Little Casino

The black force of Eros

BUT WHAT OF THE WOMEN IN BEAUTY PARADE? They have been somewhat carelessly, if rhetorically described as “big luscious women, all rich curves and swelling flesh pushing out of the tight, astonishingly abbreviated costumes” of a kind that no woman, inhabitant of the mundane world, would ever wear or even consider wearing. But the youth whose eyes have been bedazzled by the precise and overt lewdness of these erotic icons will not believe this. Let’s say that he can’t afford to believe it, read that as you will. There, lying on the daybed in the corner of the musty, stiflingly hot Lang porch, is the August 1944 issue, in which six of these stupendously free and arrogantly sexual women pose in quintessential lasciviousness. They are not wholly free, though, for their status as wives, lovers, mothers, daughters, friends, or whores, their very existence, is dependent upon the narrative skills of the foolish adolescent boy who drives them and himself hither and yon in his adoring imagination. His body grows hot and dry as he thinks of them, one at a time, waiting for his attentions, in the impossible gleam of their satin, the immaculate crispness of their lace.

They are all there, Mary Marshall, Dolores Salvati, Georgene Rydstrom, Charlotte Ryan, Nancy Ippolito, Terri O’Neill: minions and bacchantes, servants of Aphrodite and Dionysos, slaves to the black force of Eros, devotees of earthy, occulted mysteries. They order that which they desire to be done to them by their acolytes, their groveling husbands and lovers and trembling fools. They are pleased to have this power, although they are not aware of its effect on the boy who, though its creator, is obedient before it. Their not knowing is very much the same as not caring, the aristocratic aloofness of the hierophants who keep secret the sacred mysteries. They will live forever, at the behest of the dark gods, their incarnations will be endless, unceasing. Mary, Dolores, Georgene, Charlotte, Nancy, Terri.

For three months of the year, Apollo left his temple at Delphi, and his place was taken by Dionysos.

It is, surely, ludicrous to think of this stupefied boy, in 1944, as venerator of the god, but in the slow, burning days of that wartime summer, he worshiped, as it was given him to worship, as best he could. It may be that the god noticed and was pleased.

Drunk, with a half-smile, his hair bound up with aromatic grasses, a “young boy loggy with vine-must.” And the burning, orange-colored sky.