William Vollmann: Whores for Gloria

Are you Catholic? he said.

Yes, Nicole said.

Jimmy strode around naked except for his socks, inspecting her cunt like an emperor. This was the best part. Nicole gazed up at him and pulled the lips of her slit taut and up to show him the ragged pear of pinkness inside, and her cunt-lips glistened under the kitchen lights with the brightness of metal foil. — Your pussy is just like a flower*, Jimmy complimented her; all the same he did not want to get his face too close to it. He got down on his knees; he leaned his weight on his arms as if he were doing push-ups (for Jimmy was always a gendeman who would not hurt a woman with his weight); then he stuck his penis into her. She had told him that he was her first date of the night, but her cunt seemed to be full of something viscous like come or corn syrup.

* "I still remember the effect I produced on a small group of Gala tribesmen massed around a man in black clothes," wrote Vittorio Mussolini. "I dropped an aerial torpedo right in the center and the group opened up like a flowering rose. It was most entertaining."

Maybe it was just the lubricant she used. Anyhow, it stank. She had great black spots on her thighs that might have been moles or more probably the subcutaneous hemorrhages of Kaposi's syndrome as Jimmy well knew from his profoundly intellectual studies. Every time he thrust into her she grunted. He could not tell whether this was because he hurt her or because she did it to excite him and so get it over with faster. He did not feel that she hated him and her body was trying to expel him; more probably she just endured him and trusted to the frictionlessness of the corn syrup or whatever it was to protect her from being hurt by his thrusts (in direct proportion as his sensation was diminished), but the corn syrup did not much work anymore to soothe that red raw-rubbed meat between her legs, so Nicole just tried not to think about what was happening and grunted at Jimmy's every painful thrust and bit her lips whenever he grazed an ovary. She gripped his balls tightly all the time so that the rubber wouldn't slip; she dug her fingernails into his balls, either by mistake or to make him come. But after thirty seconds Jimmy knew that he wasn't going to be able to come. Maybe if she'd just sucked him off he could have done it, but what with the rubber and the stuff in her cunt he couldn't feel much. Jimmy fucked and fucked until he got bored and then told her that he was done. — Call me, he said politely. — Later his prick started to itch, and he worried about disease.

The harvest

I wonder if she gave me something, he said to himself. He could not stop thinking about it. He got a black pimple on his penis, and his balls ached. — But I used a rubber ! he said in despair. Of course, she did suck me before she put it on.

The next day he said to himself, I definitely have something.

The lecture

At the clinic all the chairs faced the same direction, as if the venereally contaminated were an expectant movie audience instead of what they were. The chairs were bolted to the floor. Jimmy sat scratching his greyish chin-stubble and reading the notices on the walls and wondering if he could duck into the bathroom for just a minute to drink a beer because the place dispirited him, but he decided that that would not be a good idea and anyway he did not have a beer with him. Finally they called his number, and a woman led him into a little room with a desk and a stool.

What are you here for? said the woman.

I had sex with a prostitute on Friday night and I think she gave me something, Jimmy said.

When did you say you had sex with the prostitute? the woman said.

Friday night.

That would be the 26th, she said, looking at the wall calendar. — All right, let's see a driver's license.

Let's see your penis, said the doctor sternly.

Jimmy pointed out to the doctor the black pimple, but the doctor laughed and ripped it off his penis with a gloved hand so that his penis bled. — That's only a zit, said the doctor. But I tell you, anyone who'd go to a prostitute ought to have his head examined. I think you're all right. Follow the yellow line; they'll give you a blood test for syphilis.

Gloria

The next day Jimmy breakfasted on aspirin and ice cream. He felt pretty down. Well James he said to himself it's time to turn over a new leaf and really work at thinking about Gloria and remember how she appeared to me and ask of her that she give me her love and never again go for diseased imitations like that draggly old Nicole bitch who had nothing in common with Gloria and cheated me anyhow by never moving underneath me so I might as well have been fucking a pork chop and I know in my heart that that's something that Gloria would never have done, bless her heart. And Jimmy remembered how sadly Nicole had sat naked in his kitchen chair, with her hands beneath her sagging ass, and her head slumped back against the wall. Her mouth curved downward in her face, and her cunt-lips hung loosely apart like wilting lettuce. — But he also knew that every bit of it was his fault. Once he was on top of Nicole he had let his mind wander; he had not been thinking about Gloria. And the other whore had been right: he had just been using Gloria as an excuse — which come to think of it was like taking her name in vain. And what had he been doing in the Black Rose playing around with Regina and Cess? He admitted that he hadn't been taking Gloria very seriously. But Gloria is all I have, he said. OK then he said from now until the whole Tenderloin falls down in the next earthquake I'm going to hold onto Gloria and well I guess I'm repeating myself but I do usually think about her.

Gloria

The truth is that Jimmy tried never to stop thinking of Gloria. Even when he bent women over as they spread the cheeks of their buttocks apart so that he could fuck them up their assholes which bulged like the ends of sausage-casings, he was thinking of Gloria.

Gloria

OK he said all those whores out there are for me but they also each have something to give to Gloria if I can just find out what that is and help Gloria along like a splash of light on the ocean and everything moving and rocking and shining in the sun so God help me now because Gloria is the great sea those whore-fish swim in; God help me to give up food so I can spend more of my SSI checks on whores and find what I need to find and God let Gloria grow right with me because I sure don't want to die alone.

It was loud the next night and the bargirls were beautiful and the bottles were redly back-lit. There were often three bottles of a kind, with the one in use having a tube and stopper like a laboratory flask, so Jimmy felt that he was in a loud laboratory of happiness, where the right combination of reagents would yield gold. Getting warmed up was what he called it. Starting now and for the rest of his life he was going to work at seeing Gloria and remembering her, and in this special place he became more and more certain that he could do it as long as he did not get ahead of himself and forfeit his desire through rashness or thoughtlessness. — Outside, a woman eating pizza said howdy, but he didn't like her. He went back in and had a beer and a beer. In his mind he saw a newspaper headline:

Cecily smiled at him and said don't be so down Jimmy; have another beer.

Korea

On Geary and Hyde he met a black whore named Korea who got on his nerves with all her acting out and acting up but Korea really liked him as it seemed because she was strung out on speed and so she was sweet and serious with Jimmy (whores and undertakers are the only eternal optimists); and she said I want you I need you 'cause I'm a refugee from Korea so won't you come with me and Jimmy said baby maybe later and Korea said no we got to do it now 'cause at ten o'clock I got to be checked in at Saint Anthony's or else they'll be sending me back to Africa with all the other black, black people, but don't worry for yourself Jimmy babe 'cause you're so white that heaven's gonna come for you and if I'm good and get to know you and keep tricking for Christ I know you'll let me stay too and not be a refugee from Germany anymore 'cause my name is Berlin; and Jimmy said I thought your name was Korea and Korea screamed now I can see you looking at me with those eyes of death.