atdtda:31 pp 884-886 (Reef and Cyprian)

[Bekah]

I'm covering the remainder of my section by scene rather than by page  
because the scenes seem to overlap pages a lot.

Starting at the top of page 884.

884. 3    Reef deliberately finds Cyprian  alone - for his own, and  
Cyprian's,  enjoyment - nothing to do with Yashmeen who is  
shopping.   Cyprian, who has just stepped out of the bathtub,  is  
submissive,  not sarcastic or witty.

***********
884. 10  Reef tells Cyprian he's let Yashmeen "ramrod" him  
(interesting term).   "They want to be told what's what,  ain't you  
figured that one out? "
*  a ramrod is a device used with early firearms to push the  
projectile up against the propellant (mainly gunpowder.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramrod

***********
884.25   Reef wonders how Cyprian can   "... let somebody do that to  
him, without even - ",   "I'd want to kill anybody tried that on me.   
Hell, I'd have to kill 'em."  ...  "I mean don't it hurt?"
***********
884.28   Reef:  "I'd have to kill anybody tried that on me.   Hell,  
I'd have to kill 'em."

***********
884.32   Cyprian :   "It hurts,  and it doesn't hurt."

Reef:  "Japanese talk. Thanks.  Knew a certain Nip mystic, back in  
San Francisco used to talk like 'at all the time."

**  "Nip "   Japanese   "mystic"    Zen?     "It hurts,  and it  
doesn't hurt," does sound a bit Zennish.

Cyprian obliquely suggests Reef try Cyprian's role.

Cyprian has  gone even more into his submissive, masochist role.   
Reef is still a cowboy, riding as if at rodeo.  Reef may even be more  
of a cowboy at this point - putting some extra Western stuff into his  
talk.  "Hell,  I'd have to kill him"

Reef is offended by a suggestion from Cyprian that he accept  
penetration.

(page break)

885.2   Reef:    "But a man's  honor - When it's your honor, it's  
life and death.  You don't have that, where you're from?  England?"
** Reef and his bad-ass cowboy talk.

***********

885.5  Cyprian:    "Perhaps I've only failed to see a connection  
between honor and desire,  Reef."

***********
885.9 - .10    But it didn't matter really,  because Cyprian would  
rather be "taken"  as it saved time and energy being concerned with  
questions of "rectal integrity" and dominance.

***********
885.11  Cyprian thinking:    "Whatever honor meant,  it no longer had  
much to do with theese outmoded sexual protocols. Let others, if they  
wished keep floundering along in the old swamps - Cyprian worked on  
firmer ground."

  I think this is part of Cyprian's desire for transcendence - he's  
transcended the "sexual protocols."    Cyprian knew where he stood  
(or lay).

And finally,  because the good ol' American boy,  Reef, has a need to  
dump on a stranger and  apparently confuses Cyprian's submissiveness  
for sympathy

***********
885.13  he "confesses" odd things like how it was traveling in the US  
with young fellas who said they were looking for work but were  
revealing things to him about wives and children.   (Cycles -  first  
Reef is the listener to tales of confession,  now talking about that  
listening and ready to talk - while Cyprian listens)

***********
885.25   "tintypes"    An early, remarkably durable form of  
photograph (technically a photographic negative), printed on a tin  
plate, then varnished.
http://www.allwords.com/word-tintype.html   (and Pynchon is quoted  
there)

***********
885.26 - "chavalitos" -   Chavalito is Mexican Spanish for young goat  
- so, similar to US English, children are called kids.
***********

885.39   Reef figures   "I was having one of those psychic  
predictions about the day when I'd be joinin' them."

** Is this Reef remembering a time when he foresaw  (psychically)   
his own entrapment in a marriage and kids he ran from?  Was he riding  
the rails before or after he took up with Stray and had Jesse?   Or  
what was he hearing from those escaped men out there on the rails?

(page break)

886.2  "longnecks"    beer in a long-neck bottle -
http://www.gono.com/beermagazineads/schlitzbeer/schlitz%20rework%201.htm
http://www.breweriana.com/history/historywalters.html

***********
886.5     "Grand Army of the Matrimonial Republic"
The Grand Army of the Republic was comprised Union veterans of the  
American Civil War. Its heyday came around 1890-1910.   Reef was  
traveling with Union war vets listening to their stories of wives and  
so on  -  now here he is in Venice, confiding ...

***********
886. 11-12:   "telling his story to the "feller sitting next to the  
window,  the one who got on back at the last station,  namely,  
you."   (telling his story to Cyprian)

Reef feels some remorse at leaving Stray and Jesse - Cyprian suggests  
he tell Yashmeen - Reef dodges the suggestion.


(end of scene)


Bekah
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