Glancing at Eros
come on in, the water's fine
About halfway through Jane Bowles’s Two Serious Ladies, Mrs. Copperfield, confesses to her friend Pacifica that she doesn’t know how to swim. The eros between them has been building, but is always a bit off the page. (We know they were “together” in Pacifica’s bedroom early in the morning, but not what happened the night before or what exactly “together” might mean.) They go the beach together. Pacifica strips and stands in the water with her legs wide apart. Mrs. Copperfield hesitates. Pacifica encourages Mrs. Copperfield to take off her clothes and allow Pacifica to teach her to swim. They look at each others’ bodies, move out into the water, and soon Pacifica is breathing like a bull with exertion. Afterward, Mrs. Copperfield collapses on the sand, “trembling and exhausted as one is after a love experience.” It’s a highly sexualized scene, devoid of explicit sex acts but rife with innuendo.
There are plenty of things that seem silly or glib in Two Serious Ladies, but the love between women is potent. In this scene, it’s rendered hotter than it might otherwise be through the indirection of the swimming scene. Power and passivity, corporeal pleasure and the tranquility of letting go are all channeled through the element of water. Importantly, this isn’t a scene where the narrative eye glances away just before the sex happens. We stay for the entire time, from seduction to climax to trembling aftermath. It’s just that we’re glancing a little to the side: at Pacifica’s hand cradling Mrs. Copperfield’s head, at Pacifica churning the water, at the dream Mrs. Copperfield recollects as she experiences elation. Sex can be sexiest when it’s not looked at directly, just as monsters are scariest when they’re unseen.
PROMPT:
Write a sex scene without any actual sex in it, using some alternate narrative object to channel the eros, as Bowles uses the water in the swimming scene.