t thick sporran others, and she was sopping wet, like a horse salivating. It was my first fuck, be Jesus, and it had to be that a train would come along and shower hot sparks over us. Lola was terrified. It was her first fuck too, I guess, and she probably needed it more than I, but when she felt the sparks she wanted to tear loose. It was like trying to hold down a wild mare. I couldn't keep her down, no matter how I wrestled with her. She got up, shook herclothes down, and adjusted the bun at the nape of her neck. "You must go home," she says. "I'm not going home," I said, and with that I took her by the arm and started walking. We walked along in dead silence for quite a distance. Neither of us seemed to be noticing where we were going. Finally we were out on the highway and up above us were the reservoirs and near the reservoirs was a pond. Instinctively I headed towards the pond. We had to pass under some low-hanging trees as we neared the pond. I was helping Lola to stoop down when suddenly she slipped, dragging me with her. She made no effort to get up; instead, she caught hold of me and pressed me to her, and to my complete amazement I also felt her slip her hand in my fly. She caressed me so wonderfully that in a jiffy I came in her hand. Then she took my hand and put it between her legs. She lay back completely relaxed and opened her legs wide. I bent over and kissed every hair on her cunt; I put my tongue in her navel and licked it clean. Then I lay with my head between her legs and lapped up the drool that was pouring from her. She was moaning now and clutching wildly with her hands; her hair had come completely undone and was lying over her bare abdomen. To make it short, I got it in again, and I held it a long time, for which she must have been damned grateful because she came I don't know how many times - it was like a pack of firecrackers going off, and with it all she sunk her teeth into me, bruised my lips, clawed me, ripped my shirt and what the hell not. I was branded like a steer when I got home and took a look at myself in the mirror. It was wonderful while it lasted, but it didn't last long. A month later the Niessens moved to another city, and I never saw Lola again. But I hung her sporran over the bed and I prayed to it every night. And whenever I began the Czemy stuff I would get an erection, thinking of Lola lying in the grass, thinking of her long black hair, the bun at the nape of her neck, the groans she vented and the juice that poured out of her. Playing the piano was just one long vicarious fuck for me. I had to wait another two years before I would get my end in again, as they say, and then it wasn't so good because I got a beautiful dose with it, and besides it wasn't in the grass and it wasn't summer, and there was no heat in it but just a cold mechanical fuck for a buck in a dirty little hotel room, the bastard trying to pretend she was coming and not coming any more than Christmas was coming. And maybe it wasn't her that gave me the clap, but her pal in the next room who was lying up with my friend Simmons. It was like this - I had finished so quick with my mechanical fuck that I thought I'd go in and see how it was going with my friend Simmons. Lo and behold, they were still at it, and they were going strong. She was a Czech, his girl, and a bit sappy; she hadn't been at it very long, apparently, and she used to forget herself and enjoy the act. Watching her hand it out, I decided to wait and have a go at her myself. And so I did. And before the week was out I had a discharge, and after that I figured it would be blueballs or rocks in the groin. Another year or so and I was giving lessons myself, and as luck would have it, the mother of the girl I'm teaching is a slut, a tramp and a trollop if ever there was one. She was living with a nigger, as I later found out. Seems she couldn't get a prick big enough to satisfy her. Anyway, every time I started to go home she'd hold me up at the door and rub it up against me. I was afraid of starting in with her because rumour had it that she was full of syph, but what the hell are you going to do when a hot bitch like that plasters her cunt up against you and slips her tongue halfway down your throat. I used to fuck her standing up in the vestibule, which wasn't so difficult because she was light and I could hold her in my hand like a doll. And like that I'm holding her one night when suddenly I hear a key being fitted into the lock, and she hears it too and she's frightened stiff. There's nowhere to go. Fortunately there's a portiere hanging at the doorway and I hide behind that. Then I heard her black buck kissing her and saying how are yer, honey ? and she's saying how she had been waiting up for him and better come right upstairs because she can't wait and so on. And when the stairs stop squeaking I gently open the door and sally out, and then by God I have a real fright because if that black buck ever finds out I'll have my throat slit and no mistake about it. And so I stop giving lessons at that joint, but soon the daughter is after me - just turning sixteen - and won't I come and give her lessons at a friend's house? We begin the Czerny exercises all over again, sparks and everything. It's the first smell of fresh cunt I've had, and it's wonderful, like new-mown hay. We fuck our way through one lesson after another and in between lessons we do a little extra fucking. And then one day it's the sad story - she's knocked up and what to do about it? I have to get a Jewboy to help me out, and he wants twenty-five bucks for the job and I've never seen twenty-five bucks in my life. Besides, she's under age. Besides, she might have blood-poisoning. I give him five bucks on account and beat it to the Adirondacks for a couple of weeks. In the Adirondacks I meet a schoolteacher who's dying to take lessons. More velocity exercises, more condoms and conundrums. Every time I touched the piano I seemed to shake a cunt loose. If there was a party I had to bring the fucking music roll along; to me it was just like wrapping my penis in a handkerchief and slinging it under my arm. In vacation time, at a farmhouse or an inn, where there was always a surplus of cunt, the music had an extraordinary effect. Vacation rime was a period I looked forward to the whole year, not because of the cunts so much as because it meant no work. Once out of harness I became a down. I was so chock-full of energy that I wanted to jump out of my skin. I remember one summer in the Catskills meeting a girl named Francie. She was beautiful and lascivious, with strong Scotch teats and a row of white even teeth that was dazzling. It began in the river where we were swimming. We were holding on to the boat and one of her boobies had slipped out of bounds. I slipped the other one out for her and then I undid the shoulder straps. She ducked under the boat coyly and I followed and as she was coming up for air I wriggled the bloody bathing suit off her and there she was floating like a mermaid with her big strong teats bobbing up and down like bloated corks. I wriggled out of my tights and we began playing like dolphins under the side of the boat. In a little while her girl friend came along in a canoe. She was a rather hefty girl a sort of strawberry blonde with agate-coloured eyes and full of freckles. She was rather shocked to find us in the raw, but we soon tumbled her out of the canoe and stripped her. And then the three of us began to play tag under the water, but it was hard to get anywhere with them because they were slippery as eels. After we had had enough of it we ran to a little bath-house which was standing in the field like an abandoned sentry box. We had brought our clothes along and we were going to get dressed, the three of us, in this little box. It was frightfully hot and sultry and the clouds were gathering for a storm. Agnes - that was Francie's friend - was in a hurry to get dressed. She was beginning to be ashamed of herself standing there naked in front of us. Francie, on the other hand seemed to be perfectly at ease. She was sitting on the bench with her legs crossed and smoking a cigarette. Anyway, just as Agnes was pulling on her chemise there came a flash of lightning and a terrifying clap of thunder right on the heels of it. Agnes screamed and dropped her chemise. There came another flash in a few seconds and again a peal of thunder, dangerously dose. The air got blue all around us and the flies began to bite and we felt nervous and itchy and a bit panicky too. Especially Agnes who was afraid of the lightning and even more afraid of being found dead and three of us stark naked. She wanted to get her things on and run for the house, she said. And just as she got that off her chest the rain came down, in bucketsful. We thought it would stop in a few minutes and so we stood there naked looking out at the steaming river through the partly opened door. It seemed to be raining rocks and the lightning kept playing around us incessantly. We were all thoroughly frightened now and in a quandary as to what to do. Agnes was wringing her hands and praying out loud; she looked like a George Grosz idiot, one of those lopsided bitches with a rosary around the neck and yellow jaundice to boot. I thought she was going to faint on us or something. Suddenly I got the bright idea of doing a war-dance in the rain - to distract them. Just as I jump out to commence my shindig a streak of lightning flashes and splits open a tree not far off. I'm so damned scared that I lose my wits. Always when I'm frightened I laugh. So I laughed a wild, blood-curdling laugh which made the girls scream. When I heard them scream, I don't know why, but I thought of the velocity exercises and with that I felt that I was standing in the void and it was blue all around and the rain was beating a bot-and-cold tattoo on my tender flesh. All my sensations had gathered on the surface of the skin and underneath the outermost layer of skin I was empty, light as a feather, lighter than air or smoke or talcum or magnesium or any goddamned thing you want. Suddenly I was a Chippewa and it was the key of sassafras again and I didn't give a fuck whether the girls were screaming or fainting or shitting in their pants, which they were minus anyway. Looking at crazy Agnes with the rosary around her neck and her big bread-basket blue with fright I got the notion to do a sacrilegious dance, with one hand cupping my balls and the other hand thumbing my nose at the thunder and lightning. The rain was hot and cold and the grass seemed full of dragonflies. I hopped about like a kangaroo and I yelled at the top of my lungs - "0 Father, you wormy old son of a bitch, pull in that fucking lightning or Agnes won't believe in you any more! Do you hear me, you old prick up there, stop the shenanigans . . . you're driving Agnes nutty. Hey you, are you deaf, you old futzer?" And with a continuous rattle of this defiant nonsense on my lips I danced around the bath-house leaping and bounding like a gazelle and using the most frightful oaths I could summon. When the lightning cracked I jumped higher and when the thunder clapped I roared like a lion and then I did a handspring and then I rolled in the grass like a cub and I chewed the grass and spit it out for them and I pounded my chest like a gorilla and all the time I could see the Czerny exercises resting on the piano, the white page full of sharps and flats, and the fucking idiot, think I to myself, imagining that that's the way to learn how to manipulate the well-tempered clavichord. And suddenly I thought that Czemy might be in heaven by now and looking down on me and so I spat at him high as I could spit and when the thunder rolled again I yelled with all my might - "You bastard, Czerny, you up there, may the lightning twist your balls off. .. may you swallow your own crooked tail and strangle yourself... do you hear me, you crazy prick?" But in spite of all my good efforts Agnes was getting more delirious. She was a dumb Irish Catholic and she had never heard God spoken to that way before. Suddenly, while 1 was dancing about in the rear of the bath-house she bolted for the river. I heard Francie scream - "Bring her back, she'll drown herself! Bring her back!" I started after her, the rain still coming down like pitchforks, and yelling to her to come back, but she ran on blindly as though possessed of the devil, and when she got to the water's edge she dove straight in and made for the boat. I swam after her and as we got to the side of the boat, which I was afraid she would capsize, I got hold of her round the waist with my one hand and I started to talk to her calmly and soothingly, as though I were talking to a child. "Go away from me," she said, "you're an atheist!" Jesus, you could have knocked me over with a feather, so astonished I was to hear that. So that was it? All that hysteria because I was insulting the Lord Almighty. I felt like batting her one in the eye to bring her to her senses. But we were out over our heads and I had a fear that she would do some mad thing like pulling the boat over our heads if I didn't handle her right. So I pretended that I was terribly sorry and I said I didn't mean a word of it, that I had been scared to death, and so on and so forth, and as I talked to her gently, soothingly, I slipped my hand down from her waist and I gently stroked her ass. That was what she wanted all right. She was talking to me blubberingly about what a good Catholic she was and how she had tried not to sin, and maybe she was so wrapped up in what she was saying that she didn't know what I was doing, but just the same when I got my hand in her crotch and said all the beautiful things I could think of, about God, about love, about going to church and confessing and all that crap, she must have felt something because I had a good three fingers inside her and working them around like drunken bobbins. "Put your arms around me Agnes," I said softly, slipping my band out and pulling her to me so that I could get my legs between hers... "There, that's the girl... take it easy now... it'll stop soon." And still talking about the church, the confessional. God love, and the whole bloody mess I managed to get it inside her. "You're very good to me," she said, just as though she didn't know my prick was in her, "and I'm sorry I acted like a fool." "I know, Agnes," I said, "it's all right... listen, grab me tighter... yeah, that's it." "I'm afraid the boat's going to tip over," she says, trying her best to keep her ass in position by paddling with her right hand. "Yes, let's get back to the shore," I said, and I start to pull away from her. "Oh don't leave me," she says, clutching me tighter. "Don't leave me, I'll drown." Just then Francie comes running down to the water. "Hurry," says Agnes, "hurry ... I'll drown." Francie was a good sort, I must say. She certainly wasn't a Catholic and if she had any morals they were of the reptilian order. She was one of those girls who are born to fuck. She had no aims, no great desires, showed no jealousy, held no grievances, was constantly cheerful and not at all unintelligent. At nights when we were sitting on the porch in the dark talking to the guests she would come over and sit on my lap with nothing on underneath her dress and I would slip it into her as she laughed and talked to the others. I think she would have brazened it out before the Pope if she had been given a chance. Back in the city, when I called on her at her home, she pulled the same stunt off in front of her mother whose sight, fortunately, was growing dim. If we went dancing and she got too hot in the pants she would drag me to a telephone booth and, queer girl that she was, she'd actually talk to some one, some one like Agnes for example, while pulling off the trick. She seemed to get a special pleasure out of doing it under people's noses; she said there was more fun in it if you didn't think about it too hard. In the crowded subway coming home from the beach, say, she'd slip her dress around so that the slit was in the middle and take my hand and put it right on her cunt. If the train was tightly packed and we were safely wedged in a comer she'd take my cock out of my fly and hold it in her two hands, as though it were a bird. Sometimes she'd get playful and hang her bag on it, as though to prove that there wasn't the least danger. Another thing about her was that she didn't pretend that I was the only guy she had on the string. Whether she told me everything I don't know, but she certainly told me plenty. She told me about her affairs laughingly, while she was climbing over me or when I had it in her, or just when I was about to come. She would tell me how they went about it, how big they were or how small, what they said when they got excited and so on and so forth giving me every possible detail, just as though I were going to write a textbook on the subject. She didn't seem to have the least feeling of sacredness about her own body or her feelings or anything connected with herself. "Francie, you bloody fucker," I used to say, "you've got the morals of a clam." "But you like me, don't you?" she'd answer. "Men like to fuck, and so do women. It doesn't harm anybody and it doesn't mean you have to love every one you fuck does it? I wouldn't want to be in love; it must be terrible to have to fuck the same man all the time, don't you think? Listen, if you didn't fuck anybody but me all the time you'd get tired of me quick, wouldn't you? Sometimes it's nice to be fucked by someone you don't know at all. Yes, I think that's the best of all," she added - "there's no complications, no telephone numbers, no love letters, no scraps, what? Listen, do you think this is very bad? Once I tried to get my brother to fuck me; you know what a sissy he is - he gives everybody a pain. I don't remember exactly how it was any more, but anyway we were in the house alone and I was passionate that day. He came into my bedroom to ask me for something. I was lying there with my dress up, thinking about it and wanting it terribly, and when he came in I didn't give a damn about his being my brother, I just thought of him as a man, and so I lay there with my skirt up and I told him I wasn't feeling well, that I had a pain in my stomach. He wanted to run right out and get something for me but I told him no, just to rub my stomach a bit, that would do it good. I opened my waist and made him rub my bare skin. He was trying to keep his eyes on the wall, the big idiot, and rubbing me as though I were a piece of wood. 'It's not there, you chump,' I said, 'it's lower down . . . what are you afraid of?' And I pretended that I was in agony. Finally he touched me accidentally. "There! that's it!' I shouted. 'Oh do rub it, it feels so good!' Do you know, the big sap actually massaged me for five minutes without realizing that it was all a game? I was so exasperated that I told him to get the hell out and leave me alone. 'You're a eunuch,' I said, but he was such a sap I don't think he knew what the word meant." She laughed, thinking what a ninny her brother was. She said he probably still had his maiden. What did I think about it - was it so terribly bad? Of course she knew I wouldn't think anything of the kind. "Listen Francie," I said, "did you ever tell that story to the cop you're going with?" She guessed she hadn't. "I guess so too," I said. "He'd beat the piss out of you if ever he heard that yam." "He's socked me already," she answered promptly. "What?" I said, "you let him beat you up?" "I don't ask him to," she said, "but you know how quick-tempered he is. I don't let anybody else sock me but somehow coming from him I don't mind so much. Sometimes it makes me feel good inside ... I don't know, maybe a woman ought to get beaten up once in a while. It doesn't hurt so much, if you really like a guy. And afterwards he's so damned gentle - I almost feel ashamed of myself..." It isn't often you get a cunt who'll admit such things - I mean a regular cunt and not a moron. There was Trix Miranda, for example, and her sister, Mrs. Costello. A fine pair of birds they were. Trix, who was going with my friend MacGregor, tried to pretend to her own sister, with whom she was living, that she had no sexual relations with MacGregor. And the sister was pretending to all and sundry that she was frigid, that she couldn't have any relations with a man even if she wanted to, because she was "built too small". And meanwhile my friend MacGregor was fucking them silly, both of them, and they both knew about each other but still they lied like that to each other. Why? I couldn't make it out. The Costello bitch was hysterical; whenever she felt that she wasn't getting a fair percentage of the lays that MacGregor was handing out she'd throw a pseudo-epileptic fit. That meant throwing towels over her, patting her wrists, opening her bosom, chafing her legs and finally hoisting her upstairs to bed where my friend MacGregor would look after her as soon as he had put the other one to sleep. Sometimes the two sisters would lie down together to take a nap of an afternoon; if MacGregor were around he would go upstairs and lie between them. And he explained it to me laughingly, the trick was for him to pretend to go to sleep. He would lie there breathing heavily, opening now one eye, now the other, to see which one was really dozing off. As soon as he was convinced that one of them was asleep he'd tackle the other. On such occasions he seemed to prefer the hysterical sister, Mrs. Costello, whose husband visited her about once every six months. The more risk he ran, the more thrill he got out of it, he said. If it were with the other sister, Trix, whom he was supposed to be courting, he had to pretend that it would be terrible if the other one were to catch them like that, and at the same time, he admitted to me, he was always hoping that the other one would wake up and catch them. But the married sister, the one who was "built too small", as she used to say, was a wily bitch and besides she felt guilty toward her sister and if her sister had ever caught her in the act she'd probably have pretended that she was having a fit and didn't know what she was doing. Nothing on earth could make her admit that she was actually permitting herself the pleasure of being fucked by a man. I knew her quite well because I was giving her lessons for a time, and I used to do my damnedest to make her admit that she had a normal cunt and that she'd enjoy a good fuck if she could get it now and then. I used to tell her wild stories, which were really thinly disguised accounts of her own doings, and yet she remained adamant. I had even gotten her to the point one day - and this beats everything - where she let me put my finger inside her. I thought sure it was settled. It's true she was dry and a bit tight, but I put that down to her hysteria. But imagine getting that far with a cunt and then having her say to your face, as she yanks her dress down violently - "you see, I told you I wasn't built right!" "I don't see anything of the kind," I said angrily. "What do you expect me to do - use a microscope on you?" "I like that," she said, pretending to get on her high horse. "What a way of talking to me!" "You know damned well you're lying," I continued. "Why do you lie like that? Don't you think it's human to have a cunt and to use it once in a while? Do you want it to dry up on you?" "Such language!" she said, biting her under lip and reddening like a beet "I always thought you were a gentleman." "Well, you're no lady," I retorted, "because even a lady admits to a fuck now and then, and besides ladies don't ask gentlemen to stick their fingers up inside them and see how small they're built." "I never asked you to touch me," she said. "I wouldn't think of asking you to put your hand on me, on my private parts anyway." "Maybe you thought I was going to swab your ear for you, is that it?" "I thought of you like a doctor at that moment, that's all I can say," she said stiffly, trying to freeze me out. "Listen," I said, taking a wild chance, "let's pretend that it was all a mistake, that nothing happened, nothing at all. I know you too well to think of insulting you like that. I wouldn't think of doing a thing like that to you - no, damned if I would. I was just wondering if maybe you weren't right in what you said, if maybe you aren't built rather small. You know, it all went so quick I couldn't tell what I felt... I don't think I even put my finger inside you. I must have just touched the outside - that's about all. Listen sit down here on the couch ... let's be friends again." I pulled her down beside me - she was melting visibly - and I put my arm around her waist, as though to console her more tenderly. "Has it always been like that?" I asked innocently, and I almost laughed the next moment, realizing what an idiotic question it was. She hung her head coyly, as though we were touching on an unmentionable tragedy. "Listen, maybe if you sat on my lap . . ." and I hoisted her gently on to my lap, at the same time delicately putting my hand under her dress and resting it lightly on her knee . . . "maybe if you sat a moment like this, you'd feel better... there, that's it, just snuggle back in my arms... are you feeling better?" She didn't answer, but she didn't resist either; she just lay back limply and closed her eyes. Gradually and very gently and smoothly I moved my hand up her leg, talking to her in a low, soothing voice all the time. When I got my fingers into her crotch and parted the little lips she was as moist as a dish-rag. I massaged it gently, opening it up more and more, and still handing out a telepathic line about women sometimes being mistaken about themselves and how sometimes they think they're very small when really they're quite normal, and the longer I kept it up the juicier she got and the more she opened up. I had four fingers inside her and there was room inside for more if I had had more to put in. She had an enormous cunt and it had been well reamed out, I could feel. I looked at her to see if she was still keeping her eyes shut. Her mouth was open and she was gasping but her eyes were tight shut, as though she were pretending to herself that it was all a dream. I could move her about roughly now - no danger of the slightest protest. And maliciously perhaps, I jostled her about unnecessarily, just to see if she would come to. She was as limp as a feather pillow and even when her head struck the arm of the sofa she showed no sign of irritation. It was as though she had anaesthetized herself for a gratuitous fuck. I pulled all her clothes off and threw them on the floor, and after I had given her a bit of a work-out on the sofa I slipped it out and laid her on the floor, on her clothes; and then I slipped it in again and she held it tight with that suction valve she used so skilfully, despite the outward appearance of coma. It seems strange to me that the music always passed off into sex. Nights, if I went out for a walk, I was sure to pick up some one - a nurse, a girl coming out of a dance hall; a sales girl, anything with a skirt on. If I went out with my friend MacGregor in his car - just a little spin to the beach, he would say -1 would find myself by midnight sitting in some strange parlour in some queer neighbourhood with a girl on my lap, usually one I didn't give a damn about because MacGregor was even less selective than I. Often, stepping in his car I'd say to him - "listen, no cunts tonight, what?" And he'd say - "Jesus, no, I'm fed up ... just a little drive somewhere . . . maybe to Sheepshead Bay, what do you say?" We wouldn't have gone more than a mile when suddenly he'd pull the car up to the curb and nudge me. "Get a look at that," he'd say, pointing to a girl strolling along the sidewalk. "Jesus, what a leg!" Or else - "Listen what do you say we ask her to come along? Maybe she can dig up a friend." And before I could say another word he'd be hailing her and handing out his usual patter, which was the same for every one. And nine times out often the girl came along. And before we'd gone very far, feeling her up with his free hand, he'd ask her if she didn't have a friend she could dig up to keep us company. And if she put up a fuss, if she didn't like being pawed over that way too quickly, he'd say - "All right, get the hell out then ... we can't waste any time on the likes of you!" And with that he'd slow up and shove her out. "We can't be bothered with cunts like that, can we Henry?" he'd say, chuckling softly. "You wait, I promised you something good before the night's over." And if I reminded him that we were going to lay off for one night he'd answer; "Well, just as you like ... I was only thinking it might make it more pleasant for you." And then suddenly the brakes would pull us up and he'd be saying to some silky silhouette looming out of the dark: - "hello sister, what yer doing - taking a little stroll?" And maybe this time it would be something exciting, a dithery little bitch with nothing else to do but pull up her skirt and hand it to you. Maybe we wouldn't even have to buy her a drink, just hail up somewhere on a side road and go at it, one after the other, in the car. And if she was an emptyheaded bimbo, as they usually were, he wouldn't even bother to drive her home. "We're not going that way," he'd say, the bastard that he was. "You'd better jump out here," and with that he'd open the door and out with her. His next thought was, of course, was she dean? That would occupy his mind all the way back. "Jesus, we ought to be more careful," he'd say. "You don't know what you're getting yourself into picking them up like that. Ever since that last one - you remember, the one we picked up on the Drive - I've been itchy as hell. Maybe it's just nervousness ... I think about it too much. Why can't a guy stick to one cunt, tell me that. Henry. You take Trix, now, she's a good kid, you know that. And I like her too, in a way, but... shit, what's the use of talking about it? You know me - I'm a glutton. You know, I'm getting so bad that sometimes when I'm on my way to a date - mind you, with a girl I want to fuck, and everything fixed too - as I say, sometimes I'm rolling along and maybe out of the comer of my eye I catch a flash of a leg crossing the street and before I know it I've got her in the car and the hell with the other girl. I must be cunt-struck, I guess ... what do you think? Don't tell me," he would add quickly. "I know you, you bugger . . . you'll be sure to tell me the worst." And then, after a pause - "you're a funny guy, do you know that? I never notice you refusing anything, but somehow you don't seem to be worrying about it all the time. Sometimes you strike me as though you didn't give a damn one way or the other. And you're a steady bastard too - almost a monogamist, I'd say. How you can keep it up so long with one woman beats me. Don't you get bored with them? Jesus, I know so well what they're going to say. Sometimes I feel like saying . . . you know, just breeze in on 'em and say; 'listen, kid, don't say a word .. . just fish it out and open your legs wide.' " He laughed heartily. "Can you imagine the expression on Trix's face if I pulled a line like that on her? I'll tell you, once I came pretty near doing it. I kept my hat and coat on. Was she sore! She didn't mind my keeping the coat on so much, but the hat! I told her I was afraid of a draught... of course there wasn't any draught. The truth is, I was so damned impatient to get away that I thought if I kept my hat on I'd be off quicker. Instead I was there all night with her. She put up such a row that I couldn't get her quiet. . . But listen, that's nothing. Once I had a drunken Irish bitch and this one had some queer ideas. In the first place, she never wanted it in bed . . . always on the table. You know, that's all right once in a while, but if you do it often it wears you out. So one night - I was a little tight, I guess - I says to her, no, nothing doing, you drunken bastard . . . you're gonna go to bed with me to-night. I want a real fuck - in bed. You know, I had to argue with that son of a bitch for an hour almost before I could persuade her to go to bed with me, and then only on the agreement that I was to keep my hat on. Listen, can you picture me getting over that stupid bitch with my hat on? And stark naked to boot! I asked her ... 'Why do you want me to keep my hat on?' You know what she said? She said it seemed more genteel. Can you imagine what a mind that cunt had? I used to hate myself for going with that bitch. I never went to her sober, that's one thing. I'd have to be tanked up first and kind of blind and batty - you know how I get sometimes . . ." I knew very well what he meant. He was one of my oldest friends and one of the most cantankerous bastards I ever knew. Stubborn wasn't the word for it. He was like a mule - a pigheaded Scotchman. And his old man was even worse. When the two of them got into a rage it was a pretty sight. The old man used to dance positively dance with rage. If the old lady got between she'd get a sock in the eye. They used to put him out of the house regularly. Out he'd go, with all his belongings, including the furniture, including the piano too. In a month or so he'd be back again - because they always gave him credit at home. And then he'd come home drunk some night with a woman he'd picked up somewhere and the rumpus would start all over again. It seems they didn't mind so much his coming home with a girl and keeping her all night, but what they did object to was the cheek of him asking his mother to serve them breakfast in bed. If his mother tried to bawl him out he'd shut her up by saying - "What are you trying to tell me? You wouldn't have been married yet if you hadn't been knocked up." The old lady would wring her hands and say - "What a son! What a son! God help me, what have I done to deserve this?" To which he'd remark, "Aw forget it! You're just an old prune!" Often as not his sister would come up to try and smooth matters out. "Jesus, Wallie," she'd say, "it's none of my business what you do, but can't you talk to your mother more respectfully?" Whereupon MacGregor would make his sister sit on the bed and start coaxing her to bring up the breakfast. Usually he'd have to ask his bed-mate what her name was in order to present her to his sister. "She's not a bad kid," he'd say, referring to his sister. "She's the only decent one in the family ... Now listen, sis, bring up some grub, will yer? Some nice bacon and eggs, eh, what do you say? Listen, is the old man around? What's his mood to-day? I'd like to borrow a couple of bucks. You try to worm it out of him, will you? I'll get you something nice for Christmas." Then, as though everything were settled, he'd pull back the covers to expose the wench beside him. "Look at her, sis, ain't she beautiful? Look at that leg! Listen, you ought to get yourself a man . . . you're too skinny. Patsy here, I bet she doesn't go begging for it, eh Patsy?" and with that a sound slap on the rump for Patsy. "Now scram, sis, I want some coffee . . . and don't forget, make the bacon crisp! Don't get any of that lousy store bacon ... get something extra. And be quick about it!" What I liked about him were his weaknesses; like all men who practise will-power he was absolutely flabby inside. There wasn't a thing he wouldn't do - out of weakness. He was always very busy and he was never really doing anything. And always boning up on something, always trying to improve his mind. For example, he would take the unabridged dictionary and, tearing out a page each day, would read it through religiously on his way back and forth from the office. He was full of facts, and the more absurd and incongruous the facts, the more pleasure he derived from them. He seemed to be bent on proving to all and sundry that life was a farce, that it wasn't worth the game, that one thing cancelled out another, and so on. He was brought up on the North Side, not very far from the neighbourhood in which I had spent my childhood. He was very much a product of the North Side, too, and that was one of the reasons why I liked him. The way he talked, out of the comer of his mouth, for instance, the tough air he put on when talking to a cop, the way he spat in disgust, the peculiar curse words he used, the sentimentality, the limited horizon, the passion for playing pool or shooting crap, the staying up all night swapping yams, the contempt for the rich, the hobnobbing with politicians, the curiosity about worthless things, the respect for learning, the fascination of the dance hall, the saloon, the burlesque, talking about seeing the world and never budging out of the city, idolizing no matter whom so long as the person showed "spunk", a thousand and one little traits or peculiarities of this sort endeared him to me because it was precisely such idiosyncrasies which marked the fellows I had known as a child. The neighbourhood was composed of nothing, it seemed, but lovable failures. The grown-ups behaved like children and the children were incorrigible. Nobody could rise very far above his neighbour or he'd be lynched. It was amazing that any one ever became a doctor or a lawyer. Even so, he had to be a good fellow, had to pretend to talk like every one else, and he had to vote the Democratic ticket. To hear MacGregor talk about Plato or Nietzsche, for instance, to his buddies was something to remember. In the first place, to even get permission to talk about such things as Plato or Nietzsche to his companions, he had to pretend that it was only by accident that he had run across their names; or perhaps he'd say that he had met an interesting drunk one night in the back room of a saloon and this drunk had started talking about these guys Nietzsche and Plato. He would even pretend he didn't quite know how the names were pronounced. Plato wasn't such a dumb bastard, he would say apologetically. Plato had an idea or two in his bean, yes sir, yes siree. He'd like to see one of those dumb politicians at Washington trying to lock horns with a guy like Plato. And he'd go on, in this roundabout, matter of fact fashion to explain to his crap-shooting friends just what kind of a bright bird Plato was in his time and how he measured up against other men in other times. Of course, he was probably a eunuch, he would add, by way of throwing a little cold water on all this erudition. In those days, as he nimbly explained, the big guys, the philosophers, often had their nuts cut off - a fact! - so as to be out of all temptation. The other guy, Nietzsche, he was a real case, a case for the bug-house. He was supposed to be in love with his sister. Hypersensitive like. Had to live in a special climate - in Nice, he thought it was. As a rule he didn't care much for the Germans, but this guy Nietzsche was different. As a matter of fact, he hated the Germans, this Nietzsche. He claimed he was a Pole or something like that. He had them dead right, too. He said they were stupid and swinish, and by God, he knew what he was talking about. Anyway he showed them up. He said they were full of shit, to make it brief, and by God, wasn't he right though? Did you see the way those bastards turned