Unfortunately my powers of recuperation were not so great that I was capable of performing again, despite Elly's ministrations to make me get another erection. When she noticed that she was singularly unsuccessful, she hollered at me, “You see, you see … you have already forgotten that you have two women; can't you imagine how it would be if you married one of us?”
She threw herself upon Lotte and embraced her passionately, caressing her body softly yet insistently, and plastering her with moist kisses; and when Lotte lifted her beautiful legs, exposing the lips of her private parts, Elly tried to stuff her breast into the love-nest, trying to rub the tickler with her erect swollen nipple. She kept staring at my member, groped at it occasionally, but my plight had been so exhausted that nothing happened at all.
Elly became frustrated. “We have to do something … can't we give her a substitute?” She pulled me down and made me lick her sister's tickler while she nuzzled her face under Lotte's behind, tickling and licking the other entrance with her tongue. Lotte groaned and cried out loud. I felt another erection coming up slowly. I pushed Elly forcefully aside. It felt as if I spent an eternity on top of Lotte and I would still have been there, unable to reach a climax, if Elly had not uninterruptedly spurred my flagging passions by licking my balls and my asshole.
Finally the three of us were so exhausted that we fell asleep and almost missed the usual hour at which the girls left the studio. But that particular day the girls were insatiable nymphs. They could not bring themselves to getting dressed. They danced naked around the room, carrying me along with them, while they were singing, “Isn't it getting hard yet, isn't it getting hard?”
Finally they left, because nothing happened. I did not think at that time that I would be able to attain erection for the rest of my life. I walked them, like I always did, toward the iron gate, kissing their hands respectfully.
When I wanted to enter my home again, the gardener walked up to me and handed me a telegram which had arrived earlier. I opened it, and its contents made me faint. I fell to the floor ere the gardener had a chance to catch me. I don't think that the message would have devastated me as much if I had not been so exhausted from the orgy. I had regained consciousness before the doctor who had been called, had arrived. By the evening of that day I was ready to travel on a long voyage which led me across France and two days later I kissed my mother's cold hands.
* * *
After the funeral, which had taken place in the free country where Mama had given up her passionate spirit, I had a nervous breakdown. I spent a long time in the care of an old, venerable doctor in the same hotel where Mama had expired.
My younger brother, who had arrived with a companion, did not move from my bedside. He became my friend during my long period of illness. He was a fine person who had inherited Mama's beauty and passion. His hands were so soft, his eyes so large and beautiful, his expression so pensive. I soon knew that in him the love of both sexes had mixed to become its own particular expression, a love which is not precisely the same as a woman's but yet its desire is for the strength only a man can offer.
He must have noticed that I had recognized it in the way I treated him. What could have happened to me, if a female had not taken possession of me at my tender age, had become second nature to him. He symbolized for me the resurrection of a Grecian youth who inflames the passions of his own sex, conquering the women who have become useless to their men. A creature of greatest perfection. We never talked about it, because I was afraid that words would not be tender enough, too harsh to express my true feelings. And he was grateful for my silence with a quiet intensity.
He made me want to get better. He consoled me with Mama's passing in a way which can neither be called motherly, nor only brotherly. During my convalescence he gave me a new lust for life as soon as he had noticed that a kiss from him made me shiver. Whenever I was moody, or when I did not want to take my medicine, he smiled and would say, “If you're not nice today, I won't kiss you.”
He has become a very happy man, an apostle of beauty.
It took months before I finally noticed the faint stirrings of a will to live within me, and it took as many weeks before I walked out into the world again. I was no longer young in mind and body, despite my relatively few years; I had become a mature man.
Chapter Seven. THE MAN
I could put this “man” between quotation marks to denote the irony of the meaning of this word. What do I care about this so-called “virility” of your “manhood.” This society has made itself a fantastic ideal of strength. As long as he is able to perform, every weakling is allowed to consider himself a giant. But the moment the ability for carnal pleasure disappears for one reason or another, and sometimes this may happen overnight, it happens frequently that a man does not become serious, but sad. And I truly believe that a sad man is the most ridiculous sight on earth.
Well, I was at the time such a man. I wrote my most stupid book, a novel drenched with melancholy, and bathed in tears. Today I know people a lot better — it's odd, but there are so few men and women — and I am no longer surprised that this particular bit of trash became my greatest best seller. I have written many more and better things since which have given me the recognition in the small circle of connoisseurs which is necessary for a creative person, but I have never had another smash like that bad book I wrote. I don't think, or hope, that I will ever have another one. But when it happened I was still blinded enough to be very proud of my “success” and I seriously believed myself to be what all these male and female morons told me I was, a great man. The success of this novel was also the reason that a theatrical producer in Vienna, who had read some of my older plays, commissioned me to write a play for him. To me, his request seemed obvious.
It was about two years after Mama's death that I returned to Vienna. I had successfully recuperated from my weakness and I also had forced myself to forget about everything that had happened prior to that sad day … I refused to think about the past. But, on the road to Vienna, several events of my life were forcibly brought back to my memory, because of the familiar surroundings, and one period above all stood out in all its glory, my year in Salzburg.
I must admit that I had a terrible longing for my two girl friends who did not know anything else but that I had been called away for an emergency two years ago. It must have been an insult to them not to hear a word from me, the man who wanted to marry one of them, for so long. It occurred to me to interrupt my voyage to Vienna, in Salzburg. I started to enjoy the idea of seeing them again, though I realized that they must have looked for, and found, a replacement for me. They simply did not belong to those people who just sit there and save it for the love of a man who takes off for several years, and they also were not the types to deny a man their bodies out of a misplaced feeling of spite. I knew them well enough for that.
I had kept my home in Salzburg by paying rent several years in advance. And it was the first place I went to. My gardener was very surprised and told me that I had changed so much that he had trouble recognizing me. Then he went on to tell me that the “ladies,” and he cocked his head, blinked his eyes and cackled knowingly, had inquired after me for several months but finally they had stayed away. He even gave me their names and the moment he noticed that my ears perked up he became more confidential. “They were no good for a fine gentleman like you … everybody in Salzburg knew about them … ooh, I tell you, Sir, about a year ago there was a real scandal with a married man about those two … his wife had to come between them … she went at them with a dog whip …”