For the first time, the man is alone in the room with the book. Upright, closed, it leans on its bottom edge into the special shelf, its orange spine facing out, its text tucked neatly inside the titillating cover. Knowing it is in the room, there is a pulse in the man’s body that doubles instantly. He almost feels sick at the intensity of his heartbeat. He walks all around his apartment not looking at the book. The erection he had initially has softened somewhat and he is dribbling a bit down his thigh. He can sense that he might be able to have a good one.
He takes the book into his left palm, face up. He runs his fingers along the top outside edge of the book’s hard cover. He exerts only the very slightest pressure inward and upward — more a question than an action. When he feels the cover give and lift slightly, the man is again hit with a heavy pulse of lust. He knows he is going to open the book. He slides his other index finger down the back of the spine till it curls under the tail end so that with a gentle motion he can the tilt the volume back and open into his waiting palm. Wanton, the book’s front cover now leans wide, exposing a searing whiteness. There is great delicacy, almost tenderness, as he runs his finger up O so lightly around and around the surface of the blank front page. Imperceptibly the circles grow larger, moving closer to the edge. His breath is close. He is blowing softly upon the uplifting paper. He sees the flash of black curling text on its undersurface. He is completely hard. He wants to just yank the volume wide open — go for its middle pages, but for the book’s sake, he draws it out. He follows all the protocols. He lingers here at the lip where the words are slow and compelling, calling him on. His tongue touches just the tip of the first syllable of the first word and a sound dissolves in air. The book grows visibly warmer. The pages, if anything, spread themselves wider apart, expecting a full and delicious reading, wanting to take him into their deepest recesses. All the while as he reads he gently rubs his middle finger over the base of the book’s spine, sometimes curling ‘round and up into the tight wedged interior. The faster his eyes rake off the electric syllables, the quicker he hears the pulsing inside. Is it the book or him? Blood is rushing through something. The book is visibly engorged, lips swollen, reddened, the text stretched in places. The book has begun to glisten. The dots bulge atop the i’s, the o’s almost exude invitation as he buries himself deeper. And now the book has begun to read him. Some sensory faculty enlivened by his observation peers out at what is written in him, what the strings of gut say when stroked over. The man is right in the steaming centre of the story. The text washes all around him. Boat and sea are one. Eyes and text are one. There is no point where the man and the book are separate. Two sexualities collide and consume and magnify and multiply till the text is oozing from the man’s pores. The book has read him right through to the spine. He is crackling with code. He is coming undone in his centre. Still the book reads on as he reads on. They’ve got each other by the root. They’re deep under the tale of language. They’re utterly gripped by one another, can’t put one another down. Friction, fiction, there is no difference. They rub away at one another, scraping off the thin last skin to the breaking light below. The book erupts. It bends back and groans, its spine cracking. The man groans. Suddenly there are words everywhere awash in language and not language. Silence and not silence.