm… The antique Greeks conceived of bodies as the boundaries separating our essences one from another. The Hebrews, conversely, regarded bodies as the vehicles enabling us to interact, soul with soul, on this mortal plane.”

  A little more rolling and very pleasurable groping.

  Next time they paused for a short rest, she said, “I dreamed about…them…in the night. Gaia and Harry. They were hovering in the air above the bed, coaching us and cheering us on. They seemed to be…very happy.”

  “Remarkable! We may have shared the same dream.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Difficult of verification, but I have encountered such things in my reading.… Fondle my nether regions again?”

  They got into position and fondled again. For all they were worth. When he was swollen very hard indeed and she was as soft and wambly as she could be without absolutely dissolving, he groped for the tube of lubricant and anointed her generously, ending by working one finger inside her cleft and wiggling gently. And, oh! If it had been a thrill last night to feel his hand on her triangle, this was a thousand times more so!

  “I believe,” he murmured, “this is what they refer to as ‘parting the petals.’ The sweet, fragrant petals.”

  “More!” she cried, her inner muscles spasming around his finger. “Oh, Cory, more!”

  Instead, he withdrew his finger slowly, millimeter by millimeter, and handed her the lubricant. “Now…if you please…anoint me.”

  She did. He lay with eyes closed, his face wreathed in total bliss.

  “Now,” he went on, “this came to me in dream. Let’s try whether it works equally well awake. Lying on our backs, we should arrange our bodies in a V, hips touching, shoulders angled some distance apart on the pillows.”

  Bubbling with curiosity, she followed his directions. When they were well arranged, he lifted her right leg up over his thighs, leaving her left to follow of its own will, but with her legs spread comfortably apart.

  Then he rolled a little bit more in her direction and rested the tip of his pointer—the beak of his bird?—in the rim of her nest.

  After a breathless second, he began to push.

  “Oh, Cory, oh, it’s going in! It’s really, really going in!”

  Halfway. He stopped halfway, and they rested. It was the most comfortable sensation she had ever felt in her life. It was right…so very, very right. She thought she could have lain like this forever. She was…almost…a little disappointed—but only for a fast heartbeat—when he rolled farther inward and pushed again.

  Farther, and deeper, and it went gliding in so smoothly…Carefully, carefully, working his body up over her legs, he rolled on top of her, hugging her shoulders as his pointer stayed inside…until their crotches were pressed as tightly together as could be…and, oh! at last she understood how a little pain could be very, very sweet…the pain that was all but a pleasure…but it passed and the sweetness did not…the pleasure that’s all but pain. She felt his male equipment nesting in her female parts and thought, in rather nonsensical delight: What the well-dressed wife is wearing this season—her husband!

  And, So this is the Sacrament. The ceremony, the witnessing, the signing things—that’s all just the sacramentals. This is the real, actual Sacrament itself—the oldest Sacrament we have, old as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, old as the Old Stone Age, even older…This is what it means, “With my body I thee worship.”

  She moved her hands down to the cheeks of his behind, and squeezed. He moved his hands down beneath hers, and squeezed back. Harder…harder…as if nature were taking over their wills, their very beings…Deliberately, she tightened the muscles of her inner nest and hugged his bird as tightly as she could.

  He gave her one look filled with astonishment and pleasure. Then he buried his face in her shoulder and started thrusting with his hips.

  Up and down, up and down, a few centimeters out and then in again to the…to the hilt? faster, faster…she was quivering, she lost track of whose parts were whose…so this is what it is when “the two become one flesh”…how sweet, how beautiful, how…

  And the universe contracted into itself, and…imploded…and spread out again in wonderful, crashing waves…embracing them…ebbing gloriously away…leaving them wrapped together soul blending into soul.

  After just enough time, they rolled apart and lay smiling at one another.

  “Your eyes are aglow,” he said.

  “So are yours. Oh, Cory, I never guessed it would be like that!”

  “Nor I,” said Corwin. “There are no words.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES, etc.

  Purgatorial stunts are by specially trained literary characters under carefully controlled conditions. Do Not Attempt at Home. Ever.

  * * * *

  On Sept. 30, 2011, I visited Northwoods Body Art on Railroad Street in Hayward, WI, to check various points concerning the use of tattoos in this novel. Many thanks to these friendly people for answering my questions! I was delighted to learn that such a “tattoo stamp” as I envisioned was indeed quite possible in a work of this genre. Even twenty years younger, and I feel sure I would have enlisted them to give me a tattoo.

  * * * *

  The quotation “Even as you and I” is from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Vampire.”

  Quotations from Dante’s Purgatorio are from the Longfellow translation: Canto 23, ll. 72-75; Canto 30, l. 145-145; Canto 23, l. 86.

  In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Sleeper” occurs the line, “The rosemary nods upon the grave,” which could explain Corwin’s sleep-mumble in Chapter 26. The citations “My duty—to be saved? Oh, let us not linger!” are drawn from E.A.P.’s poems “To Helen” and “Ululame.”

  The specific Johnny Gruelle stories cited are “Raggedy Ann’s Trip on the River” and “Raggedy Ann’s New Sisters” from Raggedy Ann Stories and “The Taffy-Pull” from Raggedy Andy Stories. Gruelle’s books seem more or less identical, with relatively unimportant variations, in both our timelines. True, in our timeline, Beloved Belindy does not talk with a dialect accent in the book named for her; but the real-for-sure human cook Dinah does. In any case, however it may be regarded
in our timeline, in those parts of the R.S.A. population who form the main cast of All But a Pleasure, attempting any dialect, from “Chocolate” to Brooklynese, is looked on as amiable if not outright complimentary.

  The Gilbert & Sullivan operas The Governess, Foggerty’s Fairy, The Tuppenny Prince, and The Drood Solution do not exist in our timeline. The Governess and The Tuppenny Prince bear certain resemblances to the last two Savoy Operas of our timeline, Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke. In our timeline, Gilbert’s 1880 nonmusical version of Foggerty’s Fairy can be found in his Original Plays, Third Series. The content of The Drood Solution may more or less be guessed at by reference to the last, unfinished novel of Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens was perhaps Gilbert’s own favorite author.

  The great historian of the Spanish Inquisition in both timelines is Henry C. Lee. Since the major split in the timelines seems to have occurred about 1868, so that Lee had the same body of material to study in both timelines, his studies in theirs are essentially the same as in ours.

  Three-player chess sets exist. I purchased one years ago and still have it around somewhere.

  A quick Internet search reveals that something called “Vision Dust” or “Visiondust” exists in our timeline. Any resemblance to the substance going by that name in the R.S.A. is purely coincidental. A similar search seems to turn up “Slumbersound” only as tags for beds; should any soporific appear in our timeline under that name, it is, again, coincidental.

  * * * *

  Since I have myself been accused, to my surprise, of showing off an overly extensive vocabulary, I may owe it to everyone to point out that Corwin’s word choice is indeed toned down by the end of this novel. For example, where the Corwin of Chapter 23 says (admittedly under orders from Lestrade, but at this point they might not make quite so much difference), “Not, I assure you, at the time!” the Corwin of Chapter 1 would have said, “Not, I attest and avow, contemporaneously with the occurrences under consideration!”

  Several of the rolegaming sessions Corwin and Angela played with Oziah Prendergast Gillikin as rulemaster have been recorded, appearing from time to time in The International Wizard of Oz Club’s annual publication Oziana (for 1986, 1988, and in 2012 or 2013). His Oz villain, closely modeled on himself, has not met exactly the kind of “interesting” fate that might have been expected: at last report, “Dr. Corwin Poe,” Computer Wizard, was living quite comfortably with his Ozian wife, the jailer Tollydiggle (played by Angela), in the Emerald City Prison, making an annual attempt to conquer Oz, perhaps chiefly to maintain his status as Official Villain and earn some such relatively harmless corrective measure as being dipped in ink. In her illustrations for the earlier Computer Wizard stories, Melody Grandy Keller has given Corwin and Oziah what I regard as their definitive portraiture, as well as providing a delightful Angela who, however, seems to have undergone the widespread phenomenon of gaining weight after marriage.