Norman Rush - Mortals

He was going to remember every second of going into her, this last time. He had told her more than once in the past that he wished she could be him long enough to know the unspeakable pleasure of going in, hot, going in, being let in, rather, being allowed.

She wasn’t ready for him to go in. She had his penis where she wanted it. She was sliding hard against the underside of the shaft, sliding her labia hard along it. His heels were in the gravel. He wanted a pillow. He would do better if he had a pillow. There was no pillow.

She was sweeping the wings of her hair across his mouth, her hair dark as death. In junior high school the words Eat hair had been a dire male-to-male insult. That was when oral sex was considered a perversion. She was sitting up higher again and he wanted her not to stop bending closer to him. He caught her hands and pulled. She resisted. He pulled again and she resisted again, harder. For a moment it felt like rowing.

He thought, We are all rowing toward death, keeping it behind us but rowing toward it and not looking at it while we study our pitiful accomplishments receding. In sex you might forget death. He could feel drops of something on his chest, tears or it could be sweat. She was being rough. He didn’t think she was trying to make him come, really, before she did, to make some kind of point about his stamina, a mean point. No, she was doing the cooperative thing they did. He hoped that was right. But she was being rough. She knew his limits, or thought she did. Tonight was different.

She had raised herself up and was touching herself again. That was almost too much for him. When she masturbated she always wanted him to hold her free hand, which made it love and not sex, only, not only sex. She wasn’t masturbating now, she was teasing herself, for him, he knew. She stopped. He wished she would say something.

This was not going to be dawdling sex or karezza or any halfway sex fun practices they had fooled around with. Here is my body and the things we can do together with it, was what she was also going to be saying to somebody else.

One thing she knew was that his cock could take pretty substantial provocation outside the snug sanctum it was aiming for. She was using that. But going in, the first minutes after that, were delicate, but if she helped they would pass and the band would begin to play and that would be fine, it could play on.

She was letting him in, just, and stopping there, and then bending over again and dragging her hair all over his face, which was cruel, if it was cruel, if it was anything but an impulse she was having but not meant to be cruel the way kissing would be. He wondered if what she was saying was You will never get a fuck like this again in your whole mortal life unless … unless something he couldn’t imagine, something other than stay with me and see what happens. He knew it wasn’t that, nothing as crude as that. It was something else. He had his own idea, by God, which was to ask for help from not God but Rhonda, help me Rhonda, help me keep her out of my heart, something cheap to make him slightly hate her, help me Beach Boys, anyone, help me, help me keep the knot tied in the heart the base of my cock, tied tight. She was letting him in.

He felt strong. He inhaled as hard as he could. That was usually helpful. He needed help. He needed everything to be different . He needed a time machine, of course, like anyone else. He was strong.

The knot keeping him from coming was threaded on his will, his willpower, his will, out of the night. Out of the night that covers me, out of the nineteenth century, the will, yes sir.

He was in and he was going to fuck her until she said to stop in the name of God.

And he needed to think of his semen bolt as a pearl of great price, a pearl, a containable thing.

He was in a little more. He grasped her waist. In Eden sex had been like a handshake according to Augustine, before there was hot sex, after the Fall. This was not going to be a handshake, except that a handshake could be goodbye as well as hello, as well as Hello I must be going.

He was in even more. She was being so careful. When she got close she wouldn’t be able to maintain herself on top. She would clutch him and fall on him and drop and roll over onto one side and pull him over on top. Now she was grasping his shoulders.

He was in deep, she was letting him in, she was sinking down to seal it, that was it, it was perfect. She was pausing, holding him there. He didn’t know what she was doing, whether she was trying to leave him with a fuck he would use the rest of his life to search for, to search for one like it, or was she trying to do something else, by this act, to change everything between them, everything in his mind having to do with what he should be doing, with what they should be doing. He had no idea.

She was starting and stopping. She was coming down hard and then she was drawing back a little way and then coming back down slowly and then waiting. There was sweat shining in the little hollows on either side of the base of her neck. She was moving her pelvis in a slow circle.

She was moving now. He grasped her breasts. I’ll just hold on to your breasts so’s they don’t get away he had said to her once.

She was moving less carefully. It was going on. He tried to get outside himself. He tried to see the stars and the glints of light in her hair and on her teeth when she opened her mouth and looked up as one combined field. She was oblivious to the strength of her movements. She was edging them off the afghan. She was making small sounds in the back of her throat. She was a noisy lover, normally, but she was trying to be mindful of prudence, because of their situation, he understood.

There was a tear of sweat on each of her nipples. She shook them off, onto his chest. She was going to stay on top until she came. That was now. It was all right. He wanted to see her face when she came. She was getting close. Her legs were shaking. He wanted her to go first. He wanted to hold back and let her go and then fuck her just after she came until she came again, and until she said no, it was too much.

He thought of Guatemala, the agency, Boyle, to cool himself. He thought about Malawi and Banda and one or two things he knew about the agency there, things Marion Resnick had told him, a man who never lied. But he thought about these dark things in a new way for him, not by acknowledging them as things at a distance but as sites of horror, bodies, dead bodies, fields of them, like the bodies at Ngami Bird Lodge, spread on the ground, pitched into the flames of the burning lodge.

He held his breath. He held himself in. There were things he wanted to say to her. He wanted to say I want to say goodbye. And he wanted to say Remember me.

It was good. She came. She fell against him. He managed to stay in her as she fell and he maneuvered her over and under him. It was done with art and it reminded him of something they had talked about, which was how amazing it was that the configurations two people could get involved in when they slept in the same bed never seemed to be exhausted.

He wanted her to tell him to fuck her, but it didn’t matter if she didn’t. He moved in her. She was in one of the afterwaves of coming when he began. That was what he had wanted. His heart was killing him. He loved her.

He drove himself harder into her. She was whining with pleasure and that was good. She would climax again right away.

He kept on, slowing himself. He pushed her knees up higher. He was almost there and so was she, again.

And then the knot at the root of his cock dissolved in fire, melting. He shouted when he came. Then she was snorting, trying to say something. She was telling him to stop. She had come a second time and she wanted him to stop. They disengaged, shaking.