444
PARTISAN REVIEW
inch toward me, but I did not foresee the fury with which she re–
sponded, enveloping me in the total, blind surge of an amoeba ingesting
its food. Her two large, flat hands were on my shoulder blades, pressing
me upwards; and her mouth on mine, loose and wet, so that her saliva
trickled down my chin, while her tongue, taut and furious, was thrusting
into me as if my whole dark inwards were a sheath for its quivering
length. It was absurd to be kissed so malely, from above; and I tilted
her backward until her knees bent, one hand in the small of her back,
the other under her skirt. She wore nothing underneath, no girdle, no
pants-and her ass was surprisingly, pleasantly cool, though the little
tuft of hair where the buttocks began to swell and separate was damp
with perspiration.
Some students passing in a car hooted at us in good-natured
mockery, for we were spotted in the fall of light from a street-corner
lamp. Looking up, I could see the shirtless men, the hypnotically rock–
ing ladies watching us dully from the porch across the way between
slapping at mosquitoes. The students roared by a second time with much
hornblowing and cries of encouragement, and I could hear them scream–
ing into a turn at the next corner for a third venture. "Look now," I
protested, "we're goldfish in a bowl!"
But she was not listening, her breath coming thick and labored.
She had not heard the students nor noticed the neighbors; and
if
she
had, she would not have cared. "Oh, this is just what I wanted," she
whispered, "just what I wanted. You don't know how long I've been
waiting!"
Between the shame I felt at the discrepancy of our desires, and
the horror stirred in me by the excessive tug of her need, my cautious,
trivial excitement drained out of me. To hide my confusion from my–
self, I let my head fall on to her breast, kissing the white rise of flesh,
coolly and as if according to plan; and I knew in that instant with a
pang of nausea the failure and shame that make a Don Giovanni. But
she moved away uneasily. "Don't," she said, "I
hate
my breasts. They're
so obvious and stupid. Like the girl on the cover of a movie magazine."
And she led me in.
"You were a long time," Hank noted mildly when we entered. It
was hard to tell from the pale mask of his face
if
he were really disturbed
or not. He had finished the bottle while we were gone, and was slumped
now in the easy chair beside the phonograph, watching the needle speed
franticaIly in the trap of the final groove. The baby was asleep, and
there was no sound except for the endless, hushed rasp of the record.
Judith turned it off with one hand, falIing into Hank's lap, and
ruffling his lank reddish hair, as she kissed him tenderly once beside
