Francis Levy
Erotomania: A Romance
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HUMAN PERSONALITY IS LIKE RELIGION. It can be a source of great wisdom and solace, but it also creates divisions, conflicts, and sometimes even wars. Personalities, like religions, had often done more harm than good, and now that more than sex was involved, now that our personalities had entered into the relationship, we were already experiencing conflict. IT WAS OH SO MUCH EASIER WHEN FEW WORDS WERE EXCHANGED AND ALL WE DID WAS FUCK.
AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I want to thank Maggie Paley for her insight, humor, and constant patience in helping me to edit the manuscript. I would also like to thank Eliza and Eric Obenauf for their their neverending fund of energy, creativity, and resourcefulness as editors and publishers. Thanks also to Adam Ludwig for his editorial suggestions, Patricia McCormick for being an inspired advocate, and to my wife Hallie Cohen for her loving and unforgiving critical eye.
Erotomania: A Romance
For Hallie, Zeno, and I itus
I GAVE HER A GOOD FUCK? WALKED OUT, AND HAD A FEW BEERS at the corner var. It wasn't one of my hangouts$ I didn't know anybody, but I didn't care. I still smelled of her pussy, I felt I owned the place. She had a boyfriend who came home from work at ten, but I would have left anyway. I didn't like talking to her, but I loved the way she fucked. She fucked as the Anna Magnani figure in Roselllini's Open City (1945) would have fucked — devouring her partner like a child stealing sweets. Neither of us bothered with th niceties. I'd pull her blouse over her head. She'd unzip my fly and go down on me. It was after we ware through that the trouble began. I always found myself wandering in the street, not remembering her face or how it had started. We'd stopped fucking at 9:01. I noticed it on her digital clock. By 9:04 I was already putting my socks on. I always put me socks on before putting on my underwear and jeans since her floors were so cold. They were made of marble. The bedroom was in what had once been the bathroom of an old mansion that was now split up into apartments, but no one had ever dealt with the heating system, which was probably another reason she liked having one more body on top of her during the evening than she would have had, if she'd been faithful to her boyfriend. I was like that extra blanket you keep at the bottom of the bed to make sure you get enough heat.
The little bit of talk she insisted on as I pulled my pants off was a formality, and I hated her for it since she had nothing to say. The forced talking was where the prostitution came in. A person has to pay for his pleasures; it's the Protestant Ethic. I don't see why people just can't accept the fact that they're going to fuck, that there is no rhyme or reason for the fucking, that it doesn't need to be lily-coated or explained away with good intentions. You don't insist on the niceties when you breathe or sit down to take a crap. Okay, fucking involves another person, and there are fucks that can be accompanied by meaningful conversation, but it's not post hoc, ergo propter hoc. One doesn't necessarily follow from the other.
I stopped for pizza on the way home. Normally I would have felt sorry for myself eating alone in the pizzeria on Chapel Street a week before Christmas, but I'd been fucked and I knew I didn't want anything more for the moment. It wasn't just that I'd been fucked, it was all the memories of how much she wanted me and how wantonly she pursued her orgasms. She placed her finger against my asshole. It was like putting a key in the ignition. She had control of me, guiding me back and forth over her. She was selfish in the pursuit of pleasure. The extent of her desire made me question the meaning of human love. I remembered a scene of a hyena chasing down a baby kangaroo on "Wild Kingdom." It was feasting on the kangaroo's intestines, its mouth covered with blood, even as the creature's limbs were still moving.
This wanting me-especially since we plainly didn't care about each other's well being in all the usual ways-made me doubt everything. Was the feasting on each other, like animals on the steppe, the true essence of the man/animal? 1 drink my beer, I eat my pizza, I take my crap, I go to sleep, I get up, go over and fuck her brains out before the boyfriend comes home from work. That would be tomorrow, the next day, and the day after. I wasn't complaining. I didn't want anything else out of life. I had just never experienced human selfishness in such a raw and appealing form.
She wanted me because of the way my dick unselfconsciously rammed both her holes, and I liked how she thrust her tongue in my mouth as she drove her nails into my back. As 1 impaled her, she thrashed about just like that kangaroo. What were all these other relationships with their medical policies, their certificates, their insurance, their pre- and postnuptial agreements, their fights, their consultations, their counseling sessions, their birthdays, their anniversaries and burials, their picture albums, pendants? Candlelight talks at restaurants whose architecture created the appropriate mood to induce fornication lacked the bare-bones truthfulness of our fucking, which in this last incarnation even included some hair pulling. She placed my hand on the hair at the back of her head as I fucked her in the ass. Having been given the reins, I was yanking on her mane. She screamed. I couldn't tell if it was out of pleasure or pain. She was now a galloping horse. I was pulling on the bit. What was I learning?
I couldn't get the taste of her out of my mouth despite the fact that 1'd ordered my pizza with pepperoni and pepper. I'm a tolerant man, I'll put up with anything but the pretension to romantic love. It's almost as bad as the self-congratulatory pretension to culture that you see amongst opera-goers. If she'd only shut her mouth when I was getting dressed,1 could take the mildewed taste of her pussy in my mouth forever.
Our encounters weren't all nonverbal communications or perfunctory chatter. There were a few great recitatives before we got carried away on her lubricity and my hardness. For instance, soon after I walked in I saidjou look likeyou really want to get fucked today, which was matched by heryeah my cunt is really hot and empty. I wantyou to shoot over my face, all over my lips and nose and cheeks, I want it dripping from my eyelids then fuck me hard in the ass. The only fight we ever had was when I took the talking too far. I said imagine me taking a hot piss between your tits. We were actually already fucking when I said that because sometimes we talked dirty to each other while we were in the process. She stopped in the middle of everything. Take that back. I don't like that. I thought she was going to pull herself out from under me, but a few seconds later she gave me the green light by shoving her finger up my ass again.
Who was she? She was just this girl I met on the street. I didn't pick her up. In essence, it's every man's fantasy: You spot a babe, she asks if you want to come up to her place. I had my tongue in her mouth and my finger in her hole within three or four minutes of appraising the premises. There were no lines, no enchantment, no seduction. There was no dialogue. I didn't make any comments about the architecture of her apartment or the provenance of any of its furnishings. I displayed a distinct unknowledgeability For someone who was so desired, I was immediately impressed by how unimportant I appeared to be. I'm not the kind of charismatic character women flock to. Yet she wanted me without my saying anything pithy, romantic, insightful, or empathetic. She definitely was not after me because I possessed insight about her which others lacked. I knew nothing. Emotion is supposed to lead to sex. In our case the sex preceded emotion. I could have been watching a porn flick. Instead I was living it and watching it at the same time. Why try for more when everything was so perfect? If I got to know her history, her problems, defeats, joys, infatuations, it could be a disaster for our lovemaking.