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Authors: James Jones
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strong cigars. Top it off with the morbid speculations about having to go to Madrid for a long period without Louisa which the conversation had called forth, and you had a Harry Gallagher in a nervous fit of irresponsible soul-searching, with me as the captive audience.
Other people’s intimate sexual disclosures have always made me nervous. Several times in my life I have been trapped and made the victim for such soul-searching declarations by men I knew, and every time it has resulted in the loss of a friendship. The next time they see you the eyebrows go up and the eyes get flat and funny, and an impenetrable wall of plastic descends. Harry remains the sole exception to this rule, but I didn’t know that then. And I was made more unhappy by having been forced to be dishonest with him.
“Of course, there’s more to the whole story than that, naturally,” was the way he began. O, foreboding sentence of a miserable night in store! How many times have I heard you? And how many times have you portended spiritual bad digestion to come?
He always was a very highly sexed individual, Harry proceeded to tell me. Even back in his earliest young youth, and as far back as he could remember. He didn’t know why exactly. It was just there. He had an abiding love for the female body, both in toto and altogether in its form (he said) and in all its details, down to its tiniest parts. And it didn’t matter much who inhabited it. He liked female bodies. He liked to look at them and touch them and smell them, and study them inside and out, in the same way that other people like to find out what is between the covers of a book. He collected women—in the same way other people collect books. And he had to admit to me he saw absolutely nothing wrong with this in any way. That was why he honestly, truly could not see what had upset Louisa so.
Of course, now he understood that it was some tremendous, baby-girllike insecurity of her own (she had, incidentally, always been a great adorer of her father: for example). And, of course, now all that was over for him now.
But it was a phenomenon he had noted (over the years; talking) in a great many American men. They were all of them—or a great, great many; a very high percentage—absolutely cunt-struck. They were almost all, like himself, completely cunt-oriented.
I sat nursing my drink and nodding, without looking up too often, and watched the level of my glass descend too fast, despite the Perrier I kept adding to it. I was sure that my ears were burning fiery red.
Harry was always quite a swearer, using all the four-letter words with great freedom, even in mixed company, and right now he was not worrying about niceties. And, I was well aware that in the past few years it had become chic to use them liberally in conversation, particularly in front of women. I was publishing them in great quantities in my Review. But my primitive upbringing never allowed me to feel comfortable around them, even when females were not present. I never used them myself. I was aware this was a fault, but there was nothing I could do about it. Besides, there was no more point in interrupting Harry than there would have been in trying to interrupt that bursting dam in Fréjus several years ago.
I have always been a low-keyed man sexually; female bodies interest me less than female minds, so to speak. Sex, while undeniably pleasant, and not something to be avoided, always seemed to me something that the pursuit of cost one a great deal more energy than the final results achieved were worth. So I don’t think I ever did really understand that part of Harry well. It was almost as if there were some actual basic biologic difference between us.
Cunt-struck, Harry was continuing, incognizant of my red ears, cunt-oriented: those were the key words to remember. When the true history of his generation came to be written, it might well go down to posterity as the Cunt-struck Generation. By extension they could then
Other people’s intimate sexual disclosures have always made me nervous. Several times in my life I have been trapped and made the victim for such soul-searching declarations by men I knew, and every time it has resulted in the loss of a friendship. The next time they see you the eyebrows go up and the eyes get flat and funny, and an impenetrable wall of plastic descends. Harry remains the sole exception to this rule, but I didn’t know that then. And I was made more unhappy by having been forced to be dishonest with him.
“Of course, there’s more to the whole story than that, naturally,” was the way he began. O, foreboding sentence of a miserable night in store! How many times have I heard you? And how many times have you portended spiritual bad digestion to come?
He always was a very highly sexed individual, Harry proceeded to tell me. Even back in his earliest young youth, and as far back as he could remember. He didn’t know why exactly. It was just there. He had an abiding love for the female body, both in toto and altogether in its form (he said) and in all its details, down to its tiniest parts. And it didn’t matter much who inhabited it. He liked female bodies. He liked to look at them and touch them and smell them, and study them inside and out, in the same way that other people like to find out what is between the covers of a book. He collected women—in the same way other people collect books. And he had to admit to me he saw absolutely nothing wrong with this in any way. That was why he honestly, truly could not see what had upset Louisa so.
Of course, now he understood that it was some tremendous, baby-girllike insecurity of her own (she had, incidentally, always been a great adorer of her father: for example). And, of course, now all that was over for him now.
But it was a phenomenon he had noted (over the years; talking) in a great many American men. They were all of them—or a great, great many; a very high percentage—absolutely cunt-struck. They were almost all, like himself, completely cunt-oriented.
I sat nursing my drink and nodding, without looking up too often, and watched the level of my glass descend too fast, despite the Perrier I kept adding to it. I was sure that my ears were burning fiery red.
Harry was always quite a swearer, using all the four-letter words with great freedom, even in mixed company, and right now he was not worrying about niceties. And, I was well aware that in the past few years it had become chic to use them liberally in conversation, particularly in front of women. I was publishing them in great quantities in my Review. But my primitive upbringing never allowed me to feel comfortable around them, even when females were not present. I never used them myself. I was aware this was a fault, but there was nothing I could do about it. Besides, there was no more point in interrupting Harry than there would have been in trying to interrupt that bursting dam in Fréjus several years ago.
I have always been a low-keyed man sexually; female bodies interest me less than female minds, so to speak. Sex, while undeniably pleasant, and not something to be avoided, always seemed to me something that the pursuit of cost one a great deal more energy than the final results achieved were worth. So I don’t think I ever did really understand that part of Harry well. It was almost as if there were some actual basic biologic difference between us.
Cunt-struck, Harry was continuing, incognizant of my red ears, cunt-oriented: those were the key words to remember. When the true history of his generation came to be written, it might well go down to posterity as the Cunt-struck Generation. By extension they could then
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