Perry Turner, a black veteran from Vietnam comes back to New York to find things have changed. His mother has moved to a classier apartment, still safe in her black section, fearful of the whites as she always has been. His girlfriend of old with whom he thought everything was over awaits him with more than open arms.
Walking the streets on his first night back for a month's leave, he runs into Al, his old buddy from school. With Al is Vicky, a sweet white girl who catches Perry's eye at first sight. He knows that there are forces pulling them together from that instant, but the forces of society, prejudice, fear, hatred, and distrust pull them apart and hold them aloof more than they want to be.
Al, Perry discovers, is something of a name in the city. He runs a slick underground paper called the East Village Alternative, and his fame has gone past the boundaries of the Hudson and East Rivers. Al, always the man in front, the school hero, and the brainchild, is now the avant-garde left wing newspaperman whose views are widely read by his select following.
But the paper is not Al's only baby. He has a commune around the corner from where his offices are. Inside his section of the building are two main rooms, one all white, the other black lit with a strangely exotic green light that gives a sense of anonymity to all who gather there.
The white room is the room of people as they want to be, of conversation, learning, exchange of ideas, and meeting people. In the black room more personal exchanges take place between various members of the cult, and there is where Perry first learns of how strongly he is really attracted to Vicky.
Caught in the turmoil between his black friends who want him only in their society, and his feeling that he must be friends with all he-likes whether or not their colors are the same, he finds himself enmeshed in the plots of both sides who vie for the strong soul and the powerful personality of the man caught between his love for the old and his desire to advance ever into the exhilarating new.
CHAPTER ONE
Suddenly, Perry Turner was frightened. Although the last few steps of the IND subway brought him up to the familiar scene of Sixth Avenue, he felt he had stepped back into a jungle as strange and as threatening as the one behind him in Vietnam.
His hands closed instinctively, to bring his rifle into instant readiness. His muscles tensed. That reassuring spurt of cold energy shot upward inside his guts. He was alert, primed, ready for anything the sons of bitches might try.
Perry squinted, trying to see more clearly through the moving twilight forest around him. Where was Marty? Or Zeke? Or, even the baby-faced Lieutenant? Shit, had Charlie gotten to all of them? Silent, invisible Charlie ... as much a part of the slimy jungle as the snakes and the rotting smell. It was bad enough being here at all. Being left alone was a nightmare.
"Shine, mister?"
A little black face was beaming white teeth and bright eyes up at him. A neat little package of personality.
"Best shine in the Village, man. Only thirty-five cents."
Perry looked down at his shoes. They were glistening. If the Marine Corps had taught him nothing else, he was a master at spit-and-polish. Maybe shoeshining was a natural talent for blacks, like dancing and singing. Shit!
The youngster latched on to Perry's hesitation; a born huckster.
"Come on. The chicks go for guys with a shine on their shoes. You'll make out like crazy. I guarantee."
Eight-years-old, and he's already using sex for selling, Perry thought. He reached into his pants pocket.
"I just had a shine," he said, "but I'll put down a deposit for the next time." He held out a quarter.
It took the boy a couple of seconds to finally put his hand out. Perry dropped the coin on the little palm, smiling at the recipient.
"You want my twenty-five-cent special, instead?" the boy asked, a frown of suspicion clouding his face.
"No, not tonight, son. The quarter's just for being a good salesman, and to help you get home earlier."
"Thanks, mister," the boy said, softly; then smiled a natural grin. "I'm here every night, all summer." He turned and ran back to where his shoeshine box was standing between the two subway entrances to announce his luck to a taller, huskier black boy who apparently shared the sidewalk spot.
Perry headed for Eighth Street, sharply aware that the strange fear he had experienced had almost completely vanished. He wasn't in Vietnam. He was in New York city, his home, and he was going to be here for a whole month. Maybe longer, if the idea floating around like a ghost in his skull took on a clearer shape.
Perry stopped at the corner to get his bearings. How long since he had been here? A year ago June, on his last furlough before leaving the States. Only fourteen months, but it might have been years. The buildings seemed the same; low, old-fashioned, squatting on three corners, with the dirty bulk of the Women's Prison looming across the intersection. The stores were apparently unchanged, hawking their endless supplies of orange drink and doughnuts, alarm clocks and cosmetics, candy and clothes.
Even the automobile traffic appeared to be the identical street-clogging assortment of buses, taxis, dirty sedans and slick open-top sports cars. What was it, then, making him feel edgy and out of place?
Perry started east on Eighth Street, walking slowly past the brightly lighted shops and eating places. He studied each window as he passed, but he did not pause. It was as if he were taking a fast inventory of shoes, desserts, bathing suits, jewelry, posters and books. He was almost at the corner of MacDougal Street when he was jolted out of his window-shopping trance.
"P.T.! " a voice announced, and a hand grasped his arm.
He turned, surprised. The nickname was almost forgotten. The first thing he saw was a beautiful face framed in long, sun-bleached hair. The light blue eyes were intent on him; the almost-white lips parted, as though waiting to be kissed.
Then, Perry looked at the man who had called out to him. His ruddy face looked vaguely familiar, but it was disguised by a full, curly beard and moustache, and a pair of owl-eyed, yellow-tinted glasses. The big hand let go of him.
"You are Perry Turner, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yes." He felt foolish. The guy's clothes gave less of a clue than his face; a nondescript shirt with the sleeves hacked off, an equally mutilated pair of shorts which had once been levis, scuffed leather sandals, and a string of colored wooden beads around his neck. The other man turned to the blonde girl.
"He doesn't recognize me!" he snorted. He looked back to Perry, flinging out his free arm as though he were a magician revealing a rabbit. "Al Park, you bastard!"
Perry frowned. The name and the person in front of him didn't fit together.
"President of the Senior Class!" Al shouted. "The man voted 'Most likely'!"
It seemed impossible; but in an instant recognition came, and with it a flood of mixed feelings and reactions. Simultaneously, Perry and Al put their hands out for a warm clasp. Perry felt a genuine sense of relief and comradeship. Al Park was one of the few white fellows in high school who treated him naturally and openly as a friend. "Handsome Al" had been THE big man, excelling in academic and social pursuits, and openly admiring Perry's skill as an athlete, which was Al's one area of insufficiency.
Even Al's parents had been great; accepted Perry in their home, not only as Al's friend, but as an individual. Perry wished his own family could be as unprejudiced.
"Yicky," Al was saying to the beautiful blonde girl, "this is the famous and fabulous
P.T., otherwise known as Perry Turner. We conned our way through the same high school together, me as a politician, and him as the captain of all the teams. P.T., this is Victoria Rushton, a refugee from Westchester County, who has come to the city to learn how to live," he paused, "with men."
Al laughed noisily at his own joke, and Perry saw a hint of a frown cross the girl's face.
"How do you do," she said, quietly, extending one hand.
"Fine," Perry answered, almost as formally, and shook hands with her very briefly. In that moment, he noticed how attractive her hands were, small-boned, well-kept. He had a moment to get an allover view of her, rather petite in a multicolored dress. It was short enough to reveal excellent legs without looking obviously sexy. There had not been that many minidresses around fourteen months ago. Now, the very number of them made them seem more acceptable, less suggestive. This girl was class all the way. Her neatness was in sharp contrast to Al's half-hippie get-up.
"Where the hell have you been since Diploma Day?" Al demanded. "Away at some bastion of higher learning?"
"For a year," Perry said. "On an athletic scholarship. Then, I upped and joined the Marines."
"The Marines?" Al put his hands together in mock piety. "You mean the walking, talking, fighting, fucking Marine Corps of the U.S. and A.? "
Perry winced at the crude adjective, and avoided looking at Victoria.
"You mean you've been out there defending us at Camp LeJeune, or some such awful place?"
Perry knew his smile was a bit forced. He had forgotten Al's conversational style, his satirical approach to every subject. He consistently knocked down every idol, including his own, taking the wind out of everyone's sails even as he seemed to be inviting angry reprisal.
"I've just come back from Vietnam," Perry said. "Last night, to be exact."
"Far out," Al said. "I bet you're fucking glad to be back on the old home soil. It's good to see you again. Why don't we do something together?"
"Look," Perry protested. "I can see you are going out together. I like you both, but I don't want to mess up your evening."
"Nonsense," said Vicky. "We were only going to a movie, and it'll be around a hell of a long time. We can see it later. The truth is, I'd rather get to know you better. Al's old friends always have been pleasant to me."
"First thought," Al added, "I want to show you the pad we have in the East Village. You'll find you like it a lot." He turned, walking-with his brisk attitude to the location of his apartment. Vicky followed half a step behind him, and Perry quickly caught up the rear, coming aside the two of them.
In the interval when they were ahead he saw how Vicky's ass wiggled, and he knew she was a real sex goddess. He imagined that she had a cunt which could give a man a good time from dusk to dawn. In the back of his mind he drifted to memories of the fucking he had done in Vietnam, of the beautiful Oriental girls that had given him release if not all the love he wanted. There were too many men wanting them for them to give love too all of them.
There was one who had been extra special. Her face had been young, though he knew she was at least twenty-two. She had charged him her regular price, but he knew she never would have charged a thing if she could have lived in some other way.
He found her one night on a street, a back street where even the roughest rarely went. He was there because of that, because of the silence and the aloneness he could find almost nowhere else. The dangers of being ripped off at knifepoint meant little to him when he thought of the quiet restfulness he could have for a few minutes.
He followed her to her place without question the minute she came up to him and asked him if he wanted a woman. She wiggled her ass just as well as Vicky did. Once they were inside she took off her clothes. The sight of her compact Oriental body turned him on immediately. She had beautiful smooth white and her black bush glistened vivaciously. His cock began to swell at incredible speed, and the hard feeling he had came all over him. She removed his clothing one piece at a time, always caressing gently the part of him she had just made nude until he was titillated from head to toe.
No sooner was he completely naked then she buried her face in his crotch as he lay on the mat with her. Her tongue worked wonders at his cock, streaming its wet caresses against that throbbing joint and thrilling him beyond anything that had happened to him in the past.
Her fingers were not idle. With her tiny right hand she stroked his hairy balls.
She knew exactly what to do to turn him on. Her actions made him feel good inside. The fingers of her left hand found the rounded opening between his buns, and she jammed them in his ass-hole as far as she could on the first thrust.
His body reacted with violent jerks to the touch of her cupped fingers about his balls. Whenever she wiggled the digits in his ass-hole he was well aware of the wonders that a good woman could give to a man. All his life he had wondered what it was like to have a good whore, and now he knew.
Her lustful tongue swept again and again over his cock, making him happier than he had been since he got into the war. Her caresses grew more affectionate with each passing second, and he had a feeling with her he had never had with any other hooker, that she liked him, almost loved him.
He liked that she did not say his cock was big. It was a good sized one, but a lot of people thought it was just because he was black, and they had to make some comment on all blacks having big ones. This woman merely did her job without commenting on a thing, merely gave him luscious titillations without ceasing while she worked in his crotch.
He could see her lithe female form all humped up so that she could better administer her caresses to his naked body. When she touched him he felt waves of succulent delight rambling all through him. His nerves and his muscles were satiated with sexual delights.
He came, blasting his come into her mouth at the full force of his power. He could hear her slurping at his cock to get all the juices down her throat, hear her sighing in pleasure to have him there with her, and her soft breathing sounds that echoed in the darkness.
While he came, she doubled her efforts at his ass-hole and his balls, jolting him with incalculable pleasure all the time. He wanted more and more of her body, more and more of that tightly wound flesh that covered her small frame.
He finished creaming his come into her, then relaxed to let her clean all his hairs free of the dredges. After that he brought her soft lips to his own, kissed her passionately, partly from the hunger he had inside his body, and partly from the need to thank her for the good suck job she gave to him. He appreciated those lips that had covered his cock with such delicate tenderness and thrilled him wonderfully into a glorious come.
Her fingers still played at his balls. She wanted him hard, he could tell. She wanted him ready to plunge his hot cock deep into the honey well of her naked body so that his caresses there would soothe her to the end of her pleasure. Incredible shoots of delight slammed into his brain as a result of the touches she gave to his crotch.
Perry's fingers went to her cunt, there pressing into her walls with the lustful desire in him to give her the same thrills that she gave to him. He worked steadily at her walls, giving them the full benefit of his manly caresses. His tips rubbed her membranes with a soft back and forth motion that simulated the action of his staff when he had it in there.
He did not forget to minister to her clit with the same delicateness he used on her pussy. His touches there drove her wild, made her filled with supreme pleasure, for her body thrashed and bounced on the mat as she reacted to the pleasure he gave to her.
. Unceasingly he labored to give her pleasure. Time after time he stroked her clit, making it hard and firm as it became blood-gorged. His cock was getting the same way from the touches'. she gave to him there, and he knew that soon they would be joined together with his pole blasting like a recoiling cannon into her pussy.
The smell of her snatch juices was on his finger, and he loved to sniff it from time to time. She had lubricants that were superb, that were undeniably the best he ever had seen. His cock was swollen with his desire to fuck her, and he reached a point where he could no longer deny his needs.
She saw what he wanted, spreading her legs to expose to him her pink walls that waited for him in patient hunger.
When he plunged his cock into her snatch he felt how tight it was, and he noticed that her oils let him squeeze into that compactness with great ease. The wonder of her cunt was something he had not been prepared for, and the surprise was a happy one.
Over and over he drilled that hot cock between his legs into the snatch which she gave to him. Her kisses never ceased to be there with him when he needed them. His pole rammed harder than ever into the fleshy delights her cunt held for it.
She fingered his balls whenever she could, wiping more of her female pleasure into him. His reactions to her ministrations made him feel she was fantastic, was so incredible there would be no way he could forget what he was doing to her or what she was doing to him.
Time after time he plunged his steaming pole against her serpentine walls, and the thrill never got anything but better. He felt his cock starting to throb, felt his balls ready to discharge their juices and thrill him again with a magnificent come. The writhing of her membranes against the naked skin of his shaft made him aware that she was a wonderful cunt to be with.
His balls flapped hard in the breezes till he came down and smashed them into her buns. He liked the drafts which flowed through the hut, for they caressed his cock hairs and made them tingle. His lust had reached almost the high point in its career, filling him with the exorbitant luxuriousness of a come before he had reached that point. Her tiny body wriggled and shook beneath his, and he noticed the contrast of their skins, hers so smooth and his masculine one so rough and hard.
Then he was spurting into her, spewing his hot gism with the same force he had done at her mouth, filling her cunt with gallons of that precious fluid. She came at the exact instant he did. He could hear her moaning and feel her arms tighten about his back while she arched her back in pleasure.
He drained his balls dry of come, then rolled to her side, his cock limp and watery. She smiled at him, thanking him for the fuck he had given her. He knew she spoke no English, and he wondered what she would have said if they could have conversed. Her working vocabulary was some twenty street words that a good prostitute would have to know, but she could not express her emotions.
His eyes fastened again on that ass of hers, on the way it stuck out from her body like a young girl's, and he was mad for her. He wanted that ass under him, wanted to get his cock in her shit hole and feel those buns pressing into his groin.
The thought of the Oriental girl's ass turned Perry from his daydream back to the real ass in front of him. They were already on the stairs of the St. Mark's apartment building. He knew he didn't want white cunt that much anyway; no matter what a lot of white fellows thought. All the girls he had ever had, except one, were Orientals; and if it had been simply a matter of circumstances, it hadn't really made any difference. Sex had mostly been disappointing.
Only Cora had been different. Cora had needed him, and it had showed every time they got within talking distance of each other. Cora had been tender, responsive to every change of his mood and desire ... slow to arouse, deeply passionate, clinging warm and loving through the long downward glide from the peaks of excitement. Cora had been everything he could want; except willing to wait for him to build the basis of his life.
But, Cora had been afraid of his dream of leaving Harlem. Her life was bounded by its black borders. It was her birthplace; it was going to be her home; and eventually, her grave.
like all the satisfying things in Perry's life, Cora had been a barrier. Somewhere he had to find the good without the bad.
As they reached the top floor, he heard Al say, "I think we already have some company." Perry didn't understand the statement until he was at the top of the stairs. Al was kicking off his worn sandals, and Victoria was removing her low-heeled shoes to put them on a white rubber mat to one side of the door of the rear apartment. There were two other pairs of shoes already on the mat: one, a set of dirty white tennis shoes; the other, black, shiny high-heeled pumps.
"If you will," Al said to Perry, pointing to the mat. "You are about to enter the Spotless Heaven."
Perry frowned, but slipped off his glistening brown shoes, placing them side-by-side toward the wall. The insistent sound of music pulsated through the air on a strong .rhythm beat. When Perry was standing ready, Al opened the door with a ceremonious gesture.
The room inside was almost completely white, making Perry squint. Floor,' walls, ceiling, the low furniture and the Shoji screens concealing the windows were like brilliant snow, making a pair of sunglasses seem sensible indoor wear. A white ceiling fixture held a cluster of tiny spotlights which left no part of the room unilluminated, and made it seem to stretch away without boundaries.
The only area of color Perry noticed was someone lying on the floor near the far end, taking a gulp from a can of beer as the door swung ajar. It was a young fellow, tall, slim, deeply tanned, wearing nothing but a pair of jockey shorts.
"Shit!" he exclaimed, jumping to his feet, holding the beer in front of him, unsuccessfully trying to hide his erection. He looked desperately toward the door at the side of the room. "I thought she lived here!"
"She does," Al said. "From time to time. And her friends are our friends. I'm Al, this is Vicky, and the other nervous gentleman in the doorway is P.T." He looked toward Perry. "Come in, and close the door."
Perry did, but stood as uncomfortable at one end of the room as the other fellow was at the other.
"My name is Joe," the guy said. "I guess I should put some clothes on."
"Not for us," Al told him. "It's a warm night and probably going to get warmer. Nobody has to wear clothes in this pad unless he really wants to. I'm sure Olivia went into the other room to get out of hers."
"You're damn right I did!" The husky voice preceded the speaker during the length of time it took for the side door to swing open.
Perry caught his breath. No wonder that white kid had been standing there with his pants bulging! The girl framed in the doorway was just a shade or two darker than the tanned young man. You couldn't really call her black. Or Negro. And, he felt instinctively she would hate the term "colored." She wasn't beautiful, either. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes too large for the size of her head; her legs a bit too muscularly heavy.
But, she was sexy. And, she knew it. She had nothing on except a tiny brassiere and brief panties; both almost the exact color of her skin. She was obviously aware of the almost-nude effect it gave as she posed in the doorway, one hand still on the knob, the other flat against the side of her thigh.
"I thought you were going to the flicks," she said to Al.
"We were. But, we ran into an old high school buddy of mine. Olivia, this is P.T."
Perry started to acknowledge the introduction, when she said, coldly, "What happened? Was your family so poor they ran out of names by the time you came along?"
Perry saw Victoria's hands clench. He felt as though he had been slapped in the face.
Al turned to him, the big warm smile bursting through the curly beard. "You'll have to understand Olivia," he said. "Her looks are a disguise. She is a secret agent for the East Village chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Her motto is, 'If lynching is good enough for Georgia, it's good enough for New York.' "
He turned back toward her. "P.T. is just back from the war, and he's our guest of honor. We're about to organize a party. You can stay and join it, if you like."
With no change of expression, Olivia walked over to Joe, and ran one hand over his chest and stomach.
"It's up to you, honey," she crooned, putting her head on his shoulder.
Perry wanted to laugh at the guy's attempt to hide both his embarrassment and excitement, but at the same time, the girl's purposeful combination of disdain and come-on made him angry. She was suddenly a challenge to him, an enemy in some way, an obstacle to be overcome.
Joe finally caught his breath. "Sure," he said. "Let's stay. It might be groovy."
"Fine," Al said. "Glad to have you. There is, however, one rule of the house which Olivia might not have had time to make clear to you."
"What's that?"
"This is a sanctuary from the world. This is a place of total freedom of self. It is outside of and apart from all the rules and restrictions with which our lives have been limited." He spread his arms in an inclusive gesture, and Perry saw the politician being replaced by the preacher. "Because the rest of the world is what it is, freedom is more than treason, it is punishable by brutal excision; ripped out of you alive and screaming by the minions of The Order. Since we all want to avoid pain, we simply agree to keep this sanctuary sacrosanct. Whenever you are away from here, it will be as if this does not exist. Whatever transpires here will be forgotten as completely as if it never happened. However you live here will be no part of your endless death outside these walls."
Joe was staring at Al transfixed. Perry wondered how much of the message was getting through the kid's senses-for the meaning of what Al Park was saying was burning deep into his mind and his emotions.
Shit, it would really be something if it were true! Maybe he had actually come upon a safe place. However much of it might be true, he was sure as hell going to stick around and find out.
CHAPTER TWO
Vicky offered Perry a drink. There was no hard stuff because Al did not allow it. He was somehow or other the one who had charge here, Perry thought.
She talked about how she had met Al when she walked in to get a job with the East Village Alternative, the underground newspaper he ran so successfully. He had been on television, and had been interviewed many times by straight people.
She told him how she had another apartment and phone at the better part of town to use as a decoy for her parents. They called her there and she got her mail there. "But," she added, "I really live here."
"You like Al a lot," he said. "Has he told you much about himself?"
"No."
"Then he has changed some. He was the Mr. Everything back when we were in school together. President of the class, Editor of the yearbook and the school paper, president of he writer's club, of the debating society, and of his fraternity. He was also voted the most popular, the most likely to succeed, and the least shy."
"Are you telling me more than you should?" she said. "He's never mentioned that."
"He was at least that much," Perry said. "I'm sure I've left something out. Al was a whiz."
Vickie wanted to take off her clothes, but she did not want to seem too forward with Perry. Other persons were coming into the apartment. Maryann and Margaret, the twins from the front apartment were there. So was Jamie, the artist who lived with them. Others, friends all, had arrived.
Vicky wondered about her feelings for Perry. Once she got to know him she might want to fuck him, but now she had to wait till she could see. It was dangerous to fuck somebody without knowing him well, or at least having a notion of what was in his head.
She remembered to herself, as she listened to Perry talk, that once she had gone on a blind date and fucked the guy that same night. He had driven her to dark place in the country after the movie, and there was little she could do to avoid a screw, even though she was not sure she wanted one.
When he stopped the car he began to kiss her, to fondle her body all over, and she liked the feeling, despite all her misgivings at first. His caresses were firm and strong, the way she hoped they would be from a man. His kisses rained on her in profusion, covering her lips and her cheeks, sometimes drifting to the back of her neck where they thrilled her in a special manner.
When he was at her lips he whipped his tongue forth to wipe it across the surface, and she thrilled to the extra titillations that gave to her. His hard pole could be felt through his pants, tights pants which revealed the shape that was stuck in them.
His kisses made her feel exuberant. She forgot that she did not usually screw on the first date. She remembered only that she liked to fuck, that her walls wanted the thrills of his cock there inside them, wiping into them again and again with his hard touches.
She felt his fingers slip past her belt and her panties. Soon three of them were into her cunt, fiddling with her walls and giving her the luscious delights that she lived for. His fingers in her cunt were hard as steel, delightful to have there, and she could no longer think of anything but the luscious fuck she was going to get from his steaming cock.
He worked at her clit while he ministered to her snatch. His fingers slid peacefully over that hump in her opening, caressing her smoothly, giving her wonderful sensations of delight over and over. The lust he drove into her racked' body like a lightning bolt, fled to all the parts she could feel, and made her shake like a leaf from head to toe. She really liked him, liked the way he fingered her so expertly, never giving her a second's respite from the reeling affections she so madly desired.
His kisses planted firmly on her face thrilled her all the more because of the extra effort he made to please her cunt and her clit. The wild gyrations of his body atop hers added to the great pleasure she got from his affections. Under his weight she seemed compressed into one lump of love for him. Her hands grasped at his clothes, trying desperately to tear them from him, to be naked with him so that he could fit his cock into her and soothe her to the end of her pleasure.
His needs became the same as hers. He wanted to be naked, too. She could tell by the way he helped her remove his clothes, and by the way he went after hers as soon as he was naked himself. His cock was huge, a massive one that stuck out from his crotch like a poker, hard as steel, hot as a geyser, waiting for her hole to be open so that it could delve into the fleshy warmth it offered to him.
When they both were nude he leapt on top of her and fondled her cunt some more while he rubbed all his flesh onto her. The lust he felt must have been great for him to react with such great tenderness to all her affections to him....
There was a wild feeling inside her, one she sensed meant, she was having a good time. She hated the way she sometimes let her reason get in the way of her pleasure, and it was something she was trying to get out of her personality.
Her cunt lips throbbed from the delights it gave to her. There was nothing she liked better than his ministrations to her snatch with his fingers, except possibly she would like his actual fucking when he got to that point. Her own fingers played at his balls and his cock, rubbing them gently with her lithe female caresses that were the best she had to give.
Every now and then he tickled her ribs or her bellybutton with his forefinger. She liked the way he had of touching her with easy smooth motions that always drove her mad and made her feel good. Her cunt knew he was a man of great experience, that he could give her a come anytime he wanted to because he knew how to get at her insides and make her feel good about herself.
His fucking had her standing on end with joy. The gentle caresses of his fingers to her pussy and her clit never ceased giving her reams of succulent pleasure she almost could not stand to bear. The fantastic delights he whipped along her skin of crisscrossed nerves made her thrash hard into his naked body.
His kisses became better as he realized that she was a woman of good talent. If he was showing his appreciation of her caresses to her, then he was doing a damn good job. His mouth covered hers completely, and his tongue wiped with wet touches all along her outer lips, driving into her titillations of the highest quality.
Remarkable hunger came to her. Often she had wanted a man badly, but she wanted this one like nothing she had ever wanted in her life. Her whole body was bound into a feeling of having his cock there as a necessity for her having a reason to exist.
The sweet feelings of pleasure that were in her increased with each stroke of his tongue across her lips. She cried out in deliberate sighs of pleasure, hoping he would be able to see that she loved what he was doing to her. In his body she could feel the muscles tense, his cock pressing hard against her, and the sweet feelings of pleasure that rambled through him and made him relax before the sexual tension overtook him again.
Her fingers curled playfully around his hanging sac, stroking his wrinkled skin delicately, soothing him fantastically well, so that he jerked and gyrated above her on the seat of the car.
In the half-light of the half-moon she barely could see his face, and when a cloud dimmed the sky she could see nothing at all. That made little difference to her, though, for she felt the wonders of his caresses all the time whether or not she could see his face.
His bones pressed hard into hers, not smashing against them, but soothing her with a gentle pressure that meant he was trying to reach her deep inside. She was on fire for the wonders that she could get when his cock was at last in her pussy.
His groans became more evident after the level of pleasure she drilled into him reached a certain point. He moaned and sighed regularly, showing her concrete facts to tell her how much he appreciated the way she ministered to his balls and his cock.
The incredible lust she felt in her cuntal passages amazed her. In all her experience no man had been able to make her desire cock the way this one was doing. It was as if his touch was the most golden touch that ever had walked the face of the earth.
His caresses finally made her need him so much she had to have him there if she was not going to die from the want of him. She spread her legs as wide as the seat of the car would allow, and he entered her, pressing his turgid tip into her snaking walls, shoving hard against her membranes so that she would be certain to know he was there fucking her.
She let forth a stream of soothing cries that must have thrilled him to hear. He was fucking her as hard as he could, bucking his ass forward while he drove pleasure after luxurious pleasure into all her body, and her cunt was alive with glory.
As he pressed into her hollow with his poker he pulled on the walls of her insides so that he also gave affection to her clit. That was the thing that really made the difference in his fucking her, the attention he gave to her clit.
She plunged a finger or two into his shit hole for a few seconds, but the force of his bucking forward was so strong that it was jolted outside in no time. She did not try to reinsert it.
At the same time they had their comes. He exploded into her snatch with gallons of his hot come, pouring it forth with each riotous bucking of his ass that made his insides ready to take the pleasure coming to him. His cock swelled inside her cunt every time he spat out some more of his steaming ball juice, and the extra pressure that gave to her membranes increased her delights three times over.
Her own come completely filled her, rambled to all the extremities of her naked flesh while it made her feel as if waves of pleasure were flowing in her like in an electric field arched by a bolt of lightning. Her body thrashed with endless delight on the seat of the car.
His kisses never stopped the whole time he was coming. His touch on her lips with his warm tongue was something undeniably delightful to her. His affection had to be so damn good that there could never be anything like it.
When they were done they fucked twice more, but in the end it all came to nothing for her. She found she did not really care for him despite his ability at fucking, and she wished she had never let him have her body.
Now she looked at Perry there before her. The attraction she felt was strong, and she knew something about him was different. Somehow she saw that Al needed this man to get something done, but what it was she did not know.
The clothing of the people who were coming inside was of all colors. They contrasted with the white walls in the brilliant lighting that Al had installed.
Al came through the crowd and sat down next to them. "I think I've invited enough. I know I passed the half-hundred mark a few minutes back." He put a hand on P.T.'s shoulder. "You must mingle tonight, my friend. The very cream of the neighborhood is here, and they'll all want to meet you."
"I'll mingle," P.T. said, "but why should they want to meet me? What did you tell them?"
"That you were the only one in my whole illustrious high school whom I could trust; in addition to the fact that you are intelligent, loyal, trustworthy, honorable, gorgeous, sexy and possessed of innumerable talents. What else could I say? By the way, do you still raise your voice in song."
"On occasion."
"Tonight will be one of the occasions. A few very talented and in musicians will be making the scene later."
"We'll see," P.T. said.
"And, hear. Vicky," Al looked at her, "would you get me a smoke?"
She stood up, smiling at the two men. "He's so subtle," she said to P.T. "He really wants to talk to you alone."
Perry watched her melt into the wall of people. From his low angle, she was quickly lost from sight.
"Well," Al said, "Let's bring each other up to date. A lot has happened."
"I'm already partly up to date on you," Perry announced. "Vicky was giving me most of the highlights. I am very much impressed. She says you are becoming quite famous, apparently everywhere but in Vietnam."
Al made an open-handed shrug. "It takes time, you know."
"It doesn't seem to be taking you very much time. Editor of a newspaper, book writer, speech maker."
"Have you ever seen the Alternative?"
Perry shook his head, no.
"Those in the know call it the EVA. They mean Extra Vehicular Activity, but we swear its just free advertising for us. I'll give you a couple of issues later. Read them through in the next day or so. There's a lot of shit and sex nonsense in them, which helps the total circulation figures, but you can skip that part. It's the editorial material I think you'll be most interested in. Maybe you'll write a piece for us."
"Me? What in hell would I write about."
"Yourself, for one thing," Al said strongly. "Why?"
"Let me give you a short course in what's new and different on the home front these days. Being black makes you a little bit special. But, being black and intelligent sets you apart from almost everyone. Also, the Marine Corps is not exactly open to anyone who wants to play hero: and, although Vietnam is, the number who go there and come back is still a minority ... if just barely so. You are, in short, news. Interesting news. The kind of news our readers want to read about. And, in addition," he smiled broadly which made his beard seem curlier than ever, "you are a very special friend of mine, and the Editor's friends get preference. Not only do their golden words get into print, along with their names, spelled correctly, and their pictures, clear enough for relatives and neighbors to exclaim over in recognition, but there is also a fee, in cash money. Have you had a better offer recently?"
Perry grinned. "I'll consider it."
"Good. And, I'll consider it one of the journalistic scoops of the year if you decide to honor the EVA with your thoughts and words."
At that moment, Vicky came up to them, handed something to Al, and melted into the crowd again. Al extended his hand toward Perry, palm up and open. On it was a cigarette, obviously a standard brand which had been emptied, refilled, the ends twisted closed.
"Care to share the peace with me?" Al asked.
"I don't think so," Perry answered. "Not tonight. As you said, I've got a lot of people to say hello to."
"That's true. And there are more nights and more smokes ahead of us." Al stood up suddenly, and Perry found himself following suit. "I'm going into the other room. It is all-black as this room is all-white. Whiteness is for seeing the world and the people in it in the way they want you to see them. Blackness is for seeing the world and the people in the way that only you can see them. The smoke is simply one of the road maps into the blackness. No two people get where they are going by the same route. And, it is so rare that any two reach the same destination. It happens. And, when it does-" He closed his eyes for a moment. "It is fantastic. I hope you will find your reasons to spend time in there; tonight or some other time; through smoke, or acid, or sex. In any event, I will see you out here later. Don't leave until I'm back. Please."
It was confident as he spoke, and this positive manner of speech appealed to Perry.
"I'll be here, Al," Perry found himself saying. "You can count on it."
He watched Al weave through the crowd, speaking to no one, answering none of the greetings. The door at the far side of the room swung ajar. He could see nothing beyond the black oblong of the doorway. Then, it was closed.
All white. All black. Was it possible to reduce this complicated world to such a simple pair of terms? It would make the whole of living so damned easy. Yes or no. True or false. Right or wrong Al, I'll still be here when you come out. If anyone can solve these problems, you can. And, if you have solved them, I want to know how!
CHAPTER THREE
Within the next couple of hours, Perry began to recapture feelings he had almost forgotten. The most important was that sense of acceptance as an individual which Al Parks had personified for him during their high school years. It was obvious that Al's friends were much the same kind of easy, warm people; that they did not judge one first by the color of one's skin, but by one's ideas and interests.
The variety of people was at first surprising, and then' reassuring. The best dressed to the most unkempt. Perry had not known any of the hippie types before, but their out-of-the-ordinary dress and hair styles became an appropriate part of their open personalities. No matter what anyone's style or appearance, the common feature among them was talk. Not the pointless, time-killing, repetitive talk of Marine bull sessions, nor the aimless, hollow fencing so typical of parties and dances; but intense, feeling conversation full of ideas expressed and listened to. Talk ... with minds active behind it, and emotions deeply involved in it.
It was talk rich with reason.
It was talk of direction, always directed toward purposes, idealistic yet weighty. Young people had changed, Perry thought, while trying not to miss anything being said to him. Although there didn't seem to be anyone in the apartment beyond his mid-twenties, the quality of thinking suggested a level of maturity and understanding far beyond that of his buddies in service, or even his classmates during that ill-fated year at college.
Several times, Vicky had materialized out of the crowd to give him a fresh beer, and to join in one of the discussions for a few minutes. He realized he was feeling more at ease in her presence now than earlier; maybe a little less conscious of her blonde beauty, a little more accepting of her relationship with Al. However, he remained acutely aware that she never failed to touch him on each of these occasions. Perhaps there was no more than a gentle hand on his arm, but the contact was definite. And, unsettling for its duration.
It was just after one of these moments, watching her move to another group, and noticing her body in the way he had when they were coming up the stairs, that Perry suddenly thought of sex. Not sex with Vicky, or with anyone he could identify, but the clear idea of close physical contact ... the pressing together, the warmth, the velvety dry brushing, the satiny moist touching, the acceleration of the nerves and muscles, the crashing surf of orgasm, and the long slow, receding tide of happiness spreading throughout his body like a magic medicine.
He noticed that a lot of the talk here was about sex, but not as a dirty silly thing like he heard in bull sessions in the Marines. There was talk of abortion, birth control, side effects of pills, and techniques to help those who were uptight, but sex was always seen in the light of something beautiful that mature persons could deal with.
He was aroused by the talk, and he had to piss. When he asked for the bathroom the person next to him pointed to the door of the black room. "It's at the other end," she .said.
He walked through the dazzle of the white room, aware of his blackness by the contrast. Inside the black room his eyes could see little, because the faint green light did nothing to show him a thing.
As he groped to the outline of a door in the back his pupils expanded, and he was amazed at what he saw. A large number of people were in the room, and they were all nude, or almost that way. He watched for a long time, seeing that many of the bodies were in contact with each other.
To his right there was a boy with his dark-haired girl friend. They were fucking hard, though they made little noise. He could see the boy's ass raise and fall as he plunged his hot cock into the cunt of his lover. The sight of them fucking was not new to him; he had been in group fucks in Vietnam when he went to some of the brothels that were cheaper, but his cock straightened out to see two people accepting sex as a part of their life with such eagerness. And at the same time he felt they had an attitude to what they were doing that was respectful instead of like what a lot of the fellows had in the Marines. The boy had a great tenderness about all he did. His fingers were plunged deep into the ass-hole of his-lover, but he was never too hard with her. His gentle strokes smoothed across the butt of the girl, always taking things easy.
Perry saw the girl move her hand to the boy's crotch. Her fingers touched his balls with gentle lusciousness, caressing him with the full desire she must have had in her. The boy jerked and shook each time her hand stroked along his steaming balls.
Perry knew it was hard for the girl to do that while he was blasting his cock into her pussy, but she evidently was just as interested in giving the boy pleasure as she was in getting it herself. Perry thought that was a good way to be.
The boy's face pressed hard into that of his lover, wagging from side to side as he drilled his kisses into her flesh and made her tremble for joy. She let out several moans of pleasure in a row, and spoke of how she loved it when he wiped his tongue along her lips. It drove her wild with lust. Other couples were fucking in other parts of the room, but they did not disturb each other by a lot of racket.
The boy caressed the tits of his girl friend, smoothing his fingers along them as he continued to plunge his cock into her pussy. His touch at her tits thrilled her. She shook arid trembled from the delicious delights that he gave, and his fingers were steady the whole time.
When he got to her tips, to the nipples that were a dark color in the dim light of the room, she squealed lowly. Her face pressed harder into his with a sudden jerk. The fantastic desire she felt for him made her grind her hips into him with more pressure than before. It seemed as if their bodies were" welded together in their love, that their skins had been joined by the plunging of his cock into her pussy.
He fingered her nipples again and again, listening intently for the sound of her coos and her groans of pleasure. His balls rose and fell while she tickled them. Her kisses became faster as she felt a stronger impulse in herself to screw, and she was almost wrapped around him with her body.
Faster and faster they writhed their naked bodies one into the other. His balls flapped with greater force against her white buns. He was screwing her fast, plunging his cock into her cunt with incredible speed and force. His body thrashed against hers in an endless succession of writhing motions, and he took great pleasure from her touches to his balls, always jerking extra hard when she hit him the the full effects of her caresses there.
The sheer luxury of her cunt made his body so filled with pleasure that he trembled like a leaf from head to toe. He was saturated, had to be, with the amazing pleasure the woman was finding to give to him. His kisses became more sporadic as he lost control because of the way his pleasure was taking over his body.
It was so good, he thought he would scream.
Suddenly he squealed in delight, and his body jerked hard and fast for almost a minute while he pumped his come from the tiny hole in the tip of his prick. His girl friend came simultaneously, grasping his naked flesh with her curled hands and moaning along with him.
Perry moved further down the wall. He had to piss. He saw one of the twin's feeling up Joe's body. He moved to the door of the bathroom and stepped aside from someone whom he could not recognize in the dark. Inside he pissed, tempted to jack off to soothe his tensions, but he turned that down. He knew he could fuck as well as any person in the room, man or woman, but he could not go out there and join in. Something held him back, something he did not totally understand yet.
He finished his piss. Outside in the dark room again he scanned the floor with his now dilated eyes. His vision rested on a couple in a corner of the room. There was no doubt as to who the woman was. Few persons could have that kind of hair and that kind of streamlined body. He watched while Vicky placed her head in Al's crotch.
She fooled with his balls, cupping them in her fingers, twirling them as much as she could, snaking her lithe tips into his body and soothing his nerves. The look on Al's face told that he was having a good time from this effort of his lover.
Vicky maneuvered one hand to the ass-hole of the man she was fondling. She drilled two fingers far into his passages, struggling to get them in all the way to the knuckles so that she could give him all possible pleasure that he could bear.
His moans were only slightly audible in keeping with the quiet, dream-like nature of the room. His body writhed with an easy motion, one that resembled that of Hawaiian dancers in some old movie. His flesh seemed to crinkle from the effects of her ministrations to his balls and his cock.
Vicky toyed for a long time with his balls, not giving him head until he was as hot as fire for the feel of her wet mouth soothing his shiny skin. Her fingers drummed a series of delightful caresses into him that made him jerk when she was especially affected by them.
Vicky had a body from out of this world. Every line in her frame was a good one. Every time she moved the fantastic lusciousness of her carriage made itself evident. She was a perfect specimen of the female body, and her lust was directed at the hardened cock of her lover, Al, who was there by her side.
Her lips covered the flesh which stuck out from his crotch, and he moaned with a loud gasp once when she finally had him inside her. Her mouth worked frantically at his cock, her lips pressing into his naked flesh, and her tongue sometimes going outside as it swept in long strokes against her lover's walls.
He reeled in pleasure from the affection she gave to him. Fiery delights streamed through all parts of his naked body, and he jerked continually as he felt her ministrations getting to him deeper and deeper with every second that passed.
Time stood half still in this darkened room. What would have been fast and flighty in the white, well lit room was slow and easy here, sensuous in its appearance and nature, seducing in its character. Her touches to his balls and his ass-hole filled him to the brim' with pleasure, and his lust grew stronger than it had ever been in his past fucks.
She roamed about his pole, his hardened pole whose throbbing veins she could feel with her fingers. The touch of her tongue was something that made him feel like a real man in all parts of his nude flesh. Her fingers in his ass-hole drove with more and more power into the snaking membranes he had there. Her lust to serve him seemed to have no bounds, and his pleasure at being pleased was not in the least manner concealed from her.
He rubbed his fingers into her scalp, massaging her there to give her delight, at the same time pushing her face more firmly into his crotch that she could better cover his pole. His cock was completely taken into her warm oral cavity, and the wonders that he felt had him writhing more than ever.
When he spurted into her the drops of his come that she could not take down slipped to the floor. Her mouth worked hard to get all of it in her throat, for she wanted to have that part of him inside her. His body shook hard and steel-like while he creamed into her the passion of his cock and his balls.
As soon as he was done coming he pulled her to him, kissing her hard, pressing his face against hers, skin against skin, bone against bone, hard driving lips careening into hard driving lips. The magnificent feelings in her made her legs stretch out so that her beautiful ass was evident to view.
Al rolled on top of her. His cock was already getting hard again as she rubbed her hand along its entire length. Whenever she hit the tip it jerked upward. Her legs were opened, waiting for the second when that pole could be inside it.
Then he was there, pushing his whole body forward to help himself drive that shaft far into the interiors of her walls. Her groans of delight were all that anyone needed to hear to know just how much she was enjoying what he was giving to her. The sheer delight of her experience with his pole was there for all to see and hear, though she maintained the same quiet manner of moaning as did the others in the room.
Perry did not stay to see the end. Vicky was an expensively dressed white tramp. He was confused by the feelings that struggled in him, hardly able to pick out the opposing factions and see what they were. Once inside the white room he closed his eyes until he adjusted them to the light by opening them a few seconds at a time. At least he could see well here.
CHAPTER FOUR
Perry had been mistaken about which twin had been in the black room.
As soon as he stepped back into the party, he saw Maryann in her sari talking with some of the other guests. By the time Margaret came through the door, a few minutes later in her boyish shirt and shorts, Perry had made a clear distinction between the sisters in his mind.
He smiled at Margaret, genuinely pleased at the notion of spending time in her company.
No, relieved would be more like it, Vie decided, as he smiled over in her direction. He had to talk to somebody. Margaret, it seemed, had a real understanding of both his needs and his hesitation. A girl with perception ... well, well!
She came directly to him.
"We can talk better in my place," she said. "It's right across the way."
"I know," Perry answered, and followed her through the crowd, out into-the hall and through the doorway opposite.
This apartment was as crowded with decoration and color as Al's place was starkly simple. A lot of deep, comfortable furniture. Old fashioned lamps with frilly, fringed shades and soft illumination. Bookcases, pottery pieces, printed fabrics on the couches and as curtains in warm colors. And paintings, paintings, paintings. The walls seemed almost solidly covered with them.
Hers was a smaller apartment; basically one very large room, with a kitchen built into what must have once been a huge closet. Perry's immediate impression was that he could relax here, in a way not possible in either of Al's rooms.
"I like your apartment," he told her. "It looks more like a place to live."
She smiled. "It is a place to live. Al's is more for discussing, entertaining, or turning on. Not all the people in the East Village follow the same pattern. Or, did you think we did?"
"I can't say I've thought about it at all," he confessed. "It's been over a year since I've been to New York. Where I was, we didn't get much news about the local happenings."
"No, I don't imagine the armed forces newspapers, or whatever it is they publish in Vietnam, would be carrying stories about Al Park's activities. I think they would consider him as a bit of a subversive."
"I'm not sure I understand what you mean?"
"You haven't read any of his writings, I take it."
"No. We haven't seen each other almost since we graduated high school."
"I see," she said. "Have you read the East Village Alternative?"
"Not yet. Al is going to give me some issues before I take off tonight. He even said something about me writing an article for it. Somehow I think he was kidding."
Margaret's expression tightened. "Al Parks doesn't kid about anything much, P.T. Certainly not about the paper. His sense of humor doesn't run in' that vein. And I've known him at least a year-and-a-half."
"Well, I don't know. It isn't really important." Perry was bored by the serious talk.
She seemed to read his mood. "Do you want something to drink? There may be a can or two of beer left. And, I know there's some wine."
"Would coffee be asking too much?"
"Not at all. It's one of my specialties."
Perry had seated himself on one of the two big studio couches. While Margaret busied herself with the percolator, he leaned back, taking the opportunity to let some of his tension go, and to study the paintings.
There were a number of nudes among them; the women all looking like Margaret or Maryann, the men vaguely reminiscent of some of the guests at the party. Many of the works were strongly executed abstracts, literally bulging with texture and color.
Then, quite suddenly, Perry discovered three portraits staring at him, hung side-by-side on the wall near the door to the hall. They were unmistakably Olivia, Al and Vicky, and the style had the effect of a photograph which had been painted over to accentuate certain aspects of personality.
The artist had made Olivia look older and darker-skinned than she had appeared to Perry. But, even more striking, the sensuality in her face seemed like a heavy cosmetic; even a mask, hiding the real person.
Vicky, on the other hand, was made to look younger and more naive than Perry now pictured her. A brief vision flashed in his mind of the sexual act she had been performing' on Al; might still be doing to him ... or someone else in that black place.
Al's portrait was the most startling. Although it showed the present young man with curly beard, moustache, and rather stern expression, it also revealed the eye-catching handsomeness beneath. He felt the artist might have known Al as he looked in his high school days.
"Who did the paintings?" he asked.
Margaret came back into the room.
"Jamie painted most of them. One of the fellows he shares studio space with did the male nudes."
"And, the portraits of your three neighbors?"
"They're mine."
He looked at her. Their eyes held for a long instant.
"Just those three?" he asked. "I've done others, but I've given them away."
"Don't you sell your paintings?"
She shook her head and sat down on the other couch. "I'm not a professional artist. And, I don't paint for the same reasons most artists do. I can never do a portrait of people I know too well, and after I do get to know them, I usually give them the work ... if they want it. Or, I get rid of it because it no longer represents the person as I see him. I would like to try one of you, but you'd have to sit with me within the next few days. After that, it could no longer be an honest piece of work."
"Why not?"
"Involvement. I'd begin to find out too many things about you, and I would start seeing you the way you see yourself. It would no longer come out as my portrait of you, but more of your portrait of yourself. I happen to believe that first impressions are closest to the truth. When people are still almost strangers they reveal more of what they really are. Once they start to get closer, they begin to adjust to each other, change themselves to suit what they think the other person wants. Then the honesty is gone."
Her talk of friendship made him think about the war, when his buddies were Zeke, and Marty and John and Carne, people who went with him on patrol, on whom his life depended every second of the day and night. These were his friends there, but he did not know what would happen if they met in civilian life.
Once he had a girl who was good in bed with him, but after that, all was separation, all was different. He wondered if she could be called a friend either. He realized that Al had been one of the few true friends he ever had, the only white to ever treat him like a person instead of a black that needed to be made equal. Al's parents had been the same, but they could not be called friends.
"Undress with me," she said. "I want to feel your body, to touch you all over."
Fighting against the strange feelings inside him, Perry took off his clothes while she did the same. He knew she was not going to fuck him. She really was interested in feeling his body to see where the lines went. As she rubbed her fingers over his nude skin, he again filtered reality from his mind and went back to the war, back to a day when everything was quiet because of a truce for some holiday.
He wasn't even looking for a broad then. All he had been doing was walking down a street, glad to be free from the shelling and the noise for a little while. A vendor stopped him and asked in a quiet voice if he wanted to fuck. Perry was amazed. The man spoke almost perfect English, and his accent was slightly Australian.
"Sure," he said. "Where? And how much?"
"Inside that white house with the roof. There's a good whore in there who charges almost nothing. She'll give you a good time."
He knocked at the door. A beautiful girl answered, clad in scarcely enough material to hide her tits and her cunt. A see-through negligee covered her body, softening her already soft lines.
"Come in," she said. "We have room for you. I call myself Mary, though that is not my real name. I use it because GI's can say it easily."
"Are you in charge?" he said.
"I am all there is," she said. "You seem surprised I speak English well. Not all of us learn on the street. Once I was rich and studied in the best schools. The man outside is a cousin of mine."
She named her price, which he paid in advance. He liked to do it that way for it assured the woman she would not be gypped afterwards, and she appreciated that. Her kisses fell on him as soon as she had deposited the money in the room on the side of the one where he lay on the soft bed.
He felt her touches, the deliciousness of her caresses to his body, the way she had her fingers at his balls and his cock before he was even out of his pants. That was the way he liked to be fucked, like a man who was hot and bothered from the minute he got the word on his possibilities, and like a man who had a really good cunt by his side.
Her tender caresses had his cock as hard as steel from the second that she touched it. He realized that she was a well-bred woman who was aware that men need attention and affection to make their fucking good. She cared for him as little as she cared for all the rest of the cocks that she allowed into her pussy, but since she had bargained for a price she was going to give him his money's worth.
Her touches were even more fantastic as soon as they both were naked. When she had taken off the little that she wore he could see that she had a wonderful body, with two tits that stuck up from her flesh and wild curly hairs in her V where her cunt was surrounded with them. He waited for the first touch of his cock against her snaking walls. This would be the time he would have the most fun with her.
He fingered her cunt, touching her deep inside her walls, thrilling her to the effects of his caresses there until she was practically wailing with sheer sexual pleasure that he gave her. His touches swept in all the places where she could feel any kind of delight, concentrating heavily on the bulging fold of skin in her upper walls that was her clit. He soothed that piece as much as he possibly could, knowing that there was where she was the most sensitive to his caresses.
His cock was like hardened steel. It was sweating from the fiery pleasure she drilled into it as her well-formed hand rolled a pattern across its naked surface. She had a touch so divine he scarcely could believe she was a mere woman. He thought she had to be from some tale of Greek goddesses, a woman who had a touch of gold and a heart of iron.
His lust made him so hot he wanted her cunt as soon as he could get in it. But he could see that she was a long way from being ready to let him inside there where he could stroke her until they were both at the peak of their salient pleasures.
He knew what to do to get her hot for him. He sunk to her crotch and spread her legs with his hands, revealing in clear view her pink membranes. She sighed with deep delight when he pushed his tongue against those snaking walls. Furiously he lapped at the walls which had such a good smell to them. That odor was enough to give him all the pleasure he needed for a good while.
He lapped at her cunt again and again, searching out places far inside her, wiping his tongue against her with his male touch that thrilled her to the brim. She was wild with the streaming delights that he gave to her. The lust she felt drove her mad with jerking and shakings through all her naked flesh. If he had been any better he thought she would have died from the pleasure she got from him.
Over and over he whipped his oral implement into her pink flesh. After a while she began to lubricate her walls, and the taste of her luscious juices added to the effects and to the pleasure he got from licking her pussy. The acidity of her oils was something especially tantalizing for him.
More and more of that delightful liquid flowed as she became ever hotter to have him there with her, fucking her madly while his cock swelled with the blood she made go into it. He lapped at her in an unceasing run of touches which thrilled her to the marrow.
Never had he seen a woman as sensitive to his tongue as this one was. Her cunt practically invited him in for more while he lapped at her. Her clit was hard and bulging with blood, and the mixture of her odors and her tastes was something special he wanted to remember.
Concentrating on her clit, he lapped his wet tongue over that hump time and time again. Her sighing was music to his ears, leasing him greatly because it told him that she was getting a lot of pleasure from all that he did to her. Whenever he stroked his oral member against her clit in just the right manner her back arched along with her sighs and her groans.
His touch was fantastic, soothing her naked body all the time. There was not one second that she was free from the pleasures he gave to her. His affections were so great she could be nothing but totally stimulated by his caresses.
He rammed a pair of fingers into her ass-hole, stroking hard in there while he felt her walls writhing and shaking. His fingers went deeper inside until they were in all the way to his knuckles. She twisted on those rods like a candy apple twists on a stick when it is held tightly and the stick is turned.
He felt her getting more ready for the touch of his cock. The sheer delight of having him there with her must have meant something to her. She fucked wonderfully, even if she did not show that much evidence that she loved him. Her cunt was firm and tight, and her odors were making him feel the incredible need he always had to be there with a woman who was ready for him.
His cock was swollen, almost at the point of erupting with his come all over the sheets instead of inside her snatch, but he controlled it with all this will power, holding back to keep himself ready for her. He knew it would not be long before he was inside there, and he wanted to fuck her terribly.
Finally he knew there was no need to wait any longer. Her juices flowed hot and heavy, and the way her walls were jerking about meant she was as ready to come as he was. He crawled on her, practically jumped on her in his eagerness, and slammed his stomach against hers when he drilled his steaming pole into the wet fleshiness of her tight little snatch. The soothing effects of her walls on his pole made him happy he had taken up the vendor's proposition, and he rammed at her with all the force in his body.
Excited by the hard lovemaking he gave to her he writhed shamelessly, her small body squeezed hard under his big one, the contrast in their skins evident to his eye as he looked down the line of her naked flesh at the woman who was screwing him.
Over and over he drilled his shaft far past the triangular bush that opened to him with a welcome. The sheer delight she gave to him made him work all that much harder to be certain that she got some of the same. He plowed deep into her passages, stirring up feelings of luxury and sex that made her shake all over.
Her face was close to his own, with her bones pressing against his and making him more aware of her presence. The soft smoothness of her skin rubbed into his, and the feeling of her close warmth continued all the way to his feet. He was saturated with the sensuous pleasures she gave to his body.
Thrust after lustful thrust of his cock whipped into the open hole between her legs. He heard her squealing with delight with each new blast that he gave her cock. Then he felt her stiffen, felt the lines of her back arch in a solid position, and her moans stayed at one steady wail while her body throbbed with the glory of her delight. Her come was so fantastic he felt pleasure at it.
Seconds after she began her thrashing, his own come saturated her pussy with his gism, pouring it into her so fast he could not believe it really was himself that was fucking her. His breath came hard and strong, and the feelings which were in him made him feel fantastic all over.
He rolled away from her. She told him that was all. There was only one fuck for the money he paid her. He could have more if he paid her some more. But he had no more to give her, so he left, and he smiled at the vendor still outside the house when all was done.
The delicious touch of the fingers on his naked body reminded him of the way that whore had dealt so well with him back then. Now he felt nothing but his own thighs where she stroked them, the hanging fullness of his testicles as she cupped them, the living weight of his penis against her palm and fingers.
I don't even know if I have a hard-on, he thought vaguely, and I don't care. I know that my stomach is flat and smooth because she is touching it. I know that my chest is wide and strong, that my face is lean, my features regular. My mouth. My eyebrows. My forehead.
Where was she touching him now? His mind explored through his body to find the reassuring pressure of her fingers. Not here. Not there. There? No, but it must be close by. I can feel it. But I can't locate it.
"Thank you," Margaret said softly, and he was jolted from one dimension to another. She was not touching him at all. Still by his side, but sitting back on her heels, looking at him.
"Do you want the coffee now," she asked, "or, are you going back to Al's black room?"
The question brought him to full consciousness. Shit, but he was excited! He looked down at himself. The throbbing erection seemed larger than he had ever noticed it before.
"The black room," he said, and his voice was shaking. If only Olivia were still in there! He would show her how a real man can make love! Not once, either. Maybe more than twice!
He got up in one movement, struggling into his clothes with a sense of desperation. Margaret was still in the same position on the studio couch when he finally got his pants zipped up over the almost-painful resistance of his sex.
"Thank you, Margaret," he said, hoarsely. "I'll see you later."
When he walked into the glaring white room Perry realized it was more full of people than before. But, even through the crush of the crowd, he could see Olivia, now fully dressed, sipping at a glass.
Their eyes met as he came across toward her. There was only one way for him to proceed now. Ask her to go back into the black room with him. She looked just as ready for it as he was.
As he came up to her, he was aware that she no longer looked at his face, but directly down at his pants. Her half-smile became an arch sneer.
"It looks like Margaret is about to paint another portrait," Olivia announced, loud enough to make half a dozen heads turn. "You better get into the other room before that black thing breaks off. You timed it just right, Daddy. There's nothing but white stuff in there now."
Perry tried to keep the expression on his face unchanged. The desire to hit her was almost beyond his control.
He turned, and found a familiar face close by; one of the fellows he had talked to for a while.
"Do you know where Al is?" Perry asked him.
"Still in there, I guess."
"Would you give him a message when he comes out?"
"Sure. Are you leaving?"
"Yes. Just tell Al if he wants to get in touch with me, our phone is still listed. Will you do that?"
"Sure. I hope we'll be seeing you again."
"That depends on Al," he said. And a few other things, he added to himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Perry!" Go away. "Perry, wake up."
"I don't care if it's the whole North Vietnamese Army. I'm not moving."
"Perry, son. There's someone on the telephone for you."
He opened his eyes. "Hi, Mother." It had been an awful dream.
"Didn't you hear me, dear? A telephone call. It's for you."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know. A young man. He sounds white."
"A lot of people are," he said, and sat up. "It must be Al."
"Who is Al?
"Al Parks. I went to high school with him. We ran into each other last night. Tell him I'll be right there."
She started to go out, then stopped. "Aren't you wearing pajamas? It's not nice to sleep in your underwear. You know better than that."
"I'm not sleeping in my underwear, Mother," he said calmly, and looked at her.
"All right," she said. "I'll tell him."
When the door closed, Perry threw back the covers and looked at himself. A healthy young man in every way, but a total nothing when it came to getting the girl he wanted. Or any other girl, either. Probably everyone else at the party had had their sex last night, but all he'd received was a hot massage and a cold shoulder.
He still had the hard-on to prove it. Somehow, in the bright light of day it was no longer a desperate urge. It might not be hot pants at all; just the need to take a good piss.
He got up, and went to the closet. The unfamiliar room made him feel as if he were in a stranger's house. But the sight of his old, red plaid bathrobe reassured him. He put it on.
Out in the hall, he had to stop to remember where the bathroom was. While he was relieving himself, his mother's voice called to him again through the door.
"You don't have to hurry. He left a number for you to call."
"Okay."
"Shall I start breakfast for you?"
"I'm going to take a shower first. Give me fifteen minutes."
The apartment was attractive, and everything in it brand new, but Perry still felt out of place. Even after more than a year's absence, and almost two years of service, he still remembered the old place, and kept reaching for things that were no longer there. The move had been his mother's dream for years, and when he had arrived home in the middle of the night before last, he could see her price even through the tearfully happy greeting. She kept referring to it as 'our home,' and pointed out the modern kitchen, the terrace, and the view of the river before she got around to asking him anything about Vietnam.
He didn't mean to resent it, but he hac to refrain from reminding her this was only a city housing project, not a luxury building; and that the river was the Harlem, not the East or the Hudson. He had never been unduly proud of living on Amsterdam Avenue, and there was no reason to object to the wide, clean lawns, the brightly lighted streets and the comparative quiet of the new neighborhood.
Still, she could never keep this apartment any cleaner than the old one. And, he bet the move had made his little brother, Mike, feel that he had abruptly been taken away from his friends. He guessed that twelve year olds were able to make these adjustments easier than older people, and by the time the boy was back from summer camp, there would be no real problems for him.
By the time he had dressed, he could smell coffee and bacon. The sun-bright yellow kitchen was cheering. A big glass of orange juice tasted like the room looked.
"Where did you go last night?" his mother asked brightly. She was a past-master of the art of the 'I'm just-asking' which really was loaded with possible comment.
"Downtown." She would have to keep asking questions to get the facts from him.
She put the bacon and eggs in front of him, and checked the toaster.
"Did you see a show?"
"No." He started to eat. She had taught him never to talk with food in his mouth, so this was bound to limit his answers.
"Oh." The toast finally popped up. She put it on a small plate, then poured coffee.
"Did you come in late? I didn't hear you."
He swallowed first, taking a sip of coffee. "About one o'clock. I almost took the wrong subway. I was starting to go back to the old apartment. Force of habit."
She smiled. "That's a habit we can all break happily. This is where we belong. I feel so proud every time I come home. I just wish your father had lived to enjoy this."
But would he have enjoyed this? Perry really didn't think so. Some people would have called Charles Turner a typical old-time Negro; maybe even an Uncle Tom. The description was not really fair or understanding. Perry's father had been a quiet, hard-working, physical person. A construction man who had worked his way up from laborer to foreman. His roots had been as deeply planted as any of the buildings he had worked on, and as permanent. He had lived in only three places in his entire life. A farm in Florida, his parents' home on 131st Street near Lenox Avenue, and the apartment on Amsterdam Avenue that he had moved into the day after he and Virginia Ferman were married. Certainly he had never expected to live any place else. Perry suspected there might have been some strong arguments from his dad against this change of address.
Now, it was just a guess. Charles Turner had been killed by. a toppling construction crane when Perry was sixteen. Virginia Turner had put almost all of the insurance and union benefit money into the bank, and returned to nursing. She said the savings were to put Perry and Michael through college, but Perry had never doubted she had part of it earmarked for a brand new apartment.
What had surprised Perry was the location. He had been sure his mother would try for the better sections of the Bronx or Queens. It had not registered in him how uncomfortable she would feel in an integrated area.
It wasn't that she felt the same as her husband. He, too, worked side by side with white, but came home to a black neighborhood. He simply believed that it was easier to live with other blacks.
Perry's mother had a stronger reason. She didn't trust white people. They were born not liking blacks. You were safer with your own kind.
"I saw Al last night," he said.
"Some sensitive person," she said. "The first night home and you go chasing after your white friends. What about Cora?"
He hardly knew what to say. "It was by chance I met Al," he said. "You know Cora and I have been finished a long time. Why is none of your business."
"You can't trust whitey," she said. "No matter how nice he is to you, he's always got a reason up his sleeve."
"That's not true," he countered angrily.
"I'll leave you now," she said with a sigh. "I have to go early to the hospital." She kissed him goodbye and walked out the door. Left alone with his solitude he mulled over the situation.
His mind drifted to Vicky, her body, her white skin, and the wonderful smile he could see on her face, and open smile that invited him to be her lover. He wanted her. But he was trapped by the old curse of the black man.
To want white flesh was to fall into the very role all the crackers had for him. Yet he wanted Vicky because she was Vicky, not because she was white.
He thought of what it might be like to fuck her, to have her naked body next to his with not a molecule of air between them. He was with her in his room, lying on the bed, hot for her lithe frame that wriggled sensuously into his nude flesh.
He fondled her cunt, wiping his fingers along the snaking walls that curved and twined about her insides. The lusciousness of her tender flesh was superb, and he needed more and more of her at each second.
Her fingers were not idle. They swept in easy strokes over his wrinkled sac, titillating his outer skin and his balls with the effects of their ministrations. The sheer delight that gave him had his cock as hard as steel, and he wished he could fuck her for three days without end.
She rammed a pair of fingers into his ass-hole, wiggling them hard from side to side. There was inside him a feeling of pleasure so great he wondered where it had come from. The other fucks he had in his life were nothing compared to what was going on at this time.
Her fingers in his ass-hole played a tune of pleasure that fled to the tip of his toes and to his brain. He was surfeited with the deep delights she readily gave to him, as though all was his due. Her touch was golden, warm, lustful and aggressive.
He fiddled with her tits, noticing the contrast between his black skin and her white flesh. His touch at her nipples made her shake all over. He watched how the lines of her body writhed with sensual lust as the effects of his touches to her tits rambled across the skein of her nerves.
His cock was hard now, streamlined in its male solidness. It was big and black, and the thought of pressing it into those white walls of flesh was invigorating. He worked harder at her cunt with his fingers, pushing against her membranes, trying to get her juices flowing so that she would soon be well oiled enough for him to get inside her.
He wiped his tips across the area that surrounded her clit. The incredible lust he felt for her burned like a raging fire in his brain. In her eyes he could see a light that meant she was well pleased with the affection he stormed into her, and he was glad to know he was giving her a good time. The sheer beauty of her nude body made him tremble with delight each time he glanced at it.
The moans from her half-closed lips reached his ears, thrilling him to the marrow. His face pressed close to hers, at times merely rubbing skin upon skin the way animals do when they play, at other times kissing, lips to lips, with their tongues sweeping along and touching each other. Every time he touched the tip of her oral member with his own, a huge jolt of pleasure rippled through his face.
She fondled his balls and his straightened cock without ceasing. The lustful pleasures she drilled into him were everywhere, all encompassing. She could have done no better than she actually was doing.
He felt his need for her reaching the point of no return, that point where he would have to have his dick plunged in her cunt if he was going to stay sane. Her walls still were slow with their juices, so he worked frantically, massaging them with a furious stroking to get them ready for his insertion.
She got her walls in rhythm with his stroking of her so that he could better get her juices flowing. When he went in with his fingers, she pressed in with her membranes, and when he went out she opened her cuntal walls so that he could get that way fast. Then he plunged once more into her steaming pussy, soothing the walls that waited for his cock to intervene in their tunnel of love.
He was frantic. The raging passion in his jerking pole told him he had not long to go before he spewed his gism all over the place whether or not he was inside her pussy. He felt at last the oils from her walls coating his finger well. That told him the time had come.
He mounted her, dragging his skin across her and feeling how good it was to have her nakedness that near his own. Into her pussy he drove his cock, delving deep into the walls that were soft and refreshing. His senses became aware of all the succulent delights that trammeled them as he dealt stroke after stroke to her membranes.
Harder and harder he blasted his cock against her snaking walls. The touch of her cunt hairs on the hairs about his cock was titillating him each time he drove all the way inside her. The incredible fire that blazed in his balls was a sign that he was reaching his come at a rapid rate.
Vicki squeezed her cunt tight against his prick when it snaked into her passages. She had a tight cunt in the first place, a compact one like the girls in Asia had, and when she worked to make it tighter the results were exhilarating. Her cuntal walls grew slipperier as her oils flowed faster than they had at the beginning.
He slammed his stomach into her time after time. The slapping sound their flesh made when they clashed their bodies together echoed through the room. He heard her sighs above the sweaty pounding that their skins made when they hit one against the other.
Each second he thought he was going to come, but no matter how hard he tried there was something holding him back. Each second he was certain the next thrust would bring his scum spurting from his cock like water from a fire hose, and then he would be disappointed that he did not reach that level as he again thrust into her snatch.
His desire became stronger as the come he wanted eluded him. What was the matter? Couldn't he make it with a white cunt? Was that what was in his head and stopping him from coming?
The harder he worked, the farther away from his come he seemed to get. Vicky had come already, and her cream covered his cock. In his struggles to climax his own body he had not even noticed her jerking and thrashings as she felt all her insides turn to sheer glory.
With greater speed than ever he blasted his cock against her walls, slipping it quickly through her cunt lips and into the deepest realm of her walls. He was closer every second, yet just as far away as when he began. Something would not let him shoot off, held him back from coming when he needed to like nothing he ever needed before.
Then he came, and the pleasure inside him was fantastic. He thrashed against her naked flesh with all the lust in his black body. He put his hands to his crotch and felt the gism hot against his touch.
Perry woke from his dream, his daydream, to find he was covered with come. He had jacked off thinking about her cunt. He felt ashamed to know he had to get his rocks off that way. He cleaned up and dialed the number that his mother had left for him to call.
"Mr. Parks is not in," said the voice at the end of the line, when he asked for Al.
"Will you tell him Perry Turner called back?"
"Perry," the voice said. "This is Vicky. What happened last night."
"Nothing," he said.
"Listen. Al wants to see you. Come down later today. He'll be in till late."
"Do you know what he wants to see me about?" he asked.
"I don't think it's anything special. He hoped to get to talk to you for a while. He was sorry you left so early."
"How late did the party last?"
"Well, most of the guests had gone by two o'clock."
He thought she was going to add more explanation, but there was only a long pause. Then, "Do you have something else planned?"
"No. I'm pretty much on my own as far as time is concerned."
"Then come on down. You'll get to see how the best Village paper operates."
"All right. Why not. Where are you located?"
"Do you know how to get back to the apartment? To St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue?"
"Sure."
"Well, we're right on Second Avenue, about two blocks down." She gave him the number. "You won't be able to miss the sign on our door."
He didn't miss it.
The building entrance had double metal doors painted purple, with the name "East Village Alternative" in a wild, multi-colored script that was close to unreadable. Under the letters, occupying the full width of both doors, was an enormous circular design that he had to look at a second time in order to decipher. It was a wheel of naked human figures, engaging in a complicated and continuous round of sexual contact. Almost every heterosexual and homosexual act was being graphically performed with complete abandon and more concentration. But then the most shocking thing about this piece of art, to Perry's mind, was the fact that it was so boldly displayed on a public street. Things had changed; even in the Village.
He was suddenly embarrassed to be standing there staring at the erotic symbol, and was about to push through the doors when he noticed the words following the outer curve of the design. It was apparently the paper's slogan. 'A weekly interchange of ideas,' it read, 'devoted to ultimate freedom of expression.' He was sure Al had written that line and conceived the illustration. It was a typical example of his odd combination of irony and seriousness.
A sign on the wall inside directed him to the third floor. He could hear typewriters and conversation before he got halfway up the steep old stairway.
The third floor defied any concept he'd ever had of a business office. At first, he thought perhaps the guests from the party had simply relocated for their daytime activities.
The entire floor was a series of open, room-like spaces; no doors, and not too many interior walls left standing. The desks, tables, and chairs looked like cast-offs from the worst part of the Harlem ghetto, and most were concealed beneath endless clutter. Stacks of newspapers, piles of scratch paper, pads of ruled note paper ... posters, pamphlets ... almost every printed item imaginable. The walls, too, were festooned with posters, notices, flyers pinned, pasted, or apparently flung at random to fill an empty area.
The smell of ink was overpowering. The noise of talking and typewriting was augmented by rock music coming from somewhere on the floor, playing at top volume.
One of two teenage girls seated at desks at the top of the steps started to ask Perry if she could help him, when Vicky appeared. Her trim, well-dressed figure was in shocking contrast to the jumbled, disheveled background. She was wearing a neat, light blue dress which made everything and everyone around her look crumpled and dirty.
"You found it," she said smiling, as he came up close to him and took hold of his arm. "Let me make some fast intros."
She turned toward the two girls, who were now joined by a long-haired boy who had just walked in from the back. "People, this is Perry Turner, a good friend of Al's." She rattled off some names, but Perry didn't try to catch them.
"Groovy," one of the girls said.
"Pleased ta meetcha," the other nodded.
The boy raised two fingers in a V sign and muttered, "Peace."
"Al will be free shortly," Vicky said to Perry. "Let me show you my office, if you can call it that."
He followed her through several of the incredibly cluttered areas. Then, burning a corner, he knew they had reached their destination. The space was dominated by a big, old-fashioned window which was sparkling clean. It looked out on Second Avenue, and the sun was just starting to shine through. There were two walls, and an enormous square pillar which defined a roughly square area. Every surface facing this office was painted a light blue, almost identical to the color of her dress.
Just above the height of the window, a false ceiling arrangement had been made of heavy paperboard, hung on wires attached to the walls. It was the same blue, and had reproduced on it the same circular design which was on the downstairs doors. The sight of that bothered Perry, but he had to admit to himself that it didn't appear either as blatant or suggestive in this spot. He wondered whether it was there as a symbol of the paper, or because she had suggested it. He tried not to picture her prostrate before Al in the black room. y
Perhaps the most striking aspect of her office was its absolute cleanliness. Although the desk and chairs were old, they shone with wax. Several filing cabinets, secondhand though they were, were spotless. And the top of her desk looked like that of any executive in a good office. Her phone was white; the only one like it in the place, he noticed.
"Are you sure we're in the right place?" he asked her.
She smiled broadly. "Al calls me his over ground employee. I take care of all the contact with the world outside. We have a lot of advertising from regular businesses, and it makes them feel ... more secure, I suppose, to deal with someone who doesn't fit their picture of the typical hippy."
"Do they come here sometimes?" Perry asked.
"A lot of the local Village business people do. Theaters, banks, the better restaurants. I've even had advertising agency men stop in. As far as they know, I'm the Business Manager of the paper."
"Are you?"
"No. I keep a lot of the records, and I make the bank deposits and payroll checks ... but Al is basically responsible for the financial end of the operation. The production and printing runs into a lot of money and details I'd know nothing about."
Vicky sat down behind the desk, and Perry took one of the chairs facing her.
"How do you keep these visitors from seeing the rest of the place, to say nothing of the employees?"
"We don't. That's the whole idea. No matter what someone might think of their appearance or their age, they have to admit the group is capable of putting a rather professional paper on the stands every week. That's one of Al's basic aims: To break down square prejudices against youth, non-conformity, self-expression. If a boy wants to wear his hair down to his shoulders, it doesn't mean there's nothing of value inside his head. If a girl would rather get a clean high on marijuana than sick on liquor, it doesn't mean she's about to go straight to hell."
"Probably not," Perry said. It sounded logical, if not completely convincing. But whatever was shaky about her statements, he had not come down here to have a discussion of morals.
* * *
He didn't come here to see me, Vicky thought.
She had been watching him closely as they talked. Perry had a very expressive face, as most intelligent people had, and she could see his sudden lack of interest in what she was explaining. like a lot of men, she imagined he reserved serious talk for when he was with other men. Women were for other things. Not too many other things, at that. She didn't often agree with Olivia's estimate of the world, but what Olivia had said about Perry this morning was probably close to the truth.
Al had been extolling Perry's intellectual virtues; telling how he expected that P.T. would be willing to write some interesting articles about Vietnam and life in the Marine Corps.
"Don't count on it, Al," Olivia proclaimed in her most knowing, world-weary manner. "That black boy has no more on his mind than getting all the free and easy ass he can before he has to go back and play soldier some more."
"You don't know him," Al insisted.
"Hah," she mocked. "If there's one thing in this world Olivia Warren knows well, it's males. They come in three varieties: the thinkers, the talkers and the fuckers. The thinkers are the ones who make the world go round. There are very few of them, Al. You know that because you're one of them. The talkers are most of the men in the world. They keep talking so they won't have to think and they won't have to do anything. They fill the offices, the suburbs, and the bars. The fuckers are very special. They think about fucking, they talk about fucking, and they do most of the real fucking that gets done. That's your friend, P.T. If Margaret hadn't gotten to him first, he'd still be in the other room, plowing anything that moved."
Al had only shrugged his shoulders. Vicky had hoped then that Olivia was wrong. She wasn't so sure at this moment.
"Let me see if Al is free yet," she said, getting up. "I'll be right back."
Al's office was far back at the end of the building. The path from Vicky's office to his was something of an obstacle course, but after six weeks she could navigate it without any problem. It was odd how quickly you became used to an entirely different set of circumstances, she mused. Not only working in this fascinating office, but her entire new life in the East Village.
At odd moments, she was aware of a sudden sense of fear or dislocation. What if her parents found out the truth? Yet, eventually, she would have to tell them. Eventually? The last time she had talked to them, the main subject of their side of the conversation had been plans for her return to college. Breaking the news was not going to be easy. But following their plans instead of her own, she knew would be harder on her than her decision would be on them.
There would be tears and recriminations, for sure. But they had always showed her a tremendous amount of respect; had let her make up her mind in so many decisions, from the time she was old enough to make them. That, of course, had been the easiest course for them; the path of least resistance. Still, she had never had to fight too hard to get her own way.
Was that good or bad, she thought briefly. Come on, now, Vicky, let's not get psyched up on reasons and causes. You know why you're doing what you're doing.
She could see that Al still had the same two men at his desk before she was all the way across the office, but she thought it better to let him know Perry was here. She had noticed that Al kind of lit up when he spoke about Perry this morning, and there was no mistaking his pleasure at seeing Perry last night.
Al saw her approaching, and called a greeting. The other two men turned to look at her briefly, and their conversation stopped.
"You want me, Vicky?" Al asked.
"Only to tell you Perry Turner is here."
"Where's he waiting?"
"In my office."
"Damn!" he said. "I didn't think he'd get down so soon." He stood up. "Excuse me a couple of minutes, fellows. I'll be right back."
Their replies were only grunts.
"Have you eaten lunch yet?" he asked Vicky, as they started back across the office.
"Not really. Why?"
"I thought you could help Perry kill some time till I'm free."
She remembered something. "I don't know if he wants to eat," she said, "but I have a better idea. I have to go uptown to the other apartment and get some things. He could come with me, and that would take an hour or more."
"Great. Let me suggest it. It'll sound better that way."
"All right."
Perry was standing at the window behind her desk when they got back, looking down at the street. He turned at Al's greeting.
"You ran out on me," Al said.
"Not really." Perry smiled. "I just ran out of energy."
"It's my fault," Al answered. "I could have waited until later to start smoking. Or, better yet, you could have joined me. You just don't know how it recharges you."
Vicky's phone rang. She picked it up, and tried to listen to both the caller and to the two men in her office. She could follow the conversation in front of her by watching Perry's face.
He seemed immediately more relaxed talking with Al. Then, she became aware of the whole man inside the fresh, short-sleeved shirt and light-colored slacks. He must have an excellent physique. She had not really noticed last night. Perhaps, this outfit was cut closer to his body. The bare forearms had long, prominent muscles, and the shape of his chest was partly revealed through the shirt.
No wonder Margaret had arranged her single guest's portrait preview as Olivia called it. The more serious of the twins disclaimed any sexual purpose to this all-over touching, but Vicky had been thoroughly aroused the night she had experienced it. She had fully expected Margaret to make a lesbian advance to her before the session was over. But she hadn't then, or at any time since, including the actual painting sessions when Vicky had posed nude. She knew Margaret had sex with men, so perhaps the girl was being perfectly honest about the purpose of this contact.
Vicky knew she could never touch a man like that and not want to have him make love to her completely. And, even while answering some idiotic question of the telephone caller, she knew she wanted to have that kind of total contact with Perry Turner.
She could almost feel his skin against her palms as she studied the partly-revealed lines of his body. A smooth-arching muscle here, a curved one there, a tightly bunched one at this sport.
Her call was ended, and she put the phone down, feeling light-headed.
"Vicky," Al said, "I've told P.T. I won't be able to get loose till after five, five-thirty or so. We're going to make it for dinner. Could he help you bring down that suitcase of clothes from the other apartment?"
"That would be wonderful," she said, directly to Perry. "If you don't mind. It would be kind of heavy for me to handle by myself."
"Glad to be useful," he said.
Maybe more than you think, thought Vicki.
Maybe much more useful.
CHAPTER SIX
It wasn't until they were about to get off the subway train that Vicky noticed Perry's uneasiness. She looked at him to tell him the next stop was theirs, and saw that he was sitting with his gaze aimed down toward the floor, his face tight. He only nodded when she spoke, and when she stood up to go to the doors, she thought he was not going to follow.
He did, but only after she had stepped out onto the station platform. He still did not look directly at her, but hesitated, waiting to see which way she would walk. He went up the other side of the steps leading to the exit gates, and out through a different door than the one she took.
He continued this odd avoidance until they were up on the street, and then stayed at least five feet to one side of her.
"This is it," she had to call to him when they came up the entrance of the apartment house. Again, she thought he might keep right on walking, and saw an expression ... almost anger in his eyes as she held the front door open for him.
She didn't speak until they were in the elevator.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No," he answered through gritted teeth, "but a lot of other people think there is."
She thought about it for a minute, but it made no sense to her.
"What is it, Perry? Did I do something I shouldn't have?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
She felt a sinking sensation. "What? Please tell me."
The car door opened. She was waiting for him to answer, and was startled when he asked, "Is this your floor?"
"What?" she looked toward the hall. "Oh, yes." The door started to slide shut, but Perry reacted swiftly, and caught it with his hand. It opened again. She stepped out, turning to the left, and he followed.
She waited until they were both in the apartment.
"Won't you please tell me? If I did something to hurt you, it was thoughtless of me. I want to know what it is."
"Very simple, Vicky. You took a ride home on the subway in the bright light of day ... with a black man."
The anger he was showing was not feigned. But, she could not imagine what had caused it, or why it was directed at her.
"You'll have to explain that to me. I don't understand what you're talking about."
"Maybe it's because you're not black."
"I'm willing to learn," she shot back at him. "Not all blondes are dumb."
"Oh, shit!" He turned away from her, shaking his head. "I know you've been living in the Village for six weeks. Where did you come from before that? Mars?"
"As a matter-of-fact," she said coldly, "I came down from New England where I go to college. But my home was in White Plains for the first eighteen years of my life. That might be out in the sticks to a city man like you, but we consider ourselves pretty civilized."
"You said it, Vicky. 'White Plains.' It's entirely possible that the people in White Plains are the most civilized in the whole fucking world ... but they are missing one of the big city's most unique experiences: They have never been fully exposed to prejudice and hatred. And, apparently they don't recognize it even when they see it. At least you don't."
She sat hard in one of the chairs, angry and confused, still totally unable to make sense of his words or emotions.
"Stop talking to me in riddles!" she shouted. "I haven't the least idea what you're angry about, no matter what you think."
"You didn't see that old couple on the train? And the cop standing at the end of the car?"
"The old couple?" She tried to recall. "You mean the ones across from us with the shopping bags?"
"That's right. And the cop?"
"I didn't notice him."
"Well, he noticed us. And so did that man and woman."
"Look," she said, "it's not the first time they saw a black man with a white girl. What's it to you what they think."
"They think I want to fuck you."
"Don't you?"
"They think that's all I want to do. That's their mind. They can't conceive that I might like you because you're Vicky instead of because you're white."
"Have you ever had a white girl?"
"No," he said.
"Well, I want to be your first. I want you. That makes things different."
He was confused by her straightforwardness. To touch her was to violate all the rules that the whites made for him, worse, to violate his mother's rules and the thinking of his father, one of the few men he could still respect in this crazy world. But her appeal was too much for him. He lost sight of her white skin and saw only the beautiful woman whose personality was inside it.
He grabbed her and kissed her hard. His cock was throbbing already from the impulses he had to screw her cunt to the end of his rope. She was soft to his touch, much softer than she had been in his fantasy before he called her. Her body, lithe and fresh, pushed into his. He wanted to be naked with her, but the barriers against that were too strong still. Perhaps he would overcome them if he could kiss her a little longer. Then his desire would conquer all his reason, and there would be nothing stopping them from having the free and easy fuck they both desired.
He rubbed his lips against hers. The sweet smell of her breath entered his nostrils. He could see the fine lines of her face as he was close to it. Her eyes were clear, easy to see into, and they were open to him with a hunger for his cock that he could have read from across a football field.
Her chin had a sweeping arch that caught his vision. It pleased him to rub against her while he was kissing her frantically. His cock wavered between getting hard and staying down. To get hard now would mean he had to be naked with her, but there was that old enemy, fear, between them, and he could do nothing to beat it down at the moment.
She sensed the problem that was in his head. She wanted his cock so badly her cunt was shaking inside as it waited for him to enter her, but she knew it was best to let him get naked in his own time. To hurry him would be a death blow to his pride, for he was fighting against not just himself, but against centuries of hatred and murder that characterized all the relations his race had with hers.
Her fingers played on the outside of his pants, rubbing against them in his crotch so that the pressure could be felt inside, and she could tell from the way he jerked and shook that his balls were getting her message loud and clear. His body was hard all over, the kind of body she expected from a Marine who had been a year fighting in the jungles.
There was on it none of the flab that so easily accumulated on even the heartiest male who stayed stateside in his comfort and relaxation. There was in him a power, a male power, that was animal-like. She hated the thought in a way, because she had been told before that blacks were like animals, but she meant to think good things of him when that crossed her mind, meant to see him as a person who had respect for his body, and that was good.
His kisses rained pleasure into her lips. With his tongue he ministered to her outer lips, soothing her deliciously each time he stroked it across her flesh. His oral implement was soothing, also, when he swept it inside her mouth, caressing her inner cheeks and the under part of her gums.
Over and over she let him wipe his pleasure into her lips and her own tongue. His breath was hot and heavy, and she knew that soon he would be well-enough aroused to take her, naked and squirming, writhing into him while his hard cock blasted pleasure into her cunt.
She fingered his balls through his pants some more. She could feel the vacillation of his cock as he wavered in his decision. Agonizing minutes went by while she wondered when he would finally come to the point where her white skin would no longer have any effect on him except to rouse him to real action by its softness.
His cock grew hard, then went down again. It repeated this action several times while they lay together and stroked each other. She noticed with satisfaction that each time it went down it stayed a little harder than it had stayed the time before. That meant he was getting to the point where he could function as a man with a woman, not as a black man with a white woman.
His kisses drilled succulent delight all through her body. The feelings inside her were surprising, for she had expected to enjoy him, but she had well overstepped the limits of what she thought she would feel for him. He had her heart entwined about his own so effectively there was no way she could escape. That very fact meant he had, also, her cunt, when he wanted it and where he wanted it. Her cunt was his.
The luxury of being with a woman was fascinating. His lust burned with fiery rage inside his hanging balls. The touch of her fingertips through his pants was electrifying. He knew that if only he could get the balls to strip their fuck would be perfect.
He struggled against all the fears that he suddenly realized his parents and his friends had drilled into him from the time he was young. It had been easy to shove them to the background before he got a chance at white cunt, but now that one lay hot under his outstretched body he suddenly realized what his father had meant, that his ass was grass if he was caught in the act. Nothing she could say would save him from the ire of the whites who accused him. She was white, he was black. They could never see an inch farther than that.
Still, her alluring flesh pulled him to her. He felt the immense softness of her body as he rubbed his big-boned frame against her. The soothing feeling she got from that echoed and re-echoed in his ears in the form of well-spaced sighs that told all he needed to know about whether or not he was treating her right.
She kissed him harder. She wanted to feel his cock inside her snatch, but first she had to show him such devotion that he could not remember anything but the love she had for him and the love he had for her. His cock was almost completely hard under his pants, and that encouraged her to keep at him, to make certain he never let her down a second.
He fondled her tits through her dress, electrified that he had dared that much. When she sighed some more with the pleasure she felt some of the fears that had manifested themselves so strongly, recoiled. His openness became more ready to deal with her the way a man wants to deal with a woman. But not yet. He still had not ability to totally bridge the gap that centuries of fear and hatred had dug between them.
Vicky sensed that he was holding back precisely because he was a sensitive person who could not batter down obstacles with the brutality that soldiers used against the enemy. He had to work his way through things, had to feel his way around the hedges and the boulders that blocked his paths.
She fingered his balls all the more, trying to make his cock harden to its ultimate point. She ran her tips along the huge bulge in his pants where his cock was stored until he brought it out ready for use. The lust she felt for him was unbounded, as she knew his must be for her, but there was little she could do to make him act until he was ready.
Encouraged by her sighs, Perry continued the caresses he gave to her tits, still refusing to take her clothes even an inch from her body. Her writhing underneath him told him that she was ready for anything from him, anything he cared to give her. He knew she wanted his cock, and he hated himself for holding back on her.
He hated, too, those who had made these fears so real in him. If not for them he could have a fuck like he had always wanted. His body pushed into hers, wanting her naked flesh with a hunger so deep it seemed to come from somewhere outside himself.
She had to help him, had to let him see he could be naked with her and not fear destruction by his enemy. She unbuttoned his shirt and ran her fingers along his powerful chest. He shivered as the touches from her tips titillated his naked skin. His fears fled into the darkness as he sensed that she could do the same thing to him all over if he were naked with her.
She unsnapped his pants and brought down the zipper. Stretching her arm to get her hand in his underwear she grasped his cock by the head and pulled it from his body. It felt so large and hot to her touch.
Her caresses there thrilled him without bounds. This was a woman, one he could live for and fuck till the end of the world. Her touch at his crotch was utterly delightful, having nothing in it that beggared for pleasure. His cock throbbed horribly, lusting for her cunt again like it had lusted for so many others since his first taste of snatch.
Kissing her passionately, he wriggled his hands to her zipper, trying to pull it open. She was lying in a way that made the teeth bind against each other when he pulled on the handle. Rolling aside, he loosed the grip of her weight, and he prepared to take her dress off her.
The telephone bell jangled through the apartment, making both of them jump, like two people coming awake from a deep sleep. She tightened her hold on his flesh, even as she felt him pull his hand away from her other one.
The telephone rang again.
"You'd better answer it," he said, the words barely audible.
She shook her head, no.
The bell sounded a third time. Was it getting louder?
"Be smart, Vicky."
She got up quickly and answered it just as the fourth ring began. "Yes?"
"Victoria, is that you?" Oh, shit! "Yes, it is, mother."
"You're not ill, are you."
"No, why?"
"I called your office," Mrs. Rushton said, "and they told me you had gone home."
"No, they misunderstood. I had forgotten something I needed, I just came home to get it. I'm going back."
"Right away?"
Vicky hesitated at the odd question. "Why do you ask?"
"I thought we could spend half an hour or so together. I haven't seen you for three weeks, you know."
"Are you in the city?"
"Yes. In fact I'm about six blocks from your apartment. I thought I would come over there. But, only if you have the time."
She could feel the color flooding her face, her entire body. She tried to grasp at some excuse or alternative. There was none. There should be none. Whatever she might come up with would only hurt her mother, and that was not her aim.
"All right, Mother, I'll wait for you. How long before you'll be here?"
"Ten minutes at the most, dear. I'm so glad. I'll see you soon."
Vicky put the phone down, taking a deep breath before she turned around. Perry was still sitting on the couch, his shirt and pants wide open, his erect penis still pointing upward from his undershorts. Only now, he was looking at her with a flat expression.
"It's my mother. She's in town, for some reason, and found out I had come home. Here. I couldn't tell her not to come over."
He nodded, but remained motionless. She tried not to look at him.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I told you I didn't want to answer the phone. No, it's better that I did. She thought I had come home sick. She would have come over to find out what was wrong."
"And she would have found you and me in bed," he said dully. "I hope not."
"Why not, Vicky? What difference would it make? She would see that you were not being seduced. That you were an ... equal partner, I think the phrase was. If I shouldn't let other people's opinions bother me, I don't think you should, either."
Why was he doing this? "I said I'm sorry it turned out like this, Perry. Please....don't sit there like that."
He began to button his shirt. "What you mean is, please, Perry, put your dick back into your pants, put your clothes back into place, and put yourself out of sight. Isn't that what you mean, Vicky?" He stood up, closed the top of his pants, but left his enormous organ outside of his trousers, pointing at her.
"It would be a little difficult to explain why there was a man in my apartment when I was supposed to have come home to get something I forgot."
"Maybe it would," Perry said, finally pushing himself inside his clothing, and zipping the fly, "But it would seem a lot easier to explain if the man was white."
"That only proves that my mother is prejudiced," she said.
"So is mine," he answered. "But what I thought you were trying to teach me was how to show prejudiced people that they are wrong.
You don't do that by conforming to their rules. Right?" He was at the door.
"I'm sorry," she murmured.
"So am I," he agreed. "If you had been right, I would have learned something wonderful about people. But you were wrong, and all I learned is how much a person can fool himself. You're not honest, Vicky. You're just easy to get!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
Where the hell am I going, Perry said to himself.
He had walked as far as the subway entrance, then realized he had no destination in mind. He looked at his watch. If he went back to the Village, he would still have to waste an hour or more before Al would be free for supper.
Maybe he should head uptown for his mother's apartment. And Harlem. As far as he could see it, his mother was right. There could be no understanding between white and black in the normal, easy social sense. They were brought up differently, and would never be able to erase the consciousness of that difference.
Oh, there might be occasional exceptions. Perhaps, Margaret was one of them. Or maybe, it was just that her purposes were not the same as Vicky's. Margaret had honestly wanted to explore his body, to become familiar with it in the most direct way possible. Vicky, obviously was out to satisfy her sexual curiosity; to prove that blondes can have more men than anyone else.
Why was he making jokes, he asked himself. He'd probably come closer to having sex more times in twenty-four hours than any man in New York. But there he was, still at Lexington Avenue and 96th Street, hard-up and hung-up. If everyone thought he was so damned sexy, why the hell didn't somebody lay him?
A flood of desire pushed through him again, and he suddenly realized he was soaked with perspiration. It made the decision for him, and he went down the steps to the uptown platform. He would go home, take a shower, maybe get his rocks off, too ... and stay the hell away from all parts of the white world. Including Al and his mixed-up friends.
He could go out tonight to one of the bars or night clubs in Harlem and have himself one helluva time. Or, he could call Cora. Hell, why was he wasting his time with all these complicated, phony-philosophical people when there was a girl waiting for him? A girl, ready to make love to him on his terms!
The thought of her increased his excitement, but the knowledge of her availability made the urge less demanding.
The train came roaring into the station, slid to a stop, and popped open invitingly. He stepped into the car and took a seat by the door. When he looked up, he was greeted by an interesting sight: Directly across from him was a girl, small, rounded and smiling.
She was Puerto" Rican, one of the dark mixtures of Spanish, Indian, and Negro blood which could combine into real beauty. She was sitting with her legs crossed, which made her short skirt ride up, temptingly close to her crotch. Her light-weight blouse revealed hard, young breasts, unconfined by a brassiere. If she had on a little too much make-up, and her black hair was too stiffly set, she still projected an image of sensuality.
He smiled back at her, and she uncrossed her legs, moving them slightly apart. She was wearing nothing under the skirt, either, and he could see the dark mat of hair there. His erection was pounding harder than before, and he glanced quickly to either side to make sure it was not being noticed. Much to his surprise and relief, there was no one else in the car.
Perry reacted 'swiftly to the situation and the opportunity. He stood up, knowing she would see the excitement in his pants. He waited only a second or two, then crossed over to sit next to her. "Hello," he said.
"Where are you going?" she asked, her accent a smooth slurring of the language.
"Nowhere in particular."
"Would you like to come with me?"
"Where are you going?" he asked, lightly echoing her question.
"To my apartment."
"Do you live alone?"
She smiled. "No. But you can come with me, if you want."
She was wearing a strong, sweet perfume. It made him think of dark, warm places.
"I think I'd like to."
She smiled more broadly, and looked down at his pants.
"I think you will like to, very much. We go off at the next station."
He was surprised at how short she was: just about five feet. She walked quickly, slightly ahead of him, up onto the street, and made no conversation until they turned in at a small apartment house, about two blocks from the subway.
Inside the tiny vestibule, she turned to him. She was no longer smiling.
"Look, honey," she said flatly, "you have some money with you?"
Perry wasn't really surprised, but he became a bit wary.
"Yeah," he said airily, "I've got some money. How much were you thinking about?"
He could almost see a little adding machine in her mind start to operate. The stupid hookers were all the same. Instead of having a flat price, they would try to see how much they could hustle extra. He had learned about this kind of bargaining in Vietnam. "I charge twenty-five to most," she said, "but I think you're kinda special, so I make it twenty."
He reached for the handle of the outer door.
"Wait a minute," she said, her voice taking on an edge of urgency.
"What's the matter?"
"My girl friend is waiting for me," he said, pushing the door just a little bit open.
She grabbed at his arm. "I'm better than your girl friend. I give you the best time you ever had. I do it French, too. Very good."
French, shit! He didn't want a blow-job. He wanted a one-hundred percent up-the-snatch screw! Why couldn't any broad in this town come right to the point? The whores in Vietnam knew what you were paying them for. Even the pickups there figured it that way.
He swung around to her, grabbed her hand and pressed it against his crotch. She had shown him what she had, he was returning the favor.
"Ten bucks, honey," he said to her. "Ten bucks for as long as it takes me to come twice. I can spend all night with my girl friend for a subway fare, but I'm ready to go now, with no
French, no tricks, not even any conversation. Take it or leave it."
Her hand tightened on his organ. "Okay, handsome man." She reached over and pressed one of the call buttons several times. After a couple of seconds, the buzzer unlocked the inner door.
The woman who opened the door of the third floor apartment had tired eyes, bleached white hair, and smelled of cold cream and garlic. She was in her forties, wrapped in a lightweight robe of an incredibly ugly flowered pattern. She made no attempt to be friendly, just said to the girl, "Use the back room." Then she slammed and locked the apartment door as Perry followed the girl down the hall.
The back room was decorated as depressingly as the older woman; everything cheap, tinselly, over-designed. Dark window shades were pulled down, and the overhead light made the room as harsh as a subway platform. Perry tried to ignore the persistent odor of perspiration, and something more cloying. What did he expect, for ten dollars?
The girl put her little pocketbook down on the dresser, kicked off her shoes, and was out of her blouse and skirt in less than fifteen seconds. She lay down on the bed, her legs out straight, her hands by her sides.
He looked at her as he skimmed off his own clothes. She was built on a small frame, except for very wide hips. Her breasts were exceedingly firm and pointed, with small nipples. Her skin was smooth and even colored, not unlike Olivia's, but she had none of the other's conscious sexiness. She had too much weight on her body. He imagined in a very few years she would be irreversibly heavy, with a bulging belly which would make her look always pregnant.
She did not move when he came to the bed. He had made a strong bargain with her, and she was going to hold him to the letter of it. Nothing but fucking, and he would have to do all the work. So what? It was a live hole, instead of a sweaty palm.
Perry pushed her legs apart, and kneeled between them. He reached out with both hands to cover her breasts, forming to them, cupping them and gently kneading them, till he felt the tiny pressure from her nipples pressing into the palms of his hands. Her eyes were turned down away from him, and he knew she was trying hard not to react to what he would do. But she was young. Maybe twenty. Maybe less; and too new at this game to be able to control her physical reaactions, even if she kept her face, poker-blank.
His fingers took hold of the nipples, now fully distended, and twirled and teased them with a continuous circular motion ... drawing up on them, flicking them gently, pushing down against them. He could see her breath come faster, revealing the delicate cage of her ribs.
Keeping one hand at her breast, Perry moved the other over her stomach, brushing the skin lightly and smoothly, circling a fingertip in the tiny pocket of her navel, working slowly but inevitably toward the black patch of hair at the base of her belly.
Then, abruptly, he placed his hand directly over her crotch. He felt a quiver dance through her, and he was simultaneously aware that his erection had come fully up again.
What was he waiting for? What kind of a game was he playing with her? What was he trying to prove with the slow arousing? She was not Cora, or Olivia, or Vicky. She was a New York whore, and she had no interest in him beyond the ten-dollar deal she had made.
He reached under both her knees, bringing her legs and buttocks up from the bed, exposing the already parted lips of her vagina. He moved toward her. His rod was so stiff he had only to guide it with a shifting of his hips up against her, and with one easy falling move, into her.
She gasped, and pulled her breath in hard. He had filled her entirely, he knew, and she was trying to relax and let herself adjust to his size.
He kept himself without moving while that familiar, wonderful internal change took place. He had experienced this several times with the tiny Oriental girls, and one of them had taught him to insert his organ easily and completely at the beginning, until she let herself flow around it. This produced a concentrated sensation which bordered pleasure with pain. The whole time he had to fight the urge to start moving his hips; to stifle the masculine need to expend his energy in a battering-ram drive.
As always, there came that long moment when he thought he was going to come; but he waited beyond it ... feeling the tingle which moved outward from his testicles through the rest of his body ... and then passed away into a glow of heightened pleasure.
Perry lowered his whole body onto hers, his elbows outstretched for support, his hands back on her breasts, and slowly started riding in and out of her. If there were .any real advantage in being hung big, he knew, it was the added length of each of these sensual strokes. He could feel the wetness increase inside her making the movement even more easy, and always more exciting.
like two tiny penises, the nipples under his hands grew harder and longer. If she would not openly show her own pleasure, she was just cheating herself. He no longer really cared about it.
The world was starting to narrow down to the place where their two bodies were joined, and all the temptation and frustration of last night and this afternoon was being transformed into an electricity running through his legs, his ass, his balls, right out to the end of his dick. The girl beneath him no longer existed. She was just a cunt; every cunt in the world; the ones he had been into and the ones he had tried for Nothing else mattered now.
Faster and faster he moved, but his awareness was so acutely tuned, it was as if he could sense every fraction of motion, every millimeter of sensation, every lick of hot, wet fire swirling up and around exposed nerves.
And then, he knew he had come up over the top of the beautiful hill. That secret message had flashed from somewhere between his legs, telegraphing itself along his spine, across his shoulders, down through his arms, hands, fingertips, and right into those two rigid nipples.
He dug his feet into the mattress, and arched himself more completely into her.
She reacted. The passively spread legs clasped around him like an enormous vise. Damp, trembling, hands came up onto his back, grasping into his muscles. And her turned-away face came up against his, her lips on his ear, the side of her jaw brittlely hard against his cheekbone.
He came; the first jolt sounding through his blood like the long, screaming wake of a rocket. He came again. And he felt her pulse inside as though a bullet had entered her. Again and again! Her heels against his lower back seemed to be pressing the explosions out of him. Another, and another, and another.
Somewhere up ahead there would be quiet and drifting peace and silent satisfaction, but for now, he was in the middle of a battle, and the only way to stay alive was to keep going ahead.
Suddenly, a fantastic vagina was alive and demanding. Hips rolled into a long, side-to-side dance, drawing his. prick like a thousand hands ... or a hundred mouths, keeping it ever more wide awake. Awake, and alive and racing ahead to the next fire fight, the next battle, the next hill to conquer. .
But now there were two of them. Words and sounds passing from one to another, hands reaching and touching, exchanged bites and kisses.
They rolled onto their sides, freeing their hips for more independent attack and counterattack. Then, finally, she was on top of him, forcing herself further down in a mounting fury of passionate movement.
"Now!" She sounded as though she were about to lose her breath.
"Now!" Her body twisted suddenly, and held. Then to the other side.
"Now! Now! Now!" she demanded, and he answered by jutting his hips violently upwards and letting the new volley of cross-fire take over.
"More ... more!" She clung to him.
"Yes, baby! Yes!" He accentuated each driving spurt.
And then there were long, long quiet minutes of absolute silence. The victory was like a rich honey flowing through him, and the tiny figure he held protectively was the precious source of this satisfaction.
They were still joined, and Perry could feel himself floating in that unreal cloudland of unexpended passion. The tiniest buzz of electricity still sparkled in the secret darkness where they touched. Maybe, by the wildest kind of chance, he had stumbled on the person he was looking for.
She lifted her head, and they looked at each other. Yes, she was really just a pretty little girl behind the false eyelashes, the hairspray, and the cosmetics.
"You know," she said, "you are really something." And her smile was great.
He had gotten through to her. She was a real human being caught in a foolish unreal situation.
"Thanks," he smiled back. "So are you. I'd like to see you again."
"You would?" she beamed. "When?"
"Tonight, if you can. I know a great place to go dancing."
"Dancing?"
"Sure. You do dance?"
"You want to pay me just to go dancing?"
Perry pulled out of her sharply, almost pushing her away. He sat up on the edge of the bed. What in hell was wrong with him, anyway? A whore is a whore is a whore. Was his need so desperate he couldn't see that?
"What's the matter, honey?" she said. "I'll go dancing with you if you want."
"Is there a place where I can wash off?"
"Sure. There's a sink in the corner, behind that screen."
He nodded. "Do you want to make another five bucks right now?"
"You want to do it again?"
He stood up and turned to her. "No, not that. This time I want it French."
CHAPTER EIGHT
The telephone was ringing as Perry unlocked the door to his mother's apartment. At first he could not remember where the phones were, and it took another ring before he thought of the one in the kitchen.
"Hello," he said a bit breathless.
"Hello, Perry." The prim, correct female voice struck a chord somewhere deep within him.
"Is this Cora?"
"Yes, it is." There was a hesitation. "How are you, Perry?"
"I'm fine. Fine. How did you know I was home?"
"Your mother told me. Are you ... all right? I mean you weren't wounded or anything?"
"No, Cora. I'm all in one piece. And you."
"Still the same."
Yes, she probably was still the same. That was too bad.
"I just got home two days ago," Perry said, trying to keep up some kind of conversation.
"I know. Your mother called me earlier today. She said I should surprise you."
"Oh." If Virginia' couldn't get Perry to do something, she would apply the pressure from outside. Anything to have her way. "Well, what's new, Cora?"
"Nothing, really. I have the same job. I got a raise a couple of months ago, and they might make me an assistant to the manager of my department. But, that's not important. You're the one who has so much to tell us. You know, we see so much of the war on television, but it doesn't seem real. I don't understand what it's all about."
"I'm not sure anyone else does, either. Certainly not the guys at the front lines. It's just a war."
"You won't have to go back, will you?" she asked in her frightened, little girl voice.
"I don't know about 'have to,' Cora. If they try to make me go back, I won't!"
Suddenly, it was out in the open. He had said it, though he really hadn't intended to. The ghost he had been hiding all these months had popped up unexpectedly, and brought a wash of fear along with it.
"Oh, I certainly hope they don't want to send you back, Perry. That wouldn't be fair at all. There are so many other fellows who haven't had to go."
That wasn't how the war was run, but how could he even try to explain it to Cora? She still lived in a child's world of strict rules, proper do's and don'ts. Fairness had little to do with the war, or anthing else in life. But, at least she had not caught the threat his words could have given away.
"I'm not thinking about that while I'm home," he said. "I've got a month with nothing to do but relax and enjoy myself."
"That's good. A whole month. I only get two weeks of vacation. They start tomorrow, on Friday."
It was a ray of hope for him. "Where are you going?"
"Going?" she echoed. "You mean away? Nowhere. I'll be here at home. There's no place I want to go particularly."
Poor Cora. There was no place she wanted to go at all. Perry's father would have loved her attitude. Go to work, do your job, and come home to Harlem. Home to the security of black family, black friends, and the black monotony of the ghetto.
Worse yet, it meant she would be totally free and available for the next two weeks. His mother must have known. He would not even put it past her to have suggested to Cora that she plan her vacation at this time. It was too pat to be accidental, and Cora would not know how to plan this kind of strategy.
"Then, I guess we'll be able to see each other soon," Perry said.
"Oh, that would be wonderful, Perry!" She was genuinely enthusiastic, he could tell.
He knew she would never say anything about him not answering her letter, but he wondered what she thought about it. Maybe she had created some complicated excuse for him. It was one thing she did so well. As long as he had know her, she had never been angry at anyone. No matter how badly anyone might have treated her, she would find some reason to explain away their behavior. 'Christian pity,' she called it when he had argued with her. That was not the way he saw it.
"What are you doing this evening, Cora?"
"I haven't a thing planned. Would you like to come over? My mother and dad want to see you, too. But I can't stay out too late, you know. I have to work tomorrow."
"Fine," he said. "I'm not used to late hours like I used to be. What time should I come over?"
"Are you going to eat at home?"
He glanced at his watch. It was almost six o'clock. He hadn't thought about food.
"I may fix myself something light."
"Oh, don't do that," she said. "Come eat with us. Come over as soon as you can."
He would have to take a shower. A long one to make himself feel clean.
"All right, Cora, as soon as I can. He had stripped himself down, and was just about to turn the shower on when the phone rang again. He walked back into the kitchen. This time it was Al. "What happened to you, P.T.? You were supposed to be back here an hour ago. We're having dinner together, remember?"
"I'm sorry, Al, I should have called you. I have to cancel out."
"Well, don't sweat it. As you said last night, you've got a whole month. How about tomorrow? The East Village really starts to swing big on Fridays."
"I think the weekend is pretty much out for me," Perry told him, trying not to let his feelings get into his voice. "Family and old-time friends, you know. I'll be making the rounds."
"You can always come on down when the old folks start going to sleep. We don't exactly keep banking hours here."
Al was always a tough customer to say no to.
"Well, maybe next week will be better, Al."
"Look, Perry," Al's tone changed, a bit stronger and deeper, "we were friends and we still are friends. Something was bugging you last night, and something is bothering you right now. I don't know what it is, but if I remember you rightly, you are not one to share your problems easily. I can't force you to tell me, but I can offer to listen, and offer whatever advice, support, sympathy, or screwed-up philosophy I can give."
"I know that, Al." Standing naked in the kitchen, Perry felt oddly unprotected.
"But, do you? Look, you've been through a lot of nonsense in the past few years. You may have forgotten what I'm really like. Depend on me, Perry."
"I appreciate that, and I haven't forgotten how good a friend you were. It's just that I've been away for so long I'm not adjusted to civilization yet. I have a lot of thinking out to do."
"Shit," Al exploded, "the worst thing you could do is get adjusted to civilization. Make it get adjusted to you. That's how I want to help you. That's what the shitty newspaper is for. I'll bet you didn't even get any copies of it."
"No, I didn't. I'll get them when I see you."
"All right. When will that be?"
"I can't really say right now." Why did he feel trapped? "Honest, I can't. As soon as I can, I'll call you and come down."
"Just come down, P.T. You never have to call me first. I'm either at the office or the pad. Or Vicky will know where to get me fast."
. "Fine. Thanks, Al. I'll be taking you up on your offer."
".I'm going to hold you to it," Al said, and it was almost a threat. "If I don't see you before the weekend's out, I'll be on your tail."
"I'll make it as soon as I can," Perry said. "I have to get into the shower now. I'm invited to a friend's house for dinner." He seized on the fact. "That's why I couldn't make it tonight. I had forgotten all about the fact we had an appointment."
"You know something-"
"What's that?"
"You've made a terrific impression on Vicky. She thinks you are just great. She's quite a girl, Perry. Don't take her lightly. She can.be a wonderful friend to have!"
When he put down the phone, Perry was thoroughly confused. What in hell had Vicky told Al? Not the truth, of course, but why this complete turnabout bullshit? If she wasn't completely psycho, she was one of the weirdest sane people he had ever run into.
But he didn't want to start thinking about her now. If he got one more hard-on today, the damn thing would break off.
CHAPTER NINE
He called on Cora, and found her the same as she had been when he left, almost exactly as she had been that night of graduation. Her parents were as cordial to him as they were all the time. They went to a show, and after that they went to his mother's apartment. His mother had purposely taken a night job in private nursing that week to be certain they would have the place free.
His cock burned for her. He wanted that body which had so often tantalized him more than he wanted anything else in the world. She was ready for him, too, hungering after his flesh like a hot bitch in the middle of a summer night.
She kissed him as soon as he had the door closed, ran her fingers inside his pants and fondled his huge cock. There were no barriers here, nothing to hold him from getting naked and screwing her till she was exhausted from the pleasure she felt.
Soon they both were naked, squirming one against the other in the big double bed of his mother's room. His cock was like steel, hard and protruding, and it wiggled on his crotch as he shook her from side to side by his caresses and his fooling with her body.
Her luscious tits felt the male touch of his fingers rubbing into their mounds. When he got to her nipples she jerked.
Indeed, she had jerked several times. He knew from the past that meant she was having what she needed, that she was going to be hot for him when they finally got to the real fucking. Her tits were gorged with blood already, hard and sticking straight into the air. He ran his finger over them and gave her nipples great touches with it. She squealed with delight when he did that. The feelings he drove into her were superb, maddening her with the hot lust that she had come to bear with him. Her naked flesh writhed freely against his own, not ashamed of her cunt, not ashamed of anything, only wanting him more than ever, desiring him, her lover come home, with the desire that had haunted her pussy for so long.
He knew it never mattered to her whether any other cock got into her passages. When she was with him she was happy, and that made the difference. Another cock might give her the physical pleasure that she needed, but he was the only man who could reach her heart in the secret places that even she did not know existed.
Her caresses to his balls kept his cock steel-hard the whole time they rolled together. She sunk to his crotch on a sudden, soothing his pole with wet touches from her tongue, running that fleshy organ along the black stem that grew in his V.
Her hands fingered his balls while she sucked at his throbbing cock. This was glory for him, was fantastic from the beginning to the very end. At the same time that she ministered to his balls and his cock she whipped three fingers into his ass-hole, stretching him a lot, and soothing him even more. The touch of her digits against his walls drove mass waves of pleasure all through his naked flesh.
He noticed how her black skin contrasted with the white color of the sheet. He felt at home here, with his own color under him and fucking him. No matter how much he lusted for Vicky and her white flesh, he knew he still had a long way to go before he was free from his own fears and passions.
His balls tingled as Cora stroked them endlessly, fooling her fingers about and thrilling him for all she was worth. He wanted to screw her till the middle of the next day and all into the night. Her fingers in his ass-hole had a good hold on his pleasure by then, and what she did to his cock with her lips and her tongue was undeniably sensual.
Sometimes she paused in her tongue strokes and her hp-massaging to give his turgid tip a few nips with her teeth, jolting him back to the reality that he was fucking a woman who knew how to handle her body. His swollen cock called to him to get inside her and stroke her to pleasure, at the same time experiencing the lust which would drive him to his own climax.
He reached into her cunt, contorting himself to reach that honeyed channel, and discovered she was well-lubricated. No longer did he have to hold back from his desires. He plunged into her pussy with all the force he could bring against her. Her squeals and shakings told him he was doing a hell of a good job.
Over and over he drilled his streaking pole into her walls, rejoicing in the tight feeling against his naked cock when she contracted her membranes as he shoved into her depths. The sensuality of her affection was surpassed by nothing he knew. Her pussy was supreme and delightful, and he wished they could get along outside of bed as well as they did inside of it.
His heart beat with the passion in him. He stroked her hungering snatch with fire and brimstone, drove massive sheets of pleasure all through her so that she was writhing under him with the fiery lust that he had released from her cunt.
Her kisses rallied him, made him more certain that she loved him better than any other man she knew. The touch of her tongue against his outer lips drove him mad, and he hastened the thrusts that he gave her snaking tunnel, for he wanted to get her to her come as soon as he possibly could.
Again and again he plunged his fiery shaft deep into the burning recesses of her well-oiled, tight cunt. His desire was to soothe her so well that she could come at the exact same time he did.
His caresses had their effect on her, and simultaneously, they flooded her walls with their juices. His cock spewed forth the hot gobs of his gism with the flashing shoots of electrical pleasure rippling through every corner and hallway of his nude body.
Cora's back arched several times while she struggled in the overpowering throes of her come. This was the man she wanted, the one she felt should be hers, but she knew that there was a scar in their hearts that might never be able to be healed, no matter how well they fucked together.
Incredible desire for another fuck overtook her, and she started in on his cock and his balls again.
The night went swiftly for them. He began to see her regularly from that day on, and the relationship was almost as if it had not been broken by his trip to the war.
The next Friday he woke from an afternoon slumber to answer the ringing phone. To his surprise he was talking to his old friend Marty Brandon, one of his best buddies from the war. They had come back on the same plane together, and they had exchanged addresses in case Perry was in St. Louis or Marty in New York.
"How are you?" Perry asked.
"Just great. I'd really like to see you."
"Sure as hell," Perry answered. "We can get together, but tell me where you are so I'll know where to go to meet you."
"At the YMCA. Sloane House. Do you know where that is?"
"Yes. On 34th Street. You're by yourself then?"
"You said it. I don't need a chaperone for what I'm looking for."
Perry could picture Marty's big square grinning face. "How long will it take you to get here? I'm ready to put on my drinking clothes."
"Gosh, Marty, I can't come down now. I've got a date for the rest of the day."
"Great! Has she got a girl friend for me?"
What the hell was the matter with Marty? Had he forgotten Perry was black?
"Not that I know of," he said, feeling trapped again in a situation which he could not control.
"Well, that doesn't matter, Perry. As long as she's old enough to go drinking with us. There certainly are plenty of girls around from the little I've seen of your town."
"What time did you get in?"
"About an hour ago. I should have been here earlier, but the bus got slowed down on the way."
"Look," Perry said, "I'll have to see what I can do to change my plans. You go out and explore the town this afternoon. I'll meet you at the Y about six o'clock. Is that okay?"
"Well, why not? Well still have most of the weekend to raise hell. I'm not going back before Monday morning."
"Okay, Marty. I'll see you there in the lobby at six."
Changing plans with Cora was easier than he had expected. Of course, she was not interested in going drinking with him and a Marine buddy. And, although she did not say it, Perry knew she would never consider going out socially in the company of white people. She didn't act hurt or insulted, but he felt she was a little less responsive in his bed that afternoon. More passive, as though she were doing it for him, rather than for herself, as well.
Marty Brandon was waiting in front of the big Sloane House building when Perry walked up.
Even in his Marine uniform, Marty was a big, freckle-faced farm boy, gaping at the parade of passing people, staring at the traffic and the buildings, and smiling like a kid who had been let loose in the circus.
He didn't seem to see Perry until he had called the Midwesterner's name, and then there was a double-take before they shook hands.
"Where's your uniform?" Marty asked. "For heaven's sake, if you're a Marine you got to be a Marine."
"It's at home," Perry answered. "For this month, I'm not a Marine. As my mother says, I'm on vacation. These are my vacation clothes. Didn't you bring any civvies with you?"
"Sure, but only to wear if I had to have my uniform cleaned."
"I think you'd be better off wearing them."
"You mean the civvies?"
"Yes."
"Why? Don't they like Marines in this city?"
"It isn't that," Perry said. How could he tell him how uncomfortable he felt? "I was thinking of taking you to visit some friends down in the Village, and the uniform would be kind of out of place there."
"What's the Village?" Marty asked.
"Greenwich Village. It's an old section of New York, very arty and mod and swinging. They don't do things the way the rest of the world does, and they think the service and the war is for the birds."
"Well, then, the hell with them, Perry. Who wants to get with people like that?"
"They're great people, Marty." Here he was defending the very ones he had spent the whole week avoiding. "Great for a good time. You can do anything you want and say anything you want when you're with them. And, there's plenty of sex for the taking."
"Then let's go!"
"We will. But honestly, the uniform will be a drawback."
"You mean I can't tell any of them I'm in the Corps?"
"Sure you can. But let them judge you by what you really are like. The uniform kind of hides the real person. You know that."
Marty looked a bit unhappy about it, but then he smiled his little-boy grin. "Okay," he-said. "If the Corporal says that's the way to 'do it, that's the way I'll do it. You want to come up to the room with me?"
Perry had noticed a neon sign down the street.
"No," he said. "I think I need a" drink to start off with. See that bar down the block? I'll meet you there. Make it as fast as you can."
Marty made his clothing change fast. Within an hour the two of them were well on their way to getting plastered.
Perry knew he was using the alcohol to steel himself against whatever their trip to the East Village would entail. He chided himself for being afraid of seeing Al and his friends without being quite sure what it was that seemed to be threatening.
Conversation was a great distraction from Perry's problems. They talked about everyone in their company, including those who had been killed. They recalled some of the toughest moments of patrol, fire fights, VC attacks; but, in retrospect, Perry could no longer sense the terrible fear and despair which had engulfed him overseas. Was it possible that New York was really more frightening than Vietnam? Was there more to hurt him here in his own home town than there had been in that shapeless jungle of a country?
By the time they took the subway downtown, he found himself looking forward to seeing Al, and the others, too. Vicky and Olivia and Margaret. He had a buddy with him, tonight; things seemed suddenly safer.
They came up to the street again at the same spot, where he'd arrived that first r ght last week. And, sure enough, there was the same little bright-eyed, black-faced shoeshine boy plying his trade next to the subway stairs.
"I want you to meet a friend of mine," Perry said to Marty, and led him over to where the youngster was standing by his working equipment.
The boy looked up at him. "Shine?" he asked.
"You bet," Perry answered. "I've come to get the thirty-five cent special you promised me the other night."
The kid looked closer, and his smile got broader.
"Yes, sir!" he exclaimed. "You the one that gave me the quarter, aren't you?" Perry nodded.
"How did you make out that night?" He started to get out bottles, rags and brushes.
Perry felt the irony twist down deep inside of him.-"You were right, son. I didn't do so well."
"I told you! I told you! It takes a real spit shine to get 'em every time."
"I think you're right."
"You better believe it," the little guy said, sounding oddly wise and adult. "Is this man with you?" he motioned at Marty.
Perry nodded.
"You better tell him to get a shine, too. Unless he don't want to get a girl, he better have the best kind of shine in the Village."
"Do you want to get a girl, Marty?" Perry asked.
"Yeah, I sure do."
"Then you better get a thirty-five cent special shine from my friend, here."
Marty looked down at his own shoes, as brilliantly polished as Perry's had been the other night.
"Doing it yourself doesn't count," Perry said, before Marty could object. "It's not the same thing. You have to let the expert do it." He looked at the boy. "Right."
"Right!"
When the youngster was finished with both shines, Perry gave him a dollar, and told him to keep the change. The kid followed them almost to the corner thanking them, but not forgetting to remind them to come back on their next trip to the Village.
"Isn't he awful young to be out on the streets working like that?" Marty said, when they were out of the boy's hearing.
"Maybe," Perry answered, "but I don't think he's as young as he looks. In any case, it's honest work, and whatever money he makes, I'm sure his family can use it. He's a real good salesman, too. He reminds me of my little brother Mike, when he was younger."
"Did Mike work as a shoeshine boy, too?" Marty asked.
It had been a perfectly innocent question, Perry knew, but suddenly his insides tensed up and that anger he had lost the last few days began to build again. He glanced sideways at Marty. So close and yet so far away. They had been buddies of the best kind during the whole Nam tour, sharing danger, the possibility of death, hope, food, drink, and, on one occasion, a girl. They knew an enormous number of facts about each other's lives; statistics of parents, siblings, events. But they might just as well have been total strangers for the amount of understanding which existed between them.
Their worlds were separated by much more than just the geographical distance between where each was born and brought up. It was the bottomless chasm of color difference. The enormous space which existed between black and white. It was a goddam shame, but it was so.
He finally answered Marty's question in the same spirit in which it had been asked.
"No, Mike didn't have to do that," Perry said. "We were never in want for money."
"That's good," Marty answered. "I hate to think of little kids being forced to work. When you're little, that's the time to have fun."
They found a restaurant, and had a drink at the bar while waiting for a table.
Marty couldn't get over the types of people that they had passed on the street. "It looks a lot like Halloween, don't it? Where do they find those get-ups they're wearing?"
"I couldn't tell you." Perry said, shrugging. "It's all new to me, too."
"If anyone dressed like that in my home town," Marty said, "I think they'd be run in on some kind of suspicion or other."
"I know what you mean, Marty, but there's a whole new kind of society down here. Everybody dresses and acts the way they please. It has some good points, the way I understand it. If they believe a certain way, that's the way they act. If someone else doesn't like what they do, they don't have to join in. But they also don't have to criticize the other guy for doing his own thing."
Marty took another gulp of his drink. "Well, I certainly don't care, as long as I can have a good time. The only problem is it's sometimes hard to tell if someone is a girl or a boy."
"Well," Perry grinned, "down in this part of town, I'm not sure it always makes a hell of a lot of difference."
"I don't know about them. But it sure makes a big difference to me!"
"Where I'm planning on taking you, Marty, you won't have any doubts about it."
Marty grinned. "In that case, I wish they'd hurry up and get us a table. I don't know how long I can hold out."
Perry wanted to tell him that that was what he had been thinking last week, but that having the urge and the energy didn't always mean you were going to have the opportunity, as well. He thought better of it and said nothing.
About halfway through the meal, it occurred to Perry that he'd assumed Al would be at the apartment, when last Friday Al had stayed late at the newspaper office. He excused himself, and went to the telephone, trying the number of the East Village Alternative first.
Al was there. After a few seconds, he came on the phone.
"Where are you, Perry?" he wanted to know.
"Over on Mac Dougal at a restaurant. I wondered if you were going to be at your apartment later."
"I will be if you will be."
"A buddy of mine from Vietnam is in town. I thought your pad would be the best place to show him what the big scene is here."
"Great. What time will you be over?"
"In about an hour," Perry said, looking at his watch.
"Go straight over there. Someone will be around. Vicky, at least. Or the twins can let you in. I won't be late." Perry didn't want to ask the next question, but he could not hold it in.
"Will Olivia be around tonight?"
"Probably. She works till nine at some imagine dress boutique uptown, but she usually comes down in this direction for her weekend's relaxation."
There was a pause, and Perry thought Al was going to ask him why he wanted to know. He was relieved when all Al said was, "See you later, then. And this time we'll really talk."
It was more than an hour until they finally made it to St. Mark's Place, because Marty wanted to look at every person, and in every window, and at every advertising poster along the route, and was getting higher on the scenery than on the booze he'd been drinking.
"They're just kidding!" was his most often repeated expression. He said it four times in a row just looking at the photographs outside a movie house. He said it about the clothes some people were wearing, about hair styles, ogling miniskirts, and in' reference to a strikingly handsome young man who passed wearing see-through shirt and pants.
The phrase became a stuck needle when they reached St. Mark's Place and its flamboyant shops. On one hand, Perry was smiling to himself at Marty's naive reactions to this special part of the city; but on the other, he felt a growing apprehension. Now they were only steps away from Al's building. Who was up there? How would tonight work out? Was he about to run into another drowning fog "of understanding in which was hidden a solid brick wall of rejection?
"Here we are, Marty," Perry stopped in front of the brownstone steps.
The other young man looked up at the building, and then back along the busy street. He shook his head in amazement, then seemed suddenly thoughtful.
"They all look so friendly," he said. "I bet you could just walk up to some of those girls and say hello, and have yourself a great time for the night."
"I guess you could."
Marty was quiet again for a moment.
"Don't you want to go up?" Perry asked him.
"Oh, sure. That's what we came here for." There was only one way to find out what was bothering his friend.
"Is something wrong, Marty?"
"No, Perry, not wrong. It's just that I kind of-well-forgot something I should have asked you before. I know you'll understand what I mean. I certainly don't want to say anything to insult you."
Perry felt cold inside. "Then, ask it," he said.
"Aw, shit! Okay. Will there be any white girls here at all? I've never gone out with colored girls."
CHAPTER TEN
Perry was put out a little, but he understood at the same time that he did not understand. He knew he could run from the problem by just refusing to go to the gig, by saying he had a headache that suddenly had arrived without warning.
Why was Marty so afraid of black women? In Vietnam he had fucked the Orientals, and they were a different race from his own. Was skin color that important? Perry remembered the time Marty had told him about a fuck in a hut in the jungles.
He had been walking, lost from the others in a patrol after they had been scattered by heavy enemy fire. Half the night lay behind him, and there was no hope he could ever zero in on his own company except by sheer luck. Then he saw it, a hut, one that should not have been there, but was, and his hopes rose.
He entered. A lone woman stood inside the confined area, fully dressed, looking at him with little emotion as she saw him enter her home. He judged her to be about thirty-five, but it was hard for him to tell with the Orientals. She spoke halting English, and she offered him a place to stay for the night.
As he lay on the floor, too tired to think of anything but the sleep he needed, he realized that she had blown the candle out, enveloping him with darkness. A minute later he felt naked human flesh next to his own, female flesh with a cunt hot for the feel of his cock inside its passages.
As she rubbed against him he felt his pole getting harder and harder, felt the tenderness of her caresses driving him to a point where he could think of nothing but the sheer joy he would receive from having his pole inside her walls, stroking her with his masculine tool while both of them enjoyed the delights of their fucking.
Inside of a few minutes his cock was like solid iron, heaped out from his crotch and hungering greedily for the time when he could feel her cunt open to him, ready for the plunge that would change his world from ordinary to-fantastically incredible.
His kisses took her into him, pulled her face against his own and thrilled him with the deliciousness of their affection. He wanted to screw her for the rest of his life. It was not every woman who so readily gave a man what he needed, nor had she asked him for any money. This fuck was a fuck she would give him because she liked him in some way or another.
His balls felt the frailness of her fingertips caressing their sac's wrinkled skin. The utter joy that gave to him burned with a fire inside his body. There was nothing he liked better than that except fucking itself, which he would be doing in a very short time.
He ran a pair of fingers into her cunt, soothing her with his touches to the walls that were soft and pliable. His hands slid easily against her passages, for her oils flowed so well she was lubricated down to her bush. She fingered his balls again and again. Her touches to all parts of his naked body gave him excruciating pleasure, and he could have borne her delights for as long as she wanted to give them to him. His lust knew no bounds, knew no reason not to fuck her until his ball juice was completely drained from his system.
The lust he felt for her made him work hard at her cunt, massaging her clit to make her more ready to receive his affections, especially the affection he wanted to give to her cunt. His cock was so swollen with gorging blood that he hurt there.
Her fingers at his crotch found new places to touch, new areas to massage, and her attentions to him made him feel damn good. If he could only have had her in peacetime, things might have been so much different. There were a lot of things about war which were ugly, and the inability to get a fuck when you wanted one was one of the worst things.
His cock could wait no longer when she got him to a certain stage, and she spread her legs wide to open her femaleness to his penetration. His pole zoomed in on her tunnel of love as fast as it would go. He mashed into her tight pussy, thrilling himself with the touches and caresses he felt from her walls.
The number of times he plunged into her pussy was lost to him, but he knew it was a lot of times. There was nothing like a good cunt to make him feel delightful. His cock burned with the pleasure her cunt gave to it.
The wild feelings that rambled through his naked flesh were all that he could bear. This was something fantastic, something to write home about if he had dared, and he loved to write home. His hunger for her cunt drove him to blast jolt after succulent jolt of his love into her cunt. She squealed with pleasure at each thrust he gave to her, obviously satisfied that he was doing a good job.
At the same time they came, creaming their juices into the same channel mixing them one with the other as they let their nude bodies writhe in the delights which their sex gave to them. Again and again he felt her lithe body writhing into his, and when he was done spurting, he rested by her.
As much as he wanted to fuck again his weariness made him sleep instead. He woke to find the hut empty, and his own company not too far away. In the night, he must have made a big circle.
Perry could not forget how Marty had raved about Oriental cunt, and now he was frightened about having home-grown, American black girls at his side. Perry assured Marty that most of the people there would be white. Marty took the news sheepishly, but Perry could tell he was happier.
Margaret answered the buzzer when he rang. She was introduced to the new man, and she led him to Al's apartment, talking to them as they followed her.
Margaret turned to look at the mat beside Al's door. There were two pairs of shoes on it. One pair was good-looking, heavy-heeled, a woman's shoes; the other, dirty white sneakers.
"It looks as if there are people in there, but I suppose they're too busy to answer door bells."
Perry felt his face grow hot. The shoes were the plainest calling card he had ever seen. Vicky and Joe! Son of a bitch! The frustration welled up and over him, and he knew part of his reaction was plain on his face.
"Why don't you two come into my apartment till Al gets back. Maryann and Jamie are here, and they never really got a chance to talk to you last week. Come on, Marty, we were just breaking out a six-pack of beer."
Marty brightened up enormously, and was soon the center of the conversation.
Perry i felt very tired. He sat back in one of the deep, upholstered chairs and let most of the talk flow around him. His mind kept picturing the apartment across the hall, sneaking into the white room like a silent intruder, and finding it starkly empty-then, crossing silently to the door on the sidej wall, pulling it open ever so slowly and quietly, to step into the black space beyond. By some trick of his eyes or the lighting, his thoughts were able to pierce the darkness, and search out the two nude figures in the center, watching their slow, passionate embraces, their sensuous arousal of each other, their searchings with hands and mouths, and the variety of their insertions into each other's secret places.
Why should he care? If it had not been for the call from her mother, Vicky and he would have experienced that same intertwining, or more. Her being with Joe, or any other man, was not a rejection of him. She wanted him, or at least she had at one particular moment. It was only her weakness and her self-delusions which had kept them from completing the union. She could have made any number of excuses for her mother not to come to the apartment. She seemed only to want to tempt him, to make sure he wanted her, and then to leave him hanging.
Why the hell did they have to leave their shoes outside the door?! Just to let everyone know they were in there screwing the hell out of each other? Sex should be private. Two people alone with each other, exploring each other.
He damn well should have stayed with Cora this evening. He could feel his need awakening again. Even another session under Margaret's hands would help to soothe him. Only, this time, he wouldn't lie there passively. He would reach out and move his hands over her body in equal response; touching out the person who lay just beneath her flesh.
Marty laughed loudly at something, and Perry was jolted back to the room. He shifted uncomfortably in the deep chair. His damned dick was hard again, caught against a fold of his undershorts. What was the matter with him? He was becoming a real sex maniac. He'd had no less than three fabulous orgasms a day since last Sunday, and he was as panting for another as a sixteen-year-old on the brink of his first piece of ass.
Someone shouting loudly in the hallway drew the attention of all of them. Jamie jumped up and opened the apartment door to see what was happening.
"Open that damn door, you pale blonde bitch!" the voice was screaming. "I'm going to put black-and-blue marks all over you!"
Perry and the others had started toward the door, but even before Jamie spoke, Perry knew who was making all the noise.
"What's the matter, Olivia?" Jamie said concernedly. "What are you yelling about?"
"I'm yelling about that sneaky blonde cunt in there with my boyfriend." She turned to the door again. "Joe, you better get this door unlocked fast if you know what's good for you and that white whore!"
Maryann had pushed her way past Jamie. "Come on, Olivia, stop the shouting and cursing. It's not going to do you any good, and it can only cause trouble."
Olivia pushed out at the girl viciously. "I'll show you what trouble really is. They can't stay in there permanently. And, damn it, I'll be right here when that door opens!"
Jamie moved out into the hall, to stand protectively beside Maryann.
"You're making a big scene over nothing," he said. "Joe is no more your boyfriend than any other guy you've brought up here. I didn't think jealousy was your bag, Olivia. Besides, since when has anyone in Al's pad ever had to take a pledge of fidelity? Now, come on in to our place, and simmer down. Al will be here soon."
"Fuck Al, and fuck you, too!" Olivia shouted. "I'm going to stay right here until that door opens, and I'm going to keep right on yelling at the top of my damn lungs! Do you hear that, Vicky-bitch? Do you hear me, Joe-cock?"
"I hear you, nigger."
Perry almost didn't realize he was going to say it, until the words were out of his mouth-deathly quiet words that stabbed across the hall right into her.
He could see the dumbfounded shock on her face, even before she turned to stand with her back against the door. The tears welling up in her eyes were clearly visible. She looked totally lost and helpless, but for the first time, he could see, undistorted, the prettiness she hid behind the dual mask of cosmetics and superior attitude.
Maryann was at Olivia's side instantly, one arm around her in support and protection. She guided her friend across the hall, past the others, and into the apartment. When she had Olivia seated on one of the couches, she turned to shoo the others out into the hall with insistent waves of her hand.
The four of them stood silently.
With all of their comradeship and love, Perry thought, they have no idea how to deal with any form of violence. Maybe I have something to teach them, while they teach me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A moment later, Al Park came up the stairs, his mind occupied intently on some thoughts so that he didn't see the group in the hall until he reached the top.
"Are we having a convention?" he asked, "or is this the welcoming committee?" Then, without waiting for anyone to answer him, "Hi, P.T.! This is the moment I've been waiting for all week."
"Hello, Al," Perry answered. "I want you to meet Marty Brandon. Marty, this is Al Park."
They shook, hands, while Margaret and Jamie stood by.
"Well," Al said, "which apartment are we going into? Mine or yours?"
No one answered the question, and Perry wondered how much of a worse situation they were about to get into.
"Is this some new kind of guessing game?" Al wanted to know.
"Your place is locked from the inside," Margaret offered, "and there's a bit of an upset in mine."
Al turned to his door. "Who locked it?" He looked down at the white mat. "Vicky?"
"I guess so," Margaret answered.
"Why, for God's sake? Just because she's got Joe in there?" Al's tone was simple annoyance, nothing else.
"We don't know."
Al knocked on the door. "Vicky? This is Al. Would you mind opening the door?"
In spite of Al's nonchalant attitude, Perry felt himself tense.
A moment later, the door swung open.
"Hello, Al," Vicky said. "Why don't you all come in?"
She was fully dressed, in another neat outfit. As they walked into the white room, Perry could see Joe stretched out on one of the couches along the side. He was wearing a pullover knit sport shirt and neat plaid Bermuda shorts, looking as cool and unrumpled as
Vicky.
Was it just possible that they had done nothing? As Al had just said, maybe this was some new kind of game: Let Everyone Use Their Imaginations, and Picture Whatever Their Dirty Minds Could Come Up With As Having Taken Place Behind the Locked Door.
It had certainly convinced Olivia, and Perry, and likely the twins and Jamie, too. They hadn't appeared to be acting in their reactions. There was something sick about it, if it were a joke. Sicker than if they had actually been balling themselves silly. Worse than sick. It had a vicious quality.
Vicky had said that Olivia hated her. Was it possible that she had trumped up this situation just to get back at her? It made a kind of twisted sense that way, but what was Joe's part in the bargain? What kind of promises had Vicky made to him?
The more he learned about some of these people, the less Perry thought of them. Perhaps, his mistake was in thinking that because they were friends of Al, they had the same depth of character and purpose; the same aims, the same qualities of easy humanity. Al was the only reason he had come back here, and Perry was going to make damn sure he got to spend most of the evening talking with him.
"Come on, Al," he said, after they had all left their shoes outside. "Let's go off in a corner. I've got some things I want to get off my chest. I think now I'm ready to do it."
Al led the way to the front corner of the room, asked Vicky to bring them beers, and settled himself next to Perry. Marty followed them.
"You sound like you're the one who needs to do the talking," he said, "so go ahead."
It was like plunging into cold water.
"I don't know how you do it, Al, but you are able to read me like an open book. You knew right off last week that something was bothering me. Maybe, if I hadn't pooped out so soon, I would have been able to tell you about it then. Maybe I just wasn't able to tell anyone."
"But you are now."
"Yes. Else I wouldn't be here." He marshaled his thoughts. "In high school, I always felt safer when you were around. You know now, and you knew then, that it was tougher for any black guy in ah integrated school. You also knew how to make it easier for me. I appreciated that quality in you more than anything else during those years.
"But, once I left high school, I didn't have that protection any more. At first, I thought I wouldn't need it. You come across so strong with me, I took it for granted that the rest of the world was full of Al Parks, too. It came as an awful shock to me in college to find out that wasn't even partially true.
"If I had gone to a college in Alabama, I couldn't have run smack into more hard-core prejudice than I did in that Ohio institution.
The worse part about it, Al, is that it was disguised prejudice. Everyone who hated you acted so damn gentlemanly about it. I almost expected some of them to say, 'Gee, Perry, I'm really so sorry you're not white. It's not your fault, and it's not mine; but of course, we know the rules, and no matter how much we don't like you, we'll never say so openly.
"And, on top of that, there were a few of the professional blacks among the students. The ones who cry loudest about equal opportunity, but spend most of their time and energy trying to create a separate black college inside the white one with Black Studies, Negro History, and African traditions. I don't fit with that either.
"So I left the school, and that was about the best thing I ever did for myself. It was rotten to the core on both sides of the race question, absolutely polluted."
Al nodded his assent, and launched into a digression on the need for equality to be living and free rather than in statutes in some law book. Perry drifted from the speech. As much as he liked Al, his anger at the memories his talking had stirred in him made him recall all the bitterness he had when he stepped onto that train for the ride home. He had taken a sleeper for the night journey, a luxury he hoped would help sooth the anger that teemed in his heart--.
Before he went to bed he decided to have a snack, and he headed for the section of the train where he had last seen the vendor whose prices were three times what he would pay on the street. But he was hungry, and cost did not matter.
On the way back to his roomette he bumped into a woman who was slightly older than him. The smile on her face let him know she did not mind his doing that, and when she pressed her hand into his own he knew she wanted to do more than talk to him. His cock rose in his pants, and he asked her if she wanted to visit him in his room.
"Mine might be better," she said. "Why don't you come down and see."
"All right," he acquiesced. He followed her to the car where she was for the night. When she opened the door he saw she had a full room and all the trimmings, that her furnishings were much better than his. Where had a black woman gotten the money for a deal like this?
He did not ask her. That might be out of line, for she might want to keep it quiet. Anyway, she had asked him there herself, so he knew she would not charge. She just liked him. After a few drinks she loosened up. She sat close to him, rubbing her body against his, making him well aware that he was a man alone in a room with a delicious young woman who wanted his cock.
He kissed her passionately, grabbing her and pulling her to himself while he wiped his tongue across her outer lips and thrilled her with his succulent caresses. The sheer pleasure she got from that registered in her body with jerking and squeals that he loved to notice.
She was a real woman. When he undressed her he stared at her fantastic tits. They were the biggest things he ever had seen, bulging from her chest like black smooth melons topped with dark bing cherries of delight. When she moved, all the massed flesh in her boobs shook eagerly from side to side.
Her body line was curved along the shape he liked to see. Her waist was trim and narrow and her ass stuck out behind her like a little child's does. Her hips were broad, encompassing all his view as he stared at her. The fragile lines of her face drew his attention; also, and he knew she was something special.
But the best thing about her was her cunt, that hairy doored passage that beckoned his cock to come on in and enjoy itself. She was a real whore in the sense of the word that he had once heard someone educated use it, a woman who liked to fuck, not for the money, not for the gain, but for the sheer pleasure she could get from it, and she cared little about whose cock was giving her her glory.
He was naked, too, and he noticed she took in his flesh with her eyes as he was doing to hers. She said no more than he did about her thoughts, which was nothing, but when he pounced on her and began kissing her with the raging desire that bubbled in him, he knew he was with a woman who liked what she was.
Her kisses rained pleasure across his face. She caressed his lips with her oral member, smoothing its fleshy warmth along his lines, thrilling him with the delightful pleasures that gave to him.
His fingers found her clit. He worked with all his skill at that member, twirling it between his digits, rubbing it back and forth while she shook in pleasure, wiggling it playfully from side to side, and drawing it slightly upwards while he held it closely in his grasp.
She screamed with delight, and he worried she was going to attract someone, but no one ever came. If she was heard, her screams were ignored completely. He was glad for once that people might not care.
His touches to her clit soon moved to farther inside her snatch, wiping against her walls, thrilling her to endless pleasure while he plunged his fingers farther into the sweltering caverns of her delight.
His touch at her walls drove her mad. He knew she wanted more and more pleasure for herself, so he slid his body along hers until his mouth was in her crotch. His nose was so close to her cunt that the odors from its juices drifted into his nostrils with each breath that he took.
His face pressed closer to her seat of pleasure. The smell from her passages soaked into his brain, filling him with more and more desire to screw her. He lapped at her cunt with his tongue, sending it far past the hairy door, tasting the delicious juices she gave to him when he did that. Over and over he rammed his oral member into her warm walls, rejoicing in the taste of her lubricants that ran fast and hard from her walls.
His teeth caught in her cunt hairs, sometimes breaking off the tips of the more fragile ones. There was in his mind a feeling of strength and manliness to be there with her fucking her like he was doing. The wonderful smell from her cuntal walls still lingered in the air trapped between her cunt and his face, and it drove him to minister to her with more lust than before.
His tongue swirled along her passages, seeking out the places where she loved best to be touched, lingering there while she shook and arched her back with pleasure. The wild feeling of her membranes against his tongue made him aware that he was with a true woman, a woman whose cunt was a cunt that liked to be used.
Over and over he whipped his tongue from his parted teeth and played at her cuntal walls. Her thrashing about added to the rocking motion of the train to give him a feeling almost like he was floating rather than riding in a line of cars. His tongue went from her cunt to her clit, there wiping up against her fold of skin innumerable times.
Where before she had felt pleasure, she now felt supreme delight, for he had a touch with his tongue that drove her clit to distraction.
His caresses there had her back permanently arched, and her breathing was hard, almost non-existent, though, when a really big jolt of pleasure hit her frame.
With unceasing devotion he lapped at her clit. He was so good that she came from that alone, creaming her luscious fluids into his face where they were lapped up quickly by his well-trained tongue. His taste buds were soothed by the many delicious flavors that combined to make her own brand of come.
He sucked her pussy dry of all her come before he returned to her face, kissing her passionately, getting his cock in position to blast into her cunt. The sheer delight he felt at being with her naked flesh rambled like wildfire through his body.
He smashed his cock against her well lubricated walls, sending it all the way to the hilt on the first stroke. The wonderful feelings that rippled through him plunged him into a realm of salacious titillations. His huge cock thrust into that honey hole she carried between her legs in exact rhythm to the contractions and expansions of her serpentine walls.
Unbelievable pleasure ran through him while he damned the opening to her channels with his massive dick. This was a great fuck, and he savored all the traces of it that fled to other parts of his body.
When he came, his ass bucked forward in a single lurch that held him tight against her hips while he poured his hit gism into her pussy. She could feel the blasts that hit her walls, for after each one she grunted in sensual pleasure.
He spurted his ball juice from the tiny hole in the tip of his prick until there was not a drop left inside him. She came a few seconds after he finished, and he witnessed the delight that she suffered at his hands another time.
They fucked the rest of the night, and he was filled with all the pleasures he could imagine. She bid good-bye to him before he reached New York, but he never forgot the fun he had with her.
Perry came out of his remembrances. He heard Marty talking to Al, Marty, who could hold a thing inside him until it was about to burst, then he had to spit it out. Perry recognized the story. He had lived it with Marty, and he was none too proud of what had happened.
"There were anti-personnel explosives," Marty said as he talked on. "They would be strung in sets between two trees, across likely paths of patrols, but always in high undergrowth or grass."
They were made and set up in a way which meant they would explode if someone broke the thin, tough vine cord used to mount them. Because of the height at which they were placed, they had earned a couple of names which are rather brutally descriptive. We called them 'Christine Jorgensens' or 'Fuck-Offs.' They were aimed directly at a soldier's crotch, and those that didn't die from having their genitals smashed to hell probably wished they had They were tiny, almost impossible to see, and deadly.
"But, their use was confined almost entirely to one strip on the map, most likely the work of one VC moving back and forth in an area of jungle he knew well. We were stationed right at one end of that strip, and every one of our patrols were trained in techniques for avoiding these booby traps, and possibly exploding them at a safe distance. Once the connective cord was broken, all the little mines attached to it would go off at the same time.
"On one of our daylight patrols, we found the Charlie who was stringing up these rotten little gadgets. We didn't know who we had come across at first. We had found a young native woman who was apparently lost trying to make her way from one local village to the next.
"We damn near let her go, except the Vietnamese interpreter got suspicious of something she said in answering one of his questions. He said he thought we should search her, just to be sure.
"They don't wear very much in that climate, so we told her to strip down, and went through what she was wearing almost stitch by stitch. We took our time at it because she looked a hell of a lot better in the raw, and it had been some time since any of us had been within shouting distance of a woman.
"It was our horniness which exposed her, Marty bit his lips, "and a lot more. One of the guys could speak enough of the language to ask her if she would like to make some American dollars by taking on a few of the guys before she headed home. She went into a irage, and tried to run off. Two of the guys caught her easily. She looked as if she were trying to cover her snatch, with her hand to protect herself, but one of them saw her drop something down between her feet. It was one of the tiny mines. There were more of them up inside of her.
"I have never seen men change so completely in just a matter of minutes. They surrounded her like a pack of hunting animals. The interpreter began his questioning, but he couldn't get anything from her that made sense. Where did she get the explosives? Who did she report to? What village did she live in? How many others did she work with? She just stood there, stark naked and defiant, making idiotic answers in a mocking way that the Orientals must have invented. The interpreter said he thought it would be best to take her back to the headquarters, and turn her over for interrogation.
"One of the guys said, 'I've got a better idea. Let's fuck the information out of her.'
" "The hell with the information,' another joined in, 'let's just get the screwing.' But the first man was serious. Deadly serious, I suppose I should say. 'Let's give it back to her right where she's been giving it to the guys. Right in the crotch. Let's give her a hundred strokes for every guy she's killed, and a thousand for every one she's ruined for the rest of his life. Let's teach her to appreciate what a precious thing a man's dick is.'
"When the sergeant said, 'Why not,' it began-
"There were ten of us Marines, and the Vietnamese interpreter. At first, two or three guys at a time held her down, while the others took turns getting into her and getting their rocks off. I had never seen a gang-bang before, and I found the idea of it kind of exciting.
"By the time all of us had it once, the one who had made the suggestion was up there ready for another round. But, now, they tied her down, which gave everyone more freedom.
"It took longer for most of the guys to get their loads off the second time, and it was during that time I began to sense the strange mood which was developing out there in the jungle. One or two of the guys had completely stripped off their uniforms, working themselves up into a fury of sex and anger. As each guy remounted the girl, the rest of them became some kind of insane cheering section, urging him on to an ever-more violent tempo.
"Although we were all aware of the blood all over her legs, the scratches and bruises on her body, and her hysterical moaning, not one of us hesitated to take his place in the strict descending order of military rank to fuck her more brutally than the man before.
"When she finally did begin to talk, we had to pull the guy out of her who was in the saddle at the moment, and shake him up a bit to bring him around to something approaching normality. The interpreter, who had only gone one time, was jabbering away, getting the information she had to give, mingled with pleas to let her go.
"During this time, the rest of us were trying to make ourselves back into soldiers and human beings. We suddenly realized we were on patrol in enemy territory. Every one of us could have been shot to hell if a VC patrol had come along in the two hours or so we had been there. We may have resumed the role of soldiers, but I, for one, have never really felt like a whole human being since. I lost my pride that day, Al. I got down to the lowest level. I took the basic creative urges of sex and love, and turned them into the crudest kind of weapon.
"You don't fight fire with fire, without destroying more than you save. Something inside of me burned out during those two hours. I'm not sure, any more, what I'm supposed to be. Not a machine to kill people. And, certainly not with my dick."
"She didn't die from it, did she?" Al asked.
"In a way, yes. We let her get dressed, and we weren't quite sure what would happen back at headquarters when they saw the condition she was in. And, while we were standing around, waiting for the sergeant to make up his mind what to do, Charlie let go with a few mortar rounds.
"We all ducked for cover, except for the girl, who started heading for the hills. A shell hit her direct. None of us looked too closely after the firing had stopped, but, there wasn't enough of her in one piece to even bother with."
Perry felt drained and empty. Reliving the story had taken all the strength out of him. He finally looked around the room and realized the others were gone. They had not come past him and Al and Marty to the front door, so they must all have moved into the black room. Good. He was glad Marty would be able to make out. It would give his buddy a base of operations for the rest of his few days in New York, and Perry could go back to Harlem and Cora.
If he were going to find any sanity during his furlough, that was the most likely place.
"Let's go into the black room with the others," Al said.
"I don't think so, Al," Perry answered. "They've got an uneven number in there now. Three more fellows will only make the combinations more difficult."
"They're not in there for sex, P.T. They may be later, but at the moment, they're all smoking. I recommend it for you. Particularly for the state your mind is in right now."
"I think eight hours sleep would be better for me."
"When's the last time you smoked pot?"
He had to think back. Way back. "Twice while I was at college. Once near LeJeune. And, yes, the last time in California, just before we took off for Vietnam. A little over a year."
"Did it relax you?"
"I can't say it really did. But I didn't expect it to. To tell you the truth, I was always afraid of it. Coming down was a bad experience each time."
"Will you be afraid of it here?" Al wanted to know.
He had to think about it. "At the moment, I don't think I am afraid of anything. I've descended to a new low point in my life. There seems to be only one way to go. Up. I just have to decide how to get started in that direction."
"For the time being, you don't have too many choices. Not until you get out of service."
"Unless I don't go back."
Al's eyes raised slowly to look into Perry's. There was a slow-motion quality to the action which made Perry feel he had ahead y taken a couple of drags of extra-strong grass.
"That is quite a decision to make." Al's voice was soft, controlled, careful.
"I know."
"Would you just not go back? Stay here in New York? They would come to get you."
"I suppose so," Perry said, almost dreamily. Now that it had been expressed, it had lost its quality of terrifying threat.
"Then, you really haven't thought it out? Haven't decided how to do it?"
"No. It's as though I'm just letting things happen the way they will. Perhaps the decision will come about without my doing anything one way or the other to influence it."
"I don't suggest that," Al said. "Too much of your problem is not being able to control the world around you. It would be much more important and meaningful for you to be the master of your future, instead of it's pawn. You have to look inside yourself for reasons and purposes and methods. You have to be in charge of yourself first, before you can start putting the world around you into order."
"I understand the need," Perry answered. "How do I start?"
"The easiest way to look into yourself, right now, is with marijuana. You are ready to let it open up your mind. You are at the juncture of decision where you can let the smoke take you where you want to go. Draw out the road map for you to follow so that not one step of the journey will be wasted; not one mile of travel will be in a false direction."
"All right, Al," he said, standing up, "I'm ready to take my first step."
The door of the apartment swung open. Maryann and Olivia came in, the former smiling, the latter seeming fully composed. No trace of the jealous hysteria showed on Olivia's face.
"Hello, Al," Olivia nodded in his direction. "Hello, Perry," she said more softly, not quite looking at him.
"We're about to go for a long smoke," Al told them, getting to his feet. "Care to join us and the rest of the group?"
"Sure thing."
"Wonderful."
They crossed the long white room, and Al opened the door just enough so they could go in. The odor of marijuana was strong in Perry's nostrils, but somehow it seemed much sweeter than when he had smelled it last week.
When the door was closed again, he saw that the bathroom door had been left ajar so that the green glow washed across the room. The four nude figures, seated near the middle of the room in a partial circle, were green ghosts of the people he had seen earlier. The only motion was the drifting of the smoke.
He got out of his clothes quickly, pushing them in a rough pile against the wall. When he turned back to the others, the circle had been completed.
He looked again in the confusing green light, trying to find the space where he could fit into. He walked up to the outside of the circle, recognizing each face. They were: Vicky, Marty, Joe, Maryann, Margaret, Jamie, Al and Olivia.
Was he to be excluded again? Was he always to find himself stranded on the outside of every human situation? He paced all the way around once more, but there was no opening, no place for him. A sense of panic began to rise in him. How could he make a journey for himself, if he could not take the first step?
And, then, he saw the beginning of the solution-Perry stepped into the center of the circle, seated himself, and reached out his hand for one of the cigarettes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The dream became a reality. He imagined so hard that what he imagined became a reality, that what he thought was really there. His face showed no change of expression, and those by him did not know what went through his mind as they chattered in their own private conversations, but he was back to the time he and Cora were first in bed, that time when he discovered what it was like to be a man with a good woman by your side.
She was naked when he looked at her, so naked that her blackness almost faded the sheet she was atop, and he lusted for her cunt. Her walls were soft and tender, he knew from the times he had felt her without actually fucking her. Her face had a smile that told him he was as welcome as he could be as long as he wanted to be there.
He undressed quickly, hurrying so that he could soon feel her walls stretching against his cock. The. sharp pleasure she would give to him would soothe him and make him ready for all the delights in the whole world. His body, naked after he I had removed all his clothes, was next to hers, and he heard her breath in his ears.
Rolling on top of her, feeling her skin rubbing against his own, he delighted in the lust that he felt for her body. There was nothing quite as good as she was. There was nothing quite as delicious and appetizing as her naked black flesh waiting there for his manly caresses.
He stormed her cunt with titillations from his fingertips. The great pleasures she got from that had her reeling under him on the bed. He was amazed that she should feel that good, for he had not known she would react to his touches in that manner.
His fingers worked hard at her cunt, thrilling her over and over, drilling into her the deep delights that he knew any woman would be glad to get from her man. The squeals of her throat made him feel he was doing the best job of fucking her that ever could be done in the world, and he wanted to fuck her until she was filled with the juices from their mutual come.
He fondled her cunt deliciously, stroking not just the bulging fold of skin but all the area around it as he had read was the best thing to do in a sex manual in the library. His cock was hard, like iron, and his balls throbbed in anticipation of all the joy they would get when she at last was stroking them with her fingers while he plunged his hot shaft past her snatch door.
His face pressed into hers, wiggling eagerly from side to side, touching bone against bone through the thin black skins that moved together. He was hot for her, and the magnificent feelings in him were a shadow of the devotion his balls felt for her cunt.
His kisses made her pleasure filled. The strokes on her cut added to this pleasure, and soon she was begging him to shove his pole so far into her that she would think it was in her throat. Her lust was something else for him, something that had inspired men from the time of Cleopatra to the whores on the Parisian streets at the present time. His touches at her clit had their effect, and he waited for her to get her legs all the way open before he plunged into her hot walls.
The first touch of her membranes against the shiny skin of his cock drove him wild with sensuous delight. Her affection for him was incredible. She managed to get her walls working in perfect rhythm with his in-strokes and his outstrokes, contracting the membranes, as he pushed in, loosening them as he came out, thus providing him with ease and pleasure while he fucked her.
This was all the fucking she needed. Her cunt was healthy, and the way she could handle it showed she had a healthy mind, too. The sheer delights that rippled like waterfall splashes through his naked flesh told him that there were few better pussies in all the world.
His balls were blasting against her buns while he plunged into her snatch time and time again. The succulence of her walls was remarkable. The feeling he had of floating on the soft mound of her body increased as his cock got closer to the time when it would discharge all its juices into her passages.
He pumped at her and pumped at her. The wild fluctuations that were in her cunt made all his fucking that much better, that much more satisfying. His pole never ceased whipping forward and soothing her cuntal walls.
His meat was hot for her, almost cooking as she rubbed against it, and their friction generated heat like neither had ever known before. His balls slammed with ever increasing force on her butt while he shoved harder than ever into her snaking cunt.
She squealed with each driving shove he gave to her. The luxuriousness of his fucking made a great impression on her, and she felt he loved her a hell of a lot.
They came, writhing and thrashing one against the other while they felt their asses sweetened with the wonder of their lustful comes. This was what they had bargained for, and it was what they got. His cock swelled inside her as the huge gobs of his steaming come surged through it, and her cuntal walls could feel the extra pressure he put on them when that happened.
He slowly came out of the dream world, and another joint went through his fingers. He was aware of all the white cunt around him, of all the lust he felt for them, not because they were white, but because any cunt could soothe his cock and make it feel devilishly good. He took another drag on the joint, a long, long one.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vicky looked up from her desk to watch Perry, as she had been doing at least once every fifteen minutes for the past two weeks. It was amazing how little he had changed in appearance, considering how much he had changed in attitude. Still dressed in crisply-pressed sport shirts and trousers, his shoes glisteningly polished, his handsome face freshly clean-shaven, his whole person never seeming to have been out of the shower more than a few minutes.
Poised over the battered typewriter, he looked like a college student intently sweating out a term paper.
But then, Vicky hadn't made any great change in her own appearance during the last two months, either. Perhaps for reasons very much like Perry's, she imagined. A kind of front to keep the family from knowing that her life was really like. Perry went home almost every night to his mother's apartment, and his friends in Harlem, and it would be inconvenient for him to appear any different from the way they expected him to be. His job on the Alternative, his East Village associates, and especially his ideas were facets of his life kept entirely hidden.
That wasn't the only thing kept hidden, Vicky thought. He was really no more open with his personal thoughts to any of this group, with the exception of Al. After the long weekend when his buddy, Marty, had been here, Perry had made his important decision. From that moment, he had become almost monastic. He had not had sex with any of them, either that weekend or since. And, it grew increasingly obvious he had no intention or desire for it.
He was posing for Margaret, but that was not a sexual situation. Vicky and Maryann had made a little comment to each other about his apparent lack of interest, and the twin had suggested perhaps Perry had a girl up in
Harlem. Even Olivia was surprised, finding her appraisal of him wrong. She had shifted him from the "fucker" category to the "thinker." Vicky felt that Perry's abrupt treatment of her jealous outburst had made Olivia take a new view of him and perhaps of herself, too.
Al was probably the only one who really knew anything about Perry's reasons and purposes, but he said nothing. In fact, since Perry had started writing for the paper, Al had immersed himself in an almost continuous fury of writing, telephone calls, late-hour conferences, and when there was time, private conversations with Perry.
In one sense, Vicky was jealous of the amount of time the two men spent together. It was only in the last day or so, when she began to wonder which one of them she was directing the jealousy toward. Her relationship with Al was an easy one. There were no restrictions between them, and no limitations to the pleasures and satisfaction they could provide for each other. By this time, she was sure that Al did not care how often she had sex with other men as long as it was within the protective confines of the apartment.
She wondered whether Perry had told Al about the abortive experience in the uptown apartment when the call from her mother had come. She didn't think so. Perry was not the type to carry tales. What had happened would explain why Perry plainly avoided her sexually, although it wouldn't hold true with regard to the other girls.
Somewhere along the line, she was going to try to get that business out into the open. She had acted wrong. She could have put her mother off. She had used the unexpected circumstances as an excuse, although she really had no idea why she needed one. If the phone had rung ten seconds later, she would have already been down on him, and once she had started having sex, she would never had allowed anything to stop it.
She still wanted it. The admission forced its way to her consciousness, and the knowledge of it only increased the sudden desire. More than that, she was sure he wanted her just as much. He was too much of a man, too easily aroused not to respond to her. He had to force himself not to look at her. And, it wasn't fair of him. She had made a mistake that Friday afternoon. She would admit it. But, everyone should be entitled to at least one mistake.
He was sure to respond to honesty. It showed in every word of every article he had. written. In some ways, he was a stronger writer than Al, but that might be because he was telling about experiences which had touched deeply within his being. Yet, as shocking and painful as they came across, there was a tempering of humor; an understanding of self, and others and the drives of circumstances which made the facts he had to report all the more shocking.
Maybe it was the content of his Report from Vietnam articles which helped cast this new light on the handsome black man. All of his writing came directly to her for basic editing. As far as his use of the language was concerned, there was little she could change. But, she had contributed some suggestions as to the order in which some of the stories were told, the addition of other viewpoints through remembered remarks of the men with whom he served, the inclusion of physical descriptions of the jungle, Vietnamese villages and people, battle details.
Perry Turner was most surely going to be the quietest revolutionary imaginable. He was showing none of the bitterness which spoiled so many of the articles in the paper. He was telling things the way they were, the way he had seen them, letting the reader judge the errors, the weaknesses, the stupidities which create wars, deprivations and hatred and then turned all these awful situations into unending nightmares.
However, Al was guiding Perry during their long sessions. The results Vicky saw were the honest outpourings of a troubled, but intelligent human being.
It only he were able to apply the same standards of release to his personal life. Vicky was more determined than ever to help him make this part of his adjustment. She didn't need to seek Al's guidance for this project. It came directly from her heart, and she was going to let her womanly instincts point out the path.
She had finished making corrections on another of Perry's reports, stapled the sheets together, and got up from her desk. If Al were back he would want to see this new material right away. She started across the office, knowing she was going to stop at Perry's desk. Picking out this particular place for him to do his writing had been most purposeful on her part. He was directly in the path between her office and Al's, a route she had to take a dozen or more times each working day. She did not stop to talk every time she passed him, but the location increased the opportunities for casual remarks and occasional conversation.
"This last one is excellent, Perry," Vicky said, standing in front of his desk. "You're getting better all the time. I think you ought to do a book."
He looked up and smiled. The expression was more careful than warm. "Thanks, Vicky. I appreciate the encouragement. I think I'm really starting to enjoy this kind of work."
"That's because you're good at it," she said.
"Writing like this," he said, "gives me a whole new slant on everything; the past and the future. I couldn't have begun to do it without Al. I owe that guy more than anyone I've ever known. I try to tell him, but I don't think he really knows how deeply I mean it."
"He might know, Perry, but Al doesn't have the knack of taking compliments. I thinks he gets embarrassed by them."
"Al embarrassed?" Perry laughed. "It's possible, but it doesn't seem to suit him. In high school .the kids used to say you couldn't tell Al anything good about himself because he would tell you first. It wasn't so in the sense they meant it. Al was never the conceited type, no matter what people thought. He was just so damned sure of himself, it made him seen like a know-it-all."
"I've got to get this article in to him," Vicky said. "Will you be staying down to have dinner with us tonight?"
Perry looked at his watch. "I don't know. If I decide to, I have to make a phone call. Tell Al I'll let him know later. Okay?"
She nodded, but by the time she had turned away from him, she was angry. She hadn't been asking on Al's behalf, and she was sure Perry knew that. Why did he keep turning her off like that? Shit, the next time she got hold of that big thing in his pants, she was going to do things with it that would flip him right up to the ceiling. Once she had sex with Perry Turner, it would be a long time before he would consider looking for any other girl to swing with.
She was just as glad that Al was not back in his office yet, or she might have been tempted to let out some of her emotions on him. "Save it up," she told herself. A healthy helping of indignation could add even more fire to that first time with Perry. And there was sure as hell going to be a first time. Even her nice, square, respectable, middle-class mother had taught her one or two tricks about bringing a man around to a woman's point of view.
There was a large rolled-up paper on Al's desk, lying across the top. She lifted it up to put Perry's manuscript where Al would see it as soon as he returned. The rolled sheet looked like a poster. Curious, Vicky opened it with both hands.
At first, she frowned, not making any sense of it. Then, she spread it out on the top of the desk to study it.
It was a roughed-out artist's sketch of an announcement poster which she had never seen before. But, as she read it through, and began to understand what it meant, Vicky was first shocked, and then even angrier than before, although now it was not directed solely at Perry.
"There is an Alternative to the Military Establishment!" the screaming top banner read. " T won't return!' says U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Perry Turner. T Am back from Vietnam, and I won't Return to Fight and Kill Helpless Civilians! I Won't Return to Prolong a Senseless War! I won't Return to Foreign Soil! I won't Return to Active Duty!' "
The rest of the poster listed the time and place of the rally, and more than a dozen sponsoring groups, including some extreme radical outfits which she had heard Al roundly denounce. The bottom of the poster proclaimed the over-all sponsorship of The East
Village Alternative, including the identification of "Al Park, Editor-Publisher."
So this was what those endless hours of conversation and conference were all aiming toward! This is what both Al and Perry were hiding behind their twin masks of indifference!
She pulled her hands away from the big sheet as though it were something poisonous, and it rolled itself up again. She walked out of Al's office, her mind in a whirl of confused and conflicting thoughts.
Why had they kept it secret, even from her? I Surely Al trusted her not to tell anyone unless he approved their knowing. Perry's silence was more understandable. He was about to do something which might well have a tremendous effect on the rest of his life, and he was the type to keep his thoughts and his counsel private.
It would be easier not to discuss his decision. Then, she recognized the basis of her anger. She did not have his confidence-he that day in the uptown apartment, it would have been nothing more. Even if he were into her every day, it would be no more than the length of his penis making contact with her. He didn't care anything about her. Everything she had ever imagined as a relationship between them had been part of her own imagination, a reflection of her own needs.
She had made the Number One Mistake. She had let her middle-class values hang around her neck, and pull her down into this ridiculous emotional situation. Personal, individual freedom had no place in its scope for romantic love. In order to allow oneself to grow toward one's full potential, one had to keep oneself free from the trap of one-to-one, mutually excluding ties.
She had no one to blame but herself. Too many times had she seen the unhappiness that possessiveness and jealousy invariably created. She was old enough and wise enough to know you don't confuse sex with love: that the overwhelming urge to get Perry out of his clothes was no more than a healthy curiosity about what it would be like to have sex with a black.
And, she knew the best way to cure herself of this childish infatuation. There was no better time to start that process than right now.
Perry watched Vicky walk away from the desk with a mixture of sadness and relief. Her blonde beauty was always stimulating to him, but her obvious sexual need to possess every man was an unhappy weakness which only served to stop any kind of relationship he might have considered, for he could take her as a fuck, but he could not bear to be possessed by her.
He had fucked last night, not with Cora, but with a slut he found on the streets, one whose breath reeked of alcohol, and whose face was long-past beautiful, but the urges in him had driven him to lay her, to follow her to the room where she stayed and strip himself naked while he waited for her to do the same.
As soon as he was beside her on the dirty sheets she kissed him. Her caresses were feminine all right, and he recognized in her touch the skills that so many women would have given their right tits to have as their own. Her tongue played with his outer lips, massaging their thin surface in easy back and forth motions.
Under the influence of her firm caresses his cock was steaming very fast. He was hard, harder than he ever thought he could be for a ten-dollar whore. Her cunt was still in good shape for someone who had been in as many rounds as she had been.
His fingers worked into her cunt, feeling the walls react to his touches the way they must have done thousands of times to other hands and other cocks. His lust for her was not diminished by that knowledge. There was in him a great need to have his come, to have it as quickly as he could get it.
He rummaged some more inside her snatch, rubbing against her walls with the delightful strokes that drove her to ecstasy from the first to the last of them. His feelings for her were worked-up the way things always went when he was with women who liked to screw, and he felt a great big soft, spot in his heart for all her worries.
But he needed his cock to be soothed, and that was the important thing for the moment.
His kisses never ceased to cover her face with their wet caresses, and the sheer glory he got when she stroked her tongue across his lips was electrifying.
He wiggled his balls closer to her hand that was stretching for his crotch. He was so much bigger than her that she had to reach out with the full length of his arm and be helped by his crooking his body before she could tantalize his balls and his cock with her fingertips.
Once she was there, however, the trouble was all worth it. Across the skin that held his balls she wiped the incessant touch of those tips that were filled with fiery pleasure, overflowing with reams of succulent delight. Her manner of caressing him was utterly incredible, and he knew she had not wasted the times she had spent in bed with so many other cocks.
He shoved a pair of fingers into her cunt, deeper than he had been before. Her! cries of pleasure rang in his ears with each thrust that he jabbed past her triangular door. The lust in his heart grew stronger and stronger while he plunged his fingers against her snaking walls.
She was ready for him, of that he was certain. Her cunt was well oiled almost from the second that he drilled his fingers against membranes that reacted mechanically to anything that was inside them. He crawled on top of her and felt her body struggling to support his until he could get into the proper position. Once there he jammed his cock against her cunt lips, missing her cunt on the first attempt because he was in too much of a hurry.
Frustrated, he returned to the starting point and let her fingers position his tip the next time. When he again whipped his ass forward he had the luscious taste of her sex-canal walls soothing his burning cock.
With hard driving strokes he ministered to her passages, beating against her with a rhythm she scarcely could keep up to. His hunger for a come made him a wild animal instead of a man. He forgot he was with a woman who was a human being with feelings and emotions. He forgot that he was a man who could give love, and soothe hunger. All that was in his brain was the burning need for the thrills that would roll across his ass and his balls when he at last shot his wad into her naked body.
Her arms circled him as far as they could. If she could have reached far enough she would have locked her fingers together and held him in a grip so tight he could not breathe. But he was too big for her to do that, so she contented herself with keeping as firm a grasp as possible on his body.
The steaming lust that was in his cock finally erupted in the sheer delight he had wanted so badly to have, and he poured out all his gism in pleasureful spurts that pounded against the back of her passages.
At the same time she had her come, had the pleasure which arched her back and made her fingers clutch at the air about her while her arms curled with spasms of delight. Every nerve and fiber of her nude flesh scintillated with the electric jolts that her climax drove against her.
He remembered that, wondered why Vicky could not fuck with the same freedom to come and go, yet with more ability to feel for her partner. He saw her coming back from Al's office, her mind intent on something.
"Come with me," she said. "I want to be together with you and talk." It was not a command or a question, but a statement of fact. They walked around the corner to the apartment building, and entered the front idoor. After they were inside the apartment, their shoes off, they sat in the white room. Perry went suddenly to the door of the dark room and opened it, then he closed it again.
"There's no one," he said.
She locked the inside bolt on the apartment door.
"Let's go into the black room," she said, tossing her little pocketbook on one of the white wall seats.
"I thought you wanted to talk." What was she pulling?
"After we have sex." her voice was low.
"And, just suppose I don't want to have sex with you?" Perry felt the anger rushing through him. "Has that ever occurred to you?"
She let out the breath she had been holding. "Yes, Perry. It has very much occurred to me.
That's why I'm asking you to do it."
"You and your hot pants. Whenever you're ready to go, it's any man who happens to be close by."
He could see the tears coming into her eyes, and it startled him.
"I knew that's how you saw me, and I can't blame you. For all I know at the moment, you may be perfectly right. Right about all of the other men I've had sex with. Even Al. I don't know. But, it doesn't hold true for you."
Something caught at him. "What does that mean."
"I have made a mistake about you, Perry. I tried to treat you just the same as anyone else I thought was nice. I knew there was one special thing, but that didn't really set you apart in my mind. You were black. So what? You're nice-looking, healthy, sexually normal. If I could have sex with Jamie and Joe and Marty, as well as with Al, there wasn't any reason why I shouldn't have sex with you."
"Yes, there was, and there is. I don't want it."
"Listen, Perry. I'm not making any claims on you. Just the opposite, in fact. That's why I want to go into the black room with you right now. It's the only way to get the whole ridiculous business out of my system. I've fallen in love with you. For all I know, it might have happened the night we met. But, it's so. I didn't realize it fully until today. All it can do is mess up my life, and yours, too. If I thought you had any kind of the same feelings for me, I'd keep as far away from you as possible. But, I know you don't. And, the only way I can kill it is to make my relationship with you the same as it is with all the others. As silly as it may sound to a man, I'm asking you to ... screw me," she had had to force the word out, "yes, Perry, screw me the same way you would any girl who happened to be around when you were ready to go!"
Without another word, she zipped down the front of her dress, stepped out of it, and tossed it aside. She had on only a brassiere and tiny pants. She walked up to him, and before he could react in any way, put her arms hard around his neck and pulled his head down into a kiss.
For a second or two, he was motionless; stunned into a complete lack of sensation. But, only for a couple of seconds.
And, then he felt the warmth of her lips, the wetness of her tongue, the pressure of it pushing against his mouth. He relaxed, and let the kiss develop, her tongue meeting his with a sensation like tasting something unexpectedly tart, and wanting another taste almost immediately.
His arms went around her, feeling the incredibly soft skin against the inside of his forearm, and the solidity of her body under his palms. He tightened his hold, almost lifting her from the floor, and pushed her tongue back into her mouth, following it with his to explore the source of that delicious flavor.
As desire burned through him, making his heart pound noisily, his ears ring, his sex start to respond, he was as abruptly filled with fear. Something was wrong! Something she had said back there in the office. He had heard it, but it had not really registered inside his mind. Now it did.
Not too gently, he pushed her down, away from him. She looked at him questioningly, a worried frown marring her face.
"What did you mean," he asked, "when you said something about me not letting you be a part of what I was planning?"
"The rally. I know about it."
"The what?"
"Next Friday night. I saw the layout for the poster on Al's desk."
"Yes?" He felt he'd better not tell her he had no idea what she was talking about. He would just let her go on talking.
"I didn't mean to get upset over it. It's one of the things that made me realize how I feel about you. Knowing you were going to take such an important step, and not sharing any of it with me. After all, it's the sharing which is the basis of this whole way of life. The sharing of ideas, and feelings, of pleasures, and problems, too. I know this is going to mean more problems for you, and I wanted to be in on the whole of it. It's all part of this same business about not getting emotionally attached. That's what I meant."
She really hadn't told him anything. He would make one more try, then go back to the office and get the facts directly from Al.
"What do you think about the rally, and everything?"
"I think it is one of the most truly brave acts possible in a time like ours. I'm all for it, you know that. I was when Al first talked about it back in June. It's bound to be a sensation. I'll bet it will make the front pages of the square newspapers for days. You're really putting your beliefs on the line. And it may get you out of the marines. I'm already proud of you." She was almost glowing as she looked at him.
Perry could feel everything inside of him shake. The whole picture was shaping inside his head, and it was unbelievable. What did they think of him? Just a stupid black boy who could be finagled into wrecking his life to satisfy some far-out theories of theirs, and maybe help sell a few thousand more copies of their scrawny, second-rate paper?
His anger mingled with the horniness she had already built up in him.
"Okay," he said, starting to unbutton his shirt, "enough of the explanation. We have something much more immediate to take care of." He pulled the shirt off.
"Shall we go into the black room?" she said, putting one hand out to touch his chest.
"No," he said, "That's too far away." He was going to be able to see her reaction through everything that would happen. He stepped out of his pants and his undershorts in one motion.
Her eyes were fixed on him, and her hands reached out toward the enormous erection. He let her just touch it, then, avoiding the impending grasp, stepped quickly around behind her, wrapping both arms around her chest, with his wrists crossed, each hand completely enclosing a breast. Through the light material of the brassiere, he could feel her nipples hardening fast. He took each between a thumb and forefinger, pulling each into a taut protruding tube.
This was more than an action of desire. It was an act of worship. His sex organs were an idol she was paying homage to. There was a wild, perfect beauty to it: her mouth fitting itself to him with a continuous purposefulness, her hand supporting and massaging the double-sac of his testicles. This joining was meant to be; to continue; to be repeated endlessly.
Then, Marty's words repeated themselves again in his memory and Perry's mind took over once more. Of course. She was good at it because she loved doing it. But, he had no intention for her to enjoy this encounter. She was going to be the instrument of his pleasure and his anger! He would have what he wanted from life-at any cost.
