Skinny Legs and All Read Online Free PDF Page B

masculine, they had to be copulative dynamos, and it was largely to prop up their insecure masculinity that they resorted to sexual display, whereas, in fact, it was their relatively mild interest in actual physical contact that was largely the source of that insecurity. Why am I not more horny? Why isn’t my pecker bigger? Why am I washed up after one orgasm when she can have a dozen and still be ready to go (to go with some fresh man)? How do I know that kid’s really mine? It’s got red hair! Ellen Cherry had to laugh.
    Typically, her own interest in sex was abiding and deep. And incognito. In a patriarchal society, the abiding sexuality of the healthy female was obliged to wear a prim disguise. Unaware of the irony, men flaunted their pale desires, while the stronger passions of the woman were usually concealed. Nobody could tell Ellen Cherry otherwise.
    The only thing that interested Ellen Cherry more than sex—in her five years in Seattle, she had drained the night drops from at least eight swains, none, she discovered to her dismay, half as satisfying as Boomer—was love. And art. Well, sex, love, and art intermingled when Boomer eased the remodeled Airstream into her apartment house parking lot.
    Its honking drew her to the kitchenette window. The notorious raindrops of Seattle blistered the fire escape, and the sky looked like bad banana baby food. But there it was! Shining in the gray. Thirty-two feet long, sixteen thousand, five hundred pounds. Emergency lights blinking, windshield wipers chasing themselves. And beside it, Boomer Petway doing his wild and gimpy dance, splashing puddle water almost as high as its appendages.
    “I made it for you!” Boomer yelled. “Made it for you, little sugar britches!
    “Wahoo!”
    After combing her curls with the most convenient implement, which happened to be a tofu-encrusted chopstick, she raced downstairs. Oblivious to the shotgun drizzle, incandescent with surprise and wonder, she circumambulated the outlandish turkeymobile, hand in hand with its creator. Around and around they went, in a glow of amused admiration, until they had practically worn a path in the wet asphalt. Eventually, he swept her up in his arms and carried her into the belly of the beast. Her panties were off before she hit the bed.
    He tricked me , Ellen Cherry was thinking now. With art and sex, he tricked me into love .
     
     
     
    Trouble was, she had scant faith in her love for Boomer. Married less than a week and already it was slipping like a frayed fan belt. Lust she feared would also leave in time. Just fly out the transom one morning on its salty red wings. Whatever happened, though, her art would see her through. She was confident enough in it to take it to New York. Give her the big time. Give her a big break. Give her Manhattan. The Bronx and Staten Island, too. Give her this day her daily bread. Boomer’s welding, for the time being, would bring home the bacon and the turpentine.
    Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, “Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confuse the puddin’ out of a perfectly reasonable wall, why does it mean so much to you?”
    It was a poor connection, but he could have sworn he heard her say, “In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.”
     
     
     
    Mr. and Mrs. Petway, tricked and trickster, were turkey-trotting through a loop of the Bible Belt. Slogans of the death cult were everywhere. “Jesus Is Coming,” the billboards announced. “Prepare to Meet Thy Maker.” “Repent for the End Is Near.” Can o’ Beans had the feeling that if doomsday didn’t arrive quite soon, those people were going to take up a collection and send for it.
    “Time Is Running Out.” “Have You Reserved Your Place in New Jerusalem?” Echoes of Uncle Buddy and his ilk. It gave Ellen Cherry the Hebrew-jeebies. Especially since the brightly hued cliffs and craters that