Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver (classic fiction .txt) 📗

ear, which I couldn’t or didn’t understand. Didn’t care. And I filled up the palms of my hands with his shoulders. He pulled my blouse from my skirt in the back and I pressed my hips against his genitals and felt his erection, under his jeans. I kicked off my shoes and unbuttoned his pants, holding him, hardened, in my right hand and pulling his hair with my left, while he penetrated my mouth with his tongue. He unbuttoned my blouse down the back and pulled it off, lowering himself to take my nipples in his mouth, while I stroked his eyelids with my fingertips. How late in life I came to understand sex, how much time I wasted. He unfastened my skirt and it fell to the ground. I bent over and licked his ears and the back of his neck. He licked my thighs and in between. And I led him to my bed. My baby. My baby boy. And he stood over me, making me want him, and understanding that I wanted to be made to want. And we made love with the violent passion of children and animals ripping at each other, biting and hurting beautifully. . . . And from my bed, the window views the river and the city beyond, and as he held me, as I had him, I became a child again, the years dripping away and falling off of me, until I was a girl. And the river flowed and the city on the other side changed from what it is to what it was: the sharp angry teeth of the buildings, the glass angles and steel knives became rounded. Until he finished. And I finished. And I threw my head back and the sun was setting on a city of the past, where everything was beautiful, and we were children, and more . . . easily pleased.

(She looks around and realizes that she has exposed more than she intended)

So you see, sex, it seems, is very important, when it comes to seeing the beauty of things.

(She crosses to her dressing table, and slowly lets her hair down. Amy closes the chiffon drape quickly. Suddenly light comes up behind the drape and Tony and Vivian are there, as if by magic. Claire is seated, oblivious to their presence, looking into her mirror. Tony and Vivian are dressed in full evening clothes. We hear “The Physician,” recorded by Gertrude Lawrence. As the song plays, Tony and Vivian do a dance that begins in traditional ballroom style, but changes rather quickly. The dance becomes a series of movements, rife with double entendres. As the song ends, Amy pulls around a burlap curtain. The new curtain is dirty, distressed, covered with blood and grime. There are words on the curtain: “Sex, Work, Girls, Men, God.” The words appear to have been written in blood.)

SCENE 2

Philip emerges abruptly from a tear in the burlap curtain. He walks to a pool of light and addresses the audience.

PHILIP: Sex. Philip and Sex:

What a preponderance of time I spend, we spend, everyone spends, dwelling on, pursuing, planning, regretting, thinking about, and avoiding the subject of Sex. I don’t know if preponderance was the right word, but you know what I mean, I hope.

I have a sick feeling in my stomach. I don’t remember when I ate last, so naturally, I don’t remember what I ate last, but it has upset my stomach—I think. I’m sure it was spoiled. It was probably some bad fish. I hate fish. I would never’ve eaten fish. You know what I mean. Pressed fish. Processed fish. And now I have botulism! I don’t think that’s the right word. You get that from canned goods. No one cans fish. Hell, you know what I mean. Trichinosis! No, God, that’s something you get from undercooked pork. I may have eaten pork last, but if I did I didn’t get trichinosis, I got—food poisoning! That’s it, food poisoning! Oh the hell with it!

Philip and Sex:

Although I have tried to make sex less and less important in my life, which implies that it was at some point important, which really isn’t accurate—but you know, the pursuit of it was important. That was my point. I have systematically tried to make the pursuit of sex, the planning and flirting, the buying of equipment, etc. etc., less important in my life.

I don’t find my sex organs particularly attractive. I don’t mean that. I mean, I don’t find my sex organs particularly attractive. That’s the same thing, isn’t it? Let me clarify—oh hell! I don’t think mine are any less attractive than anybody else’s. I don’t think my penis is any uglier than yours, say, or yours. But then, I’m assuming a lot, because I haven’t seen your penis. But then you haven’t seen mine. And let me tell you right now, you’re not going to! And not because I think it’s any uglier than anybody else’s, but just because I don’t want to! So, my point is: sex parts are ugly. Which, of course raises the invariable question, what is ugly and what is beautiful? We are all trained to see certain things as beautiful and other things as ugly, or less so. I haven’t decided whether this is entirely environmental or whether genetics has a hand in it. But the pictures in National Geographic of women with long, pendulous breasts and disks, like garbage can lids, implanted into their lips, leads me to the conclusion that it is largely environmental conditioning. (I don’t know if conditioning was the right way to end that sentence, but it was long and I lost the thread—DON’T JUDGE ME!)

Anyway, we are all trained that certain lines are attractive, angles, pleasing to the eye, cleanness of line and so forth. Anyone who’s studied design or the Munsell color wheel knows what I’m talking about. And let’s face it. The scrotum really falls through the cracks of what is generally considered attractive.