Péter Nádas - Parallel Stories

You see, I am showing it to you.

My knees would start to shake and I’d grow weak, unable to calm my fear. My hands shook so that my fingers couldn’t undo the concealed buttons in the fly of my well-tailored pants. My decision to do it, to let it happen that once, was in vain.

What the fuck are you waiting for.

Another reason I couldn’t do it was my tight-fitting, slippery wool pants. They used to call them tube trousers. The men begged me, they whispered from the bushes; with my tight pants and fumbling fingers, I must have raised hopes I couldn’t deliver on.

Here, you can grab hold of mine.

My senseless reticence made them impatient.

Then what in hell’s cunt do you want.

And they surprised me by how willingly and excitedly they showed them, how meticulously they prepared their cocks for the showing and, at the same time, how furiously and jealously they’d hide them from unwanted eyes. Everything that had to do with this particular activity sent shivers up and down my spine.

Don’t be afraid. You can show me your little one.

It was like a foreign language I’d never heard before yet understood from the first syllable, with all its phrases and expressions. It was also very surprising that I wanted to show mine too; maybe not like this, not to these men or not to everybody, but to somebody, not just anybody; it also was a surprise to me that all these penises, including mine, whether erect or semi-erect, seemed rather ungainly and repulsive. In all my searches I saw not one about which I could have said, now this, yes, let this be the one. And no less surprising was the most familiar, profound tolerance and empathy I had for them. As if I were saying, it’s all the same to me, it could be any one of them. Nevertheless, I had to realize I had no idea what to do with my insatiable curiosity.

Perhaps I was excited by the process of erection, the untraceable transformation of a cool body, which changes only with aging and then only imperceptibly. Erections kept surprising me with their inevitability as I continued to be motivated by the chance I might see yet another cock, no matter what kind, and compare its condition and substance with the sight of the man it belonged to. In my other life, it would have been inappropriate to imagine there were so many people as passionately curious about this as I.

They were practically treading on one another’s heels in the early hours of the night.

No wonder they’d trampled and sullied everything around the ruins of the Dominican cloister.

Although I understood their curiosity, its depth and pervasiveness still shocked me and had me in thrall; I felt I could never be free of it or conquer it. And because of this feeling, everything seemed to be the other way around in this life of mine — one of my two lives — the opposite of what I’d ever thought or should have thought, with a man’s cock more important than the man himself. Since a man’s cock was unlike the man or his body. I was surprised by the lack of conformity in the visible physiological marks; there was no sameness between body and cock. Every person is put together out of several people. I too differed from my cock; perhaps my penchant for humiliation and self-lacerating brooding originated in this shameful truth. Not to mention that the nature of my thinking differed substantially from the nature of my instinctual life; seeing so many different cocks gave me the impression that this extreme disparity characterized others no less than it did me. One person differs from all others physiologically, but one also carries distinguishing marks that show how one differs from one’s own self. It surprised me that I drew a conclusion from this multifaceted differentiation, which could be said to be general, but I don’t know what the conclusion was. As if it were the kind of knowledge which one can never get enough of or reach the end of. In the eyes of the men, the cock might have been the emblem of this knowledge of unknown character. Perhaps it meant that there is no I or, more correctly, that the I is only part of a larger, undiscoverable whole, or one might say that a man’s exterior, psychological makeup, way of thinking, or character won’t reveal what kind of cock he has, even though his cock is no less defining than his soul or mind. Of course, I can’t say what I mean by soul, or in what way exactly a cock would be defining, and mainly what could rationally justify men’s elementary interest in other men’s cocks if women and their procreative capacity were excluded from their considerations.

It surprised me even more that no matter what they did with their cocks and though I did nothing with mine, from the depths of my soul I approved of the way they did it and not some other way, and that they did it with one another and without initiating women into the business. And perhaps the reason I don’t do it is not because I’m not hot-blooded, impulsive, or implacably manly enough, but rather, in harmony with the dictates of my spirit, I am a woman because of my horrible mother. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw — and even later it took my breath away, made me tremble helplessly with excitement — one man finally grasp another man’s cock, saw the two of them elegantly thrust their hips forward with their cocks sticking out of their hands, saw them lean on each other’s shoulders and, each staring attentively at the other’s cock and both of them rubbing against each other’s thighs and legs, almost coolly, seeking a common rhythm, bring each other off.

They would start slowly, but their sperm quickly spouted up.

With the men I would have loved, I’d have loved to do it too.

It happened that one of them, before the spouting started or bubbled up onto his hand, would duck down to take it into his mouth, caress it with his tongue, suck and swallow the lilac ugliness rearing before him with its purplish head. To eat it, devour it, retching deep down into the back of his throat; sometimes they spat out the sperm. Others, excited by mutual desire, would fall to the filthy ground already fouled by others — they didn’t care where they fell — and mutually took into their mouths the other’s cock. Two silent pieces of flesh. Writhing on each other’s body like epileptics. Heaving, gagging, hurrying and gasping for air. The last moment before the end of the world. They weren’t bothered if they rolled around in other men’s excrement. To save myself I pretended to be disgusted, and that’s how I became disgusted. But with my countenance gazing into the darkness, I approved. They kissed into the other’s mouth the other man’s sperm.

I nearly fainted but I approved.

Or what about the naked tribal warriors in the darkest thickets, with their clothes fastened to their waists or strapped to their legs, arching their butts upward, opening their star-patterned sphincters, free of humiliation, abjection, or servility, falling on their knees and letting themselves be pounded; reaching back very adroitly with tentacle-like arms to grasp the pounding body by its thighs or hairy ass lest it slip out, and even giving little counterthrusts, slyly, helpfully, until the other man, whose name they don’t know, withholding his screams, quickly and forcefully ejaculates into them.

There were those who pulled it out before their climax, wanting to see the gushing geyser sprinkle into the darkness, into something that could not be seen, into nothingness.

There may be people whom even shit won’t stop from screwing a stranger’s ass, because for them it’s nothing more than a bit of swallowing that nobody keeps track of or judges morally; anyway, I still wouldn’t want this to be my life.

With such loathsomeness in it.

All right, I watched it, I saw it, though I don’t know why I had to; I’ve done it, that’s all I know, I’m leaving. True, I went back the next day, couldn’t stay away. And again I stayed until dawn.