From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

There is a poignancy in jazz.  A homesickness.  Jazz, mon ami, is the tongue of the exile.

There is a poignancy in jazz.  A homesickness.  Jazz, mon ami, is the tongue of the exile.

He watched his dark, swollen penis enter her, like entering a pale, flute-edged conch, blue veins spidering her thighs.  When he came, he thought his brain had burst, his skull detached and sizzling.  He would die insane, stuck inside a haole.  He screamed, struggled to pull out of her, but she did something with her hand and he was hard.  He didn't even know her name. 

She bowed her head like a young animal drinking at a trough, and brought his fingers to her lips.  Her hair fell forward, exposing her neck.  He covered that place with his forehead.  She brought omens, exhilarations.  She made him look up from his life.

The first time they made love, Keo felt he would do anything she asked.  He would give her his trumpet, his lungs, his life!  They moved on each other with a scratched-itch ecstasy,  his kisses, animal mounting bites, him lathered and wetted in her vagina that felt like a slick, rolled up tongue sucking him to incandescence.  Breathing, it seemed an achievement coming out of her, coming back alive, or half-alive, nothing left but sweat, stung marrow.  Inflamed and semen-full, how beautifully she arched, how coming made her skin catch fire.