so thick that its circumference was probably greater than my waist.
At last she stopped. Her song had no conclusion, just an end. She brought her thighs together with a clap and let the black slip fall back over her knees. Then she began to yawn, great open-mouthed yawns, like big cats in zoos. Still yawning she turned and patted Pachecoâs cheek and, without another glance at us, she slowly climbed the stairs with the money sticking like thistles from her fists.
Pacheco stood facing us. âI have given you a little something. Are you grateful?â he asked. No one answered. We were still too caught up by her dance. âNow you will always remember each other. I suppose you think this has made you men. It hasnât, but perhaps you will whine a little less.â
All of a sudden we felt released, and we laughed and whistled and clapped our hands. Pacheco was always saying serious things to which we paid little attention. Every boy has a constant game in which he plays the hero, and this Saturday afternoon it seemed we had taken part in Pachecoâs game, for which we were grateful. All of us? Well, I was grateful, or at least I thought I was. And years later, when we formed our group and committed ourselves to biannual dinners, I felt that the root of our decision was not that we had been in school together or had similar interests and backgrounds or were even particularly close to one another, but rather the beginning, the event that tied us together, was that afternoon when Pacheco had hired the whore. Even at forty-nine, I still vividly remember being pressed to her immense greasy chest while she gyrated her hips very slowly and methodically. It was almost like chewing. Others thought the same, and much later Malgiolio said how the whore had eaten our childhood. But I didnât think anything so grand. I was a fourteen-year-old boy in a black and white striped railway cap. I was simply amazed.
â
Such were our sexual beginnings. At fourteen we boys were so similar as to be like a series of ditto marks. It was only later that we grew more defined and individual: one entered the church, another the militaryâdoctor, lawyer, used car salesman. As for me, I am someone who has spent his adult life on the periphery of literature in the way that a small animal will remain just beyond the glow of a campfire, observing the strange doings of the human creatures settling in for the night. I am not an artist but a journalist, and even though my essays and interviews with Borges, Mailer, Günter Grass, and others may someday be collected and published in book form, I am not a critic but a reviewer. It is my job to compare a new book to what has already been written, not to speculate on the paths literature may take in the future. But the hardest task in any writing is to present the truth so it can be seen as true. One cannot just give the history of an event in a straightforward manner and expect it to be believed. That history must have a shape. It must have direction and movement.
Of course I am a romantic. That is my curse; it italicizes all my observations. Always at the book review I am being asked to tone down if not my opinions, then my prose. But to be a romantic, doesnât that mean seeking and even finding connection among apparently random phenomena? There must be pattern. The events of a life are not a series of scattered actions like dust thrown into the wind. Something must link them. And so in writing I am not merely giving the history of one evening at Dr. Pachecoâs but of our lives as influenced by Pacheco. Detachment, I struggle for detachment. Those hours with the whore had linked us together. We did not brood about this event. It was hardly mentioned between us and if someone did mention that Saturday afternoon it was casually and certainly without shame or guilt. It had pleased us all. That is why it seemed such a pity to begin our group without Pacheco, and why, once he had
At last she stopped. Her song had no conclusion, just an end. She brought her thighs together with a clap and let the black slip fall back over her knees. Then she began to yawn, great open-mouthed yawns, like big cats in zoos. Still yawning she turned and patted Pachecoâs cheek and, without another glance at us, she slowly climbed the stairs with the money sticking like thistles from her fists.
Pacheco stood facing us. âI have given you a little something. Are you grateful?â he asked. No one answered. We were still too caught up by her dance. âNow you will always remember each other. I suppose you think this has made you men. It hasnât, but perhaps you will whine a little less.â
All of a sudden we felt released, and we laughed and whistled and clapped our hands. Pacheco was always saying serious things to which we paid little attention. Every boy has a constant game in which he plays the hero, and this Saturday afternoon it seemed we had taken part in Pachecoâs game, for which we were grateful. All of us? Well, I was grateful, or at least I thought I was. And years later, when we formed our group and committed ourselves to biannual dinners, I felt that the root of our decision was not that we had been in school together or had similar interests and backgrounds or were even particularly close to one another, but rather the beginning, the event that tied us together, was that afternoon when Pacheco had hired the whore. Even at forty-nine, I still vividly remember being pressed to her immense greasy chest while she gyrated her hips very slowly and methodically. It was almost like chewing. Others thought the same, and much later Malgiolio said how the whore had eaten our childhood. But I didnât think anything so grand. I was a fourteen-year-old boy in a black and white striped railway cap. I was simply amazed.
â
Such were our sexual beginnings. At fourteen we boys were so similar as to be like a series of ditto marks. It was only later that we grew more defined and individual: one entered the church, another the militaryâdoctor, lawyer, used car salesman. As for me, I am someone who has spent his adult life on the periphery of literature in the way that a small animal will remain just beyond the glow of a campfire, observing the strange doings of the human creatures settling in for the night. I am not an artist but a journalist, and even though my essays and interviews with Borges, Mailer, Günter Grass, and others may someday be collected and published in book form, I am not a critic but a reviewer. It is my job to compare a new book to what has already been written, not to speculate on the paths literature may take in the future. But the hardest task in any writing is to present the truth so it can be seen as true. One cannot just give the history of an event in a straightforward manner and expect it to be believed. That history must have a shape. It must have direction and movement.
Of course I am a romantic. That is my curse; it italicizes all my observations. Always at the book review I am being asked to tone down if not my opinions, then my prose. But to be a romantic, doesnât that mean seeking and even finding connection among apparently random phenomena? There must be pattern. The events of a life are not a series of scattered actions like dust thrown into the wind. Something must link them. And so in writing I am not merely giving the history of one evening at Dr. Pachecoâs but of our lives as influenced by Pacheco. Detachment, I struggle for detachment. Those hours with the whore had linked us together. We did not brood about this event. It was hardly mentioned between us and if someone did mention that Saturday afternoon it was casually and certainly without shame or guilt. It had pleased us all. That is why it seemed such a pity to begin our group without Pacheco, and why, once he had
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