The Signature of All Things

weeks after their wedding, the poor young groom had quizzed a friend, who had given him the shocking information that the newlywed husband needed to place his organ directly inside his bride’s “watering hole” for the proper relations to occur. This thought had brought such fear and shame upon the poor young fellow that he ran to Dr. Horscht with questions as to whether this outlandish-sounding act could possibly be either performable or virtuous. Dr. Horscht, in pity for the baffled young soul, had written his guidebook on the engine of sexuality, to assist other newly married men.
    Alma had scorned the book when she’d read it years earlier. To be a young fellow and to hold such complete ignorance of the genito-urinary function seemed beyond absurd to her. Surely such people could not exist?
    Yet now she wondered.
    Did she need to show him?
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    T hat Saturday afternoon, Ambrose retired to their bedroom early and excused himself to bathe before dinner. She followed him to the room. She sat on the bed, and listened to the water running into the large porcelain tub on the other side of the door. She heard him humming. He was happy. She, on the other hand, was inflamed with misery and doubt. He must be undressing now. She heard muted splashes as he entered the bath, and then a sigh of pleasure. Then silence.
    She stood up and undressed, too. She removed everything—drawers and chemise, even the pins from her hair. If she’d had anything more to take off, she would have done so. Her nude form was not beautiful, and she knew it, but it was all she had. She went and leaned against the door of the water closet, listening with her ear pressed against it. She did not have to do this. There were alternatives. She could learn to endure things as they were. She could patiently submit to her suffering, to this strange and impossible marriage-that-was-not-a-marriage. She could learn how to conquer everything that Ambrose brought forth within her—her appetite for him, her disappointment in him, her sense of tormenting absence whenever she was near him. If she could learn how to defeat her own desire, then she could keep her husband—such as he was.
    No. No, she could not learn that.
    She turned the knob, pushed against the door, and entered as silently as she could. His head turned toward her, and his eyes grew wide with alarm. She said nothing, and he said nothing. She looked away from his eyes and allowed herself to examine his entire body, just submerged under the cool bath water. There he was, in all his naked loveliness. His skin was milky white—so much whiter in his chest and legs than on his arms. There was only a trace of hair on his torso. He could not have been more perfectly beautiful.
    Had she worried that he might not have genitalia at all? Had she imagined that this might have been the problem? Well, this was not the problem. He had genitalia—perfectly adequate, and even impressive, genitalia. She allowed herself to observe with care this lovely appendage of his—this pale, waving sea creature, which floated between his legs in its thatch of wet and private fur. Ambrose did not move. Nor did his penis stir at all. It did not like being looked at. She realized this immediately. Alma had spent enough time in the woods gazing upon shy animals to know when a creature did not want to be seen, and this creature between Ambrose’s legs did not wish to be seen. Still, she gazed at it because she could not look away. Ambrose allowed her to do this—not so much because he was permissive, but because he was paralyzed.
    At last, she looked up to his face, desperate to find some opening, some conduit, into him. He appeared frozen in fear. Why fear ? She dropped to the floor beside the bathtub. It almost looked as though she were kneeling before him in supplication. No—she was kneeling before him insupplication. His right hand, with its long and tapered fingers, was resting on the edge of the tub, clutching at the porcelain rim. She loosened this hand, one finger at a time. He allowed her to loosen it. She took his hand and brought it toward her mouth. She put three of his fingers in her mouth. She could not help herself. She needed something of him inside her. She wanted to bite down on him, just enough to keep his fingers from slipping out of her mouth. She did not wish to frighten him, but she did not wish to let him go, either. Instead of biting down, she began to suck. She was perfectly concentrated in