The Human Stain

"Do you?" he says. "Then now the hell begins."

"You think—if you ever want to know—is there a God? You want to know why am I in this world? What is it about? It's about this. It's about, You're here, and I'll do it for you. It's about not thinking you're someone else somewhere else. You're a woman and you're in bed with your husband, and you're not fucking for fucking, you're not fucking to come, you're fucking because you're in bed with your husband and it's the right thing to do. You're a man and you're with your wife and you're fucking her, but you're think- ing you want to be fucking the post office janitor. Okay—you know what? You're with the janitor."

He says softly, with a laugh, "And that proves the existence of God."

"If that doesn't, nothing does."

"Keep dancing," he says.

"When you're dead," she asks, "what does it matter if you didn't marry the right person?"

"It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter when you're alive. Keep dancing."

"What is it, Coleman? What does matter?"

"This," he said.

"That's my boy," she replies. "Now you're learning."

"Is that what this is—you teaching me?"

"It's about time somebody did. Yes, I'm teaching you. But don't look at me now like I'm good for something other than this. Something more than this. Don't do that. Stay here with me. Don't go.

Hold on to this. Don't think about anything else. Stay here with me.

I'll do whatever you want. How many times have you had a woman really tell you that and mean it? I will do anything you want. Don't lose it. Don't take it somewhere else, Coleman. This is all we're here to do. Don't think it's about tomorrow. Close all the doors, before and after. All the social ways of thinking, shut 'em down. Everything the wonderful society is asking? The way we're set up socially?

'I should, I should, I should'? Fuck all that. What you're supposed to be, what you're supposed to do, all that, it just kills everything. I can keep dancing, if that's the deal. The secret little moment—if that's the whole deal. That slice you get. That slice out of time. It's no more than that, and I hope you know it."

"Keep dancing."

"This stuff is the important stuff," she says. "If I abandoned thinking that..."

"What? Thinking what?"

"I was a whoring little cunt from early on."

"Were you?"

"He always told himself it wasn't him, it was me."

"The stepfather."

"Yes. That's what he told himself. Maybe he was even right. But I had no choice at eight and nine and ten. It was the brutality that was wrong."

"What was it like when you were ten?"

"It was like asking me to pick up the whole house and carry it on my back."

"What was it like when the door opened at night and he came into your room?"

"It's like when you're a child in a war. You ever see those pictures in the paper of kids after they bomb their cities? It's like that. It's as big as a bomb. But no matter how many times I got blown over, I was still standing. That was my downfall: my still standing up. Then I was twelve and thirteen and starting to get tits. I was starting to bleed. Suddenly I was just a body that surrounded my pussy... But stick to the dancing. All doors closed, before and after, Coleman. I see you, Coleman. You're not closing the doors. You still have the fantasies of love. You know something? I really need a guy older than you. Who's had all the love-shit kicked out of him totally.

You're too young for me, Coleman. Look at you. You're just a little boy falling in love with your piano teacher. You're falling for me, Coleman, and you're much too young for the likes of me. I need a much older man. I think I need a man at least a hundred. Do you have a friend in a wheelchair you can introduce me to? Wheelchairs are okay—I can dance and push. Maybe you have an older brother.

Look at you, Coleman. Looking at me with those schoolboy eyes.

Please, please, call your older friend. I'll keep dancing, just get him on the phone. I want to talk to him."

And she knows, while she is saying this, that it's this and the dancing that are making him fall in love with her. And it's so easy.

I've attracted a lot of men, a lot of pricks, the pricks find me and they come to me, not just any man with a prick, not the ones who don't understand, which is about ninety percent of them, but men, young boys, the ones with the real male thing, the ones like Smoky who really understand it. You can beat yourself up over the things you don't have, but that I've got, even fully dressed, and some guys know it—they know what it is, and that's why they find me, and that's why they come, but this, this, this is taking candy from a baby.

Sure—he remembers. How could he not? Once you've tasted it, you remember. My, my. After two hundred and sixty blow jobs and four hundred regular fucks and a hundred and six asshole fucks, the flirtation begins. But that's the way it goes. How many times has anyone in the world ever loved before they fucked? How many times have I loved after I fucked? Or is this it, the groundbreaker?