SEVERAL WOMEN DANCING EROTIKON By bpNichol By Paul Dutton r) The following is the first paragraph of section one of a work in progress. arrow tick 2) i can remember exactly when the obsession began, a minor feature marking my obsession with her as distinct from so many other obsessions i have undergone with young and beautiful women, not that that's the only distinguishing feature of this particular, this most tenacious, this most perilously consuming of the innumerable such obsessions i've let myself fall prey to over the course of my solitary existence, so with senseless fascinations, futile fallings-in-love, hopeless hangings-of-the-heart upon patently unobtainable objects or affection or, perhaps more properly lust or, even more accurately and darkly, some unnameable- or at any rate, unnamed - passion, instinct, or perversion, all the more powerful for being compulsive, dangerous, obscure. i can remember exactly. she presented herself in an abbreviated version of the black and white garb associated with a french maid: black high-heeled shoes, black stockings, black frilled garter-belt, black panties, tiny black apron fringed with lacy white, its black bow around her waist, holding the body of it to her abdomen, the broad straps, secured at the nape of her neck by another bow, loosely permitting the free and fluid movement of her breasts, her perfect, soft breasts, neither too ample nor too spare, that flirted tauntingly - now on view, now obscured - round the straps of the apron, and a smile playing constantly on her face within the dark fringe of her hair, parted in the middle hanging just above shoulder-length, brushing, as she leant her head to one side, the soft white flesh of her shoulder, one in colour and texture with the flesh of all her body, as she danced for the pleasure of the roomful of men in the yearning, masturbatory darkness of the strip club, whose depths, or perhaps i should say lengths, for it is a long and narrow room, the stage down one side, with four rows of seats facing it, the rows divided by a broad aisle into which juts a small projecting extension of the stage, which extension, were it longer, would be termed a runway, and with other rows of seats, largely unoccupied, ranked back from either end of the stage, as she danced for the pleasure of the roomful of men in the yearning, masturbatory darkness of the strip club, whose depths, or length, i had repaired to, now, as so often, out of a sense of burning urgency, and felt, as my rapt gaze drank in thirstily her every move, that this time, this one momentous evening, or afternoon, or whatever it was, my abandonment of incidental, though not important, undertakings and my hastening to this feisty den had occurred in response to, not a prurient whim, but a deep elemental call, an unconscious signal transmitted from somewhere within the depths of her on a frequency only i could receive, a signal that cut through the pervasive static characterizing my day-to-day existence and that drew me, with siren magnetism, to the dark room with the stage lit, where she appeared in her brief black costume and smiled as her nakedness promised itself, and her hair, cut to beneath her shoulders, flipped round the flashing white of her flesh, and my cock sprang immediately to attention, my eyes lusting for the swift disclosure of her physical secrets, a lusting that was not disappointed, as, before the first song she danced to was finished, the slight black pantines were deftly removed and my heart raced at the view of her genitals so generously afforded me. i remember exactly, her close-cropped hair her dark flesh, her leather outfit, her frowning demeanour, the long and futile wait for the g-string to be dispensed with, the aching disappointment at never seeing her soft pubic area, wondering why she would not reveal the sweet centre of my desire, as she beckoned me close with her crook'd finger and teasing voice, where i stood retiring in the black obscurity of the standing-section behind the rows of wide-eyed seats. her eyes. they were dark brown, lit with delight in the pleasures she implied with her spread legs and the moist slit of her pudenda, as she lifted her left leg and accepted, in the top of the black stocking encasing her right leg, the votive dollar or two-dollar bill from the lucky patron in the front row who thereby gained a closer view of the dark, curled hairs and soft, pink lips of her (what i called then, in the heat of romantic inflammation) seat of satisfaction - introibo ad altare deae, the goddess who gives joy to the throbbing tumescence of my manhood; confiteor deo omnipotenti, beatea mariae semper virgini, beato michaeli archangelo, beato johanni baptistae, sanctis apostolis, petro et paulo, omnibus sanctis, et tibi, pater, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et operae, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, i confess that i would approach the altar of the goddess who might give joy to my aging lust, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, through my failing vision and sight-aiding spectacles, oh what a spectacle she offers my desiring eyes in the anonymous gloom of the secrective strip-club, as the apron-strap slips from her shoulder to free her breast to untrammelled view, and the other strap and the other breast and the bow at the back, and the apron is gone and all that conceals her last bits of flesh are the transparent stockings and slight garter-belt, which she never removes, as she pulses and rocks to the sensuous rhythms, grinding her crotch and spreading her buttocks to please the hungry, collective eye of the straining, insatiable gathering of men. 3) a row AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ... anyone at all. Allan abley assisted Alex's attempts at talk articulating an arguably apoetic approach. 'After all; Alex argues, 'adjectives are applicable and allow amazingly amusing afterthoughts: Allan, admittedly angry, acclaimed Alex's argument. 'Absolutely', avowed Allan. Ann, ambiguous, avoided Alex and Allan and addressed Arnold, an amateur archeologist attending an arts academy at Athens. 'Aren't adjectives antiabsolute?' asked Ann. Arnold, amused, attacked Ann's attempted alliance: 'Assinine!' Ann, appropriately annoyed, asked Allan's assistance. Allan avoided Ann's appeal. 'Aren't all arguments assinine ?' asked Alex. Arnold ambled away, and Ann, absolutely amazed ... S:!.00 SCRIVENER SCRIVENER Magazine McGill University, Arts B-20 853 Sherbrooke St. West Montreal, Quebec H3A2T6 Submit: stories, poetry, reviews Subscribe: $5 per year (two issues) 58 59