Dany Laferrière - How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired

“WHAT DO I have against Beauty?”

Bouba savors the question. It’s right up his alley. The kind of question that sets off a Boston marathon of words. A question that pushes and tugs, the kind of thing you can change the world with. “What do I have against Beauty?” Bouba scratches his chin. His nervous tic. It signifies, Here is a question you do not answer lightly. Bouba pours himself more tea. He’s in no hurry. He has plenty of time. Eternity is on his side. Outside, people are stirring, awakening, getting their clothes on, gulping down breakfast and rushing off to work. Brainless ants. The world is in terrible need of marginal thinkers, starving philosophers and impenitent sleepers (“The sleeping man reconstructs the world,” said Heraclitus) to keep on spinning. Bouba spends most of his time on the couch reconstructing the world. Today, he will attack one of the Western World’s last bastions: Beauty.

“Here’s the problem, man: Beauty is shameless.”

“Great! I’ve got a nigger moralist on my hands now.”

“It’s thermodynamic, man, not moral. There’s a certain temperature that determines the degree of desire we feel for someone. The heat can go in two directions, inside and out.”

“All right. Then what?” I still don’t trust Bouba’s demonstration.

“Beauty’s heat goes only to the outside.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I prefer implosion to explosion.”

“I don’t think I get it.”

“All subtlety is lost on a guy like you.” In a discussion, Bouba acts as if I’m a complete stranger. “All right, take Miz Beauty. She thinks she’s doing you a favor by fucking with you, while with Miz Piggy, you’re doing her the favor, and that makes all the difference in the world.”

“Altruist!”

“Not at all. The relation is different — and to my advantage.”

“Is that so?”

“Haven’t you ever made love to a big ugly girl who’s half moron and up to her fat neck in complexes? Pure ecstasy, man. Non-stop whispering in your ear, what a great man you are, all that. But try making love to one of these Brooke Shields clones: all she wants is compliments, talk to me, talk to me, the famous talk to me people talk about so much, which boils down to I Demand Compliments. Only Allah is worthy of such praise. The Koran says, ‘Praise Allah morning and night.’ Miz Beauty does not speak. You’ve got to discover her erogenous zones, her favorite subjects of conversation, her sign, all on your own. Meanwhile, Miz Piggy’s coming like an express train. She doesn’t get it every day. And she’s hell-bent to make the most of it. She wants more, more, more. And that, man, is the true foundation of fucking. The rest is representation, pure fashion show, masturbation on a glossy page from Vogue. ”

“What if you end up with an ugly girl who’s no good?”

“That could only happen to you, man.”

If I understand correctly, the couch is one of those fat girls seething with complexes who’s great in bed. When you consider the couch with a minimum of sensitivity, you realize what Bouba’s practiced eye saw all along. The couch is endowed with the open, luxuriant forms of Rubens’s women. Standing before his canvases, who has not dreamed of such fleshly immersion? Such generous smooth bodies?

Bouba drains his teacup and goes quietly back to bed like a black maharajah in his St. Denis harem. Let the world hurl itself towards nuclear culmination. Bouba is sleeping.

MIZ LITERATURE comes sweeping in with an enormous bouquet of peonies. I’m still in bed with Bukowski. The window is closed. A line of sunlight cuts the page in half lengthwise.

I read lying down with a pillow between my shoulderblades and my head slightly raised. Stiff neck guaranteed. Unfortunately, it’s my favorite position. Usually I read early in the morning before it gets too hot, when I’m not likely to be disturbed. The building emanates an aura of calm. My neighbors, retired for the most part, are not yet awake. In an hour or two it’ll be the breakfast routine, the whistling of the pipes, the tap of toothbrushes and the smell of bacon.

I watch Miz Literature move through the shadows. It looks like she’s wearing a yellow dress with a white collar. And ballerina shoes. I picture her dressing with care, putting on perfume (just a soupçon!) and her bra (she has small breasts) so she can go do dishes for a Negro in a filthy apartment on St. Denis near the Carré St. Louis. Skid row. Miz Literature comes from a good family, she has a bright future, upright values, a solid education, perfect mastery of Elizabethan poetry, she belongs to a feminist literary club at McGill — the McGill Witches — whose mission is to restore the reputation of unjustly neglected poetesses. This year they are publishing a luxury edition of Emily Dickinson with ink drawings by Valery Miller. So what’s going on here? You could hold a gun to her head and she wouldn’t do the tenth of what she does here for a white guy. Miz Literature is writing her PhD thesis on Christine de Pizan. Which is no mean feat. So what the hell is she doing in this filthy slum? And don’t blame Cupid. If she were madly in love with a McGill guy he’d never ask her to do the tenth of what she does here, spontaneously, freely and graciously.

“Why do the dishes now?”

“Am I disturbing you?”

“Not really.”

“You’re reading! Oh, I’m sorry.”

And believe it or not, she really is sorry. Reading is sacred in her book. Besides, a black with a book denotes the triumph of Judeo-Christian civilization! Proof that those bloody crusades really did have some value. True, Europe did pillage Africa but this black is reading a book.

“There, I finished.”

She puts the clean dishes away carefully. A real jewel. Her only shortcoming is that she’ll go to any length to make this room pleasant. Confer an Outremont touch to it. Every time she comes she brings something new. Pretty soon, in a few months, we’ll be crushed under the weight of rare vases, engravings, bedside lamps and all that crap you can buy in those snobby boutiques on Laurier Street. McGill people are taught to decorate their environment. Look what I’ve gotten myself into! All right, I can understand that part. But I don’t get why she’s doing it here in this slum. Must I tell her that a slum is not a salon? Maybe it’s part of her double life. By day a WASP princess; by night slave to a Negro. That could be exciting. Suspense guaranteed because with Negroes you never know. Let’s just eat her up right now, yum-yum, with a little salt and pepper. I can see the headlines in La Presse.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN — “Did you hear? Two blacks ate a McGill co-ed.”

“How did they discover the crime?”

“The police found her arm in the refrigerator.”

“Oh, good lord! Is that the new immigration policy?

Importing cannibals?”

“I suppose they raped her first, while they were at it?”

“We’ll never know. They ate everything.”

“Oh, good lord.”

Miz Literature climbs into my bed. I put the book down at the foot of the bed, next to the bottle of wine, then bring her down to my level. Europe has paid her debt to Africa.

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.