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eruption did not know where it would expire, the gesture did not know
its endpoint. I was my need to come to the end of gesture, of eruption. I
was all mind , all body, all surface, all depth, shot through with sad and
infinite hesitation, like a sailboat on windy reefs, I was all delay and
calm purposefulness. I was all things to all men, or to all fl eas. For my
being was a circus. But
to
her I was the prospector staking out claims.
She did not share in our fused body. She was on the margin of the
artifact. Her words were in me, on me, ready to erupt from me, they
accompanied me on my way
to
her, my flight toward h er. Perhaps it
was from her I got the phrase, I'm going to come. I thought it was my
own. I confused the ruthl essness of appropriation with the feverish
pride of ownership. Her words irrigated me. I need you, I n eed you, I
muttered as my arms went out to h er. They irrigated my gestures, in
danger of drying up from too much strenuous parody of self–
effacement. But she was not interested in my long history of efface–
ment, she was not going to reward me for so much abstention. What
she was confronted with was a boor, an ogre, an insatiable animal. And
she let me know it. But there were great awakenings too, where words
played no part and decorum did not rear its ugly head . She played with
my balls, brought them out of their great slumber, they slumbered and
lamented in their hide. But she immediately regretted her frolic. I
responded to her playfulness with slight pressure of the forefinger on
various parts of her flesh. I accented her motions, I registered them.
And at the same time I was responding to them, getting a foothold
when they threatened to undo me. I wanted to restrain myself and let
her take her pleasure, come what may. A forefinger is of inestimable
value at those times. I spoke her words. Speaking began to invoke the
opposite of what the words meant.
If
I said, I am in need, that meant, I
am not in need.
As a reward for saying I am not in need when she was close to me I
would be permitted to feel my need unequivocally, or the regret for the
loss of the opportunity
to
say the sentence without ambivalence,
further proof that I was truly in need. For when I said, I am in need, the
aftertaste was one of exaggeration, pretense. And yet when I abstained
from the sentence, there was a void, a hunger for the sentence. I
believed that if I said, I am not in need I was powerful enough to
invoke its opposite. But I pretended to myself I was merely dullwitted
and very soon I would know by my state of being I had misjudged
myself. I was afraid to admit my sense of my own omniscience. For I
might be punished for my omniscience. Peddling my dullwittedness
to
myself I was exempt from punishment. The fact that I would feel need
