NANCY AND DWAYNE, DANVILLE, VIRGINIA, 1970

8 2 Y N A N C Y A N D D W A Y N E , D A N V I L L E , V I R G I N I A , 1 9 7 0 A U S T I N S M I T H after a photograph by Emmet Gowin Before the curator mentioned sex I hadn’t seen her bliss as sexual, and even after the curator mentioned sex I preferred to consider her bliss to be the bliss of saints and artists at the moment of death. How else to describe her face? Has sex ever felt like that, that eternal, I mean? The boy has nothing to do with it: he’s simply the grassclad figure she’s exerted herself against. His body has brought her to this final exhaustion in which such bliss is possible: in this he is like a day of gardening, or cooking, whatever it is that makes people sigh when they lie down. And her hand resting so gently against his ear and neck, near where his haircut is perfected, one of those remarkable haircuts of boyhood it seems impossible for barbers to give men: this is not a√ection for his body, only the bliss of having been defeated. And it’s quite possible she’ll never know this kind of bliss again, the sky will never be so bomberless, the boy never so sweet. The next time he huddles over her he may be a grown man with a bad haircut in the pain of orgasm. They cannot rest forever. They must rise against nightfall and as the dark ebbs its ignorant water into everything, Nancy and Dwayne must hose blades of grass o√ each other’s bodies, shivering as if afraid. ...