GRGR(16) - Galina/Geli

[rj]

David M.
> Katje, like V, is the Queen of Doubles.  But there are so many others.  
> Slothrop might even be a quadrupal.  Geli/Galina are also, but their 
> function in the text is what's unclear to me.  For Pynchon to have so 
> blatantly laid out these pairs of women w/ birds _should_ have a meaning of 
> function.

Not sure yet that Luba is just/only/really a bird.

But it occurred to me that Geli had trained, or *conditioned* that
("wise", male) owl to attack her unsuspecting suitor at just the precise
moment of sexual climax in order to heighten her own pleasure, perhaps,
or perhaps in order to hasten her suitor's detumescence after her own
climax. Of course, after the first such attack the suitor would be
conditioned to expect this response/stimulus, and it may actually
increase *his* pleasure too. Which is perhaps why Wernher never comes to
be fed unless Tchitcherine's there, because Geli is faithful to
Tchitcherine (both of them seeing in Slothrop, I guess, Tchitchy's
shadow-brother, as David intuits). Whatever, it's a feminist
winning-back of control from the dominant male, a subversion of the
patriarchal system, even if only momentarily, even if only in play.

Slothrop and Leni's first coital interlude is couched in gentler terms
by Pynchon, the euphemism both metaphorically apt and disclosing both
delicacy and true sentiment:

"Slothrop, though he doesn't know it yet, is as properly constituted a
State as any other in the Zone these days. Not paranoia. Just how it is.
Temporary alliances, knit and undone. He and Geli reach their
arrangement hidden from the occupied streets by remnants of walls, in an
old four poster bed facing a dark pier glass. Out the roof that isn't
there he can see a long tree-covered mountain ascending. Wine on her
breath, nests of down in the hollow of her arms, thighs with the spring
of saplings in the wind. ... " (291.3-10)

All together now: Aaaaaah.

best