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He liked to lie close to her in bed while she slept, or pretended to, and stare at her face if there was any moon or room light on it. Beautiful from all sides and the front and from in back too: the head shape and little perfect ears poking through the hair. Hair what he already said: long, black, bangs, different styles, etcetera. Eyes, small nose, chiseled lips, he’s so bad at descripts, tiny waist, didn’t mention that before but it was probably assumed and he’d wanted to say “minuscule,” slim hands, small delicate feet or delicate hands and small slim feet, flat muscled tummy, and so on the works. “This writer also said I had the best-looking ass for a woman my size he’d ever seen, so a qualified compliment but one he still thought I should appreciate. That there’d be men there too who’d want to marry me just for it. But through him I hooked up with Brons-S and from that I got J, so something good came from the legs-and-ass man.” He loved her ass too. Turning her over in bed — no, that doesn’t sound right. If she was on her back, then sort of encouraging her to get on her stomach and she’d say “Why, what do you have in mind?” and he’d say “Nothing, really . you know,” and massage her shoulders and neck and rub her back and legs and butt and then, or after some preliminaries with his fingers with at first a number of quick furtive forays, lift her butt up and try to get in her from behind. Hold the porno. “I’m a little small down there,” she said several times, “and I’m sorry if I can’t accommodate but it hurts too much that way,” and then “What are you doing? — you know it hurts,” and finally “Jesus, you rat” or “Schmuck” and once even “Hyena,” “Will you stop that! You know I can’t do it and unless something with age happens to my cunt, I never will. Try it next time and I’ll tell you to get lost for good.” Only one position she liked. He on her right, both on their backs side-by-side, her right thigh raised, he in her that way. Tries picturing it and it seems right, though remembers it always took a bit of twisting and doing, he never went in easy and straight. Became frustrating, unexciting sometimes, even uncomfortable, and humdrum too — more than three years of it and, when they weren’t fighting or sulking, they did it about four days out of five. He wanted the variety of positions two people living together for a long time would do and she kept saying she didn’t have the anatomy for anything but the double-back one and that sometimes even then it was only a little more pleasurable than painful for her, though about once every couple of months she let him come in her a different way. One time, when he knew better, after about a half hour of pleasant foreplay, he got on top of her when she was still on her back and she said “Get off, you tub.” Another time, on an unusually hot humid night for that part of California, they didn’t even own a fan, and she was naked on her back and seemingly asleep from the heat as it was around nine and they’d been reading in bed just to be on cool sheets, he said her name and she didn’t answer and he repeated it and her eyes stayed closed and he slowly bent her legs up at the knees till her heels almost touched her thighs and her vagina opened, smeared his penis with saliva and positioned himself above her without touching any other part of her body and tried gliding it in and she opened her eyes, winced from pain but calmly said “I’m not going to fight you. You’re halfway in and it already hurts like hell. But fighting you will end up hurting worse than allowing you to proceed, but I’m warning you I might be capable of doing a lot more to you when you’re done than just ordering you out of the house and cutting up all your precious things,” and he withdrew.