Because in the scale of Western values, white woman is inferior to white man, but superior to black man. That’s why she can’t get off except with a Negro. It’s obvious why: she can go as far as she wants with him. The only true sexual relation is between unequals. White women must give white men pleasure, as black men must for white women. Hence, the myth of the Black stud. Great in bed, yes, but not with his own woman. For she has to dedicate herself to his pleasure. Upstairs, Beelzebub is back for another go-round. And now Miz Literature is giving me some kind of blow job. I think of the faraway village where I was born. Of all those blacks who traveled to a white man’s land in search of riches and came back empty-handed. I don’t know why — it has nothing to do with what’s going on— but I think of a song I heard years ago. A guy in my village had a Motown record. The song was about a lynching. The lynching in St. Louis of a young black man. He was hanged then castrated. Why castrated? I’ll never stop wondering about that. Why castrated? Can you tell me? Of course no one wants to get involved with a question like that. I’d love to know, I’d like to be one hundred percent sure whether the myth of the animalistic, primitive, barbarous black who thinks only of fucking is true or not. Evidence. Show me evidence. Definitively, once and for all. No one can. The world has grown rotten with ideologies. Who will risk taking a position on a subject like that? As a black, I don’t have enough distance. Are black men sensual pigs? Are white men pale pigs? Yellow men refined pigs? Red men bleeding pigs? Only Pig is Pig. I don’t know why I always imagined the universe like that Matisse painting. Something about it struck me. It’s my essential vision of things. I’m talking about “Grand Intérieur Rouge” (1948). Primary colors. Strong, alive, violent and loud. Pictures inside a larger canvas. Everywhere flowers in different-sized pots. On two tables. A dark chair. On the wall a painting by the artist (the pineapple one) separated by a black demarcation. Under the table, a calico cat chased by a dog. Stylized, allusive strokes. Splashes of bright color. The skins of two beasts under the curved legs of the table on the right. The painting is primitive, animal, gregarious, fierce, flightly, tribal fantasy. You can feel a playful kind of cannibalism verging on immediate happiness. Right there, before your eyes. With those loud, primary colors and violent sexuality (despite the calm the eye feels) offering a new version of love in this modern jungle. When I ask myself hard questions about the role of color in sexuality, I remember Matisse’s answer. I have been carrying it with me ever since. I didn’t yet know it would not be enough to counter the storms of life, and that I would probably die with the teeth of that problem sunk into my neck.
Without warning I send a strong stream of come in Miz Literature’s face. She throws her head back and I catch a strange glow in her eyes. She dives down for my penis like a piranha. She sucks. I get hard. She gets on top. This isn’t one of those innocent, naïve, vegetarian fucks she’s used to. We’re two carnivores in bed. Miz Literature issues two or three high-pitched moans. Any minute, the vase of peonies above us is going to fall and split our heads open. I’m making love at the edge of the abyss. Miz Literature squats down in a dirty position and moves slowly up and down the length of my cock. A dusky mast. Her head is completely thrown back. Her breasts pointing to the ceiling and her mouth a painful smile. I caress her hips, her sweaty torso and the titillated tips of her breasts. Suddenly her body is racked by hard, rapid shocks and a low growl issues from her throat.
“Fuck me!”
Jesus Christ, that’s the limit! Here I am worrying about that animal Beelzebub who reduces sexuality to the animal level and all the time he was just screaming out loud what Miz Literature always wanted to say.
“You’re my man!”
I turn her over on her back. She is laid out as soft and pliable as a ragdoll. Her eyes sightless.
“Wait,” she breathes.
“Is everything all right?”
“You’re the first man I’ve ever said that to.”
“Huh?”
“I want to be yours.”
We made love again. Miz Literature got up an hour later and went to take a shower. She’s an hour and a half late for her class. She has to go back home first, change, then hurry to McGill. I stay in bed. No showers for me after love-making. I keep the smells. I open Bukowski’s book. Miz Literature kisses me chastely on the forehead then leaves with a final, astonished glance at the couch where Bouba still sleeps, mouth wide open and arms crossed over his chest.
Miz Afternoon on Her Radiant Bicycle
WITH GREAT ceremony, I remove the dust cover from the old Remington 22. The machine gives me a nasty look. We haven’t seen each other for a long time. The machine is sulking. I had it in pawn for a while. To cheer it up (there’s nothing worse than working on a depressed typewriter), I give it a good cleaning. I oil it with petroleum jelly. The Remington shines like a wild rosebush in the rain. My work table (which is also the dining room table, the spare chair and a makeshift bed when the desire arises) faces a narrow partition, away from the window. Behind the wall across the way is the room of a professional cyclist who spends night and day polishing his heap. Slowly, daylight enters the room. I flip open the Remington’s top and replace the ribbon. The cursor moves as smooth as silk. I slip a white sheet of paper in the roller, move my chair in front of the machine, settle in with a bottle of cheap wine at my feet and, once the ritual is over, I put my chin on my palm, dreaming as we all do of being Ernest Hemingway.
THREE HOURS LATER, the page as white as ever, I decide to clean house (sweeping, cleaning, the dishes) as proof that genius can express itself in a variety of ways. Waves of heat flood in through the window. I pile the books in a corner under the table and stow the typewriter under the bed.
The room is a pigsty. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I sweep up wherever the broom will reach and take down the trash. You could bake in this room. The room smells of sulfur and the whole place could burst into flames at any minute. I pick up bottles from under the table, the bed and the couch. I go down to Pellatt’s and get ten cents each from the guy behind the counter. Ah, America, America, America! (“On the day we call a witness from every nation, their pleas shall not avail the unbelievers, nor shall they be allowed to make amends.” Sura XVI, 85.) Nothing like routine to get you back in shape. I decide to do my change of address at the post office on St. Catherine Street. I go down St. Denis to St. Catherine and turn towards Radio-Québec. The air is quivering with heat. Strike a match and all Montreal will go up. I walk slowly. Just ahead of me, a girl comes out of Hachette with Miller under her arm and almost nothing on her back. My temperature shoots up to 120. It’s 90 degrees in the shade. The slightest spark and I’ll blaze like a slum on a Rio hillside. I warned myself to be careful. Every summer I go crazy like this, and a girl eating ice cream is always to blame. Miz Bookstore’s flavor is raspberry. In the final analysis, what’s a girl with ice cream except someone who is hungry or thirsty? But in the summertime it’s more than that. Just as I was about to fall in love with Miz Bookstore, I see another girl gliding down the street on her radiant bicycle, whistling. I stop breathing. She brakes and stops at the corner. Red light: her left foot on the pavement, her back bent gracefully, the nape of her neck exposed. Girls like to keep their hair short in the summer. Her body like a bent bow. Green light: she shoves off with her right foot on the pedal. Her body like the arrow that flies. Last image: her back a pure line, the graceful movement of her hips, her slender, adolescent thighs. The emotion: the pain of losing someone forever whom you’ve loved totally, if only for twelve and three-tenths seconds.