Little Casino

Lest it be forgotten

AFTER AN HOUR OR SO OF TRYING TO GET her brassiere off, or her skirt up, or both, he lies back, next to her, on the couch, thinking that maybe he’ll just go home, when she accidentally brushes, with the back of her hand, and through his slacks, his still-erect but by now leaden penis, and he realizes that he’s going to come. It’s like a joke. Let’s say, unequivocally, that it is a joke.

Some ten years later, the boy, now, of course, a man, very drunk but not so drunk as his wife, spreads her legs open as they lie, he is somewhat surprised to realize, on the living room carpeting. She is humming, over and over, the first bar of “Ruby, My Dear.” He cannot understand, for the life of him, and it’s not, let’s face it, much of a life, why he is unable to pull her panties any further down than her thighs. Can’t make a fucking thing right anymore, he says to her, but she pays him no mind, or, in any event, she does not reply. Then he puts his head on her naked belly and they both fall asleep.

And, lest it be forgotten, there is his first serious sexual experience, when a nurse or a nurse’s aide at Brooklyn Eye and Ear, where he lies after an operation, both eyes bandaged, feeds him his supper, tells him what she looks like, and, while spooning what may be tapioca pudding into his mouth, masturbates him under the covers with skill and dispatch. He thinks that he might faint with pleasure, but he stays marvelously conscious, even alert, listening to the rustle of what he imagines to be her crisp white uniform.

As she is leaving the room, she says, mysteriously, “There are a lot of nice guys in Jersey, too, but.”

One might, as an amusement, do worse than to think of adventures such as these enveloping forward-looking politicians, dim professors of civil engineering, and dreadful Christian fundamentalists. (Add or substitute your own favorites.)

It is the fashion to make fun of New Jersey, much as it is the fashion to denigrate Los Angeles and to praise the San Francisco Bay Area. “What weather!” they bubble, as the earth splits open amid vast fires, and the houses slide downhill, in cataracts of mud, onto the clogged and poisonous freeways.

Sexual experiences are rarely reported with candor, accuracy, or honesty, and these are no exceptions.

Why is this the case? It’s magic?

In 1968, CBS wanted Thelonious Monk to record an album of Beatles tunes. There sat the band’s songbook on his piano. To add, as the nice phrase has it, insult to injury, the company sent someone to Monk’s apartment to play through the book. In case Monk couldn’t read music.

Well, you needn’t, motherfucker.