Since the end of the Second World War our country has maintained a vast network of military bases both on the continental mainland and throughout the world.
These bases are, for the most part, manned by dedicated career officers and enlisted men. Their task is not an easy one. Often situated in countries which are unfriendly to American servicemen, they are also required to survive in climatic conditions which are much more severe than what they were used to in the United States.
But as difficult as this life is for the men, it is infinitely more difficult for their wives. Unable to bear the boredom, the severe heat and cold, the lack of feminine trappings, they are often plunged in intense erotic relationships with the only males available; the young native boys who work on the base.
This book is the result of confidential interviews with military wives across the world, from the burning sands of an Arabian Air Force Base to the frigid cold of sub-artic submarine installations.
During my four years of interviewing and researching the case histories in this book, two general trends could be seen.
The first is that the sexual relationship which develops between the woman and the young boy rivals in intensity and perversity almost anything on record. There is a good reason for this. Placed in an isolated situation, these women have to fall back on their sexual fantasies to sustain themselves. When their opportunities for seduction take fruit, they begin to act out those fantasies with little thought of holding back. The young boys, at the age when the erotic drive is most intriguing, do everything they can to elicit extreme sexual actions from their teachers.
The second trend is that many of the women, after their sexual alliance is terminated, are stricken with severe guilt feelings because of their infidelity. The idea that they have been unfaithful while their husbands are serving their country in often dangerous capacities becomes too much to bear. In this case, nervous breakdowns are quite common.
Most of the women I interviewed were eager to talk about their indiscretions and I often had the feeling that they looked upon me as some sort of father-confessor. Many of them would grasp my hand as they told then-story, sobbing and weeping, as if I could forgive them. But all I could do was record their words.
In each case, I promised that the true names would be disguised in order to protect both the wife and her husband. Thus, the case histories presented in this book, while true, are clothed in anonymity. I have used pseudonyms in each and every case. This was a small price to pay for their truthful confessions and trust.
It is my hope that this study will contribute to the growing body of literature concerning the sexual activities and appetites of women under extreme emotional and weather conditions.
Furthermore, this book may, by bringing many of these conditions to light, help to alleviate them. And finally, I would like to thank and pay homage to the brave men and women who have dedicated their lives to protecting our freedoms. Their actions and loyalties in isolated and dangerous bases around the globe are an example to us all.
Karl Z. Enos, Ph. D. Washington D. C. 1969
CHAPTER ONE
It was a long way from the lush rolling hills of her native Virginia to the hot dusty fields of the Texas army base and Anne B. knew the minute she arrived that her life there would not be simple.
At the age of thirty-one, she was in the full flush of womanhood and in her daydreams she was still the beautiful Southern girl who every boy in town had loved.
When she married Major B., a handsome and gallant man ten years her senior, she had been literally swept off her feet by the cut of his uniform and his manly military bearings. But, at the Texas army base, with the hot sun beating mercilessly down on her, his glamour seemed to dissipate.
Her husband was an ambitious career officer and he spent twelve hours a day, six days a week, in performing his duties on the base. He would return home, tired and irritable, saying only a few gruff words to his wife before he fell exhausted onto the bed. There is something about the desert sun in Texas which saps the sexual drive of men and the Major was no exception. Gradually, the sexual relationship with his wife lessened until it was not uncommon for them to engage in intercourse no more than twice a month.
But the heat and the dust had the opposite effect upon Anne. Sitting in her house, alone, the shadows from the sun playing upon the walls, her body seemed to be alive with strange stirrings.
Her head lowered, speaking in a soft voice, she described those feelings during our meeting:
"I would sit there, the television set turned on, and suddenly I would begin to shake. It was as if a hot sponge had been applied to my buttocks, breasts and thighs. These feelings would only last a few minutes and then go away. At first I did not know that they were erotic symptoms."
Months passed but these symptoms did not go away. Her unhappiness increased and soon the Major and his wife rarely spoke. Ann was desperate. She would call her family in Virginia at least once a day just to speak to someone she knew. The other wives on the base tried to get friendly with her but Anne found them boring and unable to carry on an intelligent conversation.
Anne was not aware of it but slowly and inevitably she was to be pushed into a sexual solution to her problems. Her body was reacting to the enforced celibacy and building an erotic thrust that would overwhelm her.
Her fall from fidelity to the Major began on one of those hot afternoons where the temperature was pushing 110 degrees and there was not the faintest whisper of a breeze. She walked out to the porch of the house, shielding her eyes from the sun with one delicate, fine-boned hand.
In the adjoining yard a Mexican boy was working in the garden. At first she paid no attention to him because many such boys did menial work on the base. Her husband, in fact, had hired two Mexican boys to clean up the house when they first arrived at the base.
But then his movements riveted her attention. The boy was like a cat. His lithe brown limbs moved smoothly and effortlessly. She suddenly was caught up in a passion so strong that she became dizzy and grabbed the porch rail for support. Turning, she went back into the house and collapsed on the bed.
After that, events moved quickly:
"For the next two days I watched him. I found out that his name was Felipe, that he was fourteen years old and that he lived with his father and sisters in the Mexican quarter.
"One day I called to him. He looked up from his work and finally walked slowly to me. Sweat stained his shirt and he wiped his brow with a sensuous brown hand.
"I invited him into my house for a cold drink. At first he was hesitant but the idea of a cool liquid overcame his nervousness and fright. Once inside, he stood beside a chair. I told him to sit down and poured him a cold drink.
"We sat facing each other. My eyes greedily drank in his dark hair, his beautifully chiselled features and his tawny body, thin and letter perfect in every detail. We did not speak. He returned my gaze and in his eyes I could see a childish lust almost as powerful as my own.
"I walked to him and laid my hand on his sweated arm. The skin was smoothe and hot. I pressed my lips to his face and his flesh seemed to sear them. My breath was coming in gasps and I felt a trickle of moisture running down my thighs.
"To explain what happened then is very difficult for my lust dissolved my will. I did not think I acted under any logical theory, my passion just took complete charge of my body and mind.
"My fingers were at his pants. Slowly I opened the buttons and then it was there, facing me, his tiny brown penis, lying like a forelorn instrument between his legs.
"My head moved down between those thin, almost emaciated thighs. Felipe stirred, ever so slightly, but he did not speak. The tenseness of his body was felt by me but I was no longer interested in his feelings. All I wanted was his young maleness.
"I kissed it. It began to stir. With greater and greater fervor I kissed it until it grew and stiffened. Then, slowly I let my lips slide over it. Felipe was breathing hard and he began to pour the cold liquid over the back of my neck. This sudden assault of coldness on my flesh combined with the generating heat of his penis made me redouble my effort.
"Then it was very large and strong. I held onto it and sucked that living flesh, joyfully filling my mouth with his pulsing youth.
"Felipe became frightened because he had never experienced such feelings before. He tried to break away from me but I would not let him. He rolled on the floor to escape my lips but my flesh was joined to his with all the anguish of my months at the base and I would not let him go until he gave me his seed, his hot love liquid to cleanse my mouth of despair.
"We rolled together, my lips and tongue a fiery, sucking animal, driving him to heights of lust that he had never been aware of.
"Finally, his body shivering and jerking, a great spasm ensued in his body and the child shot his seed into me. I drank it greedily, lovingly, unable to get enough of it. Then all was quiet. We lay together for a few minutes until he jumped up and ran from the house like the devil was on his heels."
That night, Anne was mortified with what she had done. She could not understand how she had let herself be carried away with such abandon. Nevertheless, as she thought of the event, it brought such sweet memories to her mind that she resolved to see Felipe again. She had no choice, she said to herself, for life on the base had now reached the height of terror. Anne had even contemplated suicide. But now, there was Felipe, and he at least was alive and beautiful.
Felipe, however, had been so frightened by the events that he stayed away from work for two days. Anne understood the feelings of the child and she also understood that he would return, because she had detected in his body a deep and powerful strain of flowering passion.
On the third day Felipe returned to his duties and when Anne invited him into her house he accepted the invitation quickly, with hardly a murmur of dissent.
"Our relationship was so beautiful and so pure that there was no need for words. We just sat there and watched one another, smiles ringing our faces.
"This time I took his hand and went with him into the bedroom. I stood there and asked him to undress me. He was nervous and clumsy but soon I was naked. He stepped back, his dark eyes burning as they roved over my flesh. He touched my nipple, delicately, as if my flesh would dissolve. Then his hands moved hungrily over my body, breasts, stomach, buttocks.
"Still standing, I spread my legs, pointing to the dark patch between my legs. He stopped still, his body tense, eyeing me with suspicion. Then his hands went to it, quickly. I caught my breath as he rubbed my vagina. It was magnificent.
"Gently, I pushed him down until his face was level with my thighs and pulled his face until his features were buried in the mass of black hair between my legs. His face against my vagina, we rocked slowly together, mother and son, woman and lover, earth and fire.
"Felipe kissed the lips of my vagina. The moment that happened all my hatred and disgust over the base disappeared.
"All my suffering had been worth it. As his mouth hungrily sought my womanhood, I began to weep. The feeling was exquisite, almost beyond description.
"Spreading my legs as far as I could without falling, the path opened for him. His greedy tongue entered. Deep into that unknown area it penetrated. The entry made my thighs quiver as if I was a school child.
"His animal instinct showed him what to do and his hot tongue beat a fiery path along the walls of my flowering passion. Then, even this would not suffice. I broke away from him and jumped on the bed, calling to him frantically. My legs spread wide to receive him.
"He came to me, his beautiful flesh falling on me. The scent of his sweat mingled with the mysterious odor of his flesh and it was so lovely that I wanted to drink his fluid. His maleness was a brown frenzy that sunk into me. He breathed heavily and I licked his face all over with my almost hysterical tongue. I gasped. It was so totally animal, the child was an erotic genius.
"My nails cut into his back and buttocks as I squirmed under his penetration. I wanted his blood to tie him to me forever, to clasp my vagina around that cylindrical flesh and keep it there to all eternity.
"Inside my stomach, a new world was forming. His weapon set all the internal juices rumbling and exploding. I kept calling to him to go faster and faster and to crush me and tear me apart as if he was a wild beast.
"Then his body went into a spasm and his organ stiffened to monumental proportions. A moment later my body was torn by the hot seed which poured into it and I squirmed and shivered under that delicious penetration.
"He wanted to go after that but I kept him with me, my arms wrapped tightly around his body. I asked him to sing to me in Spanish and he sang me a song his mother had often sung to him when he was in the cradle.
"Only a few moments passed but once again the hot flesh boiled over. I opened my mouth and had him kneel over me, his knees on either side of my head, his flesh filling my mouth again and again.
"For hours we were together and we utilized every moment to learn and experiment with every area of the body. My lips ate up his skin and his organ split my buttocks as I leaned against the wall, naked, waiting for that quivering spear. There was no end to our love and no beginning."
During the next two months, the older woman and the young Mexican boy carried on this intense erotic relationship. They both seemed to be consumed by a silent, all-powerful devil which was inside them.
But slowly Anne's guilt began to build up. She realized that she had betrayed her most sacred marriage vows. She realized that she had betrayed her husband's patriotism and loyalty to the service. Like steam pressure, slowly at first but quickening, these realizations began to eat into her conscience.
She was caught in an insoluable dilemna. She could not give up Felipe and remain on the base for her love for the boy was so total that such a situation would be unthinkable.
There was only one answer; to leave the base, her husband, and Felipe. For weeks she suffered through this horrible decision but finally she summoned all her will and in one great intellectual leap, said goodby to all of them and went home to Virginia to her family.
Still living in Virginia, Anne is now recuperating from her experiences. She writes her husband frequently, without mentioning Felipe, and trying to make him understand her hatred for the base. Someday, she hopes to return to her duties as an Army wife. As for Felipe, the boy occupies her innermost thoughts but she has cut off all contact with him. That silent, passionate relationship is now like some poem she had read in her youth and which still returns to haunt her.
CHAPTER TWO
The name Pearl Harbor still sends a chill down the spines of most Americans. People can still visualize the newsreels of the burning ships which became the tombs for thousands of navy men.
Few people, however, realize that Pearl Harbor is still a thriving naval base, almost thirty years after that cowardly attack.
It was at this base that one of the saddest episodes which I uncovered during my research took place. The marriage of one of the most respected and well--liked couples on the base was splintered forever by certain disclosures.
Lieutenant Commander N. was a diligent naval officer with an impeccable record. His wife of fifteen years, Charlene, was know throughout the base as the ideal wife for a career officer. But though she was known as the "ideal wife" she was about to make a step that would destroy her reputation and her marriage forever.
Charlene was an extremely intelligent woman, well-read and looking far younger than her thirty-seven years. She gave the impression of being always in control of herself at all times though the patient observer could see ripples of disquiet beneath the surface.
Life on the naval base was a series of parties and gatherings, each one more polite and boring than the next.
She became less and less anxious to attend these but continued going because she knew her absenses would hurt her husband's career.
Charlene provided me with her own description of her mental state just prior to her catastrophic leap into an illicit arrangement:
"Few people will understand. Though we are the wives of fighting men, our days and nights are spent in sterile attempts to be sophisticated. Everything must be done in an understated manner and great efforts must be made to appear sophisticated, even if one is psychologically opposed to that quality. As for me, as I grew older, I became more and more interested in authentic passions. I wanted to discover the animal in me. I wanted to know what I was as a woman, not as a puppet that knows all the social graces."
The reader can see in these words the beginnings of her lapse from grace. The seeds of an all-consuming passion had already been planted in her psyche and it was just a matter of time before the right situation came up. And the situation came up quite shortly.
"I was walking to the shopping center which was only a short distance off base when I saw a crowd gathering. Being curious, I joined the group. In the center of a ring of people, two boys were fighting. One of them I recognized. His name was Tops (I do not know what his real name was) and he was about 16 years old. Like many of the Hawaiian people, he was mixed racially. His mother was part Polynesian and his father was Chinese. He often made extra money by doing chores on the base. Though young, he was extremely brutish in appearance, with a powerful chest and a bull-like neck.
"It was obvious that Tops was winning the fight for he was sitting on top of the other boy and pummeling him. To my amazement I realized that I was enjoying the fight. I had no intention of stopping it and I even hoped that the onlookers would let the boys continue.
"But my shock was even greater when I realized that the boy's brutish young body was exerting a terrible but exciting pull on me. My eyes could not be taken away from his chest and powerful thighs. A moment later the fight was over and I walked away, shaking with a strange anticipation."
For the next few days, Charlene could not get the body of Tops out of her mind. She was intelligent enough to realize that she had become sexually fixated on the lad but she did not know how to proceed. Should she allow this passion to run its proper course? Should she fight against it and overcome it? All these questions raced through her mind, making her nervous and irritable.
One afternoon she made her decision. She had to become a woman. To her that now meant she must be taken brutally in a sexual manner. Someone must explode her false manners and bring her violently back to the earth. There was only that powerful child, Tops, who could perform this service for her. Only he had the necessary innocence and brutality.
Late that same afternoon she took the car out of the garage and began to cruise about, looking for him.
It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and sunny.
Slowly, she drove about the base, her eyes open for the boy, her heart beating quickly with anticipation. Finally, unable to spot him, she drove off the base.
The road she took went along the water and she could see the reflection of the palm trees on the beach. Then she saw a boy running on the beach. The figure was too far away for her to be sure that it was Tops. Stopping the car, she left it and began to walk toward the figure on the sand.
He had stopped running. About a hundred yards away, Charlene could see that it was Tops. The palms of her hands were wet with sweat. She called to him and waved. The boy stopped and looked at her in bewilderment. As she walked to him, she let her eyes rove lovingly over that brutish body, a golden tan, and the powerful legs and thighs of the boy.
Now she was only a foot away and she greeted him in a friendly manner.
Tops was unaccustomed to be greeted in such a manner by an officer's wife so he mumbled something and averted his eyes. He was plainly ill at ease. She spoke to him:
"I'd like you to do me a favor. I want to go for a swim, out to the breakers, but I'm afraid to go alone. I know you're a wonderful swimmer so will you please come with me-to save me if I start going under."
It was just the right tone to use with the boy because it flattered him and made him appear manly. Tops agreed and they began to swim. Charlene, of course, was an excellent swimmer, and they soon reached the breakers.
She climbed on the rocks and into a sort of natural cave. Tops followed and they both lay there, resting.
Charlene could no longer wait. The boy was so close to her that she could smell his skin. She had to have him. She had to use him. Moving close, she swung her hand and slapped the boy savagely on his face. He yelled and moved away. She hit him again and again and the boy finally lost his fear of her, striking back.
This was what she wanted. As his blows struck her, forcing her flesh into the rock, she was almost frantic with joy. The boy's face was twisted into a violent mask and his fists drew blood from her face.
Then she removed her bathing suit, standing naked before the boy. He stopped and looked at her through crazed eyes. Her beautiful flesh blended in with the sea and the rock. She rushed quickly to him and before he could protest, slipped his bathing suit off and buried her face between his legs, tasting the salt that the sea had left on his organ. He pushed her violently away. She came back and sunk her teeth into his breast. The boy screamed and struck her again and again. Charlene describes what happened next:
"My head was spinning. The power of his body and the closeness of his flesh made every part of me quiver.
"No matter how many times he struck me I returned to his body to sink my teeth into it. I wanted to eat him piece by piece. I wanted to be destroyed by him, blow by blow. His organ began to stiffen. When I saw that I wept with joy, though my tears were splattered with blood. And it was my own blood.
"The next time his fury came to me in the form of a clenched fist, I did not fall back. Instead, I joyfully absorbed the blow on my flesh and grabbed his maleness. The child screamed, unable to understand me, whom he must have thought was insane. But I would not let his organ go. I wanted it.
"Summoning all my strength I pulled the lad to me and rammed his penis into me. My vagina was like a suction cup, finally being used after years of futility. It sunk deep inside me and I closed my eyes from the force. It was so good. It was so beautiful and the more the boy struggled and fought, the deeper it penetrated. We fell together against the rocks, the sharp edges cutting both our bodies and mingling our blood.
"The boy was an animal! A powerful, brutish animal and he grunted and made funny noises. But I will never forget the movement of his flesh within me. We rolled about the rocks. Our mouths were joined and our tongues touched, darting from teeth to cheek.
"Finally, he had an explosive climax and he threw me back with a stream of liquid which seemed to cleanse my soul. We lay together gasping on the rocks, listening to the pounding surf.
"I knew it was getting late but I could not leave. The sun was setting and the water took on strange and wondrous colors. Gold and black flashed on the surface and beneath the water, demons moved as they moved in my imagination.
"The young boy seemed to be sleeping. His arms were stretched out and his eyes closed. His powerful chest was gently expanding and retracting in the clear sea breezes. It was becoming cold. I moved close to him. My lips brushed against his flesh. He opened his eyes and I saw a frightened boy. This had been his first experience with a woman and he would never forget it. My fingers began to play over his body, feeling the pulse of his ancestors through the dark flesh and powerful muscle.
"Picking up some seaweed, I began to drape his body with it, until he looked like some oriental child-god who had just been visited by an admirer. And he was a god to me; a god of woman's most precious ability, to be overcome swiftly and with great strength.
"Again the madness struck me. Every pore in my body screamed for his flesh. Every vein and artery in my flesh pulsed with desire. I could no longer recognize myself as the navy wife who was so respectable. I felt like some animal, moving swiftly through dark jungles, my flower inflamed with heat, waiting to be pounced upon.
"I sat on his chest. I struck his face until the blood flowed from his lips, but the boy only smiled. Keeping it up, I realized that I had crossed the line between normal sexuality and perversion and I was rapidly entering the world of the forbidden. But I no longer cared. All I wanted was to be satisfied.
"His mouth was brushing against my opening. I wanted him to bite me there. I struck him until the young brute bared his fangs like a rabid dog and then I shoved my passion against his teeth. He bit. I screamed with pain and desire. I cursed him and begged him for more. We fought, we bled, his mouth sucked the most precious juices from i my body and finally, we rolled off the rocks into the ocean.
"I swam toward shore. Enraged, he followed me and climbed up on me like a male porpoise. His flesh split my buttocks driving me under the water. I fought to stay afloat and we joined like a floating dream, the surf rushing around his organ as it sent its message deep into my flesh.
"Exhausted, we crawled up on shore. In the car we dried ourselves and wiped the caked blood from our bodies. I left him there on the side of the road, a dazed look in his eyes and his battered body shaking with weariness and the burden of his actions.
"At home, I slept for twenty hours straight, recovering from my ordeal. But, as exhausted as I was, my mind was filled with the dreams of perverted lust."
This relationship continued for seven months. As time passed, the woman and the young boy sank into total perversion. Every sado-masochistic sexual fantasy that they could think of was acted out. They were in a snakepit of desire, unable to extricate themselves.
But, in spite of their elaborate precautions to avoid discovery, one day a base official saw them on the rocks. Within twenty-four hours, the whole base knew. When her husband confronted Charlene with the facts, she not only readily admitted them but she defended her actions. Her face was hard and her words bitter as she described the love she had for the boy. A few months later this ideal "career wife" and her husband were divorced. Charlene left Pearl Harbor, without the boy, to attempt to build a new life outside of the Navy.
As she left, she was confused and nervous, but she knew one thing: never again would she subordinate her sexual desires in order to obtain a lady-like reputation. She had tasted the exotic fruits of the body and she would never relinquish them.
CHAPTER THREE
They found the body of Marjorie S. hanging from an electrical fixture in the small white cottage where she and her husband lived. The suicide of that lovely woman, not yet forty, profoundly disturbed all segments of the large Air Force base situated in a barren part of the Arabian desert. At the official inquiry, her husband said that he knew of no reason why his wife should have taken her life. Months passed and soon the incident was almost forgotten, only remembered as another example of how difficult life was for the wives of the men stationed there.
But the incident was not to remain buried. I received in the mail a letter from another officer's wife at the base. In it she told me that she had discovered the body first and there had been a suicide note. Because the content of the note was so alarming and filled with such intimate details, she had put it in her purse and quickly left the scene without reporting the tragedy at that time. Her conscience had begun to bother her and she enclosed Marjorie's note for me to look at and evaluate.
The note was indeed revealing. It outlined in detail the poor woman's descent into an uncontrollable passion, brought about by the horrible loneliness and deprivation of the Arabian sands. Because this note is far more important than all the judgements of professors and committees, I am reproducing the note in full, with nothing left out. Only the names have been changed to protect the survivors. The initial "L" in the note represents her husband.
"My darling L. Please do not mourn me. I can no longer survive here. My life has turned into a nightmare of such proportion that each step I take and each thought that flashes through my mind is excrutiatingly painful.
"You have been a good husband. You have a difficult and dangerous job to do and you have acted properly. It is not your fault that I am here. You go where they send you. It is not your fault that the fierce desert winds seem to bore through my brain, sucking every last ounce of strength from me.
"Nor was it your fault that I entered into a strange and perverted relationship with a young Arab boy. I beg you to understand. I beg you to take no punitive action against the boy, Gamal. It was my fault not his. It was I who seduced him and led him into swamp of erotic actions.
"This note will tell everything. I do not wish to hide even the slightest detail from you. At least, there will be no secrets between us when I am gone. I know you will carry on and do your duty for your country as you always have; with courage and dedication. Please do not hate me for this deed. Please understand and try to explain to my family.
"It began during your last mission when you had been gone for a week. Gamal was then recently employed by us but I never paid him the slightest attention. He was just another Arab boy to be used to do the washing and the various other chores. His secretive face told nothing and hid everything. Like all the other Arab boys, he was an enigma. During your absence that time, I had reached the breaking point. I wanted to throw myself on the floor and scream my hatred at that horrible country with its horrendous heat and its incessant boredom. I wanted to kill myself then. But I did not. For I saw Gamal. What I am trying to say is that for the first time since I arrived at that base I looked upon an Arab boy as human. Yes, as a delicate creature of God who had all the longings and fears of an American.
"You know how I liked to take a bath every morning. Well, one morning I called Gamal in as I was taking my bath. I just wanted to talk to him. He sat on the floor as Arab boys do and in halting English answered my questions about his family and his plans for the future.
"As he was sitting there, I suddenly became possessed with the feeling that I would like him to pour water on me. I pointed to a cup and asked him if he would let the sink faucet run, fill a cup and pour it over my body. He looked at me strangely because I was already immersed in water. But he complied.
"I closed my eyes and reveled in the feelings of the cascading waves as Gamal poured the water over my flesh. Then, without thinking, I raised my body a few inches off the bottom of the tub so that my nipples and part of my breasts were exposed.
"He began to pour water over my nipples. Shiver after shiver raced down my body as the hot water bit into them.
"I begged Gamal to continue and to make the water hotter and hotter. Finally, my nipples screamed with pain and lust as the burning liquid made them flex and retract. I had been transformed into a sort of receptacle. The tension of all those months had sent me into a frenzy that I could not control. Reaching over the tub I knocked the cup out of Gamal's hand and I pointed to my nipples. Af first he did not know what I meant but he finally understood. I must have looked insane for his face was drawn in a frightened mask.
"The child bent over the tub. As his face moved closer to my nipples, I beat the water with my thighs, like some great fish that had lapsed into a feeding frenzy.
"His tiny lips parted and they slid over one of my nipples. I began to weep as his hot Arab flesh made my nipple into the most profound vehicle to record the slightest nuance of passion. My nipples could almost speak the history of my disillusionment with the Air Force Base. In his own way, the Arab boy knew I was a woman who was on the edge of sanity, a woman who needed him more than she needed water or bread or fruit.
"His tiny hands then grasped my white breasts. It was a startling contrast to see the brown fingers sink deeply into the white flesh and burn that flesh with his innocent lust.
"My hands went inside his shirt and searched for his breast. But my hand was pulled downward by the lure of his maleness, hidden somewhere between his legs. Just as I grasped it, just as I felt its cylindrical shape, waiting for my fingers to mold it into a weapon, there was a sound outside. Gamal froze. I could see the fear in his eyes. Quickly, he left the bathroom.
"It had been the cat. What a humorous ending to the beginning of my death throes. For the next few days all I could think of was Gamal. I knew that there had been a radical change in my life. Something had snapped. It was not my love for you, it was my desire for you sexually that had broken off. It was not my hatred for my situation which had been modified, it was my sudden realization that only a change in my actions could save me. As you see now, they did not save me, they destroyed me.
"Do you find that I am writing very calmly for a woman facing death. It is true. I am somewhat calm but that is because I have gone far beyond the whining of most wives who live on this base. I am, perhaps, in another time zone, a zone where the ticking of seconds is measured in desperate erotic acts.
"A week after the incident in the bath, I was lying in bed reading a magazine from the States. I heard Gamal working downstairs. At first I was afraid to call him, worried that I had insulted him by my strange actions. But the patter of his almost silent feet excited me. Getting off the bed, I walked to the door and called to him. At first there was no answer. But then he said he would come up.
"He stood in front of the door, his robe wrapped loosely about him. I wondered how old he was. Probably not more than fifteen. He was smiling. I called him to the bed and asked him to take off his robe. He obeyed. There was nothing beneath the robe. His body was dark and firm. Not an ounce of fat marred the twisting relationship of muscles and sinew.
"I told him to come closer and soon he was holding my hand. I began to talk to him, telling how difficult my life was at the base. I asked him the secret for being able to withstand the decay of the desert and I praised you to him.
Yes, I told my child lover that my husband was a wonderful and brave man and that I loved him very much. Do you believe me? Please do. You are the only man I have ever truly loved.
"He lay down beside me. His body was fire and ice, the heat of the desert had infected his bones but his race had the coolness of ice.
"He stood up on the bed and moved his thighs ever so slightly so that I could watch the pulsing maleness which was beginning to stiffen. My eyes fastened on the tip and the small brown globes beneath it. I spread my legs, almost unconsciously, and the boy began to rub my opening with his foot. The touch of his flesh to my flesh made me gasp.
"I felt something cold and hard. The boy had placed his toe at my opening. Slowly, he let it penetrate my vagina. It inched in. The nail made my whole body move. He began to turn his toe and the sides of my flower quivered as the toe drew out its most treasured responses. His organ was still before me but I could not reach it. I was hungry for it but I was also hungry for the twisting turning toe which was within me. My thighs closed about his foot, almost unconsciously.
"Then I could wait no more. I broke away and grabbed his flesh in my mouth, tasting him. Oh, my dear husband. I do not know how to apologize to you for these words, I do not know what to say. But his organ in my mouth, the maleness of a child Arab was the sweetest and the most beautiful experience of my life. I wanted to die there. I wanted to end my life sucking on that blossoming piece of flesh as it turned and sang in my mouth. My tongue made him moan and speak to me softly in Arabic.
"There was a plant by the window, one of those gentle desert plants. Gamal reached over and pulled the plant from its resting place. Turning me over on my stomach, he reached in front of me and shoved the plant into my opening. I gasped with surprise. But the child was only beginning. Perhaps he had heard the stories his people tell around the fire. For he spread my buttocks and sent his now erect organ into the space between my buttocks. I was impaled in front and in rear by that Arab boy. I could not move. I could not think. Explosions formed before my eyes only to go away when I felt his iron organ splitting me apart and his hands working that desert weapon into my opening.
"You will never be able to understand my feelings at that time. I had entered a world of which I had never been aware. My vagina and buttocks were the receivers of the most delicate and powerful forces, forces which sent me into another dimension.
"Though he was an illiterate child and I was a sophisticated woman, the Arab boy handled me like a kitten. My body was at his disposal. Each time he thrust his organ into my buttocks or twisted the desert plant in my womanhood, I felt like he was my father who was teaching me the most hidden knowledge of the body.
"But I will not torment you anymore with these descriptions. For weeks Gamal and I continued our games, in every part of the house, seeing more in those few weeks than couples could see in their lifetimes. We drained the cup of lust.
"When it was over, when all the stars were gone, the facts of what I had done came home to me. Also the prospect of another two years at this base was made concrete and brought into focus by your promotion.
"Guilt and hate and lust. That is my life. Perhaps I was right or perhaps I was wrong. It does not matter. All that I know is that I can no longer live. You must have faith. You must forgive me. You must have mercy upon me.
The signature at the end of this pathetic note was Marjorie S. I realized that her husband and the base officials had never seen this letter. But rather than stir up old hates and feuds, I burned the letter after making a copy for my use in this book.
Few women have ever written so frank a note. That the note was a suicide note only gives lustre to her honesty and the tremendous desire she had to explain the tragedy which was about to take place. Furthermore, nothing ever written gives more credence to the many stories of incredible hardship which the wives of career soldiers are called upon to endure. Perhaps some day, Marjorie's suicide will bring about needed reforms in the administration of those godforsaken bases on the outposts of the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
Emily L. had married at the age of eighteen. During the next twenty years she followed her husband from Army base to Army base across the nation and overseas. Her parents had been wealthy and socially prominent and when their daughter married a common soldier, who they knew would spend his whole life in the Army, Emily was disinherited.
She never regretted her decision. In spite of the hardships, in spite of the long separations, she had lived a happy life, and she still loved her husband.
He was now Master Sargeant John L., one of the highest ranks an enlisted man can reach. The crisis in their life began when he was assigned to a large Army base in New England. Part of his new duties involved courier work and he was away from her about two weeks of each month.
During those days, Emily, now thirty-eight, began to think very seriously about her past life. Often, she sat for hours trying to recall incidents and conversations from then-past experiences together. She also thought a lot about her childhood and her parents, now old and feeble.
As a child, Emily had received an excellent education plus all of the "cultural" extras that a rich girl is bound to get. Her parents had given her music lessons, language lessons, and dance lessons for many years. Probably, her most profound disappointment in her marriage was that her husband had absolutely no interest in either music or dancing or literature. While thinking about her past, Emily began to experience an emptiness as she thought of the many concerts and plays her parents had sent her to.
During my interview with her, she described her feelings to me:
"I would sit there, often weeping, and snatches of music from old concerts and bits of dialogue from old plays would come into my mind. I cannot really describe why, after twenty years of having nothing to do with such things, I should suddenly be almost overwhelmed by them. And overwhelmed is the right word. It was almost a sexual feeling. It was as if my body needed cultural events like a woman who had been in prison for twenty years needs the sexual power of a man when she is released.
"I had to fill that vacuum, quickly, at almost any cost."
There was a small club of Army wives on the base which attempted to hold various cultural events. Emily contacted them and joined. The club would meet once a week to discuss a current book, or they would go into Boston to hear a concert. When her husband came back from courier duty and heard about her new venture, he laughed and made fun of it. But he did not prevent her from going to the club meetings or the events. For that, at least, she was extremely thankful. The moment, however, she began taking an interest in cultural affairs, their sexual relations suffered. Neither of them could understand it. The one overwhelming fact of their marriage was that after all that time, they still took great pleasure in each other's bodies.
Emily described the change which played a large part in her subsequent indescretion with a child less than half her age.
"It happened so suddenly. In one night our bodies became cold to each other. John came into bed and slipped his hand under my pajama top, firmly holding my breast. His hand was not feverish as it usually was when it stroked my breast. I began to kiss him. But nothing happened. There was no change in my feelings. It was as if my lips were pressing against a piece of wood rather than his surging maleness. I became frantic and my lips reflected it. Quickly, I spread my legs, begging him to come into me, to make me once more feel that rush of hot seed as it was injected by a stiffened flesh.
"But he did not enter me. We just lay there, looking at each other, our eyes reflecting our torment. Then he left the bed and went into the bedroom to drink. I followed him and curled at his feet, trying to apologize. But there was nothing to apologize for. It was the fault of both of us. Something had snapped. Something had gone out of our life. Neither of us knew whether it was a permanent affair or one of those temporary states which many married people go through."
When I asked Emily if she tried various aids to help their sexual relations along, she replied:
"Yes, for a while I did. I bathed him in warm water, trying to arouse him. I delicately scented the most precious part of my anatomy, and while he was lying in bed, I proceeded to rub his lips and face with it, hoping to transfer my body heat into his mouth, hoping to bring forth his tongue and let it enter the hidden openings. But nothing happened. I knew it was somehow connected with my sudden revival of interest in music and the arts. John probably believed, subconsciously, that I had betrayed him." The next day, after her attempt to arouse them both through various aids, she met Danny, the fifteen year old boy who was to have such an important part to play.
It happened at one of the club meetings. Emily arrived expecting the meeting to be just another get-together that would discuss the forthcoming cultural events. Instead, the recording secretary of the club announced that Danny, the son of an officer at the base and a piano prodigy, had agreed to play for them.
The women were quite enthused because they knew that the boy had already performed several concerts and had been received by critical acclaim by some of America's most outstanding musical commentators.
They held their breath as he sat down at the piano. Danny was a tall, thin boy with long flowing hair. His face was delicate and beautiful. His skin was white and the black hair and eyebrows made a firm contrast. He began to play. The women had never heard such playing before. Danny captured them, body and soul. They forced him to play encore after encore until the boy was exhausted.
But none of the women fell under the boy's spell as quickly and as totally as Emily. She could scarcely breathe as he played, the magic of his fingers seemed to constrict her chest muscles. She described that first meeting months after it happened, but the drama of the situation was not diluted by the passage of time:
"Danny's music seemed to enter into my body directly rather than the usual course of through the ears. Every pore in my flesh opened to receive those wondrous sounds. My eyes were riveted on that classical, intense face, so immersed in the music that only his delicate nostrils moved.
"And then there were his fingers. Watching them, I was only a few feet away, my eyes seemed to be glued to their movement. Never have I seen such hands, tender yet strong, thin yet steely, passionate but schooled in discipline.
"My thoughts soon went away from the beauty of his music. As his fingers darted up and back on the keyboard, I wanted them to dart up and back on me. As I was sitting there, I had what can only be called a hallucination.
"It was this: I was lying naked on a marble floor, bound hand and foot. Danny came in and pulled a piano stool next to my body as if I was a piano. I kept calling to him that I was a person and not a musical instrument but loud applause from an unseen audience drowned out my voice. Then he began to play on me. His hands glided up and down my naked flesh. I could feel the tips of hi! fingers, like tiny erotic knives, digging into me.
"A finger touched my nipple and I shivered. Another finger grazed my thighs and momentarily lost itself in that triangle of hair nestled between them.
"Then the piece was over and I broke out of that insane vision to see Danny standing by the piano, bowing, and smiling at me. Did he know, I thought to myself. Had he any idea of my thoughts?"
At home after his brief and informal concert, Emily could think of nothing but the boy. She had to meet him. She had to talk to him. Her husband was leaving for another courier trip and she knew that would be her chance.
The day after her husband left she began to inquire where Danny lived. Once having obtained the address, she began to watch the house to see where and when he would be home alone. Emily was so intrigued by the child that she did not even realize she was acting like a thief, watching his house from behind parked automobiles.
Danny was home alone every day from three to five. She could hear him practicing the piano even out on the street. One afternoon, at about four, she walked to the front door of his house and rang the bell. Emily described her feelings at that moment:
"I didn't really know why I was there. Surely, the idea of sex was not uppermost in my mind. Neither was the idea of listening to him play. All that I knew was that I had to see him and to speak to him."
I asked her whether she believed a misplaced maternal instinct had any role in her visit.
"Maybe, of course, I never really had any desire for children. But I can't be sure that a repressed maternal instinct did not enter into it. I really don't know."
Danny answered the door. Emily just stood there, not saying a word, hoping the boy would recognize her from the club concert. He looked at her for a long while. He knew he had seen her before but could not place the exact day. Drawing closer to the boy, Emily told him that she had been present at the concert and she wanted to talk to him for a few minutes about music. Danny opened the door wide and ushered her in. They went into the living room and sat down facing each other.
Events then began to happen at a dizzying pace. Emily describes what happened:
"We faced each other. Not a word was said. His face, that beautiful child-like face reflected both fear and aniticpation. He knew in his soul that something was about to happen. I walked over to him and took his hand. I bent down beside him and looked closely at those marvelous fingers. The boy began to quiver, not very much, but enough to send darts of passion coursing through my body. For the first time I spoke to him in a voice of love. I told him that I was not there to cause pain but to bring pleasure. Those words came out of my mouth without even thinking. I seemed to be possessed by another intelligence which had somehow invaded my psyche and was taking over.
"My lips pressed against his fingers. I kissed each of them, then took them one by one into my mouth and sucked them with fevered gulps.
"He closed his eyes. I moved closer and kissed his shut eyelids, trying to transfer my growing passion into his young, innocent body. I could hear him playing in my subconscious even though I knew, intellectually, that he was besides me and not at the piano.
"I opened my dress and pushed his fingers inside. Those delicate but powerful instruments were like a caged bird underneath the fabric until they found my breasts. His fingers touched the naked flesh and I cried out in indescribable joy. His fingers pushed against the nipples, putting all of his pent-up adolescent lust into them. The fingers became hot and wet as they struggled against my white breasts, trying to extract every ounce of music from the erect nipples.
"Now his body was shaking uncontrollably. I pushed my hands between his legs and opened his pants with such a fury that a button ripped off and bounced once or twice on the rug before lying there, a mute testament to my passion.
"Then his young maleness was before me. I cried out that it was beautiful, and that the child's talents were a gift from God. Danny's eyes were still closed, but his angellic face had been dappled by a slight flush.
"Slowly, quivering, his maleness asserted itself, moving toward me, almost singing its song of awakening lust. I parted my lips, eagerly, waiting, always waiting for it as it inched its way toward me. Then my tongue flicked out like a snake. A low, moaning sound came from the depths of his soul. Quickly I pounced on it. Quickly I opened my mouth to receive the secret of his talent. It was within me. I almost fainted from joy. My lips played a sonata on the struggling, muscular weapon and it darted to and fro, about my ivory teeth.
"A moment later, it grew to a size that almost suffocated me. And, then, like a rush of notes from the most stirring symphony, the child's first seed poured into me, drenching my lips and staining my teeth with that wondrous heated liquid. Danny lay quivering on the chair, his eyes filled with tears.
"The moment was too sublime. No words could be said. I gathered my purse and left, silently and quickly. He was still weeping when I closed the door behind me."
For the next two days Emily could think of nothing else but the child's surging passion, brought to a delicate fruition by her lips. She was also afraid that the boy had become frightened by her aggressiveness and would no longer want to see her.
During those two days, between her first and second encounter with Danny, all thoughts of her husband went out of her mind. Her sexual delight in Danny also translated itself into a more profound appreciation of music, and she spent many hours in the record section of the base library, listening to music that she had not heard in years and was now reacquainting herself with. But the drive to see the child again was overwhelming. He had become the center of her life. He had become the one ingredient in her life which seemed to offer her a remakable intellectual and cultural renaissance.
Her next visit to Danny is described below in her own words:
"He opened the door and let me in without a word. He was in the midst of practicing so I waited, listening to the divine sounds his fingers elicited from the keys. His eyes shone as he bent over the piano, utterly transported into a world that only genius could know. I thanked God for having the opportunity to listen to his playing once again.
"Then he finished and shyly taking my hand, led me into the bedroom. We lay on the bed together and the child began to undress me. I could hear his heavy breathing as he peeled garment after garment off my willing body, until I lay there for his total enjoyment.
"When he finished, I undressed him, covering his young, virgin body with a series of kisses. Then, we were side by side, our flesh screaming for each other. He shyly reached his hand between my legs and stroked my flower with those wondrous fingers. I encouraged him and soon he grew more daring. His thin, delicate lips grazed the insides of my thighs. Closer and closer they moved to the flower, until, in one beautiful movement, they were pressed against the lips of my opening. His mouth and my source of womanhood were joined in what seemed an eternal embrace. I called to him softly to kiss me there and his tongue entered, ever so gently, with enough force however to cause little spears of lust shooting up and down the length of my body.
"And then, before my very eyes, the child turned into a man. The delicate prodigy shed his past and grew into a vigorous, questing male with only one purpose; to enter me and crush me. Roughly, his hands pushed my thighs apart until my opening was lying exposed for him to take. He climbed on me and in one incredible moment, impaled me with his now erect maleness, driving me deep into the soft bed, making my body sing with the force and beauty of the penetration. Deeper and deeper his maleness went-into the depths of my body, bringing out of my flesh the most exquisite moans of total subjection. He was a raving beast then, his teeth searching out the most vulnerable part of my neck and drawing blood at the same time his organ performed its task.
"Then, I heard a gasp, and a second later my whole body shook with the force of the seed which poured into me and left me a gasping woman on the bed, my eyes wide with the glory of his flesh."
A most remarkable portrait of a most remarkable relationship. After this second encounter, they met every day. Their erotic urges often lapsed into perversion but the beauty and the innocence of their love cannot be disputed.
But, the inevitable occurred. Her husband returned from the courier mission and upon discovering that his wife was acting quite strangely, followed her one afternoon. He burst into the house while the woman and the boy were locked in an embrace. The Sargeant, then and there, beat his wife unmercilessly, and left her, a bruised and bleeding body, on the bedroom floor. The child was not harmed.
Her husband got drunk that night and in his anguish, punched an officer on the base. Because of his excellent record and because of the fact that he was drunk, they did not court-martial him. But they demoted him from Master Sargeant to Corporal. This sudden fall, this sudden crisis in her husband's life, seemed to act as a cooling balm on his wife. Emily dropped the boy. She was horrified that she had been the cause of her husband's difficulty because she knew that his whole life was the Army. Begging forgiveness, she asked to return to her husband. He consented.
In the months that followed, their relationship was often precarious. But Emily made a special effort to mend the breach between them and to try and make up for her infidelity. Gradually, the old ties of love and affection were reestablished.
As for the child, he was too terrified by the beatings he had witnessed to ever try to establish contact again. The secret longings that still remained in Emily's psyche will probably never be rooted out. But she has chosen to repress them for the sake of her husband's career. For that, we can only admire her.
CHAPTER FIVE
Melody F. was proud to be a Navy Nurse. The job filled almost every need she required. As a child, the dream of helping the sick and the suffering was with her night and day. At the Navy hospital in the Phillipines, that dream was being realized. She moved quickly and easily among the unfortunates, saying a kind word to them while she performed all her tasks with alertness and exceptional skill.
While stationed at the base she met a Naval Officer, five years younger than herself. Their passionate affair culminated in marriage. Her husband was aboard ship for about six months of the year. The other six months he remained on the base. His absences and subsequent returns only made their marriage more intense. She had everything in life that she ever wanted.
Then the bubble burst. Melody began to have doubts about the marriage. The main problem was that her husband laughed at her desire to help people. While home, he called her a "bleeding heart" and various other names designed to show his contempt for people like her.
When I interviewed her, she was obviously distraught but she was happy to confide in someone. Her husband was on sea duty and would be away for the next three weeks.
"I know you are interviewing me to gather information on my sexual indescretions. But, please, let me tell you why it happened otherwise I will not be able to live with myself.
"Eddie, my husband, is brave and manly and I love him more than anyone else on earth. But my job in the hospital is also important to me. The sick and the suffering, who I help everyday, also have my complete love.
"When I see a Filipino child who has been severely hurt I know that I can ease his pain, then, my life seems worthwhile. I know why I have been put on earth and there is meaning to my existence.
"Eddie does not realize this. Before our marriage it never occurred to me that he would hold my work in contempt. But, of course, we were so much in love that we never spoke about such matters. Our days and nights were spent in the exploration of each other's body.
"It was his contempt which drove me to an illicit affair. And it was my love for children which drove me to a perverse relationship with the young boy. Eddie knows about this. But he doesn't really care and this is what is most frightening. He considers it amusing that I should be forced into such an affair. He thinks it is because I was deprived of his body while on sea duty. Eddie is not even angry at me.
"Do you see why I am frightened. I know that I have sinned horribly and I have to justify my actions."
The more her husband denigrated her work, the more hours Melody put into the hospital. She worked until she could hardly stand, as if by her energy, she could prove to her husband that what she did was the most wonderful and most important work a human being could perform. But it was no use. Eddie would never change. It was just as she was realizing this that she met 'Tex". This thirteen year old boy, an orderly in the hospital, had been given that nickname by an American sailor. He had been working at the hospital only a few months but because of his personality and skills, had been moved into Melody's ward. It was a promotion and he was very proud.
Immediately, a strange bond developed between the young Filipino boy and the thirty-four year old nurse. It was a bond based on the fact that they were both born healers. Both of them wanted nothing more out of life than the chance to serve.
It was inevitable, perhaps, that this bond which was based on a deep-seated emotional similarity, would turn into a sexual alliance. Melody described the first time that she became aware of the subtle growth of an erotic interest.
"Tex had brought a new sense of purpose into my life. For the first time, I was working with someone, even though he was a child, who really respected me and wanted to pattern his life after me.
"One day we were in the ward together bandaging a burned patient. It was a young girl who had been caught in the flames of her burning hut and brought to the base hospital because of our advanced techniques. It was a delicate job and Tex was, as usual, an efficient helper. Then, he handed me a strip of gauze. Accidentally, my hand brushed against his. Instead of pulling it away, I let it rest against his hand. We stood there in that manner for only a minute. But during that minute, I experienced a feeling that was unique. How can I describe it? Well, let me say this. My sexual life with my husband is quite fulfilling.
But it is basically animalistic. When I touched that child's hand, I realized for the first time that there is another erotic realm which is based on gentleness and a shared mission in life. Anyway, we continued our work and not a word was said about that incident.
"A week later, our strange relationship took a different turn.
"Tex had to supply the ward with clean linens which were kept in a small linen closet at the head of the hallway. One afternoon, I needed a clean pillow case. I walked into the closet and to my surprise, found him there, crouched in a corner like a frightened animal. The child was weeping.
"He heard me and turned around. He lunged forward and threw himself into my lap. I did not know what to do but I tried my best to comfort him. Again and again I asked him what was the matter and why he was crying. Finally, he dried his eyes and recovered enough to talk. The poor boy had been crying because he felt he was unworthy of me. Can you imagine that? He looked upon me as some sort of angel of mercy who could do no wrong.
"I told him that I had many faults and that he was as good as I. But this would not assauge his guilt. I leaned over and kissed his cheek. Why I did that I do not really know. Perhaps it was just the affection of an older woman for a child. Or perhaps it was that I saw in him an image of my childhood.
"The moment, however, I kissed him, the dam seemed to burst and all the submerged feelings which had been buried in my subconscious, surfaced. My lips sought his. I drank in his feverish lips. The child moaned but he made no effort to escape from my grasp. He was wearing a simple tunic which all the orderlies wore, and I quickly stripped it from his body. In the dim light, his brown flesh was a beautiful color. He looked like a small animal that had been surprised in his lair by some predator.
"He began to shiver as my hands roamed his naked body. I kept whispering to him not to worry, I kept assuring him that we were one flesh, one ideal, one great love of suffering mankind. My lips pressed against his stomach. Slowly, I was drawn to his growing maleness which was like a magnet to the psyche. Then, I arrived there. I do not know what came over me. But all I could think of was that delicate sliver of flesh which was waiting for me. And I opened my mouth and to the child's shock, I devoured that shy, trembling flesh.
"While engaged in that manner, my hands moved behind him and grasped his buttocks, feeling the life moving through his flesh and muscles. He was babbling all the time but he had lapsed into his native dialect and I did not understand a word he was saying. Nor did I care to for I was utterly swept up in a passion that was the strongest of my life. The child, whose maleness was growing to great size and wisdom between the twin gates of my love, was the one person in the world who bore the same love that I bore for the hundreds of suffering souls lying in their beds of pain.
"It grew in my lips. Like the most precious fruit which was beginning to explode in the fertility of spring, it grew and increased until the child had become a man. I could not get enough of the flesh. I could not get enough of its distinctive smell and taste. I wanted to stay there forever, with the erect weapon my only sourse of food.
"The child's tip grew inflamed under my juicy treatment and for the first time, his fingers played along the nape of my neck. Just the touch of his brown fingers sent my tongue into a flurry of increased activity.
"My mouth was a suction flower. Again and again the most precious tidbit in the world was sucked in and turned into an instrument for love. The child screamed. I knew what it was. Then the seed flooded me. Hot and wet, it turned my lips and tongue into a receptacle for his surging maleness. I wept then because that boy was the one person in the world who knew the smoldering flames which lodged beneath my desire to serve the unfortunate. He, more than anyone, knew that I was more than an angel of mercy, I was a woman who needed the erotic tenderness of a child more than I needed the animal lust of my husband.
"Then we both lay on the floor of the closet together. Neither of us said anything. There was nothing to say. We knew that somehow we had crossed a dividing line in our lives and there was no telling where our explorations would lead us. I felt a sense of calmness and quiet that was unique in my life. I felt as if I had just completed a miraculous job of nursing and the patient had lived against all odds.
"As we were lying there, I opened my uniform to show him my breasts. He looked at them but did not move. I pulled him close until they were near his mouth. Slowly they opened and fastened on my nipple. I stroked his head. There was no lust, then. It was just the contact between two souls who have found themselves in the jungle of life."
That night, however, Melody had a change of heart. She suddenly became burdened with an all-encompassing feeling of guilt.
During her actions with the boy in the linen closet, she had never thought of possible penalties. By penalties, Melody meant emotional penalties that become manifest in the form of guilt and mental debilitation. And it was just these that seemed to overpower her.
For the first time since she had been stationed at that base she did not go to the hospital. Melody could not face the child and she could not face herself. She longed for her husband. She longed for someone to confide in and to bare the innermost secrets of her soul. Melody was in the throes of an emotional turmoil that was so great, she could scarcely reason.
Two days passed and still she could not return to the hospital. But finally her desire overcame her guilt. She could not resist the temptation to once again be close to the boy's body; to once again feel that surging maleness as it emerged from its infantile state.
So, she returned to the hospital. The first meeting with Tex was quite awkward. The boy averted his eyes and a deep flush penetrated his brown skin. Melody greet him casually, trying to reestablish a working relationship. But the reciprocal passion was still there. Every moment they were together in the ward, both of them experienced the most profound sexual feelings. Melody, however, fought against them. She wanted time to assess the situation. She wanted to be able to conquer her feelings. Thus, a number of days passed before their next sexual contact. It was only logical that when they both came together again, it would be with a fury and passion they could not control.
It was late in the afternoon. The day had been a busy one, with many emergencies. Melody sat on the edge of an unused bed, sipping a cup of coffee and trying to fight the fatigue which slowly overwhelmed her. She could see Tex on the other side of the ward, changing some bed linen. She lay back on the bed and pulled a blanket over her. Her eyes shut and she dozed. Melody described the following events to me:
"I fell asleep. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes when I felt a stirring and rustling on the bed, beside me. I opened my eyes. Tex had crawled underneath the blanket to be with me.
"It was tragic that some fool had named the boy Tex. Never has a nickname so ill-fitted a child. He should have been named after a god of the lagoon which sheltered his ancestors. He should have been named after one of those earth spirits which his people worship.
"But there he was. Beneath the blanket. And his hot hands were pulling at my uniform and gradually removing it. Soon my thighs were naked. And then my buttocks. The child was working with a fury that I had not thought him capable of.
"I did not fight him. The moment his hands grazed my naked buttocks, I knew that I wanted him there more than anything else in the world. I wanted the child to be flesh of my flesh, and a perpetual vehicle for my deep seated passion.
"He was like an animal caught in a trap, expending great energy but not knowing what to do. Slowly, I spread my legs beneath the blanket. The child understood.
"He pressed his lips to the insides of my thighs. I shivered as they touched me. They began to move up the slope of the thigh, burning and soothing, a child's passion brought to the most intense fruition. Up and up they went, inexorably, as if his lips contain a radar device that was programmed for that most precious part of me.
"Wider I spread my legs, to guide his mouth to its objective. Then his lips touched the lips of my womanly gate. It was only a light touch, they only grazed me, yet, at that moment, the lights in the ward seemed to flicker and my whole being was starting to move toward its goal of youthful consummation.
"That touch drove the poor child into a frenzy. Now, he thrust his mouth violently again my opening, trying to show me without words that I was his only salvation. I called out to him quietly, encouraging him. And then, his tongue darted from his beautiful mouth, like a moth moving toward the flame, and penetrated me.
"Immediately, shivers of delight ran up and down my body. His tongue moved deeper and deeper. The child was not experienced but his raw lust made up for that. The walls of my vagina began to contract and expand as his virgin tongue lavished all of its affection within me. I moaned and cried and twisted but the child, having once gotten a taste of delights, would not relinquish his entry.
"His tiny hands thrust under my buttocks to raise me just an inch or two so that his mouth and tongue would be able to travel to unexplored parts and deposit their moisture within me.
"I closed my thighs about his head, exerting pressure and driving his tongue to even greater and more passionate activity. But then, even his tongue and mouth were not enough to satisfy me. I wanted his maleness. I wanted his complete body, joined to me in our great adventure.
"Pushing his head from between my legs, I pulled him on top of me. The child's eyes rolled wildly in his head. I could feel his arms. I could feel his chest. The joys of the moment had made the muscles contract and he presented a powerful and virile figure.
"His child-like qualities had become dissolved in the spectre of his awesome maleness, now poised between his legs like some godly dart which was about to descent to earth and impregnate a race of women.
"He was in me. The terrible but beautiful weapon slid in and immediately began to twist and turn with great lust. I was driven deeper into the cool sheets of the empty bed and beads of sweat appeared on my forehead. My hands and nails dug long channels in his pliant back, making him feel the wrath of a woman who was being impaled.
"His vibrant maleness went deeper and deeper, moving to the center of my very life, fulfilling every need that I have ever felt. We were like two ideas that had come together and been formed into flesh. This was the total beauty of my life. Never before and never again will I feel a maleness that reflected such love. I wept as he thrust. I moved my buttocks up to meet each challenge and soon we were together in that lustful joining.
"The tip of his flesh, quivering yet powerful, explored deeper than any man, and elicited strange stirrings within the depths of my body. Soon I felt as if I was on a wild horse that was carrying me deep into some forbidden cavern. And, as I found out, at the end of the cavern was a volcano. His body went into spasm and as that furious liquid poured into my channel, I exploded into a veritable kaleidoscope of feelings. My body seemed to be falling apart as I reached my climax.
"Then, exhausted, both of us transformed into totally new beings, we lay under the blanket. The heavy breathing of the patients in the ward a fitting backdrop for our efforts."
From that time on, the sexual alliance between nurse and the child became a regular affair. They could not hide it from the hospital staff but there was a certain innocence about the duo which prohibited intervention. Everybody knew and everybody, in a certain sense, approved. This was a tribute to Melody's and the boy's dedication to their patients. They both seemed to increase their efforts to maintain their reputation as an angel of mercy.
When Melody's husband found out, he was merely amused. The affair seemed to prove that the only way his wife could live when he was at sea was to have an affair. His ego was gratified and the child was too young even to make him feel like a betrayed husband.
During my interview with Melody, the affair was still in progress. But there were signs that it would shortly be terminated. Once again, Melody was suffering from guilt feelings which made her often unreceptive to the advances of the boy.
We have no information about the eventual outcome of this strange alliance. But, this case history is an excellent example of how a dedicated and humane woman can enter into a perverse sexual relationship because her sacrifices are not being appreciated. The fact remains that only the child knew that she was a woman of great depth. The fact remains that only the child knew that she had to be a nurse in order to survive as a person. It was this emotional alliance between the older woman and the child, rather than the sexual alliance, which makes this case so pathetic and in a strange way, so beautiful.
CHAPTER SIX
After ten years of marriage, Elizabeth J. set out to destroy her husband's Air Force career. She was totally successful and within a few weeks after she decided on such a course, Colonel J. was forced to resign his commission.
The story of this vindictive woman and the man she destroyed is an excellent example of the tensions and hatreds that can build up on military bases.
Colonel J. was one of the new breed of Air Force officers. Trained as a scientist, he joined the service because the space and missile programs conducted by the Air Force provided the type of work he was equipped to do. After a series of assignments, he was sent to a large Southwestern missile base. The work there was challenging and fruitful. His wife, Elizabeth, however, found the base to represent the ultimate in boredom and sterility. Like many such bases in America, each family was provided with a small home near excellent shopping facilities. But this material comfort could not match the intellectual pace and excitement that Elizabeth had been used to when she lived in various large cities.
Elizabeth was thirty-six years old when she embarked on her destructive mission. She was an extremely intelligent and sensitive woman with an advanced degree in Art History. She loved her husband but she was pushed into a desperate corner where she had to choose between her comfort and his. Like many people, she chose herself.
I interviewed her when she was back in the East with her husband, a few months after his resignation from the service. She spoke calmly and freely.
"Before I begin, I want you to know this. I seduced the son of the base commander in order to force my husband's resignation. I am neither sorry nor ashamed of my actions and if the situation repeated itself, I would act in the very same manner. Do you understand this?"
I assured her that I understood what she was saying and also repeated my statement that I was a researcher not a judge. What she did was her own business. My only task is to record it, making sure that her anonymity was protected.
She accepted my position and began her story. Her eyes were quite intense, making a mockery of her outward calmness.
"During my three years at the missile base, there was not one second in which I was not accosted by that installation's vulgarity. Every day was the same. Every minute was like every other minute; a succession of silly luncheon teas and the ceaseless propoganda from the Air Force as to the proper role of an Air Force wife. I'll tell you what an Air Force wife is supposed to be. She is supposed to be vibrant and alive and sexually exciting and intellectually vigorous. But these qualities are absent at the base.
"My husband went to work each morning and returned each evening. I was left with the day to kill, with time to make use of and with a severe climate which precluded physical activity. And always on my mind was the threat of those missiles, hidden miles in the earth, ready at an instant moment to blow us all to perdition.
"Soon I had exhausted every book in the base library. The card games between the officers' wives no longer interested me, indeed, they never did.
"So, one day I realized that I had only two alternatives. The first was to put a bullet in my head. The second was to get my husband to resign his commission. But I did not want to die. I wanted to live. I wanted to taste everything in life and to travel and to read and to love. Do you understand me? And my husband loved the Air Force. It was his life. Yet, those were the only two alternatives I had. So, I made my choice. I would force him to resign from the Air Force and thereby save my life and our marriage."
I could see that her calm pose was beginning to crack. The woman had obviously gone through much but was making a valiant effort to persuade me that her choice was made in the cold, clear light of logic. As a researcher who has studied hundreds of such cases, I knew better. I knew that she had made her decision after weeks and maybe months of anguish. But I said nothing. She continued:
"It was futile to talk to my husband and ask him to resign. He would not hear of it. I would have to do something by myself which would reflect on him so poorly that he would be forced to render his resignation. At first I thought I would steal a few articles from the base PX store. But this, I knew, would only result in my having to visit a psychiatrist for the Air Force always attempts to protect officers' wives from criminal proceedings. Many other ideas came to mind. I would write checks which were not covered in the bank. I would begin to write letters about the Air Force to the local papers. I would write to my congressman complaining about conditions on the base. But all these had many problems attached to them and none of them were sure methods to force his resignation.
"But then the answer presented itself. One day I was walking home with an armful of groceries. A young boy ran up to me and asked if he could carry the bag. I thanked him for his concern but assured him I could handle it myself. The boy left as quickly as he came.
"I walked a few more steps and then realized that the boy was Roger, the son of the base commander. I had seen him a number of times before but I just didn't recognize him that time.
"Roger was a gentle, shy boy about sixteen. He was tall and blond. In spite of his height he looked much younger because his father was very stern and kept the child in a state of complete innocence about life in general."
It was then that Elizabeth decided on her actions. She would seduce the boy and in the ensuing clamor, her husband would be forced to resign his commission. The plan had another component which made it very delectable to her. Roger's father, the base commander, had always been a thorn in her side. He represented the most rigid of all military traditions and he seemed to put a damper on anything in life that reflected joy and beauty. Elizabeth knew the boy's father was a patriot and a brave man, but she disliked him so intensely that whenever she saw him, her back bristled.
The plan was simple. Elizabeth would seduce the boy. She was sure he was a virgin. After that happened, she would make sure that both of them were caught in the act. She told me of her joy at conceiving the plan:
"It was so simple and elegant. I knew the moment I planned it that it would do the trick. I felt its future success in my bones. I'd like you to know, however, that I have never been what you would call a frustrated wife. Our sex life since our marriage has been excellent. When I conceived of the plan I did not even think that I would enjoy the seduction. All I was thinking of was the outcome and the new world which would open for our marriage once the resignation was put through. As for Roger's feelings, at the stage of the game they did not concern me."
So the plot was laid. Elizabeth, in a calm and analytical manner, began to find out as much as she could about the boy. Roger used to spend most of his time out of school building and flying model airplanes. There was a large cleared field near the base where all the model plane buffs used to go to try out their latest efforts.
Late one Sunday afternoon, Elizabeth went to the field. There were many boys out there, all of them bending over their models and performing preliminary tasks on them before they were flown.
She spotted Roger. He was standing off to one side, his model under his arm, and conversing with some other boys. She was immediately struck by his handsome face and his slim body. He had a certain air of repose about him as if his innocence and virginity were tempered by a knowledge far beyond his years. Elizabeth watched him fly the plane, laughing and worrying as the model went through various crises in the air and finally fell to the earth splintering one wing in the process.
The boys on the field began gathering their model planes and leaving. Soon all had left except Roger who was bending over the model, trying to repair the injured wing. The shadows were beginning to creep across the field. Elizabeth approached the boy.
"Can I help you?" She asked.
The boy smiled up at her and pointed to the broken wing as if no one could help. "Why did it break?"
"I don't know," replied the boy, "it never happened before."
Finally Roger gave up and began to walk back to the base. Elizabeth walked by his side. As they passed a clump of bushes, Elizabeth fell to the ground clutching her side. The boy dropped the plane and rushed to her.
"Help me near the bushes," she said, quietly, as if she was suffering greatly.
The boy helped her crawl into the clump and took off his jacket, cradling it beneath her head.
Elizabeth smiled during our interview when she remembered how smoothly her plan had proceeded.
"The boy played into my hands. When I feigned illness, I was afraid he would run for help immediately which would have spoiled the plan. But he was too polite. He would not leave me. Everything was going perfect. We were in a clump of bushes. His jacket was beneath my head.
He was kneeling beside me, a terrible frown of worry creasing his face. Roger kept asking me what was the matter. But all I did was moan and mutter, talking about a vague pain in the side.
"A second later it was dark. You know how swiftly darkness comes in that part of the country. It is frightening but it was perfect for my scheme.
"I took his hand and pressed it to my breast. Roger's mouth opened in amazement and I could feel his body stiffen. But I did not stop. Forcing his hand beneath the fabric until it rested on my bare flesh, I slowly moved his hand back and forth over my nipple. The child was breathing heavily. He was frightened out of his wits.
"Taking his other hand, I pushed it inside my undergarments and slowly made it rub the inside of my thighs. The boy was almost hysterical. I kept trying to calm him but all the while never releasing the grip on his hands.
"His hand reached my opening and rested for a moment on the soft hair. I felt his body shiver. His hand began to rub between my legs. I let go of it because I was sure the boy was caught up in the passion. His hand was tender. Back and forth it glided, making warm and pliant my womanhood which nestled so poetically between the thighs.
"A cool wind moved through and made the boy rub harder. But then his hand stopped. He looked at me, withdrew his hands both from my breast and vagina and began to move away. I knew Roger was about to run. Throwing aside all subterfuge, I grabbed him and we rolled on the ground together.
"My breast was exposed. Lying on top of him I let the nipple move against his face and mouth. The boy rolled his eyes in fear and tried to escape from the flesh that moved inexorably at him, scalding his face, forcing open his mouth to taste the erect lust of my quivering nipples.
"My breast was crushed against his lips. He could not avoid it. We lay there and my fingers began to remove his pants, ripping the fabric, trying to get to his maleness which I could feel was beginning to vibrate beneath the weight of my body.
"Then my fingers reached flesh. That innocent maleness leaped into my hand with great force and seemed to respond with instant passion. I had a twisting, vibrating weapon in my grasp.
"Roger began to struggle. He wanted to remain a virgin. He wanted to gather his model plane under his arm and return to the sheltering discipline of his father. But I had other things in mind. What happened next can only be described as rape. I raped the boy. That, I cannot deny.
"I opened my legs and slid onto that twisting weapon. His struggles were to no avail. The boy gasped as he felt his penetration. We were joined. I began to move up and down and from side to side, using my buttocks to make that moment memorable.
"His hands pushed against my breasts in order to dislodge me but they were too feeble for now I was caught in an emotion that transcended my scheme. I was a woman, my womanhood impaled by that most precious of instruments. Roger began to cry. He could not control the thing between his legs and my vagina made it sing with a new song, a song of lust which was beyond his comprehension. Leaning over, I forced my tongue into his mouth and played with that opening. His maleness grew to a wondrous size within me and in spite of himself he began to bounce off the ground and meet each of my thrusts with all the power of his young body. My head was twirling under the pressure of that organ biting deeper and deeper, ever upwards, into my interior.
"Then his face became a mask of fear. It was happening. His maleness had reached the point of no return and a moment later the hot liquid shot upward into my body, completely devastating both of us, sending the boy's body into a spasm of release and leaving him sobbing on the ground. I rolled off of him, amused by my new role as a rapist.
"Thus ended the first part of my plan. It had worked to precision. I dressed the trembling boy, licking the liquid from his body, like a mother cat with her kitten."
Elizabeth then began to plan the second part of her scheme. But first she had to overcome the terrible fear of her that had been planted in the boy. She continually sought him out but every time she approached the boy would run, his eyes down, a bright red flush flooding his body.
Finally, she cornered him and apologized for her actions. She told the boy that she was terribly sorry but that she had been carried away because of the sudden pain in her side. She begged him to let her make it up. The boy finally said that he no longer hated her. The next day Elizabeth bought an extremely expensive model plane and brought it to him. The boy did not want to accept the gift at first but his childish greed proved too powerful and he began to rip the paper off the box.
Elizabeth drove the boy out to the field. They assembled the plane and spent the whole afternoon flying it. The model worked to perfection. On the way back to the base in her car, Elizabeth put the second part of her plan into operation; which was to completely remove Roger's sexual tension.
She pulled off to one side of the road. The boy asked what was the matter. Elizabeth began to speak to him about sex, telling him that he should be pleased to have been initiated into such delicacies. Gradually the boy began to relax. Her voice seemed to have an hypnotic effect on him.
Taking him by the hand, she led him into the back seat. She undressed and lay nude on the seat, a feast of flesh before his eyes and hands. Elizabeth continued to speak to him softly trying to put power into his hands, trying to give him the courage to explore her body on his own.
The words began to take effect totally. Elizabeth described to me the following remarkable events:
"Roger placed one hand on my stomach. My flesh was tight with expectation. His fingers began to roam. I moved my body ever so slightly to encourage him. Then he pressed his mouth in the space between my breasts. I felt a growing passion in the child, a passion that would one day grow into a volcano.
"His lips kissed my nipples again and again as if he had found some wondrous source of nourishment in them. My breath came heavily, laden with the joy of his mouth. And then, slowly, an inch at a time, the child's mouth began to travel down my body. Each inch it passed, it left a moment of intense love, a patch of skin that had been loved by a virgin mouth. For the first time, I forgot my scheme and thought only of the moment, the passion of the second. Spreading my legs I waited with anticipation for the eventual movement toward the fruit of my body, nestled at the apex of the thighs.
"His lips were there. I cried out. They had joined with the lips of my flower. My vagina was like a petal that began to open before some rich, fertile rain that drenched it. His lips were, however, only the funnel through which his tongue would pass.
"It was in me. Like some horrible wrath that had been released from a cave of hell, the child's tongue entered my flower with a force and lust I had never experienced. It drove me into an absolute frenzy. As it was within me, all that I could think of was that I needed his maleness against my tongue.
"I pulled at his body until he was on top of me, his tongue still moving deeper and deeper toward my vital juices. Then, it was in front of my tongue. I caught the tip of his flaming maleness. The moment I did that, his tongue, without a pause, went so deep and so far into my waiting body that I could only swallow that maleness. We stayed together like that. Our mouths were like ancient chariots running through the other's body, sucking out every drop of lust and bringing to the closed car a crescendo of limitless passion. Tongue and flower, lips and maleness, there was no present and no past-only the heat of our bodies as the juice was sucked out.
"Together we climaxed, like two released meteors sending their essences to each other."
In spite of Elizabeth's impassioned description and her obvious desire for the boy, this incident did not change her plans. In the next few weeks they saw each other every day in various secluded spots.
And then the plan reached fruition. One day she made sure they would be discovered. The news raced through the base like wildfire. Every man, woman and child on the base was scandalized. In the officer's clubs and the enlisted men's beer halls, the only topic of conversation was Elizabeth and the base commander's son.
There was nothing left for her husband to do but resign his commision. They packed up and left the base in the dead of night. Her scheme had worked to perfection.
At the end of our interview as I was standing by the door, she said:
"Again I remind you. I have no regrets. I did what I had to do to preserve my life and my sanity. As for my husband, he will recover from the shock of leaving the Air Force."
A most remarkable woman and a most remarkable episode in the tragic casebook of military wives.
CHAPTER SEVEN
During my travels throughout the world and the United States to search out the hidden secrets of service wives, I ran across only one case of a woman who committed an infidelity because of a perverted maternal instinct. Because of various difficulties, I was unable to interview the woman. In fact, the details of the case came out only through a long correspondence with her. The case is unusual and filled with many peculiar psychological difficulties.
In order to lay bare every detail of this strange case, I am reproducing below a synthesis of all the correspondence I received in the case. The woman who lived those facts and who wrote me, was rigorously honest in detailing every event. All in all, her letters add up to an extremely bizzarre case but one which will shed important light on the problems of military wives.
First let me give a few facts. Ellen and Karl M. had been married twenty-five years when the situation developed. He had served in the Army for almost thirty years and was close to retiring. In fact, he had postponed retirement to serve a second tour in Vietnam. His wife lived in Japan while he was in Vietnam, waiting patiently for the short Rest and Recreation leaves her husband received to return to Japan. Husband and wife had a close relationship on all levels. They had been through many difficulties together and lived in various uncomfortable Army bases throughout the world. This shared discomfort had played an important role in the relationship. Ellen, however, was much less self-sufficient than her husband. Her whole life was bound up with her husband. She had few interests other than pleasing him and almost no relatives to expend her ample affection on.
Her first letter to me was as follows:
"I have heard through various sources that you are engaged in a research project concerning the indescretions of wives at military bases, particularly when one of the protagonists is a young boy. Would you be interested in hearing my story? I must assure you that it has many strange and erotic components but if it will help other wives who have been in similar situations, I would be glad to disclose the complete chain of events."
It was a short letter and right to the point. I wrote her back that I would be extremely interested in her story and I promised her to protect her anonymity by using an assumed name.
The next letter from her went right into the events. It is an extremely valuable and revealing document.
"I promise you that I will withold nothing no matter how incriminating and painful it is to revive certain memories. My husband was on his second tour in Vietnam. We had rented a lovely home outside of Tokyo. My days were spent in writing him every day and walking about the lovely countryside trying to familiarize myself with the people and their customs. Though I had been in Japan once before, while my husband was fighting in Korea, I had never had such leisure to study the remarkable culture and society of Japan.
"The days passed. Each day was filled with new insights and new pleasures. I even began to try to learn the language. But each day my loneliness and desire for my husband increased.
"One day, as I was sitting on the veranda, watching a lovely Japanese family going to market, I suddenly felt a terrible emptiness.
"At first I didn't know what had caused it. But I analyzed my reaction and realized it was the sight of the children in the passing family. For the first time in my life, I knew that the fact that I was childless had created a terrible emptiness in my life. An emptiness that had been only felt at a subconscious level but was now coming out in the open.
"We had gone to many doctors but it was no use. My husband was sterile. At first I played around with the idea of artificial insemination, but the idea was too ghastly for me to go through with it. Then we tried to adopt a child but since we were obliged to move from base to base, no adoption agency would give us a child.
"I became resigned to my fate until I saw that happy Japanese family.
"Soon, my days and nights there became a nightmare. The fact of my childlessness became the most pressing fact of my life. I neglected writing to my husband and I lost all interest in the people and the customs.
"Then I met Toshiro. He came to my house, a small, innocent boy of twelve years, with the large black eyes which make Japanese children so irresistable. He knocked meekly on the door and wanted to know if I need someone to take care of my rock garden which had fallen into disrepair.
"He was so earnest and polite that I immediately agreed to hire him as a part-time gardener. If only I had known that my decision was to lead to a horrible sequence of events, I would have closed the door in the child's face."
I had to wait about three weeks for the second letter and I was afraid that she had changed her mind and did not wish to disclose the intimate details of the case. But the letter did come and it was quite revealing.
"Please forgive me for the delay. You have probably guessed the reason. It is painful to recount details that one is trying to forget. But I must go through with my original intention, to tell all, no matter who it hurts and to what extent.
"Toshiro was an excellent gardener. In a few weeks time my rock garden had blossomed into a remarkable show-piece. Strangely shaped stones with religious significance were set against those beautiful and difficult to maintain bonsai trees-dwarfed trees that lend an erie atmosphere to any place they inhabit. I would often watch the child as he worked, without saying a word to him.
"But then this fantasy began to control me. I felt somehow, in some peculiar manner, that Toshiro was my child. I knew even as I hallucinated that it was ridiculous but I could not wrench away that imaginary weight.
"One afternoon, while Toshiro was working in the garden, my madness overwhelmed my reason. I walked to him and taking him by the hand led him to a small bench in the garden. We sat together for a long time, not speaking.
"I turned to him but he would not look at me. I turned his face toward me with my hands. His eyes seemed to burn through me. His eyes sent a shiver down my body that was both erotic and maternal.
"I ran from him, realizing that I had had what can only be described as an incestuous feeling. In other words, I wanted him as both my son and my lover. For the next few days I tried to fight this growing passion. But in the end I succumbed. Please do not consider me a weak woman. I was completely overwhelmed.
"There is a small pagoda in the garden and it was there that I took him. We drank tea together and said a few words to each other about the garden.
"Then I could no longer restrain myself. I fell upon him, covering him with kisses and calling him my child. Toshiro did not respond. He just stood there, his beautiful eyes wide opened, watching the strange antics of a Westerner.
"I opened my kimona. I was wearing Japanese dress in order to please him. Since he was my child I wanted him to take milk from my body. He did not approach my breast. Slowly but firmly, I pushed his head into the heat of my straining nipples. When his mouth touched them, I almost fainted from the exquisite contact. His lips parted. My hands were inside his garment and moved down his smooth childish flesh.
"His mouth took it. I began to weep. His lips were like a divine instrument bringing every supreme joy of motherhood to my nipples. I kept calling to him, telling him to take nourishment from my flesh, begging him to such the wells of maternal lust dry. Toshiro dropped the nipple and buried his head in the valley between the breasts. His tongue began to circle my breasts, drawing a ring of fire around the white hillocks, a lovely contrast to the gleaming color of his skin.
"My hands were searching out that exotic maleness, trying to make contact with the shoot which joined branch and root. My fingers then touched the delicate globes hidden so well between his well-formed legs.
"Grasping them, grasping my son's globes, Toshiro bit into my breast. How beautiful it was, my blood mingling with his saliva and my hands finding the core of his maleness. But I wanted more. I wanted to hold that piece of flesh which defined him. My hand wrapped around it length. It was soft and limp. I began to stroke it. Slowly I felt the life pouring into it, the muscles and sinewings awakening from their long sleep.
"May God forgive me for what I did. Throwing open his robe, I kneeled before him as all mothers kneel before the image of their son. Opening my mouth like it was a ritual urn, I let that surging maleness slide in. Never has my body wanted anything so much. Never has my mouth been assailed with such a vibrant flesh.
"Now the child was pleading with me to let him go. But I would not listen. The hallucination had become paramount. He was my son and I controlled him. Grabbing the tip delicately between my teeth I watered it with a beserk tongue. I was both solemn and hysterical. The fact that it was taking place in the rock garden seemed to give the event a religious aura. But then a change took place.
"I wanted it in my body. I wanted my son to perform perversions. Using all my strength, I pushed him against the wall of the pagoda, releasing his now stiffened organ. Then, running backwards, I impaled my buttocks on his maleness. I screamed. I screamed out my shame and my lust as that mighty weapon thrust between the buttocks and impales me, like a delicate bird split asunder by the beak of a voracious bird. A moment later, the seed of his ancestors poured into me, sending me forward into the earth, sobbing and exhausted.
"An instant later, I got up and ran into the house, sobbing hysterically, my body and mind suffering the most horrible guilt. I threw myself on the bed. It was hours before I could think rationally.
"The next day, when I reflected on my actions, I knew that I had passed some important divide. I knew that a dramatic change had taken place in my relation to the world. I was a woman who had constructed an artificial son and seduced him."
The next letter I received from Ellen delved more deeply into her erotic relationship with the Japanese child. It is unfortunate that this letter did not really attempt an analysis of her mental state, but stuck pretty close to the facts. It was as if she was trying to get together enough clinical information to prove her wickedness. If that was the intent it certainly is successful. What follows is one of the most lucid descriptions of a woman caught up in the throes of a perversion which entails both child-seduction and simulated incest. Of course, the word perversion is extremely relative. Her acts were perverse only because she considered them perverse. And she thought that way because she was raised in a rural atmosphere.
"I vowed never to see Toshiro again. My vow was a farce. Soon, he occupied my thoughts every hour of the day and night. The seconds ticked away like eternal epochs while I planned my next move. He did not return to the garden immediately. But soon he did return and began tending the garden in his stoic manner, as if nothing had happened between us: but he knew in his soul that what had happened could not be forgotten.
"I asked him into the house. I had prepared everything previously. My idea was to make our next joining equal in delicacy and ritual to his religious ceremonies. We sat together on a straw mat. I undressed and he followed my wish that he become naked. There was a pot of tea on the floor beside us and we both drank from the same cup. The child seemed much more relaxed. I took a sponge and began to clean his body in the native manner, talking to him softly about my past life. He closed his eyes as I ran the sponge over every surface of his willing body. Still, his mind was a mystery to me, but I did not care. Toshiro, in my madness, was my son-lover come home and I did not have to understand. All I was required to do was act out my incredible hallucinations.
"Then I gave him a vial of just melted wax that was still hot and requested him to annoint my body. Lying down, I waited for his hungry hands and that annointing liquid.
"First he placed some of the wax on a finger and began to annoint my lips. The delicate touch of his finger sliding over the sensitive flesh, combined with the wax, sent tremors through my whole body. I bit his finger playfully. Then the wax was applied to my nipples and rubbed into the base of my breasts. The child had entered whole-heartedly into the religious game. My nipples were like nightingales perched precariously at the apex of the breasts, looking for a chance to leap beyond them.
"Toshiro moved between my legs. I spread them wide to make his work easier. I spread them for my unnatural son, given to me by the gods of the Orient.
"I saw him bend over and place some of the wax on the tip of his tongue. The moment he did that, I knew Toshiro had, himself, been infected by my hallucination.
"Closer and closer that darting thing came to the gates of my body. Then it touched, flicking across the lips of my vagina, resting there for a moment as my body shivered from the delicate but brutal touch. His lips were against it now, opening the flower wide so that his child tongue could enter.
"My body was sent into a fit of hot and cold spasms. The entry of his tongue seemed to be the high point of my strange interlude. It was as if the child was telling me without words that his tongue was the cement of our mother-son relationship. He began to flick it back and forth within me. As it swept across that narrow, yearning space, going from wall to wall in the flesh, it seemed that the thousands of miles and thousands of years which separated our cultures were dissolving as each bit of my bodies moistures adhered to his tongue. The more he was within me, the more my flower seemed to open, like a desert that is suddenly and miraculously transformed by a rainfall.
"His palms slid beneath my buttocks. Oh, how my words flowed into his ears, though he probably did not understand or hear.
"I could make out the child's frenzied eyes as my thighs closed about him and his tongue reached an incredible height of action. But suddenly, as the turmoil in my body was reaching a climax, he moved quickly away from me and stood glaring only a few steps off the straw mat. I became panicky. What had happened? Had his erotic and hallucinatory state been dissolved?
"I spread my legs wide and began to move my buttocks from side to side, waving my flower at him, trying to overcome him with the sight of my womanhood, calling to him.
"He wavered. I called out my most profound needs, asking him to fulfill them, begging in the name of everything sacred to come to me. Slowly he began to approach again. Just the sight of his body coming nearer drove me into a frenzy of excitement. His maleness was straight in front of him, poised on the threshold of greatness.
"Inch by inch, foot by foot, the body came closer. Then he made his decision. He could not escape from the draw of my body. He flung himself on me and in one magnificent moment, his maleness entered me.
"Only for one instant was there a calm, then the universe seemed to explode. In it went, driving deep and true, bringing my body to a crescendo of lust.
"Together, we were like two demons who used their organs to breach the walls of immortality. I felt each delicious quiver of his maleness. I felt each thrust as if it was the last time my body would ever taste and receive the male flesh. Then, it exploded, rending my body with the hot seed as it cascaded into my womanhood, leaving me a weeping dissolved mass. Thus, my desires were fulfilled. Thus, my past was dissolved. Thus, my marriage was threatened by the bright, clear flame of a perverted hallucination."
I received many letters from her after this one. But they all had one theme; how she was trying to rid herself of that twisted desire. Eventually she did. When her husband returned from Vietnam, Ellen stopped seeing the Japanese boy. When her husband returned once again to the battlefield, she resolved never to see the boy again. And she kept her promise, though it was at a great psychic and emotional cost.
This case is a most illuminating one, showing how the loneliness of an army wife could be transferred into the erotic actions of a frustrated mother. While there is no doubt that this is a specialized case, it points out to what extent loneliness can be transformed when there are other more potent factors lying just at the threshold of consciousness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Everyone envied Claire. Her husband was one of the youngest Admirals in the Navy. Her house, just outside one of the largest Naval Bases on the East coast, was beautifully furnished with wide, well-manicured grounds, and an exquisite statue garden. Her two children were both handsome and well-mannered. In short, Claire was, on the surface, living a life that many people aspire to.
But the reality was much different. At the age of thirty-seven, Claire had reached a point in her life where her material possessions only bored her. The endless parties at the Navy base and her husband's friends left her with an empty feeling and a growing sense of her own futility.
Whenever she discussed this growing feeling with her husband, all he could say was that she should develop some type of hobby to occupy her time. Claire recalled these conversations after their divorce:
"My husband completely misunderstood me. I didn't want a hobby. I was looking for a new form of life. I was looking for the same thing that many of the young people of today are looking for; a complete freedom of the body and mind, a chance to use my god-given talents for some purpose other than my own gratification."
Claire was a talented woman. She was an excellent horsewoman, a gourmet cook, well-read and curious, and the possessor of a trained analytical mind. But none of these qualities were being put to use. No wonder then, that her mind began to wander in forbidden channels, channels that would eventually split her marriage apart and bring the wrath of a military establishment down upon her.
As the weeks passed and this feeling of futility intensified, Claire began to look to the sexual life for some alleviation of her symptoms. She began to be much more demanding on her husband, wanting him night after night, asking him to perform certain acts which he considered perverse.
One night, as they were lying in bed together, his hand gently touching her bare thigh, she asked him:
"Why do you make love like an animal, swiftly and brutally? Why don't you approach my body with delicacy and sophistication?"
This was the first time she had ever questioned his love-making capacity. Her husband was furious. He felt that what she said was a terrible threat to his manhood. She assured him that this was not the case; she was merely interested in more experimentation.
"After all," she replied to his shock, "we are not children. We are adults to whom the marriage bed must be the most exciting place in our lives."
But all of her explanations were useless. Her words had created a breach. Claire knew that her husband's anger was always temporary so she did not really worry about it. Yes, this temporary breach in their affections was the most important cause for her lapse into an illicit relationship. Suddenly, she was free. Suddenly, she felt that the burden of marriage had been suspended for a while and the reason for the suspension was less important than the fact that it had happened during a crisis in her life.
She felt that fate had forced her to act in a manner that would increase her body and psychic liberation. We do not know why the vehicle for this liberation was a fourteen year old boy.
His name was Joseph and he worked as a busboy in the Officer's Club. Claire did not know his last name or where he had come from. All she knew that he was a half-breed, his mother was Negro and his father an American Indian.
No doubt, the fact that he was a half-breed made him exceptionally attractive to her. Being half Negro, he represented a people who had known great suffering. Furthermore, he had the best qualities of that heritage; strength and loyalty and a certain resignation before the things in this world which could not be changed.
The fact that he was part American Indian had a great effect on the mind of Claire. Being well-read, she was a fervent admirer of the Indian, having studied the great Indian civilizations of the Western Hemisphere, even being able to name a great many of the warrior chiefs who did not give up their lands to the white men without a great toll in lives and property.
Claire had always been interested in History and there can be no doubt that her love of this subject made the boy incredibly attractive to her as a representative of two great races, each of which had known great suffering and each of which had made great contributions to civilizations.
The ordinary person, looking at the young half-breed, would have undoubtably not been swayed by his ancestors. But it was this sensitivity which made Claire so unique. It was this sensitivity which made her dislike the material opulence which surrounded her and her family.
Her infidelity, her sudden leap into a strange and all-consuming passion for the boy, began one afternoon. She had been on the base to attend a ceremony and immediately after, she stopped in the Officer's Club for a cup of coffee and a sandwich.
Because it was so late, there was no one else in the club. Joseph served her even though usually a busboy was not allowed to take orders, only clean tables. But, the regular waiter was taking his afternoon "break" and Joseph was quite happy to serve the tall, beautiful woman whom he knew to be the Admiral's wife.
She gave him the order. Claire had seen the boy before on numerous occasions and they had a few discussions on his background. But it was that particular afternoon, that the passion overwhelmed her. Her description of her sudden revelation is interesting for two reasons. It shows the close ties between sexual feelings and religious revelations, and it points out key psychological motives in the older woman. Below is Claire's description of that moment:
"I gave him my order and he started to walk to the kitchen. I watched him. I specially watched his neck. Suddenly, I felt a weakness in the pit of my stomach as if a disease had suddenly entered my body and totally destroyed my will to survive. This lasted only a second. Then, an erotic wave seemed to flow over me, trying to drown me. I wanted to rush to him and press my lips against the sweet flesh of his neck. I wanted to run my tongue along his neck-line, tasting the salt of his sweat. The salt and pepper shakers on the table and the ketchup bottle suddenly took the appearance of what my subconscious viewed as the child's organ. I was like a porous piece of damp canvas that could only react to heavy and pointed thrusts. I reached out to grab his penis, and then I returned to reality; the salt shaker lying in the palm of my hand."
Claire was terribly shaken after that experience, even though it was so tatal it had to be somewhat pleasing. She did not wait for Joseph to return with her food. Instead, she left the money on the table and left the club quickly.
Once home, she sunk into a large chair in the living room trying to compose herself. Surrounding her were the various expensive things which signified her position. A shudder went through her. She contrasted the expensive surroundings with that one beautiful second when he walked from her and the line of his neck which elicited such an amazing reaction.
It was while seated in that chair that she vowed to follow her fortune to the end. She would have the boy. She would have that remarkable body which had penetrated her mind with a passion she had never before experienced.
The next afternoon, Claire returned to the Officer's club at the same time. Joseph was there. He walked to her, standing next to the table and waiting for her order. At no time did he mention her peculiar behavior of the previous day when she had left without eating. Claire could scarcely breathe. Just the boy's nearness to her exerted a profound passion in every sinew of her body. She gave him the order and he walked to the kitchen.
Claire, in spite of her age and sophistication, was now like a child. She did not know how to initiate the sexual encounter. Because of this, what happened next can be looked upon as an extremely juvenile approach, but Claire's state of mind at the time must be remembered.
Joseph came with the food and placed it on the table. Claire watched his every move. He was very handsome and virile. She wondered how much sexual experience he had. Even though he was young, she realized that the young girls on the base must have bothered him quite a bit. Joseph, she thought, must have stood out from the bland sons of the military men because of his dark complexion and passionate looks.
Claire picked up a fork in one hand. Instead of bringing it to the food, she raised one corner of the table cloth and dropped the fork under the table. Joseph looked at her perplexed.
"Please pick it up for me," she said, quietly but with the steely quality of a demon.
He just looked at her, not saying a word, his black eyes burning but noncommittal.
"The fork, it fell under the table. Please pick it up." She asked again.
Joseph went under the table. When his body was completely out of sight, she dropped the table cloth back to its original position. Claire describes what transpired next:
"I waited. The question was paramount in my mind.
Would he pick up the fork and come out immediately or would he feel the tremendous need I felt for him? Would he, in some way, be able to pick up the erotic signals which every fibre of my being was passing to him. The sweat hung in little beads from my forehead and my back was damp with perspiration.
"Very slowly, I began to spread my legs hoping he would understand. All I could hear was his heavy breathing. I knew he was trying to understand his situation. Then, in one glorious moment, I felt his hands pulling off my under garments. My thighs began to shake with anticipation.
"His hands rubbed against my naked object. He seemed, just with his hand, to reach the most profound essence of my womanhood. I steadied myself. I knew what would come next would be beautiful but dangerous.
"His face was between my legs. His lips began to kiss and nip the flesh on the inside of my thighs. Closer and closer his mouth was moving to the center of my life. I could scarcely wait. I could scarcely remain seated because I knew thousands of years of his ancestry was making the moment approaching beautiful. I thought of the nobly clad warriors and horsemen who were his forefathers, and the fact that their son, their own flesh and blood, was moving close to the most tender and fragile opening, almost made me lose consciousness.
"The lips met. Yes, his hot and fervent lips joined with the lips of my flower, sending a shock through my body and almost dissolving my will. Again and again he kissed me there, until I was weeping and murmuring strange words which I cannot even remember now.
"The chUd inserted his tongue. I became stiff. Deeper and deeper it went, like the lance of some Indian warrior. But the moment it began to move back and forth in my naked womanhood, to draw out those most preceious essences, all of the stiffness left. A terrible but overwhelming passion overcame me. The lust rolled like tidal waves through my body and I squirmed on the chair to help his tongue in that glorious penetration."
A remarkable incident. Immediately after leaving the club, Claire was almost overwhelmed with guilt and embarrassment. She had acted like a child. She had acted like a young girl who had lost all sexual control under the influence of one drink. She resolved to discontinue the relationship immediately. Thinking about Joseph, she said to herself that no conception of freedom could be worth such degrading behavior on her part.
But her well-intentioned decision did not last for long. Even that one incident of oral lovemaking had totally changed her attitude to the world.
"I realized I would have to continue with Joseph. I realized that I would degrade myself to whatever extent was needed to feel once again that tidal wave of free lust; that strange and total abandon that never had appeared in my life before. Could I afford to give it up? Could I stop because the child who provided me with that was only a few years older than my own son? No, I could not. I could not return to the life of boredom and materialism that only ate away at my soul like acid eating away fine jewelry."
So, after a few days, she returned to the club again. The moment Joseph saw her, their eyes met for a long time.
She knew what was in his eyes. She knew instantly that he had felt the same thing, though at a different level. He, too, was launching on a great venture, that had begun in the absurd way of retrieving a fork.
She ordered her food, her arms trembling and her voice breaking from nervousness. As he was taking the order, Joseph moved close enough so there shoulders touched. It was electric.
"Drop the fork," he said, "and I will get it for you."
Claire smiled at the boy, but she wanted something more satisfying than that. She knew that no one would be in the powder room and that there was a small leather couch in the smaller room adjoining it.
"Follow me," she said.
"But I cannot leave yet."
"Follow me," she ordered him, "there is no one in the club to check up on you."
The boy followed her. They both entered the small room adjoining the ladies powder room. Claire could not wait a second more. She was caught up in an uncontrollable passion. Like a bird of prey she ripped at his pants until they were open. There it was. There was what she had been waiting for. There was her freedom and her release from countless days of boredom and ennui. She grasped his maleness. It lay there, in her hand, like a wounded bird. She bent to it and lavished her lips and tongue upon it. The boy moaned and cried. Never in his short life had he experienced anything like what was happening to him. It grew under her ministrations. Muscles and sinews and flesh began to pulse and vibrate like a magic spell had been placed upon it. She held it and marvelled. It was beautiful. Before her eyes, and in her mouth and in front of her tongue, the inert maleness now exploded into a twisting, passionate tool.
She could not get enough of it. Her lips would not release it. It overwhelmed her. It totally destroyed her will and thus brought her the freedom of the body.
But even that was not enough. Here are Claire's own words:
"Finally, I led him to the couch and lay down on it. He hesitated, just a moment, his maleness in front of him, yearning and quivering.
"I held out my arms. I called to him, telling him he could not falter now for I had tasted the most precious part of him and now I must be filled by that which I had worked so hard and lovingly to excite. The child was a mystery. As he stood there, my body open for him, who could tell what was going through his mind? Who could decipher those thoughts?
"He came to me. He climbed on me. In my joy, I sunk my teeth into his beautiful flesh. My thighs called to his maleness. Then, in one great thrust the child became a man and his flesh entered me.
"I screamed, not from pain but from the supreme joy of a sexual freedom that was beyond description. We went together deeper into the waiting couch. My flower was being violated by that surging maleness, but I wanted more and more. His ancestors were in me. All the torment of a thousand years were concentrated in the red tip of that young savage.
"He crushed me into the leather. His tongue went crudely into my mouth taking my breath away. I kept bringing my buttocks up violently, to meet his glorious plunges. It went in and in, until the furthest reaches of my womanhood. Each thrust made my body sing a song of absolutely joy. The cylinder of love bored through me, and it would not stop.
"It grew within me. It grew to maturity. I felt every fibre of its being. The boy's breath came heavier and a strange sound came from his throat and chest, almost a war cry that his ancestors sung when they were ready for the kill. Then, in one great spasm, a cascade of seed poured into me, leaving us devastated on that leather couch, our minds empty and our bodies singing with the glories of maleness and womanhood joining."
That incident was only the beginning. In the days and months that followed, the Admiral's wife and the young, half-breed busboy set the base on fire with their passion. Nothing was forbidden between them, nothing was not attempted. Their relationship went beyond the sexual. They spent much time together reading and talking. She found Joseph to be unlettered but possessing a curiosity and a love of learning that matched hers.
As, in most of these cases, her husband was the last to find out. But when he made the discovery, his rage knew no bounds. Joseph was fired from the Officer's club and hounded off the base with many threats against his life. He immediately began divorce proceedings against his wife, not caring even to hear her explanation.
Claire did not really care about the divorce but she did want him to know the reasons for her indescretions. Finally, unable to speak with him rationally, she sent him a letter which he never answered. She did not contest the divorce. Her husband used all his influence to obtain the children and after a long court fight he was successful. Claire left that part of the country, heartsick over the idea of losing her children, but still determined to explore that new-found thing called "freedom".
During our interview, she was not optimistic that she could find an alternative life to the one she had been used to. But her last words to me, before I left, were quite revealing:
"To find Freedom is Utopian; to look for it is necessary. If it can be found in the organ of a young half-breed boy, then one must not avoid the child. Do you understand me? Do you understand the anguish in my life which must be eased?"
I told her that I understood and wished her luck. Seldom has so brave and lovely a woman lost everything so quickly and brutally. We can only pray that she will survive.
CHAPTER NINE
Up to this point all of our case histories have been concerned with the wives who commit certain indescretions. The boys who are partners in their erotic meanderings have not been able to disclose their side of the story. There is a good reason for this.
Since most of these cases took place months or even years before I contacted the women involved, the boys, for the most part, were no longer on the base. In almost every case, whenever the sexual alliance had been discovered, the boy was forced to move off the base. In some instances, his family was also forced to move.
Yet, their side of the story must contain some important facts which their elder companions chose to conceal. In spite of the complete honesty that each woman was pledged to, there can be no doubt that certain incidents or states of mind existed which were too painful to describe.
Several months after my entry into this field of research, I was fortunate enough to make contact with a boy who had been the object of sexual intentions by a military wife. To my astonishment and very good fortune, the boy had, in fact, been a partner in three such interludes, at various military bases in America. It was a rare stroke of good fortune and one which I knew would shed a great deal of light on our subject.
The boy's name is Clifford G. He was, in the slang expression, an "Army brat". He had been raised in a succession of Army posts by his uncle and aunt who were career Army people. His father had been killed in the Korean war and his real mother had just dropped out of sight.
At the time of our interview he was nineteen years old and a sophomore at a leading Eastern university. In the beginning he was reluctant to disclose the facts of his childhood, but after a number of days of outlining my project to him, he agreed.
Our first formal interview took place in his dormitory. Clifford was a short, well-built, dark-haired boy who looked much older than his years. He spoke very quickly and surely, punctuating his statements with a jab of his finger.
I began the interview with this question: "Now, when all those activities are far behind you, do you feel that the experience of being used sexually by a number of women has seriously hurt your growing-up process?"
He thought for a long while before answering: "At first I did not. When I left the life of the Army base for the last time, I thought all that was behind me. But, upon entering the university, I realized that I was not like other young men. I had a different outlook toward sex and toward life in general."
"How," I asked him, "does this different outlook manifest itself in actual practice?"
"Well," he replied, "I find that the girls at the university do not interest me. They seem childish. Secondly, I live for the moment, without planning ahead, ready to take my pleasures where and when I find them."
He was, I realized, a remarkably intelligent and sophisticated young man.
Clifford then began the story of the first time he was seduced. At the time, he was twelve years old.
"It was at a base near the Canadian border. The summers there are incredibly short and the brief siege of sunshine and warmth seems to turn people into sex-hunters. Looking back now, I realize it was a case of rape. Now it is amusing. Then it was not so, in fact, it took me weeks to recover from the incident and my uncle, though he never knew what happened, wanted to send me to the base psychiatrist. You can imagine in what a bad state I was after the event.
"When summer comes to that godforsaken base, it is traditional to have a tremendous base party, with all personnel at the base attending, both officers and enlisted men. As a child, I was not allowed to attend but there was a tradition for the children to sneak out and watch the festivities.
"The festivities consist of dancing and drinking. I waited until my uncle and aunt had left for the party and then snuck out of the house. Secreting myself in a clump of bushes, I watched the festivities in wide-eyed amazement. Much of what was happening was incomprehensible to me because I was very innocent at that age. But I could not help being excited by the intoxicated people saluting the brief summer season.
"As I was squatting in the bush, I heard a noise behind me. It sounded like some animal was bellowing after having been caught in a trap. I moved toward the noise. A woman was lying on the ground, flailing her arms.
"I recognized her. She was the wife of a Warrant Officer. Her name was Olga and she was a large woman who always used to chase the kids away from her house when they were playing ball in front of it.
"She also recognized me. Calling to me in her drunk voice, she pointed obscenely between her legs. I wanted to run away but I was also fascinated. Then, she got to her feet and came toward me. I was so frightened at the sight of that huge woman coming toward me that I could not move.
"She grabbed my arm and pulled me quickly and easily into the bushes. The whiskey smell was overwhelming. She fell on the ground and pulled me on top of her. My struggles were useless. Holding me with one large hand, Olga began to undress me. As she peeled the clothes off my body, her fingers probed and stroked every part of me. My body must have been a source of great amusement to her because she giggled a lot.
"When I was naked, she pushed me off her and kneeled beside me. The whiskey had turned her into a sexual cannibal. My body became food and drink to her. First her massive lips moved up and down my body, kissing the flesh with sucking motions until my body became a mass of red welts.
"At first I was only scared, but as those remarkable lips continued, my fear lessened and in its place came new experiences that flooded my body with a reality I had never known existed. Then her tongue reached my immature maleness. It flicked against the inert flesh.
"Just that one touch and the tremendous dam of adolescent sexual repression burst loose.
"I squirmed. My body turned red. Again and again her tongue, almost hysterical with whiskey and lust, brought new delights to my body. I could not believe what was happening to me. I could not believe that anything that glorious could come from a fat woman like Olga who I despised.
"Something new was happening. A terrible stiffness overcame my maleness, a pulse was vibrating with such force that my childish body was racked throughout.
"Then Olga stretched me out and lay on top of me. Her fleshy body almost suffocated me. My mouth was filled with her nipple pushing back into my throat and her heated white breasts smothered my face. I felt my organ being sucked into an incredible cavern. Not knowing what it was, not knowing anything about the female anatomy, I began to weep. But as her massive body began moving up and down and as her organ closed my maleness in, bringing to it the most delicious feelings, my tears turned to moans.
"I kept moving my body up to meet hers. I kept thrusting my maleness as deep as I could, trying frantically to match her force. I bit down on her nipple in desperation and she screamed. How I loved making her scream. Her massive thighs were sucking every bit of young passion from me. Then my body began to twitch. I did not know what it was until I shot my seed upward, into that devouring hole, up and up, straining until my maleness was without purpose, without direction, and reverted to its original state.
"An instant later, she left without a word. I lay for many minutes on the ground nursing my bruised body and pride. But I also knew that I had been initiated into a mystery that was beyond comprehension, a mystery that was the secret of life itself. I have never, until now, disclosed that incident to anyone. Even Olga, because of her drunken state, did not remember what had happened."
It was a remarkable incident and I was thankful to the boy for having been so frank and revealing. During our next interview, he related the second incident, which took place while his uncle was on assignment at a small base in the North West.
At the time of this incident he was not quite fourteen. It is a completely different type experience than his initial one, an experience made vivid by Clifford's sensitivity and descriptive powers.
"To put it in a nutshell, I fell in love. She was an older woman, like Olga, in her late thirties, but much more sophisticated and womanly. There was nothing gross or vulgar about her. The wife of a high ranking officer at the base, she was starved for some type of warmth and companionship to ease her loneliness and the disinterest of her husband. Her name was Leona, though everyone called her Bunny.
"It began on a Sunday morning. I was out in the woods with the rifle my uncle had bought me, looking for woodchucks. I tripped over a log and sprained my ankle severely. Bunny happened to be walking in the woods and she found me and called the base hospital from a nearby cabin. She waited with me until the ambulance arrived and we talked a lot. An instant, warm friendship sprung up between us.
"The next day she visited me at my uncle's house. The doctor said I must stay in bed at least a week. Bunny came the first few days every morning. We talked about everything, about her life, my life, about the Army. She did not patronize me even though I was a young boy. Then, one day she did not show up. I knew then that I was in love. When a young man falls in love it is usually with total abandon and I was no exception. I wanted to kill myself because she had not visited.
"When she came the next day, I had to tell her my feelings. But how could I? She was almost twenty years older than me. I was afraid she would laugh.
"That morning no one was in the house. She sat at the edge of the bed. I tried but I could not find the words.
"Bunny, however, knew. She knew my feelings and, wonder of wonders, she returned the feelings. Before my very eyes, and without her saying one word, she began to remove her clothes. Soon, she was naked. I could scarcely breathe as my eyes devoured that magnificent, mature figure. Her breasts were two mountains of white flesh capped by the glory of the nipples, straining toward me. Her thighs were ample yet graceful. She came slowly toward me, reached the bed, folded back the sheet and climbed into bed with me. I was so excited I closed my eyes. The heat of her body seemed to pour over me in waves.
"She whispered in my ear that her body was mine to use in any way I want. I opened my eyes. Before me was that exquisite flesh. Not even my inexperience hindered me because some inner passion seemed to guide my hands.
"I kissed her. Our lips went together hungrily and gave me courage. My lips moved down her body. Quivering, I took one of her nipples in my mouth. Because I loved her with all the intensity of the young, her nipple scorched my mouth. Right now, relating this story, I am still a young man, but I consider my ascent to adulthood to be that one instant when I have that squirming, delicate piece of flesh between my teeth.
"I released the nipple for my whole body was moving toward that dark, triangular area, nestled so beautifully in the apex of her thighs."
Clifford paused during his story. He seemed to be caught up in a memory which was so precious to him that even years later it was difficult to speak about it. He buried his face in his hands. I waited patiently for him to continue. When he did not, I asked him:
"Would you like to call it a day and I will come back tomorrow?"
"No," he said, shaking his head vigorously as if trying to shake out his trembling.
Finally, grasping hold of himself with one great effort, he continued the story. The young man was one of the bravest souls I have ever come into contact with.
"I reached the triangle. My lips pressed feverishly into the mass of hair. Bunny cried out to me. No longer did I feel like a child; I was a man, controlling her body, controlling her passion.
"Her cavern opened for me. Quickly I thrust my tongue inside, a pointed goad to her already growing lust. Her body jerked up and down. But I would not let her go. My mouth and her womanhood was in a duel, taking from each other the most that could be taken.
"It was so sweet and delicate. It was an opening that could be explored forever. An opening that contained the most beautiful fruits and the most exquisite feelings, waiting there for my tongue to pluck.
"But even that was not enough. My tongue was too tame for my newly discovered manhood. I felt the power in my organ. I felt that flesh between my legs growing until I thought it would burst. Remembering my first experience, with Olga, I knew that I had to do the same with Bunny. Only this time it would not be with a woman like Olga, it would be the penetration of the one I loved.
"Almost insane with passion, as only a young boy can be, I climbed on her and violently penetrated her, almost fainting with joy as my stiffened flesh went deep inside her. She began to weep and wrapped her arms about my back, digging her fingers into the flesh. I was like a young animal unchained, unable to reason, unable to think, all I wanted was the supreme joy of a violent penetration. And I accomplished that.
"It was too quick but those few seconds were beautiful. Our bodies joined. I could feel her sorrow becoming joy and her affection for me becoming love. My maleness controlled my body, all I could do was to follow that twisting, explosive flesh. An instant later, the seed poured out into her, my whole body going into spasm as the fluid was injected into her opening.
"For two months we were together constantly. And then her husband received transfer orders. There was nothing we could do but separate. Bunny' told me that she would write, but I never heard from her again. Maybe she woke up to the fact that I was a young boy. Maybe, she began to adjust to the life she had to lead. I just don't know."
He sat there with his head down, trying to fight back the tears. I knew that there was one other incident but I let it go for another day because of the young man's obvious discomfort.
When I returned the following day for the last interview, Clifford had recovered. He also apologized for his emotional outbreak and promised that he would try to control his emotions in the future.
The last incident of his boyhood is unique in the fact that it involves an older woman who went beyond seduction, into the realm of extreme sexual perversions in order to alleviate her boredom and unhappiness. Clifford described the incident to me in some detail, though I am sure he left out a number of details which he felt would be too incriminating. After all, we are all human and the young boy in front of me was more sensitive than most.
"Her name was V. She was almost forty and I was sixteen. My uncle had been sent to a base near the Mexican border. V. was cruel and passionate. Looking back, now, I think she was on the borderline between sanity and insanity. It is too long a story to go into how we met. But you must understand this. She did not seduce me because her life at the base was horrible. No, her husband was a good friend of my uncle and one of the kindest men I ever met.
"V. seduced me because she was insatiable. The fact of Army life only was a goad to her. We would meet in the back of the theater which was closed until six o'clock in the evening.
"I will describe for you a typical episode. You must understand that while now I am speaking calmly, at that time I was almost hysterical for I had never come across such a person before.
"There was a small, bare room in the back of the theater. V. removed her clothes and made me do the same. Then, she sat in one corner and howled. Do you believe me? V. sat in one corner and howled like a wolf. The first time I heard those terrifying sounds, I froze. That an older woman should act in such a manner was completely outside my experience. She began to move about the room on all fours, like a wolf hunting for a mate. V. made me crouch on all fours like her and follow her about the room. I was not allowed to speak. If I wanted to get her attention, I would have to make strange scratching sounds.
"Then we began our strange sexual alliance which had been carefully planned before.
"I was forced to move behind her and begin to lick her buttocks and thighs. V. would turn on me, like a she-wolf, and flay out with her nails, trying to gouge my eyes. Once, she inflicted a severe cut over my eyebrow. But as I licked her, she became more and more receptive.
Finally, I began to lick her private parts. Each stroke of my tongue brought a wolf-moan from her throat and soon she was backing up to me, waiting to be mounted, like a wolf is mounted, from behind, in some wind-swept gulley.
"There is a primitive strain in everyone and it is more prone to surface in a young person than an old one. I was seduced by the erotic game. For a brief second, I thought I was a timber wolf and in that moment, I entered her from behind, thrilling to the wail that my stiffened maleness elicited from her mouth.
"Making pathetic little sounds, she tried to escape me on all fours. But I was in her and my organ would not let her go until it had been satisfied, until my seed was pouring into the she-wolfs body.
"The next few moments were unclear because I was so swept away by the game. In and out, deeper with each thrust, I lanced her. In my subconscious I must have been trying to bring her to her knees, to force the she-wolf to grovel on the forest floor beneath me. As the explosion came, my paws reached in front of her and grabbed her breasts, squeezing them so tightly that the she-wolf screamed. Then the juice burst out and we rolled on the floor together, our bodies sucking up that wonderful ending."
Clifford's eyes were gleaming as he recounted the incident. I would like to have interviewed him in greater depth about that particular episode, but he was forced to terminate the interview because of some very important exams at the university.
I thanked him profusely for his help. He had given me some remarkable insights into the perverse relationships which were so much a part of his life. If future researchers can elicit other testimony from boys who were actually involved in such episodes, there is no doubt we would be much closer to understanding and dealing with the phenomenon.
CHAPTER TEN
"As American as apple pie." This was what everyone said about Marcia, the thirty-three year old housewife of a Marine Captain, assigned to diplomatic duty on the French Riviera.
She was born and raised in Kansas. Her style of life and her ethical code had been formed in that environment. It was perhaps inevitable that when she left the States for the first time to join her husband on the Riviera, the freedom in that area would have a profound effect on her life.
But it was not inevitable that she would be seduced by a fifteen year old boy, far wiser than her in the ways of the flesh. This is what makes Marcia's story unique. She loved her husband and was happy with his career. Life on the Riviera was just an extended vacation and Marcia was willing to stay there forever. In other words, none of the ingredients of our other stories are present in this case. Marcia was not bored or unhappy. Marcia was just a woman overwhelmed by a style of life which proved too powerful for her to combat. She was unable to withstand the subconscious urges which the young boy, Pierre, brought out. Thus, we have a case here where the aggressor was the boy and the willing victim was the older woman.
There are thousands of boys like Pierre along the southern coast of France. They survive by playing on the sexual whims of tourists. Very rarely do they have anything to do with American military people for this would be far too dangerous. There are plenty of eager female tourists around to satisfy both their financial and emotional needs. Pierre was one of them. What made him a little different was his acute intelligence and his desire to be first in everything.
Let us try to reconstruct the events leading to the scandal so that we may study the actual events with greater precision.
Marcia's husband put in a full day at the Embassy. She was left with a lot of time on her hands but this never bothered her. After making Dave breakfast, she would clean the lovely apartment which had been furnished by the Marine Corps and do the day's shopping in a small market only a few streets away.
With that accomplished, she would dress and stroll downtown to look in the amazingly varied collection of shops. It was an exciting way to spend the morning and she would always return home from these shopping expeditions flushed and excited even though she often bought nothing.
She would make herself a light lunch, change into a bathing suit and spend the afternoon at the beach. About an hour before her husband was due home, she would leave and return to the apartment to prepare supper for him. The evenings would be spent with Dave. Sometimes they stayed home, often they would go for long walks through the town or on the beach, and sometimes they would see a movie. All in all it was quite a fulfilling life and there were no problems about money or health. Marcia's letters home to her family reflected the fact that she was having the time of her life.
Four months after she arrived on the Riviera, that idyllic existence was shattered. It was shattered brutally and finally and when she emerged from the whirlpool, she was an utterly changed woman.
It began under a brilliant Riviera sun. Marcia was lying under a beach umbrella only a few feet from the edge of the water. She had been napping from time to time and watching the children race up and down the sand.
She felt, suddenly, that someone was watching her. Looking behind her, in the opposite direction from the water, she saw a young boy staring at her. He was beautifully tanned, with his long black hair cut in the fashionable style. Not thinking anything of his curiosity, she smiled at him and then turned toward the water.
The boy walked toward her slowly. He knew that she was the wife of a Marine Captain and though all the boys on the beach stayed away from the wives of American servicemen, there was something about her wholesome good looks which drew him like a fly to melted chocolate.
An instant later he was standing beside her, arrogant and sure of himself.
"Good afternoon, Madame."
His voice was deep and resonant, but it still retained the innocence of a young child. Marcia saw his shadow on the sand before she saw him. Finally, she turned smiling, and said:
"Good afternoon, what is your name?"
"Pierre."
Marcia, always polite, introduced herself and the boy, without asking, sat down on the blanket beside her. They were very close. She knew of the reputation of many boys on the beach, but it never occurred to her that such a boy might have designs on her.
"What do you do?" She asked him.
The boy shrugged but did not answer, shielding his eyes against the sun and looking out over the water.
"Do you work or go to school?" She persisted.
"I do nothing," he replied, "except have fun."
Marcia was shocked. She had been raised in a society where it was sinful for males not to work. She expressed this view to Pierre who only laughed at her.
His laugh had a strange effect on her. The boy had succeeded, with that one strange laugh, in dissolving the difference in ages between them, and making her less sure of herself. Who is this child? What does he want? Should I tell him to leave? These were the questions that raced through her mind.
Without saying another word, but waving his arm in farewell, Pierre moved quickly away from her and she followed his sinewy body as it raced across the sand, until it was only a tan blur beneath the sun.
She went home thinking about the boy. But when her husband arrived for supper she forgot about Pierre and the young couple spent a lovely evening together. But the next day, at the beach, Pierre showed up again. This time he came to the blanket as if he owned it and Marcia was beginning to lose patience with his boldness.
"Haven't you ever learned that it is good manners to wait until you're invited before you join someone."
He answered her quickly and savagely. Her question had hurt him.
"Manners are for slaves. I am no one's slave."
Immediately upon uttering those words, he pulled the blanket over both of their heads and thrust his hand under her elastic bathing suit, resting it lightly between her naked thighs.
"What are you doing?" She said in a low panicky voice, almost hysterical, a red flush appearing on her skin.
"If you move now or throw back the blanket the whole beach will see us like this. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
She realized the truth of his words. The child had trapped her, there was nothing she could do.
He began to rub her softly between her legs. She resolved to suffer in silence. But as the hand brought a warmth to her private parts, she felt herself slipping under a cloud of lust. It was as if there was some special, mysterious quality in Pierre's hand that she could not overcome. Her breathing came quickly, and she closed her eyes. His hand also was inside her suit now, gently touching her ample breasts. Marcia tried once more to fight the child, begging him to leave her alone, but when his finger entered her most precious opening, she gave up the struggle. The entry was so sudden and beautiful, she could not be opposed to it. His other hand was now playing with her nipple, and his mouth, that small, innocent mouth which smelled of fruit and tobacco odors, pressed to her neck, sucking the skin.
Marcia was now a plaything in the child's experienced hands. One small finger controlled every part of her body and by deft and practiced movements brought her to an apex of passion. She lay there, moaning, her mouth open, her body arched as his hand told her the most hidden secrets of love, secrets which had long been the sole possession of the beach boys.
But Pierre had intended this as only a taste, an introduction to the future. A moment later he was gone, sliding out from under the blanket and whispering that he would meet her tomorrow on the beach.
Marcia sat up, wondering whether anyone on the beach knew what had happened under the blanket. Then, she left quickly. Once home, she cursed herself for having fallen prey to a passion that she despised. She vowed not to go to the beach again. Such goings on were intolerable. Her husband noticed her great distress but could find out nothing further. The next morning, after he had left, she sat on a chair, determined to spend the day home, reading and doing various chores about the apartment.
But as the hours passed and as the time approached when she usually went to the beach, strange thoughts began to flash through her mind. The boy had had a greater effect upon her than she realized at the time. Marcia fought the sudden, almost overwhelming desire that came to her; the desire to go to the beach and see the child. Those few brief seconds under the blanket had totally destroyed the protective devices in her subconscious.
Almost hypnotized by the memory of the blanket, she went to the beach to meet Pierre. Even as she was walking toward the sand, she was ashamed of herself and tried to stop. But it was no use. Her demon had been set loose and it would take more than will power to chain it once again.
He was waiting for her on the beach, a knowing smile on his face. She was so ashamed she could scarcely look at the boy.
"Follow me," he ordered her.
"Do you dare to speak to me like that?"
"Yes," he replied, "and you will listen. Now follow me. I have picked out a special place for us."
She followed him. They walked for a long while. Finally they reached a deserted part of the beach where the dunes were very high. He led her beneath the side of one dune, a place where the overhanging dune made a natural cave which shut out the sun and heat.
It was cool in there. He lay down and told her to undress him. She no longer argued. Removing his garments, she almost wept at the beauty of his body. There was not one ounce of fat on it or one inch that was not tanned to a golden bronze. Her lips were on his body, instantly and greedily. Never had she done anything like this before but her desire was so great that she did not even think. His maleness was there, lying pathetically between his sculptured thighs. She kissed it. Pierre moaned slightly. Suddenly, she leaped on it, as if it was the lodestone of paradise. Her mouth and tongue moved with incredible speed and passion, bringing the quiet flesh into a raging weapon. His maleness quivered, erect, near her.
A voice seemed to come out of her past and tell her to taste that which is beautiful, to savor with her taste buds those most delicate sweetmeats. So she allowed herself to pass into the forbidden realm, and her face reflected that exquisite reward.
But then she wanted more. She had come this far and now she must have all that can be gained. Lying back, she let her legs go apart, signaling the boy that she was ready for the divine sacrifice, that she was ready to dispense with all the myths of the past; fidelity to husband, loyalty, everything will go by the wayside.
Pierre understood. He understood everything about her. The child had the wisdom of ten men. He moved over her body. And then he entered her.
She screamed. He covered her mouth and her teeth penetrated the flesh of his palm. Marcia tasted the blood and she was happy.
His maleness was like a beserk animal. Her body rose and fell to meet it, to strain with her thighs and bring every expression of love to its thrust. She felt herself going back and back into a time and a period that she could not identify. The power of his flesh had transported her through the gates of puritanism, beyond the Kansas childhood. She was in the naked world, her body penetrated by the nakedness and power of a child who was more than a man. She wept, she squirmed, she moaned, but the thrusting organ kept taking its toll of her emotional residue.
There was no sun piercing the dunes, but she felt a sun a thousand times hotter than the orb in the sky. A moment later it came, the flood of seed that wrenched her body and twisted her mind into a mass of lurid colors. She felt that the law of lust had somehow emptied all of its knowledge into her. Finally, gasping, she turned to Pierre and pledged her love with an intensity and seriousness that was unique.
They rested under the dune for many hours, saying little. Then they walked slowly back to the inhabited section of the beach. A glow covered her whole body. She felt she was walking on another planet. They parted and made an appointment to meet the following day.
The next day they met and the next and the next. Marcia could not get enough of the child. And Pierre took tokens of money and gifts from her, but he, too, was absorbed with her body in a unique way.
Her husband did not know. But he did know that his wife seemed to be falling apart before his very eyes. She was losing weight rapidly and she had become a nervous wreck, smoking heavily and unable to concentrate on anything for an extended period of time.
She often refused to talk to him and their sex life came to a halt. He did not know what to do. Finally, in desperation and without her knowledge, he put in a request to be sent back to the States. The request took two months to process but finally it came through. He told her about it the night before they were scheduled to leave. Marcia sat there dumbly, unable to say anything, her heart almost bursting with the thought of leaving Pierre. But there was nothing she could do. If she told her husband she knew he would beat the boy and perhaps kill him in his rage.
So, she sent a note to Pierre and left with her husband. The boy recovered. Two weeks later he had found an American woman, on the Riviera for a vacation, who satisfied him and kept him in the manner he was accustomed to.
Marcia never really recovered. To this day, she still cannot control the raging demon which the boy set free. Yet, in the States, that demon must be controlled or meet the wrath of the law and the community. Perhaps she will survive and regain some measure of composure, but she will never be the same woman again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Few people realize the pressures that accumulate in women who spend their days waiting for their husband's return from dangerous military assignments. In some cases these pressures grow into hysteria or nervous breakdowns. In other cases they take more exotic forms, such as sexual adventures which act as a balm on their perturbed state of mind.
Ruth W. was just such a case. After over ten years as a Navy wife she thought she had all those pressures under control. She was sadly mistaken. One brief but frightening emergency sent her into the arms of a young boy, after a lifetime of fidelity.
Her husband Donald was a submarine officer. Each tour in a sub usually lasted sixty days and then he would have shore leave for about thirty. He had been in the submarine service for so long that Ruth was used to this rhythm.
I interviewed Ruth months after the crisis was over and she spoke about it in a very detached manner, as if it had happened to someone else and she was merely commenting on it. It was immediately obvious that the brief interlude had not in any way damaged her emotional equilibrium, nor had it created a breech between her and her husband. Ruth told me that her husband knew about those few days and had completely forgiven her.
During our first meeting, I requested that she tell me the background of the incident. She readily complied:
"There is a calendar in my bedroom on which I check off Donald's days on the submarine, sixty days in all. It had become more or less automatic and I no longer even counted the days; I just assumed that when about two sheets were checked off, representing two months, he would walk through the door, his sea-bag over his shoulder, grinning that pixie grin. But then I realized that I was on the third sheet. At first I thought it was a mistake because I had received no notification from the operations office that the sub was being held at sea. I checked it. I counted the days. Donald had been out almost sixty-five days. I panicked at first but gradually I gained control and called a friend whose husband was on Donald's sub. She, too, had not noticed it.
"I called the Submarine Group Commander asking for any information. His secretary would not put me through so I knew immediately that something was wrong. The next morning the radio carried a report of Donald's submarine being over due. No contact with the sub had been made.
"All kinds of visions came into my head. I pictured the sub slowly being crushed under the massive pressure after a dive. I 'pictured Donald being swept away by the raging water and crushed against the walls of the sub. My hands shook so much that I could not hold anything or even work the zipper on my dress.
"That evening, after the radio report confirmed our fears, a group of the wives met in my house. From there we went to the base commander's office and demanded to see him. At first he would not meet with us, but he finally agreed to see us after we notified him that we would stay there until the following year if necessary.
"But he had nothing substantial to tell us. The sub was overdue and radio contact had been broken. He unrolled a map and showed us where the last contact had been made, about seven hundred miles off Cape Cod.
"One of the wives demanded that he tell us whether or not the sub was on an espionage assignment or some similar type of dangerous mission. The Commander assured us that the sub was on a routine tour and had probably needed some minor repairs which it was doing itself and had stopped radioing in order to test the sub's ability to remain in open waters without detection. There were too many contradictions in the description for any of us to believe him. But he could tell us nothing else, so we returned to our respective homes to begin our vigil."
She was silent for a while, remembering those events. Then she walked to a table where a picture of a naval officer stood. She picked it up and brought it over to me. I looked at it and asked:
"Is that your husband?"
"Yes," she replied, "only now he has put on a little weight."
"A very handsome man."
"And a good man," she added, "a man who wishes more than anything else to serve his God and his country. I am proud to be married to him."
During our interview, Donald was at sea and Ruth continually spoke of him to me as if the mere mention of his name was a good luck charm that would assure his return.
After this brief digression, she returned to her story:
"So, the hours and minutes began to pass, slowly, in excrutiating pain for the women involved. I could not sleep or eat. I began to remember little things, like the time I forgot Donald's birthday or that incident where I walked out of our car in a rage while he was teaching me to drive. Every real or imagined wrong I had ever done to my husband returned to haunt. The idea of not seeing him again and being able to confess my guilt was intolerable.
"During my marriage to Donald there had been many a crisis. After all, I was no longer a child, I was thirty-four years old. Why now, was I beginning to fall apart just because the sub was a few days late? I could not answer the question I posed to myself. And nothing seemed to help my rapid deterioration. One of my friends, noticing my complete falling apart at the seams, suggested that I go into a hospital. Savagely, I refused her suggestion, calling her names that I never used before in my life."
For the first time, at that moment, I noticed Ruth's coolness cracking. The memory of those days were still almost unbearable. But she recovered quickly and continued.
"But these were only preliminaries. The next part of my story is why you are here. I will try to be clinical and truthful though you must remember what I went through. No doubt the terrible guilt feelings which arose in me after the actual event have modified my story, subconsciously.
But I will do my best."
I assured her that anything she told me would be of value and no one can be expected to tell the absolute truth in regard to detail. In fact, such a thing was not possible and I informed her so. She sat down in a large loveseat and curled her legs up beneath her.
"I was returning late at night from a meeting of the wives of the crew. Taking out my keys, I inserted one into the front door of the house. The door was open. This sudden fact sobered me and I pulled myself together. Someone must be inside, I thought. You can get a picture of my mental state by the fact that I did not even consider calling the police. I no longer even cared for my own safety.
"Tiptoeing in, I heard a sound on the second floor. Walking upstairs, there was a light from under the bedroom door. I walked quickly to it and opened the door.
"There was a boy inside. He had not heard me enter the house and he was still rifling through the cabinet. But now he turned around, his thin face white and fearful. He looked at me and his eyes roved around the room, searching for a possible escape route.
"Strangely enough, I was almost happy to see the thief. I smiled at him. He looked perplexed. Then I invited him downstairs for a cup of hot chocolate. The thief must have thought I was insane. But what could he do. He followed me downstairs and into the kitchen, where I prepared the hot drink. He sat warily on the edge of a kitchen chair, watching me for some sign that I was about to call the police.
"He couldn't have been more than fifteen, with very white skin and dark black hair. He was thin and looked painfully undernourished about the cheeks. I asked him his name. He told me to call him Nick. He drank the hot chocolate, without a word, and then we sat looking at each other in silence. I apologized that we kept nothing of value in the house. Nick grinned at my remarks.
"I don't know how it happened, but as we were sitting there, the petty thief from the slums and the naval officer's wife, we both started to cry. It was one of the strangest events of my life. Suddenly, looking at the boy, the tears began to fall down my cheeks.
"A moment later the child was in my arms, sobbing against my breast. Looking back over the event, I can only conclude that there is a certain unwritten and unspoken language between some people which suddenly comes to the surface and allows them both to exchange some terrible and heartrending secret.
"Somehow, that poor pathetic boy, scared out of his wits, personified every one of my fears for my husband. I realize it was a mystical feeling but that does not diminish its power. The child, Nick, in that instant, became the focal point of every psychic current that was contributing to my breakdown.-
"I wanted him closer to me. I wanted his body to partake of mine, to receive all my fears and and all my hurt. I wanted his pale face to understand what I was going through, the agony of thinking one's husband is crushed to death beneath thousands of fathoms of water, and more than that, I wanted to share his grief and his life.
"Swiftly, without even thinking on a conscious level, I opened my dress and bared my breast. Nick's body stiffened and I heard one long, horrible sob coming from the depth of his body. A second later, his face was buried between my bare breasts, covering the flesh with his childish but passionate lips, burning holes into my mind, scarring the flesh with the young and tormented life he had lived.
"It was a moment of hysteria for both of us. It was a moment of drama for two persons who had never met before and who were separated by age, social class, but not by the fact of suffering. That was the link that brought us into communion.
"We fell to the floor, his mouth on my nipple. My hands were ripping at his clothes, struggling to free his maleness from the prison it was held in. During that time, I had no conception at all that I was engaging in sexual activities. It was a moment that transcended all notions of sex. I was joined with all the sadness in the world and all the sadness that would ever be.
"It was free. It was in my hands. Holding it, feeling it, I felt a surge of release. For the first time since the submarine had been reported missing, I had a clear head.
"But I had to be joined completely. I pushed Nick away from my nipples and spread my legs for him. I waited, my tears streaming down my face and my whole body quivering with the anticipation of almost a religious moment. Poor frightened Nick, he was so caught up in that weird combination of spirituality and lust that he could scarcely function.
"I pulled him on top of me and I screamed as the magnificent thrust of a young maleness ripped apart all the spider webs of my sorrow. Beneath him, beneath that child's maleness, straining and thrusting its way to an impatient maturity, my womanhood opened completely to it. I was so vulnerable, like a slowly expanding spring that moves to warmth. There, on the kitchen floor, on the cold tile, we joined our seed. There, in the house of my husband, I received a strange little thief's most intimate seed. May God forgive me."
She was silent. Her hands were moving nervously back and forth across her thigh.
"Did you," I asked her, "at any time during the actual sexual act, compare the boy with your husband."
"No," she said emphatically.
"Did you feel that you had been sexually fulfilled afterwards?"
"I can't answer that because I did not look upon it at that time, or now, as primarily a sexual experience. It was a means I used, subconsciously, to survive those terrible days when the sub was missing."
She paused again and this time I could almost feel her reflecting on her words. Then she continued.
"I asked Nick to stay the night. He agreed. We sat talking for many hours. He told me about the poverty he had grown up in and the times he had been in reform school. I told him about my life as a Navy wife and about my husband. He was very excited that I was the wife of a submariner and I lied to him by saying that someday he could be an officer, a thing I knew was impossible when one had a jail record, even a reform school record.
"It was one of the most lovely conversations I ever had in my life. And while the thought of the sub was always on my mind, the pain had been dulled and I could think clearly for the first time in days. I gave him the bedroom and I stayed in the guestroom. I fell asleep almost immediately.
"But an hour later I was wakened by a touch. It was Nick. He told me that he could not sleep. I gestured that he should come into bed with me. He climbed between the sheet and I felt his pliant body next to me.
"As we were resting like that, I had a vision of Donald's face. It was twisted and contorted as if it was in great pain. I tried to shake that face out of my brain but all my efforts were not successful. A terrible guilt welled up in me that I had for those few moments in the kitchen completely forgot about my husband.
"Shaken, twisted by the thought, only one thing was there to alleviate my crime; the body of the child. I turned to him and pressed my lips against his flesh. He moaned. I was like a beast turned loose, all of my emotions were focused on that frail form, only the body could ease my guilt once again.
"My lips and tongue were insatiable. They wandered over every inch of his body. They sucked the very despair and suffering from his mind and soul. They were like two pincers which spread a beneficent fever, rooting out the evil of poverty and homelessness.
"Then my lips were at his face. I parted his lips with my tongue and thrust it in. I saw his eyes. How can I explain them? They looked at me like a goddess. Each eye spoke a thousand words with silence. I could not stand those eyes. I was no goddess. I had to change them, to show them the truth. Grabbing his head by the hair, I pulled his face savagely until it rested between my legs, almost smothering in the soft, rich hair.
"He fought to breathe, and in that fight, a snake darted into the forbidden fruit, making me squirm and move, making me melt under the barbed pressure from the child's coated tongue.
"The boy was enraged. He threw me back on the bed. He forced my legs apart and in one swift moment, sent his maleness on a course of retribution, sent it deep into the very source of all my life, deeper and deeper, in magnificent thrusts, until my eyes were closed and mind reeled from vision to vision.
"Then everything dissolved into a ride into that other world, where flesh is supreme. I clutched his shoulder blades, thin as they were, and we moved frantically together, joining with a fury that I had never thought myself capable of exhibiting.
"When it poured out, I was ready to receive it. I was ready to catch in my body the heat and the glory of the male juice. I quivered once and was still.
"Twenty minutes later the phone rang. I picked it up. The base commander was on the wire. He said that he was calling all the wives of the sub crew to let them know that radio contact had been reestablished and the sub was coming home. I just sat there, unable to answer him, the tears streaming down my eyes.
"Nick knew. He stood up and walked to me. He opened my robe. Bending over, he kissed my naked breast with delicacy. He took the nipple and rolled it across the tongue, his eyes closed, his breathing heavily. Then, without another word, he released my breast and walked through the door. I watched him leave. Donald was coming home."
The reader will be able to see, immediately, the uniqueness of this case. It was restricted to one evening and was never repeated. It had the quality of a dream and because of that quality, it did not have a lasting effect upon Ruth.
This case dramatically points out how a woman, under the extreme duress of a husband missing at sea, can construct elaborate rationals to satisfy primeval urges.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The case we deal with next involves a woman who lulled herself at the age of forty and who, in her lifetime, achieved an almost legendary status. Her story begins at an Army basic training center where her husband was in charge of training a platoon of newly drafted men. In one of those freak accidents involving a jeep, her husband's life was tragically cut short. Alice was thirty-eight years old at the time and her husband was forty-two at the time of his death. He had served his country for almost twenty years.
Upon the death of her husband, something in Alice's mind snapped. Rather than returning home to her family, she rented a small cabin just outside die base and in the next two years, until her suicide, engaged in strange and perverse actions with the sons of Army people stationed at the base.
It is a frightening and almost incredible tale, pointing out the extremes which a woman can go to when her grief can never be diluted.
None of her story would have been known had she not left a diary. Written in a scrawl, it took months to piece together and the results are explosive. Because of the nature of the case, I am presenting her diary intact, with no dilutions. This is the only way to understand the depth and intensity of her illness and to understand why she became a legend in her lifetime.
Because of the shocking nature of the diary, the reader must suspend judgement on the woman and read the diary as a clinical presentation, otherwise the importance of the case will be destroyed by the reader's revulsion.
Furthermore, if the reader approaches this diary without a detached attitude, he or she will be unable to notice the subtle but relentless deterioration of a woman's mind. What follows is the complete diary.
THE LIFE, DEATH AND RESSURECTION OF AN ARMY WIFE
I have decided to use this title for my diary, which I begin this evening, the 7th of January, 1964, because it is a title which would have appealed to my husband, may his soul rest in peace.
It is now two days since his death. Two horrible days. How can I even write about it? A futile accident. One of the most glorious men in the world, and then, a second later, all that was left was some mangled twisted lump of flesh, lifeless, lying on the dusty road.
I remember the last time I saw him. His platoon was marching toward the rifle range. How wonderful they looked. How proud he was of the way he had trained them. Boys from all over the country, from all different backgrounds, each one a unique individual, and he had molded them all into a team.
January 12.
My future is set. I shall live alone and never marry again. My purpose in life is to continue what my husband started; to instill a love for the Army in as many men as possible. But how can I do that? How can I follow his footsteps? Where is the sudden insight that will show me how to proceed? I must find it or be doomed to a life of mourning, a life without purpose, a life that will not do justice to him.
March 4.
It came to me. Oh yes, I thank God for giving me the insight. There are hundreds of boys on the base, the sons of Army people. What do they have in common? Simply this: the majority of them will not follow in their father's footsteps. They will go to college and become lawyers and doctors and accountants. My purpose in life now is to make sure that the children, the beautiful, innocent children, do not leave the service of the country. My purpose in life is to give these children the same love of the Army that my husband had. My only function in life is to give these children a sense of honor, duty and country that they can only acquire in the Service. I shall not fail.
April 28.
So far my ideals have broken themselves on the brick wall of reality. When I speak to the children on the base, they are disinterested. At their age they cannot think of such noble theories; on the contrary; they are concerned with different issues, with school, and athletics and sex. There must be a way I can reach them. There must be a way I can bridge the generation gap and speak to them in their own language, in their own words. One of the children I spoke to, 14 year old Johnny, just smiled at me and told me he wanted to be a professional baseball player, not go into the Army like his father. There was a peculiar look in his eye. Perhaps people are already telling their children that the widow is crazy. I could see it in his eyes. The child listened to me like the American Indians used to listen to psychotics, with respectful fear but without acting on their words. I will find a way; I swear it.
June 2.
The answer is a cruel answer. The answer is a daring answer. All of these children are tormented by one thing; a growing awareness of sex, a growing yearning and gnawing in their souls which is the hallmark of adolescence. Can I do it? Can I use that one all-powerful means to get then-allegiance to the Service? It is a drastic undertaking. But it is no more drastic than my husband's torn body, lying smashed on a dusty road, his life given for an ideal that I am duty bound to continue. If I go this path, if I use my body, which is still nubile, to seduce these children into a love of the Army, will I be using improper means to reach a proper goal? If only I had studied philosophy as a child, I would have been able to formulate an answer. Yet, I know that the means do not justify the ends. But what I am about to do, is it wrong? I am no puritan. I realize that the needs of the body is the most beautiful and sacred part of the human experience. I realize that children, young boys, are afflicted with doubt and insecurities concerning their sexual roles. Would it not be better, for me to initiate them into the joys and wonders of the flesh, for a good purpose, than have them go to the brothels in town, where they will be abused and disgusted with all the sordid aspects of "love for pay?" I will do what I must do and let the future judge me.
August I.
Today, I crossed the river. It was that child, Johnny, who wanted to be a baseball player. Perhaps, now, he will think twice. I drove past his house early in the morning, when I knew he would be leaving, with his glove and bat over his shoulder. I let him walk for a few blocks and I trailed in the car. Then, pulling up to him, I opened the door. Unsuspecting, he came in. His features were beautiful to look at, well-defined and exuding a certain kind of innocence that only the young can have. He saw that I was not driving him to the ball field but at first he did not protest. Then, finally, his curiosity overwhelmed him and he asked me where I was taking him. My answer was when I pulled the car off the road and into a secluded glade of trees. Then he saw something in my eyes which frightened him. The child put his hand on the door to leave. I slipped my hand over his to prevent him from doing that. He froze. I moved closer. My lips were against his face, telling him not to be frightened, trying to show him the glories that awaited him when he vowed to give his future years to the Army. My hands moved down his body, moving the clothes away until I was faced with his maleness, lying there, between his slim athletic legs.
He fought a little but my hands were too swift and too passionate and soon I brought his flesh into that quick crescendo of stiffening maleness. Johnny could not think. His mind and fear had been dissolved by that phenomenon between his legs which was making his whole body move in a manner over which he had no control.
It was mine. That brilliant flesh, in my grasp, was mine to persuade. I could not stop. My hands and then my salivating organs were its mistress. There, on the front seat of an automobile, I felt that somehow my husband had been ressurrected in the twisting weapon which I tasted. I felt that my mission in life was beginning. The child was now on a plateau of lust beyond anything he had ever experienced. His hands turned on me, like greedy little suction cups, trying to find the most hidden area.
Moving under him, on the seat, I let him enter me. The sudden penetration shattered his adolescent arrogance and the child wept as the flesh controlled him. Deeper and deeper his maleness plunged until it had scoured the depths of womanhood, until it had reached the point where it could go no further.
Fastening my arms about him, slowly I led him into that rocking motion. The child was entering his most fertile period and my pride had no bounds. As the maleness plunged between my thighs, the thoughts which raced through my inflamed mind were on my beloved husband. If only he could know what I was doing for him and for the institution which he had dedicated his life to and had died for.
The car windows steamed as both of us moved our bodies against each other, trying to obtain the most exquisite feelings that our joined flesh could produce. He began to make small whining sounds and I knew his maleness was reaching that height of movement and excitement. Then, with one great shudder, the child's lance thrust deep and the hot, melting liquid of his manhood purged my body. He lay gasping and weeping on me and I stroked his head and told him about my husband and the beautiful comradship which is obtainable only in the service of his country and his fellow men. I drove him home. Neither of us spoke. The child was overwhelmed by his experience and the unused glove and equipment was mute testimony to the effectiveness of my method.
October 12.
Many children have now been the beneficiary of my love. The base is filled with stories. But few believe them and the young boys who are the future do not speak much. They look upon me as their entry to the adult world. I am making progress. It will take years before the results are in but I think that many of these children will believe the truths I tell them while they are lying in my arms. That, I cannot doubt.
January 20.
Today, it was Larry. Short, dark, sensitive, his nostrils quivering with the unexpected. That was Larry. I chose him. He was ripe for the plucking because he is a brilliant child and his officer-father plans a great future for him, a future that is outside of the Army.
We met in a movie. It was late afternoon and the movie was empty. Even the ushers seemed to remove themselves as if all the fates were with me. During these months, a great change has taken place in my method. I am becoming hysterical. Yes, there can be no doubt of that. I am becoming more and more open to their caresses and there is danger that I will lose sight of my goal and just dissolve in a welter of passion.
Larry felt my breast, his head down even in that dark movie out of shame. I spoke to him:
'Yes, Larry. Touch it, fondle it, feel the love it bears you. Bend over and take my nipple in your mouth. Taste it, feel the heat that will eventually join us."
The child was hot and frantic. He grabbed my darkened point in his virgin lips.
They were adult lips in spite of their age. In that darkened movie, in the solitude of the afternoon, before those strange images that were before us on the screen, I opened my blouse and dress to him.
Larry could not withstand the feast of flesh before him. Perhaps he had dreamed of my body for many months. Perhaps his dreams were filled with a mature woman such as I. But the child, whatever his dreams, had reached the threshold. His lips began to travel down my body. His lips became the focal point of his burning intelligence. I thanked fortune for my body at that moment, hoping that while his lips were pressing against my belly and thighs, he would know that I represented the sacred honor of fighting men; the honor of my husband's division.
Then the child reached that point which all children must reach sooner or later. Nestled between my glistening thighs, it called to him. The child kissed me there. He kissed the central part of me and the central part of our specie. His lips and the lips of the future joined. I wept as that child's face went out of my view to be confronted by that other eye in my body, the eye which, as the sensual mystics say, the body is perceived.
Suddenly, I was lifted almost halfway out of the seat as a terrible truth entered me. Like the most poisonous cobra, a pointed, wriggling organ, crude in its thrust but sophisticated in its goal, sent me back against the seat, back and up. He would be, I knew, a great man someday, for only a great man could be so daring as to reverse the tables and attempt to bring me pleasure even though he knew nothing of such things.
That tongue, his tongue, oh that tongue of youth, darting, terrifying, bringing home the truth to my feverish thighs. My stomach began to boil and shafts of light seemed to split my eyes and brain.
An instant later I was swept up, off my seat, as my innermost essences exploded and I was left a weak, feeble creature in his arms, my thighs wrapped around his hand, my breasts against his face, watching the images on the moving screen.
March 2.
The threatening letters are beginning to come. Mothers and fathers are calling me vile names. Let them call me what they will, I am fulfilling my destiny.
March 20.
A vision came to me. Am I going insane? Am I falling apart under the pressure of too many bodies and too many children? It was my husband. In the vision, his maleness had gone and in its place a gaping wound. He could not speak. He only looked at me and his face was twisted into a mask of despair.
Aprils.
Again that vision. I can no longer speak. I can no longer sleep. I can no longer continue my mission. Where will it end?
April 10.
It was only temporary. I have recovered. Now I must continue even though the loss of weight during my hallucinatory period has made me unattractive. But strength of will can overcome physical beauty. Of that, I will stake my life.
July 15.
Today was Harold. Twelve years old, his skin silken and burning under my touch. His body the form of a young god, nourished and formed on a foreign isle. Was his beauty a figment of my imagination. I think not. As I am writing this, hours after the event, I can only record my feelings. What actually transpired is beyond my pen, perhaps beyond anyone's pen.
A hot day. The heat lay in cascades upon the base making the ground swell and move like the floor of the ocean. I took Harold into the woods. There were birds and small mammals and the ever present trees, heavy now with their summer frock. Hand in hand, woman and child, we wandered.
I spoke to him of my husband and the Army. I spoke to him of the strange brotherhood which he must join, which he must pledge his life to when he is a man. The child was silent but I could tell my words were going beyond his intelligence, they were seeping into his very bones. Yes, I knew.
Then, under the heat and the solitude and the pregnant trees, we could not stand to be together and clothed. As we walked we deposited our clothes until we stopped beside a small brook. The water of the brook broke with the dives of insects and the fish feeding just beneath the surface. We swam and waded and then moved to the pines. I could not help it. I ran. The child followed. Soon we were racing through the woods. I fell. He was on top of me. I spread my legs for him and in one great swoop the child poured out his agony in the entry of his maleness. Joined like two stags, we rolled on the soft floor of the forest, digging out the scents and feels of our bodies. To feel the twisting churning flesh within me, to lay beneath the child was an emotion that was beyond mortals. Then, just when he was at his most excited plane, I rushed away, and he followed. Turning on him, I tasted him and that slight touch made the seed pour over the forest floor, giving sustenance to the roots of the earth.
We rested. And then again we flew through the forest, moving our legs with great speed and shouting with laughter as the vines and branches cut and bit into our naked bodies. Again, I flung myself beneath him and again the child was magnificent. This time, my womanhood pulsed as it bit into me and drove me deep into the moss. Oh, how I loved that moment, my teeth tasting the salt sweat of his face and my arms and nails digging into the driving buttocks which were sending me back to the realm of nature in the person of that green glade.
All day we continued. The sense of time was lost, the sense of destiny. My buttocks called to his maleness again and again, and after that, my tongue and cheeks. Who can know what we experienced, I and that child-nymph in that glade.
But will he know what my body was trying to say to him? Will he know that my body was speaking only for my husband whose soul had left all of us?
Fatigue is on me. I cannot write anymore. What is Harold doing now? What is the child doing? Do I have a right to be so happy while I am pursuing my mission?
October 7.
It is all falling apart. I know what is happening. I know that I have lost sight of my vision. Where did it go?
November 11.
The truth comes like a sword. Like a sword it can cut through all of my pretensions. Like a sword it can remove the poison of my illusions. They laugh at me and curse me and hold their children to their bosoms as I pass. Are they right? Have I found the truth? Am I nothing but a pervert who pollutes my husband's memory?
November 18.
The world is too backwards and too reasonable for my actions. The world wishes me to die for I have ignored their most sacred wishes. The world will dissolve me.
November 19
Do the children care? Will all the boys whose flesh I have moulded, whose incredible innocence I have exploited, will they want me? Am I a fraud to them?
December 8.
Bless you my husband. I shall join you.
December 18.
I must die. I must leap into the future. All I have accomplished is futile. Death, I long for you!
* * *
The morning after the last notation in her journal, her body was found. She died from loss of blood brought about by the cutting of her own wrists with her late husband's straight razor; one of the few items she had preserved.
After her death, many people talked about her. Most of them considered her insane. Undoubtably, we can tell from her diary that she had passed beyond the border of sanity during that last months.
But during those months when she was a vital force on the base, she can only be characterized as a female Don Quixote, bringing a new dimension to the age old trait of honoring the dead.
No doubt her husband would have been aghast at the way she honored his memory. But before the reader judges this unfortunate woman, it must be remembered that her goal was the preservation and furtherance of that which her husband had died for; the Army.
There is much to learn from this woman. Though her passions went beserk, her motives were pure. What more can we ask of a human being?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ever since the dramatic U-2 incident a few years ago, practically all Americans are now aware that our nation maintains many secret airbases around the globe in order to protect our security.
One such airbase is the scene of our next case history, though the actual events of the case took place in a small village some hundreds of miles away.
Situated in Turkey, the base was quite small in comparison with others and no dramatic episodes took place there. In fact, the job of the fliers assigned to that base was simply to make photographic reconnaissance flights and at no time were they allowed to cross over into enemy territory. The job was tedious rather than exciting.
Kevis S. was a pilot stationed at the base. He had been in the Air Force over 15 years and he was one of the lucky ones to still be flying at that age. His wife Fran, a short vivacious woman of thirty-five, lived in the States while her husband was on his tour.
Like many military wives who are subject to long and dangerous separations from their loved ones, Fran was a constant user of tranquilizers and barbituates. It was these artificial aids more than anything else which gave her the reputation of being always "on top of the situation". It was her dependence upon these drugs which made her take a step so bizzarre that few who hear about it can believe it.
Fran was an extremely strong-willed woman and, one day she decided, after her husband had been away over sixteen months, that she would go to Turkey. Since her husband's base was really not top-secret, she realized she could visit him even though she could not stay on the base. In fact, she knew of several wives who were living off-base over there. The only reason she had not gone in the beginning was that Kevin had felt his work would be dangerous. They both knew now that this was not the case and she made plans to go.
Fran rented a rather large house in a village about 250 miles away from the base. It was far enough to give her husband the illusion of a civilian life and near enough to the base so that he could visit on weekends.
For many months everything seemed to go fine. Kevin was quite happy seeing his wife on weekends and returning on Monday morning to assume his flying duties. He often joked with her about how he really had a five day a week stockbroker's job and all that he needed to complete the image was a pin-stripe suit.
But then problems began to arise. The main focus of the problem was the simple fact that Fran's supply of pills ran out. The base had no P.X. and though she could order them from the P.X. in the city of Istanbul, it would take too long and the delivery was problematic.
Three days after she ran out an incredible change began to take place. In place of the bright, vivacious woman, emerged a nervous, irritable, almost shrewish wife who made Kevin's hard-earned weekends a veritable hell of accusations and petty annoyances. Fran herself was too bright not to realize what was happening to her but she was essentially powerless to effect any change in her condition without a supply of barbituates and tranquilizers. Things went from bad to worse and soon Kevin was beginning to stay away on weekends, preferring the loneliness of the base to the tongue of his wife.
During our interview, a few months after their return from the base, Fran outlined her position at that time:
"I realized I was caught in a terrible dilemma. Here I had come all these thousands of miles to make my husband happy and all I had done was make his life more miserable.
"Until that instant I had never fully realized how dependent upon drugs I really was. The fact was quite sobering. But, I could not hospitalize myself in the base hospital or the large hospital at Istanbul for my purpose was to be with Kevin, not to cure myself.
"I made my decision. I would stay and procure barbituates and tranquilizers in the village or at least whatever substitutes they had. It is common knowledge that many forms of drugs are readily available in Turkey.
"I spoke to an old man in the village named All, who seemed to know everything and everybody. It was degrading to have to confide in a total stranger but there was no other choice. He was quite nice. All he said was that he would procure me some substitutes if I was willing to pay. I put a ten dollar American bill in his hands and he hurried off. For three days I did not see him and my impulse was that the old man had "taken" me. It was a wrong impulse. On the evening of the third day, Ali showed up carrying a small package. He unwrapped it on the table and pointed to the small bottle, saying it was of excellent quality and would act as an admirable substitute.
"I picked the small bottle up and peered through the glass. There was no label in or on the bottle, only little brown pills of course quality. He told me to trust him.
"The next day I started taking the pills in the same manner as I took the others. The results were immediate and frightening."
To this day neither she nor anyone else is familiar with the drug which Ali provided her. But whatever its contents, a part of it must have been an element used specifically to whet and arouse the erotic nerves.
Fran called Kevin on the phone and told him to come for the weekend. He could tell by the happy quality of her voice that the shrewish episode was over. What he could not tell from the voice was that those strange pills had turned his wife into a woman with sexual responses that can only be described as the symptoms of nymphomania.
Kevin found out that first night in the village. In all their married life, never did he experience his wife's total passion. Now, she gave him everything. She was like a madwoman, her body refusing to be satisfied, her mouth and hands like fiery brands searching out his every organ and consuming them.
After the weekend, he returned to the base an exhausted man but one who felt that the bond of marriage was stronger than ever between them. He was mistaken. The pills turned his wife toward the most perverse erotic pleasures, pleasures that the East can always provide, pleasures that have had a long tradition in that area: the sexual use of young boys.
Immediately after her husband returned to the base, Fran realized that she could not spend the next five days in a celibate state. The juices of her body were boiling over.
Once again she confided in the old man, Ali, outlining her predicament, and asking his advice. He stroked his beard and told her to meet him at sunset in front of the village's only coffee house. Let us hear in Fran's own words the amazing experiences she went through:
"I met the old man at the appointed time. The pills he had given me had not abated my symptoms. Every fibre in my body was on fire. Every inch of flesh was crawling.
"I followed him down dark streets and alleys that turned like a snake's belly, leading nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Finally we stopped in front of a very small door in the back of what seemed to be a warehouse. Ali knocked on the door and we waited. An old woman opened and we were ushered in. The old man whispered a few words in the gnarled area of the woman. She nodded and pointed to another doorway which we promptly entered.
"It was a small room that was completely bare except for a large, oriental rug of incredible thickness and grandeur. Ali motioned to me that I should lay down on it. At first I hesitated but he gave me a warm, reassuring squeeze of the arm and I did as I was told. Then he left and I was alone.
"Lying there, on that rug, strange odors and incense wafting over my head, I knew that I was on the threshold of an extremely wicked experience. But I didn't care, in fact, I welcomed it. My body needed something. It needed a total erotic experience, one that would ease the tension the pills had built up, a tension that can only be described as passion.
"Suddenly, I heard a door open and close. Beside me I saw two shapes. To my chagrin, they were young boys. Each of them could not have been more than fifteen. They kneeled beside me, their hands clasped in front of them in prayer, and they muttered certain sounds which seemed like ritual observances.
"Then they began to undress me. Never before in my life have I been the object of such tender affection. They removed each piece of clothing as if I was a goddess. The very process of being undressed became an erotic experience of the most extreme kind. I began to moan and breathe heavily as the clothes were peeled from my body.
"Finally I was nude. The rug seemed to stroke my body. The rug seemed like the jaws of lust that were carrying me into another land. The boys' began to press their lips to me. Each of them covered a different area of my body. How can I describe those child-like pleasures? Their lips must have been practiced to an incredible degree for each time their warm, moist flesh attacked a specific area, I would be transported into an ultimate sphere of unrivalled lust. Their lips played on my body as if I was a piece of fruit. My inhibitions were being peeled away just as my clothes were being peeled away.
"One of the boys moved away from my body for a moment and returned with some exquisite incense which he tenderly annointed my body with, until the beautiful odor of my own flesh almost made me collapse. These children were obviously trained also in ways of making one love one's own body.
"Then the two boys lay down beside me, one on each side, my arms around their shoulders.
"The three of us lay there, like relics from some exotic tale of the Arabian Nights. One of the children then leaned over and kissed my nipple with such delicacy and love that I almost wept. The other grasped my breast and proceeded to massage it as if his life depended on the suppleness of its flesh.
"Beneath their twin pressures of hand and mouth, my breasts and nipples turned from neutral appendages of my body into roaring, almost flaming, items which seemed to control my body and elicit moans and tremors from every part of it.
"My hands, heretofore silent, came into play. I touched the child on my right. The smoothness and the beauty of his skin was beyond description. It was like running one's fingers along the top of some deep mysterious stream which wandered off to die beneath some volcanic cave.
"Slowly my hands moved down his body, feeling and probing. I touched that which must be touched and it leaped to me. I stroked it. The other child moaned and I began to touch and search for his maleness, hidden between those magnificent thighs, magnificent because they had not yet reached the gross size of the man and still contained the boy-girl elegance.
"Soon, the two children were aroused. They were like young colts, excited and anxious, the strange looking mare in the field calling to them. My fingers and their love had done its work. I was flanked by two brown, surging organs, each of them trying to go to its final resting place, that most sacred crevice in the horn an body.
"I opened my mouth and one, small, sound came from it, a sound that showed the children beside me that I was ready to receive them.
"What followed next was so total an experience that I can only approximate it with words. Those two children began their work, they began what they had been trained to do. My body was ripped by surging flesh, their malenesses splitting apart every inhibition I have ever had. Like two spears, they sought every hole and opening of my body, and penetrated me. Their flesh was both a balm and an agony, as it sucked the last shred of dignity from my body. I was reduced to a helpless quivering mass, a mere receptacle for their organs which, again and again, entered me and went deeper and deeper in powerful strokes until it seemed as if my soul would dissolve underneath their attack.
"Nothing was sacred to those two demons; my mouth, my buttocks, my most private parts. With my legs spread I welcomed those surging pieces of flesh, but when their demonic malenesses had made the final penetration I fought to loose myself and in the fight only made the erotic assault more total.
"Then, I fought back. My mouth and teeth and thighs fought to survive and I wreaked a bloody havoc on those children and on their organs. But they were trained for such an attack and they used it to elicit even a further immersion into the flesh.
"Together, they reached their climax and thrust what seemed the liquid wisdom of their strange country into every opening, and I lay there, unable to do anything but receive it with a quivering mouth and body. I lay there, my eyes shut, my chest heaving, and succumbed to a wisdom that was far beyond any I had ever learned.
"It was all over. The children then dressed me as carefully and as tenderly as they had undressed me. An instant later they were gone and Ali came through the door.
"He took my arm and we left. The raging passion that the drugs had built up for the past days was quiet. I was calm and satisfied. I was at ease."
For the next two weeks, Fran continued to visit that strange place. And each time she visited, her involvement with the children became greater. There was no perversion they did not immerse themselves in and no erotic means that were not used. While her contentment flourished, her guilt began to emerge.
In spite of the fact that the pills which Ali provided her kept her body in a state of constant erotic expectation. Fran never for a moment forgot that what she was doing was horribly sinful.
Eventually this guilt made her sexual joy dissolve. Her background and training eventually overcame the joy at her fingertips. She realized she would have to go back to the U.S. Her husband, who did not know about the young boys, but was vastly enjoying the reunions with his now overly-sexed wife on weekends, remonstrated. But she overruled his objections. She realized that if she did not return as soon as possible there was a good chance she would never leave; even when her husband's tour of duty was ended.
One morning she phoned her husband and told him that she was taking an afternoon plane for the States. He was angry but there was nothing she could do. Upon arriving home she immediately put herself under the care of a physician, telling him everything and asking to be cured of her dependence upon drugs.
It was a long and painful process but when her husband returned, she was well and happy and able to function once again as a vivacious wife and passionate sexual partner.
This case history illustrates an important fact in the life of many military wives who are thrust into unusual and exotic situations. It is often not the situation which overcomes them and hurtles them into erotic episodes; it is the sudden withdrawal of some custom or luxury that they had been addicted to without knowing and are now unable to procure. In the case of Fran, it was her use of pills which sent her over the brink. Luckily, for Fran, the outcome was a good one for on her return she was cured of her habit. But we cannot tell what psychic scars she incurred while in that strange brothel where the sexual partners were young boys. That point, while important, is beyond the scope of this inquiry.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
This last case history is in many respects the most difficult to comprehend. It contains some of the most perplexing elements in our research. The woman involved personified the classic ambivalence between the erotic and religious drives, showing, in her person, how these drives often confront one another on the same level and then join to produce an offspring which is shocking to the civilized mind.
Her name was Carla and her husband was stationed in one of those Army bases manned by United States troops which dot. the countryside of post-war Germany and are only now beginning to slowly vanish. There was nothing in her background to give a clue that one day she would be involved in a lurid episode with a 16 year old German boy. There was nothing in her background to enable us to know that one day she would be "Called" in the religious sense.
As a wife, she was excellent. Carla and Dennis' marriage had been hallowed by over ten years of constant, mutual devotion. While there is no doubt that the early fire had diminished, as in most marriages, it was replaced by a firm ground of trust and deep love.
Her days at the base were satisfying. While her husband was on maneuvers, she busied herself about the house or played with their five year old son who was about to enter a school on the base. All seemed well. All seemed secure. The life she led was criticized by neither her husband nor herself nor her many friends on the base.
Let us try to construct the actual chain of events in a very precise way in order to understand what happened and why it happened. If we do not do this, the strange pathways of this case will lose the reader.
It was an hour before noon. Carla had just fed her son and then she went into the bedroom to lie down. It was a ritual she always followed. The brief nap seemed to refresh her. She lay down and watched the sun pour through the windows. Then she closed her eyes and a great outpouring of contentment seemed to flood her body.
This contentment, however, was suddenly shattered. Her body seemed to become cold. Here are Carla's words as to what happened:
"I felt my body become as cold as death. My skin lost its suppleness and hung on my bones like drapery. A hand seemed to stretch out of the heavens to me and in that hand was a feather. Yes, a long white feather. The hand came closer and closer and I began to tremble.
"Soon it was upon me. But the moment the feather touched my body all the cold left. I was warm and glowing. The feather moved along my body and every place it touched, a bright shining skin emerged. Then the hand began to pull back. I reached out to grab it but when I touched the flesh of that hand, an electrical shock raced through my body. The hand moved further and further away and I was almost hysterical because I could not reach it and pull it to me and feel that feather once again on my body. Then it was gone. I awoke. But was I sleeping during that vision? I do not know. All that I know was that my body was drenched with sweat. Something profound had happened. I lay back on the pillow, sobbing and quaking, a prey to forces beyond my control and comprehension."
We must accept the fact that Carla gave a true and faithful description of her "vision". In any event, it is the only description we have to work with.
It is Carla's view that she was the recipient of a divine visit and that the hand represented some aspect of the godhead. The feather, in her estimation, was the sign by which she was chosen to enter into a life of loving grace, a life which would be different from her past one by her wholehearted acceptance of the dictates of her Christian faith.
This is undoubtably a valid way of looking at that "vision". On the other hand, however, the vision can be looked at clinically, as a repressed woman's attempt to make the penis she desires transpose itself into a divine feather. Carla would consider such an interpretation absurd and point to her adequate sex life to show that she was not repressed.
Here we have one of the key problems in the strange and tortured relationship between spiritual and carnal appetites.
But the "vision" which Carla received is primarily important because it was the cause of her strange and perverted attachment to the young German boy, Franz.
Franz was sixteen years old and part of a religious sect whose creed was pacifism. They would neither fight nor use self-defense. They were opposed to all armies and weapons of war. Franz and the other members of the sect, not more than thirty in all, used to picket the military base on which her husband was stationed. The army men there greeted them with good humor, showing a great deal of friendliness to the group even though the soldiers realized their viewpoint was absurd in the modern world. During the cold winters, some soldiers would even bring coffee and blankets to the women members of the sect and provide them with chocolate and other food items.
Carla had seen the group many times but never thought about them until she had her vision.
A few days after her strange experience she walked by the group. Franz immediately caught her eye. His obvious innocence, his piety, his burning religiosity and desire to change the world, drew her to him. The group was walking around in a circle, slowly, carrying placards and often singing hymns. Carla waited off to one side for the group to disband so that she could speak to the youth. While waiting, her eyes followed the motion of his body and rested on the golden hair of the boy and his strange profile which seemed to remind her of some ascetic Saint who had been tortured to death by barbarians.
Finally, the group began to leave one at a time. They s id f rewell to each other and left, knowing that the next day they would continue their vigil at some other military base.
Carla fell in step behind Franz. It was a long while before the boy knew that she was behind him, so deep in thought was he. Finally, noticing her, he turned around and faced her. Smiling, he asked her if he could be of service.
"Perhaps you can," she replied, "perhaps you can. I must speak to someone who understands the ways of God."
Franz blushed. She had paid him a wonderful compliment and he was too modest a child to be able to accept it with equanimity.
"No," he replied, "I do not understand the ways of God. I only know what God requires of me; Peace and Love. And these two commands I try to fulfill."
They looked at each other for a long while and in that silent gaze, some strange pieces were falling together in both of their souls. Franz knew that the woman in front of him was going through the throes of a religious agony and he understood and sympathized with her dilemma.
"Would you care to come home with me? We can talk there and I have some hot soup and coffee." The boy was very self-conscious in making his offer and he stammered slightly, his hands jammed deep into his pockets.
Carla jumped at the chance. She knew in her heart that this boy had the answers to her most perplexing questions. She knew in die deepest recesses of her being, that this young boy had a firmer grip on the realities of the spiritual world than any book.
"It would be a great honor," she said and she fell in step beside him.
They walked side by side. We cannot know if the events which were about to take place were already forming in Carla's mind but we have to take her word that they were not. We have to believe her that on that walk to Franz' house, no thought of erotic or sensual activities were in her mind. All she was thinking of was the boy and the answers he could provide.
Finally arriving at a small modest shack, the boy walked through the unlocked door and helped her off with her coat. Carla sat on a small, ripped easy chair that had obviously been salvaged from some garbage heap.
Franz began to heat the soup and making a pot of coffee, also laying out some biscuits and a spoonful of strawberry jam on a plate. There was no conversation between the two while this activity was taking place.
The events that followed were described to me by Carla during our interview:
"We drank the soup and the coffee and ate the biscuits. Then I told him what had happened to me and why I thought it was a sign to me to enter a holy life. Franz agreed with me and he told me of a similar vision which he had received as a much younger child.
"It was so lovely and quiet in that small, shabby apartment, speaking with Franz about the world and love and the divine source. Never have I felt so fulfilled in a brief conversation and never have I learned so much about myself.
"Sitting there, I could see Franz' eyelids began to droop and I realized that he had spent a whole day walking in a circle carrying a heavy placard. But I could not leave.
"Then it happened. I will try to be precise so as not to elicit amusement from you. He was in a chair with one arm hung over the side. He picked his arm up and brought it to his lap. That sudden smooth motion of his arm sent a chill down my body.
"I cannot explain it. All I can say was that motion tapped some hidden longing within me, some hidden longing which was so powerful I could not control it. I walked to him and touched the arm. He looked up at me. His face was shining with trust. Franz did not know that the longing which he had elicited was not one of spirituality but one of extreme bodily lust, a force so intense that I was a child in the clutch of its power.
"I bent over and kissed the child full on the lips, biting passionately into the sweet flesh.
"He pushed me away, shocked, his face flushed and his body trembling.
"But I could not be stopped. I could not be kept from my goal. A flame was eating away the spirituality of my soul and replacing it with the lust of a woman, the spirituality was emptying into my body and there it was thoroughly changed.
"I disregarded his chagrin. My hands went to his closed trousers and like a woman crazed I peeled away the fabric, until, before my very eyes, the boy's flesh was exposed.
"My mouth was dry and parched as I contemplated that dormant maleness, that maleness which I knew would and could flower beneath my willing hands and mouth. His eyes were now silently and dumbly pleading with me to stop. But how could I stop? I no longer had control of my actions. I no longer had power over my body.
"The erotic urge overpowered my mouth and tongue and filled them with a flowing saliva which had to be expended upon some object. I had sunken to the very depths a woman can sink, I was about to taste the fruits of Hell. Bending over, I approached that now quivering object, its strength and size increasing in remarkable leaps and bounds. Then I was upon it. I was frenzied and brutal. It sprang to me like some powerful spring suddenly released. I grasped it. I tasted the most forbidden fruits. I gave my love to it, using that vehicle of speech, using the most fragrant of the sense organs to reflect my lust. He moaned, and he shivered under the assault. It grew and thrust and then, in one great spasm, his maleness released itself, sending me back on the floor filled with his essence.
"For almost twenty minutes not a word passed between us. Franz was recovering from his shock and I was attempting to calm my body, which was still in the grip of its erotic absolute.
"I wanted to apologize to him but I could not find the words. I want to tell that beautiful child that I was sorry but I could not in all honesty do that.
"Once more, that terrible passion came upon me. He saw it and left his chair moving along the wall like a fugitive from some Amazon's revenge.
"I followed him. I had to have his maleness once again, this time piercing my body and shooting his goodness and his mercy into me. I reached him and my lips and hands turned his body into a questing object in spite of himself. He could not control his emotions, once they had become so involved.
"We fell together on the floor and our clothes melted from our bodies as if some miracle was happening. Soon the golden child was without pretense or materials covering his beautiful flesh. Just touching the thin line of his thigh was enough to set my body gyrating in a whirlpool of passion.
"I spread for him. He would not come to me. I wrapped my fevered fingers around the back of his straining neck and summoning all the strength of my body, threw the innocent child over me.
"An instant later, his maleness, powerful and pure, entered its rightful place. I was swept up in a feeling unique in my experience. Thrown backward against the floor, it was like transcending Time and Space and the normal human range of feelings.
"We came together, two bodies joined in a common cause. Deeper and deeper his shaft plunged, searching, ever searching for the end, for the final mystery. We began to move together, in unison, in that beautiful movement which is a concert of the body. I cried, I screamed, I moaned, my lips pressed to the flesh I could reach, my legs were powerful buttresses to my buttocks and they screeched upwards to meet his unsohpisticated but potent thrusts.
"Then I heard his yell. It came from the depths of his body. It came from an area of his soul which he had never explored until now. A second later that weapon tossed its seed full into me, laying me back and leaving me on the floor, used and spent."
That is the brief but lucid description of Carla's seduction of Franz.
Their relationship continued for only a few days longer and then Franz left the area, leaving a bitter note to the older woman.
His note accused Carla of using a mystical experience to trap him into the loss of his innocence, which, he said, was extremely important to him. Franz told her that he hoped God would forgive her for he could never find it in his heart to do so. The note closed with the statement that Franz was leaving Germany for Africa where he hoped to work among the natives who were suffereing from severe tropical diseases like Leprosy and Sleeping Sickness.
Carla was horrified by the note and tried to justify her actions to herself. But she realized she could not do this. She had done a terrible thing. She had seduced a child who was pure.
After Franz left, Carla proceeded with her life as if nothing had happened. Neither her friends nor her husband knew of the strange episode nor did any of them know about her vision.
She never attempted to explore her vision further after the incident with Franz. She accepted it as a strange unexplained part of her life and she knew she would treasure it forever.
The most remarkable part of this case is that, even after her seduction of the young German boy, Carla never would admit to herself that the vision had been other than religious. In spite of the overwhelming evidence, gained from her actions, that vision must not, she thought, be sullied by an erotic interpretation.
This case is a unique one but there are many reasons to believe similar unreported cases are quite common, specially oh the military bases in Europe which are constantly being picketed by religious, pacifist groups. Further research in this area would undoubtably untangle some of the twisted threads between the erotic and the spiritual as the reflect themselves in human life.