Help Me.

Master Qui-Gon, sir,

Wait, I’m Tired…!

I’m trying to keep 

Something Alive, 

and I don’t think 

I can do it…..

Anakin..!!

DROP!!

Why Do We 

Fall, Bruce…?

“And so, this is one of the reasons I think 

Men are bailing-out of 

so much of academia, 

and maybe 

The Academic World in general. 

And maybe,

The World in general…..

"So, part of The Problem is,

Men actually don’t have 

any idea 

How to Compete 

with Women. 

Because The Problem is that 

if you unleash yourself completely, 

then you’re an 

Absolute Bully. 

And there’s no 

doubt about that, 

because even if 

Men unleash themselves 

on other Men, 

that can be pretty goddamn 

brutal, especially for 

The Men that’re 

really tough. 

And so that just 

Doesn’t Happen 

with Women, ever. 

So you can’t 

unleash yourself completely -- 

Because, 

If You Win, 

You’re a Bully;

and If You Lose, 

well, You’re just 

bloody pathetic. 

So, How The Hell are 

You supposed to play 

A Game like that…?” 

The Father, Senex,

Lord of The Dance :

You Know — I’ve learned 

a few things over The Years :

Ye can’t…. 

Ye can’t  make An Omelette, 

without crackin’ some eggs…

What Doesn’t Kill Ye, 

makes Ye Stronger;

We ARE — What We Eat.

You Buy Cheap, 

You Buy Twice.

The Open HAND, 

has The Strongest Grip.

•NEVER• parachute 

into an area, 

Y’ve just BOMBED….

PAGLIA : 

I can remember, still, 

the life of the agrarian era - 

which was for most of Human History - 

The Agrarian Era, where 

there was The World of Men, 

and The World of Women. 

And the sexes had very little 

to do with each other. 

Each had Power and Status 

in its own realm. 

And they laughed 

at each other, 

in essence. 

The Women had enormous power. 

In fact, The Older Women ruled, not 

The Young Beautiful Women like today. 

But the older you were the more 

you had control over everyone, 

including the mating and marriage.

 

There were no Doctors, 

so The Old Women were like midwives 

and knew all the ins and outs 

and [had] inherited knowledge 

about pregnancy and 

all these other things. 

I can remember this. 

And the joy that women had 

with each other all day long. 

Cooking with each other, 

being companions to each other, 

talking, conversing. 

My Mother remembered, 

as a small child in Italy, 

when it was time to 

Do The Laundry 

they would take The Laundry 

up The Hill to The Fountain 

and do it by hand. 

They would sing, they would picnic, and so on. 

We get a glimpse of that in the Odyssey when Odysseus is thrown up naked on the shores of Phaeacia and he hears the sound of women, young women, laughing and singing. And it’s Nausicaa, the princess, bringing the women to do the laundry. It’s exactly the same thing. So there was. . . 

Each gender had its OWN hierarchy, its OWN values, its OWN way of talking. And the sexes RARELY intersected. 

I can remember in my childhood in a holiday - it could be a Christmas, it could be a Thanksgiving, whatever - women would be cooking all day long, everyone would sit down to eat, and then after that the women would retire en masse to the kitchen. And the men would go. . . I would look at them through the window and see all the men. The men would be all outside, usually gathered around the car - at a time when cars didn’t work as well as they do today - with the hood up. And the men would be standing with their hands on their hips like that. Everyone’s staring at the engine. That’s how I learned men were refreshing themselves by studying something technical and mechanical after being with the women during the dinner.

So all of these problems of today are the direct consequence of women’s emancipation and freedom from housework thanks to capitalism, which made it possible for women to have jobs outside the home for the very first time in the nineteenth century. No longer to be dependent on husband or father or brother. 

So this great thing that’s happened to us, allowing us to be totally self-supporting, independent agents has produced all this animosity between men and women, because women feel unhappy. Women today - wherever I go, whether it’s Italy or Brazil or England or America or Toronto - the upper-middle class professional women are unhappy, miserable. And they don’t know why they’re unhappy. They want to blame it on men. The men must change. Men must become more like women. No. That is the wrong way to go. It’s when men are men, and understand themselves as men, are secure as men - then you’re going to be happier. 

Peterson: There’s nothing more dangerous than a weak man. 

Paglia: Absolutely. Especially all these quislings spouting feminist rhetoric. When I hear that it makes me sick. But here’s the point. Men and women have never worked side by side, ever. Maybe on the farms when you were like. . . Maybe one person is in the potato field and the other one is over here doing tomatoes, or whatever. You had families working side by side, exhausted with each other. No time to have any clash of this. It was a collaborative effort on farms and so on. Never in all of human history have men and women been working side by side. And women are now. . . The pressure about Silicon Valley - they’re all so sexist, they don’t allow women in, and so on. Men are being men in Silicon Valley. 

Peterson: Especially the engineers. 

Paglia: And the women are demanding that. . . ‘Oh, this is terrible, you’re being sexist.’ Maybe the sexes have their own particular form of rhetoric, their own particular form of identity. Maybe we need to reexamine this business about. . . Maybe we have to perhaps accept some degree of tension and conflict between the sexes in a work environment. 

I don’t mean harassment. I’m talking about women feeling disrespected. Somehow their opinions, when they express them, are not taken seriously. Even Hillary Clinton is complaining. When a woman writes something online she’s attacked immediately. Everyone is attacked online. What are you talking about? The world is tough. The world is competitive. Identity is honed by conflict. The idea that there should be no conflict, that we have to be in this bath of approbation. . . It’s infantile. 

Peterson: That’s right. It’s absolutely infantile. Okay, so, a couple of things there. Well the first thing is that the agreeableness trait that divides men and women 16

most. . . There’s three things that divide women and men most particularly from the psychometric perspective. One is that women are more agreeable than men, and so that seems to be the primary maternal dimension as far as I can tell. It’s associated with a desire to avoid conflict. But it’s associated with interpersonal closeness, compassion, politeness. Women are reliably higher than men, especially in the Scandinavian countries and in the countries where egalitarianism has progressed the farthest. So that’s where the difference is maximized, which is one of the things James Damore pointed out quite correctly in his infamous Google Memo. Women are higher in negative emotion. So that’s anxiety and emotional pain. That difference is approximately the same size. And again that maximizes in egalitarian societies, which is extremely interesting. And then the biggest difference is the difference in interest between people and things. And so women are more interested in people, and men are more interested in things, which goes along quite nicely with your car anecdote. But the thing about men interacting with men again is that it isn’t that they respect each other’s viewpoints. That’s not exactly right. What happens with a man. . . I know a lot of men that I would regard as remarkably tough people for one reason or another. And everything you do with them is a form of combat. Like if you want your viewpoint taken seriously, often you have to yell them down. They’re not going to stop talking unless you start talking over them. It’s not like men are automatically giving respect to other men, because that just doesn’t happen. It’s that the combat is there, and it’s expected. And one of the problems. . . And so, this is one of the reasons I think men are bailing out of so much of academia and maybe the academic world in general. And maybe the world in general. Men actually don’t have any idea how to compete with women. Because the problem is that if you unleash yourself completely, then you’re an absolute bully. And there’s no doubt about that, because if men unleash themselves on other men, that can be pretty goddamn brutal, especially for the men that really tough. And so that just doesn’t happen with women ever. So you can’t unleash yourself completely. If you win, you’re a bully. If you lose, well you’re just bloody pathetic. So how the hell are you supposed to play a game like that? I’ve worked with lots of women in law firms in Canada, for example. And high achieving women, like really remarkable people I would say. And they’re often nonplussed, I would say, by the attitude of the men in the law firm, because they would like to see everyone pulling together because they’re all part of the same team. Whereas the men are like at each other’s throats in a cooperative way because they want the law firm to succeed, but they want to be the person who is at the top of the success hierarchy. And that doesn’t jive well with the more cooperative ethos that’s part and parcel of agreeableness. So we don’t really have any idea how to integrate male and female dominance hierarchies.

We Should Take Care of Each Other

“ We should Take Care of each-other…

Wouldn’t it be nice to be like, 

“Remember that time,

They wuz’ gonna Kill Jesus 

but then He got 

all that Money?”

[laughing] 

Real Talk, man. It’s not a racial thing. 

It’s about Us, making 

Our Society better. 

It’s about like even 

these women that 

are coming forward, 

and everyone says "They’re Brave.", 

and many of them are. 

And a few of them – a few of them sucked The Dick and got 

buyer’s remorse. 

[laughing]

You know, that’s a huge omission from This Narrative : —

This wouldn’t have gone this far 

if some women weren’t willing to DO it. 

You can’t ask every woman 

to Hold The Line. 

Some Women can carry things 

heavier than others. 

So, We should fight 

for one another. 

We should forgive 

the ones of us 

that are weaker and 

support the ones of us 

that are stronger. 

And then we can beat The Thing. 

If you guys keep going 

after individuals, 

The System is going 

to stay intact. 

You have to have Men 

on Your Side. 

And I’m Telling You right now, 

you’re gonna have a lot 

of imperfect allies.

I’ll tell you What Happened, 

but I can’t say it directly : 

There’s a book to me that encapsulates my entire experience -- before I left The Show. 

And the book is called 'Pimp'. 

It’s written by a guy named Iceberg Slim. 

Yeah, bring it up here. 

This is Matthew. 

Matthew’s from France. He’s White. 

And yet, he has an 

original copy of 

this book 

written by a black 

American who was 

a pimp in the ’40s. Iceberg Slim. 

His real name was Robert Beck -- 

He got the name 'Iceberg' because he was in a bar in Chicago, 

and there was a shootout in the bar, 

and a bullet went through this n i g g a’s hat, 

and he still finished His Drink. 

Pimps love shit like that. 

They said, “Man, 

You’re Ice-Cold.” 

And he said, “I Like that.” 

And it stuck.

This book is so heavy in the front and has a glossary of pimp terms, because the ideas are so foreign to the American ears. 

For instance, do you know what the phrase 

“mileage on a ho” means? 

[laughing] 

Of course you don’t. 

Mileage on a ho is a very wild concept. 

It means that, 

Pimps understand there’s a finite amount of bad shit a person can do before they lose their fucking mind. 

And a good pimp can 

look at A Woman 

that he’s never seen 

before, and Call it : 

"She’s Good for 500 fucks." 

That’s her mileage —

Anything over that, 

that bitch is gonna spill. 

They Do it to You -- 

Why the fuck you think most of us work from nine to five? 

‘Cause nine to six 

might kill a bitch. 

[laughing]

Iceberg Slim was the one 

that broke down what 

A Bottom-Bitch was. 

Does anyone know what a

Bottom-Bitch is? Anyone? 

What’s a Bottom-Bitch, sir? 

"It’s your, uh– 

it’s your prostitute 

that’s the best out 

of all of ’em, 

that bring in the 

most money."

That’s right. That’s exactly right. Are you Black? 

[laughing] 

That’s right. 

A Bottom-Bitch is a pimp’s Number-one Ho. 

She’s even a bitch 

that helps him keep 

the other bitches 

in Line. I will repeat. 

She’s even the bitch 

that helps him 

keep the other 

bitches in line. 

If The Pimp was McDonald’s, 

then the Bottom-Bitch is his French fries. [laughing] 

The rest of them bitches like fish sandwiches and 

cherry pies and 

shit like that. [laughing]

Iceberg Slim breaks down 

some of the coldest 

Capitalist Concepts I’ve 

ever heard in My Life. 

He describes in detail how

 these men break women so that 

they will give them the money 

that they make with their own bodies. 

There’s A Story in here so cold, 

it makes me shudder 

to think about it -- 

Iceberg Slim is trying to Control The Woman that 

he finds uncontrollable. 

So he asks an older pimp how he can rein her in. 

And the older pimp says, 

“Oh, that’s easy, Iceberg -- All you have to do, 

is beat that bitch with 

a coat-hanger -- and then 

run her a bath -- and 

give her some pills.... 

She’ll be so grateful 

that You Fixed her, 

that she’ll forget 

You were The Motherfucker 

that beat her in 

the first place.” 

That’s some cold shit.

Now. At the end of this book, Iceberg Slim tells A Story. It’s kind of the crescendo of the book. 

And in The Story, 

Iceberg Slim’s bottom bitch is at the end of her mileage -- If she was good for 500 fucks, she was at for 498. 

[laughing] 

She was bubbling, you could see it. She was going crazy. 

She started saying all kinds of shit. 

“I always wanted to be in The Circus.” 

"Circus..!? This bitch is losing it." 

[laughing] 

“I can juggle, too, you know?” 

Juggle? 

[laughing] 

He had to let her go. 

It was hard to let a bottom bitch go, 

and he wasn’t ready to let her go, 

because his organization couldn’t handle losing her. 

But she didn’t know that. 

She didn’t know how important she was. 

So what he did was, he called her to ignite her -- 

He said, “Look, bitch, you and I got to part ways.” 

She said, 

“Fine, motherfucker, I don’t need you anyway, 

because I know somebody at Ringling Brothers.” 

He was like, 

“All right, whatever." 

[laughing] 

"I got one last trick for you. It’s a big money trick. 

You do this for me, 

You get paid, I get paid, 

and we go our separate ways.” 

She said, 

“Fine, motherfucker, what do you want me to do?” 

He said, 

“Okay, there’s a guy in that hotel across the street --

He’s waiting for you in room number seven : 

I want you to go over there and fuck him....

But before you do, I need you to 

put some of this stuff in his drink. 

And then he’s gonna fall asleep. 

When he does, 

his briefcase on his bed, 

bring the briefcase to me. 

That’s the trick, bitch. Can you handle it?” 

She said, 

“Fuck yeah, I can. I can’t wait to get rid of you.” 

And then she ran outside, 

jumped on a unicycle and peddled across the street. 

[laughing] 

And Iceberg watched her. He’s like, 

“Man, she’s pretty good.” 

[laughing] 

“If I never jerked off in her face, 

maybe she would’ve been in The Circus, now.” 

[laughing] [laughs]

And she runs up the motel steps 

and disappears in room number seven. 

She’s gone for a real long time. Real long time. 

So long, in fact, that Iceberg got a little worried. 

But then, suddenly, she came back. 

[gasps] 

He says, 

“Where’s the briefcase?” 

She said, 

“I didn’t get it, Daddy.” 

“What do you mean you didn’t? What’s wrong with you?” 

She said, 

“I did everything you said, 

but that man don’t look right -- 

Something Wrong, Daddy.” 

“What do you mean? Did you put that stuff in his drink?” 

“I did everything you said, Daddy, 

I put all of it in his drink.” 

He said, 

“Wait a minute, bitch, you put all of it in his drink?” 

Now he had to see for himself. 

So the two of them go to the motel, and they go into room number seven. 

And on the bed laying lifelessly is the white man that she was supposed to fuck. 

Iceberg said, 

“You right, bitch. He don’t look good. What the fuck?” 

So he called a friend of his that was a doctor that was close by. 

And the doctor came in, gave the guy a thorough examination and told them both what was obvious : 

“Slim, this motherfucker is dead.” 

“Oh, God, Daddy. Oh, no. 

Oh, no. We killed him!” 

He said, 

“Calm down, bitch -- We didn’t do anything. 

[laughing] 

You killed this motherfucker.” 

And then he reached on the bed and he grabbed the briefcase. 

He popped it open. It was filled with money. 

More than any of them had ever seen. 

Iceberg took a little bit of the money and gave it to the doctor, 

and the doctor left discreetly. 

“All right, bitch, let me think...

[sighs] 

I can fix this for you. 

I know somebody I can call --

But if I call him, 

I’m gonna owe these motherfuckers a big favor.” 

“Oh, God, Daddy, please. I don’t want to go to jail.” 

“Neither do I, bitch, so you shut up.”

He picked up the phone. She heard him mumbling in the phone a little bit. He hung up the phone, and then she was pacing the room, and he was just standing there cool, and they were waiting and waiting, and then suddenly, a van pulled up downstairs. 

Two guys get out with a carpet. 

They walk upstairs, they roll that carpet out on the floor, they throw the body in the carpet. 

They roll that motherfucker up like a burrito, they pick that shit up, and they throw it in the back of the van. 

They come back up 

and Iceberg opens the briefcase again 

and gives them a little money --

He says, 

“I’ll get in touch with you guys later.” 

They say, 

“You’re not going to get in touch with us, we’ll find you.” 

He said, 

“Whatever, n i g g a.” 

And they bounced. 

“Oh, God, Daddy. Oh, God.” 

He says, 

“Relax, bitch. Listen. 

We getting the fuck out of here. 

You go downstairs and you get the car. 

We gotta leave separately.” 

She went, she got the car. 

Iceberg grabbed that briefcase, waited a few minutes, 

looked out the window, and then he went down with her. 

They both got in the car, and they drove off. 

She was a blubbering mess. 

“Oh! Oh, we did all this shit!” 

He said, 

“I told you bitch -- We didn’t do anything. 

You killed the motherfucker, 

and I cleaned him up, 

and now we got us a secret. Okay? 

I know I’m not going to tell, bitch, is you?” 

“Oh, no, I ain’t gonna tell.” 

He said, 

“All right, baby, cool. 

I’m gonna need you 

to stay with me for a while 

till this shit cools down.” 

She goes, 

“Okay, okay. Okay.” 

That’s The Game.

That’s how the whole shit works, ladies. You understand? 

This bitch was at the end of her mileage. 

She was at for 498, 

she ended up tricking for Iceberg 

for another six months. 

She must have turned another 200 tricks for him. 

Do you understand? 

That’s some cold shit. 

And the cold shit about it is, that 

the dead guy on the bed wasn’t even dead at all --

This motherfucker was just 

a friend of Iceberg’s, acting like he’s asleep. 

The Doctor wasn’t a Doctor -- 

He was a motherfucking butcher 

that happened to have a white coat. 

[laughing] 

And the dudes who came in 

with the moving van clothes 

was dressed like movers 

because they were movers --

Iceberg had gotten a new apartment. 

[laughing] 

And the bag of money… 

was Iceberg’s money in the first place. 

The money he got from all those women. 

That’s a cold game. 

That’s the motherfucking Capitalist Manifesto, 

and that’s Why I Went to South Africa. 

So now we got us a little secret, bitch. 

[laughing]

Misery

“The sky was darkening purple – sunset. Five-thirty, maybe six o’clock. 

The tide was still in and he could have gone back to sleep – wanted to go back to sleep – but he had to think about this bizarre situation while he was still capable of something like rational thought. 

The worst thing, he was discovering, was that he didn’t want to think of it even while he could, even when he knew he could not bring the situation to an end without thinking about it. His mind kept trying to push it away, like a child pushing away his meal even though he has been told he cannot leave the table until he has eaten it. He didn’t want to think about it because just living it was hard enough. He didn’t want to think about it because whenever he did unpleasant images intervened – the way she went blank, the way she made him think of idols and stones, and now the way the yellow plastic floor-bucket had sped toward his face like a crashing moon. Thinking of those things would not change his situation, was in fact worse than not thinking at all, but once he turned his mind to Annie Wilkes and his position here in her house, they were the thoughts that came, crowding out all others. His heart would start to beat too fast, mostly in fear, but partly in shame, too. He saw himself putting his lips to the rim of the yellow floor-bucket, saw the rinse-water with its film of soap and the rag floating in it, saw these things but drank anyway, never hesitating a bit. He would never tell anyone about that, assuming he ever got out of this, and he supposed he might try to lie about it to himself, but he would never be able to do it. 

Yet, miserable or not (and he was), he still wanted to live. Think about it, goddammit! Jesus Christ, are you already so cowed you can’t even try? 

No – but almost that cowed. 

Then an odd, angry thought occurred to him : She doesn’t like the new book because she’s too stupid to understand what it’s up to. 

The thought wasn’t just odd; under the circumstances, how she felt about Fast Cars was totally immaterial. But thinking about the things she had said was at least a new avenue, and feeling angry at her was better than feeling scared of her, and so he went down it with some eagerness. 

Too stupid? No. Too set. Not just unwilling to change, but antagonistic to the very idea of change. 

Yes. And while she might be crazy, was she so different in her evaluation of his work from the hundreds of thousands of other people across the country – ninety percent of them women – who could barely wait for each new five-hundred-page episode in the turbulent life of the foundling who had risen to marry a peer of the realm? No, not at all. 

They wanted Misery, Misery, Misery. 

Each time he had taken a year or two off to write one of the other novels – what he thought of as his ‘serious’ work with what was at first certainty and then hope and finally a species of grim desperation – he had received a flood of protesting letters from these women, many of whom signed themselves ‘your number-one fan’. 

The tone of these letters varied from bewilderment (that always hurt the most, somehow), to reproach, to outright anger, but the message was always the same: It wasn’t what I expected, it wasn’t what I wanted. Please go back to Misery. I want to know what Misery is doing. 

He could write a modern Under the Volcano, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Sound and the Fury; it wouldn’t matter. They would still want Misery, Misery, Misery. 

It’s hard to follow … he’s not interesting … and the profanity! 

The anger sparked again. Anger at her obdurate density, anger that she could actually kidnap him – keep him prisoner here, force him into a choice between drinking dirty rinse-water from a floor-bucket or suffering the pain of his shattered legs – and then, on top of all that, find the nerve to criticize the best thing he had ever written. 

‘Bugger you and the effword you rode in on,’ he said, and he suddenly felt better again, felt himself again, even though he knew this rebellion was petty and pitiful and meaningless – she was in the barn where she couldn’t hear him, and the tide was safely in over the splintered pilings. Still … 

He remembered her coming in here, withholding the capsules, coercing permission to read the manuscript of Fast Cars. 

He felt a flush of shame and humiliation warming his face, but now they were mixed with real anger: it had bloomed from a spark into a tiny sunken flame. He had never shown anyone a manuscript before he had proof-read it and then retyped it. Never. Not even Bryce, his agent. Never. Why, he didn’t even – For a moment his thoughts broke off cleanly. He could hear the dim sound of a cow mooing. Why, he didn’t even make a copy until the second draft was done. 

The manuscript copy of Fast Cars which was now in Annie Wilkes’s possession was, in fact, the only existing copy in the whole world. He had even burned his notes. Two years of hard work, she didn’t like it, and she was crazy. 

Misery was what she liked; Misery was who she liked, not some foul-talking little spic car-thief from Spanish Harlem. He remembered thinking: Turn the pages of the manuscript into paper hats if you want, just … please … 

The anger and humiliation surged again, awakening the first dull answering throb in his legs. Yes. The work, the pride in your work, the worth of the work itself … all those things faded away to the magic-lantern shades they really were when the pain got bad enough. 

That she would do that to him – that she could, when he had spent most of his adult life thinking the word ‘Writer’ was the most important definition of himself – made her seem utterly monstrous, something he must escape. She really was an idol, and if she didn’t kill him, she might kill what was in him.

Her Name is Pussy Galore

 

“….I must be Dreaming.”

“ They had been treated like a mixture of royalty and people from Mars. Bond had answered the first, most urgent questions and then it had all suddenly seemed to be too much for his tired mind to cope with. 

Now he was lying luxuriating in the peace and the heat of the whisky and wondering about Pussy Galore and why she had chosen shelter under his wing rather than under Goldfinger’s. The connecting door with the next cabin opened and the girl came in. 

She was wearing nothing but a grey fisherman’s jersey that was decent by half an inch. The sleeves were rolled up. She looked like a painting by Vertes. She said, ‘People keep on asking if I’d like an alcohol rub and I keep on saying that if anyone’s going to rub me it’s you, and if I’m going to be rubbed with anything it’s you I’d like to be rubbed with.’ She ended lamely, ‘So here I am.’ 

Bond said firmly, ‘Lock that door, Pussy, take off that sweater and come into bed. You’ll catch cold.’ 

She did as she was told, like an obedient child. 

She lay in the crook of Bond’s arm and looked up at him. She said, not in a gangster’s voice, or a Lesbian’s, but in a girl’s voice, ‘Will you write to me in Sing Sing?’ 

Bond looked down into the deep blue-violet eyes that were no longer hard, imperious. He bent and kissed them lightly. 

He said, ‘They told me you only liked women.’ 

She said, ‘I never met a man before.’ The toughness came back into her voice. 

‘I come from The South. You know the definition of A Virgin down there? 

Well, it’s a girl who can run faster than her brother. 

In my case I couldn’t run as fast as My Uncle. I was twelve. 

That’s not so good, James. You ought to be able to guess that.’ 

Bond smiled down into the pale, beautiful face. He said, ‘All you need is a course of T.L.C.’ 

‘What’s T.L.C.?’ 

‘Short for Tender Loving Care treatment. It’s what they write on most papers when a waif gets brought in to a children’s clinic.’ 

‘I’d like that.’ She looked at the passionate, rather cruel mouth waiting above hers. She reached up and brushed back the comma of black hair that had fallen over his right eyebrow. She looked into the fiercely slitted grey eyes. ‘When’s it going to start?’ 

Bond’s right hand came slowly up the firm, muscled thighs, over the flat soft plain of the stomach to the right breast. Its point was hard with desire. He said softly, ‘Now.’ 

His mouth came ruthlessly down on hers.  ”