Lady Chatterley's Lover

tentative love affairs: by the time they were eighteen they had tentatively screwed themselves silly with the young men with whom they talked so passionately and sang so lustily in freedom, and who wanted of course the love connection , that is, ein shag. The girls were doubtful (eh?) but then the thing was so much talked about, like have you seen Hans’s thing? It’s bigger than Helmut’s. And the men were so humble and craving, they would crawl on their knees before passing women, pleading ‘Please Fraulein, just von more shag.’ They even tried to bribe women into it with gifts of apple strudel, frogs’ legs and camel rides. But oh dear, why couldn’t a girl be queenly, and give the gift of 3 herself? Over to you dear reader. So they had given the gift of themselves to the Chermans with whom they had the subtle arguments. It was quite easy you just lie down and open your legs. The intimate arguments were usually ‘Your place or mine?’ The discussions were the great thing, the greatest thing was Kurt’s: it was twelve inches long and on a clear day could be seen from the roof of the Reichstag.
    The lovemaking and connection were only a sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax, in fact Constance’s bed was littered with bits of anti-climaxes. One was less in love with a Cherman afterwards, as if he had trespassed on one’s privacy: an inner kingdom, well last night he did that, he went all over her privacy and up her inner kingdom. For, of course, being a girl, one’s whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a pure and noble freedom. (How’s that?) What else but to shake off the old, and they’d done a lot of that. And however one might sentimentalize, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connections, from these sordid connections one could get crabs and the clap. The poets who glorified it were mostly men.

    In the Moonlight
    I love you in your negligée,
    I love you in your nightie,
    But when moonlight flits across your tits
    By Christ all fucking mighty.
    Anon. 4

    Women have always known there was something, something higher, so would they be satisfied with Kilimanjaro (19,321 feet)? Now the beautiful, pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than sexual love, indeed let us go further, it was better than cod and chips, better than No. 4 Ringstead Road, Catford SE6. Men lagged so far behind in this matter, also in the making of Spotted Dick, curtains and relief massage. Men insisted on the sex thing like dogs. A woman had to yield, a man would go up to a woman in the street, drop his trousers and say, ‘Yield’ then jump on her and do it doggie-fashion (more to come folks!).
    A man was like a child with his appetites, it was fish fingers or fucking. A woman had to yield to him when he wanted, it became awkward in the Tube in rush hour, but she could delay him with fish fingers. If she didn’t yield he would turn nasty and spoil a pleasant connection from the Bakerloo to the Northern Line. But a woman can yield to a man without yielding her inner self: while he’s banging away, she is free to read The Times , smoke a cigarette, or sing popular songs. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power, all his power coming from the two eggs and bacon he had at breakfast and a cheese sandwich at lunch. She only had to hold herself back in intercourse (woah!) and let him finish without her, this she did by going into the next room and let him finish on his own, and then she could achieve her orgasm alone while he was merely her tool. She could use her sex thing to have power over him, all she had to do was wait for a hot night then flash her fanny at him.
    The War came: the girls were hurried home, leaving behind a sea of erections. Neither was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally near, and naked. ‘Am I verbally near enough, mein darling?’ he would say, banging away. Soon he would be serving the Kaiser, right now he was serving her.
    When the girls came home on holiday in 1913, their father could see they had had the love experience, they were both in wheelchairs. L’amour avait passé par là . 5 But he was a man of experience, he too had experienced crabs and clap. As for mother, she was a nervous wreck, in the days of her life, she only wanted the girls to be free. ‘Never charge for it,’ she said. She herself had never been able to be herself, sometimes she was