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Higamus, Hogamus: A Novel

by Pierre Parisien

126 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); Mature Audiences; catalogue #05-1474; ISBN 1-4120-6563-1; US$17.99, C$22.49, EUR14.62, £10.13

A night in the life of Jerome Dubinsky. A night with five women, one in his arms and four in his past: And a child... and the Black-White thing. But who are Higamus and Hogamus?

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

Jerome Dubinsky, a white man, has had a deep love affair and a torrid sex affair with Lavonne Campbell, a black woman with whom he lived for 18 months. He has also loved and accepted Lavonne's young boy, Bobo, as if his own. (There is, of course, no sexual angle in that relationship).

But Bobo has died in a traffic accident and this has eventually resulted in the break-up of his mother's relationship with Jerome, Finally, Lavonne moved to Boston (from Brooklyn) to accept a new job. Since then, Jerome has lost confidence and has become virtually impotent.

But tonight Jerome has forced himself to go out and terminate his temporary celibacy. In a pick-up bar he has met Beatrice who has accepted his invitation to his apartment.

Jerome is intent on seduction, but his efforts are awkward and ineffectual. (The alcohol he has ingested at the club doesn't help.) Out of frustration, and in his attempt to achieve an erection, he brings back to mind and relives some of his more notable sexual adventures from before his cohabitation with Lavonne. Eventually, he achieves erection and is able to make love.

After, he falls into a deep sleep and has a strange dream in which helps him understand his relationship with Lavonne and why it couldn't survive Bobo's death. When he wakes up, Beatrice has left to go to work and he finds a note on the bed. He feels a return of confidence – sexual and psychological – and his now ready to enter into real relationships with women. (Since it is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, the book doesn't strictly follow the chronology of the above description.)

BUT WHO ARE HIGAMUS AND HOGAMUS?

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About the Author

Pierre was born in Ottawa but spent most of his adult life in Brooklyn, working as a teacher and jazz musician. He has had 10 articles on economics published in magazines. He presently lives in Montreal.

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Excerpts

But back to Beatrice-as-Lavonne: Jerome tries to focus his mind and unfocus his eyes so as to see her sitting there, within the shadow space of Higamus. Gradually, Lavonne invades the features of Jerome's perception of Beatrice. Finally, the transformation is complete and it is Lavonne that is sitting there; not the brokenhearted Lavonne of after Bobo's death; not the Lavonne he doesn't know anymore, living somewhere in another city doing God knows what; but the Lavonne of before the heartbreak, the Lavonne that had been with him inside even when she wasn't physically present, and that had the magical power to make everything he did meaningful and fun.

How pretty she looks. Yet he know that she is only a ghost; that if he started walking toward her, she would fade gradually, and, at the moment of their touching, she would vanish, and it would be Beatrice that would be sitting there. So he too will become a ghost. He will send his specter to meld with hers. He approaches her slowly as if trying to surprise her. He performs what had become almost a ritual, the sequence of movements of their very first kiss, something he often did to initiate sexual play with her. Again, the gentle placing of his left hand under her chin; the slow pivoting of her head until her left cheek is at the right angle; the lowering of his head, as if drawn by a magnet; the soft cushioned impact of his lips on her satiny skin. But then, with tender ferocity, both their mouths open and converge, and their tongues intertwine in a frenzied pas-de-deux, both of them trying to suck the other's buccal flesh into his own, neither noticing the grinding clash of teeth against teeth. One hand clamps a breast, the fingers locating through her clothing the prominent and habitually erect nipple, and rolling it forcefully between thumb and forefinger. The other hand reaches for her crotch and rubs its bony promontory in time with the back and forth rolling of her nipples. And then, with the quickness of a summer squall's evanescence, the scenario changes and the ghost of Lavonne is lying on the couch and Jerome's shadow self is protectively arched over her, all of his body in intimate contact with hers, but lightly, most of its weight being supported by his elbows and knees. And he is saying beautifully simple things like, "Lavonne I love you so much," or silly things like "Moma, popa's gonna do you good," and she is thrilling him by repeating his name softly, "Jerome... oh Jerome... my Jerome... Jerome, baby!"

That's the way it had been, their lovemaking: almost without foreplay, not because they were brutish and crude, but because they were both strongly sexual, and because they had complete physical and emotional understanding of each other. And it had been just as tender when it seemed almost violent as it was intense when it seemed gentle. Boy, how that woman could claw his back! Sometimes, in the morning, they would see red lines on the sheet, where the scratches had bled. And sometimes, after a wild session, she would have one or two light bruises and neither would have any idea how or when, and they would both laugh.

Funny, but no matter how far out and wild their lovemaking could get, nothing they did together ever felt dirty or sick. His body could make love to her or fuck her, but his mind always and only made love. He remembers one time: in the middle of some furious hard-driving sex, he suddenly imagined a Peeping Tom peering through the window between the incompletely closed curtains; and he had imagined this coarse, perverted soul thinking, "Wow, this boy's fuckin' the shit outa that bitch;" and the thought had come to Jerome, in the middle of his frenzied gyrations, that such a person could never understand the essence of the act he was unlawfully ogling, because that essence was in the mind of the lovers, not in their movements, not in their sweat, not in their cries. The same curve of lips and drawing of facial muscles can be a smile or a smirk: it's all the mind of the smilers. And it's all in the mind of the fuckers.

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Catalogue Information

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