A Matter of Love in da Bronx (47 page)

Gina smiled, and quite casually tiptoed to the side of the bed, letting the blouse fall away from her. For Mary it presented the two nude lovers in frisado. Gilda lay back on the bed beside him, her legs spread wide in welcome; the dream man rose high over her, one hand resting by her shoulder, the other by her armpit; Gilda reached up to embrace him, lifting herself until her bosom pressed into his; his hips moved down as her ankles crossed at his buttocks; Gina and he simultaneously thrust toward each other, rammed his swollen cock losing itself in her pulsing, heated cunt dripping of love juice; they moved apart, they moved together, they kissed, they sucked, they gasped. The stop-action speeded up, the lovers fucking each other in earnest until to Mary it was all a blur. --He just grabbed me, and kissed me, and married me! We love each other so much. Gilda looked down at him. Isn't he beautiful? And not just his cock...and he does such wonders with it. It's huge, and hurts sometimes, but I love it. I think we're going to fuck each other to death before the week is out... She reached over with the gentleness of a mother's hand to pull the sheet over him. Now that I have him, that's all I want of the world: love, loving, lovemaking. I'll never have enough. Aunt Mary, just talking about him makes me want him again. He excites me so. He has to leave, then I can take you to dinner. Would you mind? Waiting? In the bathroom?

Mary deliberately put her back into the wall at the bottom of the stairs of the hospital apartment house. Why should she have consented to be placed in a torture chamber where the sounds of their fucking would fill her ears as the smell of their doings assaulted her nose, and did strange things to her sex? She closed her ears, put her head hard against the wall, and took it in, feeling every single sensation. It was just unbelievable that she was coming. With the last twitch in her vagina she wondered if she would carry the sex smell with her into the subway where everyone would know. Where it would cause men to have erections. Where they would throw her down in the middle of the car and gang fuck her. Despite the fresh air the sex remained in her olfactory's, savoring it, proud to read the knowing look of men and women on the subway who seemed to smile and nod that finally the fritilaria had come out of her cocoon. And perhaps it would be a fine condition for her to be oozing of sex, toting the smell, in which to surprise Sam in the shop. Who knows what could happen? And if it would. They--she and he--like Gina and husband one day soon could try to fuck themselves to death in a week, God willing. Sam! Get ready! Here we come!

But Sam would have none of it eyes, Lou's arguments too weak to penetrate his emotional blackout curtain. He remained limp, defeated, his head hanging nearly between his knees just as Lou found him when he walked into the shop. Then, Lou appealed to his rational, funny self and penetrates his emotional blackout curtain and asked what kind of a woman would say she didn't want to see him no more?

--No more! What kind of language is 'no more?' 'I don't want to see you no more? You'd think she was a fucking ignorant, red-necked rebel!

Right.

Then he admonished himself to get his head out of his scotum.

LOVE'S SUBLIMITIES send spasms through my soul. Sublunary sensibilities are pitched by the wayside. Arcane and ardent combusts the fire. You are at the core of the heat of it. So? It is you, is it? It is you. It is you. It is you. Mary. How dare I hold so precious what must be unpossessable? Is it that Nature decrees this profound feeling be enigmatical lest its fragile though worthy foundations be compromised? How clever is this bridge-barrier, occluding us, yet, enclosing us. The genius on one level preserves the genus of perpetual continuity by putting in darkness our need and reasons to participate in the ritual. We are as stones rolling down a hill. We do as we must do. No escape. Oh! Some of us do reveal its weakness. A psychological schism, part of the gossamer that ties together intelligent specie where aberrations are inherent in the production line. Sexless. Sexfearing. Loose cocks. Loose cunts. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromers. AIDS-aiders. Unchildbearing beings. The majority of us operate on two levels. One that drives us to copulate with the opposite sex for the mere sake of fun-fucking. Spurt enough seed there's bound to be enough to keep the kind going. Millions of fish eggs. Billions of seeds. Billidominions of larvae. No huge star striking Earth sending up clouds of dust to decimate dinosaurs and such. They just got too big and lazy to fuck. It had to be a catastrophe to take something like that off automatic. I mean, take a man and a woman, of any age, who had never before seen or knew of anyone of the opposite sex, and put them alone together, Bang! First thing! They'd start fucking. Just like that, with no tutoring or guidelines. That's basic. That's natural. That's Nature. The second level is the pseudo-intellectual-emotional. We'd like to think we know and understand all about love. Oh! Sure! Ask any of the psychists. They'd give you what they thought was chapter and verse, but, just once, let them fall madly, passionately in love--amazing how their answers disappear; lobotomized as everyone else. But, that's not good enough for me. I can't settle for that, Mary, my love. To singularize this passion for you, I must understand it more. To do that, I must reveal myself to you. In doing that, I know of myself. Perhaps, in knowing myself may I understand what explodes forth from me, this entablature of life supported on pilasters of euphoria? If not the most vital of life, certainly the most noticeable of its properties. First of them is birth. That is the beginning of the beginning. What do I know of that? I
deem
myself to
think
I can recall my essence not just of my infancy, but of my existence in the womb, as well as my passage into the world. Well though I would like to believe that, I have little else to go on. In all truth, the start of me remains a mystery. Last of them, if we may skip a few, will also be a black unknown: death. I will leave no diary on this. How gross to accept a collect call from a corpse even from one who would reveal all sorts of secrets. Then, there is their cousin, sleep. We don't make much of this because we do it so often, and though we have explanations we really aren't satisfied. What remains? Work, play, food and love. Love is what I've been after all along. I wonder if in understanding love, I would come to understand all life. Or, I wonder, if in the pursuit of it, I should lose the essence of it? With good reason I wonder that because it seems to be so fragile, double-sided. A careless word, a forgotten moment, a mindless act is enough--for some--to flashfreeze the ardor. Yet, how it can withstand all attack! Imagine Juliet in the balcony scene telling Romeo, --Oh! Go away, and stop disturbing my sleep. My parents say you're below my station, and unworthy of my attention... Lovers who have listened to other than the rhapsody in their hearts were never lovers. But, even those who hear the elegy are merely on the second level which requires that love to be part of their lives because it's so vital to life. Thus, we call it romance--if the first is physical--which discriminates not between the sexes. Love, the sport of life, how pleasurable to play it. For men the pursuit, for women the fulfillment, for both the attention. Survive without it we can, but what a scoriated flat of clay our world. And what a variety of this love: pretend, actual, and inflated. We pretend love--and we know it!--because it's better than nothing, at least we're participating, which is quite something. Inflated love is closer to fiction because we don't realize how large we make it for the effect, less on ourselves more for others. Love based on the production of envy is colored, too, like mold. Actual love comes to the rest of the lucky world. We always know it. We rarely appreciate it. It roves an unmarked, ragged expanse with nebulous boundaries between logic and emotion with constant new vistas and inconstant intensity, lasting for longer or shorter periods of time. ...Then, we have the rarest of loves: my love for you about which I could say all, and not say enough. What comes to my mind, here, now, past midnight, as I lay in darkness, dressed, across my bed, after hours of thoughts rocketing across the sky of my mind; after contacting my feelings like a hummingbird working a fieldful of coral bells; after daring to indulge myself in the essence and existence of this love for you; is the confounding thought: How do I satisfy the perplexing requirements of this love? It occludes yet includes, yes? To hold you I must release you. Also it asks that we give, yet, too, that we take. How do I do that? Give so you may receive. A paradoxical parable I understand that compares temporal expectations versus beneficent worldly comforts. How wily. The work of blackguards. Honesty is the word I want to use, to the giving and receiving of the
like
kind. It's this reciprocity that's the essence of a magnificent love. Now, here, tell me, is it beyond my own manipulation? Does the possibility of that artificiality pollute its purity? I wonder here if the movement is back and forth or round and round, the first a weigh and check and the latter a flow. I like the idea of a self-perpetuating, mutual growth where everything I give to you leaves a space where everything you give to me fills it completely. The more I love you, the more you love me. The more love I give to you, the more I take back. Nice. More the marvel is that this is all new to me. I've never loved before. I've thought and wondered about it, to be sure, but with a certain ease. I've never had a suit tailor made--I know I will one day just as I knew I'd fall in love one day--yet I know I need only announce myself to a tailor, and he'll do the rest. Is it that simple with love? Just...let it be? Here, I love. I am in love. I love you. I am submerged in love, never to emerge from its effect, never to be the same. Should I wonder that some experience would stand me in good stead? No, I'd rather the sharp, bright, wholesome thrill of the totally new. I find every moment an excitement. I find every moment different. I find every moment compelling. One desire that never changes is to be with you constantly, completely, combined. How can I not think of tomorrow night? No platonic affair this for I carry a perpetual erection can you believe not with a view to thrusting, ramming orgasms, but for the verymost physical proximity to you. Your tongue deep inside me; me up high within you; fused together for days, weeks; completing the circle, spinning out to space; unable for me to tell where is the you of us, for you to tell the me of you, for us to be the I, complete, perfect as the genesis of the universe itself. How I agonize for your presence. I want you to be here just to be here. And more. To undress you so I may kiss you all over. To caress you. To have you share the heat of us. My heart stops when I think of where we'll be in a few long hours. My body, will it please you when you look at me? When you touch me? Will it please? When I hold, and look, and kiss you...Ah! I'm trembling! Anxious. Nervous. Anticipating. Have I dreamed too long, too much for such a dream? Perhaps I should've asked Lou exactly what I should do. Is there a way to start? Are there just certain things one doesn't do? It can't be like the hardcore movies I watched where the hard-on comes out, and the charge begins? There must be some gentility involved, isn't there? Don't be a jerk. From the President's wife to a hillbilly whore a fuck's as personal as you can get, but when it comes to romance, just don't wait for the wrong moment to fart. I keep going over and over it in my mind everything right up to the split second before I'm about to feel myself enter you. There, you let me slip in between your legs, your arms clutching me so tight, your kiss stoking hot the fire within me, your legs close around me, they start to draw me toward you; closer, closer goes my raging cock ever close to those lips of Paradise...

--Figlio? Why you stay with the lights out like that with your clothes on? You eat hardly nothing tonight. You all right? You not sick?

--No. I'm fine. Just resting. My mother, known me all my life, and more, and doesn't know a thing about me, how can I reveal myself to you, Mary, so you may know and love me the more? So I may know more of myself, and know more of our love? What a burden to be introspective, and to analyze everything so. Merely the wish to know, to understand. The understanding doesn't change a thing, merely chocolate coats conclusions.

--Sam--a change in tone--your father asks...

--My father can ask for himself.

--Your father wants to know... Your father wants me to ask... He...

--Money.

--What?

--He wants money. What else?

--Yes. He needs for the rent...

--No.

--No?
Ma perche?

--My ambition is not to work as hard as I do to remain a pauper.

--I don't understand.

--Why should you? It's stupid for someone to work as hard as I do, and have to ask for an allowance. I can sit at home and get as much.

--He wants to know when...when your boss comes back will you pay then the rent...

--Will he give me back the blood leaked from my pores all these years?

--Figlio...

--No! No! No! Tell him that! ...Sorry, I didn't mean to raise my voice.

--Usually... ...tomorrow, Friday... I usually bring to her...them...

--To Uncle and Aunt?

--Yes, the Dolorossos. We could do, but to support two families on just what little your father and I bring in would be too hard. It could not be done, Figlio mio. I would do more, but you know I cannot go out there to work, only what I can do here. It makes me so afraid. It makes me feel not good. My sciatica...

--Yes, Ma.

--He does what he can, poor man. He asks nothing for himself--a glass of wine with the pasta, to go sometime to the Italian Club. Sam could see her outline in the blur of blackness peering down at him knowing her look would be pulled down, defeated, pleading for pity; but, unashamedly, he wondered what contortions and mutterings she made lying nude with Aunt while they kissed and fondled each other. Freud had nothing to do with it. The ensorcillation of mother as lesbo-lover was it, the fascination of the oxymoron, as if he questioned his own source. He has sacrifice his whole life, Figlio, his whole life.