Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) by Anaïs Nin Page B

Still the women are shouting and signaling. We must choose. Hugo smiles, bewildered. I glance over them. I choose a very vivid, fat, coarse Spanish-looking woman, and then I turn away from the shouting group to the end of the line and call a woman who had made no effort to attract my attention, small, feminine, almost timid. Now they sit before us.
    The small woman is sweet and pliant. We talk, oh, so politely. We discuss each other's nails. They comment on the unusualness of my nacreous nail polish. I ask Hugo to look carefully to see if I have chosen well. He does and says I could not have done better. We watch the women dancing. I see only in spots, intensely. Certain places are utter blanks to me. I see big hips, buttocks, and sagging breasts, so many bodies, all at once. We had expected there would be a man for the exhibition. "No," says the
patronne
, "but the two girls will amuse you. You will see everything." It would not be Hugo's night, then, but he accepts everything. We barter over the price. The women smile. They assume it is my evening because I have asked them if they will show me lesbian poses.
    Everything is strange to me and familiar to them. I only feel at ease because they are people who need things, whom one can do things for. I give away all my cigarettes. I wish I had a hundred packets. I wish I had a lot of money. We are going upstairs. I enjoy looking at the women's naked walk.
    The room is softly lighted and the bed low and ample. The women are cheerful, and they wash themselves. How the taste for things must wear down with so much automatism. We watch the big woman tie a penis on herself, a rosy thing, a caricature. And they take poses, nonchalantly, professionally. Arabian, Spanish, Parisienne, love when one does not have the price of a hotel room, love in a taxi, love when one of the partners is sleepy...
    Hugo and I look on, laughing a little at their sallies. We learn nothing new. It is all unreal, until I ask for the lesbian poses.
    The little woman loves it, loves it better than the man's approach. The big woman reveals to me a secret place in the woman's body, a source of a new joy, which I had sometimes sensed but never definitely—that small core at the opening of the woman's lips, just what the man passes by. There, the big woman works with the flicking of her tongue. The little woman closes her eyes, moans, and trembles in ecstasy. Hugo and I lean over them, taken by that moment of loveliness in the little woman, who offers to our eyes her conquered, quivering body. Hugo is in turmoil. I am no longer woman; I am man. I am touching the core of June's being.
    I become aware of Hugo's feelings and say, "Do you want the woman? Take her. I swear to you I won't mind, darling."
    "I could come with anybody just now," he answers.
    The little woman is lying still. Then they are up and joking and the moment passes. Do I want...? They unfasten my jacket; I say no, I don't want anything.
    I couldn't have touched them. Only a minute of beauty—the small woman's heaving, her hands caressing the other woman's head. That moment alone stirred my blood with another desire. If we had been a little madder ... But the room seemed dirty to us. We walked out. Dizzy. Joyous. Elated.
    We went to dance at the Bal Nègre. One fear was over. Hugo was liberated. We had understood each other's feelings. Together. Arm in arm. A mutual generosity.
    I was not jealous of the little woman Hugo had desired. But Hugo thought, "What if there had been a man..." So we don't know yet. All we know is that the evening was beautifully carried off. I had been able to give Hugo a portion of the joy that filled me.
    And when we returned home, he adored my body because it was lovelier than what he had seen and we sank into sensuality together with new realization. We are killing phantoms.
     
    I went to the Viking to meet Eduardo. We have been confiding to each other: he, about a woman in his pension; I, about Henry. We sat in the