"One day I walked into the room where Grandfather was sitting holding his little girl-dog on his lap. I stood and watched, as any curious child would do. His eyes were closed and he was breathing through his mouth, making little moaning sounds. He was moving Whitey toward him, then away from him in a kind of rhythm. Then all at once, his body stiffened and jerked again and again, and he moaned, 'oh-oh-oh-'and then fell back in his chair. That's when he saw me. He said gruffly, 'What are you doing, Child? Didn't anybody ever teach you to knock?' I told him the door was open. I asked, 'What were you doing?' When he realized I was merely curious, not condemning, he smiled. 'It's a game Whitey and I play,' he said. 'Do you know what it means when an animal is in heat?' I shook my head 'no.' He said, 'Well, it means oh, come here and I'll show you.' He put Whitey on the floor and picked me up . ... "
Thus was one child introduced to the world of incest. This patient, and others like her, found such sex play exciting and pleasurable at the time.
As another patient explained it:
"I didn't know enough to think there was anything wrong with what Daddy and I were doing. One day, right in front of Mom, I reached up and grabbed hold of his cock through the material of his trousers. I felt it spring to life, but he jerked back. Mom scolded me. Daddy swore I had never done anything like that before. He said it must be that I was at the curious age. Mom looked suspicious, but she let it pass. She was in a hurry to get out of the house
Guilt comes with the realization that one is committing a sin. We might reach into the dim past for an example of how this is so, into classic Greek literature in which the Oedipus story is told. Oedipus, it will be recalled, was a wealthy and powerful man, and had a happy marriage with fine children. He began to suffer only after he discovered that he was married to his mother and that his children were the result of this forbidden union.
Listen to still another patient talk about this aspect of incest:
"I was about six, I guess, when he started having me suck him off about ten the first time we screwed. I never thought there was anything wrong about it, until one day I was about twelve years old at the time we were going at it like a couple of wildcats when our paper boy walked in a kid I went to school with. Dad was furious with the boy and scared. He begged and threatened, and finally gave him five dollars. The boy accepted the money, but he didn't keep quiet. A few days later, I came home in tears. Everyone hated and despised me, and thought I was filthy. They called me 'whore' and 'father-fucker' I wanted to die
These are the case histories of real women, tortured women, women who committed crimes of sufficient seriousness to warrant their being restrained in prison-
All of these women were first introduced to sex through incestuous contact. Did this cause their criminal behavior?
It is the opinion of "Dr. Jacobs" that, if incest was not the direct cause, it was certainly a strong contributing factor.
There are no reliable statistics on the incidence of incest. When I asked "Dr. Jacobs" for an educated guess, he said, "Any guess at all would be a wild one and therefore a foolish one. However, if my experience is any indication, I should say that at least one family in every ten has an incestuous skeleton in its closet. I think this is a very conservative estimate; my own opinion would place the figure much higher than this."
It is not surprising that no statistics exist, when we stop to consider the fact that sexual relations between immediate members of a family have so long been regarded with shame and disgust. For example, an arrest is invariably treated with notoriety which often proves more painful than the crime itself. The victim, therefore, is "between a rock and a hard place" when it comes to making any kind of decision whether to complain to the police, suffer in silence, or take the law into her own hands.
It is because of this stigma that still clings to the sexual deviation called incest that we feel obligated to agree to conceal the identity of names and places, in order to bring these case histories before the public in book form. Not even the state in which this women's reformatory is located will be named.
We regret that we cannot make public the name of the dedicated man herein called "Dr. Jacobs," who is performing such a selfless, and financially thankless service for these women in trouble. "Dr. Jacobs" has asked us not to use his real name and we have agreed.
These case histories are, of course, used with the consent of the women who lived the stories. Not one word has been changed. These stories are not pretty. If the reader is easily shocked, we respectfully advise him to place this book back on the shelf and choose another.
It is our hope that this book will shed new, and much needed light upon this age-old social problem, and that it will help the public, as well as those troubled with this problem, to better understand the underlying causes and the all-too-possible results of the problem of incest.
Jane Nelson Braddock 1969
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I Frankie
2 Genie
3 Marcie Lee
4 Dee Dee
5 Chloe
6 Kerri
7 Janet
8 Holly
9 Evangeline
10 Laury
11 Bobbi
12 Ava
13 Irene
Conclusion
Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid ... to read every book . ... People who hold unpopular ideas are still part of America, and even if they have ideas that are contrary to our own, they have a right' to have them, a right to record them, and a right to have them in places where they are accessible to others. This must be unquestioned, or it is not America.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Dartmouth College June 14,1953
1
FRANKIE
"We were just as poor as it's possible for anyone to be and still be human," Frankie said. "Lots of kids in our neighborhood didn't live very long they were the lucky ones.
"There were eight kids in our family. All living in one crummy, piss-smelling room in a crummy, piss-smelling building that had been ready to fall down for years. We existed side by side with rats and cockroaches. I thought everybody in the world had them till I was about fifteen.
"We had a mother, but no father only 'uncles' that's what Mom called them the men she had sex with and who gave her money. She got a monthly Welfare check, too. I guess the Welfare people didn't know she made money on the side. They said it was important to have a mother in the home-" Frankie threw back her head and laughed merrily. Her hair was long and fiery-red (we try to let the women keep as much of their femininity as possible, and although long hair must be braided or otherwise contained while on the job, we do not require haircuts here. We feel it helps morale), and she had the look of someone thoroughly enjoying herself.
"If those dumb Welfare people just knew how many women who are getting ADC "(Aid to Dependent Children)" checks are either screwing on the side for money or have men who actually sleep at home, but sneak out at dawn you know they can't get ADC if there is a father in the home," she laughed again.
"Kids who don't learn about sex in the home learn about it in the streets," Frankie said in reply to my question how she had first learned about sex. Frankie had been arrested and convicted for stabbing a man who was attacking her sexually. Since she was a known prostitute, things hadn't exactly gone her way during the trial. So here she was.
"In my case," Frankie continued, "my brothers learned about sex in the streets, and I learned from them. They used to gang up on me. I was the only girl in the family, you see. But you know I liked it. Until I learned it was a sin and a shame to screw your brothers."
I asked how old she was when she had her first sexual experience, and she replied, "Damned if I know, Doc long before I can remember, that's for sure." She thought about it a moment, then said, "I remember once when I was about seven or eight it was after I started to school, I know. I'd done it with my brothers and thought nothing about it, but that was the first time I did it with anyone else the first time with a grown man.
"Mom was sick," she recalled. "It was winter. I think it was a Saturday, because I was home from school. The boys my brothers were out somewhere, in the streets or fooling around the stores. Mom and I were alone. She was breathing kind of funny, and it scared me. She kept saying she was cold. I piled everything I could find to cover her, but still she shivered. She said, 'Frankie, beat the radiator. Make the Supe send up more heat.' I banged on it again and again, but it didn't do any good. Finally she said, 'Frankie, go down to the basement and find the Supe. Tell him I'm sick, and I've got to have some heat up here.' The Superintendent of the building had an apartment in the basement. I'd been in there a couple of times with Mom when she paid the rent early, not wanting him to come up to our flat and bitch at her the way he did when anyone was late paying rent.
"Anyway, I did what Mom said. I went down to the basement and pushed on his doorbell. It was the only doorbell in the whole crummy building.
"You should have seen that man. He looked like an old prune, he was so dried-up. I don't know how old he was. Maybe he was just born old! He was so skinny his clothes hung on him. He had false teeth but he didn't have them on that day. I think he was drinking, probably some cheap wine, and he was chewing tobacco. I mean he was the scroungiest looking old bastard you can possibly imagine.
"He sort of leered at me when he opened the door and said, 'Why, hello, little girl. How are you today? What can I do for you?' I told him my mother was real sick and freezing, and would he please send up more heat through the pipes.
He said, 'Why, I couldn't possibly do that. You see, if I did that, it would go to all the rooms and you would only get a little bit. But it would run the fuel bill up real high, and the owner of the building would be awful sore.' I wanted to cry, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. I just stood there for a moment trying to think what to do. He said, 'You're awful worried about your mama, aren't you, little girl?' I nodded, and he said, 'So worried, I bet you'd do just about anything to help her, wouldn't you?' Again I nodded. 'Well, I tell you,' he said, I have a little oil heater that I would loan a nice little girl. A very, very nice little girl. I wouldn't loan it to just anybody.' I forced myself to smile at him, hoping he'd think I was nice. He went and got the little oil stove and showed me where the oil was to be poured in, and then he lit it and told me it shouldn't be turned up too high or it would smoke. I stood there dumbly. I could feel the heat radiating out from it, and I wished Mom could feel it.
"He said, 'I would loan this little stove to a little girl if she liked me and did nice things for me.' I asked him what he wanted me to do. He squatted down by me and put his old hand up my dress and touched my panties. 'That's what I want,' he said. 'Do you know what it means to fuck?'
"I nodded my head like a dummy, I guess, and he said, 'Have you ever fucked?'
"I said, 'Sure, lots of times.' He asked who with, and I told him my brothers. You see, I wasn't ashamed of it at all I didn't know there was anything wrong with it. He asked how old the biggest one was, and I said he was thirteen.
He took out his pecker. I guess all that talk had excited him, because it was stiff. He said, 'Is his dick as big as mine?' I studied it a moment, then shook my head. 'Well, then, do you think you could take one this big? Would you be scared?' I said no, and he said, 'And you wouldn't tell?' I said I wouldn't if he didn't want me to.
He told me to wait there, and he would take the stove up to Mom, and then he would be back, but I didn't trust him. I went along. I was worried about Mom. He told Mom he would give us a little can of oil if I wanted to come back down and get it. Mom didn't even seem to hear him.
"We went back downstairs, and he locked the door. Then he took off his clothes. I wasn't scared. I was bored, I think I wanted to get it over with. But he had to take his time. The old man took my panties off and laid me on the bed, then he sat and looked at me for a long time, and finally he started playing with me, caressing my twat slowly. It felt good, and I was beginning to not mind his being so slow. Always, sex had been fun, pretty fast, except for a pleasant sensation, I could take it or leave it. He said, 'I bet you've never come.'
"I didn't know what he meant, I was here, wasn't I? But I didn't answer him. He kept playing with me, teasing my clitoris I had never discovered it, and it really felt good. I couldn't keep from squirming because of the way it felt. He put his finger in me. Then he leaned down and started kissing me and licking me with his wet slobbery mouth. He'd tongue my clit, then stick his tongue in my pussy, and I was just about wild with the things he was making me feel. I guess he knew it.
'That's when he finally put his dick in me, not fast or rough, but slow and careful, so slow I wished he would do it faster he was driving me crazy, I wanted it so bad. When he finally got it in, then started working it in and out, I felt like I was spinning and whirling, falling down a long spiraling tunnel and that was when I had my first climax.
"I would have gladly gone back for nothing, but I didn't tell him that. He had something I wanted, and I meant to have it. I went down for more oil every time the can was empty about every other day. And he always screwed me that way, making me really enjoy it.
"The health nurse came around and game Mom some medicine, and she got over the flu or whatever it was. And spring came, and things went along as usual. But when I didn't need the oil stove anymore, the Supe gave me food sandwiches made with big slices of meat, fruit, sweets and I wouldn't give him what he wanted unless he gave me something in payment. It was a matter of principle with me, that's the way I saw it so what if I did enjoy screwing? I was giving him something he couldn't get just anywhere, something he wanted and thought was worth paying for. We had a deal, and that's the way it was.
"I guess," Frankie mused, "when you consider my attitude concerning sex and pay, that was really when I became a prostitute."
"How old were you when you started soliciting?" I asked.
"Fourteen," she said. "Mom got awfully sick that year and she had to go to the hospital. She had all these men friends that 'uncle' bit had gone down the drain long ago you know, those guys who used to move in and help support the family. She'd been picking up guys for a long time, then, and bringing them home for a fast bang or for the night. So I just sort of took over the family business, you might say," Frankie laughed.
"Did you support your younger brothers, then?" I asked.
"Oh, Doc, you make it sound so damned noble! It wasn't any big deal. Sure, I screwed and got money for it and bought food for all of us and other things, too. But it was just the natural thing to do. I knew we weren't the All American Family, but we thought a lot of each other. We stuck together. That's one thing Mom taught us."
"Where is your family now?" I asked.
"Two of my brothers are in the army," she said. "A couple of them are in school. Three of them are married. I hear from all of them from time to time. They'd come to see me if it wasn't so far. They're all poor. I guess they always will be. But I'm the only one who ever got in trouble with the law. That isn't saying the others never did anything against the law they all stole stuff sometimes. But they never went to jail. I'm the only one."
"How old were you the last time you had intercourse with one of your brothers?" I asked.
"About ten, I guess. I heard some girls making fun of a girl because her brothers screwed her, and I wouldn't let mine do it anymore. I told them to go stick it in somebody else and in our neighborhood that was easy enough to do-especially for boys as good-looking as my brothers."
Frankie's crime puzzled me. I was pretty certain that all the facts had not come out during the trial. It simply didn't make sense. After hearing Frankie talk about her sexual experiences with such candor, it made even less sense to me that she had used a knife on a man who was sexually attacking her. For one thing, Frankie was a prostitute. Prostitutes fall prey to many varieties of sexual approaches, including the man who-likes to pretend (often with bizarre acts) that he is raping his unwilling victim. But where did the knife come in?
"You're right, Doc," Frankie finally confessed. "But if I tell you this, it's strictly off the record. I'm here to pay for my crime. That's the way I want it. I did stab the bastard pretty thoroughly. I tried to kill him and I almost did. And I wouldn't have been sorry if I had."
Of course, I promised that her secret would be safe.
"I lied to you about one thing, Doc," Frankie said. "When you asked how old I was the last time I had sexual relations with my brothers. It was only partly true, I did with one of them. I guess you know why I kept it from you. I was ashamed.
"I was doing business at home, not in a 'house' and it wasn't the crummy place we grew up in, either. It was a nice apartment in a good neighborhood. My two youngest brothers were living with me. I was taking good care of them, sending them to school and everything. They knew what I was doing, but we didn't talk about it. They weren't as ignorant as I had been as a kid they knew society frowned on sex-for-pay.
"But I arranged most of my 'dates' for times when the boys were out or were in bed. There was a hall between their bedrooms and mine, so they couldn't hear what was going on if they stayed in their rooms. I gave them a color TV and a billiard table all kinds of things to make them comfortable. Actually, we had what amounted to two apartments their rooms were home the living room, dining room, kitchen, everything was on that side of the hall. In fact, they could even have friends in while I was working, because the side where I worked was off-limits as though it was a hundred miles from home, or didn't exist at all.
"Well, that night, I had this guy over. He WAS one of my regulars, a nice guy from out of town who always had a standing date with me whenever he was in town. He always spent the night. But that night, I asked him to leave about six o'clock, because I had made a previous date. He was going out for a couple of hours, see a movie, then come back and we'd have our usual long evening in front of the fireplace, late supper, drinks everything romantic and slow and all the way he liked it. He paid me very well, of course. That was the deal. But I liked him, too.
"But as I was saying, he'd left. There was this other joker that was coming over. Well, he was late, so I decided he could cool his heels. I'd never liked him much anyway, because he was so strange. In fact, I'd decided I wouldn't see him again. He was half-queer he always screwed me from the rear and called me 'Frank' stuff like that.
"Well, as I said, he was late, so I went across the hall to see how the boys were getting along. They had homework, they'd said earlier. We had a maid, but it was her night off, so I thought I'd start some dinner for the boys and they could manage the rest. I laid out a couple of steaks, and started to peel some potatoes when I heard this noise. I went to see what was going on, and this queer bastard had my little brother down trying to I guess you'd say rape him. I just waded in on pure instinct and started hacking at him. He fought at me, but I got in a few good ones. He passed out. He was bleeding pretty badly, and was about unconscious.
"The first thing I could think of was getting him out of there. It happened that he was right in the middle of a big, thick throw rug, so I had my brother help me, and we got him across the hall, into my bedroom. I closed the door and left him there.
"We went back to the apartment. There wasn't even a stain on the carpet where the rug had been. Then I turned my attention to my brother. He was twelve. God, when I was twelve, this kind of crap would have been right up my alley, but I'd pretty much protected the two youngest from the seamier side of life. He was as pale as a ghost. I asked where our other brother was, and he told me the kid had gone to a basketball game. He'd finished his homework early, and a friend had telephoned. There was a note he'd left for me. My baby brother delivered all this information in a jerky, nervous voice, and I knew he was in shock or very near it. I wasn't thinking about that queer in the other room. I just wanted to do something for that poor baby who'd had such a shock a shock that might mess him up for life. I felt that I had to do something to make it all right, make him forget what had happened.
"I took him to the bathroom and helped him undress and washed him, then I led him to his bed.
"I lay down beside him, just to comfort him. I talked. Soothingly and calmly, trying to make him relax, and I hugged him to me and petted him and rubbed him.
"I told him not to think about what had happened. 'People like that man are crazy and strange,' I said. 'Don't let what he did upset you. He has an abnormal idea about sex, and that's why he does those things. But sex is meant to be good and enjoyable.'
"I don't know just when I realized he was getting an erection, but I wasn't shocked or anything. I just wanted to prove to him that I could make everything all right for him. He was breathing more rapidly, and I started kissing him gently and helping him get worked up more. I told him not to be afraid. I was pretty sure he'd messed around a little with girls his own age. It was just that I felt I had to undo what had happened by giving him a sex experience that didn't hurt or frighten him. I know you must think I was terrible. Or at least anyone else would think so. I know I'm making a lot of explaining my reasons, but I want you to know it wasn't just lust on my part.
"He was pretty well-developed for his age, and I admit I was pretty worked up myself. I wanted to give him a good time.
"First, I rubbed him gently down there, and almost at once, he came. I told him it was all right, that's what I wanted him to do, and next time, it wouldn't happen so fast.
"I kept kissing him and petting him, and I kissed him all over the chest and stomach and then on his penis, all the time being gentle. Pretty soon it was hard again. I pulled him toward me and opened my legs and put his penis between my legs. I was hot and wet, and the rest of it just seemed to happen naturally. He pushed it in and I moulded my body to his. After a few strokes, he indicated that he wanted on top of me. He was the aggressor, now, and I let him have his way. He gave me a real screwing. It lasted a good five minutes, and by the time he was ready to come, so was I and we blasted off together.
"As soon as it was over, I started worrying that this screwing his sister would be more of a trauma for him than being raped by that male queer, but he didn't seem messed up at all. I talked to him some more and told him not to think anything about it, that I was just trying to comfort him, and did it because I loved him, but it wouldn't happen again. And it won't. But I've worried, ever since, that I did the wrong thing. But I can't undo it.
"Anyway, I had to leave him then, and I was more mixed up than I'd ever felt in my life. I knew or at least thought that man was dead. I knew it was about time for my friend to return. He was a nice guy and I didn't want him mixed up in any of it. I knew I had to call the police, but I'd already decided to wait till my friend came back and I could get him safely out of the place. I didn't care about that queer.
"I waited in the little sitting room for my friend. He wanted to stay with me can you imagine that? But of course, it was a fool thing to do, and I made him get out. Then I called the police, and I told them a lie about what had happened. It had been more than an hour since I'd stabbed him, but he was still alive. I couldn't believe it!
"You know, he could have told the truth, but he didn't choose to. He has a pretty important job, and being in a prostitute's apartment was one thing admitting he was queer would have been something else again. He said he didn't know how long it had been since I'd stabbed him, and I claimed I didn't know, either, so the 'evidence' they used at my trial was all they had to go on."
Later, Frankie said she was glad she'd told me the whole story. "You know, keeping it to myself like I'd been doing, all I could do was think in circles. Feel guilty. I couldn't really think at all. Now I know what I ought to do what I'm going to do.
"I want your help, Doc. I want you to recommend someone a good kid-doctor child psychologist or whatever they are. I don't know how much harm all this did to my little brother. There aren't many mistakes you can do anything at all about. like I said, I can't undo this, but I can see that my kid brother gets some help, if he needs it."
Because Frankie had planned for the future by saving money and, incidentally, she was supporting her two younger brothers while they made their home with an older brother she was able to provide the care for her brother that would, no doubt, help him to a better understanding of himself and all the things that had happened.
But almost equally important, this decision helped Frankie. It was a giant step on the road to a more normal adjustment to life.
I would like to point out now that even when incest is practiced as casually as Frankie's family practiced it, (and it would be wrong to call Frankie or her brothers "evil" or "wicked"), these sex acts were a factor in the poor adjustment Frankie made to life and, most certainly, the adjustment her brothers made to life, as well. My point is that, even in a case such as this, where the acts themselves seemed so guileless, incest produced a powerful backlash that prevented the participants from making these necessary adjustments.
In a society such as ours, incest seems to lead, inevitably, to serious problems, sooner or later. Rarely does one see a patient who has had incestuous relations (even though it was only innocent and childish experimentation), who is not plagued by feelings of guilt. Often, such guilt-feelings are deeply repressed and show themselves in a variety of guises neuroses, psychosomatic ailments, or whatever. The end result is usually a poorly adjusted adult who might have had life just a little easier if he had been spared the weight of guilt for having done something which society condemns as evil and abnormal.
This is as true of the person whose "sin" is, let us say, committed at the age of three, four or five, with a sibling of equal youth and innocence. Such incidents (the results of childish curiosity, and, perhaps, not-very-close parental supervision) are best forgotten. Yet, even these experiences often produce as lasting an effect upon the adult as if he had deliberately, and with full knowledge, set out to commit a major iniquity.
2
GERRIE
It is generally presumed that incest is committed only in environments of ignorance and poverty; the subject of incest brings to mind a background of backwoods or slums, poor, overcrowded and underprivileged.
Take a look, then, at Gerrie's environment.
Genie's father, the son of a fledgling millionaire, had, by the age of forty, multiplied his inherited share of that fortune into fifty million dollars. Handsome and full of youthful vigor, he decided to enjoy the money while he was still young enough. He and his beautiful wife traveled all over the world.
Gerrie, their only child, wanted for nothing in a material way. But she was seven years old when the travel bug bit her parents, and they decided she ought to stay behind and attend school. After all, they reasoned, Gerrie was too young to really appreciate travel. And her chance would come, later. She could attend any school in any part of the world she chose, vacation wherever whim dictated. But the place for a small child, they agreed, was at home with tutors and nannies and servants home where she could be sheltered, safe and secure.
Only Gerrie was not as safe as her parents liked to assume. Gerrie's paternal grandfather was a permanent fixture in the home. Everyone had always remarked on how much Grandfather thought of little Genie. Everyone also realized (although few remarked upon it) that Grandfather had grown shall we say strange in his old age.
Another fixture in the household was Grandfather's small white female dog. But then, Grandfather had many little "eccentricities" that were tolerated or ignored for, after all, hadn't Grandfather paved the way for the affluence the family now enjoyed?
"One day," Gerrie recalls, "I walked into the room where Grandfather was sitting holding his dog on his lap. I stood and watched, as any curious child would do. His eyes were closed and he was breathing through his mouth, making little moaning sounds. He was moving Whitey toward him, then away in a kind of rhythm. Then all at once, his body stiffened and jerked again and again, and he moaned 'Oh-oh-oh-' and then fell back in his chair.
That's when he saw me. He said gruffly, 'What are you doing, Child? Didn't anybody ever teach you to knock?' I told him the door was open. I asked, 'What were you doing?' When he realized I was merely curious, not condemning, he smiled, it's a game Whitey and I play,' he said. 'Do you know what it means when an animal is in heat?' I shook my head no. 'Well, he said, it means oh, come here, maybe I can show you.' He put Whitey on the floor and picked me up. That's when I saw his penis for the first time. It was hanging, limp and wet, on his trousers. He noticed me looking at it and said, 'Don't be afraid, Child. That's only a part of my body a very important part. You don't have one, because you have something else, just as important, that fits it. like two pieces of a puzzle, you see. The male has one piece, the female has the other.'
"He talked on and on about how everywhere in the Animal Kingdom it was the same, male and female, fitting together. Then he asked if I would like to know where my important place was. I nodded yes. He took off my panties and leaned me back in his lap. He spread my legs apart and ran his finger along the lips of my vulva. It tickled and I giggled. He ran his fingers back and forth for a while, then he touched my clitoris. Very gently. It felt good. He'd work his finger around, then stick it inside me, and soon I was excited and wet. He pushed his finger in and out for a while, then he put in two fingers. After a while, he inserted a third finger. It hurt a little, but the pain was all mixed up with the hot good feeling, and I didn't want him to stop.
"He'd push his fingers in as far as they would go, then bring them out and rub my clitoris, and I just about went wild. I was jutting my hips up, whispering, 'More, more, more ' and then I came, and it was like a million fireworks going off inside me and all around me at the same time. I almost lost consciousness when it happened. ... Later, he said, 'Now you understand what your important part is. Would you like to have me put my part into yours instead of my fingers?' Even though I was just getting my breath back from my first climax, I nodded eagerly. I wanted this thrill as much and as often as I could have it . ...
"Grandfather said we had better go up to his bedroom, because he wouldn't want us interrupted while we were having fun. He made me promise never to tell anyone our secret, and I promised. ... Once we were in his room, he took off all of his clothes. He was a small man I realize that now although, then he seemed big to me. ... He undressed me, then, and laid me on the big old canopied bed. Then he did a funny thing. He took out his false teeth and laid them on the bedside table. ... First, he lay back, and said 'You, first, Gerrie. See if you can coax the old pecker into life.'
"I reached down timidly and touched it. It was warm and soft. Then I thought about the way he had made me feel a few minutes ago and had promised to make me feel again only even better. So I started working on it in earnest.
When he asked me to put my mouth on it, I didn't even hesitate. I took the head of it in my mouth and started sucking on it a little. It tasted funny, but I didn't care, because I was looking forward to what he was going to do to me. Just thinking about it and sucking on his thing made me all warm and excited again, just the way I'd been a while ago when he was playing with my vagina. Pretty soon it was standing up stiff and erect.
He pushed me gently away then and said, 'No more. Now I'll do yours get you ready.' I realized later that the reason we couldn't do the soixante-neuf you know, sixty-nine was because I was too little. He lowered his face to me. ... First, he kissed me on the insides of the thighs, then he started biting me, nibbling. His mouth was wet and he had no teeth, and his gums sort of tickled me. I felt breathless. Then he got to my vagina. He was doing the same thing that he had done with his fingers only now he was working on me with his mouth and biting on my clitoris with those toothless gums, sticking his tongue inside me, rotating it around and around and in and out.
"He had told me to let him know when I was ready for him to stick his penis into me, and finally, I knew I couldn't stand much more of this without shooting off with both barrels, so I cried, 'Now, now!' He straightened up and got astraddle of me and lowered himself right on target. I was so juicy it didn't hurt at all just felt so good I thought I was going to die! He hadn't any more than pushed it in and pulled it out twice till I came with a wild gush.
"I lay shuddering for a few seconds, then I knew he wasn't finished and it excited me all over again. I started working my hips up and down, faster, faster. I thought I was going to scream, but I thought better of it in time it would have brought servants from all over the house, so I held my breath and moaned with the pure pain-pleasure of the pounding, squirting climax. I came a third time, when Grandfather did, and it was the best of all. I lay back absolutely drained and helpless, my whole body throbbing with the thrill of coming, my vagina pounding like a wounded pulse."
After that, Gerrie and her grandfather had intercourse several times a day, every day and night. Apparently, he was an unusually virile old man.
Gerrie had become obsessed with the idea of the sexual climax. It filled all her thoughts, and there was no one who knew she needed help. As far as Gerrie's grandfather was concerned, things couldn't have been happier. And Gerrie certainly did not consider this new "game" a problem quite the contrary. She couldn't get enough of this erotic pastime.
Gerrie's grandfather died about a year later. Gerrie was sent to a very exclusive boarding school. She was lonely.
"I never made friends," she said. "I wanted what Grandfather and I had done so much. I masturbated all the time. I was caught once and punished, and after that I was careful not to get caught again, but I didn't stop. I once stole a carrot out of the kitchen and hid it, and I would use it after lights-out, and pretend it was Grandfather screwing me."
Gerrie started stealing that year. Not because she had to. She had anything money could buy.
"But I never received a present," Gerrie said. "Do you know what it's like to see everyone else opening packages sometimes just a little thing like a pair of mittens or a silly little doll but someone cared enough to buy it for them someone thought about the girl and went to the bother of buying her a gift. Me I always received an envelope of money sometimes as much as a thousand dollars. But never a real gift. Grandfather was the only one who had ever given me real gifts, and he was dead."
Gerrie's loneliness and feelings of rejection drove her to stealing. The habit became worse and worse, until finally her parents refused to cover the losses, and Gerrie was sent to prison.
Did Gerrie's problem stem from the incestuous relationship between her grandfather and Gerrie? Again, I say the unnatural liaison was a strong contributing factor in Gerrie's neurosis. Her parents' neglect (although they were generous with their money), was also a contributing factor. It is hoped that continued therapy will enable Gerrie to cope with society on the outside ,when she is released, at least better than she was able to do before. But we have less than a year in which to undo the damage of some twenty years. All we can do is hope and work as hard as we can in the short amount of time we have.
3
MARCIE LEE
Marcie Lee reminded me of a small bird, somehow. She was tiny, small-boned and delicate-looking. She looked as though she might flutter away if anyone made a sudden move or spoke too loudly. She spoke softly with a Southern accent. Marcie Lee's one outstanding feature, though, was her eyes which were very large.
I knew from her records that Marcie Lee was a Lesbian.
"I think that's one reason things went so bad for me at my trial," she said. "I never denied it, never tried to hide it. Why should I?"
Without waiting for me to say anything, she went on, "People never try to hide sex when it's between male and female," she said, "no matter how ugly it might be. Men brag about running around on their wives, making it with any loose woman that'll give it to them or buying it from a whore. Women cheat on their husbands, and they think it's an accomplishment of some kind. Boys and girls, young men and young women, old men chasing girls people never look at them like they were monsters. But with Tony and me, that's different. Or they say it is.
"But I love Tony. It's not only sex. It's very little sex, if you want to know the truth. For the last two years, there's been very little like that. I mean it's been Tony, very sick and unable to take care of herself, and it's been me, working and taking care of her, giving her the strength of my love. Love, do you understand? Not sex, but just plain love, like you'd feel for a child or a sister.
"That's why I stole," Marcie Lee went on. "I was out of money. Tony needed medicine, and special food. I took a hundred dollars the first time. It lasted quite a while with the money I earned. But after a while, I had to take more."
Marcie Lee had worked at a dress shop as a salesgirl, occasionally doubling as a model, when the shop gave one of its small Spring or Autumn fashion shows, or made a TV commercial to advertise its wares. A trusted employee, it had been easy for her to steal money from the cash register.
Another employee had been blamed for the thefts, and was about to be discharged when Marcie Lee confessed. The boss was so angry and also, was upset over the fact that Marcie Lee was a Lesbian that he brought charges against her.
"Where is Tony now?" I asked.
Marcie looked at me and smiled a little, as though thinking, Thanks for asking.
"She had to go back to her folks, the last place on earth she wanted to go. I guess they'll take care of her financially, see that she gets well, if she can get well. A combination of diabetes and kidney trouble..."
"Does her family know she's a Lesbian?" I asked. "Is that the reason-"
"No. They don't know. They think she's-unnatural. You see, Tony's almost thirty, and never been married, of course. Her folks think she's either too particular or that there's something wrong. They even think that's what caused her sickness of course, it doesn't make sense, but I heard her mother say it once. She said if Tony'd got married like her sisters had like any normal girl she'd never have got sick in the first place."
"I'm sorry," I said quietly.
Marcie Lee smiled. "I think maybe you really are," she said.
"Marcie Lee," I began, "tell me about your own family."
"Oh, they weren't much, Doctor," she evaded. "To tell you the truth, with all of the nagging Tony's family gave her, I kind of envied Tony. They're decent people, not pigs like-" She bit her under lip and again stared out the window.
"Like what?" I probed gently. "Like your family? Were they pigs?"
"Worse. At least Pa was. My mother was decent. As decent as she knew how to be, God rest her soul."
"When did your mother die?"
"When I was fifteen. That's when I ran away from home," she added bitterly, her great eyes narrowing as though looking into the dim and ugly past. At last she spoke again. "I didn't even wait for Ma's funeral. I I hope she forgives me for that. I hope wherever she is, I hope she understands. But I hope she doesn't know things that she didn't know when she was living. It would hurt her to know-"
"What kind of things, Marcie Lee?"
"Awful things, horrible things. Do you think people suddenly know everything after they die? Some people say so. But do you think God would hurt a good woman like Ma by making her know
"God doesn't hurt people, Marcie Lee," I said as gently as I could speak. "People hurt themselves and each other."
She looked at me again, her eyes filled with tears, and there was gratitude in her small face.
"What happened, Marcie Lee? What happened that would hurt your mother if she knew?"
"It doesn't matter now," she said. "It's all in the past. I don't want to talk about it. It's all over-"
"I think it matters a great deal," I said. "Something is still haunting you, causing you to have nightmares every night. You have buried memories, Marcie Lee. Let's dig them out, dispose of them
"Oh, if you could dispose of them," she cried. "If you could just make them vanish from my mind, make me forget them
"I think we can help you to live with them. Even, in time, keep them out of your mind most of the time, anyway."
"What do you want me. to tell you?" She asked.
"Everything," I replied. "Everything you remember, everything that hurt or disturbed or frightened you. Everything. We have plenty of time."
"Everything hurt and disturbed me," she said slowly. "As far back as I can recollect."
"Then what is your earliest memory?" I asked. "What Pa did to Siney my big sister." Hate and bitterness tinged the soft voice, as the memory seemed to come vividly and she began to almost relive that experience.
Marcie Lee's father was a share-cropper in the Deep South. They were very poor people.
"It was cold that morning," she said. "Awful cold. The ground was frozen. Pa always made us get up early and cook breakfast and milk the cow and slop the hogs. It used to be Ma's job, but Ma was sick she'd been sick for a long time. She had a lot of miscarriages Siney and I were the only kids that lived.
"I was about eight at that time. My sister, Siney was twelve, I think. She was pretty and kind. Oh, I did love her she was so kind to me. She was always saying, 'Marcie Lee, you're too little to work. Here, let me do it for you,' and she'd milk the cow and wash the dishes and anything I was told to do. I tried to do my share, because I wanted to help her, too.
"Anyhow, that morning, we were supposed to be in the smoke house to slice some meat for breakfast some fat back from the hog that was hanging there in the smoke house.
"The knife got stuck in the meat and Siney was sort of rocking it to get it out, when Pa came in. He shut the door behind him, then kind of stumbled as he came across the little room. I knew he was drinking it wasn't unusual for Pa to start drinking home-made booze from the minute he rolled out of bed in the morning.
"He came over to Siney, and I knew she was scared of him there was something evil about the way he looked. He got to where she stood about the time she got the knife loose. She kind of backed away, holding the knife, and I remember wishing she would stick the knife in him. He took it out of her hand and threw it and it stuck in the wall, near the ceiling. I watched it, fascinated, while it swung there a little, but it didn't drop, so then my eyes went back to Siney. I wanted to help her. I knew Pa was going to do something to her. I started to cry and scream, 'Pa, please don't whip her. She was minding you. She was slicing the fat-back like you told her to-but Pa acted like he didn't even hear me. His mouth was all wet and nasty-looking, and spit drooled into the filthy whiskers on his chin. I guess you could say I watched in fascinated horror.
"Pa picked Siney up like she was a feather, and laid her down on that gritty, dirty floor. He took off her coat-I recall it was blue, and had a green patch over the pocket and it all seemed like it was done in slow motion.
"Pa unbuttoned the front of his overalls, then he pulled off Siney's panties. I saw it, the thing he took out of his overalls, his thing. It looked to me like some kind of a weapon.
"He pinned her down on that dirty floor and just before he lowered himself on her, I was staring at that thing his pecker with the veins standing up in it, swollen and throbbing, and the tip of it-kind of blue and swollen.
"He licked his lips in anticipation. He looked at me, but it was like a blind person like he didn't really see me. He pulled her legs apart, kind of forced them apart then put the end of that ugly thing between her legs. She looked like she was frozen. She lay there like she was paralyzed, waiting to see what would happen next.
"I heard her scream split the cold morning air when he pierced her. I saw the blood spurt out from her innocent, hairless vagina, and I looked frantically around for something to hit him with-something to kill him with but I couldn't find anything.
"He sank inside her, forcing his bigness into her tiny, virginal body. Oh, God I never saw so much blood in my life. And people think I ought to like men, ought to want sex with them?" She shuddered and sat silent for several seconds. Then she went on as though she had not paused. "It was like forcing something through a wall or a mattress there was no place no space for him, but he forced it into her. I think she fainted, because, pretty soon, the only screams I could hear were my own.
"It went on and on, him pushing that awful rod in and out of her, for what seemed like an eternity. There was blood on it when he'd pull it out, then he'd jam it right back in again in and out, in and out forever . ...
"Finally, he kind of leaned back, holding her limp body against him she was bent back limply at the waist he was on his knees, holding her like that, and shoved all the way in her, and he began to shake and shudder and tremble, and I guess he was coming and then it was finally over, and he dropped her, and she lay there on the dirty floor, crumpled and unconscious.
"He found some rags and cleaned the blood off himself, and put his thing back in his pants and buttoned them. By then, Siney was stirring, and Pa said in a real mean voice to the both of us, if you ever tell your Ma or anybody about this, I'll kill you!' And he reached up and got the butcher knife out of the wall and whooshed it through the air, and we knew he meant it.
"Siney and I went to the well and got some water and washed her legs and everything, and we never told Ma. We never told anybody. We knew better...."
I was pretty certain that the old man had done the same thing to Marcie Lee, but I didn't ask. I let her tell her story in her own way. In another session, she said:
"I hate Pa worse for what he did to the others Siney and Ma than for what he did to me." Still she had not told anything he had done to her, but I knew she would, in her own good time.
"Poor Ma," Marcie Lee said, and there were tears in her great, beautiful eyes. "She had one miscarriage after another. That's what killed her-that goddamned stud she had to live with, screwing the life right out of her! He killed her and he didn't care. He never cared about anybody or anything, except his own pleasure. But there was one time he went so far with his cruelty, I would have killed him if I could. God knows I wanted to. If we'd owned a gun-
"Ma was so happy, I remember. She'd carried this baby seven months, and she thought she was going to have it that it was going to live. It was the year before she died. There were only Ma and me at home, then Siney had run off and got married. Not bettering herself much, I guess, but she wanted to get away from Pa, and that's how she did it.
"Well, as I was saying, there was just Ma and me and the old man, of course at home by then. Ma and I scrimped and got a little bit of money together, and we bought some cheap material and thread and sewed baby things. They were so tiny and cute. I kept asking Ma over and over if she didn't think the clothes were too tiny could a little baby possibly be so small? And Ma would laugh at me and tell me how tiny I had been at birth, and Siney too. Oh, I had never seen Ma so happy as she was that last month or so before the baby came.
"She wasn't even very worried when she went into labor and it was only seven months. She said I had been a seven-month baby. 'They're delicate little things, but we'll bring it through, me and you, Marcie Lee,' Ma said. 'We'll love this little baby so much it will just have to live.' And she didn't even cry much while she was in labor. I was with her the whole time it took so long and it was awful. I begged Pa to go after the doctor, but he wouldn't. I was never so scared in my life. I was scared Ma would die.
"When the baby finally came, Ma raised up and took it in her hands. She was going to tell me how to hold it up and spank it so it could cry but then she fell back and started sobbing, it's dead, Marcie Lee,' she said. The little baby girl is dead!' And I tried to comfort her, but I didn't know how.
"Later on, I got the baby laid out and washed and dressed and everything. Pa came in, and Ma said to him, 'I know we can't afford to have the undertaker or anything, but I want you to make a little box and Marcie Lee can wrap the baby in the good quilt, and you all take her up on the hill and bury her up where there's no fields or anything. And put up a marker. Say she died before she lived. I'm calling her Violet.'
"I thought Pa was really going to do it. I wrapped the baby up, and Pa picked her up and went out the door. Ma lay there crying. I had to get out for a little while, and that's when I saw Pa oh, God! He went out to the hog pen and flung that little baby that little human being-into the hog pen. He was standing there with the quilt in his hand. I ran to him and started beating at him with my fists. The hogs were squealing I couldn't look.
"I couldn't hurt the old bastard. He just shoved me away like I was nothing. Then he said, 'Are you going to tell your ma?' I just stood there. I realized it would hurt Ma more than anything.
"I realized something else. Pa was the kind that would get a kick out of telling Ma himself hurting her going into detail about it. I said to him, 'No. And if you ever do, I'll kill you. Somehow, I'll find a way to kill you if it's the last act of my life.' I think he knew I meant it.
"Then I took the quilt from his hands and went and got the shovel and went up the hill. I dug a hole and folded the quilt and buried it. It made a little mound. And then I put some wild flowers on it. Later that same day, I got a board and made a marker. I wrote Violet. Born August 11, 1950. Died August 11, 1950. She died before she lived...."
Marcie Lee's mother had taken comfort in the little grave her daughter had prepared. She visited it often in the last year of her life.
Again, Marcie Lee begged me to tell her that her mother did not know the truth about what had happened to the baby. "They say the dead are all-seeing," she insisted. "They say when you're dead, you know everything."
"No, Marcie Lee," I told her gently. "God is not cruel. You must believe that your mother is happy where she is." It was what she wanted to hear, what she needed to believe.
Another time, she wanted to fill in the blank spaces in her story and tell me about the first time her father had attacked her sexually.
"I was no older than my sister had been the first time it happened to her," Marcie Lee said. "Siney was working for some folks in town that summer, keeping house, and that made me the only farm help. Ma did all she could, but cooking and keeping the shack clean just kept her worn out. That and the old man. Damn his soul many's the nights I heard that horny old bastard screwing her, and her crying softly and begging him not to be so rough. I'd know when he came he would squeal like a hog he didn't care who heard him, then-likely as not, he'd wait a few minutes and start in on her again.
"Anyhow, the time he first attacked me, as I said, I was about eleven or twelve. He'd been catching Siney and raping her every chance he got, for the last three or four years. Siney'd warned me not to let him corner me. But I'd about decided he didn't have anything like that on his mind.
"Well, one evening, Pa told me to go up in the hayloft and throw down some hay. He went out toward the hog pen, and I went up the ladder, thinking he was nowhere around. But I'd no more than reached the loft and stood up, about to reach for the hay fork, when I felt his hand grip my ankle. He threw me to one side, and I knew what was going to happen. One second more, and I'd have had that hay fork in my hand, and whether or not I could have used it much as I wanted him dead at least, I think I could have scared him off that time. But it was too late. I saw him unbuttoning his overalls at the same time he was crawling over me, on top of me.
"He was grinning, showing his filthy, yellow teeth, and there was a crazy gleam in his eyes. I squirmed violently, tried to move away, but he had me pinned down. I felt the hay biting into the skin at the backs of my legs, poking at the thin material of my dress. He pulled my pants down and I opened my mouth to scream, but he seemed to know it, and he clamped his hand roughly over my mouth and nose, almost cutting off my breath. His hand was rough and filthy and smelled like manure. The smell of him was vile and filthy.
"I struggled to breathe and blood pounded in my head I thought he was going to kill me. Then he moved his hand a little, and said, 'Don't make a sound, or I'll kill you.' He fumbled in his pocket and took out the hideous-looking knife he always carried. He pressed the button on it and the blade snaked out, sharp and menacing. He put it to my throat and whispered a whisper that was more frightening than a scream could have possibly been 'You know how I cut the hog's throat at butchering time? Well, I'm a-gonna cut your throat just like that, if you make even one little sound. And then I'll feed your carcass to the hogs, and I'll tell your Ma you sassed me, and I was fixin' to whip you and you run off.' I knew he was capable of doing it, too, so I lay still.
It was awful. The most hideous pain I have ever felt in my life. But the fear was worse. So I endured it the tearing of him attacking me with his hard rod, forcing himself into me, like he'd done to my sister that time. I felt the blood spurting where he tore me. But he didn't care, he got inside me, and he started pumping in and out just like he would have if I'd done it a hundred times before, as though I wasn't crying and moaning under my breath. Maybe that excited him hurting me that way. Then he got faster and faster, and suddenly rammed deep into me and let out that high squeal as he shuddered and jerked his body in the spasms that meant it was over or I hoped it was."
Marcie Lee devised ways to avoid her father as much as she could. Yet, he managed, many times, in the next three or four years, to corner her and vent his lust on her small, unwilling body.
She had found work keeping house in town, part of that time, and had avoided him that way. But he was stronger than she was, and he had the advantage of Marcie Lee's silence.
Marcie Lee's mother was very ill the last year of her life, following the birth of the baby whose fake grave Marcie Lee had prepared. From what Marcie Lee told me, I am sure that her mother died of cancer.
"I was fifteen," she said again. "I didn't wait for the funeral. Ma's body was lying in the little clapboard church house. I was alone with Pa, and he had been drinking. He started bawling and blubbering and telling me how there was only him and me, now, and we'd have to stick together. He said 'I'll be good and kind to you, Marcie Lee. And you can take care of me in my old age. I'll love you, and pet you and show you how to have fun screwing. I know how to heat a woman up, where to play with her snatch and where to kiss and lick-' He was getting himself all worked up, and I knew it, and I broke and ran. I could hear him screaming and cursing me and I ran until his voice faded into the night. I ran till I dropped. And then I walked.
"I wasn't as scared of the world as I was of going back to him, though. So I kept going. I'd had jobs, I knew how to work, and the next two years, I worked as a housekeeper. I lied about my age, but I doubt if anybody cared one way or the other. It's not uncommon in that part of the country for kids to quit school young younger than I was.
'it was the daughter of a lady I worked for that got me the dress shop job," Marcie Lee said. "I had moved several times, working my way North. By then, I was nearly eighteen.
"At first, I just did a little spare-time modeling, but after a while, a job opened up, and they trained me to be a salesgirl. It was like being a queen living in another world. I tried to forget the world I'd come from and I almost did except at night. I've been having awful nightmares for years," she admitted.
"I'd worked at the shop for several years when I met Tony," Marcie Lee told me. "She came in to buy a dress, and somehow, we just got along. I hadn't made any friends, not really. I guess I just didn't trust people I was scared of them. But Tony was kind and friendly, and I just somehow knew I could trust her. She asked me to have coffee with her then it was lunch and it was wonderful, because I had been so lonely more than I admitted to myself.
"Finally, she asked me to move in with her, and I did. As to the way our love developed, I'd say just naturally. Tony was always kind and affectionate. She patted me a lot, kissed me on the cheek, hugged me and the first time she kissed my mouth, I wasn't surprised or shocked except by the way I enjoyed it. I never had imagined I could enjoy any kiss.
"The love Tony and I have for each other is a thing of beauty," Marcie Lee continued.
"The first time we made love was the most natural thing on earth. As different from the ugly fornication my father inflicted upon my mother and my sister and me as night is different from day.
"It was my birthday. Would you believe no one had ever celebrated my birthday before? Well, that day, Tony got home ahead of me, and she already had dinner ready. It was only a couple of TV dinners, but she'd bought a cake and a bottle of wine, and it was so unexpected I cried. Tony was touched by my tears, and well, we cried together. Tony hugged me and kissed me, like she always did like a big sister. But that time, it was different. The kisses didn't stop at being friendly, and she started kissing me very tenderly on the mouth. It was as though a warm glow was building inside me slowly something I had never experienced before in my life. The warm glow grew and grew until it was a fire a very pleasant fire. I was totally inexperienced when it came to kissing of any kind, but Tony was loving and gentle and she taught me to express the emotion of love with my body. I am very grateful to her for that. If it hadn't been for Tony, I might never have known any love at all."
"Are you sure you feel no guilt about making love with Tony?" I asked.
"None. And please don't try to make me feel guilty. Doctor," her large eyes pleaded. "Please try to understand that, for me, there isn't any other kind of love. It isn't possible."
"I want to understand," I said. "I want to hear anything you care to tell me."
In telling me about the first time Tony made love to her, Marcie Lee was doing two things: she was hoping to make me understand and sympathize with her point of view (and the fact that she wanted my approval was, in itself, a step in the right direction, for she had never placed any confidence in any male figure before), and then, Marcie Lee's other reason for going into detail about her Lesbian love affair was a wish on her own part to relive the experience.
"That birthday was wonderful," Marcie Lee said, "and all because Tony made it wonderful. She gave me a beautiful Nile green negligee and insisted that I try it on to see whether it was the right size, and if I liked it. And of course I loved it, and her for being so thoughtful. I didn't wear things like that I never had and I was sharply aware of the silkiness against my naked body. Tony looked at me and smiled and said, 'Did anybody ever tell you, you have a terrific figure?' And then she made me sit down on the couch while she fixed the wobbly card table and served the TV dinners. She'd bought a pair of glass candle holders at the dime store, and tall pink candles, and well, she had just thought of everything. She poured the wine in water glasses, and we drank a toast to my birthday, and then we sipped the wine as we ate. And after we were through eating, we continued to drink. Every once in a while, Tony would look at me through half-closed eyes and smile, and the warm glow I'd felt earlier when she'd kissed me returned.
"We didn't get drunk. We were mellow and happy. I remember everything that happened, but it's all through a pink glow.
"We had two old studio couches in our little apartment the old-fashioned ones that make into a bed. And of course, we'd never occupied the same bed.
"Well, after a while, Tony stood up and cleared away the TV dinner containers and put the card table away. She set the wine and glasses and candles on the floor. I wanted to help, but she pushed me back and said, 'No, let me do everything. It's your birthday.' Then she made up the other couch and turned the sheet back and fluffed the pillows.
"She undressed, and for the first time, I watched her, and the sight of her body excited me high, firm breasts, slim waist, the curve of her hips, her legs and the triangle of soft-looking black hair between her legs. She put on her cotton shortie nightgown a tailored thing that buttoned down the front only she didn't button it.
"Then she turned out the lights, and there was only the glow from the flickering candles on the floor. She came over and took my hand and led me to her bed, and then she lay down beside me, facing me. For the first time, I began to realize there was going to be more than kisses. My breath caught. I was afraid, and she knew it. She said, 'Don't be afraid, sweetheart. I won't make you do anything. You can stop me any time you want to. I promise.'
And she kept her promise. She didn't force anything. She kept kissing me and caressing me, running her hand up and down my body, but not touching me intimately I mean my breasts or anything. She continued kissing me, my lips and my face and my eyes and my neck, and then my mouth again. And soon, I realized I was answering her kisses, opening my mouth, seeking her tongue with my own. I took her hand and laid it on my breast. She touched me lightly, and I tingled.
"I put my arms around her and held her close, wanting her as close as possible. I was feeling new emotions, emotions I never even knew existed! She slipped the negligee off my shoulder and started kissing me on the breast. I pulled her head close, trying to show her I wanted what she was doing. I felt her mouth open, felt it close on my nipple, hot and wet, tonguing my nipple and making it stand up hard and erect. She sucked gently and it made a thrill like an electric current run down my body into my cunt.
"Something hot and wet was running out of me, wetting my crack. As though she knew, Tony put her hand there, tentatively, as though asking permission. I put my hand on hers and guided it, pressing it there. Her fingers felt the wetness, slipped into me, then out. She rubbed something in front my clitoris making it hard and eager.
'Then, she sat up and parted my legs and said, 'Pretty, pretty, pretty...' and slowly lowered her face and began kissing me where her fingers had been. She ran her tongue into my cunt, probing around in quick, hot little jabs, then she would nibble and suck on my clitoris. Suddenly, I put my fingers in her hair, pressing her face into my cunt, and with a star-bursting convulsion, I came. It seemed to last for minutes, the pulsating and throbbing of that first climax.
"As soon as I could move, I pulled Tony up to me where I could hold her and kiss her. 'Thank you,' I told her over and over. And Tony kissed me and said, 'Happy birthday, baby.' And it was. It was the happiest day I had lived up to that moment. And it continued that way, as long as Tony and I were together. I learned how to please
Tony, too. I learned everything from Tony."
We worked on Marcie Lee's problems, but I did not try to change her Lesbian pattern. To take that away from her would have been cruel, for it would have left a vacuum. We cannot remove, we must displace. And the therapy that can (sometimes, but not always) change a patient from homosexual to heterosexual is long and complicated. Also, the patient must desire the change. Perhaps in time, I, or some other therapist, could have made Marcie Lee desire the change. But the time was denied me. Her sentence was short, and so I concentrated on the more urgent aspects of her problem.
Marcie Lee was not an aggressive girl. If (or, I should say, when) Marcie Lee has another Lesbian love affair, it will in all probability be with another woman like Tony, someone who is already homosexual, an aggressor someone who plays the "male" role in lovemaking. I do not believe Marcie Lee will ever attempt to seduce a younger girl into the Lesbian way of life. She feels protective toward children, and despises anyone who would hurt them. And, too, Marcie Lee is too passive to try seduction. She will wait for someone to seduce her. . When Marcie left us, she had almost stopped having nightmares. It wasn't much, but I suppose it was better than nothing.
4
DEE DEE
Even dressed in a blue chambray work dress and confined within these walls, there was none of the all too usual toughness in Dee Dee, as there was in many of our girls. Dee Dee was shy and polite and unsure of herself. As she herself said, "I've always been afraid of my own shadow."
I've never seen hair the color of Dee Dee's. At first, I was sure it was dyed, but when it grew out and still remained the same strange color, I decided it was some phenomenon of nature. It would have been ash blonde, except that there was a violet tint to it, very elusive and subtle. Her eyes were a darker shade of the same color. Dee Dee was a strikingly pretty girl, about five-five, very well built. She could have been a model with her looks, except for one thing: she tended to slump, as one does who has less self-confidence than one needs.
I soon found out why Dee Dee thought so little of herself: her mother was a beauty, conceited and tactless where the feelings of her daughter were concerned. All little girls go through an awkward, self-conscious time during which they feel unattractive, even ugly. A mother's love and understanding and encouragement can be a lifesaver during this period.
Outright indifference would have been better than what Dee Dee received from her self-centered mother: constant criticism and complete disapproval. These had crippled a lovely young girl's spirit. But I suspected there must be something else, something in addition that had complicated things even more for this girl. After hearing all of Dee Dee's story, I was rather amazed that she had made as good an adjustment to life as she had.
"I was what they call an army brat," Dee Dee told me. "My father was a Lieutenant Colonel who managed to get himself stationed, more or less permanently, in Hawaii. It was beautiful there the year-round summer, the lush foliage, palms, turquoise ocean and white beach.
"Mother loved the life she led. As an officer's wife, she was a big duck in a little puddle. She tried to make one out of me, too. But I think what really made me reject her kind of life was the phoniness of it the hypocrisy. Pretending one thing and doing another, pretending to like someone and talking about them behind then-back. I always felt if she did it to the people she called friends, she'd do it to me. In fact, she did made fun of me, sort of. It was supposed to be a joke, just kidding, but it hurt deeply."
A girl must have a certain measure of faith in her mother in order to believe in herself, and it seemed that Dee Dee's mother hadn't given the little girl enough to survive on.
"Another thing was the way Mother talked about Father yes, that's what I called them. And I said 'yes, ma'am' and 'yes, sir.' My father was a tyrant. He demanded perfection in everything and everyone. I thought my mother was perfect, but I found out she wasn't. I guess I felt let down. Oh, I know nobody's perfect, Doctor. Not really perfect. But deep down, I guess I still think I ought to be, that I'm a disappointment to my parents because I'm not.
"I first learned my mother was just a fake when I was about eight years old. I'd been left alone that night because they said I was too big for a baby-sitter. I was afraid to go to sleep it seemed the house was full of noises, and I jumped at every sound. We had a house guest, my mother's brother, Adam. He had dressed up like the others and gone to the party. It was about two o'clock in the morning that I heard this sound. I'd gotten out of bed a dozen times, and found nothing, but I got up again. I could see into the living room without being seen, because the doorway was draped in heavy wine-colored velvet. There was only a soft lamp on in the living room, and at first, I thought the two figures were my parents. But then I realized it was Mother and her brother, Uncle Adam. At first, I was just relieved that someone was finally home with me, and started to go back to bed, but something stopped me. They were laughing like like lovers. Not like a brother and sister. I guess I was shocked, because I just stood there.
"Mother said 'You naughty boy you! All that happened when we were just little kids and didn't know any better.' And Uncle Adam laughed and hugged her close to him and said, 'Maybe that was just the trouble we didn't know how any better. Now that we're older, we ought to be able to make lots of improvements!'
"I knew they were drinking if there's anything I'd seen plenty of, it's drinking. Uncle Adam kind of wrestled her down on the couch, and as she fell, her dress flew up she had on a real full skirt with lots of petticoats and he rammed his hand up to her crotch, and tore at her panties, and in a moment, he had them in his hand, just a handful of pink nylon fluff. He put his hand between her legs again, and this time, she giggled and squirmed. He started kissing her on the mouth and neck, and he said, 'You like my finger up your cunt, don't you, honey? It goes in a lot farther than it used to. But then you have more to stick a finger in.'
"He leaned her back and spread her legs, so her naked bottom was in the center of all those ruffles. He ran his finger in and out of her, and I could see her getting all wet, it was running down her crack.
"Then he put his face down between her legs, and she let out little squeals, and grabbed his head and held it to her. He came up for air, and complained, 'You're gonna suffocate me!' But he was laughing, and he started kissing her again, and she kissed him back, even though that stuff from her cunt was all over his mouth and face. She reached down and unzipped the front of his pants and something big flipped out. At first, I thought it was a snake! Then she leaned down and started licking it with her tongue, moaning like she was in a trance or something. I guess I was in a trance myself, or I wouldn't have just stood there staring at them.
"Uncle Adam took both of her hands and pushed her away for a moment, and said, 'You're sure Mac isn't going to be coming home for a while?' And she said, 'I told you not for a couple of hours at the very earliest.' He said, 'What if he suspects-' and Mother said, 'Adam, you must be more intoxicated than I thought. A brother and sister? What could possibly' be more innocent?' Then she leaned back with all those petticoats fanning out, blared her legs apart, and pulled him down on her. I could see it all that long, hard cock sliding slowly into that wet pussy. In and out, in and out, both of them panting and moaning and kissing and licking each other, and I realized my hand had gone under my pajama pants and I was giving myself a furious finger-fucking."
"What did you do after that?" I asked. "The next day? Did you mention it to your mother? Or tell your father?"
"Oh, no. I couldn't have. They'd have convinced me I had just had a bad dream. Maybe my father would have punished me. Yes, I'm sure he would have."
"Was that the only such incident you ever observed?" I asked. , "No. It was the first. I guess I got a kind of kick out of it like being hooked on something. It was a thrill for me, like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I just couldn't get enough of it. I suppose there'd been things like that to watch all along, only I hadn't been aware of them.
"After that, I found opportunities to watch my parents, and I really learned something about them. Mother was always talking to her friends about how happy she was with her husband, how compatible they were sexually. Well, that was all a lie. At least they sure didn't seem happy to me. It took me a long time to catch them in the act, but finally I did, and it was always the same. My father stripped off all his clothes. He looked like an ape when he was naked practically all of his body covered with black hair. It was thicker on his chest and pubic area. His cock grew out of that hair like an angry red weapon. Then he'd tear off her clothes that seemed to be the only way he could get worked up. Then he would start talking. He had to talk dirty to excite himself. He would breathe hard and fast, snorting like a bull and come at her like he was attacking her with a spear.
" 'Come on, woman, I want to fuck,' he said, I'm going to rape you. I'm going to stick this red-hot cock in your little cold cunt and come till it runs out your goddamned nose!' And he'd lunge at her. The first time I watched, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her down on the floor and got right over her, like he was taking aim, like he had a target sighted and was taking careful aim before bombing it. She lay still and let him sink his shaft into her, and then she started laughing. 'Deeper, more,' she yelled at him. 'You puny bastard, is that little earth-worm all you've got to screw with? Why don't you get one of those wonderful army doctors to give you a pecker transplant?' And she laughed some more. He kept shoving it to her, hard and fast, cursing and sweating and half-sobbing-like he was hurrying before something awful happened.
But I guess it did happen he pulled it out, and it was as limp as a noodle. He was really crying, now, like a crazy ape, blubbering, and saying, 'Why do you do that? Why do you always mess it up?' And Mother laughed. 'Who messes it up, stupid? Don't blame me for your stupid incompetence. Look here, you puny little turd.'
"She sat down and leaned against the bed, her legs spread out, and started masturbating herself, going at her clitoris with one hand and shoving her fingers, clear up to her hand, in and out, with her other hand. 'Here,' she said. 'Give me your hand.' He let her take his hand without protesting, and she took one of his fingers and stuffed it up her hole, then pulled it out, dripping. She raked his finger across his mouth. 'There! Taste it, smell it, you fuckless wonder! Who has a cold ass, you puny-peckered little goose-stepper?' Then she went back to her masturbating, making all kinds of ecstatic moans and sighs, and when she was ready, she arched her body and cried, I'm coming oooooh! Come, come, commmmmme!'
"She collapsed smiling insolently at him. "That was a good fucking, if I did have to give it to myself,' she said. 'There's my cold cunt, baby. And there,' she pointed an insulting finger at his limp organ, 'is your hard cock that you were going to rape somebody with. I'd be satisfied with a straight, good old American fucking once in a while nothing imagine. But you can't even give me that much.'
"He glared at her. 'I'm going to kill you one of these days,' he said.
"She laughed. 'No, you're not. Then you wouldn't have anybody who would keep your secret. You ought to hear me brag about what a wonderful husband you are.' She shook her head, laughing. 'Who would do that for you? Half the women you know are panting to get in bed with you because I give you such a build-up. They think you're a faithful husband.'
"He said, I am. If I wanted to, I could-'
"She said, 'Oh, dry up. You sound like a little boy, bragging that way. You would if you could. You know it and I know it. You know what you'd do if you ever got one of those gals in bed. Your pecker would melt. And if she told, your Little
Hitler image would really be shattered, wouldn't it, honey?'
"She stood up and went to the dressing table, turning and preening before the mirror. She ran her hands lovingly over her body. She picked up a hairbrush and gave her long hair a few strokes, then she turned toward him and slowly lifted one leg and slid the handle of the hair brush into her cunt. 'Mmmmmm, that feels good. Oh, man, am I glad I bought this long-handled brush. See how it curves, just like a big cock. I bet that's what the manufacturer had in mind when he designed it for women with impotent husbands like you, you fuckless fart.'
"And she stood facing him, running the brush handle to the hilt, in and out in a slow rhythm, rotating her hips in a kind of dance, her eyes half closed. After a while, she went at it with a frenzy, in and out, faster and faster, then her whole body shivered and shook and she pushed it in as far as it would go and groaned as she came, the juice running down her legs in little rivulets. She pulled the brush out and it made a little sucking sound then a soft plop. Then she threw it at him and he had to dodge to keep it from hitting him in the head. He was sobbing again.
" 'What's to become of us?' he wept. I felt so sorry for him I wanted to cry, almost. But not quite. I didn't like him. But that didn't keep me from pitying him in his shame."
"Did you always masturbate when you watched others performing sexually?" I asked. I "Always. I was surprised the first time I had a climax, so surprised, I almost cried out and gave away my hiding place in a closet. After that. I would come again and again while I watched. It doubled the excitement of watching."
Voyeurism is not unusual. One survey shows that 65% of all men, and 20% of all women have, at some time in their lives, observed others engaged in intercourse. A minority of these persons most of them male become devoted "peeping Toms." Sooner or later, the law comes into the picture. like the exhibitionist, the "peeping Tom" has an underlying wish to be caught. Part of this desire is a need to share the guilt with someone else; to make another person responsible, at least in part, for the act, I.e., saying, as it were, "You know what I'm doing. Why don't you stop me?" Another part of the wish to be exposed is the child-like need for punishment of a "naughty" or forbidden act.
Dee Dee was a little girl caught up in activities and feelings she was not prepared to handle. One part of the child wished she might be caught and stopped saved from herself. But another, part of her fed on the excitement of watching adults performing coitus, masturbation, and the fantasies that filled much of her thinking between these acts.
"Even though I hated my father," Dee Dee said, "I had one thought or vision in my mind that I couldn't throw off. I wanted to see him satisfied sexually. I suppose I wanted to be the one to satisfy him. I had these fantastic daydreams about it."
"Would you describe these daydreams?" I asked.
"I imagined him coming at me like he did at Mother," she said. "Only, instead of laughing at him, I just lay there and waited to see what he would do, and if he could do it. Instead of saying what she said that he didn't have a big-enough peter, I would imagine myself saying 'Oh, you're hurting me!' But I'd let him do it to me. I'd help by hunching up and down, the way Mother did it when she was with Uncle Adam."
"Then you realized your father needed to feel he was forcing his partner raping her?" I asked.
"Perhaps I didn't realize it I sensed it, I think. I imagined if I didn't make fun of him like she did, but, at the same time, if I fought and told him it hurt, he would be able to come."
"And that was what you wanted?" I asked. "Why?"
"What do you mean why?" She asked. "I was a sex-crazed little brat, I suppose. Doesn't that explain it?"
"Not entirely," I said. "Tell me more about your fantasy."
"Sometimes, I imagined him coming in me, shooting off great streams of juice that he'd saved up over the years, till maybe it really would run out my nose, like he said and just as that was happening, Mother would walk in and see-"
She stopped, and I prodded, "See what?"
"Good grief! See me doing something she couldn't do!"
"Do you think, then, because your mother ridiculed you and made you feel inferior, you wanted to get even?" I said. "Don't you know that was a very ordinary reaction?"
"Yes, but it wasn't normal to daydream about being laid by my own father."
"You might be surprised to learn how many children daydream of making love to the parent of the opposite sex," I told her. "In your case, things were unusual, because of the abnormal behavior of your parents, and because you had witnessed that behavior."
"That's really why I did what I did," she said hesitantly. "I mean why I'm here. I wouldn't tell it in court I was too ashamed. It was bad enough I was caught breaking and entering. Isn't burglary a man's crime?"
"Usually," I admitted. "What else did you do that you were ashamed to confess?"
"I'm a peeping Tom," she said. "That's why I really broke into those apartments. Not to steal. I didn't need the items I stole as a matter-of-fact, I didn't even bother to steal anything half the time."
"Why did you decide to tell me this," I asked.
"Didn't you guess? I thought you guys could read minds." Then she started to cry. "I'll tell you why I confessed it to you," she said. "Because I want to stop. I'm ashamed, but I can't help myself. Always, the big fear was that people would discover what I was really doing peeping. Not being caught stealing, being thought a thief. I didn't mind that. It was having them find out I was so damned twisted!
"I've never had a normal screwing in my life. The closest I ever came to it was about a year ago, when I was out with this boy and another couple. They were drinking. I wasn't. Anyhow, this other couple was going at it, screwing like mad, and I practically raped the guy I was with. While he screwed me, I watched the other couple. But he-the guy I was with had had too much to drink, and he passed out on top of me.
"I tried to find other situations like that went to a few hippie parties and stuff like that, but I never lucked out, for one reason or another. I mean it just, somehow, never happened that I had an opportunity to screw and watch at the same time. It was either one or the other and the screwing alone was never any good for me. Watching was better, because, then, at least I could play with myself and get off my rocks."
"Let's go back to your childhood. Was there ever anything physical between your father and yourself?"
"Yes. I finally did something about my fantasy. One night when I knew Father had been drinking heavily it was after one of those scenes between him and Mother and he was in bed asleep, naked. Mother had been drinking, too. When she saw he was asleep and she couldn't torment him anymore, she went into the guest room. I figured she was going to wait for Uncle Adam she often did that, then sneaked back to her room at dawn.
"Anyway, I was hiding in a closet, and I waited a while, thinking about it. The light was off, now-she'd turned it off as she left the room. I crawled over to the bed and. reached up under the covers and closed my hand around Father's cock. It hardened at once. I fondled it a little, then I stood up and put my head under the sheet and when he still didn't move, I put my mouth on the head of his dick. It was hot and throbbing. He moaned a little, but he didn't seem to wake up, so I really went at it, sucking it, ramming it in and out of my mouth as far as I could, and rubbing the shaft of it up and down faster and faster.
"Instinctively, I suppose, I knew he was about to shoot off, and I moved my face, but I held onto his rod with both hands, feeling it throb and jerk as he shot out stream after stream of hot juice. There was a puddle of it on his hairy belly. I was scared he would wake up, so I crawled across the floor and left the room. Now, I am sure he couldn't possibly have slept through all of that and I am as certain that he knew damned well who had jacked him off. He was just pretending to be asleep. That's the way he was him and the old lady both always pretending that everything was perfect, and that, if there was anything wrong, they couldn't be blamed, because they didn't even know about it! I guess I should have learned that trick from my parents. It would have made things a lot easier for me."
Dee Dee's problems were legion. After careful consideration and many tests, I decided, the best course would by hypnotherapy to more or less neutralize some of the harsher experiences and her reactions to them. In our talk sessions, I was able to help her to a better understanding and acceptance of herself as a person, and, later on, as a female human being. Her posture improved with her self-confidence, and I believe she will make a good adjustment to society, now that she has the necessary emotional equipment to cope with life's everyday demands.
5
CHLOE
Chloe was incarcerated for the crime of murder: she'd beaten her employer to death for withholding too much money from the girls' earnings. Chloe was a prostitute; her victim a madam.
"All my life I wanted money more than anything on earth," Chloe said fervently. "I never had much schooling, and I'm not too bright or ambitious. I started ripening early, and by the time I was fourteen, I knew what my life's work was going to be. It was the best way to make a lot of money."
Chloe was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. Her figure was perfect; her honey-colored hair was natural, and there was a look of child-like innocence in her face that belied every experience of her life.
"You can't imagine how poor we were," she said. "Poor white trash, people called us. Where we lived was worse than a slum it was a scab on the snatch of Society. Our house if you want to call it a house was made out of any piece of trash my old man could find apple crates, discarded parts of old cars, piss-soaked mattresses from the city dump. We lived like animals, and my parents screwed and had offspring like animals. I don't know how many of us there were. Some of my brothers and sisters died from filth and malnutrition, some from rat bites but there were plenty left.
"I haven't thought about it much in years, Doc. I hate to think about it. It's like digging up something rotten and stinking with your bare hands.
"There were probably seven or eight of us living in that shack sometimes more, I guess. We scrounged for food. It was hot warm the year around or we would never have stayed alive at all in that mess. My old man and brothers fished sometimes. We stole fruit from the fruit farmers. Sometimes somebody would steal a chicken or even a pig. We worked sometimes picking fruit. The place where we lived was condemned, and the cops were always telling us we had to move, but we didn't, and they left us pretty much alone until they got another complaint.
"My sex life, Doc? Are you kidding? I knew about sex before I knew about anything else how could I help it? All of us living in such close quarters. There was never any shame or anything, like I have learned since that other people have for sex. My parents would screw right in front of us they didn't even bother to cover up. Nobody ever scolded any of us for playing with ourselves, the way I've heard most parents do. Screwing was as natural as eating and we did it a hell of a lot oftener.
"My brothers and sisters fornicated from the time they could find their equipment. I don't remember the first time I was laid.
"I liked it. I always did. Lots of prostitutes don't like their work I mean they don't enjoy fucking. Lots of them are Lesbians they screw men for the money. Well, I did it for money too-and my price was plenty high. But I guess the reason I'm as good at my work as I am is because I really enjoy screwing."
She spoke with pride about her "profession" and her abilities. Chloe appeared to be totally without guilt feelings of any kind. I had never met anyone like her before; I have never met anyone like her since, and it is for that reason that I am including Chloe's case history.
I felt it was my duty to try to show her how and why she had been wrong to kill her boss, but it was difficult to know where to start. Chloe had killed in a fit of anger and indignation, but it was the same quality of emotion that an animal feels when he fights to the death over a choice piece of raw meat. Nothing in Chloe's experience had taught her the rights and wrongs, the moral lessons, the fears and guilts and self-control that other human beings are taught as they grow up.
Furthermore, there were times when Chloe's reasoning defied argument. For example, the time I asked her what she intended to do for a living when she was released. I had been urging her to choose a trade which she could learn while she was here.
"I'm going to be a whore," she said.
"Don't you know prostitution is against the law?" I asked her.
"I know it, but it's a silly law. It's like that old Prohibition law they used to have. Only worse. It's a natural thing for people to screw, Doc. They've been doing it since the beginning of time. How do you think you got born, Doc?"
"But there is no law against sex," I pointed out. "Sex within marriage is sanctioned. I'm talking about illicit sex prostitution."
"Doc," she said seriously, "Don't you know there are lots of men who would never get a piece of pussy if they had to get married to get it?
"Sure," she went on, "I admit lots of married men visit whorehouses. But for some guys, that's the only place they can get any sex. Unless they go rape somebody.
"Screw the Law, Doc," she said. "Tell me, honestly, don't you think it's a hell of a lot better for Society for a guy to buy himself a piece of tail legally or illegally than it is to go out and commit a rape?"
I couldn't argue with her. I changed the subject.
"If you won't choose a trade, we'll have to assign you one," I told her. "Your aptitude tests show you could do well at any one of several vocations. You have to be trained for some job, Chloe. It's one of our rules and a very good rule."
"Agreed, Doc," she said cheerfully. "And for the gals who don't have a trade, it's great everyone ought to have a trade, Doc. Me, I have one. I'm as well trained in my profession as you are in yours."
"You have a great personality," I told her seriously. "You're a beautiful girl. You have the ability to put people at ease, make them laugh, make them feel good. You would be wonderful as a receptionist. You could have a respectable life," I said.
"My work doesn't shame me, Doc, if that's what you're getting at," she laughed. "Oh, I know plenty of girls who are ashamed of being whores. But not me. I'm good at my work, Doc. Really good. It's all I've ever done. Now, if I were unhappy or guilty or ashamed or something like that, you'd be right to try to help me. But I don't need help. I'm happy. Oh, not right this minute, in this jail. And I agree with you, Doc, it was stupid of me to lose my temper and clobber that old bitch."
"It was stupid," I said. "And it was wrong. It's wrong for one human being to take the life of another."
"I know it," she agreed. "But I'm here. I'm paying for it by spending time in your lousy jail. You can bet your sweet ass I'll never do that again.
"But she was wrong to take my money, and there wasn't any law to make her quit cheating me."
"If you'd been working at a legitimate job, you could have gotten justice through the law," I pointed out.
"Well," she said tiredly, "I know I did a stupid thing and you the law Society has a right to punish me. And I give you my word I won't be back. Isn't that enough?"
I could see this was going to take time, and I wasn't too hopeful of success. There was no common meeting ground where I could communicate with Chloe. It was as hopeless as trying to explain to a cocker spaniel puppy why it was wrong to urinate on the living room sofa. As far as Chloe was concerned, I might as well have been speaking in a foreign language. If I was ever to make Chloe understand what I was talking about, I would have to teach her that language, teach her like a child, for Chloe was genuinely amoral.
I began by making her talk about her earliest memories. These had to be dug out and examined to make way for the lessons concerning plain old right and wrong of which Chloe had no more concept than a newborn infant.
For the sake of illuminating the motivation behind Chloe's amoral personality, excerpts from her revelations follow:
"One of the first things that had to do with sex that I remember is a game we used to play," she said. "I thought my brothers and sisters made it up, but of course they didn't I mean they discovered it on their own which amounts to the same as inventing it only somebody else invented it a long time ago.
"We'd all lie down on the mattresses on the floor, five or six of us, each one with his head at the crotch of the next one, making a circle. Then one of the kids would give the signal to start, and we'd all go at it, each one working as hard as we could on the cock or cunt of whoever we had. The point of the game was to be the last one to come. When somebody shot his or her gun off, they had to drop out of the game. It was pretty hard to win when the object was to make somebody come, but keep from blasting off yourself.
Sometimes I'd have one of my sisters. I'd suck at her pussy, run my fingers in, tease her clitoris like crazy, at the same time trying to keep from getting too hot from whoever was going at my snatch with their tongue and hands. Then I'd make my sister shoot off, and she'd drop out of the game, and maybe the next one in the chain would be one of my brothers. I'd poke his hard cock in my mouth and suck like crazy, putting both balls in my mouth, then up and down his dick, ramming it deep in my mouth, pulling it out against all the suction I could give it, gnawing and nibbling and sucking at the head I could make the boys come in record time," she bragged, laughing at the memory.
"And at the same time, I was getting my cunt worked over in the most delicious and exciting way. Let me tell you, Doc, when somebody's trying to win a game, they really concentrate on making you cream your seat! But, man was it good prolonging it as long as you could being right on top of coming for minutes, before you finally lost control and blew your load!"
When Chloe was fourteen, she was offered a dollar to have intercourse with a soldier. A dollar had seemed like a lot of money, but when it was over, the soldier had given her some advice: her merchandise was worth a whole lot more, he said, and made her a proposition.
He bought her a new outfit the first new clothes she had ever owned. Then he coached her on the fine points of soliciting, and they were in business, the soldier getting half the take.
Chloe simply never went home again; she was sure no one noticed or missed her.
By the time the soldier was discharged, Chloe was a professional prostitute. She worked alone for a few years, but after being beaten up "by a couple of weirdoes," she decided she needed the safety of a "house."
Chloe was a favorite right from the start.
"I made that old bitch rich," she said vehemently. "She had no right to cheat me she was already getting a hell of a good cut."
"And you really think that's what you want to go back to when you leave her?" I asked.
"No, not that particular house," she said. "There are better ones. Places where I could make plenty of money."
"What about later?" I asked. "You won't always be young and pretty," I reminded her.
"I don't like to think about that," she said. "It always makes me think of my mother." There were tears in Chloe's eyes for the first time. I mistook them for tears of homesickness and love for her mother, but she shattered that hope when she said:
"I'd rather be dead than be an old hag like her. That's why I want money lots of money. I spend some on clothes and things like that, but I save most of it. I'd kill myself before I'd ever go back to living like that."
"So you have some saved?" I asked.
"Oh, no you don't, Doc. I know about Income Tax evasion. I'm not telling you where my dough is."
"That wasn't what I meant," I said. "But you do have a point. You could land back in jail for that, you know."
"Are you trying to scare me?"
"I'm trying to make you face the fact that there's-a tomorrow, Chloe. That you ought to prepare for it in a practical way, learn a trade that you can pursue no matter what your age."
She looked thoughtful. "You may be right, Doc. Do you think I'm smart enough to learn to type. Do you really think I might be a receptionist?"
"I really do."
"Yeah, it'll be something to fall back on when I'm too old to peddle my tail."
It wasn't the answer I was looking for, but it was a beginning of sorts. These things always require time, but Chloe will be with us for a while yet; perhaps she'll decide to make a respectable citizen of herself after all.
6
KERRI
Even in a shapeless uniform, Kerri had the look of high society. She'd come from the top of the social ladder or near the top, at any rate. Three generations of money, a mansion in Boston, a summer place in Nantuckett. Not that Kerri talked about these things; like most wealthy people (except for the Johnny-come-lately type who are, themselves, impressed by their sudden wealth) she took her background for granted.
Kerri was only attractive, but she had an air of beauty and regality. She had the training of the finest private schools. When she finishes her stay here, she will have a substantial private income for life. But her family has washed its hands of her, and after what I have learned from Kerri, I am inclined to agree with her that there will never be a reconciliation.
"I don't care," she said. "There's nothing for me there now that Paul is dead. He was the only one who ever meant anything to me. Or to whom I meant anything."
Paul was Kerri's brother, and only sibling. He was fifteen when Kerri was born.
"I could never make friends," Kerri said, "even in school. I went through the motions, did as I was told, joined in the activities, but I never felt anyone liked me or even knew me. Nor did I know anyone. Paul was the only person I was ever close to, and it was after Paul's death that everything happened the drug-addiction, the scandal, everything. When you only have one person in the whole world, and lose him, there's no point in living. That's what my parents don't understand. It's difficult to understand another's needs, if they're different from your own. I wanted them to understand mine, but I never understood theirs. You see, I know my parents gave me everything they could they gave me exactly what they needed: money. The things money could buy."
Kerri was voicing what is very common among human beings. Meaning well, we try to follow the Golden Rule, to "Do unto others as we would have them do unto us." But what we frequently do not realize is that human needs differ.
The most common complaint among us is "I am misunderstood." Husbands and wives, bosses and employees all suffer. But perhaps the most frequent complaint comes from children who cry, "My parents don't understand me."
And that's just about all they can do: cry. Protest. Parents too often look at them and say, "What is there to understand? You are only a child; what could you possibly know? You're too young. Listen to me; I know what's best for you."
And then, when the child's frustration gets him into real trouble, many parents react as Kerri's parents reacted, hiding from blame behind the protest, "I did everything for that child that I knew how to do. Now, I'm through."
Kerri was convicted on the charge of possession of narcotics. She was a heroin addict. When I first saw her, she had been in the infirmary for a week. The need for the drug was no longer a physical thing, but we know too well that the physical aspect of drug addiction is the least part of recovery. Most addicts find a "connection" within hours of release from hospital or jail.
My job was to find the reasons behind Kerri's addiction, and, more vital, to find a way to make her want to live without dependence on narcotics.
To be perfectly honest, I wasn't very hopeful of success. For, as Kerri had pointed out, the only meaningful thing in her life had been Paul. Now that Paul was dead, Kerri had made narcotics the most meaningful thing in her life.
Since Paul seemed to be the only human being Kerri had ever cared about, I asked her to tell me about him.
"Paul was perfect," she stated simply. "Handsome as a god, sensitive, creative, and, intellectually, he was far above anyone I have ever known. But he was trapped in a stupid family that didn't understand him nor realize he had talents that could have made him a great man in the eyes of the world. All our father could think of, from the time Paul was born, was that now he had a son to carry on the family business and the family traditions. It was as though he believed Paul was a carbon copy of himself, not an individual with his own hopes and dreams and ambitions his own life to live.
"You can't imagine the beauty of the poetry Paul wrote. He used to take me up to his room he had the whole third floor made into a studio. And he'd read to me. I didn't understand all of what he wrote sometimes, there was just the feeling his voice gave me the way the words made me feel. I don't know why it touched me the way it did why it affected me like that. How does one explain-
"I spent a lot of time with Paul, listening to him, being with him."
She was silent, so I probed a little, "What do you mean, being with him?"
"We were lovers," she said quietly. "I don't care what you say, if you think it was wrong of course you do I don't care. We were lovers. I was the only girl Paul ever loved. Think what you will!"
My voice matched her own for calmness. "Would you like to tell me about it?"
"It wasn't evil," Kerri said again. "It wasn't, because it was as though we were the only two people on earth as though the world had ended and we were the only survivors, male and female, and we had to cling together or be destroyed, too.
"Paul used to talk to me when I was too young to understand, but I listened. It was comforting, usually. Even when it was frightening, I didn't want to leave him, though.
"But the way he loved me that was never frightening. He used to place me on his big, soft bed in that dim room it was all dark-green silk drapes and brown walls. He used to fondle me as he read. 'Let me touch the touch of my love, my one reality,' and his hand would caress my leg, my hips, my stomach. Then one day, the touching became more intimate, and neither of us wanted to stop it. Paul kissed my face, my neck, my body. He took off my clothes, and kissed me all over. His mouth became hot and wet, and my breath came fast and I was so excited, I didn't know what to do. His mouth was on my he called it a 'pussy.' He said, 'Oh, my soft little, warm little pussy, so loving and giving, so sweet.' As he kissed me, I grew warmer, not just there, but all over my body. His mouth concentrated there, kissing, licking, nibbling, and then he put his tongue into the opening, and I raised up to meet his mouth, his face. He probed in and out with his tongue, sucking me on the outside, probing deeply inside. All at once, the warmth became a kind of liquid heat, so intense I didn't think I could stand it, and then, while his mouth worked on my pussy, I came in a beautiful, frightening climax.
"He continued to rub me and caress me. And soon, I was as hot as before. Now, he took off his own clothes, and told me he wanted me to give him some pleasure, too. I took his penis in my hands and held it to my face. I kissed it and loved it. He told me what to do, he said, 'Lick around the head,' and I did. He said, 'Take the head in your mouth,' and I did that too. All the while, he was playing with me with his fingers. I was vaguely aware that he was hurting me a little, but the hurt was nothing. What he was doing was putting his fingers inside, trying to stretch me, so we could make love. I kept sucking on him, and it was as though I knew where to touch, where to suck, for in a few minutes, he came. I took his penis out of my mouth, not because I didn't want his semen in my mouth, but because I wanted to see what was happening. I thought it was beautiful, the rhythmical spewing of that lovely white fluid in little spurts, like music would look if you could see it rising and falling, until the last pearly droplet hung on the head like dew on a precious flower.
"We continued to play with each other, have oral love, sucking and kissing each other, but all the while, Paul was preparing my pussy for I entrance with his lovely tool. Finally, the day came. He told me we were going to make love the way lovers are supposed to do. I am going to insert my peter into your pussy,' he said. I was so excited I could hardly breathe. When he talked about it, it always made it more exciting.
"He had taken off all of our clothes. It was late evening, not yet dark. I could see his fine body. He was not a big man, but he was beautifully formed. Not muscular, but perfectly proportioned. We lay on our sides on the big pillows, smiling at each other. Paul kissed me on the mouth. He kissed me tenderly until my mouth was soft and yielding, then he put his tongue inside my mouth. He had never kissed me like that before. I met his tongue with my own. The fire seemed to build in our mouths and spread all through us at least it did in me, and I hoped Paul was feeling as I was.
"His hands touched my body. My chest where my breasts had just begun to swell a little. He kissed them softly, tongued them until they swelled with passion. Then he put his fingers in my pussy and brought them out dripping with the fluid his lovemaking had caused me to secrete.
"Then he pulled away from me. He was smiling, and he said, 'I want to watch it happen for the first time. Do you?' I said 'Yes,' so breathless I could hardly form the word.
"Paul brought the bureau over and tilted the mirror so we were reflected in the large glass. Then he laid me on my back, spread my legs apart and lowered himself to me. I could see his peter touching my pussy I could see it by looking down, and, because of the unusual tilt of the mirror, I could also see us there. My vagina throbbed. It felt swollen. My breathing was difficult. My heart seemed to be beating through my whole body. I had never felt so alive, so exquisitely alive, in all my life!
"I spread my legs farther apart. I reached for
Paul's peter and guided it with my hands until it found the opening, and then I took away my hands, and we watched, and felt, and now, that beautiful, hot head was inside me, and I could feel every bit of it, as though every nerve in me was standing on tiptoe, feeling him. As he sank into me, I raised my hips to admit him, to welcome him into my body. We watched as the shaft slowly sank out of sight into my pussy. Then he drew it out, and it was glistening with the love juices I had secreted. That is what Paul called it, that vaginal moisture, he called it Move juices,' and that's what it was. Love, so intense, so heightened that every stroke was heaven. He was careful that first time, going into me slowly, pulling out slowly. Partly it was so we could watch and enjoy the beauty of the slow rhythm of our union, partly because Paul did not want to hurt me. After several minutes, I would have speeded us up. I was ready to come, and I couldn't wait, but Paul made me wait. He continued that slow in-and-out rhythm, and when the climax came, it was slow and prolonged, as though we were spiraling slowly up and up and up. I felt Paul's juice splaying against the walls of my vagina, so strong, so much of it. I thought he would never get through coming, and I was matching him, spurt for spurt. I never wanted it to end and it did last a long time.
"There were lots of times when we did it that way, but there were times when we did it fast and furiously. Paul said, 'We have time to do it every way we can think of, because we have all the time in the world, Kerri. All the time in the world!'
"Only, of course, we didn't have all the time in the world. We only had six years from the time we had our first intercourse. Of course, I must remember we had the years up to that time, too years when Paul loved and cherished me, years when I was his darling baby.
"Paul was so young too young to die. He was twenty-four when we first made love. He was barely thirty when he died. It wasn't fair. It would never have happened if it hadn't been for our father. He kept making him do things for the company, entertain clients, fly all over the country to talk to people. Paul was good at that, of course. But it wasn't what he wanted. He was charming and people liked him, and Father capitalized on that fact. But Paul never got close to anyone he never wanted to get close to anyone. What we had together satisfied him. It satisfied me, too.
"Paul was killed in a train wreck. He had to go to an out-of-the-way place where planes didn't go, and had to take the train. It was hideous. I don't want to talk about it. What can you say about death, anyway? That it's over, finished, done.
After you've said that, you've said it all. I want to think of Paul alive. It's the only way I want to think about him. Everyone says I have to accept the fact that Paul is dead. I have accepted it. That is, I know it is true. But I wish I didn't believe it. I wish I could believe that he is just away, or at home, waiting for me, that soon we'll be together again. That was all that kept me alive, the first months. But they kept hammering at me to accept. As long as I could dream, relive our times together, pretend that soon we'd be together again, I could survive. But they took even that away from me. That's when I turned to drugs. It was the only way I could live.
"I know you think you're going to make me forget about drugs, but you're not. Without Paul, without drugs, there's nothing. There's nothing anyway, of course. I wish I were dead."
We talked of other things. I tried to find some idea that would at least interest (if not excite) Kerri. We talked about children, slums, service to others, and, while Kerri admitted that "Something ought to be done about all those poor people," she did not have any desire to do any of it herself.
It was a chance remark of mine that lighted the first spark of hope in her face. I said, "There isn't much encouragement for any poet today, Kerri, Paul was no exception in that way."
"But there ought to be," Kerri said almost passionately. "There must be many young people like Paul, sensitive, aching for a chance-"
From this idea, the enthusiasm grew in Kerri. She wanted to set up a fund out of her own money a memorial fund named for her brother.
This was the first step. I put her in contact with Synanon, the only organization that seems to have had any success in the rehabilitation of drug addicts. Their first rule is complete honesty. Being honest with oneself. It is my hope that they will be able to help Kerri to help herself into the world of the living. It is a world completely alien to Kerri. Because of the emotional starvation she suffered as a child, and the incestuous relationship with her brother, the only human relationship the girl ever experienced, it will not be easy. But miracles do happen. We have to hope.
7
JANET
Janet's physical appearance was a study in extremes large jutting breasts, a tiny waist, full hips. Her hair was the color of the ripened wheat that swayed in the wind, as far as the eye could see, on her father's Kansas farm.
Janet had left Kansas right after high school graduation. She had won a talent contest and determined to have a career in show business.
Wisely, she had not gone straight to Hollywood, as so many young hopefuls do. "I knew I needed experience," she said. "I took singing jobs wherever I could find them mostly in small, dingy clubs from North Dakota to Louisiana; from Minnesota to Southern Texas."
Janet's crime was prostitution and possession of narcotics.
"Nobody believes I never messed with the junk myself," she said. 'They couldn't find any needle-marks, but they wanted to believe I was a junkie."
"I believe you," I told her. "But there is one provable fact: you were caught in possession of heroin. That's illegal, you know."
"I know, and I knew then. It wasn't for me it was for someone else."
"A man?"
"A man, but I won't tell you his name."
"Why didn't he come forward while you were on trial?" I asked. "Why didn't he try to help you, at least take some of the blame?"
She laughed, showing perfect white teeth. "I said he was a man. He was a punk. A junkie. A pimp. But he meant more to me than any other guy. Maybe I loved him I don't know what love is, anyhow. But it doesn't matter. I kind of mothered him. I felt responsible for him. Oh, hell, I wasn't being noble or anything it just gave me something to do. Taking care of him, I mean."
"What do you plan to do when you leave here?" I asked.
"Not go back home, that's for sure. As far as they're concerned, I'm dead." She laughed. "They'd never take even a little bit of the blame for what has happened to me and maybe they're right. Maybe I was born rotten."
"Would you like to tell me about your family?"
"What's to tell? Respectable farmers, pillars in the community all that do-good shit."
"Then how did they contribute to your downfall?" I wanted to hear it from her.
"By pretending that nothing existed that they didn't like, or wouldn't approve of. like the thing between my half-brother and me. They knew it, but they pretended they didn't because they didn't know what to do about it. The only thing they knew to do was send him off to prep school as soon as they could, and send me off to boarding school as soon as they could. But, boy, did we have a ball for a couple of years before that!
"I think I'm what you call a nympho," Janet said. "Oh, I get my gun and all that good stuff-but I never get enough screwing. I could do it around the clock, night and day. I have the stamina and the endurance and love a good cock rammed up inside my belly."
"Your boyfriend the addict," I began, but Janet cut me off.
"Oh, not him he couldn't screw a fly. He was just my project. And my excuse, I guess. He pimped for me, and I got all the screwing I wanted. You know, what I really like is to just take them on one after the other pulling a train, we call it. I used to play a stag party once in a while, and that's the way it would be. I loved it. It was my brother that introduced me to that little trick.
"I was born with a hot tail, I guess. My father was married before and had this son, Bill. He married my mother and they had me. Bill was six years older than me.
"I guess I started thinking about sex from the moment I could think at all. Somewhere, I got hold of some of those dirty comic books you know vest comics for adults only where it shows everything in detail? I was about eight years old, and awfully conscious of sex. I remember the comic books one had some cartoon characters and the story was just plain sex the guy comes in and the girl is half dressed. His cock gets real hard and you can see it through his pants. Her tits are hanging out. There's a little conversation, and then they get down to business. Complete with dirty words. He takes his cock out, and it's about as long as his arm with a head like a fist, and dripping come, and she blares her legs apart and they say they're going to fuck and things like that, and he puts it in and everything.
"I read those things till they were nothing but shreds. And played with myself. But after a while, I got tired of just playing that game, so I started thinking about Bill. I knew he had a cock I'd noticed him lots of times when he had a hard-on. I started scheming how I was going to get myself a real fucking like those people in the dirty comics did. I knew better than to say anything Bill could repeat I had to make him do it with me, somehow, and then he would be as guilty as I was.
"I knew he had a sun lamp, and after Sunday dinner, he stripped off naked and sunned himself on his bed. So one day the folks were taking a nap, and I was supposed to be in my room, too I tried Bill's door, and it was unlocked, so I tiptoed in. I was fully dressed except that I'd taken off my panties. I went in and crawled up on his bed. He started to yell at me, but I shushed him. He was lying facedown, and he was real embarrassed, I could tell. He whispered, 'What are you doing in here? Get out!' I whispered back, 'Okay. I will in a minute, but I've got to talk to you.'
"He was kind of midway on the bed, so I sat down at the end of the bed and pulled my legs up so he had to see right up my dress to look at me at all. Very slowly, I parted my legs. I'd thought about it till I was pretty creamy down there. Bill looked like he was going to choke. He told me to get out again, but instead, I reached my hand down and stuck my finger in my twat and pulled it out and stuck it up in his face and said, 'There, what does that smell like?' He raised up, trying to get away, but in his panic he'd forgotten he was naked. I pointed at him man did he have a hard-on!
"He flopped back on the bed, and I said, 'You want to fuck, and I want to, and I won't tell. Go ahead, try it once.'
"It was like he was in a trance. He sat up, and I took advantage and grabbed his prick, at the same time, flopping over on my back. He said he wouldn't do it, so that's when I really got smart. I said, 'Look at us. If I start screaming, and the folks come in here, what will they think?' He saw my point, and all he did was lock the door, then come over and sink down on me. He shot off at once, but I didn't care, because I was determined to get all I could out of him. I lay there and I wouldn't let him pull it out. I asked him if he wanted to see something, and he said okay, and I reached down and pulled these old tattered comic books out of my pocket, but I still had my legs wrapped around him. He'd got in me real easy I'd got rid of my own cherry long ago. Anyway, as he looked at those comic books, I could feel his dick getting hard in me. In no time, he was pumping up and down, really going at it. I was pulling out and shoving my hips up to meet him with everything I had. I'd dreamed of fucking a million times this was just living the dream. The second time he came, I came with him, and man, was that delicious! We had to rest or he did but we went at it a couple more times. We tried some of the other stuff the comic books showed, licking and sucking each other and stuff.
"I knew there must be a way to get so much I'd be unable to want any more for a while. That's when I struck on the idea of getting it from his friends. They were going camping that weekend, so I told him I was going to sneak up when the lights were out and everyone was in their tents. That scared him he was a regular chicken but I told him he'd better go along with what I wanted, or I'd make things really hot for him with the folks. You could say I raped him. Forced him to do what I wanted. He was older than me, but I led him, told him what to do. He loved it sure, he did. But it wasn't his fault. It was all mine.
"Boy, I'll never forget that night. He had bragged to the guys that he'd been getting some, but didn't tell them who he'd been getting it from. He told them the girl was going to sneak in and give everybody some, but they'd have to be quiet. It was pitch dark. They couldn't see me and I couldn't see them, but man, could I feel. I took the tents one by one, all but the Leader's tent he was a grown man, and I was scared. I'd go at it and usually they'd come in two minutes. I didn't come till about the fifth or sixth guy but I knew I'd get my chance I made the tents a second time, and a third. By then I was so hot I was about to set the bedrolls on fire!
"Some of those guys were as old as fifteen, some really hung like stud-horses for their age. I screwed some of them four times. It wasn't till it started getting light that I sneaked away.
"Later on, I got myself quite a reputation. I didn't care. It was what I wanted. But my folks pretended they didn't know what was going on. They sent me off to school, though they didn't want the problem.
"Then I won that amateur talent contest and took off to sing for my supper. I had to live, I had to have costumes, and that was my excuse for selling my ass. But I liked it never forget that."
"I understand you're studying to be a beautician," I said.
"They gave me fifteen years, Doc," she said. "I won't be so young and pretty in fifteen years. A gal has to make a living."
Of course, with good behavior, Janet will be out of here long before that, but I didn't point out this fact to her. I need all the time and all the advantage I can get. Janet seems like a tough cookie, but she wants admiration and love. All of us do, to some extent; Janet more than most, as evidenced by her choice of profession: show business. Her parents' lack of real interest or display of affection, too, created a hunger in Janet that she tried to satisfy with sex. In time, she will come to realize these truths, and then she can begin to plan to work toward the things she really needs: love and respect and she will come to realize that the substitutes she accepted in the past are not good enough. All this, in good time.
8
HOLLY
"Sure, I killed Teddy," Holly said. "That's why I'm here. I knew what I was doing when I did it. I knew it was wrong. I knew I'd end up here or worse. Those facts make me legally sane," she added bitterly. "But if I were sane, how could I kill the only man who ever gave me a decent break? I loved Teddy. I loved him, loved him..."
Her sobs choked off her words.
Holly had been with us about two months at that time. She did her work without complaint. Besides that, just about the only other thing she did was cry. She ate very little, and she was as thin as a willow sapling. She looked terribly young, even younger than she actually was, and she looked defenseless. But here was a woman who had killed her young G.I. husband.
There was little resemblance between the Holly who sat before me and the Holly whose picture had been smeared across front pages such a short while ago. That girl had been blonde, softly rounded, and although her face showed confusion and sorrow and guilt, it also showed beauty. Now, her thinness was the thing one noticed most. Dr. Hargrove was concerned about her health, and, frankly, so was I. It was more than just the fact that she wouldn't eat. She had lost all desire to live. The confusion had returned, and her eyes had a wide, lost look. Over and over again, she asked, "Why did I do it? Why? Why?"
And the crying. Very often there was no sound, only tears pouring from her eyes.
She had married at the age of fifteen. Her husband, too, had been young. He had joined the army after he and Holly had been married six years, six years of living on love and little else. In the hill country where they had grown up and married, army pay had seemed like sudden riches. At least that was the way it had seemed in the beginning.
"Then we learned that out yonder everything costs more," Holly said. "But when it all went wrong was when I met up with Carrie. Only it seemed like a blessing at the time. Carrie was so pretty and she was rich I mean she had more money than she knew what to do with. She had this big, pretty house, and I used to go up there and do her heavy cleaning once a week, and she paid me real well. It was when she started getting well familiar that I started getting uneasy. At first, I thought I was being silly-maybe this was the way with town folks-affectionate, and showing it. But when she kissed me, right on the mouth, I didn't like it.
"Then one day, she gave it to me straight. She said, 'You need money, Holly. I've got money. You've got something I want enough to pay a high price for.' I asked her what it was I didn't have anything. She said first I should tell her how I'd like to make a hundred dollars. Well, a hundred dollars seemed like all the money in the world! She said all she wanted was for me to let her love me a little and for me to love her back. I still didn't understand, so she laid the money on the table where I could see it and drool over it, then she started undressing me very slow and all, and every time I'd think of running, I'd look at that money, and I had to stay put. She gave me some wine in a little glass I drank several and pretty soon, it was easier. After a while, she started kissing my body, my legs and my thighs, the insides, caressing the skin, and I closed my eyes, and after a while, I didn't mind to tell the truth, I began to like it.
"She knew I was liking it. She kissed me on the mouth, and then she knew for sure, because with a moan, I just gave up and kissed her, probing in her mouth for her tongue, moaning and groaning with the ecstasy of that kiss. It was so forbidden and so hot, I wanted to go on and on. Now, I was reaching in her blouse, digging for her tits, so big and full, and pulling them out of her bra, and then I fell to kissing, first one, then the other, sucking their big, hard nipples till they stood up high and round in my mouth. I unzipped her skirt and got my hand down inside it, inside her panties, touching the soft, curly cunt hair, feeling for her pussy, plunging my fingers into its juicy hotness. I was just going wild. We laid on the floor, on the rug and rubbed ourselves together, kissing, clinging to each other, rubbing our tits together, our nipples kissing each other, our cunts hunched up till they were really rubbing, getting all swollen with passion, so they were like two little cocks throbbing and rubbing each other, faster, faster, oh, just touching and squeezing each other all over, every nerve and every inch of skin rubbing and loving each other. Our cunts getting bigger and bigger, like they were swollen fit to burst, and then we came, like that, together, in a burst of flame, our bodies writhing and seeking each other there till they were spent.
"We took a shower together, then we went in her bedroom, and this time, we went at it slower me kissing and licking and playing with her down there, and her doing the same for me, then we'd lie straight, facing each other, and tongue-kiss awhile. Then we'd go at it sixty-nine again. I made her come by just holding my tongue in one spot on her she wanted me to, just to see if I could.
"She always paid me, but never that much again usually it was twenty dollars. She said it was because I needed the money so bad, though she knew I enjoyed what we were doing.
"And Lord help me, I did need the money. I paid off lots of bills and bought good food, and Teddy just marveled at how I was stretching his pay so far.
"And, she was right about something else I did enjoy it. I enjoyed it every bit as much as she did while we were doing it. But afterward, I'd swear I was never going to do it again. I'd cry and pray God to forgive me, and swear I would never go back, but I always did. I told myself it was for the money, but that was only part of it.
"Like Carrie said, it was plain enough I had loved and been loved by a woman. That was how I learned about sex from an aunt who used to live with us. She started in on me when I was so little I didn't know it was a sin. When I learned it was when she was caught sucking off another girl, and exposed before the whole community I was so grateful it wasn't me she was caught with, and that no one need know I was guilty of the same awful sin.
"I never felt fully cleansed till I married Teddy and was a decent wife."
"How was your sex life with your husband?" I asked.
"It was good. Sweet and right. I never had a climax, but Teddy never knew. I pretended, and I was good at it. It made him feel good. It would have made him feel there was something wrong with him if I had complained and it wasn't his fault."
"What happened, then?"
"Well, I felt more and more guilty. I decided Teddy was seeing someone else I know now that it was all in my head that I was building up a case against him to make myself seem less a sinner. But it was there anyway. It just grew. At the same time, Teddy thought I was acting different because of Carrie. He thought her being rich and all, that she was having a bad influence on me, making me dissatisfied with being just a soldier's wife.
"One day, he followed me to Carrie's. Carrie was mean she wanted to hurt him. She hated men. When he started asking her about me I was in the next room she started taunting him. She unzipped his pants oh, I know she was teasing him, but I just went crazy. All the crazy things I'd been suspecting about Teddy then, suddenly, I thought, so Carrie's the one he's been seeing-she's been making love to both of us. I wanted to kill her I wanted to kill them both. Oh, I was crazy I told you I was crazy. I hit Teddy just one blow. I hit him with a vase. I wanted to take it back the minute I did it. I prayed he wasn't dead, but he was. I knew what I was doing I didn't black out or anything. I knew God help me, I'm guilty."
Of course, Holly was right. She didn't belong here. She, like Nancine, needed to be in a mental hospital where she could get the maximum treatment available.
And so, again, incest this time homosexual incest with her adult aunt, and at an age when she was young and impressionable, crippled a girl for life. Or at least for the best part of her life. I hope there will be a good life, yet, for Holly. She is so young. She is so lovely. It's an awfully lot to hope for, but I hope....
9
EVANGELINE
Evangeline's crime was one of the sensational ones. Not because it was unusual for a man to be murdered by a jealous mistress, but because the environment of the crime was colorful.
Greenwich Village, New York; Drop City, Colorado; you name it the "colony" Evangeline escaped to had beckoned with the promise of artistic freedom, freedom from the square life.
"All my life I wanted to be Somebody with a capital'S' " Evangeline said.
She painted, and was told her work showed promise, but she felt she needed to get away from the straight life, the nine-to-five grind. She was nineteen. Her father had died, and she had no one to make demands on her time.
The colony was dirty and jumbled-looking-tents and ancient trailer-houses made the area look more like a city dump than a community.
Evangeline arrived with only a sleeping bag and her artist's supplies and the clothes on her back. She unbraided her long, brown hair that had always looked so prim and proper and let it hang loose. She was scared, but everyone was friendly and soon she felt right at home.
Then she met Rawl, an older man, who called himself an art critic. He told her she showed great promise and that he would guide her.
Evangeline moved into Rawl's filthy house-trailer. Rawl had no money. He scorned it, but had no objection to letting Evangeline buy their food as long as her money lasted.
It was a community of share-and-share-alike, and several of the kids took part-time jobs to buy food for the others. Evangeline had worked as a typist, and found a job easily.
Rawl stayed home and painted. Somehow, Evangeline's painting had come to a halt.
"I was frustrated," she recalled. "I'd come here to escape from the grind of nine-to-five living, and I was right back in the middle of it again."
"Why did you do it?" I asked her.
"To get money for Rawl. He wanted to go to New York and have a one-man show. He said if I loved him I'd help. I was crazy about him!"
She told how Rawl had seduced her, how he'd made love to her, the words he'd used, 'I was a fool," she said.
"You were a child," I corrected. "Were you a virgin?"
Her face colored. She was so open about discussing sex, and yet, my question had embarrassed or frightened her.
During the next few sessions, we talked about whatever Evangeline chose to talk about. I knew she had to make up her mind to trust me before she would tell me what was truly torturing her.
Finally, she started talking about it, her eyes begging me to sympathize and understand. I had to reassure her over and over as she talked, but she did talk.
"I don't think it was really because I was jealous that I killed Rawl," she said slowly. "Yes, I did come home from work and catch him naked in the filthy, unmade bed with another girl. She ran away, clutching her clothes around her. I got the butcher knife and stabbed him. I I didn't tell this at the trial," she said. "I mean about what I was thinking when I killed him. I'd had a couple of trips acid, you know and maybe that was what caused the distortion. I was afraid they'd send me to a mental institution if I told. You won't tell?"
She begged.
"I won't tell," I said. "I wouldn't send you away from here unless you requested it not as long as you're getting along as well as you are now."
"I thought," she whispered, her eyes wide, "I honestly thought he was my father!
"You see how crazy that was," she went on. "My father had been dead almost a year."
"Did Rawl look like your father?" I probed.
"No. Yes no. Not really. I mean, he was about the same age, but he was virile and healthy. The way Daddy used to be before " she broke off, looking sick. "I don't want to talk about it. Please don't make me talk about it."
"What was wrong with your father?" I asked. "Did he have an accident of some sort?"
"Polio," she whispered. "That's why I couldn't leave him. He needed me."
"How long had he been an invalid before he died," I went on.
"A year five years I don't remember. I don't know!"
She was so overwrought, I didn't press her to talk, but offered her a cigarette, instead. Her hands trembled and she inhaled deeply.
"All a man wants is something to vent his lust on," Evangeline said harshly. "They'll use any unfair trick to make you feel sorry for them, take care of them, pour out your life for them. I wish I had killed my father! I'm glad I killed Rawl! I wish I could kill every dirty son-of-a-bitch man in the world!"
"Tell me about your life with your father," I said gently.
"Oh, you probably think it was something like I mean, it was only that I had to work and support him the last years of his life, wait on him hand and foot " she broke off and looked at me helplessly.
"No. I'm lying. It was more than that. My father "
"Raped you?" I said. "Seduced you? Tricked you into sexual relations?" When she looked surprised, I told her, "It's not as unusual as you may believe, Evangeline. Unfortunately, it's a pretty common occurrence, incest."
My words seemed to take a great burden from her, and she was able to speak more freely. She needed to talk, and the words poured from her.
"Mom died when I was small," she said. "There was only Daddy and me. He put me in a day-nursery while he worked, then took me home each night and cooked our dinner, and everybody talked about how much courage and devotion the man had." She gave a harsh, humorless little laugh.
"Maybe it was my fault, the first time but hasn't a child the right to go to her father for comfort when she is frightened?"
There had been an electrical storm with bright flashes of lightning and loud crashes of thunder, and the little girl, bewildered by the death of her mother and scared of the storm's fury, had climbed into her father's bed and snuggled close.
"I was crying and he patted me and talked to me until I stopped, and he kept right on patting and rubbing me. First, only my head and back, and then, the nightgown slid up, and he put his hand inside it, on my back. I heard him breathing funny but I didn't think anything about it. Then, still panting like that, he pulled my legs apart and got on top of me, pushing me down, then something hit me there between the legs. I didn't know what it was like being hit with a club. He couldn't get it in, but he bruised me. I cried and screamed, so scared I thought I'd die. It only lasted a few seconds and then he squirted something warm all over me. I continued to wail. He started saying, 'My God, what have I done? Oh, God!' He hugged me to him and begged me to forgive him. Finally, I stopped crying. He got up and washed me tenderly and put salve on me. The next morning, he called his boss and said he was staying home with me, that I was very ill. I guess he was afraid the people at the nursery school would find out if I cried when I went to the bathroom, someone would be sure to examine me."
Her father had stayed off work a week, and at first, he had taken good care of her. The bruises healed quickly, but he continued to use the soothing salve on her vagina.
"I wasn't afraid of him," she recalled. "I didn't mind him rubbing me there. It felt good. Then one day, he was rubbing me with the salve, and he concentrated on my clitoris, rubbing gently. In no time, it was erect and I was excited. I giggled. He got more salve, greased his finger and ran it a little way inside, in then out around the clit, over and over, the in and out motion. I raised my hips, helping, it felt so good. When I started to come, he put his mouth on my cunt, and sucked rhythmically till it was over. Then he asked if I liked it, and I said I did. He said, 'I was bad to you and hurt you the other night. I'm sorry. That's why I want to make you feel good down there, to make it up to you.' And for a while, he concentrated on giving me pleasure it was a long time before he started asking me to do anything to him."
Her father had sworn her to secrecy, explaining that there was nothing wrong in what they were doing, that it was like using the bathroom: something you didn't go around talking about.
"I was about six, I guess, when he started having me suck him off about ten the first time we screwed. I never thought there was anything wrong with it. But one day I was twelve at the time we were going at it like a couple of wildcats, and a neighbor kid walked in. It was our paper boy, a kid I went to school with. Dad was furious and scared. He begged the boy to keep quiet, threatened him, and finally gave him five dollars."
The boy accepted the five dollars, but he didn't keep quiet. However, the gossip never filtered outside the circle of school kids. If someone had breathed the scandal to parents, the police would have been called.
A few days later, Evangeline had come home in tears. Everyone hated and despised her and thought she was filthy. "They called me names," she wailed to her father. 'They called me 'whore' and 'father-fucker' I wished I were dead!"
Evangeline's father quit his job, put the house up for sale and they moved to another city in another state.
"He didn't touch me for several weeks," Evangeline said. "I didn't want him to I mean, I was so ashamed! But at night, I thought of nothing else. The thoughts came no matter how I tried to push them out. I had to masturbate before I could fall asleep."
It was this paradox that drove her half insane: wishing for sex with her father, and at the same time hating him and herself, hating the act that she now considered vile and filthy.
like all youngsters who are introduced to full orgasm at too early an age, Evangeline was unable to control her obsession. She thought of nothing else, day and night. Her grades suffered she never again did very well in school.
"One night he came to my bedroom and got under the covers without speaking. He reached for me, and I pushed him away. That excited him. He fought with me, spread my legs apart and threw his cock into me. He had me pinned down and I was glad. I wanted him to win. That was the way we did it for about a year he raped me every time."
Then, when Evangeline was almost fourteen years old, her father contracted polio. Fortunately, he had insurance, but there was no one to care for his child, so she was first placed in an orphange, and later in a foster home a farm.
The rural life was new to her, and she liked it. Her chores were simple, and she did them willingly housework, mostly. That summer, she had plenty of free time. She took walks and rode a gentle old mare and read in the hayloft sometimes.
The family had a son who was tall and muscular, but who had the mentality of a six-year-old child.
He followed Evangeline around, and his mother asked the girl to be kind to him. Most people had made fun of him, and he was lonely. The boy he was twenty-three bored Evangeline with endless childish questions, but she had tolerated Howie.
One rainy day, she had taken a book and gone to the hayloft to escape Howie, but he found her.
"Sometimes I would put my book down and take off my panties and lie up there and play with my pussy," Evangeline said. "I was real careful not to get caught."
She had just removed her panties when she heard the sound below. She stuffed the garment down into the hay and pulled her dress down and was pretending to read when Howie appeared.
He sat down on the hay and began his childish patter.
"I had my eyes on his pants," Evangeline said. "Even though he didn't have a hard-on, I could see the outline of his pecker. It's funny, I'd never even thought of him that way before. I asked him if he would like to have a secret, just me and him, and he nodded. But I kept saying, 'I don't believe you'll keep it a secret. I think you'll blab it.' He swore he wouldn't. I told him if he did, something awful would happen, that his pecker would turn green and rot off."
Frightened, Howie had clapped his hands over his penis. Evangeline promised him his member was safe as long as he did not tell the secret. She then asked him whether he ever played with his organ. Howie blushed and denied it hotly. His father would whip him if he did that. It was naughty, Howie said.
"That's just part of the secret," Evangeline said. Lifting her dress and spraddling her legs, she asked him whether he knew what it was. Howie thought her penis had rotted off, and Evangeline had to do some patient explaining. Finally, she calmed his fears, assuring him over and over that nothing would happen to them unless one of them told the secret.
"I unzipped his fly and told him not to be afraid, I just wanted to see what it looked like. 'Gosh, it's pretty,' I told him, and he grinned. I reached out and caressed it, up and down. Then I told him it was pretty enough to kiss, and I did. It was hard and big in a few seconds. He had a prick on him like a stallion long and the knob on the end was huge. It throbbed in my hand. I hadn't played with it for a minute till he shot off a wad like a gusher. I knew he'd done without even playing with it, and that's why he came so fast. I knew he'd be a little slower next time.
"I kept right on playing with it, sometimes reaching my head down and licking it, and talking, flattering him. I asked him if he would like to touch my place I didn't want to add any words to his vocabulary that he might drop in somebody's presence and he nodded. I put his hand on my cunt, then I took one finger and put it inside me. I was hot and wet and he started panting like a dog. His prick got bone-hard all at once. I lay back and told him this was the good part of the secret, that he was supposed to put his prick in the hole where his finger had been. He didn't believe it would go, but I made him try anyway. He was cautious at first, but when my cunt lips swallowed that great big cock-head, he started trembling and giggling, and as I raised my hips to take more, he socked it in like he'd been fucking all his life. He was rough, but I didn't care.
"It hurt, but it was so good, I nearly fainted. I came in a burst of heat, and the heat ebbed away, and I came again. He didn't even take it out; he'd lay on me, jerking like he was having a fit, lay there as still as if he'd died, for a couple of minutes, and then I'd feel it get hard in me all over again. I don't know how many times I came but what amazed me was how many times he could come. Sometimes we'd fuck for about five or ten minutes before he came, but he'd turn right around and do it again."
Evangeline was faced with a new problem: On the one hand, she was obsessed by the need for sex and more sex, a need that crowded out all other needs. On the other hand, she was now living with constant fear of being caught. Every waking thought was dominated by ways and means of hiding with Howie, of getting the sex that she needed the way an addicted person needs his drug, and the accompanying fear of what would happen if they were caught. After all, Howie was a child, mentally; she was afraid he'd let something slip without meaning to.
What would happen if they were caught? Evangeline trembled at the prospects. Would they send her to jail? To a mental institution? Would Howie's father kill her in a rage of uncontrolled temper?
She was half-relieved when she was told that her father was well enough to have her home. He needed Evangeline to care for him. Of course, she would have to attend school, as well.
Evangeline did not think of dating boys who might give her the thrills she wanted. She was afraid of these boys. This fear had its roots in the experience she'd had at the age of twelve, when one of her schoolmates had caught her and her father in the act of incestuous intercourse. The clue lay in Evangline's statement, "I just didn't feel it was safe with boys like that."
The danger of doing something forbidden with the threat of getting caught enhanced the excitement, and was, in fact, a necessary part of Evangeline's sex-obsession.
"At first," Evangeline said, "I promised myself that I would get that crap out of my mind-somehow, I would! I was sixteen years old, practically a woman. I wanted so much to be normal. I thought I was insane that there must be something wrong with me. I'd die if anyone ever found out the way I was. So the only way to prevent that was to be some other way or at least behave like a normal person. If I didn't do anything unnatural, I'd seem like a normal girl. Just because I had this crazy streak in me, I didn't have to indulge in crazy acts."
For a while, Evangeline had worked herself to exhaustion at school. That was when she had taken up painting. She borrowed books from the library on art, attended an art class, and when she wasn't working in the house, cooking, cleaning, taking care of her father's health needs, she painted. Exhausted, at night she still could not control the sex-phantoms that had taken over her thoughts for several years.
In an effort to control her obsession she was afraid she might do something shameful she masturbated at night.
"It was the only way I could get to sleep," she said. "Tired as I was, I couldn't rest because of that awful fire that burned night and day between my legs!"
One thing that bothered Evangeline a great deal was having to bathe her father. Once she distorted her body to demonstrate to me what her father looked like after his polio attack twisted and deformed-looking, Evangeline declared, hunching her shoulders, drawing back her arms and throwing her legs into a twisted pose. "That gives you a general idea of how he looked," she said. "He was practically helpless. He could feed himself, but he couldn't have washed the lower half of his body if someone had held a gun to him! I had to wash his private parts, his ass, his balls, his pecker. He'd never been circumcised, and I had to pull the foreskin back and wash it, then slip the skin back. I always hurried, but he'd get a hard-on every time I washed him. He'd groan and whimper, and I couldn't stand to look at his eyes. It was like they were begging me often filled with tears to do something to relieve his ache. I felt sorry for him, but I hated him, too. Sometimes I thought about killing him. I wondered if there was any way I could do it and not get caught. I wanted to take a knife and drive it into that hideous body till it was dead and couldn't haunt me any more. But I wanted, at the same time, to do what I knew he wanted me to do."
Finally, her father had put it into words.
"I was washing him that same quick way," Evangeline recalled, "and he started crying. God, that made me sick. I didn't know what to do. He said, 'You don't know how awful it is not to be able to even get your own hand down there. I don't ask you to do anything more just use your hand jack me off.' Slowly, hating to touch him, I put my hand on it. It got harder in my hand, big and hard like it used to. It was nothing to compare with the size of Howie's, but it was a cock and I was so hot, all of a sudden, I couldn't stand it. I jerked on it a couple of times, and the come squirted out. He groaned with the relief of it, but I knew him I knew he wasn't satisfied. My own body was giving me fits. My cunt felt like it was swollen. It ached, and the juice was running down my legs. I just gave up then and tore my pants off and crawled on him. I had to do all the work nothing seemed alive about him but his prick. I went into a frenzy. I couldn't stop. I threw myself on him with all the force I had, pulling back, and ramming again. I guess we screwed or I screwed him for an hour. And that's how it started again."
Her father died when she was nineteen. He left her a very small amount of insurance and the small house, which she sold for less than it was worth, because she wanted to get away from the place that held nothing but bad memories.
It had seemed that a complete change of environment might be what she needed to break the awful pattern of her life.
"I wanted to be somebody," she said, "but every time I had made a little progress reading books, studying in school, painting every time, this sex thing had stopped me. So I took my art stuff and a little money I left most of it in the bank, just in case and I took off to this sort of colony I'd heard about. I thought if anyone would accept me, it would be these hippies. And they were nice. Friendly. They didn't ask questions. They shared everything with each other. And then I met Rawl."
"What was wrong with him?" I asked suddenly.
Her eyes flashed at me. "How did you know? Oh I guess you read about it in the papers. Or in my report."
"As a matter-of-fact, I didn't," I said. "I was making a guess."
She sat silent, thinking, for a moment, then her face lighted up. She was an intelligent girl, and I was counting on her intelligence.
"You mean I chose Rawl because he was a misfit because there was something different about him," she said. "He had been injured in a motorcycle accident. He limped very badly had to walk with one crutch. But he was as virile as any man you can imagine. He was delighted with my passion. I thought he loved me I'd do anything for him. And I had to do some pretty weird things for Rawl. But I was glad to. Then he found somebody else to do them with, and I caught them together and killed him-"
She looked into space for a while, then continued.
"My father was he was my father," she said, "which, in itself, made the situation weird. That's what hooked me, huh? And then Howie, the idiot. Then my dad as a deformed man. Then Rawl. I guess I never wanted a sex partner who was just an ordinary boy or man."
"Why not, do you suppose?"
"All boys reminded me of that one boy who caught me and my dad screwing and blabbed it all over school. Every time a boy looked at me after that, I felt frightened and thought about that big-mouthed kid!"
Evangeline's ability to analyze and face her own pattern of behavior is unusual in a patient. She will be here with us for a good while longer, but I have a lot of hope for her chances when finally she does return to society.
10
LAURY
"I don't know what I'm doing here," Laury sobbed. "All I ever wanted was to have everything snug and secure. I wasn't ever ambitious I was afraid I'd aim too high and fall. I wanted a nice, respectable job."
Laury's records showed her to have an average I.Q., but as she was what we term an "over-achiever", her high school grades had been excellent, and she had been awarded a full scholarship. The college she attended was one of the smaller ones, but it was rated quite highly.
"I decided to teach," she said. "I like small children. I'm more at ease with them than with older people. Earlier, I'd thought of becoming a secretary, but the thought of being with adults all day, the pressures it made me nervous.
"I was doing fine," she started crying again. "What happened? Where did I go wrong?"
While Laury had a great need for security, she had an equally strong but conflicting desire to be punished. This was clear to me, but I had to let her discover it for herself. She had expressed this desire by taking chances in ways that almost guaranteed that she would be caught and punished. Her crime: forgery.
Working part-time in the school financial office, taking extra jobs evenings baby-sitting, she stole checks from various checkbooks, wrote checks and cashed them. On a three-day check writing spree, she acquired and spent as lavishly and quickly as she could eight thousand dollars.
"I never did anything like that before in my life," she cried. "I was always considered the quiet, mousy type. People didn't even know I was around half the time.
"I didn't want any of the things I bought-most of them couldn't even be returned. It was as though I suddenly went insane."
I questioned her about her background and her family. Her father was dead. Suicide. No, she didn't believe anyone had known why he had killed himself. He left no note. Her mother had believed him to be an alcoholic, but he worked. He'd left some insurance not much, but she and her mother had been able to live. Her mother had always worked, even when Laury's father was still alive. She worked for the Utility Company in the small town where they lived.
Laury's mother was never an affectionate person. "She was kind, but you know, not demonstrative. I remember Daddy was more so. But then, I was awfully young when he died. I suppose one tends to build up such images, glamorize them. I really don't remember him much, if I'm to be truthful."
"But you were seven years old when he died," I reminded her. "You ought to have some very clear memories."
"Well, I'm sorry. As you know, I'm not a genius maybe I'm not smart enough to remember."
"You know better, I think," I told her. "Perhaps you don't wish to remember. The memory may be too painful."
"Could be."
I suggested the possibility of hypnosis as a method which might help unlock these memories and help Laury to a happier adjustment to life when she was released.
Her pretty face showed stark terror.
"Are you afraid of what you might learn?" I asked.
"Of course not. It's just that oh, it seems like voodoo or something," she forced a laugh.
"After I've explained it to you," I said, "you'll realize it's scientific, completely painless and often a tool that can work miracles where nothing else is effective. I won't subject you to any treatment against your will or wishes. It would be foolish on my part," I explained. "If we are to help you, we must do it together. I can do nothing without your cooperation."
She relaxed then and we spoke of other things.
The time finally came when Laury was ready to be "put under," as she called it, giving me a nervous little laugh to prove she really wasn't afraid.
The following is taken from several sessions. Many times, I was only able to keep Laury under hypnosis for a few minutes at a time, because she became so agitated I was afraid to continue. It was a long and difficult process. Therefore, I shall present it here in a continuous stream, but the reader should bear in mind that the following represents several months' analysis.
"I love Professor Ferrin. He looks like Daddy. I wanted something of his, something to make me part of him and him part of me. I dreamed we were having intercourse. He loved me. His mouth was on my mouth, then it distorted and became very big and my whole face was in his wet mouth, his tongue was licking my face: I wasn't frightened. The big mouth, the distortion, in the dream seemed all right, the way it was supposed to be. I felt comfortable and I wanted to crawl into his mouth, right inside him, inside his body, where it was safe and warm. And then it changed. He was like he always looked, only he was naked. He was smiling. His mouth was kissing me again. He took off my blouse and kissed my breasts, only they had disappeared. My breasts were gone. But he kissed them anyway, sucked at them. And my stomach. He kissed and licked my stomach, and put his tongue in my navel, and it opened up like a mouth and his tongue went into it, into my stomach, and he flicked at my sides, inside, and it was exciting. My sides ached and I wanted him to keep doing it, but he took his tongue out, and my navel closed up and it was just an ordinary navel. Then he kissed and licked my legs, the insides of my thighs ... I read a dirty story someone had at school once. It was on a piece of paper, about a woman and a dog doing it. I know what the word is. Come. I'm going to come. My whole bottom is on fire. My vagina is dripping wet. Oh, please, please, put something in my vagina. Mmmmmm. He licked the lips of my vagina. There was no hair on them. No hair at all. My vagina swelled bigger and bigger, it throbbed and ached. He put his tongue on it. There. Oh, that's good. On my clitoris. It feels good, don't stop ... please don't stop. He put his tongue in my vagina, his tongue grew bigger and bigger ... So big it hurts. Oh, please ... it hurts ... good ... please don't stop. I'm coming, Daddy. I'm coming ...
Her body had convulsed, and then lay still. Then she began to talk again.
"It was only a dream. Professor Ferrin would hate me if he knew. He'd think I'm a dirty girl. I'm so ashamed. I want something nice of him. He's clean and nice. like Daddy. I want something of his for a keepsake. A check out of his checkbook. I'll put it in my handkerchief box and keep it always. Someday I will look at it and laugh and remember a foolish young girl who had a silly crush on her college professor
Finally, I decided to try age-regression. I knew I must go very easy with this girl. It was very long, drawn-out and time-consuming, but in the end, most revealing of Laury's deep-seated neurosis.
"I'm seven years old. My mother is working. She doesn't get home till later. Daddy's home early. ...
"I was so hungry. I wanted Daddy to fix me some supper. But he said wait. Mama would come home soon. Daddy was drinking some wine. He was happy, laughing, telling jokes. I didn't think the jokes were funny because I didn't understand some of the words. A girl was going to buy a motorcycle, but she paid a hundred dollars more and got a Fuckmobile. It was a motorcycle with a cock in the seat. Daddy thought it was funny ... he asked me if I knew what a cock was. I didn't. He was sitting down. He unzipped his pants and took something out. He said not to be afraid. It was part of him. All men have one. Just like all women have a cunt. I didn't know what a cunt was. I didn't think I had one. Daddy said he would show me where my cunt was. He said we would play a game. But we mustn't tell Mama. He wanted me to sit on his lap. I liked to sit on Daddy's lap. I didn't want to touch that thing, though. That cock. But Daddy said not to be afraid. It wouldn't hurt me. He put my hand on it. It was warm and kind of hard. He put his finger in the leg of my pants. He touched me very gently. I flinched, at first, but then I relaxed. His finger rubbed me back and forth across the lips of my thing. He touched something in the middle that felt good. He rubbed me so gently. He took off my pants and lifted me up. Straight up, till my thing was even with his mouth. He kissed me. I opened my legs. They felt all weak and wiggly, like warm water. His tongue was licking that place, licking the lips of it, then he stiffened his tongue and slowly, slowly, he started it into the hole. He took out his tongue. He lowered me. Something touched me. It was his cock. I was wet and hot. The end of it was touching me. I was on my knees facing him. I wriggled down, using my hands, putting it inside of me. It hurt, but it felt so good. It felt like it was tearing me, but I wanted it in me. I pulled out a little. I felt wet and slimy. It made his cock slide in easier the next time, and a little farther. Oh ... it hurts ... more ... in and out. I don't care if it does hurt, it hurts good ... ohhhh ... Mmmmm. ... "
And after a short silence:
"Daddy said it was a game. Our secret. I'll never tell. It's the best secret we ever had. Daddy, what is a Fuckmobile? I feel so good, I want to understand the joke so I can laugh and make Daddy happy ... There really isn't any such thing as a Fuckmobile. It's just a joke. Fuck. That's what we just did, Daddy said. That was fun. I like to fuck. Let's fuck some more, Daddy. Daddy says I must never say that word in front of Mama. She is funny. She would think it was bad. No, it isn't bad, but Mama is a funny woman. Lots of things make her mad. It's our secret. What is a Fuckmobile, Daddy? Daddy said it wasn't real, but a story. In the story, it was a motorcycle with a cock in the seat. The girl could fuck as she rode along. When I get big I'm going to invent one. Daddy said I had better forget about that for now. If I let Mama hear me, she'd be mad. I said I'd forget about it for now, but when I grow up ... Daddy, why is your cock lying down? It feels funny. It's not hard any more. Is there something wrong with it? It's getting harder. Does it make it hard when I rub it? Does it feel good, like it feels when you rub me? Daddy. ... Daddy said we could try it a new way. I could lie on the floor. I spraddled my legs out. I felt all good again. I was still wet in my cunt. It was warm and happy-feeling. I wanted to play the game more and more. Daddy put his hands under me, and raised me up a little. Then he put his cock in me again. Very slowly. It felt even better this time. It didn't hurt as bad. I was getting all hot down there again, and all tingly and excited. It felt so good, deeper, I wanted it deeper. Oh ... when he goes in and out, it's so much fun, so good-feeling. Slowly, in, out, in, out. Faster, oh,oh, faster ... It's like a thousand drums, like bright lights, like a .roller-coaster. Faster, faster, faster . ... .Oh, it's going to happen again ... oh, like coming down in the elevator fast, only better ... Ohhhh...."
Again, the same convulsive movements, then lying still. Then her voice was different.
"Daddy said hurry. Go in my room. Here, take your pants. Don't tell Mama. I went in my room. I heard Mama. "For goodness sakes, the house is dark. Turn on some lights. What's the matter with you? Oh, you've been drinking again! Where's Laury? Did you fix her some supper? Of course, I might have known you wouldn't. You do nothing but drink. What's the matter with you?' Mama came in my room. The light hurt my eyes. I rubbed them. Mama said, 'Have you been asleep? And with no supper? I don't know what that man is thinking of. Drinking all the time. Goodness, child, your face is flushed. Do you have a fever? You must be coming down with something. No wonder, skipping meals. That man! Mama went to get supper ready. Daddy came and told me to wash good. Take a bath. He brought me some clothes to put on . ... .Daddy didn't come to supper. Mama said he was still drinking, even though anyone could tell he was drunk. She said he passed out. She said I should eat and forget about him. He was an alcoholic ass, Mama said...."
Now we were ready for Laury to talk about the day her father died.
"It was the next day. The day after we fucked. I thought about it all day at school I would feel excited when I thought about it. When school was out, I hurried home. I hoped Daddy would be home. I knew Mama wouldn't be home yet. Daddy wasn't home when I got there. I made a peanut butter sandwich and drank some milk. Then Daddy came home. I ran to meet him, and he swung me in the air. He smelled like sweat, but not wine. He hadn't been drinking. Mostly, I hated Daddy to drink. Except yesterday, when we had so much fun. Daddy went in his and Mama's room. I went in, too. He was standing by the dresser. I walked up to him and reached up and put my hand on his pants front. I could feel his cock through his pants. Daddy jumped back away from me. 'What are you doing, Laury?' he said. 'Where did you ever see anyone doing anything like that?' I said, 'Daddy, why are you mad? Don't you want to play with me anymore?' Daddy said, 'Sure, Baby. What do you want to play?' I said, I want to play our game some more our secret game.' Daddy said, 'What game? What is the game?' I said, 'The game we played yesterday, remember?' Daddy said, 'I guess you'll have to tell me about it. What game was it?' I said, 'Don't you remember? We fucked.' Daddy had a funny look on his face. He told me he was very sick. Very, very sick. To please go away for a while. ... I knew he was sick. He looked awful. I wanted to help him but he kept telling me to go away. I went in the living room and turned on the
TV. Daddy came in and said I didn't have to keep it quiet, that I couldn't hear it if I didn't turn it up. He turned it up loud. ... Once, I thought I heard a sound that didn't come out of the TV. Mama came home. She fixed supper. She asked, 'Where's Daddy?' I said, in your room. He's sick.' She said, I bet. Drunk is more like it. Passed out. Well, go tell him supper's ready.' I went and opened the door and..."
At this point, Laury began to scream uncontrollably. I had to wake her carefully.
Another time, we resumed. The time Laury was to remember was the next day.
"Mama kept asking me if I knew what happened. I don't know. I wish she would stop. I wish Daddy would come home and stop her."
"What happened yesterday," I asked gently. "When you went to call your Daddy to supper?"
"I don't know. I don't remember. I guess he was asleep. Or he came to supper. I don't remember."
It was obvious that the shock of seeing her father dead by his own hand was more than her mind could bear. She went into shock when she saw him, and amnesia was the result.
Laury believed she had caused her father to die, but this belief was too painful for her to face. It was buried so deeply she could not face it, even under hypnosis. I could have delved more deeply, but to have forced her to face the entire experience could very-likely have caused severe complications. I recalled a case one of my old professors had told about in which a patient, forced to face such a deeply suppressed traumatic experience, had become catatonic. I did not want this to happen to Laury.
11
BOBBI
On the surface, it might have seemed that Bobbi had delusions of grandeur. Although she had started school at the age of six, and had dropped out at the age of sixteen, during her sophomore year in high school, Bobbi's accumulated school attendance added up to less than six years. Bobbi had an energetic, rather mischievous manner, and she was full of stories braggings of what she had done and what she could do.
The strange thing was that Bobbi was telling the truth. She had tremendous ego-needs (typical of the braggart), but she also had tremendous abilities. Bobbi was, to put it mildly, a paradox.
Bobbi had killed her employer, the manager of a supermarket, and she felt she had been justified in doing so.
Starting as a checker, Bobbi had proved herself an intelligent, versatile and valuable employee. She was about to be promoted to Assistant Manager, but the Manager asked for her school records.
"He had the idea that I had been to college not because I ever said I had, but because of the things I talked about."
Bobbi is widely read; as she says, "I've always read everything I could get my hands on everything from a tomato can label to the Complete Works of Shakespeare."
Bobbi bristled, saying she could see no reason for such a rule, that a person ought to be judged on his abilities, not on where or how long he went to school.
The manager had laughed, telling her this was typical modern American youth reaction. He assumed she was trying to change the rule to protect others, the so-called underprivileged, he said, and added, "Anyone can see you're well-educated."
"Then let it go at that," Bobbi said. "If I don't do a good job, fire me, but judge me on my performance."
At this point, the Manager gave her a look of sympathy and asked, "What's the matter? Didn't you finish college? Never mind, many people have to stop going for one reason or another. There's no reason why you can't finish your education by taking evening classes."
"I told him that phrase, finish your education just burned me up," Bobbi recalls. "I told him no intelligent person ever finishes his education; that learning is a continuing process that should be pursued for life. Then he asked me whether I had finished college; I said I had not. He asked me how far I'd gone; I said I'd never seen the inside of a college. He said, 'Of course, you did graduate from high school.' I said, 'I did not.'
"His face turned red with rage. He said I had misled him, made him think I was educated, pretended a lie. He looked at me as he would have if I'd admitted that I was a syphilitic who'd secretly been pissing in the drinking fountain. He told me if he'd known I was an ignorant dropout, he'd never have hired me, and of course, I must realize that I did not have the educational qualifications for any job in his store, and certainly not a responsible position like the one he'd offered me.
"I stood there looking at the pompous little bastard, him and his finish your education bullshit, just like a million other little bastards. I felt like bawling. I felt like I had to get through to him. I tried to tell him that some of the best-educated people in the world are self-educated, but he just kept looking at me like I was a piece of trash. That's when I picked up the letter-opener. I honestly expected hot air to whoosh out of him, instead of blood..."
The Manager had attacked Bobbi's ego her self and she had instinctively defended what was being threatened.
Bobbi would not admit at first that she had always longed for a good formal education. Not being able to have what she so deeply desired, she had suppressed that desire, convinced herself that she did not want it, and had set about to prove that she could get along even better without it.
Bobbi knew, even before she started first-grade, that she would never be allowed to finish high school. Therefore, her defense against this locked door had been to hate, scorn and despise school.
Bobbi was abandoned by her father after Bobbi's mother died when the child was very young. She went to live with her grandparents, who already had more children (and less of everything else) than they needed or wanted. Bobbi never felt she belonged anywhere as, indeed, she did not.
"I never even had a regular place to sleep," she remembers. "There were two or more beds in every room. I just found a space and crawled in."
The grandfather's home, poor though it was, seemed to be a refuge for relatives with no means of their own. Whatever funds could be acquired were used for food for the clan beans or a huge kettle of stew.
One night, Bobbi was wandering around crying because nobody wanted her in their bed. An uncle, sleeping with two other male relatives, called her to his side. He spoke to her kindly and tucked her into bed beside him. He stretched out his arm for her to use as a pillow, and hugged her close. Feeling secure, she went to sleep.
"Some time later, I woke up," she says. "The house was dark and quiet, except for the snores here and there. Then, I realized what it was that had woke me my uncle was rubbing and fondling me. It was nice. I lay relaxed and enjoyed it. I didn't let on that I was awake I just wanted him to keep petting me like that as long as he would.
"I could tell his breathing was a little heavier, but he was trying to control it you know, like when you've been running, and are trying not to breathe loud. He started touching my legs, then rubbing them gently. He turned me on my back, and still I pretended to be asleep. He rubbed his hand slowly up and down my legs, on the insides of the thighs.
"Then his hand touched my pants. His hand was still for a moment, then, slowly, cautiously, one finger stole under the leg of my pants. The finger felt and searched and rubbed. I wanted to get up and run, but I couldn't move. It was scary but exciting. It was new, and I wanted to know what was going to happen. As he rubbed the lips of my pussy, I felt all hot down there, and in a minute, I was wet. I didn't know what was happening, but I wanted it to go on happening.
"He put his finger into my hole, and brought it out, wet, and he was really breathing hard, now, but trying to lie still and not wake the others or make them suspicious if they were awake. Just as slow and careful as he could, he pulled my pants down, down, and off. Then he played with me some more, getting the wet stuff out with his finger, and wetting the outside of me, all around the hole.
"Then he turned me toward him. He lifted my leg and placed it over his leg, then he put something against my hole. I knew it was his dick I'd seen boys urinating lots of times. Only his was big and hard with this sort of ball on the end. I was all hot and wet, and he put that soft part up to my hole and pushed it in just a little bit, then out just the head of it in and out. He took my hand and put it on the shaft of it and rubbed himself up and down, masturbating himself with my hand, while only the head of his dick was in me.
"Pretty soon, he started to shudder like a stalled tractor, and then I felt a stream of hot juice shoot into my pussy, washing my whole insides. I thought I was going to die, or faint, or at least giggle. But I lay quiet.
"Now his dick was softer, but still kind of firm, but it was smaller than when it had been so hard. He pushed it into me as far as it would go. His big hand was under my butt, lifting, maneuvering my body into the position he wanted me in. I thought he believed I was asleep I don't know what he thought if he thought anything. He was just feeling, I guess, not thinking.
Now, his dick was in me, and it started to get hard and big again. He pulled me back and forth, just a little, so there was movement, but not very much. The movement hurt, but having that big hard thing trapped in me like that was great. He took my hands and put them down on his balls, and I sort of massaged them, and just let myself sort of swim in the feeling of what was happening. That little bit of movement that didn't make his dick come out or go in deeper was just a kind of shaking movement. I was the only thing shaking or moving.
"I could feel his excitement, feel the thing in me throbbing like a giant heart. It went on like that for a long time. Then something happened to me. I was hotter, more excited, and it was like I couldn't stop what was happening to me. That was the first time I ever came. I put my hand on myself, in front, and I could feel the throb of my pussy. I felt my clitoris standing up like a rooster's beak, and I rubbed on it a little. Then he moved my hand and started rubbing me there with his hand, while I squeezed his balls and played with the part of his dick that wasn't inside me, and pretty soon, when he shot off in me, I came with him.
"As soon as his dick softened a little, so he could slide it in and out, he did, and it didn't hurt at all, just felt great! He pushed it in as far as he could, and this time, I wrapped my leg behind his so I could pull myself closer and get more of that thing into my pussy. He slid it in and out of me-clear out to the end, then back in as far as it would go, till it got too big and too hard to move in and out. That time, it took him a lot longer to come, but he was having more fun than before, I could tell. And so was I. Each time we'd go at it like that, me massaging his balls, until he came with a great shudder, and then the in and out fucking while he wasn't so hard, till he got too hard again. I wasn't tired or sleepy. I thought I could do this forever. And we just about did we fucked all night five or six hours till the sky began to lighten, and we had to stop for fear of being caught."
This pattern of behavior continued until Bobbi was old enough to menstruate. About that time, one of her cousins, a very pretty and popular girl, became pregnant and had to get married. The girl was trapped with a poor, uneducated boy in a life that would be downhill all the way.
"That was one of the things that made a big impression on me," Bobbi said. "Hearing Rachel cry and moan about the trap she'd screwed herself into. I remember she said to me because I was the only person handy, and she was full of talk 'Bobbi, fornicating's fun, but it's not worth what it costs a girl. Everybody tells you it's wrong, a sin. But what it really is, is stupid. Men say they're trapped, but they're not. A man can chase around all he pleases after he's married, and nobody's hurt, except his wife. But let a woman step out, and all she gets for her trouble is knocked-up. Take my advice, kid, save that snatch for some guy who can give you a decent living.'
"I could actually see the picture she painted. I could see her living in the same kind of squalor we lived in, having one kid after another, and someday, looking like Grandma, with wrinkles and no teeth, and nothing to show for a life of hard work. I knew I was old enough to get pregnant, and I made a vow that I was going to do without men.
"It wasn't easy, because I really loved screwing. But every time I thought about Rachel, every time I saw her with her stomach swelling bigger and bigger, straining against the front of her faded, worn-out dress, saw the hopeless look on her face, her stringy hair. I gained strength. Rachel went almost overnight from one of the prettiest girls you ever saw. to an old woman with no hope at all."
Bobbi had always liked to read. Now, she devoured everything she could lay her hands on. She was bored with school. She was in a hurry. She wanted to learn everything now, and she had no patience with repeated exercises and homework. She made a furious game of seeing how much she could learn, and at the same time, how little she could attend school.
She hated living in the country and riding the school bus back and forth to school. She hated never having nice clothes to wear or money to spend. Most of all, she hated the squalor of the relative-infested house, and the ignorance of everyone around her. When she was sixteen, she left home, hitchhiked to the nearest city, and got a job.
She worked at anything and everything, and she used all of her spare time reading books. At first, she read everything she'd just go down any shelf in the library and pick off a handful of titles.
"Then I decided there ought to be a system to my reading," she said. "So I started by picking a subject and reading everything I could find for say about three months, then I'd go to something else. Art. Musicians. Electricity. Interior decoration. I'm a fast reader, and I retain a high degree of what I read." She laughed. "The result was a pretty damn good liberal education."
I had to agree with her. Her I.Q. and other tests bore out the truth of this statement.
Bobbi persisted for some time in her attitude of scorn of formal education, but it was only talk, and soon, she admitted it.
When she admitted to me that the real reason she had killed her employer was because he had laughed at her and had said, "Wait till the others hear this story boy, they'll never believe it!" I felt we were getting somewhere.
"I had to I couldn't stand the humiliation, being made fun of being made to feel like I wasn't as good as anybody else. I had to silence the bastard!"
Now, Bobbi knew she could get a high school diploma and more, too, if she wanted to work toward it which she did.
When Bobbi is released, she will be a useful citizen. While getting the education she so desperately wanted, she has come to a genuine understanding of herself. And self-understanding is, after all, the first giant step toward rehabilitation.
12
AVA
Ava strode into my office with an air of defiance that dared me to try to change her. She was a striking woman with natural blonde hair chopped off short, and huge eyes the color of a hot desert sky. But the first thing that probably struck anyone seeing Ava for the first time was the steel-spring gracefulness with which she moved. I judged her to have been a girl athlete whose perfect curves are composed of well-trained muscles, but there was nothing of this in Ava's records.
But then, her records were concerned the reason she was here. Ava was a very clever, and until a few months ago, a very successful, thief. Now, as every psychologist (and a good many laymen) knows, stealing, generally speaking, indicates a severe need to be loved. But the Law had not been concerned over that. The only fact the Law had been interested in was that Ava, a very competent and popular young bank teller, had cleverly done the bank out of a quarter of a million dollars.
So here she was in prison, and sitting down for her first interview with the prison psychologist. On the surface, the whole thing smacked of routine, but in my line of work there is no such thing. Anyone seeing Ava on the street would swear she was as normal as apple pie, but girls that normal don't usually wind up here.
My first clue came when Ava sat down. She turned toward me, and her movements suggested carelessness, but that gracefulness was there, too. When she sat, she allowed the blue chambray work uniform to ride as high as it would, then she crossed her ankles, letting her knees swing apart. This is the clumsiest posture a woman can assume, but Ava didn't look clumsy at all. She wanted me to look up her dress, and arranged the peep-show, but I didn't look directly at her. Instead, I shuffled some papers on my desk, scribbled notes, and finally, politely, asked her if she would mind adjusting the Venetian blind to let in more light.
She stood, moved to the window, fiddled with the blind, then sat down again, this time crossing her legs at the knees, and pulling the skirt down primly. She was smiling broadly. "So you refuse to look up my dress, eh, Doc?" She said cheerfully. "You don't know what you're missing."
"You're a pretty girl, Ava," I told her levelly. "With a little work, you could be really beautiful. Why do you want me to think you're cheap and vulgar? Obviously it's all put on why?"
The smile faded, but Ava tried to hold onto her tough attitude a little longer. "You mean you're above peeking at a patient's snatch? Or are you trying to tell me you think I'm really a nice girl who fell by the wayside, and doesn't belong here at all? Bullshit, Doc! I'm a common thief. And even though my record may not say so, I'm a pretty common slut." She leaned forward, as though confiding something. "Hell, Doc, I bet you could make life a lot easier for me in this muck-heap-privileges, and all that if you wanted to. And I could compensate you with a good lay whenever you felt like it."
"You can't shock me, Ava," I told her in a low gentle voice, "and the sooner you begin to level with me, the sooner I can help you to adjust here, and prepare yourself for life on the outside. That sounds corny," I admitted, "but then, we have to get corny sometimes when we're searching for the truth."
She made a derisive sound, but I saw the hint of tears on her lashes.
"Suppose you begin by telling me about your sex life," I suggested.
"Psychologists and peeping Toms come out of the same mucky bag, don't they, Doc?" She was trying to shock me, make me leave her alone. She didn't want her sex life uncovered, even here in the privacy of my office. Then she added, "I never told them in court, but I gave almost all of that money to a man."
"Are you still in love with him?"
The question seemed to surprise her, but she answered, "Yes. Yes, God help me, I'm still in love with him."
"How does he feel about you?"
Her eyes blazed. "He loves me! Oh, I suppose you think he couldn't let me take the whole rap and keep his mouth shut, if he loved me, but you just don't understand!"
"I didn't say I thought anything, Ava," I reminded her. "You're right; I don't understand, but I'd like to. Please tell me about it."
"Oh, you wouldn't you'd think-" she stammered.
"Try me," I said quietly.
The man, Kirby, was married to Ava's sister, Willa. Willa had been in poor health for several years. "Female trouble of some kind," Ava said.
There were four children, and that was certainly one reason, she pointed out, why she and Kirby couldn't think only of themselves in the matter. In that first session, Ava made it sound pretty cut-and-dried or so she seemed to think. But there were a lot of things in Ava's story that just didn't fit.
Each time she told me a new episode of her love-life, she looked at me with defiance that dared me to find fault or explain away her "Logic ' I never did. I knew that Ava, like any other patient who is to benefit from therapy, must face the truth on her own, not have it handed to her in a neatly wrapped package. Underneath, Ava knew the truth, but for me to have pointed it out to her, before she was ready to face it, would have been disastrous. So I listened.
Willa was not Kirby's first wife. With a few questions, I discovered he had been married three times before. "So what?" Ava blazed. "They were all bitches!"
In the weeks that followed, the story unraveled, bit by bit. I only asked questions when I suspected Ava was trying to conceal something.
"Were all four children his and Willa's" I asked once.
"No."
She didn't elaborate, so I knew she was hiding something.
"Just how many children does Willa have by Kirby?"
She chewed her full under lip for several seconds, then mumbled, "None."
She flashed me a look, expecting me to "make something of it." Instead, I asked in the same calm voice, "Which of his wives had the children how many and by whom?"
, "They all belonged to Mary Ann, his third wife."
"Where is Mary Ann now."
"Dead."
"Of what did she die?"
"Oh, Goddamnit, Doc, leave me alone what in the hell difference does it make what oh, shit! She died when the last baby was born.
"You probably think Kirby's a rat," she cried. "Well, he isn't. He's wonderful!"
I said nothing. Anything I could have pointed out about Kirby's character would have only strengthened Ava's defense of the man. She had to come to her own conclusions, if she was to derive any benefit from them.
In another session, I explored the subject of what Kirby had done with the money Ava had given him. It turned out that he'd lost most of it gambling. They lived within convenient driving distance of legal gambling, so finding a game was not one of Kirby's problems.
"You don't understand," Ava said. "Maybe you think Kirby wanted to lose the money."
"I didn't say that."
"Well, actually, he was trying to run it up into some real dough, so we wouldn't have to wait around forever for our future."
"Would you like to tell me about your plans?"
"Well, we couldn't just leave Willa high and dry," she said. "Kirby is too softhearted to do anything like that. We were going to put her in a good nursing home, so she could get well, then set her up in her own apartment afterward. And the children well, it costs a lot to raise and educate four children."
I didn't point out that a quarter of a million dollars would have done the job nicely. The whole story was full of excuses and inconsistencies, but until Ava faced it, it would have to stay that way.
"Why did you continue to stay in their home?" I asked. "Why didn't you get an apartment by yourself?"
"Willa couldn't or wouldn't take care of those kids. They needed me. They called me Auntie Ava," she smiled. "When they were sick, I was the one who stayed up half the night nursing him, not Willa."
As she talked, it became clear that she had sacrificed her sleep, time, effort and love in proportions above and beyond the call of duty-or even good sense.
I knew there was something deeper and more basic than anything Ava had volunteered, and I waited for this part of the story.
Finally, it came. One day when fog hovered over the world, Ava decided to talk about her childhood.
"Daddy had this wild idea that he could strike it rich in Alaska," she said. "That's where he took us Mom and me. Willa stayed back home with an aunt and uncle, because she was old enough to go to school. I was only three years old when we moved to Alaska."
It seemed that Ava's father was better at dreaming and drinking than he was at making fortunes, so it fell to his wife to make the living. And since she was neither educated nor trained, she did the only thing she knew how to do. There was a woman-shortage in Alaska, and any woman who was reasonably young and attractive could make a living in the Great Frozen North as a prostitute.
"Mom used to dress up and go out," Ava recalled. "When Dad wasn't too drunk to notice, he'd yell at her and call her a whore they fought a lot."
Ava still felt bitterness toward her mother for what had happened. Not for her profession, but for leaving Ava alone with her father.
"Did your mother have any reason to think you wouldn't be safe with him?" I asked. "Most fathers are pretty good at baby-sitting. Did he neglect you?"
"Neglect!" Ava spat the word. "I wish to God he had!" I let her talk.
"When it started, I didn't mind," Ava said. "In fact, I guess I thought it was a lot of fun. I used to have to cry like a banshee to get him to fix me any food, like, maybe a can of soup and some crackers. Not that he meant to be unkind. Usually, he was too drunk to know what was going on. Man, I hate alcohol! It's worse than dope any day."
She stared into space for a few moments, as though visualizing some scene I could not see. Then she continued:
"I think it must have all started one night when he was lying on the couch half drunk and naked as a Mexican hairless dog.
"I was hungry as usual," she said. "He sort of halfway raised up in his elbow and pulled me up on the couch beside him. He pointed down at his dick and said, 'There's a titty-bottle for you, Ava. Suck it!' I whined some more. I knew I was too old for a bottle in fact, I knew it wasn't a bottle. But I couldn't reason with him. I was too young, and he was in an alcoholic state of hilarity everything seemed funny to him. He said, 'I'll suck your titty-bottle, then you can suck mine.' He took off my panties, and started kissing me on the stomach and legs. At first, I was annoyed, but then I started to giggle it tickled. He stuck his tongue in my navel, then he licked my stomach with his hot, wet tongue. Then he started kissing and licking the insides of my thighs then up to the slit between my legs. I could feel his hot breath on my skin, smell the stench of him yet, it was an exciting smell. I began to squirm, a sort of heat building up in me. His hot tongue touched something at the top of the lips of my cunt the clitoris. It throbbed and became erect. You think a four-year-old baby can't have a climax?"
She was looking at me intently, expecting me to call her a liar. I said, "I know they can. Even much younger. If the child is excited to the point of climax, age is no factor."
"Oh." She looked down at her hands a moment.
"I thought it was just me that I was well, born over-sexed or something. It made me kind of ashamed, in later years. Not then, though. I was too young "
"You were too young and too innocent," I told her. "The man was at fault, not you. Don't blame yourself."
"He waited just a minute, then started in on me again. He seemed so excited, he was panting like a dog, his eyes wild and wet, and the sounds he made, kind of whimpering. He put his hands around my body and lifted me up. In no time, I was even hotter than I had been the first time-maybe because the first time had happened so fast, and because it was the first time. I hadn't known what to expect, and the climax had surprised me-maybe even scared me a little, but the second time, I was as eager as I could be.
His hands were rough, and his nails bit into me, but I could hardly feel the pain, because the pleasure was so much more intense. He ran his tongue up and down my slit as he had before, and worked it around and around my clitoris, licking it hard almost as hard as he could have done it with his finger.
"Then he stuck his tongue in my cunt quick and hard, and I bowed back and let out a scream I had never felt anything like it, so sudden and good! He jerked his tongue out, then in, fast stretching it as long as he could, to a sharp point, darting it in one side, as deep as it would go, out, then in the other side, then out. And then, he started rotating his tongue up inside me, around and around. He would pull it out, and suck on my clitoris a little, nibbling it gently with his teeth, then massaging it, sucking it, then his tongue would go back inside my pussy.
"I was staring at the ceiling light when I came the second time. It was just a naked bulb, but suddenly it looked like the Fourth of July every color in the world, whirling I let out a long high wail. The feeling was almost more than I could bear. He kept probing with his tongue till the last tide of ecstasy died away, and I was lying there, throbbing in every nerve.
"He let me rest a minute, then pushed me down, my face on his cock. It was bulging now and as hot as a poker. I opened my mouth. Even at that tender age, I think I knew how to make a man feel things I was born knowing. I didn't even mind doing it to him. The more worked up he got, the more excited I got, and soon, my cunt was beating like a jungle drum again. I reached down with one hand and clawed at the hot, itching hunger that was building up inside me.
"He moved my hand, and started playing with me with his fingers...
"I put the head of his hot, throbbing cock in my mouth and sucked on it, sticking it as far as I could into my mouth, then sucking as hard as I could as I pulled my mouth away. I licked and nibbled it, all up and down the top, and each side, and underneath, then sucked some more. In a minute, he came in a great gush of fluid, and most of it went down my throat. I just kept sucking till it was limp in my mouth.
"I don't know how long that kept up, but I was having the time of my life.
"As I said, I didn't know enough to think there was anything wrong. One day, right in front of Mom, I walked up to him and reached up and grabbed hold of his cock through the material of his pants. I felt it spring to life, but he jerked back. Mom scolded me, and Dad swore I had never done anything like that before, that I was at the curious age. Mom looked suspicious, but she let it pass. She was in a hurry to get away from the house.
"As soon as she was gone, Dad told me I must never do anything like that when Mom or anyone else was around. It was something we could only do when we were absolutely alone. I still didn't think it was wrong just that it was something we were not supposed to do in front of Mom.
"It went on for the next three years. After the first few times, Dad was putting a little of his prick in me. breaking me in slowly. In a few weeks, we were fucking like crazy, and I loved it and couldn't get enough of it. If I laid on my back, he could get it all in, and when he pushed it as deep as it would go, it just drove me crazy. It was good dog-fashion, too, as far as getting a lot of it inside me, but that was kind of difficult because of my size.
"It all blew up when Mom walked in on us one day. She called the cops, and Dad went to jail. She sued him for divorce, and got full custody of me, but she didn't want me. She called me dirty names. Finally, she put me in a foster home. I think she sent money for my support for a while, but then she forgot me. She got married again, I think. I haven't heard from her in years."
There was no more sex for Ava after that not until she met her brother-in-law, Kirby. Instead, all Ava could think of was getting enough education so she could get a good, respectable job.
'That scandal about my dad and me God, that was awful," she said. "I didn't even want to think of sex."
So she worked hard in school, and with the help of social welfare and a small scholarship, took a course in a business college and got a job in the bank.
She had always known where her sister, Willa, lived. She chose to settle down near Willa the only "family" she had left. When Kirby and Willa invited her to board with them, she accepted. She had been there ever since until she was arrested.
"How did the affair begin between you and Kirby?" I asked.
"Affair!" She bristled. "Doc, you make it sound so cheap, so common "
"I'm sorry," I said. "You give it a name. I don't know what you want to call it."
"We were in love," she cried. "We still are!"
"How did you fall in love?"
"Right off the bat," she said. "At first sight. Kirby's not young, but he's so oh, everything a man should be," she said dreamily. "He's sweet and considerate and kind. He has a sense of humor oh, everything!"
"How old is he?"
"Forty-three I know," she grinned. "You're going to say he's old enough to be my fath-" She bit the word off in the middle and stared, a look of shock on her face. "Oh, you think he's a father-substitute," she accused.
"Did I say that?"
"Do you think that?"
"I don't know, Ava. What do you think? Suppose you tell me how it was, then I won't have to guess or jump to conclusions. Only you know how it happened."
"Willa had been griping because Kirby hardly ever took her anywhere. I said I would stay with the children, so they went to a party. About an hour after the kids were in bed, Kirby came back-alone. Willa had a little too much to drink, they'd argued, and she'd walked out, making a scene. He thought she was at home.
"He said, I don't see how you two can be sisters, she's such a bitch, and you're so sweet.' He came over and touched my face. Our eyes met, and then we were kissing.
"It had been there all along and we just hadn't faced it. I'd never imagined a kiss like Kirby's. First, so tender, then building up the heat in me, his tongue gently probing for mine. Then more fiercely I couldn't have denied him. We went into his bedroom, the one he shared with Willa, because I shared a room with the kids.
"He raised my dress and took off my panties, and when he touched my cunt, it exploded with feeling. It was like it had been suspended, waiting all those years. I never came so fast in my life. Or so many times. We sixty-nined sucked each other off three or four times. He was a hot as I was. For a man his age, I never saw a man so " She broke off and stared out the window.
"I sound like I've known a lot of men, don't I, Doc?"
"I understand. It was just a figure of speech," I lied. "Please continue."
"It was wonderful. Once I asked him if he wasn't afraid Willa would come home and catch us, but he said she wouldn't, she was too drunk and too mad. Then he started kissing me all over, sucking at my tits, making my nipples hard, kissing my stomach and the insides of my thighs and my cunt, running his tongue up inside and darting at my clitoris till it stood up as hard as a little pecker, then he was on top of me, shoving his cock home, hard, again and again. He has a rod like a stallion, and he knows how to use it. He pulled back a few inches when he was ready to come and I swear it was like a fire hose squirting a burning fence, it was like fireworks bubbling up in my throat, and if he hadn't clamped his mouth over mine, I'd have let out a scream that would have woken the whole neighborhood.
"That man can fuck all night. I wouldn't be surprised if he could screw around the clock. I'm sure going to find out when we're married."
"When will that be?" I asked.
She looked surprised, like a child who has been watching a bubble and someone suddenly breaks it with a pin.
"As soon as I get out," she said.
At this time, several months of her sentence had elapsed. I scanned her record. I said, "It's been almost five months. I imagine the divorce will be final soon," I went on blandly. "Tell me about your plans. I'm interested, I sincerely wish you happiness, Ava."
She didn't say anything for a long time. Tears stood in her eyes and then poured unchecked down her cheeks. I pretended not to notice. In truth, I was holding my breath, because this was a delicate moment and I hoped nothing would break into Ava's self-examination.
When she finally spoke, she tried to laugh. "You knew it all the time, didn't you, Doc?" She didn't expect an answer, and I didn't give one.
"Kirby tricked me," she said dreamily, as though she had wakened from a dream and was in a strange, unfamiliar place and was trying to relate to her new discoveries. "I let him use me it was my fault. An idiot could have seen through him-gambling away all that money, letting me support his family, feeding me lies. He hasn't been here once, but I made excuses for him. He's selfish and rotten," she said. "Just like my old man. The same. But I'm hooked on that man he's reward and punishment both. I'm ruined, Doc. I see the truth, but what good is it? I'll never change."
"You've won more than half the battle already," I told her. "You're young and you've got the courage to face the truth. Working out the solutions is the easiest part."
She smiled, and at that same moment, a ray of sunshine broke through the fog and slanted through the Venetian blinds. I'm a scientist, not a superstitious nut, and yet, I couldn't help thinking it was a sign of good things to come.
13
IRENE
Irene couldn't visit me; I had to go to her.
She was in the infirmary where she'd been taken after she'd slit her wrists with a dull bread knife in the kitchen where she was assigned to work.
The infirmary was not part of my usual "beat"; it was my job to stick close to my office where I could talk with and listen to as many girls as my 12-hour day allowed. And there were never enough hours in any day for all I needed to do.
The infirmary was typical of prison hospitals: clean, but badly understaffed and under-equipped. Dr. Hargrove, the lone M.D., was overworked, and, I didn't doubt, even more severely underpaid than I was. He was a tired, greying man, stooped by his long years of long hours, but his smile was warm and his handshake firm.
"She just about made it," he said, referring to the girl in bed No. ll. "As you've probably observed, most would-be suicides are weak attempts designed to get attention for the 'victim.' But Irene would have made it if she hadn't been rushed in here. She damned near cut her hands off!"
Irene lay weakly against the white pillows, and only her eyes moved like a trapped faun's. They were large, soft-brown and almond-shaped with a thick fringe of black lashes in contrast to the creamy color of her skin.
I could see the swell of her ripe young figure outlined by the bedsheet. Firm, rounded breasts stood up without the aid of a brassiere. A tiny waist spilled out into voluptuously rounded hips and thighs.
Her wrists were bandaged and lay helplessly at her sides. I asked her how she was feeling, and she didn't answer.
"What are you doing here?"
She gave me a bitter little smile that seemed to take all the effort she could dredge up. "You mean, what's a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?" The voice was weak, but the effort she was making told me this girl possessed an unusual brand of courage. But if she had strength guts, if you will why had she tried to kill herself? I asked her the question.
"I hate myself," she answered. "I can't stand mee!"
"Why do you hate yourself?" No answer.
"Did you hate the man you tried to kill what was his name?"
"What was his name, Doc?" She countered, her eyes turning cold. "He didn't have a name, nor a face, either not as far as I'm concerned. He was just another blob of filth on two legs, running around trying to do what every other blob of filth tries to do to every halfway decent-looking girl that comes down the pike!"
"He swore he wasn't trying to rape you," I reminded her, hoping to make her angry enough to bare her true feelings, as she had never done at any time during her trial. "The jury believed him," I added. "He claimed he was merely trying to kiss you."
Her eyes blazed. "Rape me with his mouth or with his prick what's the difference, Doc? Slobbers or come what's the difference? I stuck a knife in his gut, and I'm sorry-sorry I didn't cut off his cock and stuff it down his dirty throat and strangle the sonofabitch to death!"
She leaned back, eyes closed, trembling with exhaustion.
I waited until the pulse in her neck slowed down, and then I said, "Why do you want to die, Irene?"
She didn't answer.
"It's clear enough that you've had some kind of unpleasant experience with sex, but "
Her laugh, high and shrill, cut my words off in mid-sentence.
The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun. "Doc," she said, "I've never had anything but unpleasant experiences. Ever since I can remember probably even before I can remember before I was born!"
The words before I was born gave away more than she realized, and I caught her off guard when I said, "You mean incest. Your father?"
She flinched visibly, then looked at me, saw none of the horror or disapproval she had expected, and began to speak.
"My father was a roaming preacher," Irene said. "My mother died when I was four years old. There were seven of us kids, I was the only girl. The boys all went to live with uncles and aunts. The old man said I was a comfort to him so he kept me."
"He used to take me out in the fields with him," she recalled. "He'd lie down between the corn rows with me and tickle me under the arms. It half-hurt, but I remember laughing. To this day, I hate the thought of being 'goosed.' And then, he'd blow on my bare stomach, and then on me down there, you know. Well, hell, Doc, I was only a baby I couldn't help it!"
"Of course you couldn't," I agreed quietly. "It was probably a pleasant sensation, and an innocent child would feel no shame about enjoying it."
She lifted those tortured eyes to me as though I'd offered her some kind of a reprieve from hell. "I didn't know any better," she cried.
"Of course you didn't," I agreed again. "But after you grew up and learned incest is frowned upon by the world, you developed feelings of gulit."
"Oh, God you don't know! I wish I could die-"
"Why should you punish yourself?" I asked practically. "It was your father who did wrong, not you. You must talk about it, drain the poison from your soul, forgive yourself realize that, actually, there is nothing to forgive. You were the victim."
I wondered whether I'd gotten a bit carried away, but apparently I'd blundered onto the right words to convince her that she was blameless in my opinion. After that, she talked.
Sometimes, she insisted on talking with her face to the wall, but the words poured out like poisons from a lanced boil.
"It had been raining. It was cold. We were staying in this old house that didn't have a stove or anything. We were huddled together on the floor on some burlap bags or something. The old blankets we always carried with us were used for covering, but I was still cold. I wanted to go to sleep, but Dad was telling me a story, and he kept saying, 'Listen, 'Renie, I want you to hear this good.' I tried to keep my eyes open. I still remember the story. It was about how, in the olden days, like in Egypt, the royal families fell in love with each other, brothers and sisters, and married. This was to keep the royal bloodlines in the family or something.
Then he started touching me. He had been drinking, and when he drank, he always talked a lot. It was like he had to explain away what he was doing, convince me that there was nothing wrong with it. But at that time, I still didn't know it was wrong He touched me gently, and I felt warmth stealing over me. It was comforting. I couldn't have food, but I could have something He put his hand under my dress, then his fingers stole inside my panties. I relaxed and felt the heat radiate out from the place where his fingers caressed me. I wanted what he was doing. I felt myself grow wet. and hot down there.
"Dad used to tell me frightening stories about what strangers might do to me especially men and boys. I was even afraid to speak to women and girls. I'm sure people thought I wasn't 'all there' or that I was a deaf mute.
"But one summer there was a boy. We were about twelve, and he was so friendly and outgoing, I couldn't be afraid of him. His name was Ron. Once we were running in the meadow, and I fell down and we laughed and he kissed me. It was just a dumb, clumsy little kid kiss, but it was the closest thing to a romance I was ever to experience. Later, Ron and I were wading in the shallow creek, and Dad came looking for me. Ron and I were running and holding hands, and oh, God! You should have seen Dad his face turned purple, he was so mad. Ron took off, he was scared. And I think he was wise to run I think my father was crazy enough to have killed the boy.
"Dad started beating me. Oh, he'd beat me lots of times, times when I did something to displease him, but it had never been like this before I mean never connected with sex. But this time it was. He kept hitting me till I fell there on the creek bank, and then he tore off his trousers. He didn't have on any underwear, and he was jumping around yelling at me, cursing, and his rod was swinging back and forth as he jumped around and, for the first time, the sight of that naked thing frightened me.
"He screamed, 'You Jezebel! Daughter of Sodom! Whore of Babylon!' And all the time, he was getting closer and closer. I was like someone paralyzed, or having a nightmare. I couldn't move. I opened my mouth and tried to scream, but no sound came out. He lunged at my face, and oh, God! He stuck that vile thing in my mouth. It was like something with a life of its own, like a snake, I remember thinking. Striking, again and again, trying to crawl down my throat. With a squeal, his body stiffened, and he came, spewing the hot slimy mess into my mouth, down my throat.
"He fell back, but only for a moment. I watched his prick, I couldn't tear my eyes from it. I was fascinated with horror. It went kind of limber, but only for a moment, then all at once, it began to get hard again like slow motion it changed shape, straightened out, then began to turn upward as it grew harder. It had never looked so big. I could see the veins in it standing out, I could see it throbbing. The head looked as though it was going to burst with the intense swelling.
"He reached down and tore away my panties, and still I did not move. Then he came down slowly, hovering over me. I was scared, but something else I don't know and then I felt the tip of it touch me, and it was hot and pulsating with that terrible life it seemed to have. For a moment it was as though the whole world was suspended, waiting, and then with a lunge, he lowered himself into me. And then again and again, he was ramming me with such anger, such hate, such violence, I thought I was going to die, and yet oh, God!
"I don't know what it was, what was wrong with me! I couldn't help myself. I had never felt like I was feeling then. It hurt you have no idea how bad it hurt, but I almost passed out from the feeling. I wanted it to never stop. It was more than just a good feeling, more than being warm and fondled, the way it had been before. I was wild and strange. I felt like something was going to happen, something was going to explode, and when it did, I was going to have a feeling I had never had in my life before. He touched me, I surged up to take it inside me. My whole being, my whole self the whole universe seemed to be gathering for that explosion, that something whatever it was...
"And then it happened. Ron's father grabbed Dad under the arms and pulled him off of me, and then he was literally flinging him through the air, like a sack of potatoes. I heard a woman scream, and through a blur, I could see that it was Ron's mother. She was pushing Ron behind her, crying out at him not to look ... I saw Dad running, heard Ron's father shout that he was going to call the law on him. And then Ron's father came over to me and picked me up. I remember thinking, is he going to finish what Dad was doing? Is he going to make it happen, make the explosion come? But he picked me up very gently. He smoothed down my dress and carried me to their house. Ron's mother fixed me a warm bath in the bathtub it was the first time I had ever had a bath in a real bathtub...
"Later, I was taken to the County Orphanage.
Irene seemed quiet and depressed for the next few days and I was worried about her. Then at our next meeting, she said:
"It's no use, Doc. No use at all. I could have killed myself I don't know what made me go into all the gory details like I did-"
"You did it because deep down, you want to be helped, and you believe I can help you," I told her. "And I believe it too. Don't be ashamed of what you tell me, Irene."
"You must loathe me."
"I think you know better than that. Would I hate you if you had tuberclosis or heart disease?"
"You're damn decent," she said it sincerely, "and I can't kill myself without making you understand."
"You won't kill yourself, Irene," I said. "You mustn't. We're going to lick this thing you'll see!"
"No, Doc. You've taken away everything I could use as a suicide weapon, but a person can always find a lethal weapon, if she wants to bad enough. I could have but I wanted to make you see why I don't want you to blame yourself. You've tried too damned hard with me for that. I had to tell you and thank you before I-"
"Don't talk that way, Irene," I said.
"I guess I gave you the impression that I never laid eyes on my father again that he never touched me again after that time I told you about. But it's not true. I wish it was true, oh, God! How I wish everything would be different. I wouldn't be here, probably."
She had been working at the dime store for about two weeks when her father showed up one day. She was still shy and lonely and frightened. She was half-glad to see the old man, and when he told her he was broke and had been sick, she gave him all the money she could spare. She told him he could stay at her place if she had room, but she didn't. All she had was a tiny furnished room with a bed and chair and bureau.
Irene's father asked if he might stay in her room during the daytime, while she was working that is, if the landlady didn't mind. After all, he was her father.
The landlady was kind and pitied the old man, and said it would be all right for a day or two, until he could find work and a place to live.
The first evening Irene came to her room to find her father on the bed, apparently asleep. She smelled the odor of whiskey and thought, Here we go again, but she felt sorry for him. Thinking she'd give him a little more time to rest, she took her robe and went down the hall and took a bath.
When she returned, wearing nothing but the terry cloth robe, he was awake, sitting on the side of the bed.
"He was grinning at me," Irene said, "and he said he was grateful to me, that I was a good girl. Much better than any of his other children, he said. He kept saying things like, They think they're too good for their own father,' and feeling sorry for himself. Then he started talking about the Bible and what an abomination a child was, and quoting or, for all I know, misquoting the Bible. He talked about somebody who had got their father drunk two women in the Bible, he said and had seduced the poor man, because they wanted him to beget sons for them. It was not the poor man's fault, he said, because he was drunk and didn't even know what was going on.
"The first thing I knew, he reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close to him. He was wiry and strong, his hands like iron claws. I started to cry out, then thought better of it. The landlady would come in and see what was going on I could still remember the horror on the faces of Ron's parents that day long ago. They had pitied me, sure, but as soon as they did their duty by getting me in the orphans' home, they never saw me again.
"If anyone knew about this unnatural thing between my father and me they would despise me. I'd lose my room and probably my job, too. I was tooold to go back to the orphans' home ... So I gave in to him. I just leaned back on the bed and let him do what he wanted. ... Only that's not the whole story. I have to tell you-"
"Irene, it wasn't your fault. What else could you do? You said so yourself," I reminded her. "Stop blaming yourself."
"He didn't rape me. Not the way you think," she said. When I started to speak, she motioned for silence, and continued:
"I had on nothing but my robe. He pulled it back off my shoulders, exposed my breasts, and still he went on talking, saying how a woman tempted a man, and a man was blameless. He touched my breasts with his rough fingers, and my nipples tingled and hardened, but I didn't move. I could have. I could have gotten away from him and run, I know I could have, when he wasn't expecting it, only I didn't.
"He put his mouth on my breast and started to tongue and suck at it and I heard myself moan helplessly. I knew what was going to happen, and I wouldn't let myself think about it or fight it. Instead, I reached down and unbuttoned his pants. I put my hand inside and drew out his cock. It was hard and hot in my hand. It was as though my body had been suspended, waiting for that interrupted climax four years before. I couldn't wait to get that hot thing inside my body.
"I rolled over on top of him and took it into myself. I hunched and pumped like one possessed with a demon. I felt the hot spume of his semen rushing into me, drenching me. I'd been so close, so close. I pushed myself off of him and fell down on him, rubbing his dick and his balls, trying to coax them back to life.
"When I didn't have too much luck with that, I put my mouth on him and started licking him fiercely, running my tongue around the head, up and down the length of it, biting him gently, sucking on him. I seemed to come alive at once, just as it had that last time, getting hard in seconds.
I lay back laughing. He was on me in an instant. I pushed him away, knowing it would make him mad, make him want me all the more. When he finally did gain entry, he lunged and stabbed into me with terrible fury, pounding me violently into the bed. My nails dug into him. I heaved up to force him to go deeper, and he kept plunging. I felt myself spiraling up, up, up, just as I had the last time ... only this time there was no one to pull him off. He rammed it into me again and again, and I hunched up as high as I could meeting him with each plunge. And then it started, like a high, shrill, silent scream, every nerve on fire, and then the explosion more violent, more hotly gushing than I had imagined, like a volcano that erupts, pauses, erupts again and again, each time spewing out fresh spurts of molten lava until at last it is satisfied and lies throbbing with the aftermath of its destruction ... After a while, I got up, but he didn't. He had suffered a fatal heart attack. And, God help me, I was glad!"
She was silent a while, and then she said, "And that's what it was, Doc. Destruction. That destroyed me doing what I did-doing it and not having it done to me. I destroyed him, but I destroyed myself, too."
I began to talk to her then, gently, trying to make her understand what had happened and why it had happened and that it was not her fault. It was because of all the things this insane man had been doing to her all those years. "When a child is introduced to the sexual climax, he is not mature enough to know what to do with it or about it. It is magnified in his mind all out of proportion. It fills his mind, his thoughts. It is not the child's fault. It was not your fault," I said again. "Besides, that was the last time, wasn't it."
"Yes, but "
"And that was almost six years ago. It's in the past, Irene. We'll work through that even that. You have so much to live for. You'll see some day."
"Six years sixty years. Doc, I stabbed a man. I guess I was trying to work out some of my guilt or punish him for being a man I don't know. But I know it'll never be any different. Not ever, Doc. Thanks for trying, though."
I tried to talk to her some more. I half-neglected other patients to make more time for her. But it was no use. Less than a week after that session, Irene was found dead in her room. She had gone to bed in the private room, the one with nothing in it that a girl could harm herself with, but as Irene had said, A girl can always find a lethal weapon if she wants one. Irene had pulled several strands of hair from her head, knotted them together, and tied them around her neck in a hard knot, strangling herself to death.
CONCLUSION
We have seen, in these pages, some of the results of incest criminal acts upon the young. In many cases, there was nothing the therapist could do to help the patient to recover. The end results have often been drastic, including withdrawal from the stream of life, insanity, and even suicide.
We have presented the case histories of thirteen troubled women women behind bars. Again, we pose the question: Did these women commit their crimes against society because their early experiences included incestuous experiences? In many cases, we believe the answer is a fairly obvious "yes."
In my opinion, there is no doubt that all of these women would have had happier and more well-adjusted lives, had they been spared these traumatic experiences. I would go one step further: I believe I would never have met even one of these thirteen if they had grown up without the personality-twisting blight of incest, which occurred during their formative years.
Is there, then, a direct connection between incest and crime? In the cases of thirteen women I am willing to say, yes, and plead with you to take the necessary precautions that will help guarantee that other little girls will not be subjected to the experiences that led these unfortunate thirteen into the dark, confusing kind of womanhood in which they could not hope to live normally because of their bizarre, twisted sexual past.
