Read Online The Dying Animal by Philip Roth - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Philip Roth
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intelligent, tremulous, daring pioneer who couldn't stop raising her hand in class, the beautiful dissident in gypsy drag, Janie Wyatt's most sensible sidekick, who knew all the answers back in 1965, and the assertive business executive she had become in middle age, packing the potential to overpower you.
You might have expected that as time wore on and the hothouse passion of the teacher-student taboo ceased feeding into the permissible pleasures of the present moment, our meetings would run out of nostalgic appeal. But a year had passed and that hadn't happened. Because of the ease and the calm and the physical trust inherent in a resumption of play between teammates of old and because of Carolyn's realismâthe sense of proportion adult indignities had predictably imposed on the romantic expectations of a highly credentialed upper-middle-class girlâI reaped rewards that it was impossible to draw from my crazy bingeing on Consuela's breasts. Our harmonious, no-nonsense evenings in bedâscheduled by cell phone, on the run, for whenever Carolyn touched down at Kennedy from one of her business tripsânow provided the only point of contact with my pre-Consuela confidence. I never needed more the straightforward satiation Carolyn so dependably afforded now that she'd been tested as a woman and stoically survived. Each of us was getting exactly what we wanted. It was a joint venture, our sexual partnership, that profited us both and that was strongly colored by Carolyn's crisp executive manner. Here pleasure and equilibrium combined.
Then came the night that Consuela pulled out her tampon and stood there in my bathroom, with one knee dipping toward the other and, like Mantegna's Saint Sebastian, bleeding in a trickle down her thighs while I watched. Was it thrilling? Was I delighted? Was I mesmerized? Sure, but again I felt like a boy. I had set out to demand the most from her, and when she shamelessly obliged, I wound up again intimidating myself. There seemed nothing to be doneâif I wished not to be humbled completely by her exotic matter-of-factnessâexcept to fall to my knees to lick her clean. Which she allowed to happen without comment. Making me into a still smaller boy. One's impossible character. The stupidity of being oneself. The unavoidable comedy of being anyone at all. Each new excess weakening me furtherâyet what is an insatiable man to do?
The expression on her face? I was at her feet. I was on the floor. My own face was pressed to her flesh like a feeding infant's, so I could see nothing of hers. But I told you, I don't believe she was intimidated. There was no overwhelming new emotion for Consuela to deal with. Once we'd got past the preliminaries as lovers, she seemed able to assimilate easily enough whatever her nudity provoked in me. It made no sense to her that a married man like George O'Hearn should be kissing a fully clothed young woman in a public place at eight in the morningâ
that
was chaos to Consuela. But this? This was just a novel divertissement. This was coming to her, the physical fate she so lightly wore. Surely the attention being accorded by the cultural authority down on his knees wasn't something that made her feel unimportant. Consuela had been alluring to boys all her life, loved by her family all her life, adored by her father
all her life, so that self-possession, repose, a kind of statuesque equanimity, was instinctively the form her theatricality took. Somehow Consuela had been spared the awkwardness that is given to just about everyone.
That was a Thursday night. Friday night Carolyn came right from the airport to me, and on Saturday morning I was at the table, already over breakfast, when she marched into the kitchen from the shower wearing my terrycloth robe and holding in her hand a bloody tampon half wrapped in toilet paper. First she showed it to me and then she threw it at me. "You are fucking other women. Tell me the truth," Carolyn said,
You might have expected that as time wore on and the hothouse passion of the teacher-student taboo ceased feeding into the permissible pleasures of the present moment, our meetings would run out of nostalgic appeal. But a year had passed and that hadn't happened. Because of the ease and the calm and the physical trust inherent in a resumption of play between teammates of old and because of Carolyn's realismâthe sense of proportion adult indignities had predictably imposed on the romantic expectations of a highly credentialed upper-middle-class girlâI reaped rewards that it was impossible to draw from my crazy bingeing on Consuela's breasts. Our harmonious, no-nonsense evenings in bedâscheduled by cell phone, on the run, for whenever Carolyn touched down at Kennedy from one of her business tripsânow provided the only point of contact with my pre-Consuela confidence. I never needed more the straightforward satiation Carolyn so dependably afforded now that she'd been tested as a woman and stoically survived. Each of us was getting exactly what we wanted. It was a joint venture, our sexual partnership, that profited us both and that was strongly colored by Carolyn's crisp executive manner. Here pleasure and equilibrium combined.
Then came the night that Consuela pulled out her tampon and stood there in my bathroom, with one knee dipping toward the other and, like Mantegna's Saint Sebastian, bleeding in a trickle down her thighs while I watched. Was it thrilling? Was I delighted? Was I mesmerized? Sure, but again I felt like a boy. I had set out to demand the most from her, and when she shamelessly obliged, I wound up again intimidating myself. There seemed nothing to be doneâif I wished not to be humbled completely by her exotic matter-of-factnessâexcept to fall to my knees to lick her clean. Which she allowed to happen without comment. Making me into a still smaller boy. One's impossible character. The stupidity of being oneself. The unavoidable comedy of being anyone at all. Each new excess weakening me furtherâyet what is an insatiable man to do?
The expression on her face? I was at her feet. I was on the floor. My own face was pressed to her flesh like a feeding infant's, so I could see nothing of hers. But I told you, I don't believe she was intimidated. There was no overwhelming new emotion for Consuela to deal with. Once we'd got past the preliminaries as lovers, she seemed able to assimilate easily enough whatever her nudity provoked in me. It made no sense to her that a married man like George O'Hearn should be kissing a fully clothed young woman in a public place at eight in the morningâ
that
was chaos to Consuela. But this? This was just a novel divertissement. This was coming to her, the physical fate she so lightly wore. Surely the attention being accorded by the cultural authority down on his knees wasn't something that made her feel unimportant. Consuela had been alluring to boys all her life, loved by her family all her life, adored by her father
all her life, so that self-possession, repose, a kind of statuesque equanimity, was instinctively the form her theatricality took. Somehow Consuela had been spared the awkwardness that is given to just about everyone.
That was a Thursday night. Friday night Carolyn came right from the airport to me, and on Saturday morning I was at the table, already over breakfast, when she marched into the kitchen from the shower wearing my terrycloth robe and holding in her hand a bloody tampon half wrapped in toilet paper. First she showed it to me and then she threw it at me. "You are fucking other women. Tell me the truth," Carolyn said,
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