Finally, unable to do everything he felt he had to do for the cats with his bare fingers (which were about worn to nubs), one day Skunk in a Funk swiped Helia del Calvo’s toothbrush (which she never used), and began to deploy it on the desperate she-cats. Soon, the toothbrush became a sexual fetish for those poor animals—and such a fetish that when Skunk in a Funk was trying to brush his teeth one day a she-cat leaped, snatched it out of his hand, and ran with it to Helia del Calvo, presenting it to her and spreading her hind legs. Helia, nasty creature that she was, instantly figured out what was going on, and she went to Skunk in a Funk and said: “I’m so happy that you’re being nice to my kitties and trying to satisfy them this way. From now on, while you masturbate them I’ll read you little snatches from my autobiography. It’s a text I’ve never read to anyone, but you—you’re like a son to me. I give you permission to live in this house forever—under one condition. I won’t allow you to bring men in here. Men or women. Just me and my kitties.” And without further ado, Helia opened a thick notebook and began to read passages from her life story.
And that was the way that Skunk in a Funk’s nights went from that time on. After standing in line all day for fish, at night he would sit on the bed and while Helia del Calvo read him her memoirs, Skunk in a Funk would grasp the toothbrush and masturbate all the she-cats.
One night, however, after reading Skunk in a Funk a long chapter about her sexual relations with Pichilingo, Helia, surrounded by she-cats and plates of fish, her feet propped up on the bed, fell asleep in her rocking chair. Skunk in a Funk, who couldn’t take this anymore, sneaked out and went looking for a man. Fortunately, right around the corner in Maceo Park, just a few blocks from Calle Jovellar, he came across a young thug with huge boots (laces untied) and his shirt unbuttoned. Skunk in a Funk swiftly picked up the delicious hustler and with the cunning that is second nature to a queen, sneaked him into Helia del Calvo’s house. In the living room, the lip-smacking-good young thug seized the chance (while Skunk in a Funk was peeking into Helia’s bedroom) to cram into his open boottops several plaster figurines, a silver ashtray, and two porcelain teacups. Not for nothing did the Skunk’s young friend wear such big butch boots. Fairy Skunk, unaware of this thievery (which didn’t concern him anyway), meditated over how to get the young man into the maid’s room that was back behind the kitchen. It wasn’t easy, since to get to the kitchen they’d first have to go through Helia’s room, and since the old biddy slept sitting up in the rocking chair with her feet propped up on the bed (which had been given over to the she-cats), there was no way (1) to get over her or (2) to slip between her and the bed. There was just one route left them—over the bed.
But Skunk in a Funk couldn’t wait—she grabbed at the thug’s fly (not noticing that now he was sticking all kinds of things into his pockets), unbuttoned it, and silently, frenziedly sucked for upwards of three minutes. Then, leaving the final mouthful (or assful) for when they were alone in the room behind the kitchen, she pulled away. “We’ve got to be really, really quiet,” the fairy, trembling with delight, said to the thug, and taking him by the hand (while the kid tried to button up his pants) she began to lead him, very gingerly, across Helia del Calvo’s bed. Top and bottom, holding hands, terrified and in silence, were crossing that bed as though through the straits of Thermopylae. The fairy jetéed like a ballerina freed from the bonds of gravity over to the other side of the bed. A few feet more, and she would be with her beloved. But just then the mouthwatering butch, also eager to screw the fairy queen (and steal all the dishes out of the kitchen), lost his footing and stepped on one of those damned she-cats (there was always a she-cat interfering in a fairy’s love life!) that were sleeping alongside Helia’s feet. The she-cat gave her standard ear-piercing cat-howl; Helia, who hadn’t slept for at least ten years, woke up to find a thug wearing gigantic boots (and with his pants down around his ankles) on top of her bed attacking one of her adored kittens. The old biddy, enraged, gave a shrill scream (comparable only to the scream given by José María when Helio Trigoura hit him in the face with a bottle of maltine) and all the she-cats leaped as one at the butch young hunk—who, staggering, pants around his ankles, rolled down the stairs and out of the house, stolen goods scattering everywhere.
Skunk in a Funk, who knew what she was in for, pulled a sheet (reeking of cat piss) over her head and shot like a bolt of lightning over Helia del Calvo’s bed, grabbed up all her things, (including the toothbrush he’d masturbated the she-cats with), and took off for Maceo Park. Even when she’d gained the relative safety of the park, Skunk in a Funk, never releasing her grip on that toothbrush (which of course did not belong to her), had to be afraid that Helia had called the police, so she sought refuge under the huge statue of that bronze titan Maceo who, machete in hand, forever bestrides his likewise bronze horse. But Jesus! What spectacle should meet the astonished fairy farmboy’s eyes when he’d reached the shadow of the titanic horse but Hiram Prats, naked and on all fours, humping and writhing in frenzy under Maceo’s horse’s huge bronze cock! At one point the queen reared back against the bronze horsecock with such force that not only did he plunge the whole thing up inside him—he even managed to get the horse’s balls into that gigantic Holguín ass. At that, the queen gave a shriek of pleasure and shot a long arc of cum. At the same time, another jet of cum issued from the statue of Maceo and hit Skunk in a Funk in the face. Naturally, she thought Maceo had just jerked himself off. Maybe in my honor, she thought proudly; she had a thing for Negroes.
“Don’t flatter yourself, honey,” Hiram, La Reine des Araignées, told her, pulling his ass off the horse’s bronze phallus. “That cum isn’t from Maceo, it’s from Rubén Valentín Díaz Marzo, the Areopagite, a confirmed jerk-off who, by the way, is a great admirer of your work. While I was taking this horse dick, I had Rubén up there on lookout, in exchange for watching me get off. Rubén! Get down off that horse—Reinaldo Arenas is here!”
FAREWELL TO THE SEA
It was about that time (or was it before? or after?) that Skunk in a Funk had certain other adventures, but those belong to another novel.
JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA’S LECTURE
Among the many events that had taken place in Fifo’s palace, undoubtedly one of the most remarkable (and newsworthy!) was the Russian-roulette duel between Tomasito the Goya-Girl and the governor of Boston. Both men comported themselves like true heroes. Finally it was the governor of Boston who blew his head off, so it was Tomasito the Goya-Girl who received from Fifo personally the Fiftieth Anniversary Medal.
To the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the governor of Boston’s body was removed from the stage, and then several midgets bleated several cornets and Fifo stepped onto the stage once more to announce that the great writer José Lezama Lima, who had died in 1976 and been resuscitated especially for the Carnival by the magical hands of Oscar R. Horcayés, was going to give his last lecture—a lecture which, owing to its length and the prestige of the speaker, had been made a separate event from the Grand Oneirical Theological Political Philosophical Satirical Conference that was to take place later in the Grand Hall of International Conferences.
An expectant silence fell over the theater, as was only fitting for such a momentous event. After a dramatic pause, Oscar, using his gigantic wings, opened the curtains and onto the stage came, with slow, careful steps, José Lezama Lima, the revered author of Paradiso. He sat at the small table that had been placed there for him, drank down at one gulp the pitcher of water that a diligent midget had set out, pulled a handful of papers from his black bag, and, nodding in greeting to his audience, began to speak. These are the words he spoke:
My dear friends. Before I begin this lecture I wish to inform you that if I have decided to take my leave for a few hours from the realm of Proserpine where I have the good fortune not only to taste pleasures both Luciferian and Christian but also to enjoy the company of my mother and my wife, María Luisa Bautista—awoman whose life, like mine, was snuffed
out by Fifo—Oh yes, I know that this denunciation might cost me my life, but since I have none, I don’t give a fig whether I lose it or not—the reason for my decision is not that I dare not disobey the order of a fifth-rate dictator and his velvety intrigues or defy his Coryphaei with their membranous wings and sinister designs. No, I have come here, first, because I did not wish to miss the opportunity to witness this night on which so many heretofore unimagined things were to take place; second, because I wished to know in person Madame Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and Messieurs Juan Clemente Zenea and André Bréton, all reborn from the dead—as have been others—for this celebration; and third, because my lecture for you tonight is worthy of the raising of a dead man. I am that dead man, eager to see the friends who have not yet descended into the shadowy Moira . . . and now, vade retro to all those official devils, sprites, and demons who, filling the hall, writhe now in their seats or hide behind the faux-Japanese vases—I shall begin my reading.
For many years, an enigma as mysterious as the oracle at Delphi and the visage of the Sphynx, and as tempting as a Roman bath, has been for me an obsession during my most lucid moments. That enigma, which I have been able to unravel only in the calm of Hecate’s mansion, can be summed up in the following phrase: HAD THAT YOUNG FLORENTINE GIOVANOTTO WHO POSED FOR MICHELANGELO’S DAVID JUST EJACULATED , OR HAD HE NOT? This question has obsessed scholars, specialists, and simple dilettantes of the dolce stile nuovo for hundreds of years.
To answer it, let us turn first to the Egyptians, whose prehistoric imagery was invariably phallic, and therefore germinative. In Egypt, the god of creation is portrayed in profile and wearing a purse; were he not, his potent phallus would dominate the entire fresco, and therefore it would no longer be so fresh a fresco, strictly speaking, but would become a hot-blooded relief. And then let us journey to the age of the harmonious Greeks, who venerated the triumphant phallus so inordinately, and yet so fittingly, that the erect male member was a god, the god Priapus, who rules our destinies to this day. Finally, employing as a springboard those ever-throbbing phalluses, let us leap into the heart of Christianity, to examine the era with none of the small-town piety that is customary in this case—that is, we shall put aside the sanctimoniousness of the Council of Trent and the histories of that Isabel the Catholic who was led by a lack of the fruit of Adam (we all know that Ferdinand was impotent) to commit atrocities against all those who worshiped the penetrant stalk whose nectar sweetens all things. Cock, ladies and gentlemen, to say it with Xenophontian clarity, or, if you prefer, the clarity of midday, as González de la Solana might put it.—Our theme shall be cock.
Because, dear friends, I would ask you to consider: What is Christianity and its greatest symbol, Christ our Lord, but the secret and therefore sacred worship of that corpus, ne’er infused by the grace of God, which is the phallus Nike? We are moved by Christ because he has a phallus, and His body, human by reason of that phallus, hangs naked on the Cross, covered with an improvised wrapping which points to, rather than covers, the divine prepuce. The fragrance of that towel (a gift no doubt from the Magdalene), the fragrance of Christian balls and but-twipe, has Proustian reverberation. Here, the fragrance of that towel has the same power as that other madeleine (for it is Magdalenes of all types that we are discussing) exercised upon the young Proust when it brought back his entire erotic past, so that in the shadow of its savor and odor he might erect his magnum opus, A la recherche du temps perdu. The same power, yet different—for that brief Christian girdle, that towel which is the annunciation of that which is, so to speak, beneath the belt, yields up to us not some mere novel, but all of Western culture. The slender, naked body encircled by a severe band of cloth—that image which has obsessed so many, which has reigned on beaches, at swimming holes, at thermal baths, in films, and upon crucifixes is, without a doubt, the summa of the Christian tradition. Every young man with a towel laid across his groin, hiding yet promising the Adamic fruit, is a replica of Christ. The imago phallico, which has dominated virtually all pre- and post-Hellenic civilizations, is also the index, indicator, and pointer of our own. A young man thirty-three years old preaches love to the ecstatic apostles with a passion that makes his loincloth tremble. That is why—doubt it not, my friends—St. John, at the Last Supper, knowing that his Lord was about to leave him, could bear it no longer, and in the presence of the rest of the disciples fell to his knees before his Master’s legs and under the tablecloth ingurgitated the serpent divine. Meanwhile, the Master was delivering a holy, venerable sermon—a double explosion of life to a single rhythm. That is why we, the devout, bow down to every young man (in allusion to Christ Himself) who modestly but irresistibly hides under a small knotted towel his pink, or bronze, or sable balls. . . . Hosanna! Hosanna! The divine dart, the shaft of life, shall always be there, before out emotion-stirred eyes. Now we know that the Gordian knot of our lives (that compulsive tragedy) can be cut if we but stretch out our arms and unwrap that towel under which lies the sweet, divine—yet human—Lestrigon. No matter who it is that wears the towel, he is part of the harmony of the spheres. In the delectation of that Lestrigon, in the arrow wounds it gives us, lie our redemption and our peace. To be penetrated by that dart—it burns us, and in burning heals us. That penetration may be a metaphoric hypostasis, yet it must be deep. The delight of believing oneself, feeling oneself, my friends, nailed by that arrow, penetrated, transverberated—that delight is the secret correlative of the holy act. Arrow, spear, pallium, candle, musket—all are priapic symbols which, as factotums, make the skin and backside tingle and bring on spasms of Christian faith and devotion. And so the spear that pricks the side of Our Lord, qua penetrant spear, imago of the great and yearned-for dart of flesh, brings on, under the towel He wore, a slight final temblor. At the exultation inspired by the imago, there springs forth the toconema. And with thanksgiving we receive the final arrow wounds that bring on the final shudder.
Let us enter the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (a place which the orders of that wretch Fifo have prevented me from ever entering) and observe, with the blossoming-forth of a night-slug and the voracity of a Tibetan daisy, the portrait of St. Sebastian painted by Tintoretto. As with every true St. Sebastian, the young body of the saint (like some pre-Attic discus-thrower) is naked, his formidable groin covered by a peremptory loincloth. But look how that cloth rises as the arrows penetrate the flesh. Two concurrent events make the Tuscan-fleshed and therefore irresistible saint (or the model for him), as he is pierced by the arrows, become aroused. First wonder, to a Rimbaudian thrumming of the dice upon the drumhead: the penetrant arrows (from the Latin penis erectum) produce in the man who receives them a sweet, voluptuous stinging sensation like that felt by the white mouse upon being bitten by a bear cub on the islands of Terranova. Second drumroll: we must not forget that the lad who poses for the arrow-pierced saint was a beautiful naked giovanotto standing under the voracious gaze of his Master. The fact of knowing oneself chosen and painted by Tintoretto—summa Gloria, my dear friends! Do not these things, then, justify in that naked youth the proud homage of the glorious erection of his phallus? I am certain that on more than one occasion Tintoretto had to interrupt his work at the easel, as all the Greek and Roman masters did, to deliver a veritable tongue-lashing on account of the undiplomatic interruptions of that capitoline promontory. Although the giovanotto no doubt was often pacified by the painter, we can see in the finished work the remnants of a Tower of Pisa swaddled in rags and protruding from the groin of the arrow-riddled youth. The realism of Life (that supreme delectation of unreality) emerges, as always, even at the very moment of our Death. St. Augustine erred, then, in complaining of the tragedy (the temptation) experienced by the Florentine masters when their models, upon being looked upon by the masters, were pricked by the angel of antsiness—for none of those dominics of wisdom tossed their inkstands, or their brushes, or a tubful of paint at the model (who might be a fisherman on the Arno), but, on the contrary, they went on, delightin
g in their pictorial occupations, despite (or inspired by) the sprouting of the holy bulrushes. Thus it was that Andrea del Sarto painted his San Giovanni Battista naked from the waist up, but camouflaged from navel to knees with all sorts of cooking pots, mantles, rocks, crosses, and even a gigantic ferret which, while it sat upon a rock and covered the lad’s groin, nursed at the member of life. That opportunity, not scorned by the ferret, magnetized Andrea del Sarto’sSan Giovanni with that imperative, imperious modesty typical of a naked adolescent who while someone is sucking him looks at us with his big naughty innocent eyes as though supplicating us, and also commanding us, to participate in the feast.
That unique canvas, which has brought on spasms in not a few prominent marquises and even in Pope Pius XII, can fortunately still be admired in the gallery of the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence. . . . And what say you of that adolescent Bacchus by Caravaggio? This Bacchus—that is, this delicious Florentine rogue—had a prick so high-strung that even being one of the favorites of the Vergamasco family, his pyramid never found repose, not even with the good offices of Caravaggio. Finally, bags under his eyes, eyelids drooping, swaddled in layers of rags that hardly left a single victorious nipple exposed, the adolescent played a Bacchus with his legs pinned behind a table and with an enormous bowl of fruit before him, so that the marvelous fata morgana which opens all the communicating vessels would not arise, or at least would not be seen. Those models’ erections, in a time when (like today) things could not be painted as they truly are, caused no Augustinian tragedies, but they did cause neuroses both aesthetic and emotional among the Florentine masters who, like all true artists, were lovers of the truth.
The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights Page 35