by Henry Miller
Suddenly, utterly astounded, I heard Maude say: “Don’t come yet. Wait. . . Give Elsie a chance.”
I pulled out, pushing my ass in Elsie’s face in doing so, and tumbling her backwards on the floor. She gave a squeal of delight and quickly sprang to her feet. Maude climbed down from the table and Elsie nimbly placed herself in position. “Couldn’t you do something too?” she said to Maude, sitting bolt upright. “I have an idea . . .”—and she sprang off the table and threw the blanket on the floor and the pillow after it. It didn’t take her long to figure out an interesting configuration.
Maude was stretched out on her back, Elsie squatting over her on bent knees, her head facing Maude’s feet but the mouth glued to Maude’s crack. I was on my knees, giving it to Elsie from behind. Maude was playing with my balls, a light, delicate manipulation with the finger tips. I could feel Maude squirming around as Elsie licked her furiously and avidly. There was a weird pale light playing over the room and the taste of cunt in my mouth. I had one of those final erections which threaten never to break. Now and then I took it out and, pushing Elsie forward, I sank down farther and offered it to Maude’s nimble tongue. Then I would sink it in again and Elsie would squirm like mad and bury her nozzle in Maude’s crotch, shaking her head like a terrier. Finally I pulled out and pushing Elsie aside I fell on Maude and buried it in her with a vengeance. “Do it, do it!” she begged, as if she were waiting for the ax. Again I felt Elsie’s tongue on my balls. Then Maude came, like a star bursting, with a volley of half-finished words and phrases rippling off her tongue. I pulled away, still stiff as a poker, fearful now that I would never come again, and groped for Elsie. She was terribly gooey, and her mouth was just like a cunt now. “Do you want it?” I said, shoving it around inside her like a drunken fiend. “Go on, fuck, fuck!” she cried, slinging her legs up over my shoulders and dragging her bottom closer. “Give it to me, give it to me, you bugger!” She was almost yelling now. “Yes, I’ll fuck you . . . I’ll fuck you!” and she squirmed and writhed and twisted and bit and clawed me.
“Oh, oh! Don’t. Please don’t. It hurts!” she yelled.
“Shut up, you bitch you!” I said. “It hurts, does it? You wanted it, didn’t you?” I held her tightly, raised myself a little higher to get it in to the hilt, and pushed until I thought her womb would give way. Then I came—right into that snaillike mouth which was wide open. She went into a convulsion, delirious with joy and pain. Then her legs slid off my shoulders and fell to the floor with a thud. She lay there like a dead one, completely fucked out.
“Jesus,” I said, standing astraddle over her, and the sperm still coming out, dropping on her breast, her face, her hair, “Jesus Christ, I’m exhausted. I’m fucked out, do you know that?” I addressed myself to the room.
Maude was lighting a candle. “It’s getting late,” she said.
“I’m not going home,” I said. “I’m going to sleep here.”
“You are?” said Maude, an irrepressible thrill creeping into her voice.
“Yes, I can’t go back in this condition, can I? Jesus, I’m groggy and boozy and woozy.” I flopped onto a chair. “Give me a drop of that cognac, will you, I need a bracer.”
She poured out a good stiff one and held it to my lips, as if she were giving me medicine. Elsie had risen to her feet, a bit wobbly and lurchy. “Give me one too,” she begged. “What a night! We ought to do this again sometime.”
“Yeah, tomorrow,” I said.
“It was a wonderful performance,” she said, stroking my dome. “I never thought you were like that. . . . You almost killed me, do you know it?”
“You’d better take a douche,” said Maude.
“I guess so,” Elsie sighed. “I don’t seem to give a damn. If I’m caught I’m caught.”
“Go on in there, Elsie,” I said. “Don’t be a damned fool.”
“I’m too tired,” said Elsie.
“Wait a minute,” said I. “I want to have a look at you before you go in there.” I made her climb on the table and open her legs wide. With the glass in one hand I pried her cunt open with the thumb and forefinger of my other hand. the sperm was still oozing out.
“It’s a beautiful cunt, Elsie.”
Maude took a good look at it too. “Kiss it,” I said, gently pushing her nose into Elsie’s bush.
I sat there, watching Maude nibble away at Elsie’s cunt. “It feels good,” Elsie was saying. “Awfully good.” She moved like a belly dancer tied to the floor. Maude’s ass was sticking out temptingly. In spite of the fatigue my prick began to swell again. It stiffened like a blood pudding. I got behind Maude and slipped it in. She spun her ass around and around, with just the tip of it in. Elsie was now contorting herself with pleasure; she had her finger in her mouth, and was biting the knuckle. We went on like this for several minutes, until Elsie had an orgasm. Then we disengaged ourselves and looked at one another as though we had never seen each other before. We were dazed.
“I’m going to bed,” I said, determined to make an end of it. I started for the next room, thinking to lie on the couch.
“You can stay with me,” said Maude, holding me by the arm. “Why not?” she said, seeing the surprised look in my eyes.
“Yes,” said Elsie, “why not? Maybe I’ll go to bed with you too. Would you let me?” she asked Maude point-blank. “I won’t bother you,” she added. “I just hate to leave you now.”
“But what will your folks say?” said Maude.
“They won’t know that Henry stayed, will they?”
“No, of course not!” said Maude, a little frightened at the thought.
“And Melanie?” I said.
“Oh, she leaves early in the morning. She has a job now.”
Suddenly I wondered what the devil I would say to Mona. I was almost panic-stricken.
“I think I ought to phone home,” I said.
“Oh, not now,” said Elsie coaxingly. “It’s so late . . . Wait.”
We hid the bottles away, piled the dishes up in the sink, and took the phonograph upstairs with us. It was just as well that Melanie shouldn’t suspect too much. We tiptoed through the hall and up the stairs, our arms loaded.
I lay between the two of them, a hand on either cunt. They lay quietly for a long while, sound asleep I thought. I was too tired to sleep. I lay with eyes wide open, staring up into the darkness. Finally I turned over on my side. Towards Maude. Instantly she turned towards me, putting her arms around me and gluing her lips to mine. Then she removed them and placed them to my ear. “I love you,” she whispered faintly. I made no answer. “Did you hear?” she whispered. “I love you!” I pressed her close and put my hand between her legs. Just then I felt Elsie turning round, cuddling up to me spoon-fashion. I felt her hand crawling between my legs, squeezing my balls. She had her lips against my neck and was kissing me softly, warmly, with wet, cool lips.
After a time I turned back to a prone position. Elsie did the same. I closed my eyes, tried to summon sleep. It was impossible. The bed felt deliciously soft, the bodies beside me were soft and clinging, and the odor of hair and sex was in my nostrils. From the garden came the heavy fragrance of rain-soaked earth. It was strange, soothingly strange, to be back in this big bed, the marital bed, with a third person beside us, and the three of us enveloped in frank, sensual lust. It was too good to be true. I expected the door to be flung open any moment and an accusing voice scream: “Get out of there, you brazen creatures!” But there was only the silence of the night, the blackness, the heavy, sensual odors of earth and sex.
When I shifted again it was towards Elsie. She was waiting for me, eager to press her cunt against me, slip her thick, taut tongue down my throat.
“Is she asleep?” she whispered. “Do it once more,” she begged.
I lay motionless, my cock limp, my arm drooping over her waist.
“Not now,” I whispered. “In the morning maybe.”
“No, now!” she begged. My prick was curled up in her hand like
a dead snail. “Please, please,” she whispered, “I want it. Just one more fuck, Henry.”
“Let him sleep,” said Maude, snuggling up. Her voice sounded as if she were drugged.
“All right,” said Elsie, patting Maude’s arm. Then, after a few moments of silence, her lips pressed against my ear, she whispered slowly, allowing a pause between each word: “When she falls asleep, yes?” I nodded. Suddenly I felt that I was dropping off. “Thank God,” I said to myself.
There was a blank, a long blank, it seemed to me, during which I was completely out. I awakened gradually, dimly conscious that my prick was in Elsie’s mouth. I ran my hand over her head and stroked her back. She put her hand up and placed her fingers over my mouth, as if to warn me not to protest. A useless warning because, curiously enough, I had awakened with a full knowledge of what was coming. My prick was already responding to Elsie’s labial caresses. It was a new prick; it seemed thinner, longer, pointed—a doglike prick. And it had life in it, as though it had refreshed itself independently, as though it had taken a nap all by itself.
Gently, slowly, stealthily—why had we become furtive now? I wondered—I pulled Elsie up and over me. Her cunt was different from Maude’s, longer, narrower, like the finger of a glove slipping over my prick. I made comparisons as I cautiously jogged her up and down. I ran my fingers along the edge and grabbed her bush and tugged it gently. Not a whisper passed our lips. Her teeth were fastened into the hump of my shoulder. She was arched so that only the tip of it was in her and around that she was slowly, skillfully, torturingly twirling her cunt. Now and then she sank down on it and dug away like an animal.
“God, I love it!” she finally whispered. “I’d like to fuck you every night.”
We rolled over on our sides and lay there glued together, making no movement, no sound. With extraordinary muscular contractions her cunt played with my prick as if it had a life and will of its own.
“Where do you live?” she whispered. “Where can I see you . . . alone? Write me tomorrow . . . tell me where to meet you. I want a fuck every day . . . do you hear? Don’t come yet, please. I want it to last forever.”
Silence. Just the beating of her pulse between the legs. I never felt such a tight fit, such a long, smooth, silky, clean, fresh tight fit. She couldn’t have been fucked more than a dozen times. And the roots of her hair, so strong and fragrant. And her breasts, firm and smooth, almost like apples. The fingers too, strong, supple, greedy, always wandering, clutching, caressing, tickling. How she loved to grab my balls, to cup them, weigh them, then ring the scrotum with two fingers, as if she were going to milk me. And her tongue always active, her teeth biting, pinching, nipping. . . .
She’s very quiet now, not a muscle stirring. Whispers again.
“Am I doing all right? You’ll teach me, won’t you? I’m rooty. I could fuck forever. . . . You’re not tired any more, are you? Just leave it like that. . . don’t move. If I come don’t take it out. . . you won’t, will you? God, this is heaven . . .”
Quiet again. I have the feeling I could lie this way indefinitely. I want to hear more.
“I’ve got a friend,” she whispers. “We could meet there . . . she wouldn’t say anything. Jesus, Henry, I never thought it could be like this. Can you fuck like this every night?”
I smiled in the dark.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“Not every night,” I whispered, almost breaking into a giggle.
“Henry, fuck! Quick, fuck me. . . I’m coming.”
We came off simultaneously, a prolonged orgasm which made me wonder where the damned juice came from.
“You did it!” she whispered. Then: “It’s all right. . . it was marvelous.”
Maude turned over heavily in her sleep.
“Good night,” I whispered. “I’m going to sleep . . . I’m dead.”
“Write me tomorrow,” she whispered, kissing my cheek. “Or phone me . . . promise.”
I grunted. She cuddled up to me, her arm around my waist. We fell into a trance.
17
It was Sunday that this outing took place. I didn’t see Mona until near dawn Tuesday. Not that I remained with Maude—no, I went straight to the office on Monday morning. Towards noon I telephoned Mona and was told that she was asleep. It was Rebecca who answered the telephone. She said Mona hadn’t been home all night, that she had been rehearsing. “And where were you all night?” she demanded, almost with proprietary solicitude. I explained that the child had been taken ill and that I had been obliged to stay with her all night.
“You’d better think up something better than that,” she laughed, “before you talk to Mona. She’s been telephoning all night. She was frantic about you.”
“That’s why she didn’t come home, I suppose?”
“You don’t expect anyone to believe your stories, do you?” said Rebecca, giving another low, throaty laugh. “Are you coming home tonight?” she added. “We missed you. . . . You know, Henry, you ought never to get married . . .”
I cut her short. “I’ll be home tonight for dinner, yes. Tell her that when she wakes up, will you? And don’t laugh when you tell her what I said—about the child, I mean.”
She began to laugh over the telephone.
“Rebecca, listen, I’m trusting you. Don’t make it hard for me. You know I think the world of you. If I ever marry another woman it will be you, you know that. . .”
More laughter. Then: “For God’s sake, Henry, stop it! But come home tonight . . . I want to hear all about it. Arthur won’t be home. I’ll stand by you . . . though you don’t deserve it.”
So I went home, after taking a nap in the roller-skating rink. I was rather exhilarated too, on arriving, owing to a last-minute interviw with an Egyptologist who wanted a job as a night messenger. A statement he had let drop about the probable age of the pyramids had thrown me out of the rut so violently that it was a matter of complete indifference to me how Mona would react to my story. There was reason to believe, he had said, and I am sure I heard him rightly, that the pyramids might be sixty thousand years old—at least. If that were true, the whole goddamned notion of Egyptian civilization could be thrown on the scrap heap—and a lot of other historical notions too. In the subway I felt immeasurably older than I ever thought it was possible to feel. I was trying to reach back twenty or thirty thousand years, some halfway point between the erection of these enigmatic monoliths and the supposed dawn of that hoary civilization of the Nile. I was suspended in time and space. The word “age” began to take on a new significance. With it came a fantastic thought: what if I should live to be a hundred and fifty, or a hundred and ninety-five? How would this little incident that I was trying to cover up—the Organza Friganza business—stack up in the light of a hundred and fifty years of experience? What would it matter if Mona left me? What would it matter three generations hence how I had behaved on the night of the fourteenth of so and so and so? Supposing I was still virile at ninety-five and had survived the death of six wives, or eight or ten? Supposing that in the twenty-first century we had a return to Mormonism? Or that we began to see, and not only to see but to practice, the sexual logic of the Eskimos? Supposing the notion of property was abolished and the institution of matrimony wiped out? In seventy or eighty years tremendous revolutions could take place. Seventy or eighty years hence I would only be a hundred or so years old—comparatively young yet. I would probably have forgotten the names of most of my wives, to say nothing of the fly-by-nights. . . . I was almost in a state of exaltation when I walked in.
Rebecca came at once to my room. The house was empty. Mona had telephoned, she said, to say that there was another rehearsal on. She didn’t know when she would be home.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Did you make dinner?”
“God, Henry, you’re adorable.” She put her arms around me affectionately and gave me a comradely hug. “I wish Arthur were like that. It would be easier to forgive him sometimes.”
&n
bsp; “Isn’t there a soul around?” I asked. It was most unusual for the house to be so deserted.
“No, everybody’s gone,” said Rebecca, examining the roast in the oven. “Now you can tell me about the great love you were talking about over the phone.” She laughed again, in a low, earthy laugh which sent a thrill through me.
“You know I wasn’t serious,” I said. “Sometimes I say anything at all. . . though in a way I mean it too. You understand, don’t you?”
“Perfectly! That’s why I like you. You’re utterly faithless and truthful. It’s an irresistible combination.”
“You know you’re safe with me, that’s it, eh?” I said, sidling up to her and putting an arm around her.