GEORGE
413
out in the middle of the floor and go thumping away, in front of God
and everybody. He knows what's involved in going to bed with a
woman, and she knows it, too--actually, the knowledge flows from
her. Mter all, it's her decision. It's one of the most awe-inspiring
things to see, to watch the decision being reached in the first few
moments, while the eyes find the range.-All right, I'm incurably
romantic!" He had caught me looking at
him,
surprised that he was
capable of such sentiments. I was painfully aware of his bulging eyes.
"At any rate, that's your best example. The rest of them, oh what
pigs! There they were, leering and wiggling, reciting dirty limericks
and copping a feel. High school at its worst. No, college-in a small
town-the inbred, incestuous finger-diddling of the faculty and their
wives. Screaming their frustrations, a rage of impotence. No tact, no
discretion, no hope, nothing in the eyes, which are bleary and waste–
looking, streaked with blood. Right out in the open, damn you, that
each may bloat himself on the other's chagrin and meanwhile keep
an eye on his partner, the other's license justifying his own. And
nothing will come of it. A hangover, nothing more. The concupiscence
is preserved intact. Until next time, the next party, when it will
again come screaming out, only to be shelved once more, with a
headache, among the thousand hypocrisies of a conventional life.
Really, I'm ashamed for my friends.
"Now picture all this as it was when George arrived. Our hosts'
two children, wakened by the noise, were locked in one of the bed–
rooms and crying most of the time. Someone had already been sick
and had passed out. There were already a few broken records,
cigarette butts and ashes were mixed with the gin. The house already
had that overheated, disorderly look, all the freshness gone out of it,
that look of weary horror houses take on in accordance with events.
And there was an explosion coming.
"Phil and Martha, you may have heard of them. Martha left
her husband about a year ago to have an affair with Phil, and of
course Sam, Martha's husband, was there. Husbands are always in–
vited to these parties-or maybe somebody brought him. Sam was
watching every move they made, and everybody else who was not
too drunk to keep his eyes in focus was watching the three of them.
Phil and Martha were dancing in a violent way-I can't describe it,
it's a form of quarreling. They've been on the verge of breaking up.
