The Naughty Bits (18 page)

from
“To His Coy Mistress”

ANDREW MARVELL

Anyone who has read seventeenth-century verse knows Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”; anyone who has lived in this ragtag world of sexual longing knows its sentiment: C’mon, baby, let’s get it on. Now no disrespect to Marvin Gaye, but never has the case been better petitioned than by Marvell in his masterpiece. Although most men just whine to their lovers about their robin’s-egg-tinted balls, Marvell, he argues. From the oft-quoted opening lines to the final image of the unstoppable sun, Marvell denies love any eternity or stasis. And because it is true that even the hottest flame must burn in sequential time, any second unseized is lost. This is the conceit of Marvell’s exquisite bauble, which follows in its entirety. I encourage you to memorize some of its lines; we know all too well how often they’ll come in handy.

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp’d power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

from
“Cleanness”

THE PEARL POET

The fourteenth-century alliterative poem “Cleanness” (sometimes called “Purity”) narrates, in rather excruciating detail, the agonies God inflicts on filthy sinners. Its author is unknown, though he’s generally referred to as the Pearl or the Gawain poet, after two of his more popular poems. “Cleanness” didn’t catch on quite like the others, no doubt because it is an example of that oh-so-fun medieval poetic genre, homiletic verse—didactic sermons thinly veiled in poetry.

Now, although these poems are only as subtle as the Trojan horse, and about as yummy as cherry cough syrup, they can occasionally make for good reading. For one thing, you get to learn lots of great stuff, like how to lace up the armor of chastity, why everything is Eve’s fault, and how to interpret especially sticky Bible passages (“Mom, if Mary never . . . , then how . . . ?”). All this and alliteration too!

So, much as I’m sure you want to rush out and read some homilies, maybe you’re a little surprised to find one here. Sermons in a sex anthology? Not to worry. Not wanting you to miss out on this vital phase in medieval letters, I culled one of the raciest passages in the history of the genre. In it God has caught wind of some male-male sex practices taking place on Earth, and he’s not happy about it. The following excerpt is his curious response: He condemns sodomy, as the jaded among us would expect, but not from the reactionary Church position we’re used to hearing today. Instead, he argues that sodomy doesn’t make any sense considering how much fun straight sex can be. Now there’s an argument! And from the mouth of God! So, here it is, an unlikely endorsement from on high for a particularly tangible form of terrestrial paradise.

The great sound of Sodom sinks in My ears
And the guilt of Gomorrah goads Me to wrath
I shall research that rumor and see for Myself
If they have done as is heard on high.
They have learned a lifestyle that liketh Me ill,
And found in their flesh of faults the foulest,
Each male making mate of men like himself
Fondling the fellows as if they were female.
Yet I designed them a deed and taught them to do it
And deemed it in My dominion the dearest of dances
And set love therein, making such sex the sweetest.
The play of paramours I portrayed Myself,
And made one manner much merrier than all others:
When two who are true tie to one another
Between this male and his mate such mirth may be made
That paradise proper would prove hardly preferable.
They must take to each other in the manner most true
Stealing to a secluded spot, silent and unseen,
And the flame of their love will fire up so free
That all the sorrows of this life will not it slake.

—modernized by Jack Murnighan

from
Gravity’s Rainbow

THOMAS PYNCHON

Thomas Pynchon’s
Gravity’s
Rainbow
is one of the most bizarre and extraordinary novels of the twentieth century. It is gigantic and taxing, and few who begin it finish. I only succeeded in the rush of a forty-eight-hour delirium—boxer-shorted and unshaven in a squalid Parisian
chambre de bonne
with a pot of lentils between my knees. By the book’s end I was fully participating in the manic paranoia that fueled its composition, and when I staggered out onto the brightly lit street, I had a very difficult time figuring out what I was supposed to do next.

Gravity’s Rainbow
is one of those handful of novels, more a world than a book, that overwhelms you with the totality of its vision, immersing you well above the eyeballs. It’s also a very difficult novel to pin down: on the one hand an act of extreme dementia, furiously interlarded with layers of conspiracy and machination; on the other, a consummate genre-bender, interchanging moments of
Three Stooges
–like farce with hard science, statistical theory, and meticulous wartime history. It’s the kind of book writers probably shouldn’t read, considering the effects on the ego of having one’s achievements monumentally dwarfed.

But all eulogizing aside, the scene I’ve excerpted is not for the squeamish. Rarely does a writer of true greatness emerge from the legions of scribblers, rarer still does such a writer address the furthest frontiers of what most people think unthinkable. Here is one of those exceptional moments.

The cell is in semidarkness, with only a scented candle burning back in a corner that seems miles away. She waits for him in a tall Adam chair, white body and black uniform-of-the-night. He drops to his knees.

“Domina Nocturna . . . shining mother and last love . . . your servant Ernest Pudding reporting as ordered.”

. . . She is naked now, except for a long sable cape and black boots with court heels. Her only jewelry is a silver ring with an artificial ruby not cut to facets but still in the original boule, an arrogant gout of blood, extended now, waiting his kiss.

His clipped moustache bristles, trembling, across her fingers. She has filed her nails to long points and polished them the same red as her ruby. Their ruby. In this light the nails are almost black. “That’s enough. Get ready.”

. . . He is on his knees again, bare as a baby. His old man’s flesh creeps coarse-grained in the light from the candle. Old scars and new welts group here and there over his skin. His penis stands at present arms. She smiles. At her command, he crawls forward to kiss her boots. He smells wax and leather, and can feel her toes flexing beneath his tongue, through the black skin . . . Some nights she’s gagged him with a ceremonial sash, bound him with a goldtasseled fourragère or his own Sam Browne. But tonight he lies humped on the floor at her feet, his withered ass elevated for the cane, bound by nothing but his need for pain, for something real, something pure. They have taken him so far from his simple nerves. They have stuffed paper illusions and military euphemisms between him and this truth, this rare decency, this moment at her scrupulous feet . . . no it’s not guilt here, not so much amazement— that he could have listened to so many years of ministers, scientists, doctors each with his specialized lies to tell, when she was here all the time, sure in her ownership of his failing body, his true body: undisguised by uniform, uncluttered by drugs to keep from him her communiqués of vertigo, nausea and pain . . . Above all, pain. The clearest poetry, the endearment of greatest worth . . .

He struggles to his knees to kiss the instrument. She stands over him now, legs astride, pelvis cocked forward, fur cape held apart on her hips. He dares to gaze up at her cunt, that fearful vortex. Her pubic hair has been dyed black for the occasion. He sighs, and lets escape a small shameful groan.

“Ah . . . yes, I know.” She laughs. “Poor mortal Brigadier, I know. It is my last mystery,” stroking with fingernails her labia, “you cannot ask a woman to reveal her last mystery, no, can you?”

“Please . . .”

“No. Not tonight. Kneel here and take what I give you.”

. . . Her shadow covers his face and upper torso, her leather boots creak softly as thigh and abdominal muscles move, and then in a rush she begins to piss. He opens his mouth to catch the stream, choking, trying to keep swallowing, feeling warm urine dribble out the corners of his mouth and down his neck and shoulders, submerged in the hissing storm. When she’s done he licks the last few drops from his lips. More cling, golden clear, to the glossy hairs of her quim. Her face, looming between her bare breasts, is smooth as steel.

She turns. “Hold up my fur.” He obeys. “Be careful. Don’t touch my skin.” Earlier in this game she was nervous, constipated, wondering if this was anything like male impotence. But thoughtful Pointsman, anticipating this, has been sending laxative pills with her meals. Now her intestines whine softly, and she feels shit begin to slide down and out. He kneels with his arms up holding the rich cape. A dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks. He spreads his knees, awkwardly, until he can feel the leather of her boots. He leans forward to surround the hot turd with his lips, sucking on it tenderly, licking along its lower side . . . The stink of shit floods his nose, gathering him, surrounding. It is the smell of Passchendaele, of the Salient. Mixed with the mud, and the putrefaction of corpses, it was the sovereign smell of their first meeting, and her emblem. The turd slides into his mouth, down to his gullet. He gags, but bravely clamps his teeth shut. Bread that would only have floated in porcelain waters somewhere, unseen, untasted—risen now and backed in the bitter intestinal oven to bread we know, bread that’s light as domestic comfort, secret as death in bed . . . Spasms in his throat continue. The pain is terrible. With his tongue he mashes shit against the roof of his mouth and begins to chew, thickly now, the only sound in the room . . .

There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. He prays that she’ll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from his hands. She orders him to masturbate for her. She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.

The Brigadier comes quickly. The rich smell of semen fills the room like smoke.

“Now go.”

from
“Anactoria”

SAPPHO

Sappho, a Greek poet who lived over 600 years before the birth of Christ, is the most renowned woman writer of antiquity. Her poems, extant now primarily in fragments, were among the most accomplished of her day. These lyrics (so-called because she accompanied her recitals with a lyre) made her famous in her lifetime—so much so that statues of her were erected, an ancient Greek coin bore her face, and even two centuries after her death, Plato called her the tenth muse.

Today Sappho is still recognized as one of the major contributors to the development of first-person voice in Greek verse. Hers is the voice of the individual, abandoning the standard topic of feuds among the gods to address instead the barebones reality of visceral love and longing, as when she writes “Again desire, / —which loosens limbs and is so bitter and sweet, / makes my body quiver. / You are irresistible.” The level of physicality in Sappho’s verse suggests an advancement in Greek thinking: that it might not be Fate that dictates the course of human life so much as the exigencies of the emotive self.

Yet Sappho’s modern fame is more a result of her association with lesbianism than of her role in the evolution of verse. The term
lesbian
is derived from the name of the Greek isle Lesbos, where Sappho founded a school of women with whom she had sexual relations and to whom she wrote much of her exquisite and sensual verse. Her predilection is summarized in the eminently quotable lines “Lovely girls / for you / my feelings / will never change”; the evidence that she acted on her predilection can be found in lines such as “With the noble oils of flowers / you annointed yourself / and on softest beds fulfilled your desire / for me.” Lesbian desire as explicit as this would not be articulated again for centuries.