Bokelskere.no

Jeg vet bare at de mennene jeg kjenner er voksne. De er intellektuelle -ikke unger. De oppfører seg ikke som pesende bikkjer hver gang en lekker rumpe kommer svinsende forbi dem.

Howard was fifty-seven years old. He had been married for thirty years to a difficult woman. Entering waiting orifices was about as much as he felt he could handle now, in the arena of personal relations.

Zora had specifically worn the shoes she was wearing because she had not anticipated any walking. To make progress she had to grip her brother around his waist, take little pigeon-steps and lean far back on her heels. For a long time Jerome restrained himself from commentary, but at the fourth pit stop he could keep quiet no longer. 'I don't get you. Aren't you meant to be a feminist? Why would you cripple yourself like this?'

'I like these shoes, OK? They actually make me feel powerful.'

And were they still like that, she wondered – these new girls, this new generation? Did they still feel one thing and do another? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desire instead of – as Howard might put it – desiring subjects? [...] no, she could see no serious change. Still starving themselves, still reading women's magazines that explicitly hate women, still cutting themselves with little knives in places they think can't be seen, still faking their orgasms with men they dislike, still lying to everybody about everything.

When you are no longer in the sexual universe – when you are supposedly too old, or too big, or simply no longer thought of in that way – apparently a whole new range of male reactions to you come into play. One of them is humour. They find you funny. [...] And this is another thing they do. They flirt with you violently because there is no possibility of it being taken seriously.

The size [of Kiki's bosom] was sexual and at the same time more than sexual: sex was only one small element of its symbolic range. If she were white, maybe it would refer only to sex, but she was not. And so her chest gave off a mass of signals beyond her direct control: sassy, sisterly, predatory, motherly, threatening, comforting – it was a mirror-world she had stepped into in her mid forties, a strange fabulation of the person she believed she was. She could no longer be meek or shy. Her body had directed her to a new personality.

Han spekulerte ikke på om eller hvordan eller hvorfor han elsket dem. For ham var de bare kjærligheten: De var det første vitnesbyrd han noen gang hadde hatt om kjærligheten, og de kom til å bli den siste bekreftelsen på kjærligheten når alt annet raknet.