Page 62 of Two Chances With You

“Yes, but these are urban legends. Mariotti is still teaching. Do you think he would have been caught and then allowed to stay?”

“Oh, I couldn’t say. All I know is that Mazzocchi got a C minus in phys ed…”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Everything to do with it. It means she didn’t even know how to give a decent blow job.”

***

Marcantonio obviously enjoys recounting the details to me.

“I did body art on her.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“You come from New York, and you don’t know these things, Step? That is, I’d be justified—I’ve always spent my holidays at Castiglioncello—but you, living there, in the Big Apple, don’t even know what we’re talking about here?”

I heave a sigh of weariness but smile as I look at him. “I know what it is. But what it means is quite another matter.”

“Oh, there you go. I painted her whole body. I stripped her naked, and then I started painting her. Paintbrushes with light, warm tempera, all over her body, up and down, dipping them in the warm water of a flask. I slid over her, giving her pleasure, watching her. And her cheeks took on color without any assistance from me. I painted back onto her the very same panties I’d just taken off of her, then slowly the chiaroscuro of her nipples which, increasingly turgid, seemed to go crazy at those brushstrokes of sheer, warm pleasure.”

“And then?”

“Seized by the throes of a chromatic orgasm, she insisted on coloring my paintbrush.”

“In translation?”

“She gave me a blow job.”

“Phew. And after that?”

“Then, nothing. We just hung out, talking about this and that. We picked at the rest of the Japanese food, and then I took her home.”

“Come on, after the blow job, you didn’t fuck her?”

“No, she didn’t want to.”

“No, now explain this to me. A blow job yes, and a full fuck, no. What’s the reasoning here?”

“She has quite a philosophy on the subject. Or at least, so she informed me.”

“But she didn’t tell you anything more?”

“Yes, she told me, ‘You have to be happy with what you get.’ No wait, it was better than that. She said that ‘he who is willing to be happy with what he gets, gets the most pleasure.’ And then she started laughing.”

***

“Wait, Ele, excuse me. In that case, you might as well have gone to bed with him. I mean, sex is just sex.”

“What does that mean? Fucking is a different matter, the perfect union. Total involvement. He’s inside you, and this could produce a child. You understand? Whereas a blow job is another matter.”

“Why, certainly! Of course!”

“Listen, as far as I’m concerned, it’s just like a very friendly way of saying goodbye. I don’t know, like a handshake.”

“A handshake? Tell your parents that.”

“Certainly, if it came up in the conversation. Why, what do you think, that they’ve never done it? We’re the ones who don’t see how normal sex is. People ought to talk about it like anything else. It’s just that we’re bourgeois. I mean, for example, just imagine your mother giving a…”

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