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- 02/28/2023
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The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 89. I feel the truth in his body
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I feel the truth in his body
Later: Everything is okay again and I didn't have to move downstairs after all.
He slept alone on the beach [last night] because he needed some sleep. Doesn’t get much with me. But that’s his own fault for being so incredibly beautiful. We wake up two or three times in the night and start all over again[.] The ceiling is very high like the loft of a barn and the tide is lapping under the wharf. The sky, amazingly brilliant with stars. The wind blows the door wide open, the gulls are crying. Oh, Christ. I call him baby like you call Butch, though when I lie on top of him, I feel like I am polishing the Statue of Liberty or something. He is so enormous. A great bronze statue of antique Greece come to life. But with a little boy’s face. A funny upturned nose, slanting eyes, and underlip that sticks out, and hair that comes to a point in the middle of his forehead. I lean over him in the night and memorize the geography of his body with my hands — he arches his throat and makes a soft, purring sound. His skin is steaming hot like the hide of a horse that’s been galloping. It has a warm, rich odor. The odor of life. He lies very still [on his back] for a while, then his breath comes fast and his body begins to lunge. Great rhythmic plunging motion with panting breath and his hands working over my body. Then sudden release — and he moans like a little baby. I rest with my head on his stomach. Sometimes fall asleep that way. We doze for a while. And then I whisper “Turn over.” He does. We use brilliantine [hair oil]. The first time I come in three seconds, as soon as I get inside. The next time is better, slower, the bed seems to be enormous. Pacific, Atlantic, the North American continent. — A wind has blown the door open, the sky’s full of stars. High tide is in and water laps under the wharf. And now we’re so tired we can’t move. After a long while he whispers, “l like you, Tenny” — hoarse — embarrassed — ashamed of such intimate speech! — and I laugh, for I know that he loves me! — That nobody ever loved me before so completely. I feel the truth in his body. I call him baby — and tell him to go to sleep. After a while he does, his breathing is deep and even, and his great deep chest is like a continent moving slowly, warmly beneath me. The world grows dim, the world grows warm and tremendous.
—Tennessee Williams,[i]
1940
The picture of himself Kip gave to Williams the summer they met, 1940
[i] “I feel the truth in his body” Tennessee Williams, July 29-30 letter to Donald Windham from Provincetown, Massachusetts. Kip was a Canadian ballet dancer whose later death is movingly portrayed in William's autobiography.
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