Chapter 10
1.
I closed my eyes— the method Chang and I had decided upon— to become "mindless" for the next hour. But with each bounce or jolt or kick of Adelaide's leg, my eyes opened instinctively, as if against my will.… And then my brother and his wife began to have relations.
Chang stirred me yet again as he climbed on top of his wife and me. He was touching her breasts at the nipples as if he feared he'd never get the chance again. My arm was wrapped around my brother's shoulder, and to make this positioning possible, our band extended farther than it should go.
The inopportune logistics meant I had no choice but to curl against Adelaide, to cover her body partially— at the curve of her hip— and to move along her leg as my brother rocked back and forth. Chang saw my eyes were opened; he turned away quickly, and I closed them. As tightly as I could. After some rolling of the three of us, Adelaide's soft blond hair came tickling across my neck, simultaneously gift and ordeal.
I strained to keep my eyes shut as knees, elbows, fingers poked or bounced off me. Our band ached. Though my eyes were closed, I knew she was still on top of my brother because her hair gladdened my neck once again.
I let my stare glide over her coloring face, following the swerve of bone in her exquisite cheek. Another accident, her fingers ran involuntarily against my palms before she could withdraw her embarrassed hand.
She was alarmed and self-conscious and nearly crying. I felt alone and exposed. Meanwhile, Chang, eyes closed, perspired, bit his lip, and then began triumphantly to smile. I felt something, too, like a feather dragged lightly across the length of my body, chin to feet, and I shivered.
I began gradually, instinctually, I hoped imperceptibly, to approach the cheeks of my brother's bride with my own lips opened in an O. I cut their journey short at the last moment. The wind made a shrill noise through the magnolias outside, and the mattress sounded its own creaky song.
***
2. John Updike, Rabbit is Rich
Absentmindedly he strokes her long hair, soft from all that swimming, as it flows on his abdomen. "Pair of kids came into the lot late today," he begins to tell her, then thinks better of it. Now that her sexual push is past, his prick has hardened, the competing muscles of anxiety having at last relaxed.
But she, she is relaxed all over, asleep with his prick in her face. "Want me inside?" he asks softly, getting no answer. He moves her off his chest and works her inert body around so they lie side by side and he can fuck her from behind.
She wakes enough to cry "Oh" when he penetrates. Slickly admitted, he pumps slowly, pulling the sheet up over them both.
Not hot enough yet for the fan verses air-conditioner decision, both are tucked around the attic somewhere, back under the dusty caves, strain your back lifting it out, he has never liked the chill of air-conditioning even when it was only to be had at the movies and thought to be a great treat drawing you in right off the hot sidewalk,
the word COOL in blue-green with icicles on the marquee, always seemed to him healthier to live in the air God gave however lousy and let your body adjust, Nature can adjust to anything. Still, some of these nights, sticky, and the cars passing below with that wet-tire sound, the kids with their windows open or tops down and radios blaring just at the moment of dropping off to sleep, your skin prickling wherever it touched cloth and a single mosquito alive in the room. His prick is stiff as stone inside a sleeping woman.
He strokes her ass, the crease where it nestles against his belly, must start jogging again, the crease between its halves and that place within the crease, opposite of a nipple, dawned on him gradually over these years that she had no objection to being touched there, seemed to like it when she was under him his hand beneath her bottom.
***
3 . Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
He used to come easing into bed sometimes, not too drunk. I make out like I'm asleep, 'cause it's late, and he taken three dollars out of my pocketbook that morning or something.…
I think about the thick, knotty hair on his chest, and the two big swells his breast muscles make.… I pretend to wake up, and turn to him, but not opening my legs. I want him to open them for me. He does, and I be soft and wet where his fingers are strong and hard. I be softer than I ever been before. All my strength is in his hand.
My brain curls up like wilted leaves.… I stretch my legs open, and he is on top of me. Too heavy to hold, and too light not to. He puts his thing in me. In me. In me. I wrap my feet around his back so he can't get away.
His face is next to mine. The bedsprings sounds like them crickets used to back home. He puts his fingers in mine, and we stretches our arms outwise like Jesus on the cross. I hold on tight.
My fingers and my feet hold on tight, because everything else is going, going. I know he wants me to come first. But I can't. Not until he does. Not until I feel him loving me.
Just me. Sinking into me. Not until I know that my flesh is all that be on his mind. That he couldn't stop if he had to. That he would die rather than take his thing out of me. Of me. Not until he has let go of all he has, and give it to me. To me. To me.
When he does, I feel a power. I be strong, I be pretty, I be young. And then I wait. He shivers and tosses his head. Now I be strong enough, pretty enough, and young enough to let him make me come. I take my fingers out of his and put my hands on his behind.
My legs drop back onto the bed. I don't make no noise, because the chil'ren might hear. I begin to feel those little bits of color floating up into me— deep in me. That streak of green from the june-bug light, the purple from the berries trickling along my thighs, Mama's lemonade yellow runs sweet in me.
Then I feel like I'm laughing between my legs, and the laughing gets all mixed up with the colors, and I'm afraid I'll come, and afraid I won't. But I know I will. And I do. And it be rainbow all inside. And it lasts and lasts and lasts.
I want to thank him, but don't know how, so I pat him like you do a baby. He asks me if I'm all right. I say yes. He gets off me and lies down to sleep. I want to say something, but I don't. I don't want to take my mind offen the rainbow.
***
4. Stephen McCauley, True Enough
The bedroom was freezing, and when she slid into the bed, the cool of the soft yellow sheets brought up goose pimples.
He was shy, that's what made it all so touching. He liked to leave the lights off and reach for her under the covers, as if they were doing something that had to be kept secret.
He buried his face in her chest, mumbling that awful name he had for her, "Jody, Jody," and rubbed against her leg. She could feel his fat, bloated penis bumping her, clumsily.
It made her think of a Newfoundland puppy, a creature whose gawky, immature, undisciplined behavior was completely inappropriate to its size.
He was at her nipples now, this overgrown adolescent, sucking, but too hard, making her sore and angry. So many men were plagued with premature ejaculation, impotence, and other sexual dysfunctions, but always the wrong men.
But as soon as those thoughts passed through her mind, they were drowned out by a roar of remorse. So she lay there, moving her body lightly, trying to set off a spark, something that she, or, less likely, he could fan into a flame.
Thomas was in for the long haul at her chest. He was hesitant, always had been, about touching her anywhere below the waist, as if it might be disrespectful to do so.
***