I read lying down with a pillow between my shoulderblades and my head slightly raised. Stiff neck guaranteed. Unfortunately, it’s my favorite position. Usually I read early in the morning before it gets too hot, when I’m not likely to be disturbed. The building emanates an aura of calm. My neighbors, retired for the most part, are not yet awake. In an hour or two it’ll be the breakfast routine, the whistling of the pipes, the tap of toothbrushes and the smell of bacon.
I watch Miz Literature move through the shadows. It looks like she’s wearing a yellow dress with a white collar. And ballerina shoes. I picture her dressing with care, putting on perfume (just a soupçon!) and her bra (she has small breasts) so she can go do dishes for a Negro in a filthy apartment on St. Denis near the Carré St. Louis. Skid row. Miz Literature comes from a good family, she has a bright future, upright values, a solid education, perfect mastery of Elizabethan poetry, she belongs to a feminist literary club at McGill — the McGill Witches — whose mission is to restore the reputation of unjustly neglected poetesses. This year they are publishing a luxury edition of Emily Dickinson with ink drawings by Valery Miller. So what’s going on here? You could hold a gun to her head and she wouldn’t do the tenth of what she does here for a white guy. Miz Literature is writing her PhD thesis on Christine de Pizan. Which is no mean feat. So what the hell is she doing in this filthy slum? And don’t blame Cupid. If she were madly in love with a McGill guy he’d never ask her to do the tenth of what she does here, spontaneously, freely and graciously.
“Why do the dishes now?”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“Not really.”
“You’re reading! Oh, I’m sorry.”
And believe it or not, she really is sorry. Reading is sacred in her book. Besides, a black with a book denotes the triumph of Judeo-Christian civilization! Proof that those bloody crusades really did have some value. True, Europe did pillage Africa but this black is reading a book.
“There, I finished.”
She puts the clean dishes away carefully. A real jewel. Her only shortcoming is that she’ll go to any length to make this room pleasant. Confer an Outremont touch to it. Every time she comes she brings something new. Pretty soon, in a few months, we’ll be crushed under the weight of rare vases, engravings, bedside lamps and all that crap you can buy in those snobby boutiques on Laurier Street. McGill people are taught to decorate their environment. Look what I’ve gotten myself into! All right, I can understand that part. But I don’t get why she’s doing it here in this slum. Must I tell her that a slum is not a salon? Maybe it’s part of her double life. By day a WASP princess; by night slave to a Negro. That could be exciting. Suspense guaranteed because with Negroes you never know. Let’s just eat her up right now, yum-yum, with a little salt and pepper. I can see the headlines in La Presse.
THE TALK OF THE TOWN— “Did you hear? Two blacks ate a McGill co-ed.”
“How did they discover the crime?”
“The police found her arm in the refrigerator.”
“Oh, good lord! Is that the new immigration policy?
Importing cannibals?”
“I suppose they raped her first, while they were at it?”
“We’ll never know. They ate everything.”
“Oh, good lord.”
Miz Literature climbs into my bed. I put the book down at the foot of the bed, next to the bottle of wine, then bring her down to my level. Europe has paid her debt to Africa.
And Now Miz Literature Is Giving Me Some Kind of Blow Job
MIZ LITERATURE pours water into a ceramic vase she brought yesterday, then carefully arranges the flowers. She opens the window and places the vase in the left-hand corner, just above my head.
Miz Literature is standing on the bed and her long legs, sheathed in mocha stockings, bring visions of the Golden Gate. The sun is with us now. Hot air fills the room. I drop the book to the floor and pull Miz Literature to me.
Miller says there is nothing better than making love at noon. Miller is right.
If you think you’re about to be served up a hot slice of Miz Literature’s sexual proclivities, think again. You’ve got your choice of porno novels for that. I recommend the Midnight series. Miz Literature says I make love the way I eat. With the hunger of a man stranded on a desert island. When you think about it, that’s no compliment. Strange, but she says I remind her of an innocent child who has been mistreated too long. She likes making love to me. After the storm has passed, she holds me in her arms. I doze off. On her white breast. I am her child. An untrusting child, so hard sometimes. Her black boy. She strokes my forehead. Happy, gentle, fragile moments. I am more than Black. She is more than White.
If she had been giving me a blow job, I would have had my cock lopped off. Oof! Cut clean off! This time the ceiling fell in — literally, in a cloud of pink dust. Beelzebub is pulling out all the stops upstairs. A fuck to the death. Miz Literature has never attended one of Beelzebub’s demonstrations. The galloping ghost. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The ceiling opening up. We’re rooted to the spot and in our minds, the terrifying image of a couple fucking crushing a couple in repose. The Koran says, “Tell me, if the scourge of Allah overtook you unawares or openly, would any perish but the transgressors?” (Sura VI, 47.)
Miz Literature has been staring straight ahead since it began. Hypnotized. Her lips tremble slightly. A contraction at one corner of her mouth.
Upstairs Beelzebub is going back for second helpings. Miz Literature is as red as a boiled lobster. I’m sure she’s going to drop from a stroke. They’re tearing each other apart upstairs. A super-performance. Shamefully, I must face the fact: I start to get hard again. White, right and proper, Miz Literature glances surreptitiously at my penis. The snaking veins begin to uncoil. A serpent’s head rising. The Koran says, “Men, have fear of your Lord, who created you from a single soul. From that soul He created its mate, and through them He bestrewed the earth with countless men and women. Fear Allah, in whose name you plead with one another, and honor the mothers who bore you. Allah is ever watching over you.” (Sura IV, 1.) I cannot countenance this thing that abases me. No doubt, man is an unnatural animal. The Koran asks, “How many generations have We destroyed before them! Can you find one of them still alive, or hear so much as a whisper from them?” I try to think unpleasant thoughts; I think of The Critique of Pure Reason. Kant becomes porno. The Critique gives me a hard-on. It grows. Miz Literature stares straight ahead. We hear the double gasp of Beelzebub and his accomplice. Like a slow dance. They’re doing it in slow motion. In some movies they show the violent parts in slow motion to increase the effect. Like violence shot into our blood. A hypodermic. In our veins. We sense their movements in a mad modern ballet. Two naked bodies violently intertwined in a pas de deux of death. My sex keeps rising, obeying a secret command beyond my will. Miz Literature turns slightly on her axis, watching it rise with a disconcerting stare. She lowers herself towards me, reducing the angle to fifteen degrees. In the sitting position. Her eyes still staring. I close mine and Miz Literature, in a trance, takes me in her mouth. Between her beautiful pink lips. I’d dreamed of it. I’d licked my chops over it. I didn’t dare ask her. An act so. I knew that as long as she hadn’t done it, she wouldn’t be completely mine. That’s the key in sexual relations between black and white: as long as the woman hasn’t done something judged degrading, you can never be sure.