The Naughty Bits (7 page)

He said he had something very important to ask me that meant more than anything in the world to him and that I must answer absolutely truly. I said that I would do the best I could . . .

“You know I never slept with anyone except Zelda.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I thought I had told you.”

“No.” . . .

“Zelda said that the way I was built I could never make any woman happy . . . She said it was a matter of measurements. I have never felt the same since she said that and I have to know truly.”

“Come out to the office,” I said.

“Where is the office?”

“Le water,” I said.

We came back into the room and sat down at the table.

“You’re perfectly fine . . . There’s nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.”

“Those statues may not be accurate.”

“They are pretty good. Most people would settle for them.”

“But why would she say it?”

“To put you out of business. That’s the oldest way in the world of putting people out of business” . . .

We went over to the Louvre and he looked at the statues but still he was doubtful about himself.

“It’s not basically a question of the size in repose,” I said. “It is the size that it becomes.”

from
My Secret Life

ANONYMOUS

I remember a discussion I had with some friends in college about how far we had traveled to have sex. The general consensus: far, quite far. We had all cashed in frequent flier miles or student vouchers, driven long hours, and even, in my case, taken two-day bus trips just to get some nook. I regret none of it. Nor, truth be told, do I regret vast amounts of time expended for less tangible erotic results: watching discolored and unshaped images on the scrambled Playboy channel, flipping through my mom’s nursing books for good line drawings and the occasional photo (preferably without venereal disease), sneaking onto my roof in the middle of the night to try to catch my neighbor undressing, watching countless hours of late night Cinemax with the sound off hoping just to see a boob. Practices such as these would be really pathetic if they weren’t so universal. We are amateur pornographers, all of us, in the most amateurish ways—at least at certain points in our lives. And if we grow up and gain the right simply to go to the local adult bookstore and purchase a video, it is not without a certain diminishment of the joys of what we find. As Augustine says about reading the Bible, it’s the work that makes it interesting.

All this is why, of the twelve volumes of the anonymous Victorian diary,
My Secret Life,
the most interesting are the first few, in which Walter (the diarist) recounts his various endeavors to see quim. Walter is a randy little man, and he spends a lot of time trying to get an eyeful. His first chance comes with his cousin when they catch his mother and aunts peeing. Later they get the most out of keyholes, of lifting the petticoats of the servants, and of hiding under street grates. The grates provide the best viewing, as the following excerpt demonstrates. Good things come to those who wait.

Another night we heard two pairs of feet above us, one was the heavy footstep of a man. “Don’t be foolish, he won’t know,” said a man in a very low tone. “Oh! no—no, I dare not,” said a female voice, and the feet with a little rustling moved to another grating. Henry and I moved on also. “You shall, no one comes here, no one can see us,” said the man in a still lower tone. “Oh! I am so frightened,” said the female. A little gentle scuffling now took place, and then all seemed quiet but a slight movement of the feet. “Are they there?” whispered Henry from the vault. I nudged him to be quiet, and putting the light as high up as I could, pushed aside the slide a little only.

We were well rewarded. Just above our heads were two pair of feet, one pair wide apart, and hanging only partly down at her back the garments of a female, in front the trousers of a man, with the knees projecting slightly forward between the female’s legs, and higher up a bag of balls were hanging down hiding nearly the belly and channel, which the prick was taking. The distended legs between which the balls moved, enabled us however to get a glimpse of the arsehole end of a cunt. The movement of the ballocks showed the vigor with which the man was fucking, but there must have been some inequality in height, and either he was very tall, or she very short, for his knees and feet moved out at times into different positions. He then ceased for an instant his shoving, as if to arrange himself in a fresh and more convenient posture, and then the lunges recommenced. He must have had his hands on her naked rump, from the way her clothes hung, showing her legs up to her belly, or to where his breeches hid it, or where the clothes fell down which were over his arm.

Once, I imagine, the lady’s clothes were in his way, for there was a pause, his prick came quite out, her feet moved, her legs opened wider. He did not need his fingers to find his mark again, his long, stiff, red-tipped article had slidden in the direction of her bumhole, but no sooner had they readjusted their legs than it moved backwards, and again it was hidden from sight in her cunt. The balls wagged more vigorously than ever, quicker, quicker, the lady’s legs seemed to shake, we heard a sort of mixed cry, like a short groan and cry together, and the female voice say, “Oh! Don’t make such a noise,” then a quiver and a shiver of the legs, and all seemed quiet.

When I first had removed the slide, I did so in a small degree, fearing they might look below and see it, but if the sun had shone from below, I believe now they must have been in that state of excitement that they would not have noticed it. To see better I opened the slide more, and gradually held the lantern higher and higher, until the chimney through which the light issued was near to the grating. I was holding it by the bottom at arms length, and naturally, so as to best see myself. Henry could not see as well, although standing close to me, and our heads nearly touching. “Hold it more this way,” said he in an excited whisper. I did not. Just then the lady said, “Oh! Make haste now, I am so frightened.” Out slipped the prick—I saw it. At the very instant, Henry pulled my hand to get the lantern placed so as to enable him to see better. I was holding it between the very tips of my fingers, just below the feet of the copulating couple. His jerk pulled it over, and down it went with a smash . . . A huge prick as it seemed to me drew out, and flopped down, a hand grasped it, the petticoats were falling round the legs, when the crash of the lantern came. With a loud shriek from the lady, off the couple moved, and I dare say it was many a day before she had her privates moistened up against a wall again, and over a grating.

from
“A Rapture”

THOMAS CAREW

Censorship works. Much as I like to point out the contrary voices that have peeped out of the history of repression, we still have a radically skewed idea of centuries past because so many of their great works are kept from our eyes. Until recently, few people would know, for example, the number of women who were writing in the Middle Ages and the massive contributions they made to the culture of the West—including such breakthroughs as the first autobiography written in English (by Margery Kempe), the first Christian plays (by Hrotsvita of Gandersheim), or the first biography (of Charles V, by Christine de Pisan). Nor, thanks to other censorship agendas, do most people realize that Elizabethan drama contains as much bisexuality as Greek and Roman literature or that Victorian England was a hotbed for pornography. We imagine times past as but stepping-stones to the liberal triumph of today, but to think that ours is the most progressive period in history is to know little of the cultures that precede us. Time and again, by ignorance or purposeful exclusion, by selective canonization, bowdlerizing translations, or exclusionary syllabus creation, the history of literature, like so many other so-called histories, is bound and recast in a conservative package that fails to represent the actuality of what was.

So, given the sterility of most literature textbooks, one would not expect to find, browsing through an anthology of seventeenth-century poetry, a consummate how-to guide to lovemaking. But Thomas Carew’s “A Rapture” is just that. His detailed account of undressing, stroking, muff-diving, and out-and-out shtupping would rouge the cheeks of even the most licentious
Cosmopolitan
editor—and, truth be told, those of this editor too. “A Rapture” is not, I am warning you, a poem to read at your desk, unless you have a
Flashdance
-style cold shower chain you can pull. Score the point: poets, 1; censors, 0.

Come, then, and mounted on the wings of Love
We’ll cut the flitting air, and soar above
The monster’s head, and in the noblest seats
Of those blest shades quench and renew our heats.
There shall the Queen of Love, and Innocence,
Beauty, and Nature, banish all offence
From our close ivy-twines; there I’ll behold
Thy baréd snow and thy unbraided gold;
There my enfranchised hand on every side
Shall o’er thy naked polished ivory slide.
No curtain there, though of transparent lawn,
Shall be before thy virgin-treasure drawn;
But the rich mine, to the inquiring eye
Exposed, shall ready still for mintage lie,
And we will coin young Cupids. There a bed
Of roses and fresh myrtles shall be spread
Under the cooler shade of cypress groves;
Our pillows, of the down of Venus’ doves,
Whereupon our panting limbs we’ll gently lay,
In the faint respites of our active play;
That so our slumbers may in dreams have leisure
To tell the nimble fancy our past pleasure,
And so our souls that cannot be embraced
Shall the embraces of our bodies taste.
Meanwhile the bubbling stream shall court the shore,
Th’ enamoured chirping wood-choir shall adore
In varied tunes the deity of love;
The gentle blasts of western winds shall move
The trembling leaves, and through their close boughs breathe
Still music, whilst we rest ourselves beneath
Their dancing shade; till a soft murmur, sent
From souls entranced in amorous languishment,
Rouse us, and shoot into our veins fresh fire,
Till we in their sweet ecstasy expire.
Then, as the empty bee, that lately bore
Into the common treasure all her store,
Flies ’bout the painted field with nimble wing,
Deflow’ring the fresh virgins of the spring,
So will I rifle all the sweets that dwell
In my delicious paradise, and swell
My bag with honey, drawn forth by the power
Of fervent kisses, from each spicy flower.
I’ll seize the rosebuds in their perfumed bed,
The violet knots, like curious mazes spread
O’er all the garden, taste the ripened cherry,
The warm, firm apple, tipped with coral berry;
Then will I visit with a wand’ring kiss
The vale of lilies and the bower of bliss;
And where the beauteous region doth divide
Into two milky ways, my lips shall slide
Down those smooth alleys, wearing as I go
A tract for lovers on the printed snow;
Thence climbing o’er the swelling Apennine,
Retire into thy grove of eglantine,
Where I will all those ravished sweets distill
Through love’s alembic, and with chemic skill
From the mixed mass one sovereign balm derive,
Then bring that great elixir to thy hive.

Now in more subtle wreaths I will entwine
My sinewy thighs, my legs and arms with thine;
Thou like a sea of milk shalt lie displayed,
Whilst I the smooth, calm ocean invade
With such a tempest, as when Jove of old
Fell down on Danaë in a storm of gold;
Yet my tall pine shall in the Cyprian strait
Ride safe at anchor, and unlade her freight;
My rudder, with thy bold hand, like a tried
And skillful pilot, thou shall steer, and guide
My bark into love’s channel, where it shall
Dance, as the bounding waves do rise or fall.
Then shall thy circling arms embrace and clip
My willing body, and thy balmy lip
Bathe me in juice of kisses, whose perfume
Like a religious incense shall consume,
And send up holy vapors to those powers
That bless our loves, and crown our sportful hours,
That with such halcyon calmness fix our souls
In steadfast pace, as no affright controls.
There no rude sounds shake us with sudden starts;
No jealous ears, when we unrip our hearts,
Suck our discourse in; no observing spies
This blush, that glance traduce; no envious eyes
Watch our close meetings; nor are we betrayed
To rivals by the bribéd chambermaid.
No wedlock bonds unwreathe our twisted loves;
We seek no midnight arbor, no dark groves
To hide our kisses: there the hated name
Of husband, wife, lust, modest, chaste, or shame,
Are vain and empty words, whose very sound
Was never heard in the Elysian ground.
All things are lawful there that may delight
Nature or unrestrainéd appetite;
Like and enjoy, to will and act is one:
We only sin when Love’s rites are not done . . .

Come then, my Celia, we’ll no more forbear
To taste our joys, struck with a panic fear,
But will dispose from his imperious sway
This proud usurper, and walk free as they,
With necks unyoked; nor is it just that he
Should fetter your soft sex with chastity,
Which Nature made unapt for abstinence;
When yet this false imposter can dispense
With human justice and with sacred right,
And, maugre both their laws, command me fight
With rivals, or with emulous loves, that dare
Equal with thine their mistress’ eyes or hair.
If thou complain of wrong, and call my sword
To carve out thy revenge, upon that word
He bids me fight and kill, or else he brands
With marks of infamy my coward hands,
And yet religion bids from bloodshed fly,
And damns me for that act. Then tell my why
This goblin Honor, which the word adores,
Should make men atheists, and not women whores.