Women & Other Animals Read Online Free PDF Page B

the patience to brush it as my mother implored, and I cut it myself with blunt scissors, letting the ends fall to my bedroom floor. Often after a race, or even while I searched my hall locker, a circle of observers formed around me, at a safe distance, not close enough to touch me. In fact, nobody ever dared touch me until late one night when I was legpressing the maximum weight on the Universal machine, rhythmically pushing the pedals away with my bare feet, then easing them back with a clank. At the same time, I was planning a paper for my sociology class, shaping long, convincing sentences I could never compose while motionless.
    Like a shaft of light, Heart's aroma of sweat, rubber, and cocoa
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    butter spiked the room. Strong, small hands reached from behind and began to massage my shoulders and the back of my neck, speeding the flow of my blood. I closed my eyes and let my head fall to the side, moaning with each exhalation. But when she let her hands, dark veins erect on their backs, slide down over my biceps so they touched my breasts, the whole room began to throb. My vision blurred. I extended my legs to lift the stack of iron weights, tossed back my head, and roared like a jungle beast stuck with an arrow. Heart gasped, pulled away her hands, and ran from the room. I continued to howl, out of my mind with heat and confusion, wanting to stroke Heart's stringy, muscled limbs, and wanting to squeeze her leathery throat while she gasped for breath.
    In the lobby of Radcliff's office, at my next regular appointment, I thumbed through issues of National Geographic , tapping my foot wildly, absentmindedly stabbing myself with my house key, imprinting tiny, Vshaped wounds up and down my legs and arms. An article about big cats said they moved at speeds up to sixty miles per hour. Imagine the sting of the wind at such a velocity. An article about the great apes featured women researchers with gorillas. King Kong was one of my favorite movies, so these gorillas disappointed. Far from being bloodthirsty, they were gentle and strictly vegetarian. I had assumed they would eat grubs and insects at the very least. Hell, Kong had practically eaten people.
    Radcliff seemed distracted, so I asked what he knew about the great apes, and he started up about how intelligent they were. King Kong had been plenty smart, I commented, and Radcliff laughed. He liked to think that I no longer wanted to be an animal, but at that very moment, I was concentrating on becoming a movie gorilla.
    As I felt the first pricklings of wild hair sprout from my pores, my insides began to quake. A tidal wave gained momentum. Floodgates threatened to burst. The big rock clogging the mouth of the volcano rattled in its niche.
    Never had the transformation been like this. To stop myself, I told Radcliff about the incident with Heart. What had I felt? he asked. "I burned like a furnace," I said. "I roared like a lion."
    Radcliff pushed his papers onto the floor. He dropped to his knees
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    and laid his head on my lap. "I love you," he said, without warning or preamble. "I've loved you since you were eleven and you wanted to be a dog. God forgive me."
    His head was heavy on my legs. I placed my open hand on the side of his face, which was bigger and more ghoulish up close. I pushed a strand of hair, gray and soft, behind his ear and slid the tips of my nailbitten fingers between his beefy neck and the collar of his shirt. I leaned close to rub my cheek against his sandpaper face. As the musk of his sweat and aftershave seeped into my skin, my insides began to unfold and swell as though waves of flesh emanated from a hot liquid core. Radcliff's moist breath poured over my thigh, inflaming the skin. Though I wanted to caress him, I also foamed and bubbled like an angry cauldron.
    A nervous seaweedy eye stared up from my lap. Was this pathetic swamp creature the man for whom I gave up the delicacies of the grasshopper family? Was this my champion of