The Gentle Degenerates Read Free Page B

time.
    Then she turned to me. “What was that all about?” she asked.
    “Weren’t you there?” I asked, not without an edge.
    “I was someplace,” she said. “Not the same place you were.”
    Already it was beginning. The rationalizations would dim the sharp glare of the situation. This moment, enacted between millions of men and women, could be handled with anger or bitterness, but with us the liberal mode was most congenial. We reasoned that neither of us was “doing” anything to the other; there was no blame. Rather, she was in one place and I was in another, and there is no way to make judgements about what we did. There was no better or worse; only different. My mind accepted the logic of the scheme, but my blood boiled against it.
    “You don’t want to give,” I said very loudly. “And that’s all right. You can keep your precious cunt locked up tight. But don’t expect me to keep coaxing you and coming after you. Try finding someone else with as much patience as I have putting up with all your shit.”
    “My shit!” she yelled, picking up the ball on one bounce. And then we were off to another round. “If you weren’t so uncertain and spineless,” she continued, “I would have enough security to let go with you.”
    It could have gone on for some time, but we were both tired, and it ended as all our arguments end, in a feeling of sheepishness. The deed was done, and there was no going back to erase or change anything. The only direction was forward, probably to more of the same.
    We lit two more cigarettes to bring the chapter to a close. Another storm had been weathered, another notch of insight had been noted in the log, and we looked at one another like two warriors whose closeness lies in their mutual inability to totally do each other in. And in that look there was an odd tenderness which is the special mark of how I feel about her.
    For a long minute we moved into one another’s eyes. Our mutual projections joined: she saw in me the me that is most me-for-her, and I saw in her the her that is most her-for-me. And the selves we saw in one another saw one another’s selves, and the jagged vibration which had just set our teeth on edge found its proper groove, and we were back home with each other.
    I put my cigarette out and laid my head down on her belly; I put my hands under her and felt her full, tough ass cheeks in my hands. Her body seemed to call me into it, and I began moving down toward her crotch, to put my mouth on her cunt, to lick those delicate lips and kiss what had again become a sheer dear fragrance.
    But she put her hand down and pushed my face away. It was done gently and tenderly, but the message was clear: “Get away from my cunt.” For a split second I felt the old anger, but I was too weary to give it rein. I let it pass and contented myself with getting up and asking with a false heartiness, “Want some coffee?”
    “I’d love some,” she said, smiling. I plunged one last time behind her eyes, to see if there was the slightest indication that she would cop to what had just happened. But either she was unconscious of her behavior and motives, or else an absolute master at whisking away what she didn’t want seen. There was nothing to do about it, so I put the matter out of my mind and went into the kitchen to boil some water.

two.
    BEFORE SHE LEFT, we decided to try living together in California. There is something about the aura of such a decision that obscures all the real difficulties and impossibilities. I thought that, with enough will and constancy, it might be possible to resolve our problems, to dissolve them in time. I had some business to finish up, so I intended to join her in a month. We bought rings and made promises of fidelity.
    Now it was Sunday morning, and she had been gone a week. Two nights ago, she called, and it was one of those long distance long-distance conversations, where the words become a meaningless electronic jumble and the person