many devices for keeping our sexual pleasure keen. The book is not only a report of an experiment, but a part of the experiment it reports—a self-conscious experiment by a man and a woman to be endlessly fascinating to each other sexually—
To be more than that.
To be to each other, body and soul, sufficient reasons for living, though there might not be a single other satisfaction to be had.
The epigraph of the book is to the point, I think.
It is a poem by William Blake called “The Question Answered”:
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
I might aptly add here one last chapter to the
Memoirs
, chapter 643, describing the night I spent in a New York hotel with Helga, after having been without her for so many years.
I leave it to an editor of taste and delicacy to abridge with innocent polka dots whatever might offend.
M EMOIRS OF A M ONOGAMOUS C ASANOVA , C HAPTER 643
We had been apart for sixteen years. My first lustthat night was in my finger tips. Other parts of me … that were contended later were contended in a ritual way, thoroughly, to … clinical perfection. No part of me could complain, and no part of my wife could complain, I trust, of being victimized by busy-work, time-serving … or jerry-building. But my finger tips had the best of it that night. …
Which is not to say that I found myself to be an … old man, dependent, if I was to please a woman, on … foreplay and nothing more. On the contrary, I was as … ready a lover as a seventeen-year-old … with his … girl …
And as full of wonder.
And it was in my fingers that the wonder lived. Calm, resourceful, thoughtful, these … explorers, these … strategists, these … scouts, these … skirmishers, deployed themselves over the … terrain.
And all the news they gathered was good. …
My wife was a … slave girl bedded with an … emperor that night, seemingly struck dumb, seemingly not even able to speak a word of my language. And yet, how eloquent she was, letting her eyes, her breathing … express what they must, unable to keep them from expressing what they must. …
And how simple, how sublimely familiar was the tale her … body told! … It was like the breeze’s tale of what a breeze is, like the rose’s tale of what the rose is. …
After my subtle, thoughtful and grateful fingerscame greedier things, instruments of pleasure without memories, without manners, without patience. These my slave girl met in greedy kind … until Mother Nature herself, who had made the most extravagant demands upon us, could ask no more. Mother Nature herself … called an end to the game. …
We rolled apart. …
We spoke coherently to each other for the first time since bedding down.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
“Welcome home,” she said.
End of chapter 643.
The city sky was clean and hard and bright the next morning, looking like an enchanted dome that would shatter at a tap or ring like a great glass bell.
My Helga and I stepped from our hotel to the sidewalk snappily. I was lavish in my courtliness, and my Helga was no less grand in her respect and gratitude. We had had a marvelous night.
I was not wearing war-surplus clothing. I was wearing the clothes I had put on after fleeing Berlin, after shucking off the uniform of the Free American Corps. I was wearing the clothes—fur-collared impresario’s cloak and blue serge suit—I had been captured in. I was also carrying, for whimsy, a cane. I did marvelous things with the cane: rococo manualsof arms, Charlie Chaplin twirls, polo strokes at orts in the gutter.
And all the while my Helga’s small hand rested on my good left arm, creeping in an endless and erotic exploration of the tingling area between the inside of my elbow and the crest of my stringy biceps.
We were on our way to buy a bed, a bed like our bed in Berlin.
But all the stores were
To be more than that.
To be to each other, body and soul, sufficient reasons for living, though there might not be a single other satisfaction to be had.
The epigraph of the book is to the point, I think.
It is a poem by William Blake called “The Question Answered”:
What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
I might aptly add here one last chapter to the
Memoirs
, chapter 643, describing the night I spent in a New York hotel with Helga, after having been without her for so many years.
I leave it to an editor of taste and delicacy to abridge with innocent polka dots whatever might offend.
M EMOIRS OF A M ONOGAMOUS C ASANOVA , C HAPTER 643
We had been apart for sixteen years. My first lustthat night was in my finger tips. Other parts of me … that were contended later were contended in a ritual way, thoroughly, to … clinical perfection. No part of me could complain, and no part of my wife could complain, I trust, of being victimized by busy-work, time-serving … or jerry-building. But my finger tips had the best of it that night. …
Which is not to say that I found myself to be an … old man, dependent, if I was to please a woman, on … foreplay and nothing more. On the contrary, I was as … ready a lover as a seventeen-year-old … with his … girl …
And as full of wonder.
And it was in my fingers that the wonder lived. Calm, resourceful, thoughtful, these … explorers, these … strategists, these … scouts, these … skirmishers, deployed themselves over the … terrain.
And all the news they gathered was good. …
My wife was a … slave girl bedded with an … emperor that night, seemingly struck dumb, seemingly not even able to speak a word of my language. And yet, how eloquent she was, letting her eyes, her breathing … express what they must, unable to keep them from expressing what they must. …
And how simple, how sublimely familiar was the tale her … body told! … It was like the breeze’s tale of what a breeze is, like the rose’s tale of what the rose is. …
After my subtle, thoughtful and grateful fingerscame greedier things, instruments of pleasure without memories, without manners, without patience. These my slave girl met in greedy kind … until Mother Nature herself, who had made the most extravagant demands upon us, could ask no more. Mother Nature herself … called an end to the game. …
We rolled apart. …
We spoke coherently to each other for the first time since bedding down.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
“Welcome home,” she said.
End of chapter 643.
The city sky was clean and hard and bright the next morning, looking like an enchanted dome that would shatter at a tap or ring like a great glass bell.
My Helga and I stepped from our hotel to the sidewalk snappily. I was lavish in my courtliness, and my Helga was no less grand in her respect and gratitude. We had had a marvelous night.
I was not wearing war-surplus clothing. I was wearing the clothes I had put on after fleeing Berlin, after shucking off the uniform of the Free American Corps. I was wearing the clothes—fur-collared impresario’s cloak and blue serge suit—I had been captured in. I was also carrying, for whimsy, a cane. I did marvelous things with the cane: rococo manualsof arms, Charlie Chaplin twirls, polo strokes at orts in the gutter.
And all the while my Helga’s small hand rested on my good left arm, creeping in an endless and erotic exploration of the tingling area between the inside of my elbow and the crest of my stringy biceps.
We were on our way to buy a bed, a bed like our bed in Berlin.
But all the stores were
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