From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [88]
Then there was a Treeburn’s Facial Soap ad, of a long-lined blonde lying on a beach robe being kissed by a handsome head and shoulder of a man, a painting with a kind of unreal fuzzy outline, she lying there full length, stretched out, turned on one hip, her arms above her head, wearing a bathing suit that looked like a leopard skin, a tight little bra over the small snub breasts and the brief pants wrinkled enticingly across the crotch between the close-together legs. There was the heavy-lidded, full-pouting-lipped look on her face that women get when they really want it bad. This one was a fine one, better than the others, in fact, the best one yet.
And last, of the three best, there was this small one, a shaded drawing of a dame in a sort of T shirt and soft shorts. Duchessa Lazidays, Sleep in ’em Play in ’em Laze in ’em, Duchessa Underwear Corp. and the T shirt fell lightly, swelling under the pressure of the perfect breasts. Shaded half circles and points of light hinted at the rubbery red nipples underneath. The clothes really made no difference; if the artist had left out two dozen lines it would have been a nude. Yet Prew found himself staring and staring, trying vainly to penetrate beneath the plane of the attire to the plane of the figure under it, as if it were three-dimensional. Funny how just a few pencil lines adroitly arranged could suggest the swelling, deep-blooded, pulsating life of a lovely woman.
He could feel his hands beginning to sweat and the muscles along the insides of his thighs begin to tremble. That woman was too good to be true, he told himself, no woman ever lived with an ass and tits like that. Maybe that was why it was more appealing than the color photographs. And that curly headed son of a bitch in the painting, getting ready to lay his long blonde on the beach, just as natural, just as easy, taking all that he had there so much for granted. God, he thought, imagine a man that had a woman there, like that, and then taking her for granted.
You better lay off, he told himself, this is no time to be inspecting cunt pictures, not in the middle of the month, and you broke. When it’s too late to even borrow three bucks from the twenty percent men to make a flying trip to Big Sue’s in Wahiawa. You better go back to The Saturday Evening Post, buddy.
He tossed the Journals all aside then, and picked up another Post, feeling in himself the superb strength that was lying useless in his thighs, the heavy power of maleness in his belly, the lightness of the sweating fingertips that had suddenly become so sensitive to every touch.
But the first thing in the Post he saw was another ad, a full page Greyhound Bus Lines spread telling about the Glory of Southern Sun, and in the middle a full length figure of a woman, the round lean lines of her hips staring at you from behind the tiny loosely skirted pants of the two piece bathing suit.
All right, he thought, okay; if thats the way it is; a savagery of anger in him now at the pictures. They print these goddam pictures, and at the same time jail a man for having an eight page book of Toots and Casper, and the women that model for them are shocked if some joe wants to fuck them. They call them “pin-up girls” and think its cute how “our boys,” now that they’re drafted, love to hang them in their wall lockers. And then close up all the whorehouses, every place they can, so our young men will not be contaminated and will not be able to get their nuts off.
He ripped the page out of the Post and wadded it up, crumpling it in his hands until it was only pulpy paper, and threw it across the narrow room into one of the puddles on the floor. He got up and stepped on it hard, grinding it into a sodden mess under his shoe and then stepped back and looked down at it, ashamed because he had destroyed beauty, had taken a living volute woman’s hip and turned it into spitballs.
Climbing