whisper for her friends’ benefit: ‘I tell him I won’t be his friend anymore, and he says that’s fine with him!’ Cascades of shrill laughter. Glancing down at her son’s crotch, the young mother giggled. ‘Look! He loves me in spite of himself!’ And she started fooling around with his penis, setting off fresh gales of laughter. That’ll make one more macho for the crop of 2020, I said to myself. Yet another young man who’ll be incapable of making love to women…
Subra nods gravely.
‘It’s the old story of Achilles’ heel,’ I remember saying to Aziz, after our second or third fiasco in bed. ‘Whose heel?’ ‘In the Iliad. When Achilles was a baby, his mother grabbed him by the heel and dipped him in a bath of immortality. His whole body was immersed except the heel, and he ended up dying when an arrow struck him there. Moral of the story: all men are vulnerable where their mother once held them—in your case, by the weenie.’ ‘Weird place for a heel,’ laughed Aziz. ‘Oh, it’s much more common than you think,’ I told him as I went about covering the said heel with all sorts of naughty kisses and caresses. ‘Plenty of men have heels between theirlegs.’ Still, it was months before Aziz was finally able to enter me, stay inside me, bloom and blossom there.
Turning away from the pseudo-Pietà, Rena finds herself face to face with Donatello’s Maria Maddalena.
Maddalena
Pretty piece of wood, this wild woman, her voluptuous naked body concealed behind a rippling curtain of long hair.
Clasping her hands, Mary Magdalene weeps and supplicates. Tears stream down her face. She regrets her former life, no doubt about that. She falls to her knees and weeps. She washes Christ’s feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. Her tears gush forth, splashing all over the handsome young Jew’s feet. Hair on feet, tears on feet, lips on feet, perfume on feet. ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven,’ Jesus says, ‘for she loved much.’
My favourite quote by that cute bearded guy who died young, Subra murmurs.
I’ve always preferred Mary Magdalene to the Virgin Mary. In fact I’m allergic to adult virgins in general—from the goddess Athena to Mother Theresa, and from Joan of Arc to the Pope. Every time I think of the innumerable streets, buildings, neighbourhoods, towns and cities all over the world that have been named after Christian saints, id est virgins, id est individuals who deemed physical love to be dirty and vile, who dirtied and vilified physical love—every time I think of the millions of children including my brother who’ve been diddled or worse by priests who were starved for tenderness, and the millions of deaths inflicted by chaste and gallant knights of all persuasions, I pale and tremble with rage. That Saint Paul was a real catastrophe!
All my friends crack up when I tell them the apartment Aziz and I moved into last summer is on the Rue des Envierges, Envirgins Street. So far, I haven’t been able to find out where the name comes from. ‘You can devirginate people, but can you envirginate them?’ I asked Aziz on the day we signed the lease, and he reminded me that such a medical specialty indeed exists in Europe today—certain doctors skilfully sew up the ruptured hymens of young Muslim girls to make them marriageable.
Really? Subra says, feigning surprise. I didn’t know Aziz co-signed the lease for the Rue des Envierges.
He will, don’t worry, Rena replies. And she hastens to pursue her train of thought.
‘Tell me, Aziz,’ I crooned to my sweetheart one evening as he went about covering my face with droll little kisses and gently rolling my clitoris between his fingers as he’s learned to do so well, ‘faithful Muslims who die as martyrs are supposed to be rewarded with ninety-two virgins when they get to heaven…But what do women get? What’s heaven like for Muslim women?’ ‘When a woman gets to heaven,’ Aziz murmured between kisses,
Subra nods gravely.
‘It’s the old story of Achilles’ heel,’ I remember saying to Aziz, after our second or third fiasco in bed. ‘Whose heel?’ ‘In the Iliad. When Achilles was a baby, his mother grabbed him by the heel and dipped him in a bath of immortality. His whole body was immersed except the heel, and he ended up dying when an arrow struck him there. Moral of the story: all men are vulnerable where their mother once held them—in your case, by the weenie.’ ‘Weird place for a heel,’ laughed Aziz. ‘Oh, it’s much more common than you think,’ I told him as I went about covering the said heel with all sorts of naughty kisses and caresses. ‘Plenty of men have heels between theirlegs.’ Still, it was months before Aziz was finally able to enter me, stay inside me, bloom and blossom there.
Turning away from the pseudo-Pietà, Rena finds herself face to face with Donatello’s Maria Maddalena.
Maddalena
Pretty piece of wood, this wild woman, her voluptuous naked body concealed behind a rippling curtain of long hair.
Clasping her hands, Mary Magdalene weeps and supplicates. Tears stream down her face. She regrets her former life, no doubt about that. She falls to her knees and weeps. She washes Christ’s feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. Her tears gush forth, splashing all over the handsome young Jew’s feet. Hair on feet, tears on feet, lips on feet, perfume on feet. ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven,’ Jesus says, ‘for she loved much.’
My favourite quote by that cute bearded guy who died young, Subra murmurs.
I’ve always preferred Mary Magdalene to the Virgin Mary. In fact I’m allergic to adult virgins in general—from the goddess Athena to Mother Theresa, and from Joan of Arc to the Pope. Every time I think of the innumerable streets, buildings, neighbourhoods, towns and cities all over the world that have been named after Christian saints, id est virgins, id est individuals who deemed physical love to be dirty and vile, who dirtied and vilified physical love—every time I think of the millions of children including my brother who’ve been diddled or worse by priests who were starved for tenderness, and the millions of deaths inflicted by chaste and gallant knights of all persuasions, I pale and tremble with rage. That Saint Paul was a real catastrophe!
All my friends crack up when I tell them the apartment Aziz and I moved into last summer is on the Rue des Envierges, Envirgins Street. So far, I haven’t been able to find out where the name comes from. ‘You can devirginate people, but can you envirginate them?’ I asked Aziz on the day we signed the lease, and he reminded me that such a medical specialty indeed exists in Europe today—certain doctors skilfully sew up the ruptured hymens of young Muslim girls to make them marriageable.
Really? Subra says, feigning surprise. I didn’t know Aziz co-signed the lease for the Rue des Envierges.
He will, don’t worry, Rena replies. And she hastens to pursue her train of thought.
‘Tell me, Aziz,’ I crooned to my sweetheart one evening as he went about covering my face with droll little kisses and gently rolling my clitoris between his fingers as he’s learned to do so well, ‘faithful Muslims who die as martyrs are supposed to be rewarded with ninety-two virgins when they get to heaven…But what do women get? What’s heaven like for Muslim women?’ ‘When a woman gets to heaven,’ Aziz murmured between kisses,
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