just a taste of Anais Nin

[Glorious Amok]

Henry & June by Anais Nin

Huge and I are in the car, driving to an elegant evening. I sing until it seems my singing is driving the car. I swell my chest and imitate the roucoulement of the pigeons. My French rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr roll. Hugo laughs. Later, with a marquis and a marquise, we come out of the theatre, and whores press in around us, very close. The marquise tightens her mouth. I think, they are Henry’s whores, and I feel warmly towards them, friendly.

One evening I suggest to Hugo that we go to an ‘exhibition’ together, just to see. ‘Do you want to?” I say, although in my mind I am ready to live, not to see. He is curious, elated. ‘Yes, yes.’ We call up Henry to ask for information. He suggests 32 rue Blondel.

On the way over, Hugo hesitates, but I am laughing at his side, and I urge him on. The taxi drops us in a narrow little street. We had forgotten the number. But I see 32 in red over one of the doorways. I feel that we have stood on a diving board and have plunged. And now we are in a play. We are different.

I push a swinging door. I was to go ahead to barter over the price. But when I see it is not a house but a café full of people and naked women, I come back to call Hugo, and we walk in.

Noise. Blinding lights. Many women surrounding us, calling us, trying to attract our attention. The patronne leads us to a table. Still the women are shouting and signalling. We must choose. Hugo smiles, bewildered. I glance over them. I choose a very vivid, fat, coarse, Spanish-looking woman, and then I turn away from the shouting group to the end of the line and call a woman who had made no effort to attract my attention, small, feminine, almost timid. Now they sit before us.

The small woman is sweet and pliant. We talk, oh, so politely. We discuss each other’s nails. They comment on the unusualness of my nacreous nail polish. I ask Hugo to look carefully to see if I have chosen well. He does and says I could not have done better. We watch the women dancing. I see only in spots, intensely. Certain places are utter blanks to me. I see big hips, buttocks, and sagging breats, so many bodies, all at once. We had expected there would be a man for the exhibition. ‘No’, says the patronne, ‘but the two girls will amuse you. You will see everything.’ It would not be Hugo’s night then, but he accepts everything. We barter over the price. The women smile. They assume it is my evening because I have asked them if they will show me lesbian poses.

Everything is strange to me and familiar to them. I only feel at ease because they are people who need things, whom one can do things for. I give away all my cigarettes. I wish I had a hundred packets. I wish I had a lot of money. We are going upstairs. I enjoy looking at the women’s naked walk.

The room is softly lighted and the bed low and ample. The women are cheerful, and they wash themselves. How the taste for things must wear down with so much automatism. We watch the big woman tie a penis on herself, a rosey thing, a caricature. And they take poses, nonchalantly, professionally. Arabian, Spanish, Parisienne, love when one does not have the price of a hotel room, love in a taxi, love when one of the partners is sleepy…

Hugo and I look on, laughing a little at their sallies. We learn nothing new. It is all unreal, until I ask for the lesbian poses.

The little woman loves it, loves it better than the man’s approach. The big woman reveals to me a secret place in the woman’s body, a source of new joy, which I had sometimes sensed but never definitely – that small core at the opening of the woman’s lips, just what the man passes by. There, the big woman works with the flicking of her tongue. The little woman closes her eyes, moans, and trembles in ecstasy. Hugo and I lean over them, taken by that moment of loveliness in the little woman, who offers to our eyes her conquered, quivering body. Hugo is in turmoil. I am no longer woman; I am man. I am touching the core of June’s being.

I become aware of Hugo’s feelings and say, ‘Do you want the woman? Take her. I swear to you I won’t mind, darling.”

“I could come with anybody just now,” he answers.

The little woman is lying still. Then they are up and joking and the moment passes. Do I want . . . . ? They unfasten my jacket; I say no, I don’t want anything.

I couldn’t have touched them. Only a minute of beauty – the small woman’s heaving, her hands caressing the other woman’s head. That moment alone stirred my blood with another desire. If we had been a little madder . . . But the room seemed dirty to us. We walked out. Dizzy. Joyous. Elated.

We went to dance at the Bal Negre. One fear was over. Hugo was liberated. We had understood each other’s feelings. Together. Arm in arm. A mutual generosity.

I was not jealous of the little woman Hugo had desired. But Hugo thought, “What if there had been a man . . . ?” So we don’t know yet. All we know is that the evening was beautifully carried off. I had been able to give Hugo a portion of the joy that filled me.

And when we returned home, he adored my body because it was lovelier than what he had seen and we sank into sensuality together with new realization. We are killing phantoms.

[Glorious Amok]

i think the first sentence and the last sentence here are both so exhillarating and freeing.

they put me in the mind of a time that comes in everyone's life when they are able to free themselves, to step far beyond what they ever have done before. to discover new things that are galaxies more fascinating, and also more terrifying than anything previously encountered.

we are killing phantoms. we are erasing the pencil lines, and pulling the cap off the pen.

[WIREMAN]

Ya know I read her letters and a whole lotta henry, who is my bigest influence for sure, for years and kinda knew they were lovers and all but to tell ya the truth ya did'nt....till after they all finally died and all the literature bout that time came out....anais and henry, what a pair of life livers...eh?.......mark