Chapter 4
1. J.G. Ballard, Crash
"A loose hierarchy of prostitutes occupied the airport and its suburbs – within the hotels, in discotheques where music was never played, conveniently sited near the bedrooms for the thousands of transit passengers who never left the airport; a second echelon working the terminal building concourses and restaurant mezzanines; and beyond these an army of freelances renting rooms on a daily basis in the apartment complexes along the motorway.
We reached the multi-storey car-park behind the air-freight building. I drove around the canted concrete floors of this oblique and ambiguous building and parked in an empty bay among the cars on the sloping roof.
After tucking the banknotes away in her silver handbag, the woman lowered her preoccupied face across my lap, expertly releasing my zip with one hand. She began to work systematically at my penis with both mouth and hand, spreading her arms comfortably across my knees. I flinched from the pressure of her hard elbows …
As she brought my penis to life I looked down at her strong back, at the junction between the contours of her shoulders demarked by the straps of her brassiere and the elaborately decorated instrument panel of this American car, between her thick buttock in my left hand and the pastel-shaded binnacles of the clock and the speedometer. Encouraged by these hooded dials, my left ring-finger moved towards her anus."
***
2. Milan Kundera, Unbearable Lightness of Being
The camera served Tereza as both a mechanical eye through which to observe Tomas's mistress and a veil by which to conceal her face from her.
It took Sabina some time before she could bring herself to slip out of the robe entirely. The situation she found herself in was proving a bit more difficult han she had expected. After several minutes of posing, she went up to Tereza and said, "Now it's my turn to take your picture. Strip!"
Sabina had heard the command "Strip!" so many times from Tomas that it was engraved in her memory. Thus, Tomas's mistress had just given Tomas's command to Tomas's wife. The two women were joined by the same magic word.
That was Tomas's way of unexpectedly turning an innocent conversation with a woman into an erotic situation. Instead of stroking, flattering, pleading, he would issue a command, issue it abruptly, unexpectedly, softly yet firmly and authoritatively, and at a distance: at such moments he never touched the woman he was addressing.
He often used it on Tereza as well, and even though he said it softly, even though he whispered it, it was a command, and obeying never failed to arouse her. Hearing the word now made her desire to obey even stronger, because doing a stranger's bidding is a special madness, a madness all the more heady in this case because the command came not from a man but from a woman.
Sabina took the camera from her, and Tereza took off her clothes. There she stood before Sabina naked and disarmed. Literally disarmed: deprived of the apparatus she had been using to cover her face and aim at Sabina like a weapon.
She was completely at the mercy of Tomas's mistress. This beautiful submission intoxicated Tereza. She wished that the moments she stood naked opposite Sabina would never end.
I think that Sabina, too, felt the strange enchantment of the situation: her lover's wife standing oddly compliant and timorous before her. But after clicking the shutter two or three times, almost frightened by the enchantment and eager to dispel it, she burst into loud laughter.
Tereza followed suit, and the two of them got dressed.
***
3. Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge
"Inside the apartment, Windust doesn't waste time. "Get down on the floor." Seems to be in a sort of erotic snit. She gives him a look.
"Now."
Shouldn't she be saying, "You know what, fuck yourself, you'll have more fun," and walking out? No, instead, instant docility—she slides to her knees.
Quickly, without further discussion, not that some bed would have been a better choice, she has joined months of unvacuumed debris on the rug, face on the floor, ass in the air, skirt pushed up, Windust's not-exactly-manicured nails ripping methodically at sheer taupe pantyhose it took her easily twenty minutes in Saks not so long ago to decide on, and his cock is inside her with so little inconvenience that she must have been wet without knowing it.
His hands, murderer's hands, are gripping her forcefully by the hips, exactly where it matters, exactly where some demonic set of nerve receptors she has been till now only semi-aware of have waited to be found and used like buttons on a game controller… impossible for her to know if it's him moving or if she's doing it herself… not a distinction to be lingered on till much later, of course, if at all, though in some circles it is held to be something of a big deal…
Down on the floor, nose level with an electrical outlet, she imagines for a second she can see some great brightness of power just behind the parallel slits.
Something scurries at the edge of her vision, the size of a mouse, and it is Lester Traipse, the shy, wronged soul of Lester, in need of sanctuary, abandoned, not least by Maxine. He stands in front of the outlet, reaches in, parts the sides of one slit like a doorway, glances back apologetically, slides into the annihilating brightness. Gone.
She cries out, though not for Lester exactly."
***
4. Norman Rush, Mortals
She straddled him. Her hair was loose. It was cut straight across at the level of her shoulders. It was hanging forward, hiding her face, except for her eyes, which she was holding shut tight. She was being careful about his cock, leaving it alone so far. On his back meant fun for him, Iris taking her time.
He had to push his anxiety away. It would be easier for him to get up and take care of an emergency if she weren't on top of him. He had to forget about that. Some of their best sex had been with her on top, using him as a dildo, taking her sweet time.
One thing he loved that she sometimes did was to align their nipples and rub. Hers would be hard and his would be too. He didn't know if she would do that. In an ideal world she would do everything she had ever done with him, in farewell, a variety show, had they world enough and time, which they didn't. There was too much.
She was dragging her hair across his eyes. Kiss me, he thought, anguished, because she wasn't going to, he knew. She lightly bit his shoulder. She was lowering herself more. She was brushing her breasts across his face.
He wanted to take one of her breasts into his mouth, either one. He was frantic. He wanted to get as much of one of her breasts into his mouth as he could. Her breasts were killing him, her blunt instruments. He had called them that and she had laughed, long ago. […]
He drove himself harder into her. She was whining with pleasure and that was good. She would climax again right away.
He kept on, slowing himself. He pushed her knees up higher. He was almost there and so was she, again.
And then the knot at the root of his cock dissolved in fire, melting. He shouted when he came. Then she was snorting, trying to say something. She was telling him to stop. She had come a second time and she wanted him to stop. They disengaged, shaking.