I, Mary MacLane/Chapter 61
AMONG my other gifts I own also Wantonness. In proof of which I am wishing as I sit here for a Thousand careless kisses: eleven o'clock of still evening—a Thousand Kisses.
A wonderful, wonderful attribute, Wantonness: rich, rich luster in the conscious temperament which owns it, a Gift-thing delicate and gorgeous.
By it I want a Thousand Kisses: a Thousand—made all of Wantonness.
Kisses come in differing kinds and only one is Wanton.
The kiss of a lover has an intense cosmic use: the kiss of a mother is tender fostering food: the kiss of a friend is vantage and grace of friendliness: the kiss of a child is cool charm of snowflakes and green springtime leaves.
And the kiss of Wantonness is not of use, nor of food, nor of gracing vantage, nor of childhood charm—but is restless essence of humanness and worldliness and mere sheer limitless encompassing liking: born of sweet lips, alien it might be, and secretly 'unattuned,' but warm and fond and present: answering the pathos of infinite jejuneness which flows, flows always in red human blood.
Through the race rides a long dread wistfulness, made of tears and lies and the barbaric distress and pitfall of everyday's journey: a crying wish for a cup of warmed drugged sweet ease to turn it all a moment away: but a moment away.
And through all the race is the measureless poetry, purling and mantling in its bowl of flesh. Each human one is made of the sun, and made of the moon, and made of the four winds and the seas and the last pink sea-foam on the crests of the twilit waves: and made of salt and of sugar and of lonesome calling of loons and quick song of skylarks: and made of sword-edges and of money and of dolls and toys and painted glass: and made of loose reckless shuffling of dry autumn leaves, and of nerves and of illusions and of broken food and hesitance: and made of Mother-Goose rhymes and of cigarette-ashes and of raveled silk: and made of layers and layers of mixed-up passionate colors and of gilded cakes and of strawberries and of temperamental orgasms and raw silvery onions and gaming and dancing and minute-by-minute inconsistency: all veiled in a thin gold veil—all in a thin gold veil.
Betwixt the wistfulness and the poetry—hélas, what chance has the human equation, unsought, unwarned, unchallenged of God to be straitly equable!
No chance.
Happily no chance.
Thus I, Mary MacLane, so conscious of Me and garbledly gifted, want a Thousand Kisses at eleven o'clock of a still evening.
No spirit-hands of Love are laid soft on my drooping shoulders in the passing days: no Love—no Love—in all my life.
No miracle Wonder and Gentleness stirs in and against my Heart: my Heart is strangely dead of a strange Realness, known and felt but unachieved:—no Love—no Love in my life.
And I can wish for no Love, for the listless Heart is listlessly dead.
I wish instead, in hastening present clock-ticking moments, for a Thousand present-warmed Kisses: a Thousand in Wanton response to a Wanton 'leven-o'clock.
Dominating waving washing warmth of Wantonness, compassing me at eleven o'clock.
A Thousand careless insouciant Kisses: a Thousand gorgeous delicate Kisses: a round Thousand.
From what lips—whose lips—what do I know?—: so their Kisses are a Thousand.
From what lips—what do I care?—: so they be eager and live and tenderly false.
—come some of the Thousand glowing on my pink lips, and my white fingers, which were tense, relax—
—come more of the Thousand, and my rigid hard-riding thoughts grow drowsy and pliant and negligible.
—come more of the Thousand, and my knees and the marrow in my bones are gently aware of most logical opiate ease—
—come more of the Thousand, and my midriff is full of cream-and-chocolate casualness and my smooth arms are washed down with mists of custom.
—come more of the Thousand, and my seven senses start to melt at the edges—
—come more of the Thousand, and the palms of my hands wax merely pleasant-feeling and the soles of my feet fatly comfortable—
—come the last of the Thousand in a swirling silly lovely lightly-insane shower—and I feel exactly like a woman in the next street who goes forth clad in mustard-and-cerise with a devilish black-and-white Valeska-Suratt parasol: and more—much more—I feel the way she looks—
For this Wanton-thing is not amour but psychology: in it I am less the mænad than the philosopher: less the Cyprian woman than the Muse.
I am a deeply gifted woman.
I am not prone on my green couch, frayed, frazzled, bowed-down in spirit from a day of frightful stress and cross-purpose.
Instead, hair-triggerishly alive, with definite desire beating hotly this moment in my throat: the wish for Kisses—Kisses far removed from Death and Graves and Coffins: Kisses of this present clock-tickingness, Kisses useless, meaningless, sweet—oh, sweet!—
—in number, a Thousand: in kind. Wanton.