"Let each one learn to bore himself."

(585.22-587.2)  (As an initial matter, this post, more than most, could bear an "Explicit Content" advisory, so be forewarned, reader.)  Ok, so HCE and ALP's lovemaking didn't quite end during yesterday's reading.  Today's passage begins with the two fully united, "whiskered beau and donahbella."  "O yes!  O yes!" we hear as the climax occurs.  "Withdraw your member!  Closure.  This chamber stands abjourned.  (McHugh notes that "chambre" is French slang for "cunt," so there you go.)  As the two lovers return to their resting state, we see a much debated line:  "You never wet the tea!"  There seems to be a contingent (at least based upon what I've read in my secondary sources, which admittedly are more on the "vintage" side of things) that believes this is ALP saying that HCE never gets the job done.  Tindall disagrees with this reading -- he says it means that HCE always wears a contraceptive (HCE's liquid/semen never wets/fertilizes ALP's teabag/egg) and I think I agree with him.  There's a lot of language indicating that something is happening (the "O yes!  O yes!" is a prime example), and Luke said that this event is "precedent" for population shortages in "Donnelly's orchard" and "Fairbrother's field."

Anyway, with all this excitement done, things begin to quiet down in the Earwicker household.  A brief list of nighttime rules for those lodging at HCE's pub appears.  "Others are as tired of themselves as you are," says Luke in a passage I like.  "Let each one learn to bore himself."  There will be no "cobsmoking, spitting, pubchat, wrastle rounds, coarse courting, smut etc" during "those hours so devoted to repose."  And the lodgers should be careful about doing their own fornication, lest the maid will begin a gossip chain that will result in half the town knowing about it.  "This is seriously meant," Luke says.  "Here is a homelet, not a hothel."

And if the police officer -- who, as he walked by outside, could see the shadows of HCE and ALP in the windows as they were having sex -- were to walk by again, he would see no light shining in those windows.  In fact, if he "brought his boots to pause in peace," he wouldn't hear a sound from the house, either.  He would only hear the flow of the river, "telling him all, all about ham and livery, stay and toast ham in livery."