Sophie's Choice - William Styron [112]
I might be tipped off to what is going on when we get into the taxi after Gage & Tollner’s. Naturally by then I am so beside myself with plain old hog lust that I simply wrap Leslie in my arms even before the cab gets moving. Right off it is a repetition of the moment when we went to look at the Pissarro. That foraging tongue of hers is inside me like some shad thrashing upstream for dear life. Never before have I known that kissing can be so major, so expansive. Obviously, though, the time has come for me to reciprocate, and so I do. As we ride down Fulton Street I “give tongue” back to her and she clearly loves it, responding with little groans and shudders. By this time I am so hot that I do something I have always wanted to do when kissing a girl but never dared to down in Va., because of its rather blatant suggestiveness. What I do is to slowly and rhythmically move my tongue in and out of her mouth in long copulatory movements, ad libitum. This causes Leslie to groan again and she draws her lips away long enough to whisper, “God! Your guess what in my guess what!” I am not deflected by that odd coyness. I am semi-deranged. It is almost impossible to reproduce my condition at this moment. In a sort of controlled frenzy I decide that now is the time to make the first truly direct move. So very delicately I slip my hand up in a way that will allow it to begin to cup the underpart of her luscious left breast, or right one, I forget which. And at that instant, to my almost total disbelief, with a firmness and a resolve that match my own delicate stealth, she moves her arm protectively into a position which clearly means: “Nothing doing.” It is absolutely dumfounding, so completely dumfounding that I think one of us has made a mistake, gotten our signals crossed, that she is joking (a bad joke), something. So, shortly after this, while my tongue is still rammed down her gullet and she continues to make these little moaning sounds, I move toward her other knocker. Wham! The same thing again: the sudden protective movement, the arm flung down like one of those barriers at a railroad crossing. “Do not pass!” It is utterly beyond belief.
(Writing now at 8 P.M. Friday, I consult my “Merck’s Manual.” From “Merck” I can assume I am suffering from a case of “severe acute glossitis,” an inflamed condition of the tongue’s surface which is of traumatic origin but doubtless aggravated by bacteria, viruses and all sorts of toxicity resulting from five or six hours of salivary exchange unprecedented in the history of my mouth and I daresay anyone’s. “Merck” informs me that this is a transient state, becoming palliated after a number of hours of the tongue’s gentle rest, which is a great relief to know, since it is sheer murder to eat anything or to take more than a few sips of beer. It is nearly nightfall, I am writing at Yetta’s, alone. I cannot even face Sophie or Nathan. In plain truth I am suffering from a desolation and letdown such as I have never known, or thought possible.)
Back to Stingo’s Progress. Naturally, almost to preserve my reason, I have to think of some rationale to explain her bizarre behavior. Obviously, I think, Les simply and with logic does not wish to have anything of an overt nature take place in a taxicab. Perfectly proper indeed. A lady in a taxi, a whore in bed. With this consideration in mind, I content myself with more labyrinthine tongue-work until the taxi arrives at the brownstone on Pierrepont Street. We disembark and enter the dark house. As Leslie unlocks the front door she remarks that, it being Thursday, it is Minnie’s night off, and I construe this to lay emphasis on the privacy we will have. In the soft light of the