On the Road Sex Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #25

"Terry," I pleaded with all my soul. "Please listen to me and understand, I’m not a pimp." An hour ago I’d thought she was a hustler. How sad it was. Our minds, with their store of madness, had diverged. O gruesome life, how I moaned and pleaded, and then I got mad and realized I was pleading with a dumb little Mexican wench and I told her so; and before I knew it I picked up her red pumps and hurled them at the bathroom door and told her to get out. "Go on, beat it!" I’d sleep and forget it; I had my own life, my own sad and ragged life forever. There was a dead silence in the bathroom. I took my clothes off and went to bed. (I.12.25)

Sal lashes out at Terry the way he later lashes out at Dean. He is unable to allow himself to get truly close to someone.

Quote #26

Terry came out with tears of sorriness in her eyes. In her simple and funny little mind had been decided the fact that a pimp does not throw a woman’s shoes against the door and does not tell her to get out. In reverent and sweet little silence she took all her clothes off and slipped her tiny body into the sheets with me. It was brown as grapes. I saw her poor belly where there was a Caesarian scar; her hips were so narrow she couldn’t bear a child without getting gashed open. Her legs were like little sticks. She was only four foot ten. I made love to her in the sweetness of the weary morning. Then, two tired angels of some kind, hung-up forlornly in an LA shelf, having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon. (I.12.26)

Sal repeatedly describes sex as a holy act.

Quote #27

The most beautiful little gone gals in the world cut by in slacks; they came to be starlets; they ended up in drive-ins. (I.13.3)

Sal’s view of women follows its own mad logic: every group of girls he meets is "the most beautiful."