Great Apes Read Online Free Page B
Author: Will Self
gambolled back from the other end of the bar.More drinks were ordered from Julius. The Braithwaites returned, eyes and noses wet, as if they had been doggily retrieving some cocaine which had been shot down in the gentsâ. Sarah sat and appreciated the warm bicker about her, the sarcasm and irony, the satire and ridicule, the delightful, cosy inwardlookingness of it all. Each snide aside she felt as a light caress, each barbed remark as a hortatory pat.
But it wasnât always thus. This brittleness had once been nothing but brittle, thin social ice failing to support her flailing sense of herself. Only ⦠what? As little as six months ago this early evening in the club, this prelude to her own abandonment of her childâs body, would have been purgatory, a recrudescence of loathing. Now everything about it was redefined by the fact of Simon. More specifically by the fact of his body.
If she concentrated, honed down the sound, cut out the shards oflight from glasses, mirrors and spectacle frames, she could imagine his approaching body as a low thrum of tangible solidity winging towards her through the shades of evening. A bomber group of a body in close formation, collarbone, rib cage, hips, penis. Feet, calves, thighs, penis. Hands, shoulders, elbows, penis. âSarah Loves Simonâs Penisâ. She should carve it on the bar with her hatpin, it was such a true, romantic belief.
The fade from neck stubble to chest hair, the long hardnesses of muscle, like flexible splints. And the paradoxical softness of his pale skin. Like a boyâs skin, a skin that would always be sensual, always cry out to be touched. A skin that smelt wholly of him, him boiled up in the unpuckered bag of it. Sarah wanted to slash this skin ofhis, have him gush into her. She chafed her thighs together at the thought of this and wished he were there already. Why did they bother with going out at all? Why did she want to drag him out this evening? She didnât really. She would have far rather stayed in and let him peel her and peel her and peel her again. He could get her going, crank up the galvanic heart ofher so that she came and came and came, each dizzy orgasm more vertiginous than the one that preceded it.
Why did they go out? Why did they do drugs? Because this was
too
much for both of them, because, Sarah sensed, this was something that could be atrophied rather than toned by exercise. Something that might be worked out of them in the working out. She had not read Lycurgus, but had she done so she would have recognised the beauty of the Spartan law on adultery. In Sparta adultery was without sanction, but woe betide the man caught making love to his wife, for certain death would ensue for both parties. This imparted a dangerous tension to marital relations, kept them forbidden, truly sexy. So it was for Simon and Sarah, the Sealink, the drugs, the gaping lacuna was their Laconia.
There was this, but more locally there were his ex-wife and his ex-girlfriends. The many many ex-girlfriends. Unpack Simon and there wasnât just Simon there, there was also a series of Russian dolly-women, his reified memories of lovemaking with them packed each inside the other. He was a cyclopaedia of clitrubs, a compendium of cunt-sucks, and a Britannica of breast-caresses. If Sarah caught herself thinking of this as they made love it was enough to make her cry, burst out crying with him inside her. Sometimes she thought of this on the very brink ofcoming, the very teetering edge. Then she would be wracked by two kinds of sobs. As she subsided, Simon would hang on to her, bewildered by this perturbation he had wittingly produced.
Where was he? Why wasnât he there already, so she could grab hold of the mast of him, hang on in the watery flux of the Sealink? Once Simon was there the whole evening would become a tipping deck, the two of them sliding down it towards bed, like a pair of hands entwined in practical prayer, then
But it wasnât always thus. This brittleness had once been nothing but brittle, thin social ice failing to support her flailing sense of herself. Only ⦠what? As little as six months ago this early evening in the club, this prelude to her own abandonment of her childâs body, would have been purgatory, a recrudescence of loathing. Now everything about it was redefined by the fact of Simon. More specifically by the fact of his body.
If she concentrated, honed down the sound, cut out the shards oflight from glasses, mirrors and spectacle frames, she could imagine his approaching body as a low thrum of tangible solidity winging towards her through the shades of evening. A bomber group of a body in close formation, collarbone, rib cage, hips, penis. Feet, calves, thighs, penis. Hands, shoulders, elbows, penis. âSarah Loves Simonâs Penisâ. She should carve it on the bar with her hatpin, it was such a true, romantic belief.
The fade from neck stubble to chest hair, the long hardnesses of muscle, like flexible splints. And the paradoxical softness of his pale skin. Like a boyâs skin, a skin that would always be sensual, always cry out to be touched. A skin that smelt wholly of him, him boiled up in the unpuckered bag of it. Sarah wanted to slash this skin ofhis, have him gush into her. She chafed her thighs together at the thought of this and wished he were there already. Why did they bother with going out at all? Why did she want to drag him out this evening? She didnât really. She would have far rather stayed in and let him peel her and peel her and peel her again. He could get her going, crank up the galvanic heart ofher so that she came and came and came, each dizzy orgasm more vertiginous than the one that preceded it.
Why did they go out? Why did they do drugs? Because this was
too
much for both of them, because, Sarah sensed, this was something that could be atrophied rather than toned by exercise. Something that might be worked out of them in the working out. She had not read Lycurgus, but had she done so she would have recognised the beauty of the Spartan law on adultery. In Sparta adultery was without sanction, but woe betide the man caught making love to his wife, for certain death would ensue for both parties. This imparted a dangerous tension to marital relations, kept them forbidden, truly sexy. So it was for Simon and Sarah, the Sealink, the drugs, the gaping lacuna was their Laconia.
There was this, but more locally there were his ex-wife and his ex-girlfriends. The many many ex-girlfriends. Unpack Simon and there wasnât just Simon there, there was also a series of Russian dolly-women, his reified memories of lovemaking with them packed each inside the other. He was a cyclopaedia of clitrubs, a compendium of cunt-sucks, and a Britannica of breast-caresses. If Sarah caught herself thinking of this as they made love it was enough to make her cry, burst out crying with him inside her. Sometimes she thought of this on the very brink ofcoming, the very teetering edge. Then she would be wracked by two kinds of sobs. As she subsided, Simon would hang on to her, bewildered by this perturbation he had wittingly produced.
Where was he? Why wasnât he there already, so she could grab hold of the mast of him, hang on in the watery flux of the Sealink? Once Simon was there the whole evening would become a tipping deck, the two of them sliding down it towards bed, like a pair of hands entwined in practical prayer, then
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