more. Then: “You know, suggesting you change your hair isn’t an insult.”
“Of course it is!” Marion was suddenly animate. The covers were thrown off, she sat bolt upright, and spoke loudly, addressing the room as if it were full of listening jurors. “You’re always hinting that I should lose weight, change my hair, get a winter tan—what kind of idiot do you think I am? I know what—”
“Come on, come on, come on,” Fred had been saying, and went on saying while she continued.
“—that means. You’re ugly! You’re ugly! You’re ugly!”
“Oh God!” Fred covered his face. All the pain of his marriage, the simultaneous hurt of knowing her accusation was true, and that his desire for a more beautiful woman was wrong, and yet that somehow he was a good man, and that he did love her; all this, the confusing dissonant symphony of his relationship with Marion, played while she yelled at him; and yet one clear, cold voice in the auditorium whispered: I guess this means we aren’t going to fuck.
Smooth and inflamed, moist and comforted, intensely sensitive and yet inhumanly independent—David’s organ occupied Patty’s mouth. Her tongue, after an especially deep pass around his penis, played lightly round the ridge of his circumcision and wrenched moans from his stomach, enraging the thick vein that coursed like a swollen river from its purple base. And then she opened wide to swallow …
“Oh God …”
She had wondered what to do when this happened. She had never stayed this long for fear that the man might climax and—now it happened: her mouth filling with the stuff, the hot brew of nature’s quick mix.
Disgusted, she swallowed, almost choking because it felt so thick that she imagined her throat might be stopped up forever, cemented by semen.
She removed her mouth, despite a protesting groan from David, and gulped to get it down. Her fears had been foolish, because all of it was easily ingested. She looked at David and felt delighted with her results. He lay there, his gray wool pants and jockey shorts twisted at the knees, his red penis dwindling in the open air, glistening wet. His head was thrown back as if he had been caught in that position by an audience.
But her pleasure was short-lived when she took a second look at his shriveling member. She had assaulted him because she wanted to make love, to touch and sweat and make contact, and to forget everything that had failed and was failing in her life. She was horny. She had felt in her thighs and in her dry thirsting mouth that she wanted love: she had seduced David so that he would satisfy her, but the drooping flag of manhood before her eyes wasn’t encouraging.
His eyes opened. Only a little at first. They looked sleepy, drunk, and happy. Their happiness infuriated her. She had to make clear that the fun wasn’t over yet. She stood up and, looking him in the eyes, she pulled her pink cotton top up and over her head, pulling her arms through quickly. Her nipples were thick and pink-red. Her white breasts were mapped by veins, and they stuck out in the air as if held by invisible strings.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice hoarse and yet small and innocent like a child’s.
She unzipped her pleated beige pants, hooked her underpants with her fingers, and pulled off both layers in one motion, steadying herself with first one hand and then the other against the couch. She looked smaller naked: sleek and white like a boy, despite her large breasts, narrow stomach, and widening hips that poured her like champagne into the graceful stem of her legs. She got on top of him and he ran his hands up and down her, happily. She was like a stone washed and polished by the sea; his fingers ran over her back, her buttocks, her legs, as though making an assessment. Beneath her, she felt his penis harden again, and that heartened her. She liked him a little more and kissed him, forcing his mouth open with her tongue and exploring inside
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