The Gentle Degenerates (The Vassi Collection) Read online

  The fantasy took hold. I saw her now, still fucking, biting her lips in passion, her hands fluttering a tattoo like pigeons’ wings along the man’s back. Yet the man wasn’t me. It was any man who happened to fill this particular slot at this particular time. I looked down at her. Her eyes were closed. Her lean dancer’s body rippled and writhed under me, as she sucked at my cock with her now sloshing cunt, and put her legs around my thighs in that most intimate of all embraces. Her entire ripe body began to open, and I wasn’t sure it was me she was opening to. There was just man, just the male, only the cock.

  Torment burned through me as the sensations of sex forced me to move. I lost my breath and my ribcage became sore. I cried out, “Regina,” and yearned for her to respond to me. But all I received was an impersonal caress. “Don’t stop,” she said.

  I bounced immediately from sorrow to anger. The bitch! She was betraying me while she was in my very arms by nullifying me, making me a stud to rub herself on. I was past all notions of reason or logic. There was pure feeling, and the thoughts which that feeling fed. She was worse than a whore, for a whore makes no pretence of sharing, while the slut lying under me wooed me with promises of love and fidelity. Now she seemed filthy, and all my hidden hatred of women burst through and flooded the experience of sex. All she wanted was a male animal.

  And so I became that animal. From inside me growls rumbled up and through my teeth. I hunched my back and pinned her down, as though I were a great cat about to slash the throat of a deer. I bit into her flesh, nipping at her jaw and shoulders and chest. She bucked and dug her claws into my back. Pain matched pain. She opened her eyes in confusion, and for a full second she didn’t recognize me. She floundered in her responses and I screwed up my eyes to smile wickedly into her face. She saw that she had been caught and two rays of hatred shot back at me. I laughed in exultation and slapped her across the mouth. She screamed in anger. “Fuck you, fuck you, I’ll kill you!” she cried.

  I yelled at the top of my lungs, a crackling jungle cry that drove her head back into the pillow. Then, very softly, I said, “You stupid little liar.” And with that, drove my cock into her as hard as I could. A wavering cry fluttered up from her chest and she brought her hands to her mouth, making soft unclenched fists. Her legs came up and opened my cock into her like a man swimming in a deep lake. Her gaping, brimming pussy took every shock and thrust and got hotter and hotter. I slammed into her like a stallion rearing against his first bit, and she moaned, over and over again, “Oh no, don’t, yes, do it, no, please, oh, help me, fuck me, fuck me.”

  By now there was no personality left. It was sheer energy, and I looked down to see her quivering breasts, jiggling with each movement, her belly all wrinkled from being folded over, and her ass like a deep steaming dish on which was offered the unquenchable cunt. The heat flashes began to break up and down my body, and I urged her to let it all go, whispering, “Come on, come on, do it, reach for it.” Her cunt rose up like a fish leaping from the water and swallowed my cock whole. My bowels fell out, my eyes rolled back, and, like an epileptic in full fit, I felt my spine go into great rolling convulsions as I shot a thick volley into her begging crack.

  And then it was over. Almost immediately. There was none of that mutual settling into silence that follows a good fuck. I tasted only the bitterness of those who overextend their energy in fucking a fantasy while forgetting the person who is the source of the act. It was an impersonal fuck, a theatrical bang, the kind I can enjoy with tricks I pick up at parties, but which I cannot dig with Regina. For a moment I hovered at the edge of once and for all, making her impersonal to me, killing the myth of specialness with which she had infected me and which I nurtured. I wanted then to treat her like any one of the hundreds of men and women I have known and fucked. Why should I make this particular human being into a fetish? Why can’t she be just a good piece of ass in bed? Why did I come to insist on exclusiveness, with all its concurrent jealousy and limiting of consciousness?

  I wanted very much to get up and leave, never to see her again. I had no feelings but disgust and self-hatred. Yet, when I looked at her, I suddenly wanted to let go and just sink into her arms, to heal the split between us which burned like acid on my skin. We stared at each other over an immense distance, while eddies of love and hate, of trust and insecurity, flickered around the edges of our eyes. For no good reason, I smiled, and she grimaced and turned her face away. I pulled back from her and my now limp cock slithered out of the already cold cunt hole.

  I rolled over on my back and we lay silent for a few minutes, then she said, “Do you have the cigarettes by you?” And that was the making of the compact, the closing of the deed. It was the signal that we had not brought it off, but could now talk about it, talk about fucking, about love, about the future, about the state of civilization, about anything in the world, because we were too tense to lie quietly and watch the universe float by.

  I got the cigarettes and we lit them slowly, watching each other’s eyes over the flame. She lay back then, sprawled out to stare at the ceiling. I remained propped on one elbow, and looked at her body. The smallish breasts which had seemed boyishly exciting now looked merely inadequate. Her cunt hair was matted with sperm and blood. Her toenails were ragged and her mouth had re-formed into a thin mean slit. Everything about her which had turned me on a few moments earlier now seemed slightly repulsive.

  When I was younger, I was devastated by such changes in mood, and would have been angry at myself or hated the woman. But now I realized that this was the way of things, that when passion did not flow free and unencumbered, but became embroiled in distorting fantasies, then beauty became ugliness and the delicious juices of the body tasted rank and stale and rotten. We smoked for a long time.

  Then she turned to me. “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “Weren’t you there?” I asked, not without an edge.

  “I was someplace,” she said. “Not the same place you were.”

  Already it was beginning. The rationalizations would dim the sharp glare of the situation. This moment, enacted between millions of men and women, could be handled with anger or bitterness, but with us the liberal mode was most congenial. We reasoned that neither of us was “doing” anything to the other; there was no blame. Rather, she was in one place and I was in another, and there is no way to make judgements about what we did. There was no better or worse; only different. My mind accepted the logic of the scheme, but my blood boiled against it.

  “You don’t want to give,” I said very loudly. “And that’s all right. You can keep your precious cunt locked up tight. But don’t expect me to keep coaxing you and coming after you. Try finding someone else with as much patience as I have putting up with all your shit.”

  “My shit!” she yelled, picking up the ball on one bounce. And then we were off to another round. “If you weren’t so uncertain and spineless,” she continued, “I would have enough security to let go with you.”

  It could have gone on for some time, but we were both tired, and it ended as all our arguments end, in a feeling of sheepishness. The deed was done, and there was no going back to erase or change anything. The only direction was forward, probably to more of the same.

  We lit two more cigarettes to bring the chapter to a close. Another storm had been weathered, another notch of insight had been noted in the log, and we looked at one another like two warriors whose closeness lies in their mutual inability to totally do each other in. And in that look there was an odd tenderness which is the special mark of how I feel about her.

  For a long minute we moved into one another’s eyes. Our mutual projections joined: she saw in me the me that is most me-for-her, and I saw in her the her that is most her-for-me. And the selves we saw in one another saw one another’s selves, and the jagged vibration which had just set our teeth on edge found its proper groove, and we were back home with each other.

  I
put my cigarette out and laid my head down on her belly; I put my hands under her and felt her full, tough ass cheeks in my hands. Her body seemed to call me into it, and I began moving down toward her crotch, to put my mouth on her cunt, to lick those delicate lips and kiss what had again become a sheer dear fragrance.

  But she put her hand down and pushed my face away. It was done gently and tenderly, but the message was clear: “Get away from my cunt.” For a split second I felt the old anger, but I was too weary to give it rein. I let it pass and contented myself with getting up and asking with a false heartiness, “Want some coffee?”

  “I’d love some,” she said, smiling. I plunged one last time behind her eyes, to see if there was the slightest indication that she would cop to what had just happened. But either she was unconscious of her behavior and motives, or else an absolute master at whisking away what she didn’t want seen. There was nothing to do about it, so I put the matter out of my mind and went into the kitchen to boil some water.

  two.

  BEFORE SHE LEFT, we decided to try living together in California. There is something about the aura of such a decision that obscures all the real difficulties and impossibilities. I thought that, with enough will and constancy, it might be possible to resolve our problems, to dissolve them in time. I had some business to finish up, so I intended to join her in a month. We bought rings and made promises of fidelity.

  Now it was Sunday morning, and she had been gone a week. Two nights ago, she called, and it was one of those long distance long-distance conversations, where the words become a meaningless electronic jumble and the person is far away. We had little to talk about except our respective gossip, and even that only served as a vehicle for shunting resentments, for paying off old debts, real and imaginary. Without even the warmth of her presence to offset the negative feelings, I sensed all the tightness in her.

  Apropos of nothing, she mentioned a male friend who had visited her house. She described him in some detail and I wondered what she was getting at. “He wanted to make me,” she said. There was a long pause during which I felt the familiar burning beginning in my stomach. She continued, “But I showed him the ring and told him all about us.” I waited for the rest of it, waited for her to say that he didn’t turn her on, that since she was away from me only a few days, she couldn’t even think of another man. But the opposite followed. “The only thing that stopped me,” she said, “was that I knew you would be jealous.” I couldn’t resist the bait. “What happened?” I asked. “Oh, we talked,” she said, “and it was very friendly. I told him he could come by to visit any time he wanted.” The taunting in her voice was unmistakable; she was telling me that I had better get there as soon as possible, or else.

  I didn’t respond, and the rest of the conversation dribbled off into inanities. When I hung up I felt furious and sick. The barb had lodged home, and now I would be living with the spectre of this faceless, nameless man hanging around the edges of her life, in that amorphous California style, where people act more like sludges than human beings, and attach themselves to vortices of energy, waiting for the crumbs to fall, as fall they will. I pictured him in the living room, prowling, while Regina lay upstairs with her supply of dope and her beckoning stare, lolling on the bed and fingering her cunt, deciding whether or not she will let this one have her, tossing up her desire for a fuck to see if it came down heads or tails.

  And worse than that was my reaction, my stupid jealous response, instead of the thing I wanted to say, which is, “Go ahead, fuck whoever you like. See if they will put up with your temperamental pussy for long. Find some inarticulate pothead who will rub you with his tool. But when you want someone who knows what it’s all about, who knows how you like to be touched, who knows all the ways you try to hide and is able to come find you, then give me a call. But by that time, bitch, I might be too busy.”

  Yet some weakness was holding me down, making me feeble. Some great neurotic hand had me by the balls and was forcing me to play the role of spineless fool, copping to her taunts and allowing myself to fall into impotent rages. Compounding it was the fact that I didn’t have a clean conscience myself, because the night before I had gone to visit Joan, and spent the evening fucking.

  It had started innocently enough. We had been friends for a long time, and for one reason or another had never got down to making it. We fell into that kind of coy chumminess that women put on with men whom they don’t want to fuck, but not discourage either. It’s a way of keeping the lines of access open. When I knocked at her door there was no idea of sex in my mind. I wanted some music and a little dope. More than anything, I needed a Vicks rub for my soul.

  She was in the middle of ironing clothes, and I prepared to make my visit a short one. But before I knew it, she stopped what she was doing and sat down next to me, paying unusually close attention to my rap. Some subtle change in the vibrations caught me up, and I switched my set from verbal cues to body language, that means of communication that tells most directly where we are at, but which we ignore most of the time.

  Immediately everything slowed down, and the speed train of talk began to make stops to allow the passengers to look at the scenery. Which in this case was captivating. Joan was small in that way which suggests tight pussy and hard nipples. The fact that she was perfectly proportioned made her size all the more delicious. We fell into a lilting talk about movies we had seen, a topic which allowed us to speak mechanically and thus free our eyes and ears for more meaningful exchanges.

  As she sat there, she was doing a little dance, a dance that would be unseen by anyone who wasn’t paying the closest attention. Her tongue would flick out from time to time and lick the portion of her lips just at the line which divided the inside of her mouth from the outside. It was like a tiny hand coming to the edge of a cave and inviting me in. But the cave was a full, wet, continually sensitive mouth, which now seemed to be calling for a tongue or cock to visit it. Her hands fluttered back and forth from her lap to her hair, and her fingers spun an invisible fabric over her, a transparent shawl which she kept removing in order to expose her ripe breasts, which sagged and pressed against the tight shirt she wore. Each shift of her torso sent her tits shuddering against the cloth and outlined her nipples more sharply. My eyes went to her chest to watch the soft mounds move like seaweed in the tide, lolling lazily back and forth, screaming for my hand to reach out and grab them gingerly, as though plucking a ripe pear from a tree. And most of all I became aware of how she moved on her chair: a continual squirming shuffle with her ass that must have come near to searing her panties. Although there was hardly any external movement, she continued to squeeze her thighs together and let them fall open.

  By this time I was breathing rapidly and deeply. The words we were speaking dropped between us and went unheard and uncared-about. I leaned forward and watched her face as she spoke. Everything about her was alive, the small twitches of her mouth, and the way her eyes kept thrusting and yielding like the point of a fine fencing blade. Suddenly I saw her whole, this vibrant breathing creature of sound and touch, her entire body a field of pleasure and pain, and ripping aside all the silly conventions of time and place, I found myself in eternity with her, with no other considerations or connections, with not a thought for other people or other ties. Regina became phantasmagorical. This was now, this was real. There was no other context within which to dig it. Joan flashed it at the same time, and without a flicker of hesitation we moved into each other’s space and our lips met in that most electrifying of all experiences, the first kiss.

  For a few minutes there was nothing but the tentativeness of touch. My hands roamed her entire body, finding out the answers to all the questions I had asked myself during the years I could see her but did not feel her; how firm her ass was, and how sensitive her nipples, and did the little bulge above her belly button mean that she was totally relaxed into her womb? For if she was, then fucking her would be different from fuck
ing most women. It would mean being able to dive deep into her cunt, past the surface excitement of her lips and clitoris, and thrash about in a welcoming, wallowing vagina that could feel my cock and grip at it and come around it with heavy ripples and an overflow of hot juice.

  We separated and looked at one another in that classic instant of dislocation halfway between the oblivion of passion and the guidelines of social reality. “Are you sure you want to fuck me?” she said. “I wouldn’t want it to make us stop being friends.” I understood what she meant and hastened to reassure her. “There are people I fuck who aren’t my friends, and there are friends whom I don’t fuck; but best in the world are fucking buddies.” She smiled at that. “Why don’t you wait for me in the bedroom?” she said. “I have to go to the John first.”

  I walked off to the bedroom and was surprised to find myself swaggering. It wasn’t with any sense of conquest or John Wayneliness. Just a simple zoological response to the situation.

  I took off all my clothes except my shirt. It occurred to me that it would be indelicate to be lying there bare-assed naked as she came into the room. I am always surprising myself by finding odd bits and pieces of a conservative sexual psyche knocking around my consciousness. It reminded me of the time I lost my virginity in a San Francisco whorehouse. As I had waited in the room for the chick to show, I decided to keep my pants and socks on, but removed my shoes and shirt. And then wondered whether smoking a cigarette would give me bad breath and whether she would mind that. Actually, when she arrived, she just pulled out my cock to check for clap and then upped the price ten dollars by offering to give me head.

  Joan came in, still fully dressed. We looked at each other, and a great self-consciousness filled the room. Theoretically, we were inflamed with passion, or at least that was supposed to be the reason men and women fucked. But actually all I felt was a kind of disinterested curiosity, wondering how she tasted and smelled, and whether she would dive all the way in at once or had some restraining notions about modesty. She climbed onto the bed and put her arms around me. “I want you to know that this isn’t just fucking for me,” she said. “I’m doing this because I really like you. Do you like me?”