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PARTISAN REVIEW
stigmata of nuance. They had been evicted long ago. The word sweat,
like fart, was neutral, an impediment in the way of other words, center
of gravity of sentences of all shapes and sizes. As dapple for Gerard.
She renewed me, absorbed me without a spasm, without a flicker,
without the least ripple at incorporation. Her cunt the quicksand my
prick the wilting prey. Inside her I was free to utter primitive sounds,
they provided enough light and heat for two. Because hers were the
kind of moans and caresses that launch limp projectiles into a dazzling
empyrean I was no longer afraid, no longer afraid just to speak, never
mind if they were her words or mine. So we come to our lovemaking. I
have skirted it long enough. We agreed on names for the parts of our
bodies. Though sometimes I called thigh the space between the thighs.
Because the parting of the thighs is such sweet sorrow. And what she
call ed my cock was often the hair at its base or the base itself or my left
ball when my cock was erect. Preponderant in the nippy air. In short,
the night was a lawn in which we dug deep and in which more than
puddles sprouted. But about h er misnomers I was a little perplexed.
Did she call what was not my cock my cock to demonstrate (to me? to
herself?) its raw potency had metastasized to more inocuous regions of
my body. I was all cock, then. Or was she disoriented and if she was
disoriented was it from rapture or disappointment. Or from burgeon–
ing desire or indifference. Or perhaps her strategem (for my investiga–
tion converts its target into a strategem) was therapeutic, to herself. To
assure herself my cock was not dangerous since it was not concentrated
anywhere in particular, ready to spring or fold. Instead it was a
relentlessly shifting essence, an indispensable commodity in which my
humps and hollows trafficked, and flat stretches too. But she began to
give names to what was erupting before it erupted completely. That
worried me. She was beginning to resemble Fall. I groped toward her
and she called it curiosity before I had even amassed its principal, to say
nothing of the dividends. And just before she achieved an orgasm she
announced, I'm going to come, a littl e sadly. I did the same. But our
motives must have been different. She must have begrudged me my
participation in her ecstasy, a little muted for the occasion. Whereas I
was proclaiming my aloneness, my fear of that aloneness, I was
expressing expectation of a reward for all that semen
to
come (to come)
a warning and an entreaty for mercy at my most vulnerable moment, I
was calling the world to witness an event I cou ld not a llow it to bypass,
I was attempting to stimulate her, to alert her to the need for appropri–
ate activity on her part. But what still bothered me was whether I was
one with my ejaculation, the proud harbinger, or reacting to it, an
