Lady Chatterley's Awakening

the only way out of nothingness is tenderness
--

Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her in the middle of the body. She saw the clumsy breeches, slipping down over the pure, delicae, white loins, the bones showing a little, and the sense of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed her. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and inwardly alone. And beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty, not even the body of beauty, but a lambency, the warm, white flame of a single life, revealing itself in contours that one might touch: a body!

The voice out of the uttermost night, the life! The man heard it beneath him with a kind of awe, as his life sprang out into her. And as it subsided, he subsided too and lay utterly still, unknowingly, while her grip on him slowly relaxed, and she lay inert. And they lay and knew nothing, not even of each other, both lost. Till at last he began to rouse and become aware of his defenseless nakedness, and she was aware that his body was loosening its clasp on her. He was coming apart,; but in her breasts she felt she could not bear him to leave her uncovered. He must cover her now for ever.

It's not good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, will the gap be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the time when the gap is filled , when they come. But they've got to come, you can't force them.

I look at women who's never really been warmed through by a man, well, they seem to me poor dool-owls after all, no matter how they may dress up and gad. No, I'll abide by my own. I've not much respect for people.

That's what I wanted: a woman who wanted me to fuck her.

But I wouldn't preach to the men: only strip 'em an' say: Look at yourselves! That's workin for money!-- Hark at yourselves! That's working for money. You've been working for money! Look at Tevershall! It's horrible. That's because it was built while you was working for money. Look at your girls! They don't care about you, you don't care about them. It's because you've spent your time working an' caring for money. You can't talk nor move nor live, you can't properly be with a woman. You're not alive. Look at yourselves!

It was pleasant in a way. It was almost enjoyment. But anyhow, with all the cocktails, all the lying in warmish water and sunbathing on hot sand in hot sun, jazzing with your stomach up against some fellow in the warm nights, cooling of with ices, it was a complete narcotic. And that was what they all wanted, a drug: the slow water, a drug; the sun, a drug; jazz, a drug,; cigarettes, cocktails, ices, vermouth. To be drugged! Enjoyment! Enjoyment!

C: Shall I tell you? Shall I tell you what you have that other men don't have, and that will make the future? Shall I tell you?
M: Tell me then.
C: It's the courage of your own tenderness, that's what it is, like when you put your hand on my tail and say I've got a pretty tail."
M: That! Ay. You're right. It's that really. IT's that all the way thorugh. I knew it with the men. I had to be in touch with them, physically, and not go back on it. I had to be bodily aware of them, and a bit tender to them, even if I put 'em through hell. It's a question of awareness, as Buddha says. But even he fought shy of the bodily awareness, and that natural physical tenderness which is the best, even between men; in a properly manly way. Makes 'em really manly, not so monkeyish. Ay! It's tenderness, really; it's cunt-awareness. Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And it's touch we're afraid of. We're only half conscious, and half alive. We've got to come alive and aware. Especially the English have got to get into touch with one another, a bit delicate and a bit tender. It's our crying need.

Be tender to it, and that will be its future.

And he realized as he went into her that this was teh thing he had to do, to come into tender touch, without losing his pride or his dignity or his integrity as a man.

Well! he said at last. I agree to anything. The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do my best. But you're right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.

It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse.

You can't insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it.

What misery to be Don Juan, and impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace, and the little flame alrigh, impotent and unable to be chaste in teh cool betweens--whiles, as by a river.