an example of prelapsarian high spirits which as of tonight will be another experience unavailable to me

On the way back I entertained Rachel and kept things going with an account of my own sexual history. Now I had had ten girls. I considered doubling, even squaring, this figure. I ended up halving it. AH five, I stressed, had been important and serious relationships. I was sorry, but I had no time for the other kind. Excuse me, but I wasn't interested in purely sexual encounters, thank you, although it was true - one hated to say it - that most of the boys I knew were interested ... in precious little else - no, perhaps that wasn't fair. Of course I had tried it, more out of curiosity than anything, I supposed. It was odd, but - I don't know - it seemed that a girl's body was ... empty unless you liked its owner. Sure, the incredibly beautiful girls in these experimental liaisons had got in a bit of a state - what with being so incredibly sexed up at the time. Understandable. (One or two, I didn't mind telling her, had got pretty violent, pretty ugly, about the whole thing.) But I had had just to explain myself, as tactfully as possible. No - hell - they could keep their money; a boy can't fake it.

What was good sex? Well, good sex had nothing to do with expertise, how many French tricks one knew (how convincingly you munched on each other's stools, etc.). No: if there was affection and enthusiasm, that was enough.

By now my head is lodged dourly between her shoulder and the pillow - no flair, no finessing, just cock to the grindstone. Two times two is four. Three times two, moreover, is six. Stop kissing her mouth, work on ears. Let me come. Stop all movement and kiss her meditatively, in slow motion, so that she differentiates it and realizes what is happening: here I am kissing you. Ninety per cent withdrawal, prod her clitoris with my male reproductive organ, feel her contract, smile potently in the half-light. Withdraw to irreducible helmet depth feel her muscles clench and arms tighten pleadingly on my back withdraw till almost out - then - wait - BOOF. She goes stiff then floppy. Pound like an engine, go dog go. Hand on stomach between shuffling webs of pubic hair, take pressure off, pull legs up too sexy slacken calm down. Fast for three strokes then slow for three then fast. Slow and good, then quick and nasty, then slow and good. Suddenly she shouts, lifts and widens her legs, calls from the end of the world, hands knead my buttocks don't do that. Two thirteens twenty-six, three thirteens forty-nine, thirteen twenty-sixes forty-two. (As regards the physical aspect, by the way, this is all utterly intolerable.) Industrial accidents, pimples, bee-keeping, pus crapping Tampax exams ... Pick a poet - Because I do not hope to turn the mermaids round from the back singing because I do not hope to keep your hands off me I do not think bloody sheets that they will sing because there can't be anything left I do not hope to turn the pain the pain. Body strung out on a giant whip, the buckled praying mantis soon to be eaten. I grow old I grow old shall I feel her fingernails hear her neigh give me strength O my people affirm before the world no more and deny between the socks not long for the garden where end loves all ten more five more the bathroom in the garden the garden in the desert of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed. (I come now, a token sperm in the rubber nozzle; but that's hardly the point.) Tossed along with the strength of ten men, every second lucid agony, grating thrusts, the crunch of genitals. Then I surfed helplessly on the wave of her climax, pounded and tugged at as it broke by a thousand alien currents. And she came under my dead body.

Rachel's eyes were streaming. She smiled a shamed, apologetic smile. I tried to say something but had breath enough only to mouth it. She saw, though, in the half-light. 'Oh. I love you, too,' she said.