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themselves a secret police and spy constantly to make sure that nobody gets more than the legal
maximum, which is a stale and uncertain minimum at best and sometimes completely unavailable. They
say out of one side of their mouths that sex is okay and beautiful, but out of the other side they say that
any real enthusiasm for sex is a sign of immaturity, Don Juanism, nymphomania, satyriasis, and social
irresponsibility.
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Go ahead and enjoy sex, they say, if you're willing to make everybody else murderously jealous and
maybe drive them crazy and if you're willing to degrade the girl and deal with the leering motel
proprietress and the abortionist and the police. Go ahead and enjoy it, and then boast about it and snicker
and sneer at it for the dirty thing it is. (Theylie when they say it's beautiful, though not I.) Go ahead and
enjoy it, they say, if you're willing to pay the price. But remember there's always a price. My God, the
price you sometimes have to pay!"
I shut my mouth. The breath whistled through my nose for a while. I was standing by the bedside table
now. The drinking glass had a half inch of water left in it and a lipstick print that looked purple in the
blue light. The pillbox I'd given Vivian that morning was sitting beside it, open and empty. I was glad of
that because I'd been afraid all along she might have taken only one of the two capsules and one might
not have worked so completely or so cleanly.
I let myself look at Vivian now for several seconds. She hadn't vomited at all or been sick in any way
that I could see. I'd somehow guessed all along that the effects of the cyanide wouldn't be as
unpleasantly violent as the books described they always exaggerate those things and try to throw an
extra scare into you, about death as well as sex! though I had been prepared to clean Vivian up if that
had been necessary, clean her up in all tenderness and reverence.
I lightly touched the hand nearest me. It rocked a little, as though there were something under it liquid
and gurgling. And it was icy cold.
Somehow the fact that her hand was cold shocked me and I quicky drew back my fingers. Naive of me, I
suppose, but really except for her pale blue complexion, which was justified by the blue light, and the
cold of her hand, and of course the empty pillbox, there was no way of knowing she was dead.
Then, gaining in boldness, I leaned closer to her and for the first time I caught the sweet musky rotten
odor of corruption.
That jarred, I didn't want it, and I started for the bathroom, but before I got there I saw the slim fanciful
bottles on her dressing table. I selected a lilac spray cologne and passed it back and forth at arm's length
above her, from feet to head, several times.
Then, as the floral alcoholic mist settled, I plunged my hands through it and reverently parted the white
silk kimono above her waist and drew back a little and looked at her breasts.
At that moment I experienced ecstasy, awe, and a kind of stubborn astonishment. Why,why , is it that
two curving cones of flesh should exercise such a fiendish hold on man's imagination? They must mean
something, be something; they can't be just a meaningless arbitrary target for man's fixation. I do not
buy that theory about remembering mother's good milk and being cuddled into mother's warm protective
bosom. Grown men aren't milk maniacs. Surely giving milk and pillowing a squirming brat are only
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subordinate functions of a woman's breasts, the sort of work they can do when they're broken down and
good for nothing else. No, a woman's breasts must be designed for something fundamentally much more
important. They're organs for voiceless communication, dear helpless hands, lovely mouthless snouts.
They're trying to say or do something. They're like soft-nosed velvet creatures pushing out of a woman's
body, wanting to feel and sense intensely maybe Shelley was getting at something deep when he
thought of a woman's breasts with each nipple replaced by a peering eye. Breasts are sacraments an
outward sign of some mysterious hidden glory. They're beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and I don't
understand it at all.
Once I saw some pornographic movies of what I suppose are the ordinary sort at any rate, men and
live women doing it together and after the first second or so I didn't feel any of the ususal delightful
hot excitement (such as comes to me when I have someone undress a woman in my imagination or as
used to come to me at burlesque shows) but only a cold intense awe like watching live birth or death
might awaken or observing some completely inorganic phenomenon on a grand scale, such as the creep
of a glacier or the surging of the sea in storm or the implacable rush and leap of a forest fire and the
flight of large animals before it, or the slow wheeling of the stars.
No, Vivian, I don't understand it at all, I heard myself say, quite loudly. It hit me that I could freely
talk to Vivian now, talk to her about all the things I'd never been able to hint at before, talk to her about
the thingsbeyond those things the things you couldn't even think of until you'd talked about the others
first why, there was no end to it.. What's more, I realized I wouldn't have minded if Vivian had been
able to listen to me, yes, and answer me too, comment on what I said, show me her view of things and
maybe bring new light into my own brain that way; in fact, I even wished she would.
It hit me hard, let me tell you, it struck me all in a heap as our country cousins say, to realize that in one
way I was sorry now I had killed Vivian. I decided that I would have to get this thing straightened out, I
would have to explain myself to myself, before I did anything else.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to go back and change what I'd done. I was still delighted that I had
Vivian in a situation where I could enjoy her just as I wanted to. My gaze kept licking back every few
seconds to her naked breasts and every time it did I re-experienced that same mixed ecstasy. But I was
secure in the knowledge that I could find fulfillment with Vivian whenever I wanted: I had all the night
ahead of me. It was just that it was beginning to seem a necessary or at least a desirable part of my
fulfillment that I explain myself first. And if I talked to Vivian while doing it, that wasn't because I
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