John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Ah, dear God, Joan, wilt thou not see?" said Ebenezer, still down upon his knees. " 'Tis not for common sport I crave thee, as might another: such lechery I leave to mere gluttonous whoremongers like Ben Oliver. What I crave of thee cannot be bought!"

"Aha," smiled Joan, "so 'tis a matter o' strange tastes, is't? I'd not have guessed it by the honest look o' ye, but think not so quickly 'tis out o' the question. Well do I know There's more ways to the woods than one , and if't work no great or lasting hurt, why, 'tis but a matter o' price to me, sir. Name me thy game, and I'll fix thee thy fee."

"Joan, Joan, put by this talk!" cried Ebenezer, shaking his head. "Can you not see it tears my heart? What's past is past; I cannot bear to think on't, how much the less hear it from thy sweet lips! Dear girl, I swear to thee now I am a virgin, and as I come to thee pure and undefiled, so in my mind you come to me; whate'er hath gone before, speak not of it. Nay!" he warned, for Joan's mouth dropped open. "Nay, not a word of't, for 'tis over and done. Joan Toast, I love thee! Ah, that startles thee! Aye, I swear to Heaven I love thee, and 'twas to declare it I wished thee here. Speak no more of your awful trafficking, for I love thy sweet body unspeakably, and that spirit which it so fairly houses, unimaginably!"

"Nay, Mr. Cooke, 'tis an unbecoming jest ye make, to call thyself virgin," Joan said doubtfully.

"As God is my witness," swore Ebenezer, "I have known no woman carnally to this night, nor ever loved at all."

"But how is that?" Joan demanded. "Why, when I was but a slip of a thing, not yet fourteen and innocent of the world's villainy, I recall I once cried out at table how I had commenced a queer letting of blood, and what was I ill of? And send quick for the leeches! And everyone laughed and made strange jests, but none would tell me what was the cause of't. Then my young bachelor uncle Harold approached me privily, and kissed me upon the lips and stroked my hair, and told me 'twas no common leech I wanted, for that I was letting much blood already; but that anon when I had stopped I should come to him in secret, for he kept in his rooms a great torn leech such as I had ne'er yet been bit by, the virtue of which was, that it would restore by sweet infusions what I had lost. I believed without question all that he had told me, for he was a great favorite o' mine, more brother than uncle to me, and therefore I said naught to anyone, but directly the curse left me went straight to his bedchamber, as he had prescribed. 'Where is the great torn leech?' I asked him. 'I have't ready,' said he, 'but it fears the light and will do its work only in darkness. Make thyself ready,' said he, 'and I'll apply the leech where it must go. 'Very well,' said I, 'but ye must tell me how to ready myself, Harold, for I know naught of leeching.' 'Disrobe thyself,' said he, 'and lie down upon the bed.'

"And so I stripped myself all naked, simple soul that I was, right before his eyes, and lay down upon the bed as he directed — a skinny pup I, as yet unbreasted and unfurred — and he blew out the candle. 'Ah, dear Harold!' I cried. 'Come lie beside me on the bed, I pray, for I fear the bite o' thy great torn leech in the dark!' Harold made me no answer, but shortly joined me upon his bed. 'How is this?' I cried, feeling his skin upon me. 'Do you mean to take the leech as well? Did you too lose blood?' 'Nay,' he laughed, ' 'tis but the manner whereby my leech must be applied. I have't ready for ye, dear girl; are ye ready for't?' 'Nay, dear Harold,' I cried, 'I am fearful! Where will it bite me? How will it hurt?' ' Twill bite where it must,' said Harold, 'and 'twill pain ye a mere minute, and then pleasure ye enough.' 'Ah, then,' I sighed, 'let us get by the pain and hasten the pleasure with all speed. But prithee hold my hand, lest I cry out at the creature's bite.' 'Ye shan't cry out,' Harold said then, 'for I shall kiss ye.'

"And straightway he embraced me and kissed my mouth tight shut, and, while we were a-kissing, suddenly I felt the great torn leech his fearful bite, and I was maiden no more! At first I wept, not alone from the pain he'd warned of, but from alarm at what I'd learned o' the leech's nature. But e'en as Harold promised, the pain soon flew, and his great torn leech took bite after bite till near sunup, by which time, though I was by no means weary o' the leeching, my Harold had no more leech to leech with, but only a poor cockroach or simple pismire, not fit for the work, which scurried away at the first light. 'Twas then I learned the queer virtue o' this animal: for just as a fleabite, the more ye scratch it, wants scratching the more, so, once this creature had bit me, I longed for further bites and was forever after poor Harold and his leech, like an opium eater his phial. And though since then I've suffered the bite of every sort and size — none more fearsome or ravenous than my good John's — yet the craving plagues me still, till I shiver at the thought o' the great torn leech!"

"Stop, I beg thee!" Ebenezer pleaded. "I cannot hear more! What, 'Dear Uncle,' you call him, and 'Poor Harold'! Ah, the knave, the scoundrel, to deceive you so, who loved and trusted him! 'Twas no leechery he put thee to, but lechery, and laid thy maiden body forever in the bed of harlotry! I curse him, and his ilk!"

"Ye say't with relish," smiled Joan, "as one who'd do the like with fire in his eye and sweat on his arse, could he find himself a child fond as I. Nay, Ebenezer, rail not at poor dear Harold, who is these several years under the sod from an ague got swiving ardently in cold chambers. Says I, 'tis but the nature o' the leech to bite and of the leeched to want biting, and 'tis a mystery and astonishment to me, since so many crave leeching and the best leech is so lightly surfeited, how yours hath gone starved, as ye declare, these thirty years! What, are ye a mere arrant sluggard, sir? Or are ye haply o' that queer sort who lust for none but their own sex? 'Tis a thing past grasping!"

"Nor the one nor the other," replied Ebenezer. "I am man in spirit as well as body, and my innocence is not wholly my own choosing. I have ere now been ready enough, but to grind love's grain wants mortar as well as pestle; no man dances the morris dance alone, and till this night no woman e'er looked on me with favor."

"Marry!" laughed Joan. "Doth the ewe chase the ram, or the hen the cock? Doth the field come to the plow for furrowing, or the scabbard to the sword for sheathing? 'Tis all arsy-turvy ye look at the world!"

"That I grant," sighed Ebenezer, "but I know naught of the art of seduction, nor have the patience for't."

"Foeh! There's no great labor to the bedding of women! For the most, all a man need do, I swear, is ask plainly and politely, did he but know it."

"How is that?" exclaimed Ebenezer in astonishment. "Are women then so lecherous?"

"Nay." said Joan. "Think not we crave a swiving pure and simple at any time as do men always — 'tis oft a pleasure with us. but rarely a passion. Howbeit, what with men forever panting at us like so many hounds at a salt-bitch, and begging us out by our virtue and give 'em a tumble, and withal despising us for whores and slatterns if we do; or bidding us be faithful to our husbands and yet losing no chance to cuckold their truest friends; or charging us to guard our chastity and yet assaulting it from all quarters in every alleyway, carriage, or sitting room; or being soon bored with us if we show no fire in swiving and yet sermoning us for sinners if we do; inventing morals on the one hand and rape on the other; and in general preaching us to virtue whilst they lure us on to vice — what with the pull and haul of all this, I say, we women are forever at sixes and sevens, all fussed and rattled and torn 'twixt what we ought and what we would, and so entirely confounded, that we never know what we think on the matter or how much license to grant from one minute to the next; so that if a man commence the usual strut, pat, and tweak, we may thrust him from us (if he do not floor us and have at us by main strength); and if he let us quite alone, we are so happy of the respite we dare not make a move; but should e'er a man approach us in all honest friendship, and look upon us as fellow humans and not just a bum and a bosom, from eyes other than a stud-stallion's, and after some courteous talk should propose a cordial swiving as one might a hand of whist (instead of inviting us to whist as lecherously as though to bed) — if, I say, e'er a man should learn to make such a request in such a manner, his bed would break 'neath the weight of grateful women, and he would grow gray ere his time! But in sooth 'twill never happen," Joan concluded, "forasmuch as 'twould mean receiving a partner and not taking a vassal: 'tis not mere sport a man lusts after, 'tis conquest — else philanderers were rare as the plague and not common as the pox. Do but ask, Ebenezer, cordially and courteously, as ye would ask a small favor from a good friend, and what ye ask shall rarely be refused. But ye must ask, else in our great relief at not being hard pressed for't, we shall pass ye by."