Cobo Abe - The Woman in the Dunes

But in her heart she was probably not satisfied with such a commercial-sample type of relationship… He remembered the brothel smell of disinfectant as he had begun buttoning up his trousers, already feeling he was being hurried out… and the woman still naked on the bed with the towel stuck between her legs.

«But it's all right if once in a while you feel like forcing a sale, isn't it?»

«No, it isn't. Any forcing…»

«But you're cured by now, aren't you?»

«If you really think that, then why don't we agree to go on without protection?»

«Come on, now. Why are you trying to get out of your responsibilities?» «Well, didn't I say I don't like to force a sale?»

«It's very strange. What have I got to do with your venereal disease, for heaven's sake?»

«Maybe you do have something to do with it.» «Don't be silly!»

«Well, anyway, I withdraw the forced selling.»

«Well then, don't you ever intend to take off your hat in your whole life?»

«I wonder why you're so uncooperative. It would be natural for you to feel tender toward me if we slept together.»

«In other words, you've got a psychological veneral disease, haven't you? By the way, maybe I'll have to work tomorrow.»

Hmm. A psychological venereal disease, he thought, yawning. It's a pretty clever expression for her to think up. But she would never know just how much the expression had hurt him. In the first place, venereal disease was the exact opposite of soap opera. Venereal disease was the most desperate evidence that soap opera did not exist. Venereal disease… stealthily imported by Columbus in his tiny ships into tiny harbors… spread so diligently by everyone throughout the world. All men were equal before death and venereal disease. Venereal disease… the collective responsibility of mankind. Nevertheless, she absolutely refused to admit it. She had shut herself in her own Alice in Wonderland tale where she herself played the main role. And he was left alone on this side of the minor, suffering with his psychological venereal disease. And so his naked — hatless — member was paralyzed and useless. Her mirror made him impotent. Her woman's innocence had turned him into an enemy.

His face was as stiff as starch, his breathing like a storm. His saliva tasted of dry scorched sugar… and such a terrible loss of energy. At least one glassful of water must have evaporated in perspiration. The woman arose sluggishly, keeping her head bent. Her sand-streaked face came to about the height of his eyes. Suddenly she blew her nose with her fingers and rubbed her hands with sand that she scooped up. Her trousers slipped down over her bending hips.

Annoyed, he turned his eyes away. Yet it was not quite right to say he was only annoyed. A strange feeling, different from dryness, lingered on the tip of his tongue. His member had been pulsating and vibrant without the rubber, although only for a short time, until he had been put off by the woman's stupid expression. And now a lingering warmth remained in it. To call this a discovery would perhaps be exaggerating, but it was worth a moment's attention.

He did not feel that he was particularly degenerate. But he was not at all disposed only to spiritual rape. It was like eating unsweetened tapioca. Spiritual rape meant that before he could hurt her, he would have to hurt himself. And why should he contract even a psychological venereal disease? That would be adding insult to injury. Was it true that a woman's glands were so weak that they emitted blood just because a man looked at her?

He vaguely sensed that there were two kinds of sexual desire. For example, on the basis of the Mobius circle, when you courted a girl, you always began, it seemed, with lectures on nutrition and taste… that is, before you got around to sex. Food exists only in an abstract sense for anybody dying of hunger; there isn't any such thing as the taste of Kobe beef or Hiroshima oysters. But once one's belly is full, then one begins to discern differences in taste and textures. Sexual desire was the same. First came desire in general, and only after that did particular sexual tastes evolve. And sex couldn't be discussed in general; it depended on time and place… sometimes you needed a dose of vitamins… some time sabowlofeelsand rice. It was a well-thought-out theory, but regrettably not a single girl friend had offered herself to him in support of it, with a readiness to experience sexual desire in general or sex in particular. That was natural. No man or woman is wooed by theory alone. He knew this, but he naively observed the theory of the Mobius circle and kept repeatedly pushing the doorbell of an empty house, only because he did not want to commit spiritual rape.

To be sure, he himself wasn't so romantic as to dream of pure sexual relations. You could do that when you were looking death in the eye… like the bamboo grass that bears seeds just as it is beginning to wither… like starving mice that repeatedly and frantically copulate as they migrate… like tuberculosis patients who are all seized by a kind of sex madness… like the king or ruler who dwells in a tower and devotes himself to establishing a harem… like the soldier for whom every moment is precious as he awaits the enemy attack and who spends those final moments masturbating… Fortunately, however, man is not indiscriminately exposed to the dangers of death. Man no longer needs to fear, even in winter; he has been able to free himself of the seasonal sexual urge. Yet when the struggle is over, weapons become an encumbrance. Order has come about, and the power to control sex and brute force lies within man's grasp, in place of Nature's. Thus, sexual intercourse is like a commutation ticket: it has to be punched every time you use it. Of course, you must check to see that the ticket is genuine. But this checking is terribly onerous; it corresponds precisely to the complications of order. All kinds of certificates — contracts, licenses, I. D. cards, permits, certificates of title, authorizations, registrations, carrying permits, certificates of membership, letters of recommendation, notes, leases, temporary permits, agreements, income declarations, receipts, even certificates of ancestry… every conceivable type of paper must be mobilized into action.

Thanks to such checks, sex is completely buried under a mantle of certifications… like a basket worm. It would be all right, I suppose, if this were satisfying. But even so, would that be the end of certificates? Wouldn't there be something else we had forgotten to declare? Both men and women are captives of an oppressive jealousy, always suspicious that the other party has purposely left something out To demonstrate their honesty they are compelled to issue a new certificate. No one knows where it will ever stop In the last analysis, the certificate seems to be infinite.

(She blames me for being too argumentative. But I'm not the one who's argumentative. It's just the truth.)

«But isn't that the obligation of love?»

«Not at all. It's what's left after you have struck out the restrictions by a process of elimination. If you don't have that much confidence, you might just as well not have any at all.»

There's no obligation to go along with this to the extent — and the poor taste — of gift-wrapping sex. Let's be freshly pressed every morning in sex too. In sex, once the coat's been worn, it's already old. You press out the wrinkles and it's like new again. Once it's new, it's immediately old again… Is there any obligation to listen to such indecencies?

Of course, if he could feel that this regularization offered some guarantee for life, then there was still room for compromise. But what about reality? The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move. In sex, too, one seems to have a vague premonition, a feeling that one has been left with a false promissory note. And so one begins to falsify the commutation ticket because one is sexually unsatisfied. Well, that's all right; it's good business. Or one admits of spiritual rape as a necessary evil. Anyway, without it there would be almost no marriages. Those who are in favor of free sex behave in much the same way. They are only giving a plausible rationalization to mutual rape. If you accept it as such, it can be enjoyed too. Freedom combined with constant worry — like a curtain that does not quite close — can only result in sexual psychopaths. There was no opportunity for his pitiable sex to doff its hat and relax.