Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, book 1)

by Henry Miller

  By this time she was slipping her panties on. I hadn't bothered to shove my prick back in my trousers. It was getting limp now; it fell on the grass, dejected.

  «Well, let's have something to eat then,» I said. «If we can't fuck we can always eat.»

  «Yes, eat! You can eat any time. That's all you care about, eating and sleeping.»

  «Fucking,» I said, «not sleeping.»

  «I wish you'd stop talking to me that way.» She began to undo the lunch. «You have to spoil everything. I thought we might have a peaceful day, just once. You always said you wanted to take us out on a picnic. You never did. Not once. You thought of nothing but yourself, your friends, your women. I was a fool to think you might change. You don't care about your child—you've hardly noticed her. You can't even restrain yourself in her presence. You'd take me in front of her and pretend that it was innocent. You're vile.... I'm glad it's all over. By this time next week I'll be free... I'll be rid of your forever. You've poisoned me. You've made me bitter and hateful. You make me despise myself. Since I know you I don't recognize myself any more.

  I've become what you wanted me to become. You never loved me... never. All you wanted was to satisfy your desires. You've treated me like an animal. You take what you want and you go. You go from me to the next woman—any woman—just so long as she'll open her legs for you. You haven't an ounce of loyalty or tenderness or consideration in you.... Here, take it!» she said, shoving a sandwich in my fist. «I hope you choke on it!»

  As I brought the sandwich to my mouth I smelled the odor of her cunt on my fingers. I sniffed my fingers while looking up at her with a grin.

  «You're disgusting!» she said.

  «Not so very, my lady. It smells good to me, even if you are a hateful sour-puss. I like it. It's the only thing about you I like.»

  She was furious now. She began to weep.

  «Weeping because I said I liked your cunt! What a woman! Jesus, I'm the one who ought to do the despising. What sort of woman are you?»

  Her tears became more copious. Just then the child came running up. What was the matter? Why was mother crying?

  «It's nothing,» said Maude, drying her tears. «I turned my ankle.» A few dry sobs belched from her despite her efforts to restrain herself. She bent over the basket and selected a sandwich for the child.

  «Why don't you do something, Henry?» said the child. She sat there looking from one to the other with a grave, puzzled look.

  I got to my knees and rubbed Maude's ankle.

  «Don't touch me!» she said harshly.

  «But he wants to make it better,» said the child.

  «Yes, daddy'll make it better,» I said, rubbing the ankle gently, and then patting the calf of her leg.

  «Kiss her,» said the child. «Kiss her and make the tears go away.»

  I bent forward and kissed Maude on the cheek. To my astonishment she flung her arms around me and kissed me violently on the mouth. The child also put her arms around us and kissed us.

  Suddenly Maude had a fresh spasm of weeping. This time it was really pitiful to behold. I felt sorry for her. I put my arms around her tenderly and comforted her.

  «.God,» she sobbed, «what a farce!»

  «But it isn't,» I said. «I mean it sincerely. I'm sorry, sorry for everything.»

  «Don't cry any more,» begged the child. «I want to eat. I want Henry to take me over there,» and she pointed with her little hand to a copse of wood at the edge of the field. «I want you to come too.»

  «To think this is the only time... and it had to be like this.» She was sniffling now.

  «Don't say that, Maude. The day isn't over yet. Let's forget about all that. Come on, let's eat.»

  Reluctantly, wearily, it seemed, she picked up a sandwich and held it to her mouth. «I can't eat,» she murmured, dropping the sandwich.

  «Come on, yes you can!» I urged, putting my arm around her again.

  «You act this way now... and later you'll do something to spoil it.»

  «No I won't... I promise you.»

  «Kiss her again,» said the child.

  I leaned over and kissed her softly and gently on the lips. She seemed really placated now. A soft light came into her eyes.

  «Why can't you be like this always?» she said, after a brief pause.

  «I am,» I said, «when I'm given a chance. I don't like to fight with you. Why should I? We're not man and wife any longer.»

  «Then why do you treat me the way you do?

  Why do you always make love to me? Why don't you leave me alone?»

  «I'm not making love to you,» I answered. «It's not love, it's passion. That's not a crime, is it? For God's sake, let's not start that all over again. I'm going to treat you the way you want to be treated— to-day. I won't touch you again.»

  «I don't ask that. I don't say you shouldn't touch me. But it's the way you do it... you don't show any respect for me... for my person. That's what I dislike. I know you don't love me any more, but you can behave decently towards me, even if you don't care any more. I'm not the prude you pretend I am. I have feelings too... maybe deeper, stronger than yours. I can find some one else to replace you, don't think that I can't. I just want a little time...»

  She was munching her sandwich half-heartedly. Suddenly there was a gleam in her eye. She put on a coy, roguish expression.

  «I could get married to-morrow, if I wanted to,» she continued. «You never thought that, did you? I've had three proposals already, as a matter of fact. The last one was from...» and here she mentioned the lawyer's name.

  «Him?» I said, unable to repress a disdainful smile.

  «Yes, him,» she said. «And he's not what you think he is. I like him very much.»

  «Well, that explains things. Now I know why he's taken such a passionate interest in the case.»

  I knew she didn't care for him, this Rocambolesque, any more than she cared for the doctor who explored her vagina with a rubber finger. She didn't care for anybody really; all she wanted was peace, surcease from pain. She wanted a lap to sit on in the dark, a prick to enter her mysteriously, a babble of words to drown her unmentionable desires. Lawyer what's-his-name would do of course. Why not? He would be as faithful as a fountain pen, as discreet as a rat trap, as provident as an insurance policy. He was a walking briefcase with pigeon holes in his belfry; he was a salamander with a heart of pastrami. He was shocked, was he, to learn that I had brought another woman to my own home? Shocked to learn that I had left the used condoms on the edge of the sink? Shocked that I had stayed for breakfast with my paramour? A snail is shocked when a drop of rain hits its shell. A general is shocked when he learns that his garrison has been massacred in his absence. God himself is shocked doubtless when He sees how revoltingly stupid and insensitive the human beast really is. But I doubt if angels are ever shocked—not even by the presence of the insane.

  I was trying to give her the dialectics of the moral dynamism. I twisted my tongue in the endeavour to make her understand the marriage of the animal and the divine. She understood about as well as a layman understands when you explain the fourth dimension. She talked about delicacy and respect, as if they were pieces of angel cake. Sex was an animal locked up in a zoo which one visited now and then in order to study evolution.

  Towards evening we rode back to the city, the last stretch in the elevated train, the child asleep in my arms. Mamma and Papa returning from the picnic grounds. Below, the city spread out with senseless geometrical rigidity, an evil dream rearing itself architecturally. A dream from which it is impossible to awaken. Mr. and Mrs. Megalopolitan with their offspring. Hobbled and fettered. Suspended in the sky like so much venison. A pair of every kind hanging by the hocks. At one end of the line starvation; at the other end bankruptcy. Between stations the pawnbroker, with three golden balls to signify the triune God of birth, buggery and blight. Happy days. A fog rolling in from Rockaway. Nature folding up like a dead leaf—at Mineola. Every now and then the doo
rs open and shut: fresh batches of meat for the slaughter-house. Little scraps of conversation, like the twittering of titmice. Who would think that the chubby little youngster beside you will in ten of fifteen years be shitting his brains out with fright on a foreign field? All day long you make innocent little gadgets; at night you sit in a dark hall and watch phantoms move across a silver screen. Maybe the realest moments you know are when you sit alone in the toilet and make caca. That doesn't cost anything or commit you in any way. Not like eating or fucking, or making works of art. You leave the toilet and you step into the big shit-house. Whatever you touch is shitty. Even when it's wrapped in cellophane the smell is there. Caca! The philosopher's stone of the industrial age. Death and transfiguration—into shit! The department store life—with filmy silks on one counter and bombs on the other counter. No matter what interpretation you put on it, every thought, every deed, is cash registered. You're fucked from the moment you draw your first breath. One grand international business machine corporation. Logistics, as they say.

  Mamma and Papa are now as peaceful as blut-wurst. Not an ounce of fight left in them. How glorious to spend a day in the open, with the worms and other creatures of God. What a delightful entr'acte! Life glides by like a dream. If you were to cut the bodies open while still warm you would find nothing resembling this idyll. If you were to scrape the bodies out and fill them with stones they would sink to the bottom of the sea, like dead ducks.

  It begins to rain. It pours. Hail-stones big as bob-o'-links bounce from the pavement. The city looks like an ant pile smeared with salvarsan. The sewers rise and disgorge their vomit. The sky is as sullen and lurid as the bottom of a test tube.

  I feel murderously gay all of a sudden. I hope to Christ it will rain like this for forty days and nights. I'd like to see the city swimming in its own shit; I'd like to see mannikins floating into the river and cash registers ground under the wheels of trucks; I'd like to see the insane pouring out of the asylums with cleavers and hacking right and left. The water cure! Like they gave it to the Filipinos in '98! But where is our Aguinaldo? Where is the rat who can breast the flood with a machete between his lips?

  I bring them home in a cab, deposit them safely just as a bolt of lightning strikes the steeple of the bloody Catholic church on the corner. The broken bells make a hell of a din as they hit the pavement. Inside the church a plaster Virgin is smashed to smithereens. The priest is so taken by surprise that he hasn't time to button up his pants. His balls swell up like rocks.

  Melanie flutters about like a demented albatross. «Dry your things!» she wails. A grand undressing, with gasps and shrieks and objurgations. I get into Maude's dressing sack, the one with the maribou feathers. Look like a fairy about to give an impersonation of Loulou Hurluburlu. All flub and foozle now. I'm getting a hard-on, «a personal hard-on», if you know what I mean.

  Maude is upstairs putting the child to bed. I walk around in my bare feet, the dressing sack wide open. A lovely feeling. Melanie peeks in, just to see if I'm all right. She's walking around in her drawers with the parrot perched on her wrist. Afraid of the lightning she is. I'm talking to her with my hands folded over my prick. Could be a scene out of the «Wizard of Oz» by Memling. Time: dreiviertel takt. Now and then the lightning strikes afresh. It leaves the taste of burning rubber in the mouth.

  I'm standing in front of the big mirror admiring my quivering cock when Maude trips in. She's as frisky as a hare and all decked out in tulle and mousseline. She seems not at all frightened by what she sees in the mirror. She comes over and stands beside me. «Open it up!» I urge. «Are you hungry?» she says, undoing herself leisurely. I turn her around and press her to me. She raises a leg to let me get it in. We look at each other in the mirror. She's fascinated. I pull the wrap up over her ass so that she can have a better look. I lift her up and she twines her legs around me. «Yes, do it,» she begs. «Fuck me! Fuck me!» Suddenly she untwines her legs, unhitches. She grabs the big arm chair and turns it around, resting her hands on the back of it. Her ass is stuck out invitingly. She doesn't wait for me to put it in—she grabs it and places it herself, watching all the time through the mirror. I push it back and forth slowly, holding my skirts up like a bedraggled hussy. She likes to see it coming out— how far will it come before it falls out. She reaches under with one hand and plays with my balls. She's completely unleashed now, as brazen as a pot. I withdraw as far as I can without letting it slip out and she rolls her ass around, sinking down on it now and then and clutching it with a feathery beak. Finally she's had enough of that. She wants to lie down on the floor and put her legs around my neck. «Get it in all the way,» she begs. «Don't be afraid of hurting me... I want it. I want you to do everything.» I got it in so deep it felt as though I were buried in a bed of mussels. She was quivering and slithering in every ream. I bent over and sucked her breasts; the nipples were taut as nails. Suddenly she pulled my head down and began to bite me wildly—lips, ears, cheeks, neck. «You want it, don't you?» she hissed. «You want it, you want it....» Her lips twisted obscenely. «You want it... you want it!» And she fairly lifted herself off the floor in her abandon. Then a groan, a spasm, a wild, tortured look as if her face were under a mirror pounded by a hammer. «Don't take it out yet,» she grunted. She lay there, her legs still slung around my neck, and the little flag inside her began twitching and fluttering. «God,» she said, «I can't stop it!» My prick was still firm. It hung obedient on her wet lips, as though receiving the sacrament from a lascivious angel. She came again, like an accordion collapsing in a bag of milk. I got hornier and hornier. I pulled her legs down and lay them flat alongside my own. «Now don't move, damn you,» I said. «I'm going to give it to you straight.» Slowly and furiously I moved in and out. «Ah, ah... Oh!» she hissed, sucking her breath in. I kept it up like a Juggernaut. Moloch fucking a piece of bombazine. Organza Friganza. The bolero in straight jabs. Her eyes were going wild; she looked like an elephant walking the ball. All she needed was a trunk to trumpet with. It was a fuck to a standstill. I fell on top of her and chewed her lips to a frazzle.

  Then suddenly I thought of the douche. «Get up! Get up!» I said, nudging her roughly.

  «I don't need to,» she said weakly, giving me a knowing smile.

  «You mean...?» I looked at her in astonishment.

  «Yes, there's no need to worry.... Are you all right? Don't you want to wash?»

  In the bathroom she confessed that she had been to the doctor—another doctor. There would be nothing to fear any more.

  «So that's it?» I whistled.

  She powdered my cock for me, stretched it like a glove-fitter, and then bent over and kissed it. «Oh God,» she said, flinging her arms around me, «if only....»

  «If only what?»

  «You know what I mean...»

  I unglued myself and turning my head away, I said: «Yes, I guess I do. Anyway, you don't hate me any more, do you?»

  «I don't hate any one,» she answered. «I'm sorry it's turned out the way it has. Now I'll have to share you... with her.»

  «You must be hungry,» she added quickly. «Let me fix you something before you go.» She powdered her face carefully first, rouged her lips, and did her hair up negligently but attractively. Her wraps was open from the waist up. She looked a thousand times better than I had ever seen her look. She was like a bright voracious animal.

  I walked around in the kitchen with my prick hanging out and helped her fix a cold snack. To my surprise she unearthed a bottle of home made wine—elderberry wine that a neighbor had given her. We closed the doors and kept the gas burning to keep warm. Jesus, it was quite wonderful. It was like getting to know one another all over again. Now and then I got up and put my arms around her, kissed her passionately while my hand slid into her crack. She wasn't at all shy or balky. On the contrary. When I pulled away, she held my hand, and then with a quick dive she fastened her mouth over my prick and sucked it in.

  «You don't have to go immediately, do you?» s
he asked, as I sat down and resumed eating.

  «Not if you don't want me to,» I said, in the most amiable state of acquiescence.

  «Was it my fault,» she said, «that this never happened before? Was I such a squeamish creature?» She looked at me with such frankness and sincerity I hardly recognized the woman I had lived with all these years.

  «I guess we were both to blame,» I said, downing another glass of elderberry wine.

  She went to the ice-box to ferret out some delicacy.

  «You know what I feel like doing?» she said, coming back to the table with arms laden. «I'd like to bring the gramophone down and dance. I have some very soft needles... Would you like that?»

  «Sure,» I said, «it sounds fine.»

  «And let's get a bit drunk... would you mind? I feel so wonderful. I want to celebrate.»

  «What about the wine?» I said. «Is that all you have?»

  «I can get some more from the girl upstairs,» she said. «Or maybe some cognac—would you like that?»

  «I'll drink anything... if it will make you happy.»

  She started to go at once. I jumped up and caught her by the waist. I raised her wrap and kissed her ass.

  «Let me go,» she murmured. «I'll be back in a minute.»

  As she came back I heard her whispering to the girl from upstairs. She tapped lightly on the glass panel. «Put something on,» she cooed, «I've got Elsie with me.»

  I went into the bathroom and wrapped a towel around my loins. Elsie went into a fit of laughter when she saw me. We hadn't met since the day she found me lying in bed with Mona. She seemed in excellent good humor and not at all embarrassed by the turn of events. They had brought down another bottle, of wine and some cognac. And the gramophone and the records.

  Elsie was in just the mood to share our little celebration. I had expected Maude to offer her a drink and then get rid of her more or less politely. But no, nothing of the kind. She wasn't at all disturbed by Elsie's presence. She did excuse herself for being half-naked, but with a good-natured laugh, as though it were just one of those things. We put a record on and I danced with Maude. The towel slipped off but neither of us made any attempt to pick it up. When we ungrappled I stood there with my prick standing out like a flag-pole and calmly reached for my glass. Elsie gave one startled look and then turned her head away. Maude handed me the towel, or rather slung it over my prick. «You don't mind, do you, Elsie?» she said. Elsie was terribly quiet—you could hear her temples hammering. Presently she went over to the machine and turned the record over. Then she reached for her glass without looking at us and gulped it down.