"Acting doesn't have much to do with the script of a play. The writer writes the script and gives you a character, lines, a story, and some stage directions. The director gives you a more detailed set of stage directions, a costume, criticism, and a sounding board. You as the actors have to supply the flesh and the emotion, the life and the personality of the characters, and that life can come only from what's inside you as people. You'll never be able to create anything in a character that you don't already have inside you, and your hang-ups are going to show in a bright spotlight on that stage."
I sit nervously and listen to his even, confident voice and feel the panic rising in me, happy for the comforting presence of the twenty other students of the acting school sitting around me, glad that his sharp eyes and drilling voice aren't focused on me alone. He is so dynamic and sure of himself that he's frightening yet terribly exciting at the same time. There was no one in Topeka like him, but then this isn't Topeka either; it's New York and I'm here now and he's a part of New York. I've been here over a week and I still can't get used to the idea.
"We'll begin the year by staging a two act play that I wrote. I'm going to assign parts randomly, trying to type cast as much as possible instead of having you audition. The sooner you get on stage the sooner I'll be able to assess your individual abilities. Some of you will probably get parts that are foreign to you, but that will just give you more of an opportunity to act."
His eyes are so powerful that I keep blinking to help myself screen his intensity down to where I can handle it. Then I appraise his features with a forced calculation; it's a trick I taught myself in order to cope with people more powerful than myself. I look at them as if they're objects instead of people and they become less of a threat. He is about six feet tall with dark hair that falls over his ears and down over his collar in back and he's terribly handsome with piercing gray eyes. I guess him to be in his mid-thirties but it's hard to be certain. I have the feeling he could project any age he wanted. His body is lean and thin almost to the point of being skinny, yet his muscles are hard and flex under his shirt when he moves, and his movements are cat-like they are so self-controlled and fluid. I remember his name, Mark Langstrom... and that he is a well known Off-Broadway director.
"There's one more thing I want to stress at this point. This is a professional acting school, not a place for kids who want to play at acting. You pay money to come here, a lot of money, but that doesn't mean that you're going to stay here. There's a hundred others for every one of you sitting here that would like to take your place, and as far as I'm concerned they can have your place if you don't earn it and earn it fast. I don't know what kind of experience any of you have had in acting or in your personal lives, but if you don't grow fast in both of these areas you're going to get the boot, and if it comes don't say you weren't warned. If I don't think you've got it together to act I won't waste my time or yours. I may sound hard and I am hard, but I'll be honest with you all the way. If I ever tell any of you that you're doing something well you'll know I mean it."
He begins passing out copies of the script and I watch his hands. They have a softness and delicacy that is almost feminine, but I notice that the heels of each hand are calloused in a strange way. He hands me a script and I feel his eyes all over me. He is looking at each of us carefully as he passes out the script. I suddenly feel as if I'm sitting naked, as if his eyes are seeing right through my clothes they stare so hard and deep.
I take the script and with feigned interest I begin reading it to escape his eyes. Then he is back up in front and I look up as he begins talking again. We all look at the list of characters on the second page and he begins assigning parts, asking each person his name as he assigns a part and writing the name in his copy of the script. I sit frozen with fear as he moves closer to me in his assignments, then he asks me my name and I have to audibly clear my throat before I can answer.
"Jennifer Reynolds."
I feel his eyes burning into me.
"Stand up, will you Jennifer," he says.
He hasn't asked anyone else to stand up, and as I rise to my feet all eyes in the room focus on me. Some boy in the room whistles softly and there is a wave of laughter. I feel myself turning red and fight to control it but I know it shows. I've been handling whistles and catcalls all through high school but I feel insecure and alone here and I can't keep myself together not to blush. I look at Mark Langstrom and he is smiling.
"I've saved the part of Lilly especially for you, Jennifer. Lilly of the Valley, she's called, and she never blushes."
I blush all the more with that dig and sit back down while he doles out the rest of the parts. I'm acutely conscious of my body now and squirm on the floor where I sit. I feel hot all over as I watch him talking, and when the session is over and the first rehearsal time has been set I hurry out of the room and go quickly down the hall to the dressing rooms. Dance class is in half an hour and I must change into a leotard. A girl named Bernie and another named Sandra come in behind me and we begin undressing together, talking about the script.
The school offers several different classes of instruction in various theater-related subjects like dance, signing, costumes, make-up, stage design, lighting, and so on. I have chosen to concentrate on dance because I feel most competent in it, and I've always been told I'm a good dancer.
Sandra and Bernie strip down to their bra and panties and I do the same, looking discreetly at their bodies. Sandra has big breasts, as big as mine, but they are lower on her body. Bernie has little pointed breasts and is very thin except for her ass which shoots out behind like the ass of a Negress. The door to the hall is partly open and I wonder if they aren't afraid of someone walking by in the hall and seeing them nearly naked, when the door suddenly bangs open and a tall blond guy named Bill comes walking into the dressing room.
"Hi, chickies," he says.
I reach for my robe and hold it in front of my body but Sandra and Bernie just look up and smile at him. They don't seem upset in the least as he looks them over. He throws his own tights and T-shirt on the long dressing table and proceeds to unbutton his shirt and pull it off.
"You're taking dance too?" Bernie asks.
"Yeah."
"Good, it'll be nice to have a man around," Bernie says.
"I would think so."
He next unbuttons his pants and pulls them down and I see with a shock that he has nothing on underneath. His genitals come openly into view. I look away but then look back. His penis is dangling out from thick blond pubic hair and his balls hang underneath. His penis is long and tipped with a reddish head. I've only seen a man's genitals once before and that was at a distance but that image has stayed with me ever since, and now I can't tear my eyes away from Bill's exposed genitals. He bends and pulls his pant legs over his feet, then straightens, and his penis sticks out from his body so I can see his balls, round and full and covered with soft blond hair like down. He is naked now and I see that both Sandra and Bernie are glancing at him too. Their eyes travel up and down his body while mine are fastened on his crotch. I begin to sweat under my arms and my own crotch feels moist. I'm suddenly certain that I must be the only virgin in the entire school and that feeling makes me nervous and afraid. I'm sure I don't look like a virgin, though, and I decide I'd better stop acting so much like one or they'll all know. I put the robe down and stand in my bra and panties too. I look at myself in the mirror and see that there is a bulge where my pubic hair presses out against the flimsy fabric of my panties. Then I look at Bill casually and see that his penis has grown some. It is growing bigger before my eyes. Bill looks at me, at my body, and grins broadly. I force myself to smile at him and turn away to keep from staring at his genitals.
Then we are all dressed and walk together down the hall to the room where dance class is held. During exercises at the bar I stand behind Bill, and I can't take my eyes off the bulge in the crotch of his tights. When he stretches it pokes out even more and I force myself to keep my eyes closed for several seconds to gain control of myself. Floor exercises are better. I can't see him at all. After about forty-five minutes of exercises the class ends for the first day and we return to the dressing room.
I'm terribly excited as I pull off my leotard. I fiddle in my purse as an excuse for standing almost naked like that. I want Bill to look at me again. He undresses as before and again I see his genitals exposed. His body is flushed and hot from the exercises and his penis hangs down in a long curve from his crotch. His balls hang lower now also, and as I watch him out of the corner of my eye he rubs his genitals absently. I feel myself getting weak in the knees like a little girl who is confronted with something bad yet exciting. The temptation is there to reach out and touch it. He is that close to me. I shake the thought out of my head and turn away, breathing hard. Sandra and Bernie are already dressed and I quickly pull on my clothes. I feel ashamed of myself for staring at him, for indulging in fantasies about touching him. I feel suffocated suddenly in my own terrible thoughts, feel myself slipping into a state of lost control as if sinking under water. I have to get out of here quick. I pick up my things and cram them into my bag and head for the door, not looking back. Sandra and Bernie have already left. I pull open the door and am almost out in the hall when I hear him.
"Jennifer."
I close my eyes against his voice wanting to pretend I haven't heard him, but I have; I've already hesitated at the sound of my name, and he knows I heard him. Slowly I turn back and am relieved to see that he already has his pants pulled up.
"Yes," I finally manage to say, forcing a carefree voice and thanking God for what acting ability I have.
"How about having dinner with me tonight?"
He's pulling on his shirt and I see his chest with the patch of curly blond hair disappear beneath it. He is so cool, so manly, and I suddenly am terrified of him.
"Yes, sure," I hear myself saying, thinking no, never, I just couldn't, not after seeing you like that. I bite my tongue for having accepted and think maybe he didn't hear me. I feel myself slipping deeper into the water. I cling to the doorknob to keep from going under, to keep part of me afloat.
"Good. Be with you in a minute," he says.
"I'll wait out in the hall," I say, and I close the door behind me. Out in the hall I lean against the wall and breathe deeply. I know that if you can control your breath, make it come easily, you can get control of the rest of you. I feel my lungs catch then fill with air and my head slows down. I reach in my purse and pull out my cigarettes and stuff one in my mouth, lighting it with shaking fingers. I inhale deeply and blow the smoke out almost as a sigh of relief. My mother was surprised to find that I had begun smoking a year ago. She should have known why-the tension got too great sometimes and cigarettes seemed to help.
I light my second cigarette as Bill comes out and we walk down the long hall together in silence. Outside the building the five o'clock Manhattan rush is on. People jam the streets and sidewalks all in a mad rush to get home from work, to get from one cubicle to another. As we push our way along the street Bill takes my hand. I feel more secure that way and am glad he did it. He turns us left about four blocks from the school and we go another half block and duck into an old apartment building. We climb the stairs to the third floor and he unlocks his door and we're inside and away from the streets.
The apartment is nice in an inexpensive way, nicer than I had expected from the outside appearance of the building. It's only two blocks from my own apartment, but in Manhattan two blocks can be two worlds. There is a large living room with a small bedroom off to one end, and a kitchen and bath and closet. The ceilings are high and a corner window looks out over the street. I settle on the couch and look down at the tops of peoples' heads while Bill puts some music on the stereo.
"I'm going to take a shower," he says. "Want to join me?"
"No ... no thanks. I don't feel like one just yet," I answer with as much cool as I can muster. He disappears into the bathroom and I hear him singing above the spray of the water. After a few minutes he walks out of the bathroom naked. I'm not expecting that and I catch my breath and pretend not to see. He crosses the room to the closet and stands for a long time as if trying to decide what to put on. I look furtively at him and see that his genitals are swollen even bigger than in the dressing room. He finally slips into some pants and a shirt and joins me on the couch. His mere presence now gets me excited and scared and I try to think of a way of escaping from him for a while. Then I remember his offering me a shower.
"Bill, if it's all right, I think I could use a shower. Suddenly I feel all sweaty and tired from dancing class."
"Be my guest," he answers.
I go into the bathroom and close the door. There is no lock and this disturbs me, but it's too late to back out now so I quickly undress and jump into the hot water. I don't care if my long hair gets wet because I have to wash it at home that night anyway. I lather my body heavily with soap and rub my skin all over, feeling the sensuous tickling of my fingers on my skin. When I get to my crotch I can't keep from rubbing the bar of soap sideways into my slit and I feel the pounding of my clitoris as the soap teases it. Before I know what I'm doing my fingers have replaced the soap and I'm back into the year-old habit of caressing myself between the legs, only now I'm in a fever with it like I've never been before. I close my eyes and picture Bill's naked body, his genitals dangling close to me, and as I see them in my mind my hand works harder in my slit and my whole body is pounding wildly. My clit grows stiff under my fingers and a feeling like floating comes over me. My legs feel like rubber and my thighs spread wide as if someone is pulling them part. As if from a long way off I feel it coming, a throbbing that pulses and explodes inside me as I dig my fingers into my cunt, and I stifle a sob as I come, still picturing his penis in my churning mind.
Seconds later the bathroom door opens and Bill pulls the shower curtain back. My legs are weak and my mind is filled with guilt at what I've just done. I've rubbed myself with soapy hands before but I've never carried it all the way. It was the first orgasm I had ever known and I'm dizzy from it.
I look at Bill's leering face and my first thought is that he has seen me masturbating. I turn scarlet and want to drain out of the tub like the water, to become fluid and invisible and disappear forever down into the sewers of the city where I belong. I'm so upset and uncontrolled that I don't even bother to hide myself from his hot eyes. I just stand there with shame written all over my face and let him stare at me.
"You got a lot of soap in your crotch," he says grinning. "Let me help you wash it."
I try to speak but my tongue won't work. I see his hand extending toward me and watch his fingers sink into the soapy hair of my cunt. They dig into my slit where my clit is still throbbing and I feel him poke around my secret flesh. I want to scream I'm so frightened.
"Don't!" I manage to say weakly.
"Come on now, it's all in fun. A little petting is good for everybody. Keeps your blood circulating."
I feel his fingers exploring my flesh where no man has ever felt before and against all my will I begin to respond as he manipulates my love button.
"Like it, don't you," he says, and his fingers reach for the unopened entrance to my cunt.
I feel him pressing up into my hole, pressing against the unbroken hymen closing the entrance to my vagina against him, and I panic, feel his slippery finger digging inside me and jerk away from his hand, splashing him with water as I move back in the shower. He wipes the water from his face and stares at me angrily.
"Look, chick, I know what you were doing in here. You can't fool me with this coy bullshit. You like your own finger up there better than mine? I can see all over your face that you were fucking with yourself."
"I wasn't! I wasn't!" I hear myself scream, and then I'm crying, sobbing tears that mix with the water and flow down over my breasts into the drain. I look at his face and he seems scared, hesitant. I'm sure he didn't expect such an emotional outburst, such hysteria, and all of it so real. His face goes slack, uncomprehending; he tries to put the shattered pieces together.
"You're really scared," he finally says in an almost clinical tone of voice, as if he's watching some animal react in an experiment. "You're really fucked up, aren't you?"
"Leave me alone, please," I plead.
He shows no sign of leaving. He looks me up and down and I watch his eyes focus on my breasts. I feel like a trapped animal in a cage. Then he strips his clothes off and steps into the shower beside me. I see that his penis is no longer flaccid and hanging. It's stiff and sticking out cruelly in front of him like a weapon, like a knife of flesh. He presses against me, his hands covering my breasts, and he fondles my flesh. I feel his penis like a spear pricking at my belly and I close my eyes at its touch. I feel faint, terrified, helpless against him. His mouth is seeking mine and I twist my head to avoid his lips, pushing at him with what strength I have left. The hot water sprays over us and I feel suffocated by his body and the steam. I can't breathe. I struggle harder against him and in a sudden spray of water we both slip. The water hits my face and mouth and I gasp for breath. He lets go and struggles to his feet, reaching down and pulling me up after him.
"Get me out. Please, I'm suffocating," I whimper.
I feel his arms lift me off my feet and I am being carried out of the bathroom. I feel the cool air of the living room and see the high ceiling. The music is around us now and I hear it interspersed with my own choking. Then the living room ceiling changes to the bedroom ceiling and I feel the softness of the bed cushion my body.
"No . . . no," I mumble. "Please ..."
Chapter Two
"Stop it!" I scream, and then I realize that he isn't even touching me. My breath is coming in quick gasps and I force air deep into my lungs. I feel a catch inside me and then a release as if I've taken a long drag on a cigarette, and my body stops shaking so violently and relaxes on the bed. I feel like I've been sweating but it's only the water from the shower. Then I realize that my eyes are closed tight and I force myself to open them.
The bedroom ceiling is above me again. I turn my head to the side and see Bill standing beside the bed, dripping wet and naked, looking curiously down at me as if he's not quite certain what I am. He obviously wasn't expecting anyone like me, so screwed up and helplessly hysterical, and my loss of control has sobered him.
I'm aware of my nakedness and aware of Bill's eyes traveling over me. I'm lying on my back and my legs are spread a little giving him a look at my crotch, and I don't make any move to hide himself from him. A strange sensation of playing a game comes over me. Where moments before I was hysterical thinking he was touching me, I am now almost inviting him to touch me as I expose myself even more by shifting my body and turning it slightly toward his side of the bed. I don't understand what I'm doing, why I'm teasing him like this when only minutes before I was hysterical. I think I must be crazy but I'm out of control; my body seems to have a will of its own suddenly, beyond the rational control or even understanding of my mind. I play the game out because I can't do anything else, can't stop even if I want to stop. I've never exposed myself this way to anyone, any man, before in my life and I'm on fire with a kind of excitement that is new and strangely delicious to me. My blood is pulsing wildly and my hysteria has seemingly disappeared and been replaced by a kind of blatant and lewd coquettishness.
I look at Bill and a smile plays over my lips, flickers seductively, and it's as if I'm suddenly acting out a part for a play. I'm more aware of my body than I ever have been before, even more than when I dance, and I feel a sudden surge of power like when I'm delivering a crucial line on stage. The power over the situation seems to' be in my hands now, and with the slightest movement of a thigh I can make him visibly react. And it's fun, it's a new and fun game for me, an exciting game.
Bill is standing staring at me and his penis is rising, rising up until it is sticking out stiff in front of him like a heavy red sausage. It looks silly and disgusting to me at the same time. I've never seen a man with a full erection before and it fascinates me even though it looks ugly. His balls are hanging absurdly down underneath. I feel a thrill go through me as I stare at him, and I notice that he is shaking now, shaking with desire for me. I know he wants to make love to me, wants to jam that thing into my body up between my legs and to squirm around in there, dance between my legs and unload his semen into me, but I'm not going to let him do it. And that is what's so much fun; I'm not going to let him have his way; I'm going to drive him crazy first!
"Do you like what you see?" I ask him.
"I'd like to fuck what I see," he says.
"That's up to me."
"Don't be too sure," he says.
I just smile at him.
"You can look all you want, but you can't touch. Unless you marry me first."
I have no intention of getting married, and certainly not to him, but I tell him that anyway to see what his reaction will be.
"What are you, some kind of religious nut, some kind of Bible belt bitch?" he asks.
"You're getting mad now, aren't you, lover boy?"
He doesn't answer and I see him look at my crotch again as if he's debating whether to rape me or not. I suppose that in the end he could rape me, overpower me physically, hit me in the stomach or the jaw and have his way with me dazed and helpless beneath him, but I don't think he has it in him; at least I'm willing to believe that I can deter that from happening.
He's breathing hard now and he sits down on the bed beside me with a hard look in his eyes. I watch his every move. He looks at my body and I feel my flesh respond to his eyes as if he's touching me physically. The closer he gets to me the less sure of myself I am and for a second I almost loosen my control, almost panic again like I did in the shower when he touched me. I look at his erection again, look at it from close up, and I have the desire to reach out and touch it. I know I'm out of control by the way I jump from disgust to desire and back again. I feel confused and helpless one second and powerful the next. I know I want him to fuck me-yes, that's it, fuck me, like all the things I've heard and imagined, all the animal desires that are incorporated in fucking that I've never experienced and only dreamed about-and at the same time I think I'll scream if he touches me. Yet I squirm and spread my thighs a little further so he is looking right into my cunt. Why I keep teasing him I don't know, yet I can't stop. I can see his penis twitching and I wonder what it would be like to feel it twitching inside me.
He reaches out and his hand touches my belly just above my pubic hair.
"Look but don't touch!" I say coldly, taking his hand and throwing it back at him.
He looks at me with hatred in his eyes and puts his hand back, only this time he digs his fingers into my crotch. I feel his fingers in my hair and tremble as he touches my clitoris. I reach down and grab his hand and try to remove it but he doesn't let me this time. I dig my fingernails into his hand and watch his face as the pain builds but he still doesn't move his hand, and then I scratch hard up his arm and he grabs my hand with his other hand and squeezes tighter into the flesh of my cunt.
"You bastard!" I hear myself saying. "Let go!"
"Shut up," he says and he continues to explore my crotch roughly.
I hate him and yet I love what is happening. My flesh is alive like I've never know it before. I feel like screaming and running but I don't. Instead I reach for his hand again only this time I press it hard between my legs and watch his face as he feels me. Then without warning I slap him across the face. I've never hit anyone before, and I don't hit him very hard, but it surprises him as much as me and he withdraws his hand from my cunt and looks so surprised that I laugh out loud, hysterically.
"You're absolutely crazy," he says angrily, looking me in the eyes. "You want it and you know damn well you do!"
I know he's right, that I want it, not him but it, that hard rod sticking out between his legs. I want it jammed into my body where nothing has ever penetrated before, want to feel its hardness tearing me open. His hand is on me again, soft this time, his fingers playing along my thighs, moving slowly up to my crotch. I want to tear away, slap him again, refuse his touch, but something has happened and I'm suddenly afraid to move or to fight. I look at him and see the lust in his eyes and watch his fingers explore my flesh and I think him disgusting, an animal bent on satisfying his base sexual instinct. He doesn't care about me at all; he cares only for himself, for his penis and his pleasure, and he wants to use my sacred body to satisfy that. Yet I lie still and let him feel me as he wants. His hands work up to my breasts and his fingers poke into the soft flesh of my bosom. I feel my tits tighten strangely as he pinches them; I watch my nipples grow hard and feel an excitement like electricity shoot through my body as if my nipples are wired to my cunt. Involuntarily I begin to pant and squirm under his hands and I see him smile indulgently. I can tell he is confident now, certain of his victim. He toys with my body like a cat playing with a crippled mouse, working his fingers into my flesh and working his loins to iron heat. He leans over me and presses his mouth against mine and I feel his tongue slip between my lips and plunge into my mouth. He is no longer gentle. He kisses me brutally. I feel the power in his tongue and I hate it but I respond helplessly, sucking on his tongue as I've never kissed anyone. I wish I could stop but he has control of me now. I know he will take me in his own way and time and I can hardly believe it is really happening to me. Why now? And why him? I loathe him. Why am I letting him enjoy my treasures? I don't understand any more, don't understand anything except that my body is betraying me to him against my will.
His mouth grins against mine and I feel his naked body pressing into me. He turns me on my side and his hot hands flow down my back and caress my buttocks, his fingers splitting my buns apart and digging into the crack of my ass. I move to avoid his filthy fingers but when I move I push into his stiff organ and it slips between my legs rubbing against me. I clamp my thighs tight around it and feel a surge of desire flood through me. His penis is moving between my legs like a snake, rubbing against the sensitive flesh of my cunt, and I close my eyes to feel it better. It feels hot and sharp and evil and I want him now like I've never wanted anything in my life.
He rolls over on top of me and presses me into the mattress. I feel the suffocation I felt in the steamy shower returning and I break away from his mouth gasping for air, but this time it is different, I don't get hysterical and scream. The air fills my lungs and the suffocation passes as quickly as it came and I am moving under him like a backstreet whore. I feel ashamed and wicked, as if I'm degrading myself, as if I'm destroying everything that is good in me, and I love it and want it.
His fingers are plying my thighs now, spreading them apart and groping into my crotch eagerly, and I am letting him push his finger into my hole. Suddenly there is a sharp pain and I whimper like a rabbit but I let him continue his investigation. Then he finds my clitoris and rubs it brutally while I moan and thrash under him. I am lost now. I feel myself slipping away as if sinking under water in a sea of sexual sensation, as if I'm drowning in my own body. His hands wash over me like waves and I know I'm being carried toward a rocky shore where I'll crash and split open and sink into a world I've never known, a world from which I'll never return again.
He is kneeling between my parted legs now, his hands spreading my cunt open, his eyes searching out the pink entrance to my body, and I see his cock poised above my cunt like a red-hot poker. Then he takes his organ and places the bulging tip at the center of my being and with a cruel lunge of his loins he spears into me. I scream as the pain shoots up into my belly. I thrash and cry for him to stop but his full weight is upon me, his full strength concentrated in his penis, and he rips into my body like a dagger. Tears flood my eyes and pain fills my belly but he is insensitive to everything but burying himself deeper inside me. I feel my flesh tearing like cloth stretched too tight at the seams, feel the sensation of blood and I know that I am torn and bleeding. He pumps himself into me like a jack hammer, banging into me ruthlessly, into my pain and my virginity, and then I know that he is there, is all the way inside me, reaching up into my belly with his hard cock.
And I am moving with him now, bucking under him as if in defiance of the pain and humiliation of the act. I could have never imagined anything so bestial and hideous, so depraved, and yet I am a willing accomplice to the act, a partner in depravity, and secretly I am loving it. The pain has become pleasure without my knowing when or how it happened. My arms are around his neck pulling him down harder against me. I feel his muscular body grind against mine and pull my legs up high to give him every chance to screw into me. I want him to hurt me now, to tear me in half in his passion, and I wait for each stroke to strike him deeper into me. Then he begins to shake and his rhythm increases to a fever pitch and I know that he is coming. I thrash under him and claw at his back like a lioness as he groans and unloads his semen into my waiting, eager belly, and I cry to know that he is coming inside me-and it is over and it has only just begun.
Chapter Three
It was on a Friday, on September seventeenth, that I lost my virginity and I noted it in my diary in the following words: "Today, or rather tonight, the hellfire of the Lord descended upon me in the form of a serpent of flesh and screwed me until my blood ran like a river of foul water. His cock was so ugly I want to vomit, and his semen is still dripping out. I hate him and I hate myself." I dreaded going to classes the following Monday, knowing that I would have to face Bill in all his ugliness, look at him and remember what he had done to me. All weekend I stayed in my apartment and worked what had happened over and over in my mind. I remembered every detail of the day and evening, every glimpse of his naked body and every twitch of his penis and every roll of his balls. Images of his genitals flooded my mind and filled my dreams and there was no escape in waking or in sleep. There was one point that remained a mystery to me though, a blank in my memory. I could remember everything up to the point where he had driven into me; the sight of his cock poised between my legs and the pain of his entry were vivid in my mind, and the sensation of him driving deeper and deeper up into my vagina, filling my belly with his enormous organ, I could also remember in minute detail as if I'd had days to feel and study it instead of seconds, but at some point my memory refused to function any more and I knew what point that was but I still couldn't remember it happening nor could I remember anything after it until I felt him exploding inside me. The only thing I could remember out of that lost period while he was screwing me was that I had my hands around his neck and was pulling him tight against me as if I wanted him there, only I couldn't remember why I was doing that or what I was feeling then. That one lapse both frightens and scares me and makes me angry and furious with myself even now as I dress for class after two days of effort at remembering.
It is Monday morning and my dance class is at eleven o'clock and I'm late. I throw on my clothes and for the first time in two days I try not to think about what happened. My cunt doesn't hurt so much this morning, not even as much as the night before, and I leap up in the air and do a couple splits to test it out. There is still some pain but not enough to keep me from exercising. I feel good about that at least. I'm not a cripple from my degradation.
The day is warm and sunny and I enjoy the walk to school, feeling my pulse quicken and my nerves relax in the sunshine. I take my time and stop to look into a window or two as I go, and I know that under my calm I'm still reluctant to face Bill. I skip up the steps into the red brick building and immediately light a cigarette as I walk down the hall to the dressing room. There is nobody there when I open the door and I glance at my watch. Class began a couple minutes ago. I quickly change into my leotard and skip down the hall and en the door into the room where the lessons are held. There are more people today; besides Sandra, Bernie, and Bill there are two other girls and another man, but my eyes fasten immediately on Bill and despite myself I look straight at his crotch as he bends over holding onto the bar for balance. He is facing the opposite way from where I stand and I can look long at his bulging tights without him knowing it. My mind immediately fills with images of him naked and as I look I actually think I see his cock and balls hanging down between his stretched and spread legs, and for a second I wonder at his lack of inhibitions to be exercising naked with the others all dressed around him, then I snap back and realize he is naked only in my own mind. I go to the bar at the end furthest from him and begin doing the exercises along with the rest of them.
The class takes a couple minute break and I know Bill sees me now but I don't even look at him. I'm thankful that I got a chance to see him without having to acknowledge him because it gave me a chance to orient myself to his presence without feeling any pressure to talk to him. I purposely get into a conversation with Sandra during the break so as not to invite his attention by standing idly around. Then for the next forty minutes we concentrate on exercises and when it is over I walk out the door and down the hall toward the dressing room with Sandra still without looking at Bill.
Inside the dressing room I change so quickly that by the time Bill walks in I'm already dressed. Sandra is still in the process of pulling off her tights. I meet Bill's eyes this time and my own eyes are playful and teasing.
"How are you?" he asks me, somewhat disappointed at my already being dressed, I can tell.
"Fine. I had a wonderful weekend, Saturday and Sunday. I met a lovely man, a beautiful man," I lied.
Bill's eyes narrowed at my put down. He scrutinized my face looking for the lie I knew he suspected but I held out against him and finally he turned to Sandra who was bent over struggling out of her tights.
"A virgin one day, a whore the next, isn't that right, Sandra?" he said half joking.
"Who's a virgin?" Sandra laughed. "I haven't seen one in years."
"Yes you have only you don't recognize them any more."
"What do they look like?" Sandra asked.
"Sometimes they can look like Jennifer here, for a while anyway," Bill answered with a cruel grin, and my control melted like butter on a hot stove and I stared at him with undisguised hatred, remembering his touches and loathing him. "But Jenny here is no virgin, let me tell you that."
Sandra looks up at me and smiles lewdly.
"Don't tell me lover boy Bill has already taken a whack at your crack?" she asked me curiously. "It took him a week of sniffing around before I'd let him into my pants."
I feel my face getting red. So Bill has screwed Sandra too. I look at Sandra and can see that she would be an easy lay and still it took him a week to get her, and he got me, virginity and all, in a few hours. I feel my face tighten and my eyes go weak with confusion and I force a thin smile but can't speak. I feel utterly ruined and filthy like a slut. I want to deny it but I'm trapped; if I deny it Bill will have me and if I admit it Sandy will know how really easy I am. But she knows anyway; she can tell from my face.
"Well I'll be damned, Bill," Sandra says. "You must have improved over the summer. If you put a notch on your cock for every cunt you got, like the old gunfighters in the West did when they killed a man, you'd have nothing left by now."
Bill laughs loudly and pinches Sandra on the ass, only he doesn't pinch her on her buns but right up where her pussy is and she giggles happily.
The rest of the dance class walks in then and saves me from any further embarrassment. I light a cigarette and fight to gain back my control as they undress and put on their street clothes. Bill purposely turns his nakedness toward me as he changes and so as to appear unafraid I look at his genitals as he wants me to and I feel a surge of desire in my loins. I puff on the cigarette to keep from showing it but he grins seeing it anyway. Then I begin to turn red again and turn away wanting to cry and run out of the room but I veto that impulse and know that I'll just have to sit it out until I can make a graceful exit. Then Sandra looks up at me again.
"Say Jenny, why don't you come over for dinner tonight? We can get to know each other since we seem to have something in common."
I want to say no but again I'm trapped. Any excuse I give will sound like just that, an excuse, so I say yes with my best smile. She gives me her address and I take the opportunity to leave the dressing room. Out in the hall I breathe easily again, light another cigarette in relief, and walk down the hall and go into the theater area and walk up onto the stage. There are some people experimenting with the lights, part of a class I imagine, and I sit in one corner and open up the script and look through the list of characters until I come to Lilly. Then I go back and see that the play is titled Lilly.
I have two weeks to memorize my part so I begin reading the play which is in two acts. The scene sets the tone of the play immediately. I read: "The first act takes place in a small bar in an isolated area of the Northwest in the Cascade Mountains. The bar is adjoining a bus station in a small town. The season is winter and outside there is a raging snow storm which has halted all traffic, forcing the bus to lay over until the storm subsides. It is about ten at night and most of the passengers from the bus are in the bar drinking and waiting. Everyone is well on the way to getting drunk as the curtain opens." Engrossed and somewhat awed at having been handed the female lead I read: "Lilly, called Lilly of the Valley with an allusion to her beauty as well as her genitals, is in her late twenties and possesses the worn beauty of a woman who has had to use her body to survive. Inherent in her is the childish innocence of a woman who was cheated out of her girlhood and who never lived out her romantic ideas of love and carries them beneath a cynical realism and flint-like hardness that would do justice to a streetwalker. She is a combination of these two paradoxical forces, the romantic buried and the woman of the night evident in her every move. She lets her sex hang out unashamedly in her every action. She is the center of all the mens' attention but out of some long buried impulse allows herself to indulge in a romantic attraction to a young college boy who embodies her buried innocence. It begins as a game for her but as the night advances she gives herself more and more to her romantic impulse until it becomes, momentarily at least, very real for her." I read on eagerly, somewhat afraid of the idea of playing a character so foreign to my own lifestyle. I know enough about the romantic side of her character but the hard sexual side frightens me. I remember what Mark Langstrom said about an actor's hang-ups showing in a bright spotlight when you're on stage, and I begin to worry immediately about my own sexual hang-ups. Then I remember him saying that each of us was going to have to grow and grow fast in our own private lives or we wouldn't make it. Well, I think with ironic humor, Bill saw to it that I began growing sexually the first day of acting school after nineteen years of dormancy. I light another cigarette and read on into the play.
Soon I come to the male lead and read: "Peter Swanson is twenty-one years old and a college student. He is shy, and obviously innocent of much contact with women. He too lives with paradoxical values. His obvious motives are high-minded and not very sexual, yet underneath he would like to live a life of sexual abandon and even depravity. He hides from these underlying desires because he feels unable to attain and satisfy them, and he sees them as sinful and evil when others act them out. He is self-righteous and lives a life aimed at helping others to raise themselves up out of gutters. He hides from the side of himself that would like to crawl into the gutters also." Already the conflict of values between Peter and Lilly are becoming clear to me, or rather the conflict of their apparent lifestyles. As I read on it becomes increasingly clear what is going to happen. Lilly, the hard and realistic woman, is opening herself up to the romantic nature of Peter, opening herself up to trusting in the goodness of people, and Peter is responding to her by allowing his underlying depravity to come out. Lilly is openly bad and turning toward good while, by doing this, she is giving Peter who is openly good an opportunity to act out his repressed desires. I wonder who is going to play Peter but I can't remember who was assigned the part. I read slowly through the first act stopping often to repeat my lines and I try to visualize myself acting them out, try to visualize myself as Lilly. I know enough about make-up to know that when I finally go on stage as Lilly I'll at least look like Lilly on the outside, but whether I'll be able to feel like Lilly on the inside where it counts is something else. In high school back in Topeka just looking like Lilly would have been enough, but I know that Mark Langstrom and New York are going to demand a lot more than outer appearances. Langstrom will want to see Lilly inside and out on that stage.
Before I knew it the day passed and when I looked at my watch it was approaching five o'clock. I told Sandra I would be over by six. When I thought of Sandra I thought of Bill again, and this time I thought about him with a little of Lilly in my head and I felt easier toward him and toward my missing virginity. After all, Lilly wouldn't give a damn about losing her virginity, nor about getting fucked.
Then as I walked out into the late afternoon sun in the busy streets of Manhattan I forgot about both Bill and Lilly and became Jennifer Reynolds again, a young and pretty girl fresh from Topeka wandering the streets of an exciting city all new to me. The endless small shops fascinated me as did the endless variety of people. If ever there was a true melting pot in America it was in New York. Hippies, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Blacks, all walked along with me and all held one thing in common. They were all Americans no matter how much they hated each other. And I was one of them, only at that moment I loved them all because I was grooving with myself again. Lilly had given me a strange kind of confidence, even though I hadn't read far enough to find out what happened to her. But then I hadn't lived far enough in my own life to have much of an idea what was going to happen to me either.
Chapter Four
I reached the apartment house where Sandra lived just before six and rang the buzzer below her name and pushed the door open when the door buzzed unlocked. The apartment was only about ten blocks from mine and was in a racially mixed neighborhood with the predominant culture seeming to be Puerto Rican by the number of people speaking Spanish in the streets around me. I knew no Spanish at all and had the sensation of walking in a foreign country. My long blonde hair had attracted some attention as I walked the last two blocks and I heard a chorus of whistles behind me as I went. At first it confused me but after a few steps I relaxed and enjoyed the compliment. When I entered Sandra's apartment I was feeling fine.
"You look stunning," Sandra said to me immediately, and I smiled warmly at her. It was a nice thing for her to say and it made me like her, not so much because she was complimenting me but because she would actually say it. Then I turned around and saw Bill sitting in a chair.
"She's right. You do look stunning," he said, smiling.
I looked long at him and decided that he wasn't being sarcastic, that he actually meant it too, and I smiled back at him, slightly upset that he was there but thankful that he was being nice and friendly. In fact, he looked so cheerful and open that I continued to smile at him, feeling my natural attraction for him bubbling to the surface. He was really very good looking with his long blond hair and clear blue eyes, his lanky body stuffed awkwardly into a big chair, and I suddenly realized that objectively I hadn't done so bad for myself after all in letting him be the one to enjoy popping my sweet cherry. This thought brought my gaze down to his crotch and again I saw the bulge in his tight pants and felt my knees weaken slightly as I imagined his genitals hanging out as I had in dance class earlier. Bill's balls and cock, I suddenly realized, would be imprinted in my mind for life.
"Would* you like a drink of wine?" Sandra asked me.
"Yes, I think so," I said relaxing.
After two glasses of wine I felt completely at ease with both of them. Sandra fixed dinner and we sat around on the floor and ate and talked. Bill was acting like a real gentleman.
"By the way, Jenny," he asked part way through dinner, "have you read the play yet?"
"Only the first act so far, but I like it very much."
"You play Lilly, don't you?" he asked curiously.
"Why yes, how did you know?"
"I remember Langstrom assigning you the part."
"Oh," I said, remembering my embarrassment at having to stand up. "Was it you that whistled?"
"Of course," Bill answered. "I'm sorry if it embarrassed you."
"It kind of did," I confessed, and am surprised how easy it is for me to admit that. "But it's all right."
"I get carried away sometimes."
"I know," I said, and we smile at each other. Tonight I really like Bill.
"What do you play, Bill?" Sandra asked.
"Peter," Bill says, and looks hard at me.
"What?" I burst out, unable to control myself.
"I thought that would get a rise out of you," Bill said smiling.
"Wow!" Sandra says. "You two are going to have one hell of a time with this play!"
"I know," Bill agrees." "Jenny, you like me tonight, don't you?"
"Yes ..."
"Do you know what I've been doing ever since you walked in that door?"
"I'm not sure what you mean," I answer, confused.
"I've been acting more like Peter might act in this circumstance than like I would normally act. I've been acting Peter out for you rather than myself. And you like Peter better than you like me."
It hits me like a hammer that he is right. He has been acting young and innocent, polite and shy, the whole evening and I liked him more this way than I ever did before. I look in amazement at him and for the first time I see that Bill is one good actor and has a depth that I'm just beginning to see. Both of their eyes are fastened on me and I know what they're thinking, that I may not be able to handle the part of Lilly because I'm more like Peter than anything.
"Lilly wouldn't like me the way I'm acting tonight," Bill says. "Lilly would pass me by a thousand times before the one time in the play when she gives the innocent type a try."
"I know," I say, looking down in a sudden fit of self-doubt.
"Hold on a minute," Bill says, apparently sensing my sudden discouragement. "Look at me."
I look up at him and he holds my eyes as he talks.
"Let's get something straight right now, Jenny. Last week I fucked you and I was Bill to you, simple and clear, and you were Jenny to me, simple and clear. But now I am also Peter to you and you are also Lilly to me. I've proved I can begin to act like Peter around you, but you're going to have to act like Lilly around me. And I'm going to see that you do, because when we finally get on that stage you're going to have to be Lilly all the way. If you aren't, then I'll fall flat as Peter too, because it is going to take both of us to bring those two characters alive and neither of us can do it by ourselves."
"I understand," I say.
"Good. Only I want you to understand something else about the way I feel as well. Langstrom is big. He's capable of making me an actor, of getting me good parts and giving me the break I need. I'm more than simply ambitious about acting, Jenny; I'm absolutely ruthless. This is a big chance for me and it so happens that much of how I come out of it depends on you. Langstrom is no dumb ass. It was no accident that he cast me in the lead as Peter; he wants to see me act, to see if I can act, because he's always looking for actors that he can really use. He cast me as Peter because he thinks he can use me and this is going to be my chance to show him and I'm not about to blow it. It will be a hard part for me because I'm not much like Peter and he knows it. He's seen this play acted out a lot of times before and he knows what can be done with the part; after all, he wrote the damn play. And I'll tell you something else, Jenny. It was no accident that he cast you as Lilly either. You're quite beautiful only you got small town Midwest written all over you like you just walked out of a corn field. You look more like a contestant for Miss America than you do an actress. He's going to test you fast, and by making me play opposite you he's testing me even further."
I listen and look into Bill's penetrating stare and suddenly I begin to understand what New York is really all about, understand how far from Topeka I've really come, and I want nothing more than to run back there as fast as I can only I don't even know how to do that. I avert my eyes from Bill's and stare at the floor sullenly. The silence in the room is almost unbearable. I can feel both of them looking at me, searching my reactions to what Bill has said. Sandra is the first to speak.
"I wish I had your chance, Jenny," she says with her usual open honesty about herself, a trait I'm beginning to admire more and more in her and in people. Even Bill in his way is being very honest now and I feel it necessary to follow their lead.
"I don't know if I can do it, Bill," I say humbly, looking back up into his eyes. "I'm sorry you got stuck with me."
"You're being sorry doesn't matter a damn," he says. "I'm stuck with you and that's that."
"Take it easy, Bill," Sandra says.
"Hell I will," Bill answers back, and I look up at him startled. "Jenny," he begins again, in a soft voice now, "I'm not trying to frighten you. I'm trying to open up myself to you so that you can really trust me, because that's what it's going to take. I'm going to believe that you've got it in you to act the part of Lilly like it has never been acted before. And I'm going to do everything in my power to see that you come through with it. I want to get all your fear out in the open so we can move beyond it. There is no sense in being sorry about anything. We simply have what is and we have to make the very best of it we can, even if it means facing pain and the unknown inside us. There's no going back, no starting over, and no regrets. And in the end we're-you and I-going to give a performance that will blow his mind. Is that all right with you?"
"Yes . . . you're right," I say, only I begin to cry anyway and I try to stifle my sobs. "I'm scared, Bill," I manage to say through my tears.
"You're not the only one, Jenny," I hear him say in a different voice yet, one mixed suddenly with his own fear for himself, and I look up at him and see that he really means it and isn't just trying to baby me. I stop crying and look at him almost hotly. So he's really scared too, I think in wonder.
"I'm beginning to understand, Bill," I say, wiping my tears away as I talk. "I'm beginning to understand what acting and life are all about. You see, I've never known people like you before, and I've never known what honesty is all about, what it even meant."
"That's it, Jenny," Sandra says. "You're getting into it now."
"I. feel like a little girl that just walked out of her parents' house for the first time."
"That's what you are, Jenny," Bill agreed. "Only you got only six weeks to become a woman, to become Lilly."
"Is that when the play is scheduled to be shown?" I ask.
"Yeah. I saw Langstrom today and he told me. He asked me if I'd met my leading lady yet. He knows what's going on."
We finish dinner in silence, and after dinner we have another glass of wine and talk about New York. Bill has been in New York for ten years and Sandra for three. I'm surprised to find they are both twenty-four years old, older than I had thought they were. They don't look any particular age but being nineteen myself I just assumed that most of the students were around the same age. I ask about the other classes and Sandra tells me there are people of all ages connected with the school, that there is one man in his sixties that is a pretty good actor and will probably take the part of the bartender in the play.
"You see, Jenny," Bill said, "most acting schools aren't worth a damn because they're divorced from existing theaters; they play their little games for their own ego satisfaction and are happy to be students which is a safe life. But this one is different. This place is more like a casting agency, and Langstrom won't keep people around that he doesn't think he can use. He doesn't need our money. And he's too busy to waste his time with students. He wants good actors and this is his way of finding them."
It gets late and Bill says he'll walk me home. We say good night to Sandra and walk out into the darkened streets of the city. The night is soft and still warm, but in the air there is a crispness that presages the coming of fall. We walk close to each other but Bill doesn't take my hand. I would like him to touch me, hold my hand, in some physical way acknowledge me, but he doesn't. As he walks I see his genitals pushing out against the fabric of his pants and I wonder if we'll fuck sometime again. It's so strange for me to be thinking something like that, so unfamiliar. Only four nights before I lost my virginity under his naked body, and only today I hated him and myself for it and thought it was so sordid and degrading, a vile and humiliating act, and now I'm wondering if and when I'll do it again with him. I decide I'm really screwed up about sex, that I don't even know how I feel about it, or rather that my feelings are in such conflict that I feel a hundred different ways at once. I'm beginning to be relieved that that first one is over, though; I'm beginning to be thankful that I'm no longer a virgin.
We reach my apartment building and Bill walks inside with me when I open the door and follows me up the dark stairs. I unlock the door into my apartment and turn to say good night but Bill walks on past me as if he has no plans to say good night yet, so I close the door behind us and wait to see what is happening. Before I can turn on a light Bill puts his arms around me and kisses me on the mouth hard. I feel his lips crush into mine and his tongue slip into my mouth and seek my tongue. I whimper and try to pull away but he holds me and forces his kisses against me. Finally I jerk back, breathing hard and scared.
"Stop it Bill, you're hurting me."
"I'm going to hurt you a lot more than that," I hear him say in the dark.
"Now you're scaring me too," I answer.
"You scare yourself."
"I want some light."
"Light a candle then," he tells me.
All right, I say to myself, and I walk in the dark over to the table by the couch and fumble for matches, then I strike one and light the two candles I keep there. Suddenly I don't like what is happening and I wish he would go home and leave me alone. The night has been really good up to now, but so much has happened, so much has crowded into my mind, that I need and want time to sort it all out before having to handle any more. I might like to fuck him again some time, but I certainly don't want to do it tonight. Last Friday is still too close and I'm still scared to think about anything like that happening again even though I keep looking at his crotch and wondering about it. Thinking and doing are such different things, and all I'm interested in doing right now is thinking about it.
I turn toward him and see him standing tall and lean in the flickering light of the candles. He looks pale and almost grotesque to me, and I realize how afraid of him I really am. He must see my fear now because he smiles a crooked smile and moves slowly toward me as if I'm a victim of some sort. I fight against my fear as he approaches me, and when he stops directly in front of me and so close that my breasts almost touch him I can hear myself breathing and the blood pounding in my head. He lifts one of his hands and cups my left breast and squeezes it hard. Despite myself I feel my nipple stiffen under his grasp, feel a pulling in my belly and a wobbling in my legs.
"Don't," I warn, my voice sounding hollow to me even as I say it.
"Get undressed," he hisses at me.
"Get out of here," I say to him, my tongue thick and dry in my mouth like a wad of cotton.
"Take your clothes off or I'll rip them off!"
I break down. He looms tall and gaunt over me and I feel small and helpless. I want to cry.
"Please," I whimper. "Please don't do it to me again."
He lifts both his hands and begins to unbutton my blouse, beginning up at the neck and working down until my blouse pulls open and my breasts heave inside the cups of my black bra. I feel my heart pounding as he reaches behind my back and unsnaps my bra. Then he reaches underneath it and his hands cup the full flesh of my breasts and his fingers pinch my nipples firmly. I want to run but my feet are rooted firmly where I stand; I don't even try to fight or even scream, perhaps because it has happened once before and I know deep in me that he will have his way again. Yet I hate him for what he is doing, and I hate the weakness, the fear, inside myself that is allowing it to happen against my desire. Or is it against my desire? I don't know any more. My body is on fire, my breasts are in his grasp and my flesh is hot, and I am not fighting back, am not even attempting to resist his caresses. He fondles my breasts, and lifting my bra he bends his head to them and I feel his warm mouth wash my tits and his teeth nibble at my soft flesh. Then he is pulling my blouse off, lifting my bra from my body, and unfastening my skirt and pulling it down my ankles and with it my panties and I am naked and vulnerable before him.
He begins to take his own clothes off, looking me up and down with a triumphant grin as he lets his shirt drop and unbuckles the belt on his pants and slides them down to his ankles and steps out of them, flipping his shoes off without even bending to untie the laces. He is standing before me, his huge erection stabbing the air an inch from my belly, swollen and veined, pointing at its victim like a bird dog at the soft underbelly of a frightened quail, and my flesh feels like feathers, soft and pliant before his crude hardness. His penis is his gun and he is about to blow me down, he the hunter and I the victim of his power.
"Take it," he says.
I look at him blankly, feeling his power and feeling myself cringe inwardly in fear.
"Take my cock, baby. Squeeze it like you've never squeezed anything before, like you love it and worship it."
I look at his penis and can see it pulsing alive in the light of the candles. Slowly I reach out my right hand and let my fingertips touch his swollen member. It feels slippery and hard as rock, only the swollen red tip is soft and fleshy like soft rubber. It's the first time I've ever touched a man's penis and a thrill like sparks shoots from my fingers up my arm and through my entire body and I tremble where I stand.
"Squeeze it!" Bill demands.
I clasp my hand around it and tighten my fingers with all the strength left in me and suddenly my other hand is there also, grasping and squeezing at his long stem. He pumps it into my hands and I go crazy with excitement feeling its power pushed against me, and my hands go underneath to his balls and I feel for the first time the soft squishy sensation of holding a man's testicles.
"Now suck on it," Bill tells me, and I look in horror at him.
He grabs my head between his hands and with a vise-like strength he forces it down, forces me to my knees before him, and pushes his cock into my mouth. I choke, and tears come to my eyes; I whimper and try to beg him to stop. My mind fills with odious images; I feel filthy, like a whore, a slut, like a beast, an animal, unclean and unhuman. Still he forces me to keep him inside my mouth and slowly I begin to do his bidding like a sex slave, sucking him into me and running my tongue along his penis in horror. He begins to thrust it harder and faster into my mouth. I feel the pressure building in him like a dam about to burst, and I try to escape from the terror that fills me, but he holds me to my task and his rhythm mounts. His hand clamps my head and the room spins with his thrusts. Suddenly I feel deep in the roots of his cock a quivering that is as old as man himself, a spasm of animal release that ripples forward through his shaft in wave upon wave and he is moaning and my tongue is washing him furiously. My mouth closes tight around him and I feel his dam burst into my eager jaws, his semen flowing into my taste and slipping into my throat as he ejaculates his wad into my mouth. I keep sucking, beyond any control or direction, my womanhood rising and burning all else before it, my one desire to suck his cock dry.
And then I'm on the floor wailing and moaning with disgust and shame, my belly retching with the filth of the act I've performed, my eyes still fixed on him standing victorious and dripping above me, a grin on his victor's face.
"You got a good mouth, baby," he says, and when he dresses and goes I can't remember, crumpled in a ball of self-disgust on the floor where he leaves me.
Chapter Five
I miss two days of school because of Bill. I spend the two days in my apartment trying to sort out my flood of emotions. I am sunk in morbid anxieties the whole first day, images of Bill standing over me, forcing me into animal acts perverted beyond all that I have ever known. I see his cock stabbing into my mouth, feel the hard flesh against my tongue, taste again the salty brine of his semen, viscous and sticky, and I see him gloating above me as I wallow at his feet.
The second day I feel better and begin to examine my feelings with a more detached and rational frame of mind. For the first time since the dinner at Sandra's I think of Lilly again also, and I begin to compare Lilly with myself. I think how Lilly might have reacted to the scene with Bill. Certainly she couldn't have been any more eager than I was once I got his cock into my mouth, but the two crucial periods of difference for us would be the time just before the sex act and the time just after. I felt that what happened was dirty and perverted; my whole moral code and my sense of self-worth was deeply offended by what I had done, yet I imagined that Lilly might accept this kind of sexual act as normal and possibly even gratifying. I begin to see the worlds apart Lilly and I live in, and I also begin to understand how relative moral standards are. Then I begin to wonder what kind of moral codes toward sexual behavior other people hold. I realize quickly that I know almost nothing about how people make love, what is normal and what is perverted. I try to imagine my friends back in Topeka, the girls I grew up with, down on their knees with a man's cock in their mouths, sucking his semen out into their waiting throats and surprisingly enough I can actually picture a few of them in such a position, though the ones I can see doing something like that were not my closest friends. I realize also that those girls who might do something like that always caused me a certain amount of envy and jealousy, as if I sensed this possibility in them all the time I knew them only never knew until now what it was. Now I know that 1 envied them because I felt somehow that they would experience things that would be ever closed off to me because of my own strict morals. I remember what Bill said, that I have a good mouth, and I remember one girl in particular back in Kansas, Donna White, who had what was obviously a good mouth, full-lipped and sexily pouting, only before now I never even considered the possibility that her mouth might be used for anything other than kissing.
Still, emotionally at least I was what I was, what I am; after nineteen years of strict codes it won't be easy for me to learn to give in easily to strange sexual experiences, and I hate Bill for forcing me into such ordeals. I have seen other sides of Bill too, though, and I'm beginning to see just how ruthless he really is, like he said, and I admit to myself that I'm attracted by his ruthlessness, and by his sex. And I have to admit that a part of me enjoyed that degrading experience, enjoyed sucking him off. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, as the saying goes; Bill stuck his cock in my mouth, but I was the one that sucked it and drank his come.
By Thursday morning I felt able to cope with myself and with school and I walked leisurely through the busy streets to dance class and ran into Sandra and Bernie as I entered the building.
"Hi," Sandra said warmly. "Where have you been keeping yourself? I haven't seen you in a couple days."
"I've been thinking," I answer, feeling upset at having to explain things in front of Bernie whom I don't know very well.
We walk into the dressing room together and I want to talk to Sandra suddenly, tell her all that has been on my mind, even confess, perhaps, what took place between Bill and I, though I don't know if I have the courage to tell her or anyone about that. In the dressing room I look curiously at Bernie and notice that her mouth might easily be imagined circling a man's penis. She has the same pout that Donna White had, and her eyes are dark and sultry with an expression of open sexuality. I wonder if Bill has fucked her too, if her lips have been parted by his jabbing cock. I feel a certain amount of jealousy at the thought of Bill and she contorted in love, and I wonder why I don't feel the same jealousy for Sandra whom I know Bill has screwed. Sandra doesn't have those kind of lips, but Bernie definitely does.
As we undress and change I look at Bernie's body. Her breasts are small and sharp like two erect cones, and I think that I have her beaten hollow there. It's her ass that attracts my attention the most, and I imagine that it attracts the attention of most men too. It is perfectly rounded and sticks out behind her in an almost obscene way, the cleavage between her buns apparent even under a skirt. It is an advertisement for sex, and she knows it and knows its effect. All during dance class I watch her movements, and she seems to use that hot ass to the utmost in every step she takes. Bill isn't there this day and I make a mental note to watch him next time to see if he watches Bernie's ass.
After class I ask Sandra if she's seen Bill, in a casual way so as not to show how curious I am as to where he is.
"He said he was going to stay home for a few days and work on the script," she answers.
"When did he say that?"
"Day before yesterday."
"Oh," I say, and despite myself there is a certain disappointment in my voice. Sandra seemingly picks up on it.
"Why don't you go see him?" she suggests.
"Oh, I couldn't do that."
"Huh? Why not?"
I look at her and I don't want to say that I'm afraid, and I don't know what else to say. What I want to say is that I'm scared of what will happen if I go there, what he will force me to do with him. Yet I don't even know what would happen, but I know it will involve sex and I'm scared of sex. Yes, that's it. I'm scared to death of sex.
"Well, he might not want me to come," I say, copping out. I immediately berate myself for being so weak and dishonest but I can't seem to help it.
'If I were a man, baby, I'd want you to come, day or night," Sandra says with a slight edge in her voice, as if she knows I'm lying about why I'm hesitating to visit him. "And both of us know damn well that Bill would like to see you, for more reasons than one."
I feel ashamed of myself for being such a baby and I'm just about to confess my fears when Bernie walks up.
"Where's Bill, Sandra? I want to talk to him and I can't find him anywhere," Bernie says.
"I haven't seen him lately either," Sandra says, telling half the truth but not all she knows, not telling Bernie where he is.
I look at Sandra curiously. She's in effect lying to one of her best friends, and I know she's lying because of me.
"Oh, well, let's go get something to eat," Bernie says to Sandra with a frown as if she's momentarily tired of looking for Bill, as if it doesn't matter that much to her whether she finds him or not.
"Good idea," Sandra says, then she looks at me. "I wouldn't wait too long if I were you. She who hesitates loses."
I watch the two of them walk off, watch Bernie's ass bouncing sexily behind her, pushing her away from me, and I hear Sandra's warning ringing through my head like a gong has been struck inside my skull. I've been hesitating for nineteen years and I've gained nothing by it; I've felt and learned more about myself in the last two weeks than I have in my entire life before, it seems. I think of Bernie; she wouldn't hesitate, not for one second, I know. And she would damn well enjoy whatever happened to the fullest.
Then I'm out in the streets walking toward Bill's apartment without having even made the decision to go see him, walking as if something inside me is compelling me toward him, something in my belly and my cunt, not in my head, something in my womanhood. I feel as if I've come awake after a long sleep, risen out of a nightmare of fear into a morning of possibility. Only as I get closer to his apartment the fear creeps back into my mind and I hesitate at the last moment before ringing his bell, my mind in a turmoil of confusion and doubt.
The thing that has driven me this far won't give up so easily, though, and my finger presses the bell and in a matter of seconds the buzzer sounds and I push open the door and walk up the stairs and knock at his apartment door. I hear music coming from inside and I wonder if he'll be alone. I know that if Sandra hadn't lied Bernie would already be there with him.
The door opens and Bill looks at me as if he's expecting me, motions me in without saying a word and closes the door behind him. He walks past me and sits down in the middle of the floor and opens his copy of the play to where he's been reading. He's wearing only pants, his muscular chest bare and his long arms loose at his sides as he bends over the script. I feel a catch in my belly as I look at him and my eyes drop uncontrollably to his crotch, to the ever present bulge in his pants. He sits like a rock in the middle of the room ignoring me. I go sit on the couch and look out the window at the street below, staring at the people and feeling embarrassed and almost hysterical at being there, at coming unasked for something that I'm desperately afraid of yet desperately desire. A half hour passes without so much as a look or a word from him and I calm down, slowly gain control of my racing pulse, and I begin to get curious about what he's thinking but I'm afraid to ask him anything. Finally I clear my throat and speak.
"Are you reading the script?"
He looks up at me but doesn't answer. It's as if he's looking at a tree and is mildly surprised to find that it talks. The look in his eyes is neither friendly nor hostile, merely removed, distant.
I try again.
"Can I read with you?"
"You can get undressed," he says.
"I asked if I could read with you," I counter with my voice shaking with apprehension.
He looks at me coldly and stares me down with little effort. I'm too scared and nervous to take him on and he knows it.
"Get undressed," he says again, only this time he continues to stare at me until I stand up and slowly obey his command like some puppet to which he holds the strings, hating myself for doing it yet flushing with excitement as I strip my clothes from my body.
To add excitement I watch his crotch as I throw my clothes off, and as I let my bra fall and bend to pull my panties down I feel a pulsing in my pussy that makes me blush.
"Stand up straight so I can look at you," he orders, and I stand erect and see my breasts lift and jut out provocatively. I feel more naked than I ever have before and turn red under his eyes. My tits contract and harden as his eyes fondle them and I watch as his gaze drops to my cunt.
"Spread your legs some, I want to see your I hesitate, the blood pounding through me like water through a fire hose, then I spread my legs and feel his eyes wash into my slit. He stares at me for a long time then motions me to come to him. With rubber legs I walk over to where he sits, stopping about three feet away, my cunt at his eye level, my thighs quivering.
He reaches out with both hands and grabs around me and I feel his fingers digging into my buns and he pulls me closer to him, so close that I can feel his breath on my belly. He takes his hands from my ass and spreads my thighs apart, forcing my feet wide apart, and with a careful motion he leans forward and puts his mouth to my open cunt, and I feel his tongue wet against my pubic hair and feel it slip wet into my raw crack and wash back and forward. He finds my clitoris and licks playfully at it, around it, and I feel it come erect and feel a spasm of pure burning in my pussy and for the first time I know what it is to want a man inside me, screwing the hell out of me.
He pulls his head back and grins up at me.
"You like that, don't you?" he asks, almost mocking me.
"Yes," I whisper, my voice catching.
Then he puts his hand between my legs and I feel him spreading the lips of my pussy and feel a finger poking into my secret hole, wiggling deeper and deeper up into my vagina, poking and pushing inside my flesh, and my legs go limp and I put my hands on his head to brace myself, to keep from falling in my excruciating pleasure. My eyes close and my hips begin a slow dance of love balanced on his finger; my ass pushes back and forth and I realize that I'm fucking him, fucking his finger, and the thought of it terrifies me but I can't stop. My body is in control of me now and my body says yes, a hundred times yes, while my mind screams no, it can't be me doing this! Then my mind is down in my body and I become all sensation, a voracious cunt opening to whatever he's willing to stuff up me.
He stands up and drops his pants and I see his cock spring out stiff and beautiful and I don't need coaxing this time; I'm on my knees before he even has time to order me down and my hands are around him and my mouth is pressed over the bulging tip of his penis and I'm slobbering up and down his pulsing stem like a bitch in heat, like a whore, a nympho, a slut. I squeeze his balls in my fingers and feel my cunt drip with excitement, with need and desire.
I can stand it no longer. I squeeze his cock tight between my fingers and beg him to put it inside me. He grins down at me lewdly, his eyes full of power and lust.
"Get on your hands and knees. I want you like a dog."
Helpless in my heat I obey, crouch down on my hands and knees on the floor, my ass sticking lewdly out behind me, watch while he circles behind me; he sniffs at my cunt, pressing his nose into the pubic hair from behind, fingers my slit and fondles my ass, then he takes his penis in his hand and places the tip at my hole and pushes deep into my vagina. I scream at the pain and at the excruciating pleasure that follows, and as he bangs into me and out and back in I moan and thrust my ass into his loins, feeling his fullness and his power separate my body and dig at my dept and reaming into me like a pile driver. And, Lord, oh, God, it feels so sweet, even the pain! His thrusts grow stronger and faster and a new sensation builds in me, a terrible pressure fills my body and my muscles tighten and strain against it, against him, and my blood rushes to my head and my cunt and the room and the floor spins before me. He has his hands around my hips now, holding me up, holding my ass high, so he can batter me down. He is deeper now than anything has ever been, deeper than anything could ever be, and I feel the pressure boiling inside me and I scream as it centers in my cunt and bursts, and I cry and moan and thrust in my ecstasy, in the terror and joyous agony of my first real orgasm, and I feel him ripping into me and coming too in an ecstasy that equals my own, and everywhere he touches me is alive and electric as if all my nerve endings are on fire.
Then he lets go of my hips and I drop to the floor panting.
Chapter Six
Like a dog. Those were his words and that's what I was, like a dog, like a bitch with her ass in the air for the other dogs to sniff and screw, bending to his whims without will of my own, my own body robbing me of all respect for myself, a toy and a plaything to use and let drop like a dirty rag.
My mind spins with these thoughts and the room spins with my mind as my panting slows and my flesh cools from the fire he ignited in me. My eyes are open again and I see myself for what I am, what I've done, and I can't understand why I came here in the first place. It was me that came this time, knowing what would happen and coming anyway, coming precisely for what would happen and did happen and the guilt and horror of it rises up like a tide that sweeps all the pleasure before it. I turn over and see him sitting on the couch lighting a cigarette and smiling bemusedly down at me, his skin wet with the sweat of love. Suddenly I feel empty, more empty than I can ever remember feeling, and tears fill my eyes as I look at him. Is this what sex is all about, this emptiness, this distance right after being welded together in such heated love? I don't know; I don't have anything to compare it with. All I know is a yearning to be loved, really loved, to be held and kissed and comforted. Then I see his cock resting across his thigh, glistening with my juices, and for a moment I feel the sensation of it inside me, the heat and the pleasure of it, but my guilt and embarrassment is too strong now for me to hold onto that sensation and I turn my eyes from it.
I close my eyes again and his cock is there too, long and lean like his body, and I try to block it out but it keeps coming, pushing through into my mind's eye as it pushed through into my cunt. The pleasure comes back again too; I weave between emptiness and ecstasy as I lay there, between horror and pleasure, pain and joy, the same way I have each time after he's made love with me. I wish I could cast out the horror and doubt and concentrate all my being on the joy but it's so hard. There is a part of me that keeps whispering in my mind that I've done wrong, that sex is evil and sex like Bill forces me into is doubly evil, perverted, dog-like.
I feel Bill's hand on my shoulder and when I open my eyes he is bending over me, and he lowers his lips and kisses me tenderly on my mouth and I cry and throw my arms around him and pull him down to me and feel his body warm against mine, so thankful for his gesture of care and concern, and I whisper into his ear that I love him without thinking what I'm saying.
He strokes me and holds me for a long time and when he stands again he pulls me up with him and leads me into the bathroom and turns on the shower. The warm water sprays over our bodies and my body relaxes, resting against his while he soaps my crotch and rubs my breasts and belly.
"The trouble with you is you don't trust your own feelings," he whispers into my ear. "You liked what happened out there, and liking it is what scares you because it means giving up control with your mind and turning over control to your emotions."
"It's so hard for me, Bill," I say. "You don't know how it pulls me apart." "I know."
"Do you hate me for it?" I ask him.
He doesn't answer and I want to ask him again, but I don't have the nerve to ask again.
After the shower I dress and leave, promising him I'll return Saturday and spend the weekend at his place going over the play. The thought of staying there frightens me but I promise anyway. I want to stay with him, even if it means forcing myself.
That night I lie awake thinking for a long time about what Bill said and I know he is right only knowing it and changing it are two different things. The morals I've grown up with are outdated, old-fashioned, even for Kansas much less New York, yet they are in me, a part of me and I can't just throw them off like old clothing. And I'm beginning to trust Bill more as I know him. I have to admit that in his way he has been both honest and kind to me. And in a way that I don't understand at all I think I do love him. Only I'm so desperately confused by it all.
That night I have a strange dream. I dream that I'm walking down a busy street and the sun is shining, and suddenly I turn a corner and it's night. The streets are dark and empty and I'm frightened. The buildings tower tall and stone cold around me, closing me in. I panic and run, turn a corner, and run into a dark alley that leads past garbage cans and rubbish barrels toward a light at the end. Then there are footsteps behind me, chasing after me. I turn and see three naked men, their cocks flailing as they run, chasing after me, and I run faster but as I run, for some unaccountable reason I begin taking my own clothes off, throwing them away as I race for the light at the end of the alley. When I reach the light there is a tall brick wall and I can run no further. I stand under the light, turn to face the men chasing me, and wait as they come, naked. I want to scream as they come into the light and stop, glaring before me. They are Puerto Rican men, with long thin phalluses, knife-like in the dim light, and they all have erections that curve up at me. Then instead of screaming I grin and get down on my hands and knees, and one by one they stick their cocks into me from behind, and one by one I screw with them, feeling their pricks fill me, and all the while I'm both crying and laughing in a rage of pain and pleasure, and just as I'm about to explode into orgasm I turn and it is Bill who is fucking me, sinking even his balls into my gaping cunt, and I scream with pleasure and come in shaking spasms, and I wake, sit up in bed, and trembling put my hand into my crotch, half asleep and sweating, and I rub my clitoris until I come, and slide slowly back into sleep again.
When I wake it's Saturday morning and I remember the dream and am thankful that it's the day to go see Bill. In the dream I was afraid until it happened, I ran until there was nowhere left to run, then, forced to stop and submit, I enjoyed it and it turned into something beautiful, into Bill. The curious part was that while I was running I took my clothes off. Did I know all along that it would turn into something good? Was I just playing a game with myself by running away at all?
Was I only pretending to be frightened?
I want to see Bill right away, to tell him about the dream and tell him that it turned out all right, that he was there in the end and there was no guilt, only love and pleasure. I put my tooth brush and a few other things into a bag and leave my apartment immediately. It is still early, before nine o'clock; the streets are warm with the morning sun and they are unusually deserted. I feel wonderful, going off to spend a weekend with a man. I skip along and sing to myself, aware of my own happiness as I haven't been in a long time.
Within minutes I ring his doorbell and wait for the buzzer to sound, and when it does I push the door open and skip up the steps and knock on his door. He opens it and smiles sleepily, standing naked and beautiful, his genitals soft and dangling between his legs, and I walk past him into the apartment smiling.
"Hi," I say. "I came early. I hope you don't mind."
He looks at me with a confused expression on his face, as if he's trying to figure something out, then he shrugs and says, "Sure, why not?"
I go over and sit on the couch by the window. The early morning sun is slanting through and the room is bright and warm, and Bill is still standing in the middle of the room as if he doesn't quite know what to do next. I smile at him, thinking he must be still half asleep, and chalk up his indecision to that. I've never seen Bill so at a loss before. Then I hear a noise from the bedroom, then soft footsteps on the floor, and I look at the door in time to see Bernie emerge from the bedroom and stand just inside the living room with a curious expression on her face. She is naked, unashamedly naked, even in front of me, and my eyes harden as I look at her body, her small pointed breasts and her lean belly, and her triangle of dark pubic hair fluffing out from between her legs. She is more beautiful than I would have thought; she is at her best naked. As I look at her I feel a tightening in my stomach like I'm going to vomit, and my sudden jealousy and embarrassment almost force tears into my eyes. I see Bill look from me to Bernie and back to me still at a loss as to what to do. Then Bernie gives me a quick, catty smile.
"Hello, Jennifer," she says sweetly, only her eyes are defiant and mocking.
"Hello," I manage to force my voice to say.
"You two know each other. I remember now, through dance class," Bill says.
Neither of us answer him. Then as if there's nothing really left to do, he sits down naked right in the middle of the room where he's been standing and smiles at both of us.
"Well, I guess that ends play time," Bernie says, and she walks across the room toward the kitchen, and stops at the kitchen door. "Coffee anyone?" she asks, turning toward Bill first then toward me.
Bill answers yes and I nod my head yes but don't speak. She skips into the kitchen, but she doesn't skip like I skipped coming over here; her skip is like the quick, fluid step of a cat, and her naked ass, round and beautiful, tightens behind her.
Alone in the room with Bill, I don't know what to do, where to look. I let my eyes wander out the window, not wanting to look at him or let him look at me. I feel crushed and embarrassed and angry all at once and I try to sort out my feelings before I break down and do something that will embarrass me all the more. I wish I'd never come, never met him or Bernie; I was so happy to see him and now I wish I could fly out the window and keep flying, high and far away from him never to see him again. Images of Bernie's cunt fill my mind, and I picture Bill standing next to her, his cock erect and alive, aimed at her pussy, poking and throbbing into it and she smiling, her slut's lips parted, her body arched to receive his, and I feel myself turning into stone where I sit, drying up and growing hard and cold. I don't know how I'll ever manage to turn back and face him, face them, and I want to get up and walk out and slam the door behind me, slam it shut on them and on my own memory, but I'm too upset and weak to move. Outside the streets are beginning to fill with people. A delivery truck pulls up and double parks in front of a small grocery, and a man carries two boxes of fresh vegetables out of the truck into the store, nearly bumping into three little Puerto Rican kids running down the sidewalk. The man seems to holler something at the kids, and one of them lifts his middle finger at the man as he runs away. A couple walk hand in hand down the sidewalk from the other direction and from the way they lean against each other it is obvious they have spent the night pressing against each other's bodies. They are young, perhaps only eighteen, yet they have known each other deeply, fully, and their thin bodies and black hair make them almost twins. As I watch them my mind fills with images of Bill and Bernie again. They are certainly not twins, not welded together like those two in the street, yet they must be enormously attracted to each other, as opposites are, Bill tall and blond and Bernie slender and dark. I try to picture their pubic hair pressed together, then when I do picture it I try to forget it, but even that won't go away. I wish something would go away-me, Bill, Bernie, the light, my mind, something.
Bernie comes back with the coffee and I turn back to them in time to see her bent over, facing away from me, handing a cup to Bill, her ass sticking up in the air, her lovely buns parted slightly, her cunt sticking out behind her from between her legs. She must be standing like that on purpose, I think, to show me her prize ass. Then she straightens, and I watch her buns come together, tighten, and she turns to me and with the same mocking smile she hands me the second cup of coffee, then slithers back into the kitchen and returns with the last cup for herself.
She sits down on the floor beside Bill, crossing her legs so that I look right into her cunt when I look at her, and with a deliberate yet casual movement of her hand she reaches across Bill's thigh and gives his cock a squeeze right in front of my eyes. Her hand lingers on his shaft for a moment, then she returns to her coffee, smiling.
She has me trapped there and she's going to make the most of it. She knows that I'm uncomfortable, embarrassed. I begin to really despise her.
"Why don't you take off your clothes and join us?" Bill says suddenly, looking at me warmly, and as I look at him I notice that his cock has risen between his legs into a full blown erection from Bernie's touch. I also notice Bernie give Bill a sharp look, then try to hide it. Apparently she wasn't expecting him to invite me to do that. So Bernie doesn't like that idea, I muse. Then I decide that that's precisely what I'll do, if for no other reason than to strike back at her.
I give a sweet smile at Bernie.
"Why thank you, Bill," I say with my most innocent smile. "I just think I will."
I'm acting now, acting it all the way and I surprise myself at how suddenly easy it is to act out. My embarrassment fades as I take the center stage and a part of me that I've never really made use of before comes bubbling into my movements, a female, competitive part, selfish and vindictive, sultry and sexual. I stand and with the practiced ease of a backstreet stripper I peel my clothes off garment by garment until I'm standing in my bra and panties. Then with a sweet smile at Bernie and a wink at Bill I unfasten my bra and cup my breasts with my hands, concealing them for a second more, then I let them push out naked and full before me and I look down at them and see their fresh fullness and smile to myself. Against my knockers Bernie doesn't stand a chance. I glance up at them and Bill is grinning amusedly and his cock is throbbing, and Bernie is desperately trying to ignore me but I won't let her. I reach down my sides to the hem of my silk panties and, turning my knees into each other to accentuate my hour glass form and my triangle of pubic hair, I slip my panties slowly down my belly and cunt and slide them to my knees, then I bend sticking my ass out and step out of them, rise to my full height, naked, and I know from Bill's eager eyes, beautiful. Bernie is positively gulping down her coffee now. I go sit directly in front of Bill, cross my legs just as she has done, and reach into Bill's crotch and give his cock a hard squeeze, then I burst into giggles at my own parody of Bernie. Bill bursts into laughter and his eyes gleam.
"Well done, beautiful Jenny. You got some of Lilly in you already, you surely do."
I smile my sweetest Topeka smile and look at him with pretended confusion.
"Why, Mister, I don't really know what you mean."
Bill cracks up at this and Bernie looks miserable, suddenly left hanging.
As I sit there smiling and talking with Bill over the coffee I realize that by accepting Bernie's challenge I have not only won a round but I have come alive in a way that is new to me. I was acting through the whole strip but I was also being me. There is a part of me that is very real and womanly that came out in that episode, a part that is fearless, that throws off embarrassment and old-fashioned morality. I begin to objectively look at what I just did and it amazes me. If anyone had ever suggested that I would do a strip tease in front of a naked man and woman, then calmly reach over and stroke his throbbing erection, I would have been horrified at the suggestion and thought the person either didn't know me very well or was crazy or both. Yet I just did that very thing! And here I am sitting naked with a naked man and woman and thoroughly enjoying it. I begin to really understand like I never have before how shallow most moral codes are, especially those moral codes you learn at home and in school, the ones given to you that you simply accept without finding out for yourself what's right and wrong. And I'm amazed at how easily they slip away.
After Bill finishes his coffee he sighs and stretches out on the rug on his back, and his stiff cock sticks straight up at the ceiling between me and Bernie. We both keep returning our eyes to it, and I know that if I don't do something with it soon Bernie will. I've never been in such a situation before and my mind is a frenzy of hesitation and desire. I know beyond any doubt that I want that piece of hard, pulsing flesh inside me; I'm almost drooling over it and my cunt is dripping wet; yet my ingrained embarrassment and shyness is holding me back. Bill is lying there amused and confident that one of us is going to grab him, and I know that he is testing me in his own way and I think it's cruel. Yet that knowledge that I'm being challenged again makes me act, and throwing shyness to the wind I reach out and curl my fingers around his penis right under Bernie's hostile eyes.
I look at Bill's face and he is smiling softly, humorously, looking down his body at my hand clasped around him. He knows that he has maneuvered me into grasping for him, and there is a glint of pleased triumph in his eyes.
I look back at my hand around his cock in time to see Bernie slip her small hand delicately between his legs and cup his balls in her palm and fingers. Together, hating each other's interference, we stroke his genitals. I run my hand up and down his shaft, feeling it jump and quiver in my fingers, while Bernie expertly teases his testicles with soothing fingers. In a matter of seconds Bill is moaning and moving his hips in a simulation of screwing, unable to control himself under our combined attention. I wonder if he's ever had two women rubbing his genitals at once before, two women as lovely and as willing as he has now, anyway.
I don't know what to do next. I keep him firmly in my hand, not about to give Bernie a chance to take over, to squeeze me out, yet the tighter I squeeze his pounding cock the more my cunt drips my desire. I want him stuffed up me like I've never wanted that before; I ache for him, for his cock to be crammed into me, pounding and reaching for my belly roots, my sex and my love. And I know that Bernie wants the same thing. I'm beginning to shake and my hips are rotating in time with Bill's upward thrusts. It seems like a hopeless stalemate, an endless standoff between me and Bernie that will end with Bill creaming in our hands and neither of us getting his cock. Then, out of a final desperation, I look at Bernie with a cold stare.
"I'll whisper either black or white to Bill," I say with a rasp in my voice like cold metal being filed. "If you guess which it's your ball. If you guess wrong it's mine, baby!"
The hardness of my voice and the natural way I spit out the word "ball" surprises me and excites me too; this morning I seem to be discovering totally unexpected sides of my personality, discovering how deeply competitive and emotional I really am about sex.
Bernie looks at me with daggers in her eyes and nods agreement.
I lean down to Bill's ear without relinquishing my hold on his penis and whisper white into his ear, then I sit back up and watch as Bernie decides which to guess. She looks at Bill hotly and guesses white. I feel a sinking in my belly as if a crushing weight has been dropped on my abdomen.
"Black," I hear Bill say huskily. "It was black, Bernie."
I look at him in disbelief, only remembering to mask my reaction to his lie just in time, unable to comprehend for a split second what Bill is doing. Then it hits me and I smile at him with a smile that promises all, that promises him a fuck that will turn his cock inside out and my cunt with it. It never even occurred to me that he might lie to get me, that he would even want me over Bernie, and my heart is pounding with the secret of our coming screw, and I stare at Bernie with more triumph in my eyes than I ever would have had if I had merely won the right to him.
"Move off, honey," I say to Bernie, and she withdraws her hand from his crotch and slides back to watch with an expression of pure hatred for me and the situation. The tables are turned now, you little wet slitted bitch, I think; watch if you want and eat your cunt out!
I slip my leg over Bill and poise my cunt above the spear of his passion, then slowly, holding his cock in my hand, I ease down on it, directing it up into me, feeling it's bulbous, fleshy head part my slit and push into my secret hole, deeper and deeper until I have swallowed him entirely, until he is swelling inside me and filling my aching belly with fire. I put my full weight down on him, feel my ass squish his balls against his thighs, and I begin a slow, tantalizing, tortuous movement with my hips that turns into a wild screwing motion. I stare down at him the whole time, my eyes darting deep into his, my tongue licking at my own parted lips in an ecstasy of pleasure and love. His hand reach up and clamp over my breasts. I feel m nipples harden at his touch, feel them shoot electricity through my body, shock my cunt, as his fingers tighten and squeeze them painfully in his abandon.
Out of the corner of my eye I catch Bernie staring at us with dark serpents in her eyes, her expression blotched and contorted with lust and hatred, and I decide to show that bitch once and for all that there are other women in the world who know how to use their bodies. I bear down with all my strength on Bill's upthrusting cock, lock my thighs around his hips, and fling myself into such a wild rage of screwing, flailing back and forth and sideways, tearing at the root of his cock so viciously that I wonder if I'll pull it out of him, that the room spins around me and my head goes light and airy as if I'm being lifted off the floor and suspended on his pumping organ. I feel myself building, feel him knocking against my clit with each jab and feel his cock darting up deeper into me than I thought possible. I come down hard on his balls and hear him groan in pained ecstasy, his fingers madly working my tits, and I go over the brink with a shriek that must be audible in the apartment below, a long wail of sexual fulfillment that grows in intensity as I feel him coming with me, feel his pounding grow unbearable and merciless as he spurts his semen deep into my snaking snatch. I suck at him with all the strength in my cunt, tighten with muscles I never knew I had and drain every last drop of his juice into me before I collapse onto his chest and bury my mouth in his neck, feel my teeth tease his tender skin and lick with hot tongue at his parted lips.
And after a long time I roll over beside him happy in the knowledge that there is nothing left for Bernie, nothing at all.
Chapter Seven
"You still sound like you're reading the Lord's Prayer at a Sunday School recital," Bill snaps at me impatiently, slamming his script to the floor. "Lilly isn't soft, she's crass! She talks like nails and you're reading like pillows. She's sat on barstools her whole life, not sofas. You sound more like a school teacher than a whore."
"But she's not a whore, Bill," I say, defending my reading as best I can.
"No, you're right. She's not precisely a whore, but she's closer to a whore than a school teacher. There's no gentility in her voice, baby, no upper middle class softness. Get out of the suburbs, baby; get into the crummy city streets where Lilly lives!"
I'm nearly in tears as we begin the scene again. It's after midnight and Bill has been screaming insults at me over my reading since we began at eight o'clock to work through the play. Four hours of reading and four hours of insults and I feel like throwing up I'm so sick of him stopping me with a disgusted look and an insulting remark. Bill can be viciously sarcastic and he's been ridiculing my reading since the first line.
I begin again and get no more than a third of the way through the encounter scene when Bill starts mimicking me, making fun of my reading again.
"I'm trying, I'm trying! Would you kindly leave me alone!" I yell at him.
"That's better," he says, looking into my face with a dull look that says plainly he doesn't think I can act worth a damn. "When I bug you enough so that you feel vulnerable and pissed you begin to fight back, get defensive and angry. Well, Lilly's first reaction is always to get defensive, to get angry and to mistrust everyone. Only she wouldn't say 'kindly leave me alone,' she'd say fuck off. You've got to get that kind of tone in your voice, baby."
"Stop calling me baby."
"That's what I feel like calling you, baby," he says coldly.
"Get fucked!" I say to him as viciously as I can, and I walk out of the room into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. When I get into the kitchen I realize what I've just said. It's the first time in my life I've ever talked to anyone like that, the first time I've ever told anyone to get fucked. And what surprises me even more is that I meant it, meant those words and used those words. They came out of me not out of a script.
I pour myself a cup of coffee and begin to run through the day in my frazzled mind, and what a strange day it has been in my life. The episode with Bill and Bernie in the morning seems like a dream to me now, someone else's dream at that, so unlike anything I've ever done was it, and even though I actually did screw Bill right in front of Bernie it seems unreal and imaginary, like a flight of fancy. Yet it was real and I know I did it because I have that familiar uneasy feeling about it, and I don't really want to think about it for fear that I'll become guilt ridden and scared by my own lack of inhibitions and I'll panic as I usually do. Then the long afternoon of reading quietly to myself until I began to know my lines without even trying to consciously memorize them, reading them over and over to myself until they began to be absorbed as a part of me. That much I learned in Topeka and I'm thankful for it; to simply memorize lines does no good. Instead you have to absorb them like you absorb oxygen and sun through your skin. Then the almost silent dinner before beginning to read through the play together, Bill jacked up on bennies as he calls them, to keep him alert, and I jacked up because of the morning. And for the last four hours the incredibly frustrating agony of being insulted at every attempt to produce even the voice of Lilly much less the action. I shake my head in amazement and anxiety; I'm beginning not to recognize myself anymore. I don't sound much like me at all.
I go back out into the living room and see Bill studying the script like a madman bent over a piece of his own insanity, examining it for rational flaws. I sit down quietly on the floor facing him, afraid that if I disturb him he'll react with a new attack of some kind. He seems totally absorbed, though, and I think he doesn't even know I'm back until, without looking up, he speaks.
"Take off all your clothes," he says.
"What?"
"Strip, baby. You heard me."
I look at his bent head and studious expression devoid of any emotion, like ice, and I feel a sudden rebellion welling up inside me, an indignation that he should order me out of my clothes after he's been such a shit. Does he think he owns me? I wonder.
"I don't feel like it," I say flatly.
"I didn't ask you if you felt like it, I asked you to strip down, baby."
Still he doesn't look up but the ice in his face has melted into his voice and it scares me. I suddenly see him as a real madman, vicious and evil, and my fear rises, yet at the same time I feel myself intimidated by him and even attracted to him. A sexual surge fills my body and I stand and strip, hating myself for doing it and getting excited at the same moment. When I'm naked I stay standing and look at him, enjoying my advantage of height over his sitting form if nothing else and unwilling to relinquish even that small advantage when I'm being stripped of all else, physically and emotionally.
"Is this what you want?" I ask with a sarcastic tone in my own voice.
"Sit down and shut up," he says, still not looking up, and I sink to the floor in a crumpled pile of indignation and despair.
He throws my script at me and looks up.
"From now on, baby, we read and rehearse with you naked. You're going to learn what vulnerability and defense are all about. You're not going to hide behind your clothes any more than you are behind your middle class upbringing, dig?"
"Why do you keep insulting and humiliating me?" I demand, my voice suddenly losing control, angry.
"You don't know what humiliation is, baby, but you're going to learn. And I'll tell you something else; you want to be humiliated, baby; you're a born masochist and you know it deep inside you. You middle class bitches are all alike. You're shit and that's what you respond best to, that's what you learn from."
I want to run, feel the suffocation coming over me like a stream of steamy water, my eyes burning and wet. This morning when he lied so he could screw me instead of Bernie I felt so good, thought he liked me, perhaps even loved me in his own way, and now he treats me like dirt. I can't stand it, I think. If I stay and sit through this he's right, I am nothing more than a masochist, but if I leave he'll just call me a weak little girl. He's trapped me and I want to escape.
I fidget where I sit trying desperately to sort it out, and as I think about it the suffocation passes and I remain sitting. He looks at me and says we'll take it from where we left off.
I begin to read into my part and almost immediately I brace myself for a sarcastic remark. I feel doubly vulnerable sitting naked, my breasts loose and my cunt open, and out of sheer dread at being attacked I try to hide in the part, try to hide in Lilly, and a strange thing happens. My voice drops a register and sounds unlike me. It takes on a low, almost alcoholic slur with fear as its base and protection as its purpose, a sex come on and an emotional put off at the same time. And I feel safer in that voice, and the words, Lilly's words, seem to fit that voice, and I continue reading, getting deeper into her words, without hearing the sarcastic comment from Bill that I'm waiting for. I read completely through the long speech and when I'm finished, almost before the last word has left my lips, Bill comes in with his lines, only it isn't Bill either, it's a college kid with an unsure yet poised and practiced confidence about him and he carries me into my next line as easily as one note of music carries you into another.
We read on for the next half hour without speaking to each other except through the characters in the play, thumbing through to our lines and ignoring the lines of other characters in the play, until we get to the last part of the second act where we are alone on stage and about to make love in an almost surrealistic scene where it both is and isn't acted out, where it happens right before the audience's eyes yet doesn't quite happen. We read through the scene and I find myself getting confused and lost, the voice I've been using no longer working for Lilly; there has been a change and I can't find where it occurs. We read through the scene and get to the after part, the moment of sex and the reaction to it, and by that time I'm completely lost, have completely lost Lilly.
Bill stands up and glares down at me, and I see both Bill and the college kid at once in his cruel face. He strips down to his skin and his cock springs up erect and swollen.
"Do you know what happens there?" he almost shouts at me, and I look startled and scared at him, afraid to answer. His face is almost pathological, full of aggression and madness, and I feel his hard breathing as if he's hitting me with it. "You don't, do you? You wouldn't even think of that, you soft cunt!" He's furious with me and I don't know why, what I've done. I thought it was going so well until the last when I lost her, became confused. I look up at him and still can't answer though the fear is boiling up inside me as irrational as he seems, as if I do know what happens there in the play only I don't want to face or admit to it. "I'll tell you what happens, baby! He fucks her in the asshole, that's what happens, and she don't want that because she wants love and niceness like you do, only that's not what she gets and that's not what you're going to get!"
I feel the cold panic running through my blood as I stare up at him realizing what he is saying and scared too much to move. I've given too much of myself to him already to fight back now; he's got so much of me under his control already that I don't have enough of myself left to fight back with. I watch in horror as he comes toward me and puts his hands on my breasts, pushing hard against my soft flesh so that I fall back on the rug; then he is kneeling over me, his fingers digging into my hips as he rolls me limply over on my stomach. I don't fight but my lips shake and my eyes water and I begin to whimper and quiver with fright, and my voice squeaks out a plea for him to stop. He ignores it and I feel his fingers sink into the crack of my ass and pry my buns apart and I begin to whimper louder until the tears roll down my cheeks and I'm crying and sobbing in my cowardice and helplessness, in the knowledge that I won't, I can't, fight back.
Then my panic finds a way out. I tell myself it's all a part of the play, that he's acting it out for me so I'll know what happens, that he'll stop and I'll sit back up and we'll read the scene again and I'll know how to read it, how it must feel without ever having to submit to such a torturous act. His fingers pry into me, find the round button of my rectum, finger it and poke into it. I feel a nausea come over me, a panic so deep and irrational that my flesh is shaking like I'm in a fever of chills, and his finger jabs deep into my asshole and I tighten my buns in pain and tell myself that he'll stop now, stop any second now and withdraw his finger.
Only he pokes it in deeper and wiggles it around and I'm squirming under him and telling him to stop now, that I understand what it's like, that he can stop it now, oh, please. Then I feel the weight of his thighs as he straddles my ass and I feel his finger ream me open and I'm crying for him to stop as he withdraws his finger. I feel my body go instantly soft with relief and hear myself sobbing above his pounding breath and I'm so relieved and thankful that he stopped. His fingers are still spreading my buns apart but I hardly notice them now; it hardly matters; all that matters is that it didn't happen, that it is over.
As if from a dream rising, as if out of sleep into waking I feel his weight come down on me, press me into the rug, feel his cock jam into my rectum, feel my ass tighten against it but too late to keep him out, feel the excruciating pain shoot through my intestines and belly as he jams it up my asshole, feel my mouth open and my throat squeeze out the hissing scream of pain and humiliation as he buries himself to the hilt in my asshole, feel the humiliation turn to hatred and the feeling of betrayal, of being betrayed, used, abused, and ruined forever. And still he humps at me, jabbing the pain up into me like a burning iron. No . . . no . . . it's not true, it's not what it is, I keep thinking, keep returning to my fantasy of him stopping even while he's doing it, while he's screwing the shit out of my ass, and I feel my head fill with poison gas and my eyes fog with smoke and my head spin in disbelief and unimagined pain and helpless fury, and I know nothing else until I feel him pounding out his sperm and letting himself fall off me. Then the room is silent, filled with silence like a heavy weight over me, and the silence is broken only by my mounting sobs, and by my humiliation and hatred for him, for myself, and for all men everywhere that comes breaking out of me in a scream of animal rage. Then a long, long silence.
Chapter Eight
It's been two weeks now since I've been to the acting school for anything. I've missed every class. It has also been two weeks since I've seen Bill or anyone else connected with the school. The phone has rung several times and I haven't answered it. The door bell rang three times but I didn't answer that either. It's the longest period of time I've ever spent without talking to someone I know, and it has been the longest two weeks of my life.
There is only one notation in my diary for the entire two weeks, and that was made the night I came home, the night Bill raped me in my ass. It simply reads, "Fuck off!"
Only now I'm not so certain that Bill did rape me, not precisely, anyway, just like Lilly isn't precisely a whore. But it was closer to rape than it was to making love.
Until yesterday I never wanted to see Bill again, but even my feelings about that are changing. I picked up the play yesterday for the first time in two weeks and read through it curiously, and I found that Lilly is suddenly a very understandable character to me; I even found myself identifying with her as a reader instead of an actress. And the part that confused me, the part that prompted Bill's attack on my ass, seems very obvious to me now. That was yesterday.
Today I feel ambivalent about everything, but not with the indecision of fear but with the calm ambivalence of someone who knows what her choices are and knows that what she chooses she will follow through with all the way to the sweet or bitter end. I have reached the crisis point in my life, the point where I must make a decision as to how much I want to be an actress, how much I want to give of my life to become an actress. I will either give up acting forever and move on to another way of life, not back to Topeka certainly, but on to some other kind of involvement, or I will go back into the acting school and Lilly and Bill and whatever and whoever comes along that is part of that life, and there I will devote myself to becoming an actress and handle myself as best I can.
It is Saturday and by Monday morning I will have made my decision somehow.
Monday morning comes and I wake early. I get up and make myself a big breakfast of ham and eggs and toast and lots of coffee, black, a real Topeka breakfast, a farmer's special, all in celebration of my decision. Then with a grim smile I walk the few blocks to the acting school, script in hand, and ask to see Mark Langstrom.
He's busy with someone else and I sit impatiently outside his office until he's free, then I walk inside and face him.
"Hello," I say with an easy tone of voice. "I wanted to ask you if I still have the part of Lilly?"
He is sitting behind a desk and all I can see of him are his piercing gray eyes and longish dark hair, and his thin yet broad shoulders, and I think that I should be frightened of him but I'm not, and I wonder vaguely why I'm not. He is scrutinizing me with a level gaze that shows nothing of his thoughts, gives no hint even of his mood or humor.
I know only that he recognizes me, knows who I am, and I wait patiently for him to answer my question.
"Where have you been?" he finally asks, noncommittally, avoiding my question. "We've tried to get in contact with you all week. You missed the first two staging sessions and the costume fitting."
"I've been thinking things out by myself. I wasn't answering the phone," I answer honestly.
He looks at me curiously, inspects me for games, but I easily hold his steel gaze because I'm telling the truth, and finally he seems to realize that I'm not playing some weird game with him, that I am telling the truth.
"I may be neurotic, but I'm an honest neurotic," I say, still standing easily under his scrutiny. "Do I still play Lilly?"
"As of yesterday you lost the part," he answers coolly.
I stare at him and don't know quite what to do or say. I can tell that he is telling the truth too.
"Well," I finally say, still relaxed and under perfect control, "That ends that."
I thank him and start to leave his office.
"Jennifer."
I hear his voice saying my name, and it startles me, not so much him saying my name as the way he says it, the soft tone in his usually booming voice. I turn and face him.
"Yes?"
"I haven't assigned the part to anyone else yet. I was going to do that tonight. What happened to you, anyway?"
"I had some growing to do. It kind of caught up with me all at once."
"Can you play Lilly?" he asks.
"Yes, I can play Lilly. Now."
He looks deep into my eyes and I feel his energy surge into me, a curious, compelling energy that makes me lose my easy control for the first time, makes me aware of myself as a woman as well as an actress. Again, as when I first saw him the day he handed out the parts, I am aware of his awesome power and his keen perception. I am thankful that I'm telling the truth because I know he would see through any lies almost immediately. .
"All right, Jennifer. You do that."
I walk down the hall to the wardrobe department with a smile on my lips and a picture of Mark Langstrom in my eyes. There was no more than that, his simple "you do that," yet it was the most encouraging thing anyone ever said to me in my whole life. There was no threat, no doubt, no judgment. Simply "you do that," simply, the way it should be.
There is a class going on in the wardrobe room and I walk in and wait until the teacher is through talking, then tell him that Mark Langstrom sent me in to be fitted for the part of Lilly. It is obvious that I have been the subject of some unkind comments during my two week absence because of my failure to appear when I was supposed to appear, and the teacher and even the students eye me suspiciously as if they doubt that I still have the part.
"Did Langstrom just send you down?" the teacher asks.
"That's right," I say, still smiling. "Yesterday he said you were through."
"That's right. Yesterday."
I notice that the students are all ears, and they are showing their own surprise at the sudden turn of affairs. It seems that I must have caused quite a commotion by my absence. There are about eight of them, half women and half men, clustered around listening to what is going on. The teacher shakes his head as if he doesn't understand it.
"Langstrom doesn't change his mind often," he says.
"Perhaps not," I answer coolly. I know that the teacher is a homosexual from hearing Bill talk about him; Bill doesn't like him even though he admits that the man is a genius with make-up, an artist. I can understand why Bill doesn't like him, though; he is too high strung and petty to feel very close with.
"Okay, okay," he says with his clipped voice. "You, get out the script and see what she needs," he says, pointing at a tall guy who is standing near him. "This is a class project as of now," he informs the rest of them.
Soon everyone is consulting their copies of the script and trying to decide what I need in the way of costuming. The make-up will come only on the night of the dress rehearsal. Eventually a dress is brought to me, a flimsy, filmy bargain basement special and I look at it curiously, trying to imagine Lilly in it, and it seems to fit the part. "Okay, dear, try it on, please," he says. I look around at the class and see them watching me eagerly, especially the men. I methodically unzip my own dress and step out of it, standing in the middle of the room in my bra and panties, aware of their caressing eyes. I know that my pubic hair is pushing out against my black silk panties, making a puffed V, and 1 congratulate myself on how far I've come in the past month for I don't even blush. A month ago I would have been bright red from doing such a thing, if anyone could have gotten me to do it in the first place.
I take the dress and begin to step into it.
"Wait," the teacher says. "Do you wear a bra or not on stage?"
"I don't know," I say, never having thought about that, about the possible effects of wearing or not wearing a bra for the part. It is a good question, though; not wearing a bra would give my appearance an added sleazy touch.
"We have to know," the teacher says excitedly. "Run down and ask Langstrom," he says, pointing to a girl standing near the door.
The girl walks away down the hall and I stand waiting in my bra and panties while she goes to ask. I can feel the sudden heat in the room and it seems that the men find reasons to walk around behind me to get a look at my ass. My panties don't hide much. The girl comes back a few minutes later.
"No bra," she says.
Without waiting for anyone to say anything further I reach behind my back and unsnap my bra. Then I casually pull it off and let my breasts free, look down at them jutting out naked and full. There is utter silence in the room for a second or two as all eyes are fastened on my boobs, then the teacher turns and says something to the girl who came back from talking to Mark and I step into the flimsy dress and pull it up over my breasts and over my shoulders. Even after my boobs are covered I can feel the heat of the men's eyes as they stare at me. I walk to a mirror and look at myself, and I can see why. The dress makes me look like a streetwalker, only a delicious one, one that would even attract my gaze if I were to pass her on the sidewalk. I look like sin and sex itself. The fabric molds to my hips and ass and my tits are plainly visible beneath the material.
"Too much," I hear a voice say, and turning I see Bill standing in the open doorway to the room. There is a sudden surge of panic in me as I see him, but within a split second I recover and smile casually at him, then turn back to the business at hand as if he's just another student at the school, another human prop to work with when I can use him.
The teacher expertly marks a few places the dress will have to be taken in and let out to fit right. This won't be the dress itself that I'll wear, merely the pattern for the actual dress which will be made from scratch by students studying costume design.
When he's finished marking the dress I step out of it and again I'm aware of the eyes of the men stroking my naked flesh. I turn just far enough to notice that Bill is still standing in the doorway. I don't look at him. I pick my own dress up and slip into it, stopping when it is up to my waist to put on my bra, then pull the dress up over my breasts and I am dressed again. The tension in the room relaxes and I pick up my copy of the script from the table where I laid it and turn, walking straight toward Bill who stands in the doorway, right in my way. I look at him nonchalantly, right into his eyes, with the same kind of level, noncommittal gaze that Mark Langstrom gave me, and as I approach him he melts back into the hall and stands there, waiting for me. I walk out into the hall and pause.
"What has happened to you?" he asks, almost bewildered.
"I don't understand," I say, really not understanding what he means.
"You look like a different person, and you act like a different person too. Honest to God, I hardly recognized you at first in there. I didn't know it was you until you turned around."
"Well, if it's a compliment, thank you," I say unemotionally.
"Yes, it's a compliment," Bill says, looking even closer at me as if he's trying to discover the exact difference in me, the change.
The last time I was with Bill comes slowly back to me, him kneeling over me, spreading my buns apart, driving his cock deep into my unprotected ass, the nightmare of pain and humiliation, of fear and hatred, and the chaos of guilt and self-doubt that spread over the two weeks after and ended only yesterday, yet I'm surprised how distant it all feels now as I stand talking with him, and I realize that my whole life before this morning seems like one long yesterday from which I've finally emerged. Today is a new world, a new life, a new me.
"Well, I've got to be going," I say, and I start to walk down the hall away from him, feeling his eyes follow me.
I turn the corner of the hall and head for the theater area, duck in through the stage door, and come out onto the stage where several people from the stage design class are hammering and pounding and sawing and arranging the set for the play. I look with curiosity at the emerging bar with the juke box and the few tables, the long bar with stools, and the clutter of deer heads and other musty odds and ends which look as if they came out of some corner bar in Topeka.
I sit at the edge of the stage and watch, fascinated by the chaotic order of their work, laughing at their jokes and clowning, and I'm aware of the fact that I really love the theater, love the whole collection of props, lights, people, and fantasies that make up this living organism called theater. Looking back over the past two weeks my decision to return here now seems as if it was predestined all along. Somehow I have become a part of this world, and leaving it would be a little bit like dying.
Time gets lost in the scrape of saws and the bang of hammers, and when I stand up to stretch and look at my watch two hours have passed.
A tall, dark guy in his late twenties comes over and we begin talking. He asks me my name and when I tell him he looks at me as if he's heard of me.
"You're playing the lead," he says. "I play Lilly."
"Yeah. I'm in charge of stage design. Well, Jennifer, do you like what you see so far?" "It's fascinating."
He says his name is Tony, that he once wanted to be an actor but found that he prefers stage design.
"I guess I've got more architect than actor in me," he smiles easily.
I like him and smile back easily. He's so down to earth and unassuming in a place full of egomaniacs that I feel real and refreshed with him as if I've just awakened after a strange dream. He motions me to follow him and we go behind the back curtain and he pulls a thin cigarette hand rolled in a paper designed like an American flag out of his pocket and lights it, takes a long drag, and hands it to me. I know it is marijuana and hesitate, but I feel too good and strong to get scared, and I take a long drag too and go into a coughing fit. Tony dances around me excitedly, raising his fingers to his lips in a shushing gesture of silence, and I giggle helplessly as I press my hand over my mouth to stop my coughing.
"Hey, I know what's going on back there," a voice yells from out on stage on the other side of the curtain, and other voices chime in until both Tony and I are giggling and laughing. They keep teasing us as we smoke the rest of the cigarette, and they smile at us as we walk back to stage front and sit talking. I feel suddenly very light and funny as if my mind is soaring above my body, and everything Tony says sounds hilarious. After a while he asks me out to dinner.
"You don't look very rich," I say, smiling.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his money. He counts three dollars and seventy cents.
"Is that rich?" he asks.
"No, that's poor," I answer. "Why don't we go to my place and I'll cook us dinner."
By the time we reach my apartment it's five in the afternoon. I put on some food and we eat an hour later, then Tony pulls out another cigarette and we smoke it. I turn on the stereo as loud as I dare, afraid to bother the neighbors, and the music fills the apartment as if I have ten speakers going. I float up with it until I seem to lift higher and higher with each note, then suddenly I realize what a strange sensation I'm feeling and I giggle. Tony laughs and grins at me and I feel his eyes flowing into mine as I return his gaze. My perceptions seem almost electric as if I'm some kind of antenna that picks up on vibrations in the air, vibrations from the music and from Tony's eyes. Then a warmth spreads through me and I feel so fine and relaxed, so at home with myself and my body. I stretch out on the rug on my back and breathe deeply, my breasts rising against my dress with each breath. Tony is sitting beside me and I look up at his face and suddenly realize how Roman his features are.
"You're a Roman," I tell him.
"My ancestors were," he says. "I'm a Roman-American."
I laugh and then we remain silent listening to the music.
Almost without my being aware of when it began, I discover Tony's hand rubbing against my belly, softly, caressingly, and I close my eyes to feel the soothing sensation of his fingers. One part of my mind warns me to watch out, beware of what's happening, but another part laughs at this and mocks it as the old Jenny, yesterday's Jenny. After a moment of arguing back and forth in my mind, the new Jenny wins out and I feel my mind go blank, aware only of Tony's hand as it strays upward from my belly along my ribs and ever so softly moves over my breast. I feel my nipples tighten under my dress and my stomach muscles harden. His fingers search out my tit and then his mouth is pressed against mine and I feel his tongue parting my lips and penetrating into my mouth, and I wash his tongue with my own and lift my breast hard into his hand. Then my old self pushes back, sticks a needle sharply into my mind, says I don't know Tony, says not to trust him, not to let him touch me like this, and for an instant I feel the old, familiar sensation of suffocation coming over me and 1 push him back, turning my mouth away and pulling my breast back from his hand. He looks curiously at me and I breathe deeply, anxiously, and the suffocation passes. I look at him, down his body, and I see the huge bulge in his pants at his crotch and I know he has an erection and it's aiming at me. A flood of desire sweeps through me, sweeping the old Jenny out of my head, and I can't take my eyes off that bulge. I've never felt anything so compelling in my life, so utterly bestial as my sudden desire. My whole body is on fire with it, and I reach down his side to his pants and put my hand right on the bulge, watching what I'm doing as I do it and marveling at my own aggressiveness, and I feel his hardness jump under my hand.
"Undress," he tells me, and without hesitation I stand and pull my clothes off. feel his lips press into my cunt, his tongue sliding into the flesh of my crack.
He sits on the floor and stares at me, then he hooks one hand around behind my ass and pulls me close to where he sits. I feel his fingers working into my buttock and his breath on my belly. He takes his free hand and slides it sideways between my thighs and turns it, spreading my legs apart. Then he leans forward and turns his head, and I feel his lips press into my cunt, his tongue sliding into the flesh of my crack. It slides back and forth up and down the length of my pussy, parting the folds and caressing my pink flesh, then he finds my clitoris and his tongue washes it, circling and poking until I feel a throbbing that is almost painful it is so pleasurable, and I spread my thighs further to give him full access. I put both hands on his head and pull him tight into my cunt and begin a slow fucking motion at his tongue, thinking how lewd I'm behaving, how strange it is for me to be standing with my cunt in the face of a man I barely know and letting him eat me out, and how wonderfully delicious it feels. I remember the bulge in his pants and pull him to his feet, then I tear his pants open and pull them down anxious to see his penis. It pops out stiff and curved slightly upward, long and lean with a red bulb at the tip that's swollen huge. Without hesitating I clamp my mouth over it and feel it's fleshy, rubbery texture, and as I suck a sticky liquid comes out into my mouth and this excites me even more. My hands finger his balls as they dangle under his cock, cupping and stroking them, squeezing softly and feeling them bunch and slide in his bag, and I lick down the underside of his penis and poke the tip of my tongue tenderly between his testicles and feel him moan and squirm with pleasure.
I'm fully aware of how hungry I am for his cock and I indulge my hunger to the utmost. I can't seem to caress and lick his genitals enough; the longer he's in my mouth the hotter I get. I can feel my flesh crawling as he bends over and clasps my full breasts, pinching my nipples roughly, passionately, and my heart is pounding the blood through me like water rushing through a firehose. I can feel a trembling in my cunt and my legs are weak; I pull him down to the floor and he lies on his back. I go for his cock again with my mouth and he pulls me over him so my legs straddle his head and I lower my pussy onto his waiting lips and feel his tongue pierce my hole, his saliva merging with my love juices, his mouth washing my raw grotto, and I begin to fuck hard at his mouth, feeling the heat building in my cunt and sucking wildly on his cock. For the first time in my life I really abandon myself to sex, lust after a man's penis, throw all thought of morality to the wind, and every sensation is a joy and every lick of my tongue along his penis sends shivers through me. There is no mind left, just flesh, his and mine, and I'm feasting on his genitals like the love starved female I really am underneath my cool, old exterior.
When I can stand it no longer I swivel around and, holding his throbbing prick in both hands, I lower my pussy onto it, guide it up into my hole, raise up again, hear the sucking smack of my wet cunt around his cock, lower myself again and push down hard, feeling his member jab deep into me, fill me and ream me, and I begin to bounce up and down, my breasts dancing and jiggling, watching his face contort with the anguish of sexual pleasure. I screw him brazenly, unashamedly, with no thought of good or evil, and when he slips his hand around my ass and I feel his finger search out my asshole and enter it I raise up to give him room and delight in the perversion. He sticks his finger deep into my asshole and I moan and thrash on top of him, yanking at his cock with my pussy, and I come in a sudden and unexpected fit of joy, reaming with the full force of my orgasm, and Tony is right with me, jabbing up into me and pouring out his sperm in a swollen release. We continue to fuck each other until our strength gives out and I topple over beside him on the rug.
Chapter Nine
The knock at the door startles me out of my dream-like lethargy and I sit up beside Tony who is still lying on his back on the floor lost in the music and in the aftermath of making love. The knock comes again, louder, more persistent, and I want to ignore it, pretend that I'm not home but the music is blaring and obviously I am home. I stand up and walk to the door, press my face to the crack, and ask who's there.
"Bill," a familiar voice says.
There is a sudden moment of panic, a leftover from my yesterday, when I look quickly down at my nakedness and glance back at Tony's naked body, seeing his penis resting across his thigh, his balls bunched between his legs at his crotch, and I don't know what to do or say. Then my mind relaxes and I get a hold of myself, control my panic, and look at the situation with a certain divorced perspective. I smile as I realize that the situation is almost identical to when I showed up at Bill's and found Bernie there, only now the roles are reversed and Bill is the intruder. That thought excites me and I'm suddenly quite delighted and amused by Bill's appearance, and I'm curious to see how he'll react to Tony's naked presence. I unlock the door and open it, and Bill walks in.
He is so busy looking me up and down that he doesn't even notice Tony until I speak.
"Hello, Bill. You know Tony, don't you?"
Bill's eyes follow my gaze across the room to where Tony has risen to his elbows and is looking at us curiously, not knowing quite what to do himself. I look back at Bill in time to see his eyes narrow and recede as he takes in the situation immediately, and I can almost see his mind revolving in search of a suitable reaction, quickly sorting through the possible reactions that his emotions give to find the best one under the circumstances.
"Yeah, hi, Tony. Getting a little sun?" he asks.
Tony can't help laughing and I smile sweetly at Bill, appreciating his easy wit even in a surprise situation. I still have my share of resentment and hatred for Bill, but that quick wit abolishes it and I take his hand and lead him into the room, letting go and plopping down on the floor near but not quite beside Tony. Bill sits down too and I see his eyes travel down into my crotch eagerly and I feel a pang of fresh desire flood through me at once. I've heard it said that a woman never loses her attraction for the man that busts her cherry; I don't know if that's true, but I do know instantly that Bill turns me on more than Tony ever could, although I am capable of lusting after Tony's cock with total abandon.
I can tell that Bill is uncomfortable and even shocked to find Tony lying there naked, knowing we have just made love, and I remember the way Bill lied to Bernie so that he could fuck me. To end his discomfort I look at him and smile.
"Why don't you take off your clothes and join us," I say.
Bill recognizes his own words being thrown back at him and gives me an appreciative grin.
"You're really something, Jenny," he says.
"You learn real fast, don't you?" "I try harder than most." "Yeah, I see that."
Tony is looking from one of us to the other, bewildered; I know' that my sudden invitation to Bill was as much of a shock to him as Bill's invitation to me had been to Bernie.
Bill stands up and with careful, easy movements strips his clothes off. I watch as his genitals appear, watch as his long, thick cock juts out in a full erection, his testicles dangling beneath, and my eyes stay fastened on his crotch as he sits back down, legs spread, so that I can see the underside of his shaft as it sticks stiffly up. I squirm on the rug, my cunt lighted with a new pulsing fire, and I want to crawl over and stick my head between Bill's legs and press my lips around his cock, but I'm stopped by a sudden shyness about Tony's presence. I've never been naked with two naked men before, and it's somehow different than when I was with Bill and Bernie; I'm the center of attention this time as Bill was then. To just crawl between Bill's legs seems too much for me to do. I think back to what Bill did in that situation and remember that he had simply lain down and abandoned the situation to me and Bernie. I decide to do the same thing. I lie down on my back on the rug, my breasts poking up and my belly rising and falling with my heat, my cunt fluffing from between my thighs, and I wait to see what will happen.
I don't have to wait long. I feel Bill's touch and look down at my belly to see his finger tracing a line from the edge of my pubic hair up over my belly button and on up between my breasts. His finger circles both my breasts, crosses over my nipples lightly, and wanders back down my body, only this time it traces into the tangle of my cunt hair and sinks into the slit of my pussy. I feel it stop and circle my clitoris, then trace slowly to my hole and poke inside my vagina. Mechanically I spread my thighs apart, breathing hotly while he toys in my pussy. I feel my whole belly contract as his finger slips in deeper and begins a circular screwing motion inside me. One brief touch to my cunt and I'm gone, I know. I love it, love the feel of a hand or a cock between my legs; I think that if a total stranger walked up to me and put his hand on my cunt I'd not be able to stop myself from spreading my thighs apart to give him better access. My old pattern of fear and guilt has been broken, and with my freedom from it has come a sexual desire so strong and insatiable that a touch is enough to send me beyond control.
Bill seems to guess what has happened to me because he toys with my cunt and watches my reaction as if he's experimenting with my responses. I turn my head to the side and see that Tony is watching everything, and that his slack cock has risen into a pulsing erection. I reach out my hand and curl my fingers around Tony's penis and feel it jump. Then I take my other hand and wrap it around Bill's hard cock and I squeeze both of their genitals at once and my head swims with desire. I can barely believe what I'm doing, that I'm lying naked with two mens' genitals in my hands at once, me, the shy virgin of little more than a month ago; and instead of guilt I'm experiencing the most unbelievable sexual ecstasy and desire.
I feel myself pulled up and Bill is suddenly lying on his back on the floor and I'm fumbling to stuff his cock up inside my cunt, all the while squeezing Tony's penis with my other hand, and when I crush my ass down on Bill and feel his cock thrust up into me I moan and pull Tony by his cock, pull not him but his cock up and to my mouth, and as Bill begins to fuck me hard in my cunt I clamp my mouth around Tony's hot organ and suck madly on it. In seconds I'm coming, coming with a force and urgency that surpasses anything I've ever known or dreamed of knowing, and my orgasms ripple and flow like water onto a beach, building and pounding like surf breaking. My mad excitement is contagious, and Bill swells and beats viciously at me, in me, and Tony thrusts his prick hard into my throat. I am blind, deaf, lost in their terrible, animal fornication, lost in the throes of my insatiable climax, and I fuck back at Bill as if I'm an extension of his penis, and I suck on Tony as if I'm trying to swallow his cock. They come together, both swelling and exploding into me at once, one in my cunt and the other in my mouth, and I feel their double urgency and power and nearly faint with the forbidden pleasure of it. I swallow the sperm, choking as more pulses into my mouth, and I suck Tony dry and continue to hump down on Bill until he lies limp and tired beneath my ass, then I fall off to the side and lie still on the rug, my cunt wet and dripping and my mouth filled with a taste like seaweed.
Tony is the first to leave. Still naked I kiss him good night at the door and, after he is gone, return to sit with Bill and listen to music. Idly I hold his penis in my hand, and run my fingers over his balls.
"I've never seen anyone undergo such a quick change as you," he says, shaking his head incredulously. "You are absolutely a different person."
I can tell he means it by the way he looks at me, and I smile at him still holding onto his cock. The curious thing is that I'm very attracted to him sexually, for his cock and his manner, but as I sit there with him I realize that this is as far as my attraction for him goes, that I'm neither in love with him nor possessive or jealous of him, like I once thought I was.
"Do you like Tony?" he asks me suddenly, off-handedly, as if he doesn't really care what I answer, but he overplays the casualness of the question and I know he has been wanting to ask me about tonight and Tony.
"He's sweet," I say.
Bill looks at me and nods knowingly, as if to say that that's all right, but that sweet guys don't make it, really, except as sweet guys.
"I liked him to fuck me," I add, to see his reaction.
"Better than me?" he asks.
"Different than you."
"How so?" he asks curiously.
I think about it for a moment, feeling his penis still in my hand, trying to figure out exactly what the difference was between them.
"I guess it's just that when we make it I feel like you are fucking me, while when Tony and I make it I feel like I'm fucking him. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Kind of do, I guess."
"You're super aggressive. Tony is passive. That's all. I'm more aggressive than Tony is."
"Do you like that?" he asks again. "It's different, is all."
He's silent for a while and I squeeze his cock, afraid that his feelings are hurt because I won't say I like him to screw me better than Tony. I don't want to hurt him, not now, anyway; I wanted to until tonight but now that I have my feelings about him sorted out, now that I know I don't love him, it seems silly and even cruel to hurt him.
"You showed me an awful lot about myself," I tell him honestly. "You showed me that I didn't need to feel guilty about sex, and most important you showed me how much I love to fuck."
Bill looks at me and shakes his head as if he still doesn't believe the way I'm acting, the way I am. Then he changes the subject. "So you're still Lilly," he says. "That's right. Lilly of the Valley am I." "You don't know how lucky you are, my dear," Bill says with a sudden ominous tone in his voice. "Langstrom has very little patience with actors and actresses who don't show when they're supposed to show. In fact, you are the first case that I've ever heard of him changing his mind after he's dropped someone."
"Things have changed with me, Bill. I don't know about Mark Langstrom but I do know about myself; I know that I can play Lilly now and I guess that Mark saw I could too."
Bill looks at me as if he doesn't know me. His eyes penetrate into mine and I hold his gaze easily, undefensively, until he shakes his head in surprise. "I believe you," he finally says. "You'd better believe me, Bill, because you're going to look like a damn fool up on that stage if you don't."
Chapter Ten
Rehearsals are scheduled to begin tonight at seven in the theater. I don't feel like eating, too nervous, perhaps, and I walk down to the stage around six and watch Tony and the others put the final touches on the set. Tony offers me a hit of marijuana to calm my nerves but I decline, afraid that it will disorient me from my carefully worked out image of Lilly. Then Sandra comes in and we sit talking about the night to come.
"Have you seen Bill in the last week?" I ask.
"No, but I hear that he's been working himself to death on his part, sleeping with the script. That's kind of what I wanted to warn you about, honey," Sandra says, and when I look at her she brushes the hair out of her eyes and continues. "I don't know what happened with you and Bill but Bill is going to be laying for you up on that stage. I've seen him do it before and he can be vicious."
I smile to myself, realizing that my little warning to Bill must have had quite an effect. I'm not worried about keeping up with him but I'm thankful for Sandra's warning because it will eliminate the surprise if Bill really wants to make a battle of it for some reason.
"Thanks, Sandra," I say, smiling warmly at her. "I'll keep my eyes open."
"Bill likes to control people," Sandra says.
"Well, he doesn't control me." I look at Sandra quizzically, and it suddenly occurs to me to wonder how she knows what Bill is up to if she hasn't seen him. "One question, Sandra," I ask. "How do you know what Bill is doing if you haven't seen him?"
"Bernie told me. I guess she's been practically living over at his place this last week."
"Bernie, huh? The plot begins to thicken," I say out loud. "She doesn't like me, does she?"
"No, she doesn't."
I know that Bernie would like nothing better than to see me flop in the play, and she isn't above turning Bill against me. I think of her lovely ass and wonder just how much influence that ass might have on Bill. That ass alone makes her someone to watch out for.
"Why would Bill want to give me a hard time?" I ask Sandra. "When he heard I was playing Lilly all he was worried about was whether I'd be good enough to play opposite him. He said he was going to help me as much as he could just because he would look better playing opposite a good actress."
Sandra looks at me as if she's just about to answer me, then she abruptly turns away. "What's wrong?" "Nothing, honey."
"Then why won't you answer my question?"
"Okay, I'll answer it. There's a rumor around that the reason you got the part back from Langstrom after you didn't show all that time is that you slept with him."
"That's ridiculous, Sandra. You don't believe that for a moment, do you?"
"I'm just telling you what the rumor is, that's all."
"But do you believe it?" I ask her again.
"Honey, I don't know and I don't care. What you do and what you do it for is your own business."
I stare in disbelief at Sandra and realize she probably does believe it.
"Then you do believe I slept with Mark Langstrom to get the part back?"
"All I know is that Langstrom has never abruptly changed his mind like that before. Hell, Jenny, I'd like to ball Langstrom myself. He's beautiful."
"But I didn't ball him, Sandra. The whole idea never even came up. I just told him I needed time by myself to work things out and that I could play Lilly well. That's all."
"I was just trying to answer your question, Jenny."
"Besides, do you think Mark Langstrom would actually give a part to me just because I slept with him?"
"I don't know. Jenny, you're a beautiful chick. I imagine men would do a lot to screw you."
I stare at Sandra coldly, aware that she isn't going to change her mind either way, no matter what I say, and I decide to drop that part of the conversation.
"Well, you still haven't answered my question," I say. "How does all this affect Bill?"
"Bill thinks you slept with Langstrom too. He says he misjudged you, that he thought you really were naive and innocent but that you aren't. He thinks you've shrewdly got Langstrom wrapped around your little finger, that you conned Langstrom just like you conned him, that you are ruthless when it comes to getting ahead. After he saw you with Tony he became convinced you would do anything. What he's afraid of is that Langstrom won't even be looking at him during the play, that he'll only be interested in you, and Bill is counting on this play to get ahead himself. So he figures the only way to get Langstrom's attention is to out act you so obviously that Langstrom will have to notice him despite you being up there on stage."
"That's crazy! Bill is absolutely paranoid, and he's projecting himself on me as well. He's the ruthless one. He told me that himself even."
"Well, that answers your question, anyway," Sandra says. "I've got to run. Jenny, the reason I told you all this is because I like you and I'm on your side no matter what you did or do. Okay?"
Sandra smiles sweetly at me, and I thank her for telling me all about what's happening. I watch her as she walks away from me and really do feel a sudden gratitude toward her. After all, she didn't have to say anything. It hurts me, though, that even she doesn't really believe me.
Then the stage area becomes a madhouse of people and sound and lights as the time for rehearsal arrives and people pour into the theater auditorium and converge on the stage. Mark Langstrom walks in with Jack Broten, the student director who is working with Mark on this play. They go up on stage and talk with Tony first, then Jack goes backstage and Mark spots me and walks over to me.
"Hello, Jennifer," he says almost politely, and I think how unlike a lover his greeting is, how concerned yet removed. "How do you feel?"
I look into his alert gray eyes and feel the tension build inside me immediately. What if I did make love with him? What would it be like? The thought of it almost scares me, even as a thought. He must be the most powerful and handsome man I've ever met, and the most difficult to read. His eyes seem to hold the whole theater in them all at once, as if he's aware of everything that is happening around him and still able to focus his whole attention on me while talking to me. He also projects something so purely sexual and male that it is confusing to me; it's not as if he's directing it at me or anyone else either; instead it just emanates from him like an aura.
"You're a Scorpio, aren't you?" I ask him without even thinking what I'm asking.
He looks at me carefully, his eyes perceptively narrowing, and suddenly I become embarrassed by my foolish question and begin to blush. He catches my embarrassment and smiles.
"Triple," he says. "And you're a Pisces."
"Yes," I say, looking amazed.
He smiles quickly, turns, and walks back to where Jack Broten has disappeared behind the curtain at stage left. I stand and watch him walk, wondering what just happened between us. Scorpio and Pisces aren't supposed to get along at all, I know. Yet what just happened was rather unbelievable.
I turn around and begin to climb down off the stage to the first row of seats when I see Bill and Bernie sitting off to the side and several rows back, and by the way they are both watching me I know they've been watching me talking to Mark. It's obvious that they have taken the little scene as further proof that I've become involved with Mark sexually. Neither of them smile or even acknowledge me except with icy stares, and I turn my back to them and sit down with a chill running up and down my spine. I'm more grateful than ever for Sandra's warning now, or I might have walked blindly into a bear trap. It's obvious that Bernie has gotten to Bill.
Mark gathers us together and tells us that we have two weeks before opening night, five full rehearsals including tonight. There is an audible moan running through the company when he says that. Five rehearsals aren't very many. Mark looks down at the company with an amused smile playing around the corners of his lips.
"You wanted to be professionals, didn't you? Well, here's your chance." His eyes twinkle and his smile broadens with the challenge before them all. "Okay, we'll begin at the beginning and go through it tonight if it takes us all night to do it. Roll this curtain down and let's get going!"
I go back behind the curtain with the others and take my place at the end of the bar. The bar is built diagonally across the stage so that sitting where I am I'm at the front of the stage and almost at the left side of the stage. It's a strange feeling sitting there in my own clothes, as if I just walked off the street into a bar. I have the same feeling of insecurity and shyness that I've felt the few times I've lied about my age and gone into bars. I watch the others take their positions along the bar and in the room, and I stare at Bill a moment as he positions himself about halfway down the bar. Mark is watching us and changing the opening positions of some people, but he is satisfied with the positions that both Bill and I have taken.
The curtain lifts and the play begins. Almost immediately Mark stops the action and goes back for a conference with the light technicians. The lights play on and off creating wild patterns across the stage until they finally hold steady in the proper lighting. The lighting uses reds and blues which makes the bar seem eerie and unreal and a strong yellow spotlight bathes the action of the play along the bar, isolating the characters that are carrying the play at the moment. I sit through the first few minutes, truing to figure out what to do with myself. It seems an endless time until my first line. Then when Bill approaches and speaks his line which is my cue to enter vocally into the play I tense and deliver it and feel a rush in my mind as I project myself into the part of Lilly, become Lilly instead of Jennifer. I listen to Lilly's voice as she speaks and it sounds right, the right mixture of little girl defensiveness and husky street woman. Bill is right on with the college kid too; he presses me with each delivery, and as the play progresses and he gets drunker he uses his body at the bar expertly even while I'm talking and I feel him pulling the play away from me with his actions. I realize that I'm too unfamiliar with bars and barrooms, that I don't know how people, especially bar women, sit and move and walk in bars, and I could kick myself for my ignorance. But there is nothing I can do about it now, so I don't try to compete, not yet, not until I've done some studying, and instead I concentrate on getting the fine nuances of Lilly's voice down to where I can handle it without thinking about it. Four hours and countless interruptions later we get entirely through the play and gather around Mark who reads us a list of things that need changing and improvement. He kept writing things down during the whole evening and the list is extensive. Then he says the next rehearsal is in three nights and we all drag ourselves out of the auditorium. Bill doesn't say a word to me, but he seems very confident, and I suspect he feels certain he can bulldoze over me with his body movements alone like he did tonight. I know I've got to end that quickly.
I catch Sandra on the way out of the auditorium and walk out into the midnight street with her.
"You were right about Bill," I tell her. "He's out to get me up there, and unless I learn something about bars I'm done for."
"It takes a while. Bill's been hanging around bars for years, you know."
"Yes, I can tell. But I've got two weeks and I'm going to spend them drinking in bars."
"You're crazy. The bars in New York are dangerous. You'll just get yourself in trouble," she warns.
The idea has taken hold of me, though, and no matter what Sandra says I'm going to do it, beginning tonight. Finally, after two more blocks of objecting, Sandra gives in to my plan.
"Well, good luck," she says as we say good night.
"Thanks," I say, and I walk into the nearest bar.
It is dark inside and the lighting is surprisingly like the stage lighting. Almost immediately I become aware that I'm the only blonde in a sea of black hair. Most of the talk is Spanish, and 1 know that I've blundered into a Puerto Rican bar. I have a moment of panic at the strangeness of the place, a moment when I want to turn and bolt out the door, but I hold myself steady and walk to the nearest corner of the bar and sit on a stool. A wolf whistle comes from the back of the bar, a common denominator in all languages, and the bartender turns to see what caused the whistle, sees me, and comes down to my end of the bar. He asks to see some identification after looking at me closely. He speaks pretty good English but I can tell he is more comfortable speaking Spanish.
He reads my identification, looks back up at me to check the description, and hands it back to me apparently satisfied, then he asks me what I'll have to drink.
"Vodka Collins," I say, because it's the only drink I know.
He mixes the drink and takes the money, then returns to the other end of the bar and begins talking in lightning fast Spanish with some young men sitting back there. I sit sipping my drink and watching the people in the bar. There must be thirty people in the long room in all and my guess is that twenty of them are men, mostly young men. There is one woman that attracts my attention immediately out of the ten or so women. She looks to be in her early twenties with long black hair and a face that is beautiful for its sexuality as well as its hardness. I think she looks exactly like what Lilly would look like if she were Puerto Rican and I decide that I can learn something from watching her. She's sitting at the bar about halfway down the length of the room, sprawled on her stool and on the bar at the same time, yet despite her draped posture there is something erect and regal about her demeanor, as if her slovenly posture is the very thing that sets off her commanding presence. Suddenly as if by some sixth sense, she becomes aware of my stare and returns it sullenly, fixes me with her eyes, looks me over competitively, and I have the crawling feeling along the back of my neck that her stare is not friendly. Then she abruptly turns away from me and gives me the impression that I'm some kind of worm in her eyes that crawled off the sidewalks into her world and that I'm not worthy of further attention. It amazes me that she can project such strong impressions just with a look, and I begin to wonder whether I'm cut out to be an actress at all, whether this creature sitting in this bar isn't perhaps a great actress instead of me. I continue to watch her as she talks to the man beside her, watch her eyes alternately flash at him and turn cold at him. I can't see his face, only his long black hair. Then as I watch he turns languorously around and looks at me from huge black eyes. He stares at me, looking me up and down and the woman stares at me again with him. He is very good-looking, almost too handsome, and the combined attention of their eyes is too much for me to handle and I look down, reach for my drink, and sip at it nervously, hoping that I haven't brought a lot of trouble down on myself by my staring.
I busy myself by looking away from them, studiously not looking at them, and I think I'm doing fine until I feel a soft tap on my shoulder and nearly jump off the bar stool from surprise and jittery nerves.
"Excuse me, I didn't mean to scare you," a soft voice says.
I look into the dark face of the man who was sitting next to the woman, see his soft eyes sparkling close to mine, and feel his masculinity like an aura around him, quiet yet tense like a spring about to snap. His voice is heavy with Spanish accent, yet his English is near perfect. About his lips plays an almost imperceptible smile, so slight and hidden that I'm not sure it's even there until it flickers broader with his next words.
"We thought you might join us for a drink?"
I'm still staring helplessly into the dark, luminous pools of his eyes and I have to struggle to find my voice.
"All right," I answer as casually as I can.
I follow him to where the woman is sitting at the bar, and he motions me onto a stool beside her and sits down on the other side of me. I feel a trapped sensation come over me and have to fight my fear back. He asks what I'm drinking and I say vodka collins. At that the woman spits out a long string of Spanish which I don't understand but which is obviously derisive. He quiets her with a hard look and orders the drink for me. The woman obviously understands English, I note.
"My name is Manolo," he says. "This woman is Lupe."
I look at her and nod, but she simply stares through me as if I don't exist. I turn back to Manolo.
"My name's Jennifer."
"Jennifer," he says, repeating it carefully as if thinking about it, and it sounds foreign even to me when he says it.
He asks me some questions and I ask him some in return, and he orders me another drink then another and another until my head is swimming, whether from the drinks or from nerves I don't know. The woman is mostly silent, but when she speaks she always talks in Spanish and she never directs anything at me but open hostility. I watch her movements as much as I can, and when she gets up and walks down the bar to talk with some people sitting there I stare after her, marveling at the liquid flow of her hips and the bounce of her ass; her ass is pronounced and lovely under her tight skirt, yet it is much more unselfconsciously integrated into her movements than is Bernie's ass. She simply lets all her sex show with no pretense. That is the secret of her movements, and I try to mentally record them to practice later on myself. If I can capture her movements I'll have Lilly down perfectly.
Several young men come up and talk with Manolo, all of them looking me up and down with open lust, and when talking to them, even in English, Manolo lapses into a very different speech pattern. His Spanish becomes short and abrupt, loud and forceful, and his English turns to a street idiom that I have to struggle to understand even though it's English. It's like a third language. I become aware that Manolo is intensely quick witted and intelligent, and I can tell from the way the others talk to him that they have a certain respect for him, that he is some kind of leader among them. And what is most obvious to me is the undercurrent of violence that is so evident among them all, like an underground river that is threatening to explode over the surface of their calm at any moment. I feel a strange tenseness and excitement around them, and I realize that this uncontained, or barely contained, possibility of violence is also a part of Lupe's presence, her whole being.
I don't know how long I've been sitting there with them, but Manolo and Lupe suddenly exchange a barrage of Spanish, and I get the feeling that they're talking about me from the looks that Lupe flashes at me. Then Manolo and Lupe stand up, and Manolo tells me to follow them. Not wanting to stay there any longer by myself I follow them out of the bar into the dark street. Manolo pauses outside the door and looks around cautiously as if expecting some danger from the deserted streets, then we walk up the block to a rundown apartment house and enter. When I hesitate going up the dark, narrow stairs Manolo gives me an impatient look and tells me to come quickly. We walk up three flights and he opens a door into a cluttered apartment. One red light bulb burns nakedly in a lamp giving a soft, eerie glow to the room. Only after a moment do I notice that another young man is sprawled on a mattress on the floor.
"This is Eduardo," Manolo says, and Eduardo gives me a curious, lustful look without moving even an eyelash.
Lupe sits down on the mattress with Eduardo and Manolo motions me to follow him into the next room. I follow and see that it is a bedroom of sorts. Manolo closes the door and turns to me. I feel a sudden flush of panic, but I fight against it and look at him.
"Undress," he says flatly.
I know that this is it, that he means to screw me, and I realize that I've known all along it would come to this. There is no escape even if I wanted t escape, but I also know that I don't want to escape. I take my clothes off slowly and he leans against the closed door and watches me. When I'm naked and standing nervously before him he undresses too. I watch his cock come into view from his pulled down pants, a long dark cock swollen purple at the tip, and before he can pull his pants off I drop to my knees and put my hands around it, feel it pulse between my fingers, and bend my mouth to it. I push my lips over it and suck it inside my mouth, feeling the blood pound into my cunt as it slips deep into my hungry mouth. He takes his shirt off while I suck on him, still not touching me, and then he pushes me roughly back while he bends and pulls his pants off and throws them in the corner. "Stand up," he says.
I stand and he comes to me and presses his hands hard .into my breasts. I feel my tits tighten under his fingers and impulsively I push my stomach forward until I feel his cock jab my belly. Its touch sends new pulsing through my body and I push my naked breasts hard into his hands, feel his fingers pinch at my nipples, and I reach down and circle his penis with my hands, working my fingers back along his shaft and feeling underneath for his balls. Then he pushes me down on my knees and again I take his cock in my mouth and suck on it. I feel suddenly more like Lilly than like Jennifer, and my hands circle around and feel his tight ass while I suck, pulling him deeper into my mouth. I love the taste of him in my mouth, love the feel of his cock against my tongue, and I wash the length of it, teasing the bulb with the tip of my tongue. The whore is coming out in me, the long pent-up, denied whore that is in every woman, the animal lust that fastens onto a man's genitals no matter whether she knows him or not, no matter whether she likes him or not. It isn't Manolo that I want, it's that long lean cock between his legs that I want, want deep inside me, sticking up into my cunt like it's sticking into my mouth. For the first time in my life I'm making no pretenses about it, about my female lust. I'm madly sucking on the genitals of a man I don't know in a world I'm not a part of and I'm crazy about it, intoxicated with desire, like a slut. I am a slut now, a street whore, less than Lilly even, because Lilly would want something back, something besides her own lust fulfilled, some money at least, while all I want is his cock.
He pulls me to my feet and pushes me against the wall. I turn to face him but he spins me back around, facing the wall, and he sticks his hand between my legs from behind and grabs my cunt, squeezing it in his fingers like a wet sponge. Then he pulls my ass out and makes me bend over. I'm panting with pleasure. I stick my ass out and feel his fingers opening the door to my pussy, slicing into my slit and parting the lips of my cunt, then he stuffs his cock into me from behind and I moan and push back onto it, bracing myself with my hands against the wall for support, bending almost in half to get my ass in the air for him to screw, and I feel him slide deep into my cunt and begin to fuck wildly at me, pawing the roundness of my buttocks as he bangs it into me. Faster and harder he whacks into me, and I push back at his every stroke until I'm coming wildly. Then I reach between my leg and up between his, and I stretch my fingers out and clasp his balls from underneath as he bangs away. I feel them churning and sweaty, hot and squishy in my fingers, and as I squeeze them hard he comes in a rush of hot jabs, squirting his semen into me and moaning like a stallion. I think I'm going to faint with the pleasure of being screwed like that, up against the wall; my legs grow weak and I collapse to my knees, feeling him slip out of me. Then he pulls me around and with an oath in Spanish and a muted "whore" in English he kicks me in the crotch. I feel his toe jab into my cunt and I cry out in surprised pain, but he is already at the door, opening it and closing it behind him without another word or even a look. I know that I've been used, and a sudden welling of anger rises with the pain in my pussy, and anger at the uncalled for viciousness and at being treated like a whore. And Lilly floats into my mind, disjointed, like an apparition from a lighted stage, and I feel her anger and mistrust as my own.
Chapter Eleven
Before I can collect myself together enough even to stand up, the door opens and Eduardo comes quietly into the room and closes the door behind him. He stares down at me without speaking, stares at my blonde hair and white skin, at my exposed breasts and naked thighs. I stare back at him, hurt and defensive, hating all Puerto Ricans at that moment.
"Did Manolo hurt you?" he says quietly, and surprisingly there is no cruelty nor even indifference in his voice, just a quiet, real concern. I can still see the lust in his eyes, but his voice is full of concern, and when he repeats the question even his eyes lose their lust.
"No, he didn't hurt me, really. He's just a shit and a bastard!"
"You are lucky then," Eduardo says, and he sits down on the floor next to me. I watch him carefully but he makes no attempt to touch me even though I'm only inches away from him, naked, and for all practical purposes trapped in this apartment and defenseless. "You must have treated Manolo well or he would have really hurt you. Lupe didn't like you-she wanted him to cut you."
"Cut me? I don't understand."
"With the knife."
"With a knife? My God, why?"
"Lupe wanted to come in here and do it herself, but Manolo wouldn't let her."
"But why?" I ask again, unable to comprehend why Lupe or Manolo or anyone else would want to cut me up with a knife. It's all too hideous and unbelievable for me to get firmly into my head.
Eduardo just shrugs and gives me a slight smile. "Lupe didn't like you," he repeats as if that's the entire explanation.
I look at him with sudden curiosity. He's not as beautifully handsome as Manolo, but his eyes have a softness that is deeper than Manolo's, and by any normal standard he is quite good-looking, thinner than Manolo without the wiry muscles that cord Manolo's body.
"What do you have to do with Manolo?" I ask.
"He is my brother, my older brother. He is war lord."
"Who is Lupe?"
"She is Manolo's woman."
"Did she know what Manolo was doing in here with me?"
"Sure. She thought he would hurt you, though."
"This is all crazy," I say to Eduardo absently and lean back against the wall to collect my racing thoughts. Apparently I came close to being scarred for life tonight, and I didn't do anything but go into a bar and have a few drinks. I look at Eduardo again out of a desire to put all the insanity of the night together.
"How do you fit in all this?" I ask him.
"I am Manolo's younger brother," he repeats.
His Spanish accent is much thicker than Manolo's and he seems much less comfortable speaking English than did Manolo. Yet I can see the same quick intelligence in his face as in his brother's, only the aggressive wit is softened and held in check. I feel comfortable and completely at ease with him despite my apparent danger. "Am I free to leave?" I ask curiously. "No." "Why not?"
"Manolo say to keep you here." "Why?"
Eduardo just shrugs.
"If I try to leave will you let me?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Manolo say you must stay."
He says that with surprising finality despite his gentle voice, and I can see that his good nature doesn't mean that he will bend to my will easily. My one desire is to get out of here as quickly as I can. I assume that Manolo and Lupe are gone. That leaves Eduardo to get around. I have nothing left to fight with but my body, I know, and I look again at Eduardo, sizing him up with a cold calculation that would do Lilly justice. If I make it with him, give it to him good, he might let me go. And it's not that I'm not attracted to him either; I am. It might just be fun too, I tell myself. And if I can make him really like me he might let me go.
I slide slowly up to my feet against the wall, my hands behind my ass, and my breasts jutting out in front of me, giving him his first full look at my body. My cunt is fluffed out from between my legs and I see his eyes fasten there and the lust return to them. I let him look me up and down before I speak.
"Do you like what you see, Eduardo?" "You are very beautiful," he says slowly. "Manolo just had me. Don't you want me too?" He stands up and lifts his hands to my flanks, softly letting his fingers trace up my ribs to my breasts. His hands fondle my boobs with a feather touch and my nipples harden almost before he touches them. Then he bends his head and licks my tits and I quiver against the wall with lust of my own. I've never been touched so gracefully before, so lightly, and I feel like I'm the aggressive one, like I felt with Tony only more so now, like I'm seducing him. I raise his head and press my lips to his full lips, part them with my tongue and hotly slip it into his mouth, feeling for his tongue with darting motions, teasing him until he jabs his tongue back into my eager mouth. Eduardo feels like a beautiful child in my arms, like a bashful lover, and I feel like an older woman, experienced, jaded, and I feel like corrupting him.
"How old are you?" I ask him, whispering in his ear.
"Seventeen," he answers.
"Undress," I whisper, eager to see his cock.
He undresses and stands naked, his cock still limp and dangling long, his testicles round and full dangling to either side of his cock like fruit. His penis is dark against my hand when I touch it. I squeeze it between my fingers and yank on it, drawing it out, and I feel it tighten and quiver into a long, huge erection in my hand. The tip of it swells and turns purple as I squeeze the stem, and still gripping it tightly I go to my knees and put my lips to it. My tongue snakes out and washes the swollen bulb; I find the small hole at its tip and poke my tongue at it, then I wash along the stem, licking him hungrily while my hands cup and fondle his balls. The dark ring of pubic hair around the base of his penis is silken, soft, and I nuzzle my nose into it and smell the musky sweat of his crotch as I lick at him. Everything about him is sweet, boy-like, soft and gentle, and I go wild with my mouth on his genitals, sucking wildly at him. Even his ass is soft and hairless, and my fingers part his buns and find his asshole, poking and prying until I stick one finger up his ass. His cock swells larger and my mouth tightens until he is pulsing inside, my tongue coaxing him bigger. The twitch in my cunt becomes an ache and I stand and lead him to the bed. I fall onto my back and spread my legs wide, letting him stare into my moist grotto, letting him savor my pussy knowing he's about to penetrate it, and he crawls on top of me, pressing me into the mattress, his hand groping into my crotch. I let him feel me, feel his finger slide up into me, and I buck against his hand. Then I can stand it no longer. I find his cock and position it at my cunt and pull him down hard on me, and he enters me and plunges it deep into my heated pussy. Aroused, he fucks crazily at me and I arch to receive his thrusts, returning his wild jabbing with a dance of passion underneath him, feeling his strong loins beating against me. I raise my legs and clasp them around his hips, spreading myself open like I never have before. He comes in a fit of fucking and I keep at him until he relaxes, then I pull away from him and go at his cock with my mouth again until it firms and swells. This time I stick my ass into the air and he enters from behind as Manolo did, and with the tension of his first come behind him he lasts long, thrusting in and out like a sex machine until I'm screaming with fulfillment. How long he fucks me this second time before he comes I don't know. It's all I can do to keep my ass up for him, and when he explodes finally into orgasm and withdraws from me I collapse on the mattress exhausted. He rests beside me and I float into the soft oblivion of sleep, all thought of escape having been screwed from my mind.
Chapter Twelve
I wake and stare blankly around the cluttered room, the events of the night before coalescing slowly in my mind, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle until I know where I am and how I got here. The sun is slanting almost horizontally across the room through the parted drapes of the window and I realize with a start that it's late afternoon or early evening. I'm also startled to find that Eduardo isn't there beside me, that I'm alone. I stand up and stretch myself until the drowsiness of my long sleep disappears, then I hunt for my clothes from among the clutter of clothes strewn about the floor and dress. I tiptoe to the door and listen; there is no sound from the other room. Quietly I open the door and peep through the crack; the room is empty. I go into it and peer into the little kitchen off the room, then look into the bathroom. The apartment is deserted. I breathe a sigh of relief, go back into the bedroom for my purse, then quickly walk to the door. When I try to open it it's locked. I fiddle with the locks until I realize that the door is fitted with a third lock that is set opposite the other two, so that the door can lock people in as well as out. Trapped still, I think dismally, and I plunk myself down on the couch to wait for my jailor's return, hoping it will be Eduardo and not Manolo or Lupe. I realize that I would like to see Eduardo again.
I wait about an hour before I hear footsteps on the stairs and a key in the lock. The door opens and Eduardo walks in carrying a bag of groceries and a bottle of wine. He closes the door, locks it, and smiles at me.
"You wake up," he says.
"Yes," I smile at him. In the daylight he looks even more boyish and young. I remember his strong cock and look down at his crotch and can barely see its outline against his tight pants. He takes the groceries into the kitchen and returns to stare at me.
"Can I leave now?" I ask cheerfully.
He shakes his head.
"Why not?"
"Manolo hasn't said so."
"Oh," I sigh. "Where is Manolo?"
"Gone."
"But where?"
"Don't know. He'll be at bar tonight." "Well, I'm hungry."
I fix the two of us dinner and we eat, sipping wine and talking. Eduardo is shy and quietly charming and being in jail this way isn't so bad. I would like to make love with him again. As long as I'm being held prisoner I might as well enjoy myself, make the most of it so to speak.
"Eduardo, I'm going to take a shower," I tell him and waltz into the bathroom, leaving the door open a few inches, certain he will follow. I undress and turn the water on, adjust the temperature, and step in. The water flows over my body and revives me completely. I soap my crotch good to wash away the last of last night's lovemaking and think about another shower in my past, the shower that ended with Bill breaking my cherry. It seems so long ago, another lifetime, an event in the life of someone else, another Jenny. It's amazing how a couple months in New York will change a girl. During that other shower I was scared stiff that a man might come in after me; now I purposely leave the door open so one will come in. Yet I'm the same girl basically. Only the morals have changed, broadened. Sex is no longer immoral, it's just sex, and it's great, fantastic, the only way to live, the more the better. I really enjoyed both Manolo and Eduardo last night; if Manolo hadn't pulled that whore bit he would have been fine. I know from what Eduardo said about Lupe that Manolo did it out of a guilty conscience for not really hurting me as Lupe wanted, did it as a concession to Lupe, and it really didn't hurt me so much as it hurt my pride. I suppose I got off easy compared to what it would have been like if Lupe had really gotten her way with me.
I finish washing myself and Eduardo still hasn't come in. It strikes me as ironic that when I want a man to bust in on my shower I end up with a perfect gentleman, and Eduardo is just that. It seems so strange that I should find a gentleman in a situation like this, in a shabby apartment where I am a virtual prisoner. I smile to myself as I remember last night and how he wasn't going to even touch me until I asked him to, even though I was naked and had just been screwed by his brother.
"Hey, Eduardo," I stick my head out of the shower and yell.
"Yes?" he answers from the other room. "Do you always treat your prisoners with so little concern for their well being?" "What?"
'My back needs scrubbing, you idiot." His head appears at the door. He looks at me questioningly.
"Yeah, you. Come in here and wash my back for me. There's some things a woman just can't manage by herself."
He comes into the bathroom shyly but obviously pleased with the idea. I pull the shower curtain back and give him a good look at the front of me before I turn my back to him. I feel his hands wash over my back, feel the bar of soap slide against my skin and his fingers dig into my flesh, up at my neck then trailing down to the small of my back, hesitate, then slide down over my buttocks. I let him wash for a couple minutes then slowly I turn to face him. His hands continue to wash at me, pressing against my belly then working up to my breasts, slippery over my tits. He keeps washing and I begin to think that he would stand there washing all night if I didn't do something. I grab him by the wrists hard and drag him into the shower, clothes still on, and he laughs boyishly and presses himself against me as water sprays over him. I help him undress, pulling his shirt and pants off him and jerking his sandals off his feet. Then we are pressed into each other. I take the soap from him and reach down between his legs, soaping his genitals and coaxing his cock into a long erection. I wrap my thighs around it and let him fuck back and forth between my legs, feel his hard rod rub against my soapy cunt, and I pry into his mouth with my tongue. The steam rises from the shower but there is no suffocation this time, no feeling of panic; this is what I want, the way it should have been that time with Bill only I wasn't ready for it yet, and I take my time and enjoy every moment, every touch of it. I work my hand down and fondle his soapy balls, feel them slip and roll in my fingers, and coax him to the bursting point. Then I turn and prop my hands against the wall, sticking my ass out as I did for his brother, and Eduardo guides his cock into my cunt and begins the slow teasing rhythm that has become so much a part of my life, that will work me into an ecstasy of orgasm and wild sexual response. It builds and I feel my womanhood rising with it, rising and soaring as only sex can make it rise. When I come I'm flying and I'm taking Eduardo with me, and that is what I've learned in the time I've been in New York, that sex can make a woman fly and a woman can take a man with her, up where neither of them have been before. That's the magic of sex and that is all the justification it needs.
Suddenly the shower water turns cold and we both yell as the icy water hits us and brings us quickly back to earth. We hop out shivering and grab for towels, laughing and hugging each other like two little children caught in the rain. After we dress I comb my hair out and wait impatiently for it to dry; I've talked Eduardo into taking me down to the bar to talk with Manolo. Eduardo isn't very excited about the idea, but I point out to him that I'm still under his control in the bar as much as here and he consents, more, I think, because he doesn't really know why he's holding me himself. Every time I've asked him he simply shrugs and says Manolo told him to do it.
What I want, despite the now obvious danger, is another good hour of watching Lupe. For reason, despite the odd events of the past twenty-four hours, I'm much more relaxed than I was the night before in the bar, and I want to study Lupe's movements when I'm feeling relaxed. After all, that was the whole point of my getting involved in all this in the first place and I figure I might as well accomplish my purpose.
The bar is crowded again with what looks like the same faces as the night before. We step just inside the door and Eduardo halts and stops me with a hand around my wrist. He stares until his eyes get used to the red glare of the long room and he motions with his head toward Manolo who is sitting almost exactly in the middle of the long bar where he had been sitting the night before. Eduardo leads me toward him, and as we walk people notice us, smile and nod at Eduardo playfully, accost him with loud jabbering Spanish which I take to be some kind of obscene jokes at my expense because of the nervous way Eduardo handles them, smiling and grinning back but almost at a loss for words. I begin to wonder what I've dragged Eduardo into and wonder what Manolo's reaction will be.
Manolo watches us approach for the last several feet and I can see his eyes are dark pools with nothing reflected in them of what he is thinking. He looks so different from Eduardo; there is something like violent death hanging over him, resting on his shoulders like a cape, yet his manner is lazy, unconcerned, careless. Lupe is sitting at his side watching me as if she can't believe her eyes, as if the sight of me back in her territory after last night is too much of an insult to comprehend much less tolerate, yet there I am and with the younger brother of her man no less. I know what a predicament this must put Lupe in and I begin watching her like a hawk, her every eye movement, her every grimace, smile, slouch, step. She is why I came.
Manolo and Eduardo talk in Spanish, Manolo asking questions and Eduardo answering timidly, shyly, yet responding, holding his ground against his older brother's aggressiveness and obvious anger. Finally Manolo abruptly stops talking to Eduardo, dismisses him without saying another word, and looks curiously at me.
"What do you want?" he asks coldly.
"The usual, vodka collins," I say, purposely pretending to have misunderstood the nature of his question, smiling innocently at him.
He looks at me and almost smiles at my nerve, then he bangs on the bar and the bartender appears instantly.
"Give the lady a vodka collins," he orders, and flips out a dollar bill onto the bar. He leaves Eduardo standing there without a drink to shame him more and the bartender senses this, I guess, and doesn't even look at Eduardo. I want to ask Eduardo what he'll have myself but I'm afraid of bringing further trouble down on him if I do, so I keep my mouth shut. Instead I look straight at Lupe and smile, trying to goad her into action. I do; she stands up, sticks her ample bosom into the air, and saunters off with her hips swinging deliciously. She stops several feet away and slouches with the bar at her back, staring at me like a picture from an old Western saloon. Hollywood sure missed when they missed her, I think, but I realize they wouldn't know what to do with her anyway, any more than they would know what to do with the real Billy the Kid, because Lupe is the real thing too, and is really dangerous.
I keep my eyes on Lupe and talk to Manolo.
"I'm tired of being held like some kind of prisoner."
"You don't look like you are being held," Manolo answers.
"Then I'm free to go any time I want from here?"
"Certainly."
"Thank you." I smile sweetly. I don't trust him at all and I look at Eduardo casually, trying to discover in his eyes if anything will happen to me if I try to leave, but Eduardo is still embarrassed and sulking and uncommunicative and won't meet my eyes. I turn back to watching Lupe who is talking with two young men and I have a feeling that they are talking about me, though I keep telling myself it's just my own paranoia. Lupe is putting on quite a show for me though; I feel like I'm watching a master mime at an acting seminar. I sip my drink and try to get Manolo and Eduardo talking but both of them have seemingly turned to stone. I get to feeling uneasy then actually frightened and I'm just finishing my drink when Lupe walks back toward us and stops in front of my stool with hatred darting out of her dark eyes like daggers.
"What you doin' here, slut?" she asks, for the first time since I've met her using English instead of Spanish.
"I'm just leaving," I say as calmly as I can. "You leave when I say, when Lupe say." "Fuck you," I hear the words come out of my mouth and immediately wish they hadn't.
Lupe's hand whacks across my face and I fall off the stool and somehow find my feet as I lean against the bar for balance. People are gathering around and I know I've got to get out of there quickly or run the risk of being killed. I look back up at her, tears in my eyes from my smarting cheek, and she is standing waiting for me to make the next move. I don't want to fight her. I slide out away from the bar keeping the stool between us, and when I get out I simply turn and start to walk for the door. I take three steps when my hair is yanked backward so viciously that I fall backwards with it onto the floor, twist, and look up into Lupe's smiling face in time to see her foot lift up at my own face. I wheel sideways and take the kick in my shoulder, scramble to my feet and dash for the door with fear written all over me and Lupe's hard smile following me, triumphant, harassing, vicious. The bar is loud with laughter behind me but I don't care; my pride isn't involved as far as I'm concerned, just my safety. Let Lupe and the rest of them live out their little code of valor in the shabby bar; I'll live mine out in another way on another kind of stage. I reach the door and burst out into the dark sidewalk, take several steps aimlessly up the block, stop and lean against the stone side of a building to gain my breath and get control of my nerves which are shattered. The street is deserted, the night colder than I would have expected. The wind whistles through the deep canyons of the buildings. I catch my breath and realize I've run the wrong way down the block after leaving the bar. I start across the street to pass on the other side but as I'm halfway across the bar door opens and three men walk out and, spotting me, halt and watch me. There is a hurried exchange in Spanish, one of them ducks back into the bar, and I don't wait to see what will happen. Abandoning my idea of changing direction I start running away from the bar, down the middle of the street, hearing their footsteps clanging on the pavement behind me. I race faster but their footfalls drum closer in my ears, welling up behind me like a wave that's about to roll over me and carry me crashing down in an avalanche of asphalt and boot heels.
There is nowhere to run except straight ahead. The street is lined with a solid facade of buildings on both sides and the block is very long. I angle across the street and keep running on the sidewalk opposite the bar side of the street, and then I see a street sign ahead, small and grimy white under a streetlamp and nothing but dark empty street beyond it. I turn and run up it only a few steps before I realize my mistake; it isn't a street, it's an alley and it dead ends in another hundred feet under a single lighted bulb hanging from a doorway at the end of the alley. I race up it anyway and as I run the footsteps dogging my own stop and all I can hear are my own clattering steps on the asphalt. I run to the very end of the alley without looking back, and when I reach the brick wall of the building that blocks the road with its three storied massive brick bulk I turn beneath the ring of light and watch as my pursuers stand watching me from the open end of the blind alley. Then slowly they walk toward me as I stand under the spotlight. They spread out the width of the alley and move as shadows of men until they reach the outer perimeter of light and form a semicircle around me. There are five of them, young and dark, Puerto Ricans from the bar, their faces strangely familiar from the red glare of the neon barroom yet now, under the dim yellow light of the naked bulb, their faces seem strange and screwed tight on their sharp skulls like masks of themselves, and there is a taunting humor in their eyes like wolves, a glint and promise of what is to come. I back against the wall of the building and wonder if they'll dare try anything in the light even though it's in an alley and late at night. Finally I can't take the suspense and I scream loudly; still they don't move, and a light goes on in a window on the second story above us. We all look up in unison at the lighted window to see what these new actors are going to do, patiently waiting as a face appears at the window and stares down at us. Then the window opens, creaking, and the heads of a man and a woman appear at the window. Anxiously I try to see what race they are and I'm relieved when I see her blonde hair and his brown hair.
"What's going on down there?" the man's voice says gruffly.
The Puerto Ricans don't answer. I look up at the window pleading with my eyes.
"Go away," the man's voice says again, ineffectually, down at us.
The wolves begin to circle and dart in at me; I take my eyes away from the window and concentrate on my own drama, my own part in the scene, and I dodge helplessly as my clothes are ripped from my body. My blouse and skirt disappear and my panties are ripped clean off and last my bra is pulled up over my breasts by snatching fingers and I'm pinned to the hard bricks of the building, spread-eagle against the wall, while my tormentors individually pull their pants down and stick their cocks up between my legs, fucking me against the bricks and feeling my thighs and breasts while they push up into me. During the attack I look up and see the two faces at the open window watching. I hear a woman's voice crying, "My God, they're raping her!"
"What do you want me to do about it?" the man's voice sounds indignantly. "They're a pack of niggers!"
"Well, call the police!"
"Lot of good that'll do. Wait, maybe they'll go away."
"I'll call the police, then."
"No you won't!" the man's voice warns. "We don't want no trouble."
The faces disappear from the window and the attack goes on until all five have had their turn and I'm sore and crumbled against the wall. They let me fall against the pavement, half-propped against the bricks, and I look up to see Eduardo standing in front of me. I remember what sex was like only two hours ago with him, how gentle and clean and fulfilling it had been, and now I look at the ring of faces around me in the naked light and see how vulgar and degrading it is, and I know how degraded I feel, how wasted. Eduardo is not smiling, not enjoying the spectacle of me being violated; yet he isn't doing anything to help me either, just watching limply.
"You mother!" I yell at him, into his limp face. 'Call them off, won't you?"
But it is too late; it's already over, and they filter back out of the alley and Eduardo goes with them. He's one of them after all, a Puerto Rican, a nigger in New York, and he has everything to lose and nothing to gain by sticking up for me.
I stagger after them down the alley with the rags of my clothes wrapped around me, skirt through the dark streets and reach my apartment house. Inside I collapse and wonder how you draw the line between lives, how you know what men to trust.
I wash my torn cunt and swear I'll never fuck another man unless I feel certain he loves me. I'm Jennifer Reynolds, not Lupe or Lilly, and street sex is for those that are born to it; I'm not. I know where my stage is and I'm staying right there in that world, my world, and to hell with the streets of Manhattan. Sex is great when it's a part of your scene, and it was best with Bill because he is a part of my scene all the way. Still, I've outgrown Bill and I don't want anything more to do with him.
Chapter Thirteen
Two days later I meet Sandra and she looks at me curiously.
"You didn't last long, did you, honey," she says.
I tell her briefly about the bar, about Manolo and Eduardo and Lupe, but I don't tell her about being raped. That was more than I had bargained for and I still don't want to think too much about it. "I can play Lilly without even thinking about it now. I know her every move, her every glance and expression. Bill can lay for me all he wants and I'll be ready. You watch!"
Somehow, though, the incident in the alley made me stronger. I remember my dream of long ago, my nightmare, when I was chased up an alley by Puerto Ricans only to find Bill standing over me in the end; I understand now the fear I had of sex, how the Puerto Ricans symbolized that fear and how Bill symbolized my faith in myself. When I had that dream I still needed to cling to Bill because I had no faith in myself, but in that alley facing those Puerto Ricans for real I learned to have some faith in myself. I didn't need Bill there. I came out of it all by myself.
I think back to the first day of acting school and how Mark Langstrom warned us that our hang-ups would show in a bright spotlight on stage, and I know that I've overcome my biggest hang-up, my fear of sex, and no matter what else happens on that stage, whatever else shows up, I'll be one of the sexiest Lillys that he's ever seen. Lilly of the Valley won't blush, I think to myself, and smile.
The night of the final rehearsal comes and there is an excitement that has been absent from the previous rehearsals. We are all in costume, and for the first time we are going to run through the entire play without stopping. Everyone that has had anything to do with the production is in the theater to watch; there must be close to forty people out there and more filtering in.
I feel appropriately sleazy in my tight-fitting dress, with no bra and only a pair of silk bikini panties, and I have an image of Lilly firmly in my mind, an image that owes much to Lupe. I wonder if Lupe would recognize herself in Lilly were she to see the performance, and decide that she probably would. Lupe's powers of observation were keen.
Mark Langstrom is everywhere at once, going over last minute suggestions and instructions with everyone. He comes up behind me and whispers in my ear that I look lovely and I grin happily. The curious thing is that he has worked with almost all the actors and actresses during the past rehearsals except me. He worked hard with Bill and I was surprised at how well they seemed to work together, Mark making suggestions and Bill trying to find a way to incorporate them into his character. Yet the whole time Mark didn't say more than a word or two to me, and what he did say was of minor importance. Yet I caught him watching me closely several times, and I could never tell if he was pleased or disturbed with what he saw. At several points I was about to ask him what he thought but I would always back away when I was with him. If he had something to tell me he would tell me, I would say to myself, and ask nothing.
Then just before curtain time I see him go down to the center of the auditorium about halfway back and slouch down in a chair as if to say that he's done all there is to be done and the rest is up to us. I watch him for a moment, see the lines on his forehead that I've never noticed before, the tiredness around his gray eyes where the worry and countless small tasks of directing a play have etched into his skin. It suddenly occurs to me why he's such a good director. It's because he gives you the feeling that everything is all right, that it is all under control, and he takes the whole burden secretly and without confiding in anyone lest he upset them. He hears problems and complaints from everyone but can never complain himself; he has to be completely self-contained through the whole chaotic ordeal, and he manages somehow to do it. For a moment tears fill my eyes as I look at him. He looks suddenly so miserable and helpless, so vulnerable, like a little boy confronted with something he can't cope with. And I realize for the first time that somehow I have come to love him simply for what he is, not for the glamour or prestige or power of his position, but simply for the man he is, and it upsets me to realize how secretly I came to love him. Before, I knew I was attracted to him as a sex object, attracted to his piercing gray eyes, his dark handsome face, his lean body and casual manner, his reputation, but these were all impersonal, sexual, romantic. But there is no romance in the sad figure slouched exhausted in the chair, alone, no longer in touch with the very play he created and directed, only a bittersweet hunk of very human humanity, a personal, private, individual that has worked himself into complete exhaustion in a very lonely job. And that is the Mark Langstrom I have come to love, to see as he is and love.
I don't see Bill at all until the play begins, then I see him as a college kid. I haven't spoken to him in a long time off stage, and I'm beginning to recognize him in his part better than I remember him in real life. Only tonight it is different. I see him immediately as Bill, ruthless and eager to outshine me, full of paranoia and competition. And I'm thankful that he'll never enter my body again because he suddenly seems vile to me, loathsome. I have to snap my mind quickly back to Lilly and force myself to see him as the college kid before I blow my part.
The play goes smoothly enough, I feel. Bill tries immediately to intimidate me by trying to upstage me but I've learned how to handle that kind of thing. I use my breasts and hips to best advantage, and soon I can feel the visual energy of the audience planted firmly on me. I can tell the second Bill gives up the attempt, and I slow down a little too and the play flows better for both of us, though I can feel the hostility of Bill's eyes when he looks at me. But he doesn't try any more tricks with me. I think it must surprise him how far I've come in a few short weeks.
By the time the scene with Bill in bed approaches I'm really into my part, completely lost in it as if Jennifer doesn't even exist. I've convinced myself that I'm attracted to the innocence that this college boy represents to me. Standing beside the bed both of us strip naked; in the strange lighting it seems weird, almost unreal, yet as I look at the college kid I snap back to my real identity and see him as Bill, see Bill's long, dangling cock in front of me. The scene is supposed to culminate with a simulated fucking scene, Bill behind me, and at the last moment he is supposed to simulate jabbing his cock up my asshole instead of into my cunt, thereby defiling and debasing my romantic impulse, playing my love for a cruel kind of sex.
I'm on the bed now, and at his first touch I almost cringe. I don't want Bill touching me any more, and I fight to get him oriented back as the college kid to make his touches easier. Bill uses the opportunity to good advantage; his hands are all over my breasts and hips, and as the scene continues he slips his fingers into my crotch and up into my cunt. There's nothing I can do but let him feel into my body and keep reminding myself that I'm Lilly, and he knows that I'm helpless. When the moment comes for him to supposedly jam his cock up my asshole I feel a sudden jab at my pussy and realize that he has stuck his cock up my cunt and is really fucking me. Despite my shock I manage to scream in supposed pain and outrage then fall limp and let him have his way. The bastard, I think to myself, biting my lip as he slides in and out of me, the bastard! I wonder if Mark Langstrom can tell he's really screwing me up here; I hope desperately not. Then I feel Bill straining and suddenly he is coming inside me, bursting like a coiled spring suddenly released, and I feel the tension of the performance draining from him into me. Then the scene is over and I'm off stage dressing quickly and hoping that his damn sperm won't run down my leg during the last few minutes of the performance. I resolve to stuff myself with a tampon the next night so he won't be able to pull any shit like this again, the fucker.
The last few minutes go smoothly and the curtain falls and I feel the tired exhilaration of having completed a performance and the slightly queasy feeling of knowing that nothing stands between me and the real thing now but twenty hours. After the performance we change clothes and return to the stage area where Mark is waiting for us. He says a few things to a few people, glancing at notes he has written during the performance, and then tells us to relax and forget about it all until tomorrow evening. As I'm walking slowly out of the auditorium I hear his voice suddenly call my name.
I turn sharply and look at him.
"I'd like to talk to you a moment," he says.
I go sit down by him and wait for him to tell me something, expecting some kind of criticism of my performance, but instead he just looks at me wearily and smiles as if his whole body is drained. Again I see the fatigue around his eyes and feel myself pulled toward him, and without thinking I lean toward him and softly rub his temples with the heels of my hands. He closes his eyes and receives my caress thankfully, and when he opens his eyes again our hands are together, our fingers laced. Neither of us says anything; there's no need for words. Words are plays and conversation and scripts and criticisms and directions, but touch is all there is to feelings, all that is needed.
We sit there like that for several minutes in silence. I feel his hand relaxed in mine, and once he closes his eyes for several seconds and lays his head back against the chair. Then he shakes himself back to wakefulness and looks at me softly.
"Can I drive you home?" he asks.
I squeeze his hand in answer and we go out through the empty auditorium to his car parked outside. In five minutes he is parking in front of my apartment, and together we climb the steep stairs to my floor.
Inside I pour him a glass of wine and we sit listening to music and looking out the window at the people driving past, at the lights of the city towering around us, and at the occasional pedestrian that walks past below. I feel the immensity of it all pressing around me like some huge indefinable beast, not exactly threatening, just awesome, incomprehensible. It makes me feel my own insignificance, my own tiny speck of humanity in this human sea, and I know that Mark is feeling the same thing. We go through our days and our lives as if it's all earth-shakingly important, suffer and sweat out our work and our loves, and only rarely do we take a good look around us and put ourselves back into perspective like this, and in some strange way it is a comforting thing to do.
I don't exactly know when we come together. I simply realize at some point that we are lying on the couch with our arms around each other and our lips glued together, our tongues seeking the hot softness of each other's. And it strikes me how strange it is, and how strange I feel. Strange because for the first time in my life I'm lying in a man's arms and it's no different than talking or holding hands, or looking into each other's eyes. I know what is coming as sure as I know I'll make it tomorrow with Lilly, yet it seems so different from all the sex I've had. It isn't exactly sex and yet it is, or perhaps it's so much more than sex with the sex acting as the medium. Whatever it is I feel suddenly like I've released a huge load and relaxed in a way that I've never relaxed before, yet I'm also feeling hotter, more turned on, then I ever have before. Mark's hand traces down my neck and I shudder as I feel it move onto my breast. I thrust my breast into his hand and press my thighs against his, and slowly as we feel each other I lift my knee between his legs and rub up into his crotch with it. I begin to shake as I feel his hard cock with my knee, and I can't stand being dressed any longer.
I sit up and pull my clothes off, and I'm aware of Mark's eyes caressing my bare flesh as it appears, washing over my bulging breasts and darting in to see my throbbing cunt. I sit naked, smiling, and let him look at me. Then I begin undressing him, pulling his clothes off until he's lying there nude with his cock stuck up in the air like a flagpole, his balls cupped by his thighs and rounded full. I feel my belly tighten, constrict with a kind of hunger that is new to me, and I lower my lips to his organ and slowly suck at the swollen bulb of his prick. And what a prick, I think, what a beautiful cock he has. I've never really thought of a cock as being beautiful in itself before, but now I'm awed by the size and symmetry of it, by the strength of it, the power. I want it inside me but not yet; first I want to love it, to suck and even abuse it a little, to squeeze it and bite it and caress it until I've worked it to its full power.
I slip down lower, my mouth formed in an oval, and I suck on his balls until I'm sucking so hard that he winces. I smile to myself and lick them tenderly, slicing my tongue into the softness of his scrotum between his nuts. Then I slide my tongue back along the root of his cock. He raises up and my tongue finds his asshole and with a kind of frenzied ecstasy I penetrate him with my tongue, rubbing his fully extended cock with my hands, scratching lightly at his balls, until I feel him jerking in my fingers and know that it's time to let him inside my oven.
I sit on top of him and lower my cunt around his penis, wetting the tip with my flowing juices, sinking lower and lower around him as he strains upward, thrusts up into me. Finally, with all my strength, I bear down on him and grind my cunt over him until I feel him jabbing up so high that it hurts, and the pain makes me want more of him, more and deeper. His hands sink into my bouncing breasts and we heave and strain together feeling our pulse in our locked genitals, feeling our love merge sexually into a final climax of ecstasy. He pounds harder and I grind and thrash on top of him, and as he's coming I come too, and with a kind of wanton abandon I've never really acted out before I take his hand and force his finger up my asshole all the way and it feels like I'm having a double climax.
Afterwards I lay with my head on his pubic hair and idly lick his cock clean of love juices, letting my tongue wash around and around his stem and balls while he lies and moans under my ministrations. I feel his body relaxing and know that he's falling off to sleep, and I feel sleepy too, but I don't want to let his cock out of my mouth, and finally I fall asleep with it still in my mouth and it's the best sleep I can ever remember having.
Chapter Fourteen
The next evening Mark and I walk into the auditorium at six-thirty to find almost everyone already there. We make no pretense of hiding the fact that we are together, and it must be quite obvious to most people that we have been together all last night. I see Bill give me a mean look and I know that he at least knows, and his paranoia certainly blossoms forth quickly. He stares hatred at me for several minutes before turning completely away. I know he thinks I'm in competition with him for the star position in the play, but I couldn't really care less at this point. I have Lilly under control and I really don't want to compete with anyone; what Mark thinks after seeing the performance is his own business.
Mark goes up to the front and stands up on the stage to give us a last-minute talk.
"You've all worked hard and I think you're all ready. Just play it like last night, like another rehearsal, and it'll go fine."
He continues and with that very special ability he has to relax and instill confidence in people he soon has everyone feeling much more certain that all will go well. I can almost feel everyone let their tension out and ease back into their chairs, and I remember last night and how at ease I felt in his arms. I stare lovingly at him and feel his energy flowing my way as he keeps looking at me as he talks. I look over at Bill and see that, despite his paranoia, he too seems to respond to Mark, although I can tell he is still furious and distrustful of me.
"Well," he says to end the talk, "I'm going to walk outside for a quick drink and come back and go to the theater just like anyone else. I trust I'll see a good show. Bon voyage et bon chance."
We quickly set into motion and for the next hour the place is like a beehive with everyone in frantic haste to get ready. Costumes and makeup are donned, lights are tested, sound systems are checked, scripts undergo a last-minute study, and almost unbelievably the curtain rises at precisely eight-fifteen just like it is scheduled. All that hour during which we are bustling about we keep getting reports from the ushers as to how many people have turned up in the audience, and the last report is a full house which sends us all into a weird kind of mental excitement, almost a controlled hysteria. The Theatre Workshop, which is the name of the playhouse connected with the school, has a high reputation around New York for good avant garde and original productions, much of it based upon and due to Mark Langstrom's own reputation; it consistently draws good crowds of a knowledgeable and intelligent variety and its plays almost always get thoroughly reviewed.
When the curtain rises and I take my first look out at the audience it seems that everyone in New York must have somehow crowded into the auditorium.
The pace of the play picks up quickly until we are going noticeably faster than during last night's dress rehearsal. I seem to barely finish a delivery when the next lines are hurled back at me and I hear myself responding. There is a palpable tension in the air on stage and I can feel the audience being swept along. The crowd out there has become one unit and that unit has become incorporated into the play as certainly as if it were a part written into the script. After about seven minutes the action swings away from me for a moment and I get a chance to catch my wits and have a quick look at the whole thing objectively. Bill is carrying the action now, standing at front stage center and I can feel the audience with him. I've never seen him so lost from himself; I have a difficult time remembering that he really is Bill. Then the action shifts back to me and all objectivity is lost as I become Lilly.
By the middle of the play a firm pace has been established and a rhythm set up among all of us on stage that carries us from line to line effortlessly as though we are floating through the performance under the direction of a conductor. I can feel the audience zero in on my breasts and hips as I flaunt them, and my voice acquires a rasp that I didn't think I was capable of producing. I am supposed to be getting drunk as the play progresses and more and more I recognize Lupe in my movements. Bill is pressing me hard now and he's in such fine form that I suddenly realize he's been purposely holding back at rehearsals and not showing me how deeply he really has gotten into his character. He comes up with new movements and expressions at every turn and I have to let myself go as I never have before to stay with him. It's a cruel trick to have played on me and I know I'll hate him for it after the play when I have a second free to hate, but now all I can do is watch and try to guess what he's going to do next. He's playing for keeps and he's good at it.
By the time the sex scene comes I'm exhausted yet I still have super nervous energy. My muscles quiver and my voice is grating with emotion. My legs feel weak as I crawl onto the bed and I can sense the power and viciousness of Bill so close to me. Stripping is like peeling my skin off. I feel the lights burning into my flesh and feel the thousand eyes of the audience penetrating into my crotch, yet I stand up under it all and hardly cringe as I feel Bill's hand suddenly push from behind me into my naked crotch. This is the moment I've been preparing myself for for the past weeks, the moment that will tell whether I've grown as a person or not. All my fear of sex has been culminated in this one scene and Bill is going to try to make it hard for me somehow. I tense at his touch, waiting for a sign as to what he's going to do, knowing that I have to make myself vulnerable to him and not show my fear. I wish I had really crammed a tampon up my cunt like I thought of doing, but it seemed silly to me and I didn't do it. Bill is working my crotch over good now and I can feel that he has an erection already. The moment when I have to make myself vulnerable is coming and I tense as his fingers slip into my cunt. I want to lurch away, to scream at him to get his filthy fingers out of my pussy, but I can't. Then the moment comes. I bend forward and lift my crotch to him and I feel his fingers tighten in my cunt. Then with a brutal jab I feel his cock jab up into my asshole and I scream a real scream of agony as the pain jolts through my body. Tears fill my eyes and I swear to myself amid my trembling panic. Bill has really done what he was supposed to simulate. He has entered my ass and is pounding away under the eyes of hundreds of people who think it's all an act. The pain is almost unbearable and I feel my eyes close and my teeth grit and my legs weaken. The filthy bastard! The filthy fucking bastard!
On he pounds until I feel him come and loosen his cock from my burning hole, all in a matter of a few seconds which seem like an eternity to me. I have to stand then, wobbling, infuriated, and I do stand and wobble only it isn't an act for me-it's real and ugly and I hate him like I've never hated anyone before. How I manage to end the play I don't know. I use Lilly's words and actions but it's my own personal emotions that go into the rest of the play, and when it's over and amid a thunder of applause I have to go through two long curtain calls, I don't know whether I'll make it without fainting. Then it's over and the curtain drops for the last time and I push my way through the chaotic joy of the people backstage and out the wing and into the deserted hall of the school. I'm crying now and my legs are shaking as I run to the women's room at the far end and slam the door shut.
Inside it is dark and quiet. I feel for a toilet and sit down heavily on it and let myself sob with anger and pain. My asshole feels like it has been ripped open with a razor. Carefully I reach back and feel the liquid dripping out, not knowing if it's blood or sperm or both and not being able to see in the dark. After a while I stop crying and go to a sink where I wet a wad of toilet paper with warm water and swab at my rectum while tears still run down my face.
I have no idea how long I've been in the bathroom when I finally walk out into the hall and make my way down the silent corridor. As I approach the stage door I hear the noise like a waterfall of voices and I know that the party has begun.
I slip through the door and find myself in the midst of that special kind of insanity that can only be found at cast parties after an opening performance. Everyone is crowded onto the stage and the set is serving admirably as a real bar, only a bar with the weirdest lighting imaginable as someone has turned on several rows of colored stage lights and blues, reds, greens, purples, and yellows are streaming down on everyone like a burst rainbow. Bottles of wine and champagne are everywhere and people are tottering around already drunk. The tension of the performance was too great to contain for long, and now it is all being released in an orgy of liquor and whatever else may happen. I look instinctively for Mark but trying to find anyone in particular amidst that chaos is like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. I slip around the edges trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, but I only get a few feet before I'm grabbed and spun around to face Sandra and Tony.
"Jenny, you were great, fantastic! I've been looking all over for you to tell you!"
"Magnificent!" Tony chimes in, echoing Sandra's sentiments. "When you screamed I thought I was going to scream with you. And that last scene was just too realistic."
Both of them are half-crocked on champagne and they keep their tight grasp on me. I try slipping away from them but they won't let go. Then others come up and soon I'm surrounded by drunken admirers, all with wonderful things to say and all pushing me to my limits. I feel suffocated, trapped. I push and shove at them and finally break loose and move quickly away hearing them asking each other, "What's wrong with her, anyway?" I'm careful to avoid people now, staying close to the curtain, fading in and out of the folds. I want to find Mark and get him to take me away from here, get me out of this unreal world full of phony actors, insensitive and even sadistic. "Just too realistic." Tony's words flash over and over in my mind and I want to tell them just how realistic that scene really was and watch their faces drop, all of them. And I'd like to see them all staring at Bill and trying to figure out an appropriate reaction, a right reaction. I'd bet most of the mindless idiots would look at Mark Langstrom for direction, for some cue as to how to react. "Magnificent, just too realistic!" they would probably say.
As I slip along the curtain I see two figures standing in front of me on the edge of the crazy party and I instantly recognize the one facing me as Mark. His lithe body and chiseled face are unmistakable even in this weird lighting. I let a small cry escape from my lips as I leap toward him. He turns just as I reach him and before he can do anything or say anything I bury myself against him, pushing my head into his chest. I feel his arms circle me and pull me into him and despite all my efforts not to I burst into fresh tears and lean tight against him sobbing. He holds me and comforts me until I regain my composure. Then I look up into his face and all I can think is it's over, finally over.
His eyes are a mixture of concern and perplexity.
"You were great," he says softly, looking me in the eyes, and he looks so deep that I'm afraid he'll see what's hiding there. And I don't want him to see what really happened on that stage.
I push back slightly and wipe my eyes, hiding from his gaze until I can push back all the ugliness. Then I turn around and stare right into the eyes of Bill! It was Bill Mark had been talking with when I ran up. I stare at him and feel myself tremble all over again. If I didn't have Mark to hold onto I don't know what I might do. I cling with all my strength to his arms. All I can see in Bill's eyes is a carefully masked conspiratorial look, furtive, secretive, impossible to pin down yet there just the same, and my hatred for him seethes. I let him see it with all the masked contempt I can muster. I think of screaming the truth out right there, of throwing a fit of disgust and hatred for all to see, yet as soon as I think it I know I won't do it, just like I didn't cram a tampon up my cunt, though even that wouldn't have helped.
Finally I see Bill begin to squirm under my stare; perhaps he senses what possibilities are going through my mind and is afraid I might just be crazy enough to explode with the truth. He fumbles for a cigarette and lights it clumsily then looks at me nervously. I clamp my hand on Mark and watch him.
"You won, Jenny, with the last scene," he says, and he looks suddenly defeated, like a small boy who's lost something dear to him.
"You gave me the last scene," I say with an ice in my voice that I couldn't have mustered even for Lilly. "Thanks for nothing!"
Then I turn abruptly to Mark and whisper up into his ear, and he nods his head and without a word leads me out of there, out of the building into the dark streets of Manhattan, and I feel the soft night air clear my mind and I walk very close to Mark down the sidewalk suddenly knowing that I did win, somehow, without even competing, far more than Bill will ever know.
