Chapter 16

• “The Ceremony goes as usual”
• “The rings of her left hand cut into my fingers. It may or may not be revenge.”
• “Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body.”
• “I do not say making love, because this is not what he’s doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for.”
• “I remember Queen Victoria’s advice to her daughter. Close your eyes and think of England. But this is not England.”
• “There’s an impatience in his rhythm now. But isn’t this everyone’s wet dream, two women at once? (…) It has nothing to do with passion, or love, or romance or any of these other notions we used to titillate ourselves with.”
• “If he were better looking would I enjoy this more?”
• "Get up and get out." She's supposed to have me rest, for ten minutes, with my feet on a pillow to improve the chances.
• One detaches oneself. One describes.
• Serena is arranged outspread. Her legs are apart, I lie between them,
• suspended like a sagging cloud [...] and its heavy downward curve, both ethereality and matter.” [...] Or the sail of a ship. Big-bellied sails, they used to say, in poems. Bellying. Propelled forward by a swollen belly.
• “This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product. If any.”
• Which of us is it worse for, her or me?