Chapter 3

1.

"I wanted to kiss him forever. I blocked out all thought about what this was, what it might mean, what further mess I might create for myself...

And I kissed him until reason seeped out through my pores and I became a living pulse, conscious only of what I wanted to do to him ...

And suddenly we were crashing around the little railway carriage, all hands and lips and, oh, God, the scent and taste and feel of him. It was like tiny fireworks going off all over me, bits of me I'd thought dead reigniting to life."

~~Are you drooling a little bit? Yeah, me too.~~

***

2.

It is quiet in the rest of the library.

Inside the back room, the woman has crawled out from underneath the man. Now fuck me like a dog, she tells him.

She grips a pillow in her fists and he breathes behind her, hot air down her back which is starting to sweat and slip on his stomach.

She doesn't want him to see her face because it is blowing up inside, red and furious, and she's grimacing at the pale white wall which is cool when she puts her hand on it to help her push back into him, get his dick to fill up her body until there's nothing left of her inside: just dick.

***

3.

"She begins to strip like a roommate and climb into bed.

They have fallen asleep. Dean wakes first, in the early afternoon. He unfastens her stockings and slowly rolls them off. Her skirt is next and then her underpants. She opens her eyes. The garter belt he leaves on, to confirm her nakedness. He rests his head there.

Her hand touches his chest and begins to fall in excruciating slow designs.

He lies still as a dog beneath it, still as an idiot.

The next morning she is recovered. His prick is hard. She takes it in her hand. They always sleep naked. Their flesh is innocent and warm. In the end she is arranged across the pillows, a ritual she accepts without a word.

It is half an hour before they fall apart, spent, and call for breakfast. She eats both her rolls and one of his.

"There was a lot," she says.

She glistens with it. The inside of her thighs is wet.

"How long does it take to make again?" she asks.

Dean tries to think. He is remembering biology.

"Two or three days," he guesses.

"Non, non!" she cries. That is not what she meant.

She begins to make him hard again. In a few minutes he rolls her over and puts it in as if the intermission were ended. This time she is wild. The great bed begins creaking. Her breath becomes short. Dean has to brace his hands on the wall. He hooks his knees outside her legs and drives himself deeper.

"Oh," she breathes, "that's the best."

When he comes, it downs them both. They crumble like sand. He returns from the bathroom and picks up the covers from the floor. She has not moved. She lies just where she has fallen.

***

4.

"She now stood nude in the lamplight except for her black embroidered cotton stockings which were held up by elastic bands around the thighs. Goldman rolled the stockings down and Evelyn stepped out of her stockings. She held her arms across her breasts. Goldman stood and turned her around slowly for inspection, a frown on her face. […]

Lie down. Evelyn sat down on the bed and looked at what was coming out of the black bag. On your stomach, Goldman said.

She was holding a bottle and tilting the contents of the bottle into her cupped hand. Evelyn lay down on her stomach and Goldman applied the liquid where the marks of the stays reddened the flesh. Ow, Evelyn cried. It stings!

This is an astringent – the first thing is to restore circulation, Goldman explained as she rubbed Evelyn's back and buttocks and thighs. Evelyn was squirming and her flesh cringing with each application.

She buried her face in the pillow to smother her cries. I know, I know, Goldman said. But you will thank me. Under Goldman's vigorous rubbing Evelyn's flesh seemed to spring into its fullest conformations. She was shivering now and her buttocks were clenched against the invigorating chill of the astringent.

Her legs squeezed together. Goldman now took from her bag a bottle of massage oil and began to knead Evelyn's neck and shoulders and back, her thighs and calves and the soles of her feet.

Gradually Evelyn relaxed and her flesh shook and quivered under the emphatic skill of Goldman's hands. Goldman rubbed the oil into her skin until her body found its own natural rosy white being and began to stir with self-perception.

Turn over, Goldman commanded. Evelyn's hair was now undone and lay on the pillow about her face. Her eyes were closed and her lips stretched in an involuntary smile as Goldman massaged her breasts, her stomach, her legs.

Yes, even this, Emma Goldman said, briskly passing her hand over the mons. You must have the courage to live. The bedside lamp seemed to dim for a moment.

Evelyn put her own hands on her breasts and her palms rotated the nipples. Her hands swam down along her flanks. She rubbed her hips.

Her feet pointed like dancer's and her toes curled. Her pelvis rose from the bed as if seeking something in the air. Goldman was now at the bureau, capping her bottled emollient, her back to Evelyn as the younger woman began to ripple on the bed like a wave on the sea.

At this moment a hoarse unearthly cry issued from the walls, the closet door flew open and Mother's Younger Brother fell into the room, his face twisted in a paroxysm of saintly mortification. He was clutching in his hands, as if trying to choke it, a rampant penis which, scornful of his intentions, whipped him about the floor, launching to his cries of ecstasy or despair, great filamented spurts of jism that traced the air like bullets and then settled slowly over Evelyn in her bed like falling ticker tape."

***