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In it, a dying woman recalls with her lover how wonderful it was to experiment sexually with him.
To Greenwell, this is one of the most romantic scenes in literature.
It came down, and as it came upon me, I realized that it was warm.
Do I dare taste it?
And I started with my tongue to lick around my lips.
And there was this piss.
I dont know how to describe it more than that.
I tasted it, and it tasted sweet, like beer.
It had that kind of taste to it, and just something that made it so wonderful.
That I could be allowed to do this that was so forbidden.
And so I wanted everything of it, I wanted it on my tits.
I remember you were standing over me, and you did it on my cunt also.
It was very warm, it was so warm, I just felt totally…
I dont knowtaken by it.
Id never done that before.
I didnt expect to do it with anyone else, and today I was thinking I never will.
But it really made me have a pact with you.
It was like we were forever united in that.
He was clearly a writer who was interested in provoking and who enjoyed the discomfort provided by provocative art.
Mickey Sabbath is all of that times one thousand.
They had a decades-long affair.
In the last of these recollections at the end of the book, we see Mickey at Drenkas bedside.
Shes in the hospital with terminal cancer.
They spend hours together.
Shes on morphine, so sometimes hes just holding her hand and sometimes theyre talking.
And in their last scene together, they remember an erotic moment from their past.
This is a sex scene thats very mediated because its being retold.
Their sex life contains these incredible escapades experimentation and play.
Its an experience of sex that is joyful and full of love.
Its also unclear how far in the past it is I was trying to figure it out.
But its clear that its deep in their relationship and they have a lot of trust.
Theres very little that I know of in the way of sex scenes involving disabled or infirm bodies.
The present-tense intimacy theyre creating by talking about their past also involves very sick bodies.
Its also fascinating because its a scene of kink.
This is a scene in which theyre remembering a day when they pissed on each other.
First he pisses on her and then she pisses on him.
It goes into great detail about the experience: Theyre outside, theyre lying in a stream.
Each of them is resistant at first theyre both doing it to like the other.
But then Drenka especially finds real rapture in this.
She loves it when he pisses on her, and she loves drinking it.
I love the fact that Roth is not demure about it.
He writes it in full explicitness, full sense-data glory.
They are re-experiencing the tenderness and the intimacy that this moment created between them.
Drenka says this wonderful thing she says it was an experience of commingling.
It was a more intense intimacy than she had ever experienced before.
The section ends with a return to the real present day, where Mickey is grieving her.
Her last words to him are I give my heart, I give myself in my fucking.
And he says to her, You do indeed.
The last words of that section are To co-mingle with you, Drenka.
To co-mingle with you now.
I became obsessed with Roth long before I ever thought of writing fiction myself.
I read every single book of his when I was an undergraduate, just for fun.
I wasnt studying them, I wasnt thinking that I was going to write a novel like Roth.
I read them early and I loved them.
Its very different from my own writing.
I could never write like him!
The mainstream American reader might find the act outrageous or shocking, and Roth knows that.
Part of his craft is to play with that.
Id lost them there.
So Roth knows hes playing with that.
But then he brings in these warmer affects.
There is nothing degrading about this scene.
It is not a BDSM scene.
