The Tides of Lust Read online

  SAMUEL R DELANY, born 1942, grew up in New York City’s Harlem. His novels Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection both won Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America, as have his short fictions, Eye, and Gomorrah and Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones (which also took a Hugo Award during the World Science Fiction Convention at Heidelberg). His books include The Jewels of Aptor, The Fall of the Towers, Nova, Driftglass (short stories), Tales of Neveryon, Triton and Dhalgren, the million-selling odyssey of modern youth. With his wife, National Book Award-winning poetess Marilyn Hacker, he co-edited the speculative fiction quarterly Quark. He also wrote, directed and edited the half-hour film The Orchid. His essays in literary criticism are collected in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977). In 1975 he was visiting Butler Chair Professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. For the last half dozen years Delany and Hacker have lived between New York, San Fransisco and London. They have one daughter.

  Kirsten stepped into the hall and lazily thought about her brother. . . . The Captain’s juices still drooled on her thighs and made them slip.

  She caught sight of the long-armed, curly-headed boy, and moved beside him. “Gunner . . .” She took his hand and he put his mouth on hers. She leaned against the wall and saw the others passing behind him. Her hand slipped to his trousers . . .

  Her mind curled through sensational labyrinths until somebody touched her lightly and whispered, “Hurry, girl! Hurry! Proctor is waiting.”

  The Tides of Lust

  Modern Erotic Classics

  The Houdini Girl

  Martyn Bedford

  Lie to Me

  Tamara Faith Berger

  The Phallus of Osiris

  Valentina Cilescu

  Kiss of Death

  Valentina Cilescu

  The Flesh Constrained

  Cleo Cordell

  The Flesh Endures

  Cleo Cordell

  Hogg

  Samuel R. Delany

  The Tides of Lust

  Samuel R. Delany

  Sad Sister

  Florence Dugas

  The Ties That Bind

  Vanessa Duriés

  Dark Ride

  Kent Harrington

  3

  Julie Hilden

  Neptune & Surf

  Marilyn Jaye Lewis

  Violent Silence

  Paul Mayersberg

  Homme Fatale

  Paul Mayersberg

  The Agency

  David Meltzer

  Burn

  Michael Perkins

  Dark Matter

  Michael Perkins

  Evil Companions

  Michael Perkins

  Beautiful Losers

  Remittance Girl

  Meeting the Master

  Elissa Wald

  The Tides of Lust

  Samuel R. Delany

  Modern Erotic Classics

  Series Editor: Maxim Jakubowski

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Savoy Books Ltd., 1973

  This ebook edition published by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © Samuel R. Delaney, 1973

  Series Editor: Maxim Jakubowski

  The right of Samuel R. Delaney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-562-2 (ebook)

  AUTHOR’S DEDICATION:

  This is an artificial, extravagant, and pretentious book, Joe Soley. But it is honest before its artifice; and in this age of extravagant expressions, honesty is the last pretension.

  Paul Caruso, you have made heroic attempts to keep me from going mad. But these pages bear the most circumscribed reverence for sanity. They concern form—which saves no one, but is icily instructive.

  I offer you both, then, this book in exchange on strictures of transactual calculus. In it are infinite summary informations. Summate only if you would.

  CONTENTS

  I. Riders of the Scorpion

  II. Labyrinths

  III. Faust in Italy

  IV. Homunculi

  V. The Stones of St. Mark

  VI. Alchemica

  VII. Harbor of the Scorpion

  ONE

  RIDERS OF THE SCORPION

  Mordecai played Mephistopheles—so much less impressive in Marlowe’s than in Goethe’s version. He delivered the lines that begin, “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it,” with chilling grace, as though this admission of irrevocable damnation and despair were nothing more than an epigram, some piece of inconsequence by Sheridan or Wilde.

  —Camp Concentration, Thomas M. Disch

  The color of bell metal:

  Longer than a big man’s foot; thick as a small girl’s wrist. Veins made low relief like vines beneath the wrinkled hood. His fingers climbed the shaft, dropped to hair tight as wire, moved under the canvas flaps to gouge the sac, black as an over-ripe avocado: spilled his palm (it is a big hand); climbed the shaft again.

  There is little light.

  What’s here bars the shutters in gold. Water lisps and whispers outside. The cabin sways, rises. There is a wind out to sea, that means. That means here at port it is clear evening.

  The dog on the floor claws the planks.

  The captain’s toes spread the footboard. His chin went back and his belly made black ridges. The long head rolled on the pillow, brass ring at his ear a-flash.

  The hood slipped from the punctured helmet.

  The knuckles, like knots in weathered cable, flexed on him. The rhythm started with the boat’s sway. Increase: his hand and the boat syncopate. The doubled pace pulled his buttocks from the blanket. The rim of his fist beat the tenderer rim (one color with his palm). His breath got loud. It halted, and halted, and halted.

  Stop action film: a white orchid from bud to bloom.

  Breath regular.

  Mucus drips his knuckles. Still stiff, the shaft glistens. Pearls on black wire.

  “Kirsten?”

  He swung his feet over the edge, his shoulders hunched (dull as cannon shot); his dirty shirt was sleeveless. Buttons: copper.

  “Kirsten!”

  His voice: maroons, purples, a nap between velvet and suede.

  “Come down here!”

  When the door cracked, he laughed.

  Her hair was yellow, paler than the light. Her smock, torn at her neck, hung between her breasts. One dull aureole rose on the blue horizon. Her face moved with its laughter before she saw, “Captain, you . . . ?” saw, and smothered it, to have it break again. Blue eyes widened in the half dark. “What do you want?”

  She stepped on to the rug. A copper anklet sloped beneath the knob of her ankle, crossed low on her calloused heel. (Uneven hem brushes smudged knees.) A print sash bound her belly.

  “Where is your brother?”

  “In the wheelhouse, asleep.”

  “Where were you?”

  “On deck. I was sitting in the sun.”

  “With the men on the docks all coming by to stare? How many with their hands in their pockets?”

  “Oh . . . !”

  “None of them with what I got.” He leaned back. His fingers tracked his stomach. “Come here. Tell me what’s for supper.”

  “Your thoughts have gone as high as your gut, now?”

  “How do you and the boy get chores done if you sleep and sun all the time?”

  “But what is there to do in port?” She stepped across the rug, laughing.

  He grabbed her wrist. She stumbled and he caught: “How many times!”

  She pushed his chest. Her wrist turned under slippery fingers.

  “Five times? Six? I’ll say seven—”

  “But see, you’ve already—”

  “Once already. Six more now.” He kneaded her inner thigh.

  “Captain . . . !” She tried to pull away.

  His hand went beneath the hem.

  She shrieked and bit the sound off. What spilled after was a giggle.

  “How many years have I had you two, now?” His forearm shifted like bunched blacksnakes. She tried to push his hand from under her skirt. Stopped trying.

  She opened her lips and caressed his arm.

  “How many years? Seven. Now, once for each year you’ve worked on my boat.” He looked down at himself.

  She touched where he looked: she took it, slipping the loose skin from the head. When she fingered beneath the twice full bag, he arched his back.

  “Pig. Sit on it. Little white pig . . .” Three calloused fingers were knuckle deep in her. She bent; her hair swept his face. He caught it in his yellow teeth, twisted hi
s head. Kirsten grabbed at her hair, and made an ugly sound. His teeth opened on laughter; it and her hair spilled black lips mottled with cerise.

  Barking.

  Claws at wood.

  Black paws and long muzzle lapped the bunk. The captain kicked the dog with his bare foot (the big chain around his ankle jangles). “Down, Niger! Down, you stupid dog!”

  Down; then back, nuzzling between them: dog’s tongue. One color: Kirsten’s nipple, the dog’s tongue, the captain’s palm. Niger lapped her crotch for salt.

  “Down, Niger!”

  The dog barked.

  Then the captain looked up: frowned.

  One shutter had swung open. A woman’s face pressed the glass (dock-side of the boat), tongue caught at the corner of her mouth. Her fingers tipped the sill. Sunlight behind her exploded in loose hair, dimmed her features. Niger barked at her once more.

  Her eyes shifted; she saw the captain. Her mouth opened, her palm slapped the pane, a sail of sunlight slapped the far wall: the window cleared and burned.

  Niger wheeled the room, leapt on the door. It banged the hatchway wall. Claws clicked at the ladder. The door swung slowly back.

  The captain: frowning. But Kirsten’s hair, brushing his neck, fell from his face like lame, swept back from hers: she had not seen.

  One knee was beside his left hip, one beside his right. She swayed, pulling at her brush; dug in the lips. His head lodged. Her hair rasped the plum glans. He gasped and grabbed her head.

  Her lips struck his. His mashed open and swallowed hers. His tongue troweled her teeth; her teeth opened. He licked the roof of her mouth. He pressed her neck, her shoulders. Her breasts, bared now, bulged between the black bars his fingers made.

  Gold brush lowered to iron wool.

  Their mouths were windy with one another’s breath. He thrust, and caught her lips in his teeth. She fell, clutching him. Tried to push away. He took her buttocks, his thumb tobogganing her, moist. He opened the wrinkled bud. She tried to block his tongue with her tongue. She failed.

  He rolled with her. His knuckles scraped the wall. When she was beneath him, he braced his feet on the footboard and twisted on her. His belly slapped her. She tried to hold him in with her legs, but he pulled up, to fall, and: her fingers arched his neck, mashed his rough hair, arched. He rocked faster than the boat around them.

  In stop action: an ice shard melts in a copper cup.

  He lay on her. Her hair was wet to brass blades on her neck. He touched them with his tongue. Then he pushed himself up.

  She gargled and reached for him. He glistened above her. (She sees him glance at the porthole, does not understand why.)

  Her fingers palped the gold and coral wound.

  “Two!” he panted. “Turn over.”

  Her eyes were closed, her legs apart. She moved her head on the crushed blanket, hands on her stomach.

  “Turn over!”

  He grabbed her leg and pulled. She felt lazy, she felt hysterical. Opened her eyes as he yanked her ankle again. (Why was he staring at the porthole? The light, like blood, varnished his big lips, his flat nose, flamed on his sloping brow till rough, rough hair soaked it up.) “Owww . . . !”

  Her knee struck the floor. She stretched her arms over the blanket, and rocked her face on the damp, hot wool. The smell of him: she moved her lips there, her tongue. The taste of him.

  The captain breathed hard. He raised his hand, high, drew back lips and shoulder and hip.

  Crack!

  Her buttocks shook. Redness bloomed and faded. She gasped, then bit her tongue. His hand swung back the other way. She gasped again.

  He pulled apart her cheeks, puckered his lips, and pushed out his saliva. It trailed in the discolored cleft. When the foamy tear reached the sphincter, he leaned on her. The hood peeled. Entrance, and her shoulders came up. The heat of her surprised him. He caught a breath: then let it chuckle from him as he eased. Kirsten clutched the end of the mattress. He grasped her wrists, fell. She screamed, and her back, wiggling, slid under his chest. He hissed, “Swing it.” He whispered: “That’s right, girl.” He hissed again, “Dance on that black stick, little monkey!”

  Soft things slipped and broke. Something with points crumbled as he tunneled and plunged. Her buttocks mashed and spread under the blades of his pelvis. He bit her shoulder, kneaded the skin in his big teeth till it bruised burgundy.

  He let go of her arm, felt under her belly. He thumbed the dry hairs; thumbed the wet. Four bunched fingers, in and in further. He spread them in her slop.

  She made sounds in her chest.

  He felt his swollen passage beyond her, wet and tender. His thumb, again, slipped under the thickening tab folded in the roof.

  Her sounds were between simper and growl. Her smock was a wet roll at her back’s small. She heaved at him. When he withdrew, she butted up to impale. His down stroke pushed her to the bed. And again. And.

  In marble: white rock crumbles from the freshet.

  In the shadow his back shone. Heavy, twinned breath. Sweat ran Kirsten’s side, curved at her breast bulging out.

  “. . . three,” while cooler air came between her back and his belly when he pulled—

  “No! Don’t take it . . .”

  He stood, panting. His shirt lay on the floor. His belt dangled at each hip. The canvas pants creased down over his buttocks. “Once more . . .”

  “You’re not tired yet?” She let herself slip to her knees beside the bed. The triangle of sheet by the bunched blanket was wet. He let his knees bend, touched her back. As his hand walked on her shoulder she dropped her head back. He scratched her neck, ran his forefinger in the damp troughs of her ear. He cradled her head when she rolled it over his palm. (It is a big hand.) Her hair fell in ingots on his forearm. His fingers deviled them to cloudy snarls.

  Through the closed shutter bars of light reddened the bedding. The captain reached to close the other. It swung to, the catch failed, and it swung out again. He made a fist in her hair.

  “You want more?”

  “. . . no,” all breathy.

  “You want it!”

  “But Gunner has tired me out, all this morning—” her smile a grimace as he tugged. She let her face fall against his thigh.

  “Kiss it. That little dirty-face has made you hot for more. Yes? You don’t, and I’ll beat you and that little brother of yours. Kiss it all over, with your tongue.”

  She swiveled her cheek on his hip. “But it’s all . . .” She slid her hand into the sweaty fold between leg and sack. “. . . all soft.”

  “You make it hard.” He pushed her into it.

  “And dirty!” She tried to pull away.

  “It’s your dirt.”

  She made muffled contest, but he pressed her face in. When he took his hand away, she didn’t pull back. Her tongue went warm in the crevice. He grinned, and fingered her hair back. She took the limp length in her hands, opened her mouth, and tongued him to the hilt hair.

  “Underneath. Go down underneath. Get it all in, girl. Before it gets too big.” He moved his legs. “There’s a lot of junk in the pockets. Tongue . . . hungry. Yeah! Be sweet to it. That’s where I like to see you. Be hungry. Be hungry and eat me. Hey, don’t back away! Take it, deep.” He brushed her distended cheek with bunched knuckles. “It’s going, yeah, down. All the way. Get ready. Yeah,” and, “Yeah . . .” and, “Oh, yeah!” He held her hair. Hardness and then soft ridges over his thrust. He swiveled to mash his hair on her mouth, till he felt her gag constrict him. He let her retreat to breathe, then filled her throat again. “Yeah . . .

  “Go underneath again.” He took his shining stock in his left fist; his right pushed her down; pushed half of the sack in her mouth with his thumb. “Tongue it. That’s good—”

  He tapped her. “Watch your teeth! No nutcrackers. A little tickle.” His left fist swung the long arc, fell at her face. “Now the other one . . . fine!”

  He breathed like a dog. She held his hips and rocked her face between his legs.

  “In your mouth, girl. Or let me leak it on your face . . .”

  She swallowed him, and felt the under tube swell down her tongue, retreat, swell again. In a geyser of black mud, a sudden eruption of white froth

  (Eruption . . .)

  and he pushed: thrust, and gout, thrust, thrust, gout.

  He held his breath, and let her fall against the bed’s edge. The black, bright length wrinkled, sagged. Her lips glistened. Her eyes were closed.