How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired

Must I Tell Her That a Slum Is Not a Salon?

MIZ LITERATURE comes sweeping in with an enormous bouquet of peonies. I’m still in bed with Bukowski. The window is closed. A line of sunlight cuts the page in half lengthwise.

I read lying down with a pillow between my shoulderblades and my head slightly raised. Stiff neck guaranteed. Unfortunately, it’s my favorite position. Usually I read early in the morning before it gets too hot, when I’m not likely to be disturbed. The building emanates an aura of calm. My neighbors, retired for the most part, are not yet awake. In an hour or two it’ll be the breakfast routine, the whistling of the pipes, the tap of toothbrushes and the smell of bacon.

I watch Miz Literature move through the shadows. It looks like she’s wearing a yellow dress with a white collar. And ballerina shoes. I picture her dressing with care, putting on perfume (just a soupçon!) and her bra (she has small breasts) so she can go do dishes for a Negro in a filthy apartment on St. Denis near the Carré St. Louis. Skid row. Miz Literature comes from a good family, she has a bright future, upright values, a solid education, perfect mastery of Elizabethan poetry, she belongs to a feminist literary club at McGill — the McGill Witches — whose mission is to restore the reputation of unjustly neglected poetesses. This year they are publishing a luxury edition of Emily Dickinson with ink drawings by Valery Miller. So what’s going on here? You could hold a gun to her head and she wouldn’t do the tenth of what she does here for a white guy. Miz Literature is writing her PhD thesis on Christine de Pizan. Which is no mean feat. So what the hell is she doing in this filthy slum? And don’t blame Cupid. If she were madly in love with a McGill guy he’d never ask her to do the tenth of what she does here, spontaneously, freely and graciously.

“Why do the dishes now?”

“Am I disturbing you?”

“Not really.”

“You’re reading! Oh, I’m sorry.”

And believe it or not, she really is sorry. Reading is sacred in her book. Besides, a black with a book denotes the triumph of Judeo-Christian civilization! Proof that those bloody crusades really did have some value. True, Europe did pillage Africa but this black is reading a book.

“There, I finished.”

She puts the clean dishes away carefully. A real jewel. Her only shortcoming is that she’ll go to any length to make this room pleasant. Confer an Outremont touch to it. Every time she comes she brings something new. Pretty soon, in a few months, we’ll be crushed under the weight of rare vases, engravings, bedside lamps and all that crap you can buy in those snobby boutiques on Laurier Street. McGill people are taught to decorate their environment. Look what I’ve gotten myself into! All right, I can understand that part. But I don’t get why she’s doing it here in this slum. Must I tell her that a slum is not a salon? Maybe it’s part of her double life. By day a WASP princess; by night slave to a Negro. That could be exciting. Suspense guaranteed because with Negroes you never know. Let’s just eat her up right now, yum-yum, with a little salt and pepper. I can see the headlines in La Presse.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN— “Did you hear? Two blacks ate a McGill co-ed.”

“How did they discover the crime?”

“The police found her arm in the refrigerator.”

“Oh, good lord! Is that the new immigration policy?

Importing cannibals?”

“I suppose they raped her first, while they were at it?”

“We’ll never know. They ate everything.”

“Oh, good lord.”

Miz Literature climbs into my bed. I put the book down at the foot of the bed, next to the bottle of wine, then bring her down to my level. Europe has paid her debt to Africa.