Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [31]
Lilith gasped at the sight, and Mabel said, ‘We certainly caught them at the best moment.’ And laughed. So Mabel knew this climax which Lilith had not known and wanted to know. Lilith wanted to ask her, ‘What is it like?’ But soon she would know. She would be impelled to let loose all those desires usually experienced only in fantasies, in long daydreams that filled her hours when she was alone in the house. She would sit painting and think: Now a man with whom I am very much in love enters. He enters the room and says, ‘Let me undress you.’ My husband never undressed me – he gets undressed by himself and then gets into bed and if he wants me he puts out the light. But this man will come and undress me slowly, piece by piece. This will give me so much time to feel him, his hands about me. He will loosen the belt first of all and touch my waist with his two hands and say, ‘What a beautiful waist you have, how it curves in, how slender it is.’ And then he will unbutton my blouse very slowly, and I will feel his hands unbuttoning each button and touching my breasts little by little, until they come out of the blouse, and then he will love them and suckle at the nipples like a child, hurting me a little with his teeth, and I will feel all this creeping over my whole body, untying each little tight nerve and dissolving me. He will get impatient with the skirt, tear at it a little. He will be in such a state of desire. He will not put out the light. He will keep looking at me with his desire, admiring me, worshiping me, warming my body with his hands, waiting until I am completely aroused, every little part of my skin.
Was the Spanish fly affecting her? No, she was languid, with her fantasy beginning again, over and over again – but that was all. Yet, the sight of the couple in the automobile, their state of ecstasy, was something she wanted to know.
When she reached home her husband was reading. He looked up and smiled at her mischievously. She did not want to confess that she was not affected. She was immensely disappointed in herself. What a cold woman she was, whom nothing could affect – not even this which had once made a nobleman in the eighteenth century make love for three nights and three days without stopping. What a monster she was. Even her husband must not know. He would laugh at her. In the end he would look for a more sensitive woman.
So she began to undress in front of him, walking back and forth half-naked, brushing her hair in front of the mirror. Usually she never did this. She did not want him to desire her. She did not enjoy it. It was something to be done quickly, for his sake. For her it was a sacrifice. His excitement and his enjoyment that she did not share were rather repulsive to her. She felt like a whore who was receiving money for this. She was a whore who had no feelings, and in exchange for his love and devotion she would fling this empty, unfeeling body at him. She felt ashamed to be so dead in her body.
But when she had finally slipped into bed, he said, ‘I don’t think the Spanish fly has affected you enough. I feel sleepy. You wake me up if …’
Lilith tried to sleep, but all of the time she was waiting to go wild with desire. After an hour she got up and went to the bathroom. She took the little tube along and took about ten pills, thinking, ‘This will do it now.’ And she waited. During the night her husband came into her bed. But she was so tight between her legs that no moisture would come, and she had to wet his penis with saliva.
The next morning she awakened weeping.