crazy,” he said in a shaky, quavering voice. I could see him, the bastard, trembling over the telephone, his thighs and mouth caving open, his whole body curved to a position of entrance, the sheer weakness of him oozing from every pore. “You’re crazy. This can’t be real. This is America.”
“Yes,” I say, carefully meshing an older concept with a newer, “yes, my friend you are right. This is America.”
Then I hang up on him, chuckling from a sudden weakness of my own which causes me to stagger to the window in search of fresh air. Through the vents the city pours over me, the clear, stinking gray of it clearing my head and giving me a better orientation. I put the phone back in the center of my desk, toss the ad into the out bin, take the check to give in to accounting and then for a while I merely sit, hands behind head, chair tilted toward the window, looking at New York spreading out underneath me like a fish abandoned on shore, gasping for air.
This is no easy position into which I have gotten myself, but it has certain narrow compensations which, after a fashion, can keep one going.
XIV
On the streets in the summer I am overcome by seizures of lust, follow strange, pretty girls for blocks on end muttering to myself and watching their bodies move ahead of me as if they contained all light, all purpose, all sense and structure. In their dresses the girls look un touchable, the vulnerability of their flesh and soft breasts masked by a slow hardness which begins at the eyes and descends through all areas and levels of their faces, ending at last around the waist from which fulcrum they move in urgent, contained motions that simulate but have absolutely nothing to do with intercourse. I have noted this hardness more and more in recent summers; it seems to me that girls, when I was younger, did not look this way but faced the streets with demureness and fear. Now there is something else, something almost shattering, an air of malevolence which marks them as both dangerous and desirable. The hardness only makes them more sensual; I yearn to touch, to cleave myself against them, to tell them secrets.
Following them in stunned gaze, my whole body poised to attention, the mind only a numb chatter in the midst of the sensibility, I feel that if I could only somehow go up to them and lay before them my fear and desire, my uniqueness and pain, they would submit to me, for I know that what goes on inside of me when I look at these girls is the churnings of an emotion more profound than ever they have known before. I am sure, at the moments of pursuit, that I love them more than their parents or boy friends, fiancés or husbands, children or employers; if only given the chance I could sculpt out for them that love in a way which they could not refuse … but I find it impossible to speak to them. Sometimes, heads swinging from side to side, they nail me with a gaze, and in that gaze is such complacence, protectiveness and contempt mingled that it is all I can do to keep from gasping on the street and holding onto my sides for comfort. I cannot speak to them. There is no way, I understand this, no way in which I could ever establish myself with these girls, for the messages they send out in midsummer casualness are not those which can take any reply.
“Listen here,” I want to say to them, pinning them against a wall, holding out my hands, showing the streaked, innocent palms, the fine, intelligent crinkle of my forehead. “Listen here, I am a college graduate, thirty-four years old, highly intelligent with a good income, and I feel for you more deeply than you could ever know. I have wit, a good deal of background, have had my small successes with women and am considered good in bed. Perhaps you would not approve of my occupation or source of income
in toto
, but the fact is that I am doing very nicely and am less corrupt than any of the account executives or copywriters who catch your attention; I am at least
“Yes,” I say, carefully meshing an older concept with a newer, “yes, my friend you are right. This is America.”
Then I hang up on him, chuckling from a sudden weakness of my own which causes me to stagger to the window in search of fresh air. Through the vents the city pours over me, the clear, stinking gray of it clearing my head and giving me a better orientation. I put the phone back in the center of my desk, toss the ad into the out bin, take the check to give in to accounting and then for a while I merely sit, hands behind head, chair tilted toward the window, looking at New York spreading out underneath me like a fish abandoned on shore, gasping for air.
This is no easy position into which I have gotten myself, but it has certain narrow compensations which, after a fashion, can keep one going.
XIV
On the streets in the summer I am overcome by seizures of lust, follow strange, pretty girls for blocks on end muttering to myself and watching their bodies move ahead of me as if they contained all light, all purpose, all sense and structure. In their dresses the girls look un touchable, the vulnerability of their flesh and soft breasts masked by a slow hardness which begins at the eyes and descends through all areas and levels of their faces, ending at last around the waist from which fulcrum they move in urgent, contained motions that simulate but have absolutely nothing to do with intercourse. I have noted this hardness more and more in recent summers; it seems to me that girls, when I was younger, did not look this way but faced the streets with demureness and fear. Now there is something else, something almost shattering, an air of malevolence which marks them as both dangerous and desirable. The hardness only makes them more sensual; I yearn to touch, to cleave myself against them, to tell them secrets.
Following them in stunned gaze, my whole body poised to attention, the mind only a numb chatter in the midst of the sensibility, I feel that if I could only somehow go up to them and lay before them my fear and desire, my uniqueness and pain, they would submit to me, for I know that what goes on inside of me when I look at these girls is the churnings of an emotion more profound than ever they have known before. I am sure, at the moments of pursuit, that I love them more than their parents or boy friends, fiancés or husbands, children or employers; if only given the chance I could sculpt out for them that love in a way which they could not refuse … but I find it impossible to speak to them. Sometimes, heads swinging from side to side, they nail me with a gaze, and in that gaze is such complacence, protectiveness and contempt mingled that it is all I can do to keep from gasping on the street and holding onto my sides for comfort. I cannot speak to them. There is no way, I understand this, no way in which I could ever establish myself with these girls, for the messages they send out in midsummer casualness are not those which can take any reply.
“Listen here,” I want to say to them, pinning them against a wall, holding out my hands, showing the streaked, innocent palms, the fine, intelligent crinkle of my forehead. “Listen here, I am a college graduate, thirty-four years old, highly intelligent with a good income, and I feel for you more deeply than you could ever know. I have wit, a good deal of background, have had my small successes with women and am considered good in bed. Perhaps you would not approve of my occupation or source of income
in toto
, but the fact is that I am doing very nicely and am less corrupt than any of the account executives or copywriters who catch your attention; I am at least
Similar Books
Talk to Me
Allison DuBois
The Heist
Janet Evanovich
Jake's Thief
A.C. Katt
The Road from Coorain
Jill Ker Conway
The Dead Boys
Royce Buckingham
Squiggle
B.B. Wurge
Suddenly Sexy
Linda Francis Lee
The Threateners
Donald Hamilton
The Adored
Tom Connolly
Heart Murmurs
Suleikha Snyder