In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster

gird yourself to the quick, purging your mind of all erotic digressions—but still, there are moments when you are alone, in bed at night for example, with the world all dark around you, and it becomes hard not to imagine yourself in various situations. I won’t deny how lonely I felt in my corner. Things like that can drive you crazy sometimes. There is an ache inside you, a horrendous, clamoring ache, and unless you do something about it, there will never be an end to it. God knows that I tried to control myself, but there were times when I couldn’t stand it anymore, times when I thought my heart would explode. I would shut my eyes and tell myself to go to sleep, but my brain would be in such turmoil, heaving up images of the day I had just spent, taunting me with a pandemonium of streets and bodies, and with Ferdinand’s insults still fresh in my mind to add to the chaos, sleep simply would not come. The only thing that seemed to have any effect was to masturbate. Forgive me for being so blunt, but I don’t see any point in mincing words. It’s a common enough solution for all of us, and under the circumstances, I didn’t have much choice. Almost without being aware of it, I would begin to touch my body, pretending that my hands belonged to someone else—rubbing my palms lightly over my stomach, stroking the insides of my thighs, sometimes even grabbing hold of my buttocks and working away at the flesh with my fingers, as if there were two of me and we were in each other’s arms. I understood that this was only a sad little game, but my body would nevertheless respond to these tricks, and eventually I would feel an ooze of wetness gatheringbelow. The middle finger of my right hand would do the rest, and once it was over, a languor would crawl into my bones, weighing down my eyelids until I finally sank into sleep.
    All well and good, perhaps. The problem was that in such cramped quarters it was dangerous to make even the slightest sound, and on certain nights I must have slipped, must have allowed a sigh or whimper to escape from me at the crucial moment. I say this because I soon learned that Ferdinand had been listening to me, and with a sordid mind like his, it did not take long for him to figure out what I was up to. Little by little, his insults became more sexual in tone—a barrage of insinuations and ugly cracks. One minute he would call me a dirty-minded little whore, the next minute he would say that no man would ever want to touch a frigid beast like me—each statement contradicting the others, coming at me from all sides, never letting up. It was a squalid story from top to bottom, and I knew it would end badly for all of us. A seed had been lodged in Ferdinand’s brain, and there was no way to get it out. He was mustering his courage, gearing up to take action, and each day I could see him becoming bolder, more sure of himself, more committed to his plan. I had had that bad experience with the Tollist on Muldoon Boulevard, but that was out in the open, and I had been able to run away from him. This was a different story. The apartment was too small, and if anything happened there, I would be trapped. Short of never going to sleep again, I had no idea what to do.
    It was summer, which month I forget. I remember the heat, the long days boiling in the blood, the airless nights. The sun would go down, but the torrid air still hung overyou, thick with its unbreathable smells. It was on one of those nights that Ferdinand finally made his move—inching across the room on all fours, coming toward my bed with dim-witted stealth. For reasons I still do not understand, all my panic subsided the moment he touched me. I had been lying there in the darkness, pretending to be asleep, not knowing whether I should try to fight him off or just scream as loudly as I could. Now, it suddenly became clear to me that I should do neither one of those things. Ferdinand placed his hand on my breast and let out a snickering