“Go ahead … . fuck her,” Sam urges me. “Have a drink first.”
“Hey, now look, Sam … .”
“Don’t tell me she’s not worth fucking,” he says, “I know better. I have proof!”
he grabs a pile of papers from a drawer and shoves them under my nose. They’re not papers … . they’re the pictures we took of Ann that night. He pushes them into my hands and goes to the bed. I look toward the door to be certain I can get there in a hurry if I want to … . but it doesn’t look as though Sam was going to wave a pistol or anything like that. He pulls Ann off the bed and gives her a shove in my direction.
“Suck him off now, you whore!” he yells at her. “I’ve seen all the pictures …
now let me see you do it!”
Ann’s pretty drunk too. She wobbles toward me and goes down to her knees in front of me. I try to break away from her, but she’s got my legs in her arms. She kisses the front of my pants and puts her fingers into my fly.
It’s so crazy and frightening that I seem to have become petrified. I don’t know if they’ve gone nuts or I have. I watch Ann take my dong out and lick it… . Then she puts it into her mouth … . .
“Snuggles!” Sam roars.
Snuggles comes hopping in from another room. She’s naked too, but she doesn’t look scared. That’s a good sign … if Sam had gone nuts she’d be pissing in her pants.
“Come on over to the bed,” Sam says. “You, too, Alf. Come on, fuck them both
… you’ve done it before. I’ll fuck them both too … . I’ve done it before… .”
“Listen, Sam,” I say, “what the Jesus is this? … What’s going on!”
“Why this is Paris, my boy!” he shouts. “Paris, where everything happens, where you learn things you never knew about yourself! And your family!” He pulls Snuggles to him and she grabs his cock. He sets her on his knee and plays with her figlet while he’s yelling at me… . . “I want to meet these friends of yours
… . this Ernest fellow, and Sid. And that fairy brother of Tania’s, too … . I think I’d enjoy watching a fairy fuck my wife! Maybe I’ll let him suck me off afterward, if he does a good job of it! Bring them all around … . all but that bastard Carl. I just want to meet the people who’ve been fucking my family for me!”
He pushes Snuggles on her ass and yells for Ann to come over and suck his prick for awhile. Then he decides that he wants them both to do it, taking turns.
“We’re going to have a big party tonight, Alf,” he says. “Lesbians and everything … . somebody named Billie took my wife to bed with her! AND my daughter … . mustn’t forget Snuggles! Champagne and cunt for everybody! I’m going to have Tania here … . . and Alexandra! I’m going to out-Paris Paris… .”
“Sam, I think you’re making a mistake… .”
“Not any more, Alf! Here, why don’t you fuck somebody, why don’t you screw one of these bitches for me? I’m killing myself trying to handle both of them … . if they wouldn’t suck each other off I’d be dead already!”
“Sam, look, if you act crazy like this you’re going to make a lot of trouble for yourself… . You’ve got a business to take care of… …
“Business? What business? I don’t have … oh, you mean that thing with Severin? Well, fuck Severin! And that piss ant Carl, too. That bastard Carl always did get on my nerves… . No, that’s gone overboard…”
“But Sam, what to Jesus are you going to do?”
“Do? I’m going to have some fun. I’m going to find out just what these two bitches of mine are… . . I’ll drag out every fucking bit of slime in them! I hear that you fellows made a little profit on this whore wife of mine the other night… . .
maybe I’ll try that myself! No … I can think up something better than that… .
And when I’ve found out everything there is to know about them, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to beat the ass off both of them and take them back to America! They wanted Paris… . I’ll give them the Paris they can stand!”
I’m standing there with my cock hanging out not knowing what I’m supposed to do or say. I’ve never run into anything like this … . I didn’t even know that things like this happened. I still have a feeling that all isn’t right in Sam’s upper story. He wants to know if I’d like to to see Ann and Snuggles play tete-beche.
“Sam… . I haven’t got the time right now. I just came around to tell you I’m off the paper… .”
“Got kicked out of your job, did you? Well, it’s about time that they caught onto you. How much do you want to borrow?”
“I don’t want to borrow anything, Sam. I want you to give me some money.”
“Now you’re talking, by Jesus! Come right out and ask for it! How much do you want? Say it in American money… .”
He’s waving a check book already. I take a chance and name twice the amount I really need for what I’m going to do. Then I translate it into francs for him. I grab at that check like a drowning man grabbing for a nice big lifeboat… …
“If you want some more money tomorrow come around… Oh, that’s right … .
you’ll be around tonight to help me screw these cunts, won’t you?”
I run for the door before he can change his mind. And on the street I run for the taxi to take me to the bank. I am running away, and I am not going to stop running. I am not going to stop running until I have bought a ticket to America on Sam’s money and am on the boat. And when I get to America I am going to run some more. I am running away, and I am not going to stop running until I have put a lot of ocean between me and Sam Backer, Ann, Snuggles, Tania, Alexandra and the rest of these crazy bitches who have slowly been driving me nuts for the last year or so. I am going to America and I am going to buy or make or have made a good mechanical cunt, a fucking machine, which runs by electricity and which can be pulled out of the wall socket when the fuses begin to blow and the trouble starts.
Epilogue
The following is an affidavit filed by Milton Luboviski at the United States Embassy in Paris on March 10, 1983 affirming the circumstances under which he commissioned Henry Miller to write Opus Pistorum:
In the summer of 1940, I was a partner in the Larry Edmunds Bookshop at 1603 North Chuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, California. In September of that year, Henry Miller arrived at the bookshop on a Sunday afternoon when the shop was closed. He knocked on the door, introduced himself and I admitted him to the shop. That began a friendship which lasted some thirty-five years or so. At that time, Henry had little or no money and knew very few people in California. I befriended him, helping him with money from time to time, introducing him to people and, at one point, finding him a place to live.
On September 1, 1941 Larry Edmunds died and I became sole owner of the bookshop. In those days the shop was not doing well and I supplemented our income by selling various items of pornography whenever it was possible to obtain them. My customers were mainly studio producers, writers and directors such as Joseph Mankiewicz, Julian Johnson, Daniele Amfitheatrof, Billy Wilder, Frederick Hollander, Henry Blanke, and others.
Henry, being in need of money, offered to write material for me that I would be able to sell. I offered to pay him one dollar per page in return for all rights to the material he would write for me. Shortly thereafter he began to bring in several pages at a time and I paid him in cash at the agreed rate. Within a few months the pages had accumulated into a complete book which he entitled Opus Pistorum.
When he gave me the last pages, around the middle of 1942, I recall his saying
“Here is the end of the book. I hope you make a few months’ rent from it.”
I retyped the entire manuscript, making four carbon copies. I then had all five copies bound by a book binder and, thereafter, sold copies to Julian Johnson, Daniele Amfitheatrof and Frederick Hollander. A few years later, I gave a copy to my friend, Robert Light, and kept the original for myself.
The End
