lies back and takes it

[Jane Sweet]

Paul Mackin wrote:

> 
> Benny and Sphere may be less representatives of true male lack of
> religiion when satisfaction of carnal appetites is at stake and more in
> the literary  and movie tradition of not taking random advantage of low
> status women or even spoiled rich girls who may not quite know what they
> are doing. It was the code of behavior  practiced by, say,  Humphrey
> Bogart with regard to the dimwitted  little sister in "The Big Sleep"
> and why Jimmy Stewart did not have sex with the very drunk and willing
> Katherine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story."  (there are some things a
> gentleman doesn't do sez Jimmy and Frank Sinatra too in a remake) It's
> possibly  akin to what young Pynchon might have felt  set he himself
> apart from the Crew,  the Pig Bodines and the college kids.  Even Mafia
> might qualify for immune status from what  certainly would not have been
> exploitation.  If Rachel does not qaulify (I don't quite remember)--well
> it's the exception that tests the rule. Or maybe it's true love . . .
> .There is such a thing, Jane dear.
> 
>                                                     P.


i LOVE you, nothing wrong with two thirds of that phrase, I
and you, but that middle, that four letter word, love...

On page seven of my V., and I think I'm the only girl on
this list with this pagination, 

"American movies had given them stereotypes all, all but
Paola Maijstral..."

In the current chapter, chapter 10, part III, Pig and Roony,
both drunk and sweating, fight, they try to "fight a like
western movie." And of course they are fighting is over
Paola Maijstral. Roony wants a divorce and the only way to
get a divorce (not from the Pope, but from the State) is to
prove adultery, the guilt of either husband or wife will do,
so he figures he'll beat Mafia to it and what or whom is the
object of his drunken and pathetic plan? Paola of course. 

And in the same part, Chapter 10 Part III, Benny  argues
with Mafia about sex, the confused relationships, and the
narrator makes the connection to Benny and Fina and the
Bath tub argument--"Like with Fina in the bathtub." 

Fina in the bathtub is Chapter Six. Now Fina, she reminds me
quite a lot of Paola and her relationship to the gang of
"Playboys" (more homosexual, as in the Queer man in the
Stencil Chapter that dove-tails), Benny figures, is for the
moment, Christian, unworldly and proper, but she, this
Saint,  was overdue for a gang bang. And the bath tub
incident is infused with Tom Mix, a TV movie hero, but Benny
thinks, well it might as well be me, she's a Virgin, but he
looks in the Mirror. And what does he see? A PIG!
Fina, like Paola, turns him into a P I G. He argues Catholic
religion at her, wait till you get married before you
surrender your cherry, what **IS** Sister MARIA ANNUNZIATA
going to think, the BOOK! 

NO, he said.