And Now Miz Literature Is Giving
Me Some Kind of Blow Job

MIZ LITERATURE pours water into a ceramic vase she brought yesterday, then carefully arranges the flowers. She opens the window and places the vase in the left-hand corner, just above my head.

Miz Literature is standing on the bed and her long legs, sheathed in mocha stockings, bring visions of the Golden Gate. The sun is with us now. Hot air fills the room. I drop the book to the floor and pull Miz Literature to me.

Miller says there is nothing better than making love at noon. Miller is right.

If you think you’re about to be served up a hot slice of Miz Literature’s sexual proclivities, think again. You’ve got your choice of porno novels for that. I recommend the Midnight series. Miz Literature says I make love the way I eat. With the hunger of a man stranded on a desert island. When you think about it, that’s no compliment. Strange, but she says I remind her of an innocent child who has been mistreated too long. She likes making love to me. After the storm has passed, she holds me in her arms. I doze off. On her white breast. I am her child. An untrusting child, so hard sometimes. Her black boy. She strokes my forehead. Happy, gentle, fragile moments. I am more than Black. She is more than White.

If she had been giving me a blow job, I would have had my cock lopped off. Oof! Cut clean off! This time the ceiling fell in—literally, in a cloud of pink dust. Beelzebub is pulling out all the stops upstairs. A fuck to the death. Miz Literature has never attended one of Beelzebub’s demonstrations. The galloping ghost. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The ceiling opening up. We’re rooted to the spot and in our minds, the terrifying image of a couple fucking crushing a couple in repose. The Koran says, “Tell me, if the scourge of Allah overtook you unawares or openly, would any perish but the transgressors?” (Sura VI, 47.)

Miz Literature has been staring straight ahead since it began. Hypnotized. Her lips tremble slightly. A contraction at one corner of her mouth.

Upstairs Beelzebub is going back for second helpings. Miz Literature is as red as a boiled lobster. I’m sure she’s going to drop from a stroke. They’re tearing each other apart upstairs. A super-performance. Shamefully, I must face the fact: I start to get hard again. White, right and proper, Miz Literature glances surreptitiously at my penis. The snaking veins begin to uncoil. A serpent’s head rising. The Koran says, “Men, have fear of your Lord, who created you from a single soul. From that soul He created its mate, and through them He bestrewed the earth with countless men and women. Fear Allah, in whose name you plead with one another, and honor the mothers who bore you. Allah is ever watching over you.” (Sura IV, 1.) I cannot countenance this thing that abases me. No doubt, man is an unnatural animal. The Koran asks, “How many generations have We destroyed before them! Can you find one of them still alive, or hear so much as a whisper from them?” I try to think unpleasant thoughts; I think of The Critique of Pure Reason. Kant becomes porno. The Critique gives me a hard-on. It grows. Miz Literature stares straight ahead. We hear the double gasp of Beelzebub and his accomplice. Like a slow dance. They’re doing it in slow motion. In some movies they show the violent parts in slow motion to increase the effect. Like violence shot into our blood. A hypodermic. In our veins. We sense their movements in a mad modern ballet. Two naked bodies violently intertwined in a pas de deux of death. My sex keeps rising, obeying a secret command beyond my will. Miz Literature turns slightly on her axis, watching it rise with a disconcerting stare. She lowers herself towards me, reducing the angle to fifteen degrees. In the sitting position. Her eyes still staring. I close mine and Miz Literature, in a trance, takes me in her mouth. Between her beautiful pink lips. I’d dreamed of it. I’d licked my chops over it. I didn’t dare ask her. An act so . . . I knew that as long as she hadn’t done it, she wouldn’t be completely mine. That’s the key in sexual relations between black and white: as long as the woman hasn’t done something judged degrading, you can never be sure.

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.