The infinite erotic civilization we createdis declining now. Breast and penis wag in publicas in primitive times, when nothing was erotic but the gods,
and they wave placards and besiege the legislature,demanding their right to go naked, unmolested,unnoticed like anyone else through the pubic airwaves.
There are still heroes of eroticism,those we call The Antediluvians, who appear in g-stringsbehind aquarium glass, as if anyone were watching,
and there are still those who watch themin the tired chrome and neon of the Erotomania Clubor on a last streetcorner of transvestite whores.
We still sometimes enjoy the very significant old bromidewhereby the decolleté is made to seem momentarilythe sacred cleft of the buttocks. Yet now
it all has the shuttered umbrella-folding sadend-of-the-season feel that any religion will exudeas it survives stubbornly into the new age.
And the new age: how few steps are left to takefor the ever-developing machine of the bodybefore we get there. The distances are very big
but crossable, given merely a life that could be counted outin simplest arithmetic, though it would have to lastlonger than the universe, they say, is going to.
And it would be -- will be -- a boring journey,like a bus trip across the Australian desert, sixty hours,with the two drivers taking ten-hour shifts, each sleeping
while the other jounces and rots and the passengers look outon the unvarying succession of pebbles, no two alikeand no two distinguishable: as if a mite should crawl
across one of those paintings of North African stone and sandin which Jean Dubuffet submerges into the pure 'thingness'and dignity of earth's basic material. Yes,
though we bury our penises in the sand, we have to seethe erotic age is now dead and in the world coming to bewill be infinitely pitied by our sexless shadows.
For the time being, however, we remain: brittleelders, almost insensible, almost impotent, yet aliveby the sufferance of our young, who could easily grab us
and wring our necks, if they ever should desire to.But they don't desire. Who can understand them? They carenothing at all for the mating song and dance
except that its necessary management provides some jobs.They say right out loud that pleasure is a patina,something to ease the bitter with the sweet,
and that the abyssal wealth of nature, custom,and personality was all illusion, a mistake.Nor can anything we do seduce or divert their resentment,
now that our most alluring female is only an oldhalf-bursting vacuum cleaner bag, whose penis envyis about to vanish forever into white oblivion.
Still, we possess the last great strength of the eroticera: intoxicated terror. Let them do as they please,their advances can't help moving us to the passion
of agony and sorrow while we die.Àæ The finalpenetration, the thrust home, is coming, and they will bethe deliverer, whatever they do or don't desire.
Around the last salons and saloons the human wavemounts and howls willy-nilly with an electronic chuckling,we can hear a click-click-click of commercial stiletto
heels: an undreamt body is stalking to be sold naked,to be chained by the wrists to a white pillarin the flap-snap-flop of the laundry of the future
strung out the windows of tropical highrise slums.
