Since the beginnings of organized society, women have uniformly assumed a position subordinate to men. In ancient cultures, they were excluded, with few exceptions, from the economic and social power structure; and in contemporary society, although they are afforded a limited entree into that power structure, they have been conditioned since childhood to view themselves as the inferior sex.
As a result, their sexuality has been shrouded in suspicion, contempt and myth-the purpose of virginity at marriage is to assure the husband that the child his wife will bear is definitely his; and that the body he is acquiring, much the way fie would acquire a car, is not used. She is protected by her father for possession by her future husband, and educated by her mother to serve. Contained within this simplistic and unfulfilling growth pattern-daughter to mother-she is denied expression of her individuality and deprived of an identity beyond the suffocating generality of her role. She is a woman first, and, if she is fortunate, a person second.
Men too are victims of this rigidly limited definition of sexual roles. Their masculinity is manifested in acts of dominance, aggression, and competition. Considered weak when vulnerable, they are denied emotions which are crucial to all living creatures-pain, fear, and the desire to submit. Their sexuality is confined as strictly as the woman's in a faulty and incomplete mythology. They possess an advantage in that they assume, within the hierarchy of the patriarch, a position which allows them the option to express their drives outside of the male-female relationship; however, they too find their individuality repressed by this sexual mystique.
Women at the present time, however, are experiencing a more dramatic reversal of role than men; oppression of their individuality has been more extensive and overwhelming in the past, so the changes are sharper in contrast. In some cultures, for example the Moslem, women are to this day only tolerated as necessary evils. Fantasized as sexually insatiable, they become the victims of a brutally degrading sexual ethic. In most Moslem countries, an operation called a clitoridectomy is performed on young girls, not for hygienic reasons-as circumcision is purportedly performed for males-but rather to insure the girl's virginity at marriage (which it doesn't) and to prohibit her from achieving sex-ua) satisfaction; an excellent and extremely painful method for promoting the myth of the insatiable woman. In his book Taboo, Armand Denis quotes a passage from the Koran (the book of Moslem religious law) which describes the feelings of a father when he hears that his wife has borne him a daughter rather than a son:
His visage darkens. Overcome, he hides from his people for the shame of that which has been announced, wondering whether it were better to keep this child to his dishonor, or bury it in the dust....
With the emergence of the Women's Liberation Movement, in Western civilizations at any rate, and with the gradual demise of the double standard-under which, according to tradition, male sexual license was not only encouraged but applauded while female sexuality was suppressed and held, in contempt-women are now permitted a radically altered vision of themselves. They are gradually beginning to consider their needs with the same autonomy previously limited to the male, and in the process are altering the masculine/feminine mystique. No longer molded by social and economic pressure into a submissive image, they are reevaluating their options-dominance and submission within a relationship need no longer exist at all; and if it does, it need not conform to a sexual generality but rather manifest itself according to the individual's characteristics. A submissive man can form a relationship with a dominant woman successfully without feeling that his masculinity has failed; and the same is true of a woman who prefers a career on the stock market to raising children. The words feminine and masculine, during this transition, seem to have temporarily lost their traditional meaning. Beyond the obvious changes occurring in the realm of social life and career, this new self-view opens an entire psychosexual arena heretofore denied women.
In the abstract, women will be permitted what historically has been almost exclusively the privilege of the male-indulgence in polygamous relationships. I say abstract since polygamy is defined specifically as taking one or more husbands or wives within the law. Although the laws of most contemporary societies forbid plural marriage, it's absurd to claim that the man who is married-and maintaining one or more mistresses simultaneously-is not engaged in polygamous relationships.
Putting aside the sexual myth which has prohibited women from assuming such an aggressive stance, one of the factors that has made it impossible for women to openly conduct more than one sexual relationship at a time, in the past, has been economic dependence. As women move farther away from their positions as chattel. and assume a more dominant role within the economic power structure, there is no reason-particularly as the sexual ethic alters-she should not establish plural sexual relationships according to her needs. As her economic freedom develops, the entire concept of the male patriarch will collapse and take with it the threat of social disapproval for the sexually liberated woman.
The practice of polygamy has been evident in most cultures since Neolithic times when man first began to form social institutions. The form has usually been confined to polygyny, the taking of more than one wife. Polyandry, the taking of more than one husband, has only appeared under rare conditions. In an extremely poor society, the males will sometimes be forced to pool their resources in order to acquire and support a wife; or in cases where female infanticide is practiced as a check on population growth, there may be a surplus of males in the society. However, under most circumstances women outnumber men in population; and combining that factor with their inferior status economically and socially, it is not surprising that polygyny flourished and that polyandry only appeared rarely.
The simple fact that the female can bear only one child in nine months-while the male is capable of impregnating any number of women during that period of time-has been crucial to the prevalence of polygamy. In cultures based on conquest, a massive population was an asset and polygyny was a successful device. It has also been employed by rulers to display their stature and wealth. King Solomon, the last of the Hebrew Kings to rule the united monarchy, established a harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines in order to exhibit, in imitation of other Oriental despots, the magnificence of his rule.
Polygyny has been sanctioned in most ancient cultures; it was practiced by the Hebrews, the Assyrians, and the Greeks. Oddly enough, the Egyptians and Babylonians extended their women some limited economic and political power. Today polygyny as a legal societal form is confined mainly to a few Eskimo communities, the Wahuma tribe of East Africa, and to southern India and Tibet. Its effects, however, are still evident all over the world and manifest themselves in the sexual double standard and the assumption that the female is, by nature, inferior to the male.
The most humane ideology supporting polygyny was espoused by the Mormons, who engaged in plural marriage within the confines of a strict religious ethic, and who offered the female a respected and revered role within the society. The role was limited to the stereotyped concept of femininity, however; the woman was not considered an object of contempt. Joseph Smith believed that in a community where there is a surplus of women, and where the only fulfillment offered a woman is through marriage and the bearing of children, polygyny would permit all women involvement in a productive and satisfying life within the community. He theorized that it would also eliminate the need for prostitution, a state the Mormons considered degrading not with condemnation but. with pity. Monogamy, under those circumstances, would exclude many women from their places within the community, and from a sense of worth.
The Koran also states these reasons for sanctioning polygyny, its teachings based to a large extent on the Old Testament It encourages the man to take more than one wife, but only if he can keep more than one woman happy. It also discourages prostitution, and not only condemns the prostitute but the patron as well. However, the Moslem practice has always been far removed from the teachings of the Koran. The women are uniformly held in contempt and prostitution in Moslem countries is rampant. In Taboo, Armand Denis writes:
For prostitution has always seemed to flourish in Moslem countries. Even in modern times the prostitutes of Egypt are still famous. Many accounts exist of the dancer-prostitutes called the Ghawazee whose exciting street performances were legendary. They also performed at private parties and all writers are generally agreed that the lasciviousness of these performances defied description.
In former eras, when women were almost exclusively denied participation in the economic and social power structure, certain female monarchs-with the intelligence and strength to protect their position-did indulge, with some obligatory discretion, in polygamous relationships. Catherine the Great of Russia, a legendary ruler who brought Russia from a semi-primitive state into a position of great world power, was notorious for her love affairs. She installed her "harem" in positions of political power as a result of their liaison with her; and the extent of their power remained contingent upon her whim. There is little difference between Catherine's behavior and that of the despot who bestows gifts on his favorite wife, or the man who installs his most prized mistress in the finest apartment in town.
The same was true of Elizabeth of England; she refused to marry except very late in life, and then purely for political purposes. She preferred instead to indulge a variety of love affairs including one involving a commoner. Already married, he was suspected of murdering his wife, but he was moved into the aristocracy by Elizabeth once he was freed from his marriage bonds by "his wife's timely death. As monarch, and a particularly astute and strong one, she held total power over her men; she was able to execute one of her favorites, Lord Essex, for treason although she still loved him. Surely this type of behavior cannot be seen as anything other than polyandrous, even though the men were not legally bound to the women who dominated their lives.
As the concept of the female as chattel and sexual inferior disappears-with the waning of the patriarchal mentality-men and women both are given the opportunity to form liaisons, both sexual and emotional, outside of the confines of a general sexual role, according to their needs as individuals. No longer bound up in the rigid Victorian sexual code, women are experiencing a release of inhibitions not solely in terms of the sexual act alone, but in terms of their ability to choose from a number of alternatives. They may elect the form they prefer for their sexual and emotional relationships, and guide rather than submit. The woman who chooses a career over motherhood, who prefers simultaneous affairs to marriage, or achieves independence, is no longer an anomaly.
Great emphasis is now being placed on a woman's need to not only experience her ability to survive economically without the support of another, but to achieve a sense of worth through a healthy competition outside of the home. The need to compete on the same level as a man, in terms of pure ability, and to receive equal compensation for her efforts, has finally been recognized. Luther G. Baker, Jr., contributing to the volume entitled The New Sexual Revolution, edited by Lester A. Kirkendall and Robert N. Whitehurst, says of the woman in contemporary life:
Radically rejecting the "myth of the feminine mystique" she (Betty Friedan) urges every person, irrespective of sex, to creative human endeavor, and says that women owe it to themselves and to society to develop all their human powers ... The theory that a woman achieves personhood-"humanity"-by creative contribution to her significant society helps to explain the plethora of literature lamenting the frustrated dissatisfaction so frequently expressed by young mothers.
Even those women who are held back from exploration of their freedom, because of responsibilities assumed before they even questioned the role assigned them, will seek ways to express their individuality and establish identities not simply as women but as people. Their efforts will create a completely new concept of femininity, one based on the needs of the individual rather than on an archaic and unfulfilling sexual generality.
CHAPTER ONE
Female Hugh Hefner
It isn't easy, you know, publishing a magazine. And it's even harder if you happen to be a woman. I should know. My name's Rose Lemay. You've probably heard of me, most people have. I'm not as famous, of course, as the male giants in the other end of the industry, but I do have a following.
Usually, when people meet me, the first thing they want to know is how I got into this business. It is a strange story, but I'll make it brief.
Fifteen years ago, fresh out of secretarial school, I started my first job with a publishing firm. I brought home about fifty dollars a week, and even in those days, it was hard to live on that kind of money. Right away, I looked around for something higher.
Let's face it, it's mostly a man's world. I had about as many brains as any other girl, and my typing was no better or worse than anybody else's. The only really striking thing about me was my body. As you can see, I've still got quite a figure. Big full breasts, nice round hips, and long, long legs. Back in those days, I could wear a tight skirt and black nylon stockings, so it wasn't long before I caught the eye of the office supervisor.
Looking back on it, I know he wasn't much in the whole scheme of things, but he was my first step. I never actually went to bed with him; he wasn't that attractive. But I knew he wanted to, and knowing that, I started asking for favors until I worked myself up to research assistant
I've never actually been what you'd call a one-man woman. I like having several men around, sometimes without their even knowing it. So about that time, I started flirting with the foreign assignments man, and in a year I was suddenly transferred to that department.
About that time, I stopped flirting with my first boss-even made it a point to avoid him-and started in on the head of the Foreign Department. It took me four years to land my first assignment-as a research assistant to a man who headed the Paris bureau. I was never crazy about him, but we worked well together, and, well, he was my ticket to France, so I'll admit I stayed on his good side.
The really good luck started in the Paris bureau. The head of the company-he published about four magazines, then-stopped by the office, and I made sure to catch his attention by bending over to retrieve a stray pencil. He got enough view of my panties to last him about half an hour. That is, until he stopped by my desk to ask me out to dinner.
Walt was nice to me, although he was nearly fifty years older, and we saw each other each time he came to Paris for the next two years. Not too many people could really understand him, so it wasn't surprising that I was one of his few true friends when he died.
I never put all my eggs in one basket, as I said, so in between Walt's visits, I saw a lot of the new head of the bureau-Jacques. I even lived with him periodically. I graduated to covering my own stories. As a matter-of-fact, I was the first woman on the magazine to get a byline.
About this time, I started thinking what a wonderful idea it would be to run a magazine like ours, but for women. I knew that I loved looking at naked men, and I knew there were plenty of women like me. I never dreamed that my crazy idea would some day be a reality.
That is, until Walt died. I was shocked to find that he'd left part of his huge holdings to me. His relatives tried to contest it, but I won, and there I was at twenty-eight, with a whole magazine. The one he'd left me-out of the four-was a rag, really. A bunch of pulpy stories for women. Jacques and I put our heads together and decided to revamp the whole thing.
In less than a year, I'd thrown out the staff, the format, even the masthead, and I had the beginnings of this magazine.
I' left Jacques, then, to return to Chicago. There was just too much for me to do in the States. I still see him, though, maybe three or four times a year, and we're still the same ardent lovers we were then. But how I loved building the magazine. I gathered the best staff I could find, mostly men, I must admit, because I love being surrounded by men; especially if a couple of them are in love with me. And gradually we added the foldout, the nude shots, and the philosophy. I still love it.
Oh, it's hard work, I'll grant you, but what better work could there be than surrounding yourself with beautiful men, and choosing the best among them to love.
What's it like? Well, here's about how it goes on a typical workday. I'm usually up by seven. Henri runs my bath and dresses me, then I sit down to a quick breakfast with the morning paper. I'm always scanning for ideas, new angles to shoot from in the magazine.
Then I call George, or sometimes Henri calls him if I want to linger over my coffee, and he runs me down to the office. Perhaps a chauffeur is a luxury these days, but I get a lot of work done on the way downtown.
Early in the mornings, I usually have a conference with my money man, followed by about an hour of going through paperwork. About nine, one of the photographers, or one of the layout men from downstairs will bring me up the glossies. While I've delegated a lot of my work to the other people, I always check each and every photo myself. Each one has to be perfect-after all, the reader picks up the magazine at the newsstand. What if she happens to turn to a page with a poor picture on it? I've lost the sale.
Besides, I want a preview of everything before it goes to print. If a photo doesn't turn me on, I don't want it in the issue. Sometimes I have to go through hundreds of stills to find the right one. Occasionally, I will even have to call in the model and the photographer and suggest a new shooting session. Sometimes I do that when the model seems to be particularly sexy and the photos really don't bring it out.
For example, last week I went through about thirty stills of a young model that the layout man was trying to tie into a story. I kept looking at the pictures, and in twenty-nine of them, nothing was happening. In the last photo I caught a glimpse of how really sexy the man might be. So I called him in to see if I could warm him up enough to get some good pictures.
It was about ten in the morning, I guess, hardly the time for any good sex. When the kid came upstairs, I just sat back rather provocatively in my chair and asked him why the shooting had gone wrong. He seemed reluctant to talk with the layout man in the room, so I dismissed him to make the kid more at ease. Once the layout man left, it was easier to get at the truth. The kid seemed rather shy, and it was fairly difficult to persuade him to talk. Finally he told me that the photographer, another man, had made advances in the first part of the session. The one good photo Ed seen had been taken before he started moving in on the kid.
A simple problem-I'd hire a new photographer for the story. There was something about this young model that was irresistible. Maybe it was just because he felt that way about me. The whole time we'd been talking, he was staring at my legs under my dress. He tried to be deferential, but his penis gave him away. It was standing at attention, bulging through his pants.
Rather shyly at first, he explained that he'd been crazy about me for the two years that he'd been trying to land an assignment with the magazine. I don't know if I believed it, of course. The kid was almost fifteen years younger than I am. But it was flattering. And, as I said before, there was something very sensual about him.
Usually younger men don't make very good lovers, and though many of them proposition me, I rarely accept. I do, as a matter-of-fact, have some loyalty to the three men who make up the largest part of my life.
But everything that morning told me that I would enjoy the boy, and I've learned never to say no to my own body. So I motioned for the boy to come close, and I raised my skirt, almost imperceptibly, so he would have a clear view all the way up to my panties. He was shy at first, not really believing that I would let him touch me.
I stretched out my arm and pulled his face to mine. When his lips touched mine, I let myself go in the kiss, telling him exactly what I wanted without ever saying a word. His tongue came out, exploring my mouth, and I let him have all of it.
His hands moved softly over my breasts, and he sighed through his kiss as he felt my nipples pointing through the fabric of my bra and the thin silk of my blouse. Swiftly, I reached to the intercom and told my secretary I'd be busy for a while and not to send any calls through. Then I lay back and let him make love to me.
First he unfastened my bra, then gently slid my blouse up to expose my breasts. I'm proud of them, I must admit-they're still as large and firm as a girl's. My nipples were pointed straight out. He leaned down over me and began to suck on one nipple, rolling the other one gently in his hand I pushed against him, thrilling at the sensation.
Inside his pants, his penis throbbed against the zipper. I could see it moving slightly, yearning to break free.
One of his hands roamed up my leg, pausing at the line of flesh above my stocking. Then, suddenly, he moved his hand abruptly, pulled my skirt up, and buried his face against the silk of my panties.
He seemed to be happy there, just lapping at me through the slick material. I was excited, wet there, and I loved his gentle tongue. Just in time, he moved the panties aside and thrust his tongue against my bare flesh. Just in time, for I exploded all over his waiting mouth.
I thought he'd be disappointed-after all, he never even got his penis outside his pants, but he seemed content just to lick all my own juice from me. "It's okay?" I asked.
"More than I could hope for," he answered. Finally, I dismissed him, cautioning him to look just like he did that minute when he posed for the layout.
Often my job entails traveling to the various clubs. Last week I had to fly to L.A. and check out the accommodations at my newest club. The opening was to be that night, and I wanted final inspection before the press got there.
As a precaution, I'd invited a few journalists along on the flight aboard my private jet. As George drove me through the heavy downtown traffic, I made a few last-minute calls, and freshened my makeup.
The press was there when I arrived. Some of them seemed already to have helped themselves to the facilities, mainly the bar. One thing about the press-they can sure drink!
About two-thirds of the jet is made into a party room. Usually I use it for press conferences, like this one, and then I can write off the whole trip to publicity. The other part of the plane is my bedroom, which few have ever seen. I like to keep it that way because it is rather intimate, a real reflection of my own personality; and frankly, I don't want everyone in the world to know just exactly what my preferences are in bed.
This was a typical conference, at least for me. It's funny, in an industry like this, most of the reporters who cover the big stories are male. Females are usually reserved for human interest, society angles, stuff like that. Only in my case, they never know who to send. The women are usually not high enough in status to cover a celebrity like me, but the papers are afraid the men will offend me.
So this conference was about half male, half female. I didn't see any-likely prospects aboard, not that I was really looking. Michael had called to say he'd meet me in L.A., and when I see one of my "good friends," I'm never in the market for any other action. Anyway, we laughed it up, talking about the latest jokes about the magazine, and I gave them all a taste of my famous charm.
It was good to get out of that phony situation, and to see Michael again. He has an import firm, and so he travels nearly as much as I do. We try to arrange our schedules to coincide when we can, and frequently we're together in New York, or Paris, or L.A. I have a steady man in Chicago, though, so Michael never sees me there.
It took about three hours to go through the new club. The lounge act, who were rehearsing when I arrived, were pretty good, but their opening night costumes were in very poor taste. I called a rush job from my own tailor in L.A., who rounded up several associates, and they made new jackets for the group before the 8: P.M. opening.
Everything else seemed in good shape, so Michael and I had time for a leisurely drive and dinner before the crowds arrived at the club. Once I was sure that everything was running smoothly, we left for the airport The next day I had an important meeting in New York, and Michael had arranged to fly with me.
I guess here I should tell you about my bedroom. It's a masterpiece of built-in technology, really. Everything you could ever want is built into an automatic selector board at the head of the bed. Once we've lain back in bed, we don't have to get up for anything until we get to our destination.
It had been three weeks since the last time I'd seen Michael, and I missed him. He has a ready wit and an easy charm that set him apart from my other man. In fact, he is unique among all men, not just mine. He is a man in his own right, and at the same time a ladies' man of the first magnitude. He keeps me laughing sometimes for hours. That night, he was joking about some rather obnoxious member of the press as we went aboard. As soon as we shut the door of the bedroom, though, he was sweet and gentle.
We took a long shower together, and he washed my back. Then he led me into the bedroom, and we lay back for our interval to New York.
Michael is a very good lover-about ten years older than I am, and divorced. He seems always to know just what I want without even asking. That night I was a little tense from those hours in front of the spotlight, and I needed some time to get aroused. He knew it, and just lay joking with me while he massaged my back, my legs, my neck, and my arms.
Then he turned me over and massaged my breasts, only very gently; and my thighs, and my stomach. Michael, like most very proficient lovers, talks all the time. That night he started his crooning as his hands first touched me.
"Pretty baby, pretty breasts, oh, such tight nipples, such good, good breasts," he said, as his hands roamed over my curves and teased my nipples.
It's very soothing, and at the same time very stimulating, when he talks like that. I feel I'm floating away on a dream, and that my inner self is just coming to life as he talks.
After he has me warmed up, then he always begins the really exciting part His tone changes, and even his words. While I love to start off mild, once we're started, the dirtier the better! It seems to really turn me on when he starts swearing at me, and calling me filthy names. The dirtier he talks, the hotter I get.
like that night, I think he started by talking about my breasts. "Fine tits," he said. "Fine pointy tits. Love to suck those tits."
And of course he matched his actions with words. His mouth moved immediately to cover my tits, and soon he was sucking away like a madman. That really turns me on, and he always does it just right. Then he started insulting me, "Hot little bitch, aren't you?" he said. "You're so hot for a big hard dong, you're just panting to have a big stiff dick in your mouth. You want it, don't you bitch!"
Then he knelt above me and shoved his cock between my lips. I did want to suck on it, he knew it; but he shoved it in as if I didn't, just to insult me.
"Suck it! Suck on it, you bitch! Take my cock and suck the juice right on out of it!" he cried.
I love the feel of his giant cock between my lips. It seems like I never get enough of sucking on it. I could feel his balls slapping against my chin as he drove it in and out of my mouth. I could even feel little hairs on his balls tickling my face as I tried to take all of his giant cock into my mouth at one time.
The way I sucked on him, running my hands over his balls and into his ass, sucking his dick down deep into my throat-any other man would have come right then. Not Michael. He has tremendous control. He just kept shoving his dick down my throat, insulting me each time.
"Eat it, you little cunt. Eat that big prick.
Beg for it, you little cunt; you don't even deserve it, you little slut!" he muttered.
Then, suddenly, he pulled it out. Just took it away from me for no reason at all. I grabbed for him and he just shook his head. "Uh-uh." he said. "You can't have any more of my sweet meat, not even if you beg for it I I've got something I want to do!"
He slid down the length of my body, leaving his hands on my nipples as his mouth headed for the curling hair between my legs. He licked at the hairs first, teasing me. I pushed against him, longing to feel his tongue inside my box, and up against my clit.
But it wasn't that simple. He pulled his face away, and twirled my nipples hard between his fingers as he said, "Beg for it. Beg for it, you little cunt! Tell me how much you want me to eat your pussy!"
"I want it," I begged.
"That's not good enough," he said. "Not good enough!"
"Please," I begged him, "please eat me!"
"No," he said, shaking his head. "That's still not good enough."
"Eat me!" I screamed at him.
"What?" he said, still shaking his head.
"Eat me, oh please, please, I beg you, eat my cunt!"
"What is it you want me to do?" he asked
"Eat me!" I screamed. "Put your tongue down between my legs and lick "on me. Lick up inside my box-oh, eat me until I come!"
"That's more like it," he grinned.
Finally, he leaned down and started licking at me. I shivered as his tongue hit the soft, swollen lips. I really wanted him-I was churning up against him. Pretty soon, his tongue was darting inside my box. Each time it went in, I could feel the little thrill of pleasure going deeper inside my cunt.
He knew exactly how far he could take me before I came, and he stopped just short of it. This time he climbed up over me again, waving his cock in the air, just above my head so that I couldn't reach it. "I don't believe you really want me," he teased.
"Oh yes!" I screamed, trying to reach his cock with my hands, frustration raging through me, but they were pinioned. It was no use. My hands were pinned at my sides by his strong thighs. I stretched my neck, trying desperately to get some part of his body into contact with my mouth. It was still no use. He was too tall. His cock was tantalizing me, but just out of my reach.
"What is it you want?" he asked, as if he hadn't heard me before.
"I want you!" I screamed, trying to beat my helpless fists against my legs.
"I don't Understand," he insisted. "Could you be more specific?"
I was really at the boiling point. I knew I wanted him, wanted to be consumed by him, wanted to come. I didn't care how, I just wanted to come with him inside me somewhere, somehow. "Please," I said, "fuck me, make me come!"
"How's that?" he asked.
I could have killed him for being so obstinate. "Please," I sobbed. "Please put your big dick inside me. Shove it up my cunt. Set me on fire! Make me come!"
"Oh," he said, feigning surprise. "Is that what you want. Well," he said, "ask me nice."
"Oh God, Michael, please fuck me! I want to feel your cock deep inside me, I want to come with you!"
"Oh," he laughed, "why didn't you say so!"
Then he moved down on me, waving his cock against my tits, teasing my poor pointed nipples with it, then my navel, and finally, he crouched above me with his cock resting against my pussy.
"Now, Michael," I pleaded. "Don't tease me anymore."
"Is this what you want?" he asked, letting his cock spring against my pussy, just touching the outer lips.
"Oh yes!" I screamed. "Please, shove it in! Jam your cock all the way up my pussy."
Slowly, maddeningly slowly, the head of his cock poked between my lips, searching for an opening. I was so excited by then, that I couldn't let him wait another second. I reached down to guide him in.
He grabbed my hand and took it away from his heaving cock. "Let me in all by myself," he said.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, the head poked inside my aching hot pussy. It was tremendous! Each tiny fraction of an inch, he felt like a steaming hot iron, setting my pussy on fire.
I couldn't help myself-I pushed my hips up against him, straining to get him deeper inside.
"Wait a second," he said, withdrawing as far as he could without coming out completely. "I said all by myself!"
So I had no choice. I had to lay back still as he crawled inside, inch by agonizing inch.
Then he started a new torture. "Ask me for more!" he demanded when his cock was only halfway in.
"More!" I screamed.
"More what?" he asked.
"Please, Michael, please give me more of your cock. I want it. I need it!" I screamed.
"Okay, a little," he said, letting his cock slide another half inch up my fiery hot channel.
"More," I screamed, "please, Michael, I need more of your beautiful, hot dick!"
Silently, he let it slide another inch into me. I was on fire, I wanted to come already! Finally, the head of his cock touched against my inner walls and stopped. For one long moment, he just lay there, with the walls of my pussy churning and itching all around him.
Then he couldn't stand it any more either. He started a slow withdrawal, teasing me at every inch, as he slid out and left me empty. "No!" I screamed, thinking he was going to pull out altogether.
But by this time, he didn't have too much control left. He just went out nearly to the end, then slid back in again, quicker than the first time. And so, he settled down to the long slow rhythm of his fucking, teasing me as he pulled out, setting me on fire as he slid in.
I loved it! I must have screamed at him the whole time, begging him to come inside me, begging him to make me come. I'm just glad I thought to have the bedroom of the plane soundproofed-otherwise I might have had a pretty horny pilot!
I can't remember exactly what I said after that, or what he said. All I recall is the soft slurpy sound of his dick pushing inside my pussy, and the the slap of his chest against my quivering tits. Each stroke was ecstasy, higher than the stroke before. All of a sudden, I felt myself sinking, sinking deeper into the whole hot experience. My cunt was churning, the walls of it clinging to his cock as he drew it out. I knew then that I had to have just one more stroke I exploded, before I came all over his dick.
That was the one stroke he'd been waiting for. I guess he could feel me inside, all hot and waiting for him, because this time his cock came rushing in, pushing and shoving at my walls, churning and twisting as he released his own sticky juice. The last thing I remembered was the feel of his come shooting hot against the walls of my pussy. And then I just sank into the heat of my own coming. It was incredible, it was everything; I was my pussy, my pussy was me, we were all coming together!
When I came to, Michael was already primed for more action. It's the strangest thing. While other men usually quit after one time, Michael is usually ready to go by the time I've recovered from my first one. Which, of course, is okay by me! I love coming, and I love every conceivable position and coupling, so I'm always ready for the next bout as soon as he is.
That night, he was big on humiliation. He really wanted to hear how much I needed him, I guess because we hadn't seen each other in so long; and in a way, I think he wanted to punish me for being too busy to see him. I'm not sure, but I think I'm the only woman in his life-Michael is just not the kind to have two or three lovers at once, which I always do.
He flipped me over, while I was still panting from the last one, and told me to start begging again. I wasn't quite sure what he wanted-sometimes he just takes me from the rear, and other times, when he puts me in that position, he-likes to slip between my cheeks and slide into my ass. I was pretty vague to start with. "I want you," I murmured. "I want your big dick!"
"Where do you want it?" he asked.
I had to think carefully-I really did want him inside me, and I liked it just as well either way. Mostly, that night I just wanted to please him-to pay him back for all the pleasure he'd just given me. And I knew that my ass was a special treat for him. So that's what I chose. "Lick me!" I said. "Lick up around my little ass-hole, and then stick your great big dong inside!"
Over my shoulder I could see him above me, his cock already long and hard again, waving in the air above my ass. He leaned down and placed his tongue in the top of the crack of my ass. "Oh, yes," I screamed, "lick my ass!"
His tongue moved in wide circles around the cheeks of my ass, going all the way to the outer edges, then circling back in, up over my still sopping pussy lips, just narrowly missing my ass, and back up again through the dark track of hair that runs up my ass.
He was a terrible tease. I knew we both wanted it, but he just ran his tongue in those circles on my buttocks, first on the left side, then on the right, until I thought we'd both go crazy. Then, slowly, each time he began slipping a little closer, touching the puckered opening of my ass for a moment on each pass around my cheeks. Each time he lingered just a little bit longer. I could just barely hear him as he kept up a little monologue. I guess he was talking to my ass.
"Sweet, sweet little hole," I could hear him saying, "Sweet dark little ass! I love your ass," he said, just a little louder. "I love these big woman cheeks and the nice round ass-hole in between them! I love every last bit of you...."
I could feel a little flame inside me each time his tongue would venture close to my hole. All I wanted, at that moment, was to feel it deep inside my ass. I begged him, "Reach inside, oh, please, shove your tongue inside."
"You really want it?" he teased. "Oh yes! Yes! Please lick inside my ass-hole."
For one tremendous, exciting moment, his tongue vanished deep inside. I thought I was going to die, it felt so good. Then he took it out. "No," I screamed, "don't take it out!"
One more time, his tongue scurried inside. It was as if he was savoring one last little taste that would have to last him for a long time.
The next thing I knew, the head of his cock was pushing against my ass-hole, stretching it, pulling and tearing at it. I loved every minute of it. This time he couldn't stop me from helping. I pushed back against him like a wild animal, forcing his cock inside my slender channel, gripping him tighter, and pulling him inside at each stroke.
Each time I pushed my hips backward, he thrust forward, and soon he was buried deep inside me. Over my shoulder I could see him staring down at his cock as it moved in and out of my ass. I could see his balls swinging hard at each stroke when I looked back between my legs. It was just too much to take-the feel of him stretching inside my ass, and the sight of his balls swinging against me. I exploded again, coming all over myself, my legs, and his balls. Un-like most women, my orgasms produce a copious discharge, almost like a man's ejaculation.
That was all he needed. With one last tremendous thrust, he shoved the rest of his come inside me. I could feel it pouring against the tight walls of my ass, covering his cock with sticky, sweet come.
Afterwards, he wrapped me in his arms, as gently as before, and we feel asleep together. I must say, I miss that when I'm with one of my other men, for no one else can sleep with me through the entire night. But it just can't beboth of us are too busy to see each other all the time, and I have other men who fill my other needs when Michael is off to China or somewhere.
In all too short a time, we were in New York. We checked into the Waldorf, and fell asleep again, too exhausted by the long flight and the change in time to do much else. When I woke at four, he was already gone. His appointments were earlier, and he'd left a call for noon. I'd been so tired I didn't even feel it when he slipped away from me. There was a note on the dresser.
New Orleans, a week from Sunday? it said. And then, I love you. Your Michael.
I had barely time to get dressed and meet my publisher friend, Tom, for dinner. Tom is a strange guy. More enemy than friend actually. I figured that our meeting was probably a bid on his part to buy the magazine. Fat chance! I thought to myself as I slipped into my black silk. When I'd needed money a couple of years ago, Tom's had mysteriously been "all tied up." Funny, how he couldn't help me then, when my magazine was kind of a risky thing. Now, all of a sudden, when I'm really making it big, he thinks the magazine is great.
I was right, of course. After a couple of cocktails and a serving of Chateaubriand, he got around to business. The offer he gave me was ridiculous! It still amazes me that men think they can get to me with a few compliments and a free dinner. Especially since they don't seem to realize how much I am the magazine, and it is me. I turned him down flat. Didn't even bother to thank him for the dinner. He didn't deserve it, the cheap-
So that's a typical day during the week. It's not all the glamour that people make it out to be; but on the other hand, it's not near as much work as I used to put in for fifty dollars a week. The higher up on the scale you are, the less you really work.
Now, the weekends are a different story. Most of them, believe it or not, I spend quietly right here in Chicago. With Sean.
Sean. He's very different from my dear old Jacques, and my charming, gentle Michael. He's Irish, and a man's man. I could really picture him in a country estate, with hunting dogs, and big guns, and a plaid jacket.
In reality, he's a banker. That's one reason why we try to avoid publicity when we're together. We see each other very privately, usually at his apartment, but occasionally at mine. Lots of times I cook for him, and tidy up after ourselves when we spend the whole weekend together. It's not a role that I'd like on a permanent basis, but with him it seems right. It's just the kind of thing to do when I'm with him.
A couple of weeks ago, when it rained so hard, we sat inside the apartment all weekend. He watched some football on TV until I couldn't stand it. So I drifted in, in a thin white negligee, with my nipples poking out through holes in the lace, and stood quietly at the side of the room. I guess he could smell my perfume because, in a few minutes, he turned from the TV and saw me.
Before I knew what was happening, he had me on the couch, pulling up my nightgown and unfastening his pants at the same time. That's the thing I love about Sean-when he wants to get inside me, he doesn't mess around! He just pulls down his zipper and we're off and running. like I said, a steady diet of Sean would probably bore me. But it's nice to know that I nearly always have him to come home to, if I want. It's good to know that there is always Sean, just as hot for me, just as natural and masculine as the day we met.
He slid inside me, helping spread my lips apart with his hand, and entered me. It was violent, but exciting, and I was ready for it. After all, if I wear something like that around Sean, I have to be prepared for the consequences.
In a minute, I was pushing and tugging at him just as hard as he was pounding into me. I love the way his penis is bigger around the head, and it really gets me off when he takes me without even taking clothes off. That day, as I recall, he didn't even bother to take off his socks and shoes. He's learned, by now, never to apologize. I stay with him because I like his violence, I like his sudden desire for me, and his indifference afterwards. I don't have to look for tenderness in him, or anything else that he doesn't fell like giving me. I have Michael for that.
And for kicks, for just sheer craziness and joy, I have Jacques. He gets over to the States about twice a year, and I fly back to Paris a little more often than that, so we take long weekends together and run out to the country, or down to the Riviera out of season. With Jacques, I make love on deserted beaches, and in haystacks, and once, believe it or not, on the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower!
Jacques, too, like Sean and Michael, belongs to me. Oh, being a Frenchman, I suppose he has brief affairs occasionally. But his heart belongs to me. When I come into town, he is mine, totally and completely, and I am his. With each of my men, I love them when I am with them, and forget them when I am not.
As different as they are, I never compare them. Each one is himself, a part of my life. None of them ever ask for more than I can give them, because I guess they know it's impossible. I love the magazine, and I can't give it up to live with any one of my men.
What's in it for me? I don't really know. Oh, there's the money, of course. And the adoration-all the models and the men who flock around me because I am who I am. That's fun for a while, as long as I don't have to think about it or cope with it for too long.
And the travel. I love being able to go anywhere I want, virtually whenever I want. I've seen just about every corner of the globe I'd ever want to.
The glamour? I suppose there is some of that, packed in between the hard work. It's not really why I stay with the magazine. After all, the glamour, the travel, the money-those would still be mine if I never lifted a finger on the magazine again.
There's something about the magazine itself. Maybe it's knowing that I'm responsible for giving women an equal chance. For years there have been magazines to show off the female figure to men. Only through me do women ever have a chance to see the bodies of beautiful men.
I think of most women, trapped in a conventional marriage, never making love with anyone else, never having the variety that I enjoy, never even seeing another man nude. It must be so boring for them. I hope I can give them the idea of the kinds of things that I can enjoy, the freedom to choose between men-as they have chosen between women for centuries.
Maybe it will make men more aware of their bodies, too. If their wife is looking at a picture of another man, maybe they'll remember that their body should be in good form for lovemaking, too.
The main thing, though, is the independence. My personal independence-I feel like I have a purpose to my own life. As long as I have the magazine, no one man can try to claim me for his own. No one man can demand chastity or fidelity, and I never have to bother explaining it.
I'm free, as very few women in the world, to pick and choose among men. Not just a few, either, because I have many men at my disposal. I can have a brief affair with a man, or even just make love one time, and then discard him. It's my choice. And if I want, I know I can keep him for as long as I want. Why, each of my three steady men has been mine for years. And none of them has strayed, or even expressed any desire for another woman.
Last weekend, for example, I wanted some excitement. I'd spent the last weekend with Sean, and I wanted something different. So I flew down to Mexico, and lay in the sun on the beach. In a few minutes, a strong suntanned man approached me. I don't really know whether he knew who I was, or whether he was just attracted by my figure.
At any rate, within a few minutes, we were back at my suite, with his long dark penis in my mouth, and my curling hairs between his teeth. We made love for a couple of hours, then I sent him away.
He never came back again, of course, and I didn't even bother to learn his name. But he brightened up the weekend, and I enjoyed the sex with him. I keep my body in shape with encounters like that, and I know my appeal is not any less than it used to be when I can still pick up strangers on a crowded beach.
There are other thrills, of course. like being recognized wherever I go. Even some of the very rich can't say that. I never have to wait for a table at a restaurant, or fight an airline for reservations. Occasionally I have to wait in a traffic jam, like other people, but at least I'm not driving. And being able to decide exactly what I want to do at any minute. I mean, I'm not responsible to anyone, ever, except myself. There are very few men, and virtually no women, who can say that.
Oh, there's the personal luxury. I never even see an unmade bed, or a dirty bathtub. Those things vanish before they have time to appear. And for a girl who worked her way through secretarial school, I can really appreciate that.
And, except for the few times I cook for Sean, I never have to fix a meal. If I'm not going out, there is always one of my favorite meals, prepared to taste, just silently waiting there.
I'll be getting a yacht next year, as soon as the new models are out, so then I'll have my own jet, my own boat, and a chauffeured Rolls in each of the three cities where I spend most of my time. I guess it's starting to sound like bragging. Maybe so, but it's pretty hard for a girl like me to forget where she came from, and the years of work it took to get where I am. And if I appreciate the luxuries I've earned, well, who can really blame me?
The best, though, the very best part of it, is my men. Only when I achieved this status, when I started running a successful magazine, was I able to run my men the way I'd always dreamed. Now they are completely in my control. I more or less run their lives, and they have no say in mine. I can choose to be with any of them, or none of them. I can spend a month with one man, and leave him to go to the arms of a perfect stranger.
And the best part of that, of course, is the sex. I can have it gentle, or rough, or sweet, or crazy, or demanding or undemanding-exactly what I want, anytime I want it. That alone is worth the years and the work I've put in to get here.
So, all in all, I guess there's nobody in the world I'd rather be than Rose Lemay.
Few women have had the option available to men, proportionately, of working themselves up as a result of pure ability, from a subordinate to a controlling position within a power structure traditionally dominated by men. Faced with sexual bias, the highly aggressive woman poses not only a threat to the male's career, but she threatens his masculinity as well. Trained to view women as sexual inferiors, the man who is faced with a career woman-possessed of either equal or superior ability in his field of endeavor-will be forced to fall back on prerogatives afforded him, exclusively because of his sex, by the patriarchy in order to defeat her. He will resort to unfair tactics, acting according to sexual prejudice, in order to keep the aggressive woman in her place. She is labeled unfeminine; and in most cases, dependent on the approval of male superiors for advancement, she finds herself passed by time and again when a promotion becomes available, and is frustrated to see a man of lesser ability move up the corporate ladder. The submissive woman tends, in the face of this severe resistance to her efforts, to abandon whatever ambitions she may have harbored and take the acceptable way out. She marries and stays home.
Rose Lemay seems to be an exception to the rule. She is not only highly competitive but shrewdly realistic as well. Possessed of an apparently liberated sexuality, she is capable of quickly sizing up the situation and when it seems necessary, she is not averse to falling back on her sexual appeal to obtain a particular goal in business. Her behavior, although a sideline, is no different from a prostitute's. However, in that context, neither is the behavior of a woman who marries a man she does not love or respect for the security he represents, or the woman who marries purely for wealthy gain.
Rose is also an exception in that she doesn't use her sexuality unless it gives her pleasure as well as gain. Although she maintains simultaneous relationships based predominantly on her convenience and profit, she is also able to establish long term emotional ties with some of the men.
When the head of the publishing companywith whom she has had a long and intermittent affair-dies, she finds herself in possession of a magazine. Up to this point, she had successfully maneuvered herself into a position with the Paris bureau writing the first woman's byline. Then faced with the financial possibilities the magazine offers her if it were revamped, she applies her shrewd mind to her understanding of female sexuality as she knows it exists in reality. She realizes that just as she would like to see photos of nude men, so would millions of women who, unlike her, lack the audacity to admit it. With the help of her now former boss and lover, she puts together this unique woman's magazine, which, true to her wise expectations, proves to be a great success; and in the process, gives her the power and success she had sought
Now a dominant figure in a masculine society, Rose assumes the masculine stance. Obsessed by her work, and stimulated by her stature in the economic structure-and the resulting power-she chooses her lovers according to whim and convenience. She still maintains relationships with old favorites, who have developed friendships with her almost as though she were a man. The fact that she will not extend her success to other women by hiring them on the magazine reveals the flaw in Rose's facade of independence. Instead of hiring women, she prefers to hire men, who she claims understand her better-and it always makes her feel better to have a few men around in love with her.
Having assumed the psyche of the men she felt forced to manipulate in the beginning of her career, she too is now threatened by the competitive and aggressive woman. She doesn't want to encounter another Rose Lemay; having relied on her sexual appeal to some extent to acquire what she has, she would feel insecure when faced with an adversary immune to this useful device. She prefers male co-workers because if all else fails in her attempts to manipulate a situation, she can depend on her sexuality to gain her goals.
Her sexual relationships, partially because of her involvement in business, take an important but secondary position to her corporate power. She bases her choices of men totally on the pleasure principle and her needs are diverse. Although she enjoys being dominated and mildly degraded by one of her lovers, she indulges this particular craving simply as another diversion, another fantasy among many. She is attracted by eroticism. She acquires a variety of lovers, who assume different roles sexually, and engages them according to her whim of the moment. The men she is involved with are not threatened by her since she is already on top. They can only gain from the situation. They are either equals within the power structure, or they are men who may be able to move up as a result of their liaison with her. Only at that uppermost point in her career does Rose give full vent to her dominant nature, and her fierce sense of competition. She is no longer dependent on the men around her for her success.
It is not necessarily unhealthy for a woman who has been able to assert herself through her work, and establish her identity as an individual, to free her view of her femininity from the rigid definition given her by society. Under the conditions by which she lives her life, a woman like Rose Lemay could not maintain a single relationship. Her life is highly mobile, she moves when her career demands it; and in that context it is logical that she would require a variety of relationships with men, structured in such a way as not to interfere with her work. In this sense it is mandatory that she assume a dominant role.
CHAPTER TWO
A Perfect Union
A quick glance at the clock confirmed my suspicions. Ernst was half an hour late. Ordinarily I wouldn't have cared particularly. I've never been a slave to the clock myself. But I had the feeling that Ernst's lateness meant that he had somehow found out what must seem a terrible truth. My terrible truth.
No, my delightful secret....
I smiled a little sadly and began to brush my long hair in the mirror over my antique vanity. I wondered if Ernst was conjuring up all sorts of crazy images about me at the moment. "There's something different about you, Tanya," he'd said during our first date. But then he'd been attracted to that streak he thought of as unusual. I didn't really consider myself all that different or unusual. I simply thought of myself as being more ... realistic.
Somehow I doubted that Ernst would think of a union consisting of seven men and one woman realistic.
Yet.
It's funny how we develop our ideas toward life, other people, and what does or doesn't constitute a proper relationship. Alisha told me that most of our ways of thinking are like borrowed bicycles-if you ride a borrowed bicycle long enough, you come to think of it as your very own. If someone else's way of thinking gets passed on to you early enough, you tend to think of it as your own thoughts or beliefs. Our parents and society do a good job of infecting us with their crippled thoughts before we get a chance to think or screw things up for ourselves.
I became close to Alisha at a very important time in my life, at a moment when I doubted having any sort of future at all. I had just made my marriage a part of my very dead past. The borrowed bicycles I rode then said I was a failure. The thought had me bitterly reflecting on my parent. They stayed married all their lives, but my brother and I didn't have to be brilliant to figure out that they were less than ecstatic. I knew something was missing from their lives from the time I was old enough to open my eyes and take a good look at them; but I didn't know how to evaluate what had been wrong until I'd met Alisha.
Alisha lived in the same apartment building I'd lived in during my two-year marriage. She'd watched me enter as a happy, hopeful bride, and she saw me exit as a frustrated, bitter divorcee. And in between, she'd watched my lovers come and go.
On the borrowed bicycles I wouldn't have a chance to make anyone understand my problem, if problem is what it is. By the old standards, Dirk was an excellent husband who didn't dream of being unfaithful until his wife had already taken herself a number of lovers. Dirk was probably off somewhere, telling a new wife or girl friend all about it, and undoubtedly she'd moan and condemn along with him.
Fools.
Yes, it was true, all of it. I'd married Dirk and been with him less than six months before the desire to have another man in my life became overpowering. At the first time I hadn't known how to fit it into the somber promise of fidelity I'd made during the brief marriage ceremony. Perhaps if I recreate the flow of the marriage, I'll make things somewhat clearer.
I was twenty when I married Dirk. I'd dropped out of college after a year because my small trust fund had gone much more quickly than I'd expected. I found a job in an insurance office and though about attending night school, but I was so busy with men and constant dating, that I pushed school out of my mind. I had wanted to be a midwife since high school days, but the lab courses I had to take required a minimum of distraction.
Other than the shelving of my educational plans, the two years before I married Dirk were the happiest I'd ever known. They were also the most stimulating and fulfilling. I worked only to pay the bills and save a little money toward school, but my true life consisted only of my dating hours. I had all the offers I'd ever want, thanks to the good fortune of inheriting my father's dark eyes and hair, my mother's pale perfect skin, and some thoughtful ancestor's very great figure, the kind of body which took no effort to maintain. It was fortunate, because I was too busy to exercise outside of bed. Men thought I was very attractive and rather mysterious, and most of them appreciated my sponge-like mind which absorbed everything they said and asked for more.
Since I always had a choice, I dated only the most fascinating men with the most diverse personalities. There were also a few guys like Paul. Paul was a stud, pure and simple, and he was the biggest bed turn-on of all the men I saw regularly. Even then, dimly aware at best, I understood that Paul served one need while Frank, Terry, Bill, and the others, served very different needs. Bill was a doctor and I loved listening to him explain his outlook on life as well as teaching me some of the basic things I needed to know about medicine. Terry was a poet, and he taught me to look at people and the earth itself with new eyes. Frank was an outdoors type, non-intellectual, and very involved with the natural flow of life. I slept with all of them and loved giving them back what I had to give. And so, without any thought at all, I was then living more nearly my perfect life, until I tripped over another damn bicycle....
I don't know what put the thought of getting married into my mind, but once it was there it refused to budge. Probably some charming advertising slogan or chance remark tripped off my conditioned expectations of marriage. I began to look around at my steady men. For one reason or another none of them seemed-likely. Terry would be a sensitive mate, but we'd live in the slums while he created and explored his world. Bill thought he was in love with me and would have loved me, but he'd never be there to enjoy the wonderful home he'd provide. Frank was impossible, of course, since he needed a woman only to sleep with and perhaps to applaud his manliness now and then. Paul and a few others of his type I didn't even consider. Quickly I ran through my men and knew that none of them would do at all.
Two weeks later I met Dirk. He was an insurance agent from another firm, and he seemed perfect from the start. I knew it even before he asked me out. He was tall and attractive, with a nice smile and a brightness in his eyes which told me there was more to him than the respectable, conventional insurance man facade. Our first date proved I was right. He wrote science fiction in his spare time, had a degree in botany, and was involved in ecology and politics. He was bright and stimulating, and I thought he was a man I could happily live with and not be bored to death.
The first time he took me to bed was a perfect example of my confusion at the time. Perfect. We'd gone out to a play-which I'd loved and he'd panned-and dinner afterwards was really fun, since each of us felt free to explain and justify our positions on the play. It had been a new presentation of a shocker of the sixties, The Beard, and since it was about sex, we finally got around to talking about that.
Before long Dirk threw me one of those smiles I liked so much. "How about it?"
I grinned back. "Why not?" I liked more than his smile by then. I liked him. Which brings me to an important point-I may have slept with a lot of men, but none whom I didn't sincerely like. Not then or now.
Anyway, our first night in bed together was typical of my distorted thinking at the time. He was, as I expected, good at that, too. And fairly sensitive, fairly dynamic, and even fairly original. The keynote here if. "fairly." Which means that he was a reasonably good lover in all ways, and that's where my thinking was off. Why would I want my only lover to be just fairly good when I could have one who was excellent? See what I mean? Dirk was fairly creative, but he was no Terry. He was into nature, but a Frank he was not. He made good money and was a steady type, but he certainly wasn't Bill....
So the point any intelligent human being is going to come to here is to inform me that no one man can be all those things. Right? Right! So why would any reasonable woman in my position give up all those men-who supplied all those things--.for any one man, who could, at best, supply a limited version? I did it because somewhere along the way someone had convinced me that being married to one man was the only way to go.
We got married and moved into our new apartment, and I quit my job and began going to school full time again. I was very happy then, and so was Dirk. We met Alisha, a rather plain but very interesting woman who lived down the hall. She was a sculptor and painter, and I knew there was an older man paying her way and two younger ones he saw regularly. I wondered how that worked out, because the two younger ones seemed to be the greatest of friends. They sometimes even came to see her together, and once in a while Alisha would go out with both of them at the same time. I was curious and maybe a little jealous, at moments, but I never mentioned a thing to Alisha about her personal life. However, it was only a neighborly acquaintance; we weren't bosom friends.
It's a little difficult to pin down the exact time when I began to realize that Dirk alone wasn't man enough in my life. It would be easy to say I got bored one evening and that's when a fascinating man came by. And that would begin to sound like I was saying that afterwards I was sorry and guilt-ridden. But it wasn't that way at all. I simply began to see the various lacks in my situation after about six months, and I knew that Dirk wasn't any more at fault than I. Some women seem able to be satiated with less, that's all. I began to find Dirk predictable and static, and I thought it would be kinder and better to fill in the gaps myself than disturb our home.
I met Chuck in one of my classes. He was a very funny man. His sharp wit gave me a fresh viewpoint on things, and I found myself energized just from being with him. I also felt a keener appreciation of Dirk because of having someone around who could supply me with certain things not in Dirk to give. Having an affair with Chuck made my marriage better, not worse.
Dirk was always rather serious, but Chuck was funny, even in bed. The first time I brought him home with me he began to laugh over the cup of tea I'd made him. "What's so funny?" I liked his grin and his blonde good looks. He looked like a Viking who had gotten himself lost in space and time.
For answer he got up and came to me. His broad hands slipped down over my long neck, past the deep vee in my blouse and over my bare breasts. "These," he said, still laughing. "Here I am, attempting to tell you something funny, and those gorgeous little nipples keep winking at me through the blouse. Maybe we could do better if I took the damn thing off." He gave my breasts another warm squeeze, then removed my blouse.
Then he finished his story-which was funny-and when he was finished, he winked back at my nipples.
Later, in bed, he asked about Dirk, and accepted my brief explanation that Dirk was a fine man and husband, but that I seemed to have need of more than one man in my life. I liked the way he digested that and grinned. He glanced at his watch. "Okay. It's Thursday and one-fifteen in the afternoon. From now on I'll be your Thursday, one-fifteen in the afternoon husband." He grinned. "On alternating Thursdays, that is. Chem lab, you know."
I had no idea at the time that Chuck's words would ever be more than a joke.
Setting the pace for my peculiarities was the fact that Chuck already had a girl friend, and I didn't like it. I'll try to explain that. No, better still, I'll try to explain it as Alisha later explained it to me. "Men and women have entirely different needs. Men are generally less into relationships than into having a woman as a backboard of their own egos. There's nothing wrong with that-it simply means that most men need less from a woman than a woman needs from a man. Or men. Usually a woman who's willing to listen to a man, enjoy him on the levels he's willing to share himself, give him a lot of good, enthusiastic sex, take care of his cave and fulfill whatever other domestic needs he's got, is fine with him. He doesn't need any others. Even for sexual variety, all he actually requires is a woman who's willing to reassure his ego and give him variety in bed herself. But there are women--more of them than anyone suspects, who need far more from a man than any one man can possibly give. That sort of woman does better with several husbands. But she had better get faithful husbands, because a man has just so much to share with women in general, and what he gives to one he takes from what he would have given to another."
A woman, she had said, was used as a symbol of eternity for a very good reason-she was constantly renewing and enriching, and was a natural to give all that was needed to fulfill many men.
Whatever the reason, I didn't want to share Chuck, though he would have to share me. I felt that Alisha was right in her theory, when I finally heard it quite some time later. Dimly I recalled my parents once again, and without knowing how I knew, I was certain that at one point, he took a mistress. If there was trouble before, home was complete insanity after that. My father wasn't even there when he was there in body. Just as Alisha said, he had just so much to give to a relationship, and what he had didn't go far between two women.
Chuck thought I was kidding when I told him he'd either have a relationship with me alone, or with his girl friend alone. I chose a time to tell him carefully, however.
We were in bed, and I'd done all the things to him that I knew he loved. Instinctively I knew how to act, how to cater to his needs. I'd been totally aggressive with him, a sexually starved and demanding woman, the undergraduate's dream of a woman. I'd teased him with my nakedness, with my firm, full breasts, my fingers, my lips and tongue. It drove Chuck wild to have me run my tongue over his body slowly, and I did it more slowly than ever. When I finally got to my objective, he was ready to ejaculate almost immediately. But I wouldn't allow it. I prolonged it by rising over him and leisurely dragging my body over his, lifting higher and higher until his moaning mouth was closing over my tensed clitoris. By the time that his inexperienced but wonderful tongue had brought me to a frenzied orgasm, he'd regained enough body control to let me reciprocate without too much risk of settling for a less than perfect experience for him. I used my mouth and tongue very knowingly, exciting him without allowing him to pass over the no-return point too quickly. Then, at the last moment, when I thought I could restrain him no longer, I begged him to take me. I went crazy when he entered me, moaning and begging to do it, and in seconds we were making it together. It was the best we'd ever had.
It was then that I announced that he'd .have to make a choice between myself and Hella, his girl. It was, I admit, a sneaky time to pull that. But also very effective.
"How can you ask me to be faithful to you, Tanya?" He looked at me doubtfully. "You're kidding, aren't you?"
Carefully I explained that I was deadly serious, and that he had about fifteen minutes in which to make up his mind.
"What am I supposed to be doing while you're diddling your husband? Shake hands with my cock?"
The answer to that seemed obvious. "But that's perfect! Look, Chuck, you've got school and can't afford to spend much time with dates. You know that. Already you're a little behind. I can be all that you need in a woman, and you know it. Think about it."
While he was thinking I began to rub his penis in a most sensuous way. He didn't even take his full fifteen minutes to decide I was more than enough woman for him. He didn't need that much time.
Thom was next, only I didn't meet him at school. There was a restaurant I sometimes went to when I had a lot of studying to do and didn't want to be home alone in the apartment with it. There was just enough stimulation with the people coming and going, and still not enough to totally distract me from my work. I noticed Thom right away. He always sat in a small booth by himself. Generally he'd read as he ate, or sometimes he'd just stare moodily off in space. There seemed to be a cloud over him at all times, a terribly attractive gray cloud, as if he alone knew all the horrors of life and had to carry them by himself. He was older, close to forty, I'd guess, and he never smiled when our eyes met in that restaurant.
I don't know when my idle curiosity turned to real interest. He was very handsome in his brooding way; a younger, handsomer Orson Welles, complete with short red beard and sunglasses too thick to be anything but corrective. He wore his hair more than fashionably long. Once he removed his glasses and revealed pale watery blue eyes which seemed to see right through me.
He became something of an obsession with me before long, and I became more and more overt in my attempts to catch his attention. Since that didn't work either, I simply took my coffee and sat down in his booth one day before he arrived. He always sat at the same booth and hardly anyone was ever in the place when he came in, so it was easy to predict his reaction. He began to sit down before he even noticed me.
"Oh!" He stared at me as if he'd never seen me before. His glasses were like a wall between us. Even in that moment I suspected that he saw things in depths I'd never suspected existed.
I told him I'd known it was "his" booth, but had honestly run out of other ways of getting his attention. I think my complete honesty interested him. Nearly two hours passed before I realized my coffee was as cold as ice in the untouched cup. Thorn was a frustrated artist, an artist without an art, was the way he put it. But that wasn't true. Thorn was a writer, but the blackness of the world didn't need exploiting, he felt. His mind was an intense furnace, blasting out sadness and hopelessness, and while no woman with a working mind would want to endure Thorn's negativity as a steady diet, he was fascinating in a somewhat smaller role in my life.
Our first experience in bed surprised me, though it shouldn't have. Thom carried the im-potency of his life into his sex life. It was as if he saw the futility in one orgasm that had no meaning in my Pill-controlled body beyond the orgasm itself.
"Oh, that's not so bad, is it?" I asked, teasing him with my fingers. "You should allow yourself a little simple pleasure, Tom...."
I turned out to be very good for Thom. Even therapeutic. I didn't even bother mentioning to him the details of my arrangement with Dirk or Chuck. I didn't want to add to his world of gloom particularly, and I would never have been able to explain my beliefs to Thom. I met him three or four afternoons a week, and once in a while he'd come home with me for a few hours.
Those three were more or less my steadies, and there were several men who walked in and out of my life in addition to them. One or two would have been lovely to have steadily, but they objected violently to the sort of relationship I wanted them to join into. The others were distractions, welcome oases, filling gaps in my life as I did in theirs. Life was fairly sweet until Dirk came home early one afternoon. He'd managed to snare some amazing deal or other, and was elated with his success. He'd rushed home to tell me all about it, and found me in bed with Chuck.
It could have been worse. It could have been Thom, I suppose.
Dirk was shocked, betrayed, maniacal in his anger, and totally beyond listening to explanations, however reasonable.
It was nearly three in the morning before he returned home, and when he did, he still would not listen to reason. I was afraid to tell him about the others, so I just told him about Chuck, and how my sleeping with a lover had little to do with the relationship I had with my husband.
He didn't even listen. He insisted I promise I'd never see Chuck again, and I admit, I was too weak and confused to fight about it. Even though I knew in my heart that I was right, for my needs, I didn't have enough self-awareness and insight to find the right words; I just didn't know enough basic psychology.
After that I began going to Chuck's apartment for our sex, or to Thorn's. I was surprised that my brooding lover Thorn lived in somber luxury in an apartment I wouldn't be able to afford in a lifetime. But nothing was the same after that. I was nervous and uncomfortable; and angrily, I felt that Dirk was certainly expecting what he'd been taught to expect from a marriage, but that none of what he asked from me made any sense at all. I wasn't taking anything from him by being with other men. I was always there when he came home, I didn't go out nights when he was home, and I never denied him in or out of bed. I had plenty to go around, in every way.
I was actually having an innocent cup of coffee in a nearby cafe when Dirk came in and made the big scene. I'd met this very sweet boy who also went to my school, and we were simply having a cup of coffee together when Dirk, wild-eyed with suspicion, marched in looking for me.
Again he'd come home early, and his mind jumped to conclusions when he noticed my car in front of the cafe. Poor Bob was so embarrassed at Dirk's untrue accusations, though I imagine they made great impressions on Bob's frat brothers later on.
There was no way to convince Dirk that I wasn't having sex with Bob and who knows how many other guys. I didn't even try. We went home to fight it out. Only there was no fight. Dirk began to play it cool, to act hurt but brave. The act turned me off. I had the feeling this was far from the end of it.
It was a month before I realized he was having an affair with his secretary. Of all the corny, vengeful, inane things. He let me know about it, too, expecting me to die of remorse on the spot.
That our relationship was impossible was an obvious fact, and I only wish we'd ended things on that note. But I continued seeing my men and Dirk knew it, and things got pretty ugly between us. I finally tried explaining my feeling about needing several men to make a complete relationship, but he wasn't buying it. He retaliated by bringing his girl friend home one evening when I was out. I came home and found them in my bed. It was pure spite and defiance, and I had had enough of the whole thing.
I packed and moved him out that night.
After it was over, however, I was depressed. I'd just ended my marriage. I was a failure. I'd been the party in error, from all points of view other than my own. I'd made the first several breaches of fidelity.
I don't know what I'd have done if Alisha hadn't come into my life then. She'd been in the background till then, waiting and watching, but not interfering. But after Dirk was gone she was there. She found me sitting on the couch in a puddle of confusion and conflict.
"Talking about it is the best way of putting things in order, Tanya dear. Tell Mother all."
She was rather maternal, though I only wish my real mother had as much sense. I told her everything, all of it, unafraid with her to speak my mind clearly. In the background was my knowledge of her various lovers, of course, and that made it so much easier. I didn't know if she'd understand why I felt less guilty than I was supposed to, and why I thought what Dirk had done was impossible.
"You were acting out of genuine need, darling, while your husband was motivated by jealousy and revenge. It's all the difference in the world...." She understood everything so perfectly.
Alisha was the first person who ever explained the concept of polyandry. "In some parts of the world women understand the difference in their capacity for sustaining relationships compared to men. A woman will take several husbands and all will share a satisfying relationship. It insures a certain degree of built-in birth control among primitive tribes, something we needed long before the Pill. I've never been able to find one man to fill all of my needs, or even to satisfy me sexually. It's always been necessary for me to have several men in my life at the same time."
She patiently explained about those borrowed bicycles. "Monogamy isn't everyone's cup of tea, my dear," she finished, shrugging. "It's someone else's tired two-wheeler. But having enough men to fill all of your needs presents a certain problem or two, in our society. I'd expect it a nearly impossible demand to make of a conventional marriage."
She was right, of course, and I knew I was better off divorced. For the next six months I set aside the concepts Alisha had put across to me, retreated back into my old habits of acquiring several boyfriends, juggling them neatly to keep paths from crossing and tempers from flaring. I was a busy single woman, and was involved with as neat a setup as I thought I could manage. But Alisha once again stepped in.
"Come, darling, let me show you what I mean." She invited me for dinner the next night.
I wasn't quite sure what she was getting at until I arrived for dinner and found myself dining with Alisha and the four men in her life. I knew the two younger ones slightly, and the older man who paid the tab I'd seen. The new one was Arthur, whom she introduced as her brand new husband.
"He's the only legal one at that," she said, laughing. "I married him this afternoon. His mother's will prohibits Arthur from inheriting his father's estate until he marries. The dear boy has been destitute! Poverty is not a good life for an artist, no matter what anyone says." She kissed him affectionately. "Arthur's never married because he does prefer men to women, but I must say he does a good job with women when the mood strikes him." She patted his hand and moved on to the others, introducing each and calmly telling me their finer points.
I was a little at a loss, in terms of responding to Alisha's strange introductions. She smilingly put me at ease. "But don't you see, silly girl? None of these marvelous men are competing with each other! Each offers me a completely different world. They have no reason to be hostile toward each other, because no one interferes with any one else's place in my heart."
"What about them?" I asked, after digesting that.
She undestood. "That couldn't be easier. As long as they are here, that means they're getting enough out of the relationship and me. If our ... unusual relationship becomes more of a liability than an asset to anyone, why, that person will drop out." She smiled fondly at her men. "We haven't found ourselves with a problem so far...."
It was a wonderful evening. Each of the men was warm and friendly to me, but at no time was there any competitive flirting, no using me to prove something to Alisha or the others, in the way that Dirk had used his secretary to get back at me. None of the men struck me as being particularly strange or intimidated by Alisha. They were each intelligent and seemed to appreciate the ultra-honest relationship they shared. I left Alisha's apartment feeling quite incomplete; though also very hopeful.
Looking back on my former relationships, I felt that my mistake was in attempting to pretend one-to-one relationship when I was actually being deceitful. To be completely honest, and give the other men a chance to choose between sharing me with the others or doing without me, sounded like a reasonable approach. Seeing Alisha's men gave me courage.
I realized that none of the men I was then seeing could hope to understand my needs. I had to start over. Fortunately, a big city had lots of eager men. I found my first prospect quickly enough, whom I met through one of my bosses.
John had a thriving plastics business which commanded a huge chunk of his time and energy. Twice divorced, John told me he would never consider marriage or that type of involvement again. He understood that he couldn't devote as much time or attention to a relationship as his women had demanded. Silently I smiled and realized that his poor ex-wives were simply confused. No man could possibly give them as much time or attention as they craved. John is a living dynamo, a fireball who generates energy. In his middle forties and extremely attractive in a graying, vital way, I knew instantly that he would be perfect for what I had in mind. He needed someone he could see once a week, perhaps, someone who would be there when he needed a woman, and yet wouldn't be upset about having no more of him than that. For my part, John added energy to my life, and his mature, successful outlook gave my thinking an entire new slant.
I had agreed to go out with him, but at the last minute I decided that dinner didn't look as good as John did. "We could eat later," I suggested, meeting his eyes. I was wearing a black lacy thing, an expensive sheath which fell away as his fingers moved over my back zipper. Underneath I wore only a pair of spider web panties.
He went wild over my body. "You're very beautiful, Tanya. Your breasts are exquisite." He touched them lightly, then stroked me more firmly. "Damn, it's been too long!"
It had been a while for me, too. I could feel the man's energy become strongly sexual. Some of his amazing force seeped into me as well as coming at me. I met his lips for the first time and gave myself up completely to the insistency of his kiss. His tongue was a wave of fire, lashing over mine. His hands worked over my breasts with the same intensity, and then I couldn't wait tor him to be inside me, driving into me, using that power to nail me to my bed.
"Take me to bed, darling! I want you to fuck me!" I felt his strong arms lift and carry me to my bed. "Oh, yes! Yes!"
He burst out of his clothing, shedding them rapidly, desperate to get into bed, to get into me.... Neither of us were interested in playing delightful bed games or drawing out the moment. We just wanted this first time to be happening, as quickly as possible. We needed each other.
John is well built for a man who sat behind a desk pushing a pen the better part of each day. He has masses of gray wiry hair on his tanned body, and his muscle tone is admirably maintained by his twice-a-week stint at the private health club he'd joined a year before. He was grinning with the eagerness of a boy as he came to me.
"Jesus. I feel like a kid. I'm not sure I can wait." He rolled over my body, making as much contact as he could.
"You don't have to wait." I let my tongue play over his dry lips. "Don't wait. I can't wait. Just do it. Just do it to me good...."
"Do what, Tanya? What do you want me to do to you?" he asked, kissing my nipples and stroking my loins. "Tell me just what you want me to do to you...."
His massive penis was very hard and throbbed against my mound, beating at the door when I wanted it to force its way inside me. "I want you to fuck me, John! I want you to put that big beautiful cock all the way into me.... I want you to fuck me, John ... ! "
Moaning, he did as I asked. I spread my legs and arched my back, presenting him with my moist slit for instant entry. He was like a wonderful animal on top of me, ramming his manhood in and out of me, taking me, controlling my every emotion. "That's good ... so good," I sighed, letting him do whatever he wished.
He was fast but exacting, and soon I was stiffening and moaning in that special way, and he was spraying my womb with his understandably urgent juices.
Afterwards he acted a little worried. "I've never made it with a woman that fast and that good, not on the first evening, anyway. I really meant what I said about being unable to be available full time. You have to understand that. But I also don't want to lose you---"
I didn't hesitate with John. I explained everything, even my deliberate choosing of him as a likely first "husband."
"Do I have it straight?" he asked. "You want a different steady mate for each day in the week? You want me to be a part of this harem you want to create for yourself?"
I nodded, grinning. "Or would you like to be my man for every night? Or you could choose to just walk out of here and never come back...."
He laughed. "Monday! I'm hot to be Tanya's Monday man. Honey, I think it's a fine idea. Just don't let them wear you out for me...."
John was easy, as I'd known he'd be.
Brad, my second choice, was a little more difficult. He had entered my life and apartment house through Alisha herself. He had been one of Alisha's husbands, but he had dropped out some time before I'd met her. "I just couldn't take it then," he told me as Alisha, Brad, and I had coffee in my apartment.
"Then?" Alisha asked, one eyebrow cocked.
Brad grinned. "Then, now, or ever, okay? I found out I don't dig sharing my woman."
Alisha grinned right back at him. "That's only because I wasn't the right woman for you, Brad. Your need for solitude demands that you spend only a small time with a woman, leaving her free to make other arrangements for the rest of her time."
Brad's eyes moved to me, and I read curiosity and interest in them. He had recognized the truth in what she had said, and was wondering if
I could be his "right" woman....
But Brad was temperamental and independent, and though he wanted me quite obviously, he would not come to bed with me for more than a week. I'd never had to be so aggressive with a man before, but I wanted Brad. He had a unique mind and a skillful way with words. He also understood polyandrous relationships. But he was also uptight about them.
"Come to bed with me, Brad. You know you want to. You know I want you---" We'd been watching TV in my apartment, and his kisses had excited me. I was afraid he'd storm out of my apartment again, as he had the night before.
He looked at me a minute without answering. "I can't be one of your steady men, Tanya. I don't have the guts for that kind of relationship again."
"I'm not asking for more than you want to give. Ever. All I want is you now." My fingers trailed over his flat belly and onto the hard bulge in his pants. "Just for now," I coaxed.
Sighing, he pulled me back into his strong arms and kissed me while his hands began to work on my clothing.
He was slim and not particularly impressively built. It didn't matter, though, because his thing turned out to be oral love. Most of the men I'd known enjoyed that, but I'd never known anyone like Brad. His mouth worked over my body lovingly, sucking and nibbling my breasts, licking the soft mounds, never leaving my nipples until they were rigid and sweetly aching. It was a warm, delicious feeling.
I contented myself with thrusting my breasts up into his face while my hands stroked his moving head, broad back, and slim waist. My excitement increased as he began to work his way down my body. "Oh, do it, Brad.... Yes....
I love it...." I moaned as his lips nuzzled the soft curls over my juicing slit. I could feel his hot breath.
He began slowly, licking so lightly it was like drawing a damp feather airily over my clitoris. Every stroke opened me more. Sighing, I thrust my legs on either side of his neck and used my hands to bring him more powerfully to me.
That's when his tongue began beating against my clit, whipping back and forth, over and over, drumming against the excited little organ. Meanwhile his fingers worked into my cunt, slipping in and out of me, shooting thrills up and down my body. I had my first orgasm immediately.
Brad wouldn't let me move until I'd had so many orgasms I couldn't stand any more. Only when my clitoris was so sensitive that each stroke was more pain than pleasure did he stop. "That was wonderful, Brad! Are you sure you won't change your mind? That once a week would be my idea of heaven!"
He brought his hard cock to my mouth. "And why not twice a week? Or three times? What if I'm Monday night and I just don't feel like it on Monday ....?"
I kissed the waiting shaft. "Monday's taken. I'm keeping my Tuesdays open for you, Brad.
When you feel like it...."I cut the conversation short then by drawing the entire length of him into my mouth.
After that nothing more was said for over a month. I was firm from the start, and he was determined to make it difficult. He would show up at my door other nights, and even when I was alone, I'd refuse to see him on any night other than Tuesdays. It was a battle from the start, but eventually Brad gave up. "You're a real little witch, do you know that? If I want you at all I can see that I'll have to take you on your terms." He smiled then. "Maybe that won't be so bad, after all. Besides, all those other dudes will-make you think of me. Longingly."
But it was again as Alisha had said-Brad was really very happy to keep his social, sexual life down to one day a week. I got busy finding numbers three and four.
I started seeing Gary, who was a musician, but that didn't work out. He nearly died when I told him my arrangement, and though he liked the sex and me, he had no thoughts of becoming any woman's harem boy, as he called it. I managed to keep him coming every Wednesday night for several weeks, but it was different. With Gary it was just a date one night a week, and when we were together it was all pretense arid phony structure. It was exactly what I didn't want, but I was so in love with the idea of seven husbands, one for every day in the week, that I let it slip for a while. Besides, I was busy with Hal, Chris, Tony, and Raul, one after the other, lining them up, learning to love each, experimenting in bed with each of them, just the way any couple does....
It was surprising how many men took to the idea of sharing me with other men. As soon as it was possible I got them together, making introductions and working them so that their conditioned competitiveness and egos didn't make trouble. It was a little like working bread dough-you have to take separate, distinct ingredients and mold them together, gently convincing them to become one comfortable mass. With these men it was not only fun but challenging as well, and I loved every minute of it. I felt intimate, close, loving toward each of them; and I wanted some of that good feeling to spread out and make each of the men somewhat at ease and fond of their co-husbands. Yes, I will admit that there was also a feeling of power.
At our first dinner together, which everyone but busy John attended, I knew it wouldn't work out with Gary at all. He agreed to come, as a lark, he'd said, but he arrived drunk and wearing a chip as big as a log on his shoulder. I had to divert him, talk him into going out to buy some more rum for the drinks before things settled back to being comfortable.
Hal talked to him when he came back, convincing him that if he found it impossible to be cooperative and enter into the spirit of things then it was better that he left. Hal himself was perfectly comfortable with the arrangement as it was. He had been well prepared for such a relationship, having been raised along with eight brothers by a widowed mother. As a close and loving unit, he and his brothers had learned how to share the woman they adored.
After Gary left, with one last, dramatic remark about getting his harem walking papers, I settled back to enjoy the rest of the evening. Gary's exit was the only flaw in that jewel of a day. It was, however, a flaw. While listening to Tony talk about driving race cars, his profession and passion, I spaced out a little and found myself wondering why I had the need of exactly seven men, or one each night. It would be nice to have one day reserved for an open house, with all of the men free to come over, as each was during the days of the week, but never the nights. But all I could come up with was a chance remark of my mother, a sniveling plea sent out to a husbandless house. "If only," she'd whimpered, "I'd have someone to turn to every night...."
Did I think I needed someone every night? But then I smiled and turned my attention back to Tony, my handsome husband one night a week. What did it matter? Reasons were for fools who spent their lives thinking instead of doing. All I knew was that I now had one night open each week, a gap I expected to fill at the earliest possible moment....
Ernst came along soon after. As my habit, I simply went out with him on what I hoped would be his night for a few weeks. He wondered about me, commenting often on the mysterious aspects of my life. I knew he was afraid that I had a lover, that I was someone's mistress. Since he was serious about me from the start, I let the hook sink in deeper by offering no information at first
I knew how my situation looked to him. With my active love life I had long before quit work. I was a housewife, in the grandest sense. A very happy John insisted on taking care of the apartment rental, Tony had bought me a new car, Hal's dress shop supplied my clothing, and between the others everything else was spoken for, including enough cash put aside to take care of my old age. It was a necessary part of our arrangement, since a wife of my variety could hardly expect the courts to see to my security. I even began to play with the idea of having a child or two. For those men who would desire fatherhood. Raul, perhaps, and maybe Tony. The others either already had children by previous, conventional marriages, or they were beyond that point in their lives, or they simply didn't care.
I knew my life would be perfect, once Ernst understood his position in this relationship....
Even before I opened the door I knew Ernst had heard. I quickly evaluated the dark look on his face as he came in. Soon I would know who had told him before I had had my chance to break the news gently. It would take a little longer to convince him that it was for the best, that I could make him so very happy.
And then, once again, everything would be perfect!
The woman in this story is attempting to deal with a problem common not only to women in a monogamous society, but to men as well. Most people will readily admit that emotionally one must maintain relationships with more than one person to feel complete; even though one marries that doesn't mean all friendships must end, or that affections for others must cease. However, because of the restrictions of the sexual myth, this thinking cannot be extended into the areas of sexual relationships. It seems a logical progression that if one emotional relationship cannot fulfill all emotional needs, one sexual relationship cannot fulfill a person's sexual needs either.
The character in the beginning of the story remembers the period before her marriage, when she was seeing a variety of men who stimulated her diverse needs, as the happiest in her life. The fact that she devoted most of her energy to these relationships, at the expense of her education and eventual involvement in a career she desired, can be seen as the first signs of capitulation to the sexual stereotype. Rather than view herself as an independent being, capable of growth in other areas, she confines her efforts-although her solution at the end is novel-to pleasing men. She continues to indulge the submissive role, although in a disguised form. She places her ability to be sexually attractive to men above her ability to compete within the society as a capable and intelligent individual.
She cannot recall what caused her sudden desire to marry, but the source is apparent. At a certain age, usually in their early twenties, women marry or they are considered deficient sexually; they become social outcasts. Even women who later choose a career rather than marriage as their arena, prefer to have at least one divorce to their credit in order to secure their status within the feminine hierarchy. When the character examines the fractured relationships she has developed, she realizes that none of the men can fulfill all of her needs on his own; each one is intensely involved in only one particular aspect of her diverse nature. So she automatically seeks an emotional "jack of all trades," a middle of the liner, who will touch-albeit it incompletely-all aspects of her being. When she finds that Dirk fits the bill she marries him and establishes herself within the stereotype.
After six months, however, she finds that she is intensely frustrated. Having closed herself off from all other outlets for her energy, and limiting her stimulation and sense of accomplishment to her sexuality, she is dissatisfied as a married woman and with confining her sexual needs within a single relationship.
Still naively driven to maintain the myth, rather than seek other forms for release, she is forced to have clandestine affairs. A chance remark on the part of her first lover opens the door to a solution; simultaneous relationships with men. Her friend Alisha's explanation of why, under those circumstances, she would demand fidelity on the part of her lovers while she herself indulged a number of affairs is an absurd and degrading extension of the feminine mystique. What is suggested is that a woman is nothing more than a sexual object, capable-because she has, as a result of her nature, limited her expression of self to sex alone-of fulfilling any number of male needs for ego gratification and sexual diversion. The male, according to Alisha, is removed from the relationship because of the demands made by his development as an autonomous being; allegedly has a limited ability to give to a woman; is, in the guise of sexual freedom, simply a reaffirmation of the sexual bias fostered by the feminine mystique. This concept of the female as sexually insatiable-an object to be possessed and one whose entire existence is predicated on her ability to please the male-is about as logical as claiming that blondes have more fun than brunettes. What Alisha describes when she suggests that women need more from men than men need from women is a simpleminded acceptance of the bondage women have been held in for centuries. Alisha is an excellent example of the woman who is sexually liberated, but not intellectually.
The young bride then uses her sexual prowess, much in the way a prostitute would, in order to gain her objectives. To the resistant lover she makes herself, calculatedly, indispensable sexually. She puts him in a position, with sex as the payoff, where he cannot refuse her offer; and as a result she acquires a number of lovers, other than her husband who is kept in the dark, who are faithful to her. She relies on this position for a sense of power and ego gratification, which she confuses with sexual appetite. She is no different from the men her friend Alisha describes, except she prefers to deal with the feminine mystique rather than in the society that has produced her as an individual. She uses her sexuality in this small world as the legal tender rather than cash.
When she is discovered by her husband with one of her lovers, their marriage quickly disintegrates, leaving her-still naively contained in myth-with a sense of having failed. Her friend comes to her aid and quickly relieves her sense of guilt. Alisha reveals that she has made an institution of the kind of relationships the girl was attempting to establish in secret. She has a number of "husbands," who know each other, who are faithful to Alisha, and who are devoid of any sense of competition with each other sexually. The girl immediately, seeing a solution to her needs, follows Alisha's lead and with her friend's guidance goes about setting up a similar situation for herself. She comes across a few men who reject her plans; but generally she carefully chooses men who will, because of demanding lives, be quite capable of accepting her terms and finding satisfaction in the relationship. A stray thought passes through her mind at the end of the story: She remembers her unhappy mother complaining about her father's absence from home, and wishing she would just have someone there every night. The girl lets the thought pass unexplored but it is pertinent to her behavior. She is incapable of achieving any real independence of identity, and is simply projecting her mother's wish compulsively.
The idea of a woman maintaining several sexual relationships with men openly and simultaneously could be a healthy solution to the frustrations of monogamy, and there is no reason why it should be seen as neurotic behavior. However, in this case the character is capitulating completely to the stereotype concept of women, although she believes she is attempting to break free of myth and the confines of monogamous marriage. She continues to channel all of her energy and efforts into her role as a female-the definition of that sex following the most archaic concepts of her body as merely an object, and her mind simply a device employed for the pleasure and gratification of the male.
CHAPTER THREE
Say It Isn't So
Osgood Fenner had taken a beating. It wasn't a physical one; no sunglasses covered blackened eyes, no teeth were chipped, his jaw wasn't broken, nor were any of his ribs bruised. He had done his suffering in a much more vulnerable, more lasting area. He had sustained a deep gouge to the wallet.
Clarissa, his ex-dearly beloved had done it to him. "A thousand bucks a month?" Ossie wailed into the phone. He was talking to his former friend and present lawyer. "How can they expect me to pay a thousand a month?"
"It was the best I could do, Ossie," the lawyer said. "They made the estimate on one-third of your gross income per year. That comes to about a thousand a month."
"But what about...?" Ossie didn't get to finish.
"She let you keep the house," the lawyer placated.
"Great, That'll cost me six hundred a month. Easy. Add that up. House and ex-wife totals half my gross income. And what about taxes?"
"That's your problem, Ossie," the lawyer said, being no help. "You're only paying me to get you out of this bind."
"And a lousy job you're doing."
"I did the best I could."
"You said that before," Ossie shouted.
"She's letting you keep both cars."
"Terrific. That's another three hundred a month out of the old gross. Harry, I'm going to be a pauper." Ossie was feeling very depressed.
"I hope you've got enough to pay my bill," the lawyer said. He chuckled as though he were joking; he wasn't.
"I'm going to give it to you in pennies," Ossie said.
"Clarissa wants the washer and dryer," the lawyer continued. He was intoning the destruction of Ossie's life without the least bit of emotion.
"I knew she'd take those," Ossie said miserably. "They're paid for."
"And" she gets the dog," the lawyer concluded.
"One more question," Ossie said, "and then I don't ever want to hear your voice again. How long does this thousand a month last?"
"Until Clarissa marries again," the lawyer said.
"She'll be single until hell freezes, over!" Ossie shouted.
"But she won't be lacking companionship," the lawyer said smugly. "In fact, Ossie, I'm having dinner with her tonight. Talk to you later."
"Not if I can help it," Ossie said resignedly. "You ass-hole."
"Watch your language, Ossie. I may have to sue you."
Ossie hung up without saying more. There he was, screwed to the wall by his ex-wife and his own lawyer. Wasn't that a sad commentary on contemporary life in these United States? It was his own fault, he realized. He'd been stupid. For years he'd kept Clarissa on a forty-dollar-a-week household budget, telling her they had to put the rest away for rainy days, and when she somehow found out about all the dough he was laying out to support "that little chippie," she went ape. She promised to nail him to the wall, and she did. She had her pound of flesh.
Ossie sat down with a long sheet of paper and tried to figure out just how much he'd have after all his new expenses. When he was finished with the column of numbers, he was shocked. It was worse than he thought. Nobody could live on that small amount a month. A Tibetan monk couldn't live on that amount. He'd be working his ass off only to make sure that Clarissa was comfortable. And he didn't even like her anymore.
The worst part was that he wouldn't be able to afford that great little gal he'd been keeping so well, with so many rewarding benefits for him. Even if he moved her into a coldwater flat, he couldn't afford to keep her anymore. Course, he could move her into his own house ... but she wasn't the type you moved into your own house.
For two months Ossie fulfilled the role of ripped-off husband. He paid his alimony, and the rest of his debts on time. Everybody was happy except him. He found himself wearing shirts two or three days in a row to save money at the laundry. He found himself skipping meals so that he could afford to buy some babe a drink in a bar after work. And he was a guy who was making over thirty-six thousand dollars a year. Ridiculous.
The ridiculousness of the situation manifested itself at its ultimate four days before the thousand-dollar check to Clarissa was due for the third time. "No," Ossie said as he looked at himself in the mirror. "I'm not going to do it. Not any more. They can throw me in jail and throw the key away. I'm not going to support that slut."
After the resolve was, taken, he worked fast. He called the office the next day and quit outright. No more job. He next visited a real estate agent he knew and put the house on the market. He next went home and packed up everything he could lay his hands on and sent for a storage van.
Lastly, he visited his safety deposit box. There, on the bottom, was a sheet of paper, brown now with age, folded tightly into eighths. Ossie sat and slowly unfolded the paper. On it, drawn in his father's wavering hand, was a map. A map to a piece of land that Ossie had inherited from the old man. Right dab in the middle of that piece of land was a gold mine. That's where Ossie was heading. It didn't bother him in the least that it was in the middle of Alaska. The farther away from Clarissa he could get, the better it would be.
Ossie had never seen the mine, or even Alaska, but he and his father had often talked about that place. "It's not the most productive mine in the world," the old man had told him. "But it could give you a way to live if you ever need it. Don't ever sell it, Osgood. It's my only legacy to you."
The words the old man had said, something about the mine being able to "give a way to live," fascinated Ossie; especially since when the old man had been talking, the price of gold was only about thirty-five dollars an ounce. When he'd last checked, the price had gone up considerably and was dangling around a hundred and twenty-five dollars an ounce. If he could have made a living when the price was thirty-five, he figured he could do damned well now. Just pick the stuff up off the ground.
He called an airline and made a reservation on the first plane he could get to Alaska.
The flight to Fairbanks was a treat. They flew along the coast and the scenery was spectacular. Already Ossie felt healthy and more alive. He was heading for a great adventure; the last American frontier. He felt like a man, and a new one at that. Besides, that goddamned Clarissa wouldn't think of looking for him up there; she'd just sit next to her empty mailbox for weeks, waiting for him to send the check. The dumb cow.
He arrived in Fairbanks on June 21, the first day of summer. It was twelve degrees at two o'clock in the afternoon. His blue-black-'n'-gray Pendleton shirt wasn't nearly warm enough, wool though it was. After stuffing his luggage into a locker, he headed to a men's store, where he spent four hundred and fifty dollars on a "summer" wardrobe which included a fur-lined parka, sealskin lined boots, long johns, and gloves. He was ready to conquer the last frontier. He went back to the airport, but before getting his luggage he went to the information booth.
"Excuse me," he said to the girl behind the counter, who wasn't paying the least attention to him, nor seemed inclined to in the near future, "could you tell me how to get to Vlady's Creek?"
The girl sighed. She loved her job, Ossie could tell that right off. "Where'd you say?" she asked.
"Vlady's Creek," Ossie repeated. He pulled an Automobile Club map out of his pocket. He unfolded it. "There it is," he said. "But how do I get there."
The girl followed his pointing finger to the deep interior. She looked at him. "I haven't the foggiest," she said.
Ossie picked up his luggage and headed for the Fairbanks Automobile Club office.
He was a little early in the season, he found out. The conventional methods of getting to Vlady's Creek, which was the nearest town to his mine, were unavailable. He had two alternatives: he could go in by dog sled, which seemed romantic but impractical since it was almost impossible to find anybody anymore who drove one of the things; or he could go in by helicopter, which was the way Vlady's Creek got its supplies during the "cold" season. That "cold season" stretched from approximately Labor Day to the Fourth of July.
The Auto Club clerk told him he would be dropped into the village just like he was a box of toilet tissue or a can of kerosene. The image seemed to strike the clerk funny. The clerk exaggerated. The. helicopter landed for about twenty seconds, while Ossie and some cases of canned goods were unloaded. Ossie was in his new home.
Ossie didn't know what he had expected Vlady's Creek to be like, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he had imagined that the Howard Johnson Motel chain was represented in every town in the world. It hadn't made it to Vlady's Creek, however, and the best he could come up with, after talking with all four people he could find in the village, was a deserted cabin which was desperately in need of work. He moved in.
He had noticed in his travels around the village, looking for a place to put his head, that there was a sort of saloon-general store, so when he got his gear stowed away, he headed in that direction, where he got his first surprise. He had expected to be surrounded by Asian-looking people who rubbed noses and chewed whale blubber. What he found was a total absence of Eskimos and an abundance of people like himself-if five or six can be referred to as an abundance. Everybody he talked to, except for the owner of the saloon-general store-whom Ossie suspected immediately of being an escaped mass murderer-was a product of one of the warmer climates of the U.S.A. who had decided for one reason or another-mostly unpayable debts-to give up the "good life" and come to Alaska to rough it and make a fortune at a mine he had picked up title to somewhere along the way. Their stories were so similar to his own that Ossie felt apprehensive; he had thought he was unique.
"Have you found any gold?" he asked one man he met, who was about his own age.
"Sure," the man answered. "It's all over the place. The only problem is that it's too damned spread out. I've been working all spring and I'm heading into a town in about a month to see what I've got." He pulled out a cloth bag and opened it, showing Ossie what looked like a considerable number of gold nuggets.
"'Course, it looks like more than it is," the man explained. "The stuff up here ain't too pure. Have to have it assayed." He returned to his beer.
In the next few weeks, Ossie got an education. First, he found that his mine wasn't really a mine, but actually a plot of land which included a series of shallow holes in the ground. To mine, he had to get on his belly and crawl into the hole to a point below the frost line and start digging with the aid of a miner's cap, cum light, which he bought at the general store for an exorbitant price.
At first he was so tired by the time he'd finished a day's work-with so few results-that he'd just return to his cabin, get himself a meal together and collapse. But slowly his body got hard and his constitution became accustomed to the way of life he was leading. He began after a week or two, to feel the urge for some sort of a social life. That's when he began to appreciate the saloon-general store.
There was no television and only short-wave radio, not a movie projector within a hundred miles, so entertainment consisted of having a drink of some kind in front of him and talking with the other inhabitants of the area, all of whom were in the same condition he was. It made making friends easy. The main drawback in all this was the total lack of femininity. Everybody was so goddamned butch it made him want to puke.
Three of the boys plus Ossie were sitting around a table one night, all nine-tenths smashed, when somebody came up with a suggestion.
"Why don't we get a woman up here?" that somebody asked. "We could share her."
There was a short period of silence while the suggestion was digested, then all four began to talk, wildly enthusiastic. The idea seemed to all of them to be fantastic. Why not? There was that cabin down by the helicopter landing pad that was empty since old Waldo had left. She could use that and the boys could use her. Get together and pay her. "Hell," one of the miners said, "maybe she'd even cook for us.
That was the clincher. A home-cooked meal was even more appealing than the constant availability of a lay. They ordered another round of drinks and started to make plans.
Ossie, as a former public relations man and smooth talker, was elected to make the pitch to whoever seemed feasible in Fairbanks. That's where they had decided to find a girl-woman? In Fairbanks.
Two days later Ossie was on the helicopter heading for Fairbanks. The first thing he did was spend an hour in a bathtub and then headed out to the local pleasure palaces to see what he could dig up in the way of a Vlady's Creek sex-pot
He asked a cabbie and was directed to a house down near the center of town. It was owned, the cabbie said, by a Mrs. Turk, who "brooked no nonsense." Ossie was delivered to the house, got out of the cab, paid his fare and then looked inside the window. "Pardon me," he said, "but cabbies just don't say 'brook no nonsense' where I came from. You a college professor or something?"
The cabbie looked at him and grimaced. "I was a professor," he said. "Got my doctorate in Medieval French Literature. But I ran into this tiny little girl-she couldn't have been more than four-feet-eleven-who was the greatest fuck in the world. She was taking my survey course. Fucked her every night for a month, then I got caught. Now I'm a cabbie up here in the armpit of the world, saying things like 'brook no nonsense,' and I couldn't be happier."
Ossie invited the man for a visit to Vlady's Creek and headed inside the house. The place, called Ma Turk's, wasn't the most elegant in the world, but neither was the clientele. Neither were the girls. Ossie was let in after being examined through a peephole. He walked into the parlor to see what the place had to offer.
Madeleine was six-foot-three and wore a leather skirt and boots. She carried a whip mentally; Ossie dismissed her as a possibility. Joyce was a petite blonde who'd seen a lot of better years. She had to be fifty years old. Ossie dismissed her.
Caroline was a former nun who was making up for lost time. She looked like she'd be good in bed, but she was addicted to philosophical and theological remarks she'd carried over from her former life; Ossie figured that aspect of her personality wouldn't be appreciated in the confines of Vlady's Creek.
The last girl was a surprise to Ossie. She looked familiar and as he stared at her, it dawned on him where he had seen her before. She was the woman he had talked to behind the information counter at the airport. He walked toward her.
"Yeah," she said before he could open his mouth. "You've seen me at the airport. Yeah, I'm moon-lighting and yeah, I'm free."
Three minutes later Ossie was upstairs in a private room on top of the information girl. She had told him her name was Mavis and that she liked "freaky things." After he'd pulled out of her and got off from on top of her, she looked at him and sighed. "You're not very freaky," she said, sounding more bored here than she had behind the information counter.
"What do you mean by freaky?" he asked.
"Well, not really freaky," she said. "Just something different. I've been in this damned state for six years and I've been bored every second."
Ossie's mind was racing. Mavis seemed like a perfect choice. The deal he was offering her might just be "freaky" enough to appeal to her. They got comfortable and Ossie started to tell her what he had to offer. The more he talked the brighter her eyes got and Ossie knew he had a live wire. He knew for sure her answer would be a resounding yes. It was.
Ossie met her the next morning and took her, along with her luggage, to the airport. He was excited as a man could be on the helicopter ride back to Vlady's Creek.
Everybody was out working the mines when they arrived, so Ossie got Mavis established in the empty cabin and told her to come over to the saloon that night about nine, wearing "something provocative."
Ossie could barely eat dinner that night he was so excited about the surprise he'd have for his buddies. He left for the bar about seven-thirty. When he walked in, all his friends were already gathered. He was deluged with questions.
"Where is she?" somebody shouted. Ossie looked downcast, as though he hadn't been able to find anybody.
"Christ, you're a bust," another said. "I want the money I gave you back." Ossie just shook his head sadly.
The questions and the recriminations continued for an hour and a half and the guys didn't shut up until the front door to the place opened and Mavis walked in wearing something so minute that ninety-nine and forty-four percent of her assets were showing. You could have heard a pin drop in the place, except for the sound of cocks being erected.
Ossie got up quickly and walked to her. He put his arm around her shoulder and walked her to the table. "Gentlemen," he said, "I would like you all to meet Mavis, who has agreed to become our boon companion."
Suddenly, the place was a mass of shouted hurrahs. The men acted like a new invention had been placed in their midst. Ossie's place next to Mavis was quickly usurped, but that was all right with him. He'd had some nookie just the night before.
Mavis felt right at home. Within the next hour, at her own cabin, she took on all the boys and even granted a few seconds. The boys were ecstatic, and made even happier when Ossie came back into the bar after a romp and told them that Mavis had agreed to cook them all their evening meal. "But she's tired now," Ossie said. "Tomorrow night we eat and screw to our hearts' content."
The only damper on the evening was Ossie's additional announcement of what Mavis was demanding in remuneration for the meals and friendship. She came high, but like frontiersmen everywhere, money was no object to the boys when it came to filling their bellies and getting their rocks off.
The festivities the next night were scheduled to begin at seven-thirty, but by six o'clock all the male participants were gathered at the bar for a pre-party drinking bout. Ossie had never seen his new friends so alive and happy. Booze flowed like a mountain stream; Ossie himself, who rarely let alchohol get the better of his senses, was pie-eyed by the time it was time to leave for Mavis's cabin.
Mavis's efforts were greeted with shouts of approval. She had a place set for each of the four of them at the table, plus one .for herself. Where she had got them nobody knew, but she had included napkins at the place settings. They were paper, but they were still napkins. All the men, despite their drunken states, were starting to feel human gain. Mavis was a lousy cook and the food was rotten, but that didn't dampen anybody's spirits. It was the loudest, most boisterous, most fun dinner party ever held in Vlady's Creek.
Wine had flowed generously during dinner, so that increased everybody's inebriated state. Mavis had gotten into the swing of things and was feeling no pain herself.
"My belly's not the only thing that's full," Lou shouted. He stood up. "My cock's so goddamned full and hard it downright hurts me." He unzipped his trousers, moved his long johns to the side and pulled his cock out. He'd been telling the truth; maybe not about the hurting part, but it sure was hard.
"What the fuck do you think you're going to do with that little thing?" Joe yelled and stood up next to his buddy. "Take a look at a man." He, too, unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out. For all the noise he was making, it wasn't the least bit bigger than Lou's.
"Shit, my cock's bigger than yours," Lou said.
"Fuck it is," Joe shouted back.
Carl, who rarely said anything, joined in the argument. "Let's be gentlemen about this," he said. "Let the lady decide." He turned to Mavis who was swaying drunkenly in her seat.
"I can't even see the goddamned things," she said, giggling, "much less tell you which one is bigger."
Ossie went over behind her. "Hen, if you can't see 'em, get closer." He pulled her out of her chair and gave her a shove toward his two friends. Mavis lurched in their direction, catching herself on the side of the table.
"I still can't see 'em," she shouted, shrieking with laughter.
Joe moved right up next to her, pushing her down and shoving his cock in her face. "Now tell me," he said. "Which one's bigger."
"I can see yours just fine," Mavis said, still laughing, "but I can't see Lou's worth a shit."
Joe turned to his buddy. "Tell you what," he said. "The first one of us makes her choke wins the bet."
That was agreed to by Lou, but Carl and Ossie weren't satisfied. "We're in on it, too," they both shouted. "One of us has probably got everybody else beat."
The contest was on. Joe shoved his cock at Mavis's mouth after pushing her to her knees and ripping open the top of her dress. Mavis was right in there; while she sucked on his cock she kept mauling her own tits.
Ossie couldn't stand to let that happen and he got down on the floor, pushing his face at her tits. He began to suck them with everything he had. While he was sucking and licking, he took her hand and put it down in his lap. Mavis took hold of his cock and started to pump on it, getting it rock hard.
She didn't suck Joe to a come and there wasn't a choke in sight, so after a short while, Lou pushed his friend aside. "My turn, shortie," he said, and shoved his cock at Mavis's waiting mouth. She treated him just as cordially as she had Joe.
Mavis was a talented cocksucker. No matter how hard Lou fucked her face, he couldn't get her to choke.
Carl eventually took his place at her mouth. In the meantime, Ossie had given up on her tits and was burrowing under her dress. He fought and fought until he found what he was after and plastered his mouth against her cunt Mavis grunted in full and undisguised pleasure.
Ossie licked and sucked, kissed and gently bit her pussy. He worked first on her cunt lips with his own lips and tongue, washing them down lavishly. Then he attacked her clit with his tongue and teeth, first lapping on it and then gently biting it. He had Mavis in seventh heaven, but she still didn't choke on Carl's cock.
Eventually, Ossie pulled himself away from her cunt and unraveled himself from her skirt. He stood up and shoved Carl out of the way. "C'mon, Tiny," he said. "Make room for a man."
His cock was rock hard as he took hold of the back of Mavis's head and pulled it toward him. He pressed his cock against her lips and forced his way inside. He held her head tightly in his hands, pulling her toward him, slammed his prick deeply into her throat with one push. She didn't make a sound. "C'mon, bitch," Ossie shouted at her. "Suck it and choke."
He continued to wedge his cock deep into her throat, moving faster and faster. He didn't give her a second to hesitate or even to get a breath. After several long seconds of that, unable to get any air and almost brutalized by Ossie's treatment of her, the inevitable happened: Mavis choked.
Ossie let out a yell of victory and pulled his prick out of Mavis's mouth. He reached down and helped her to her feet. Despite the treatment she'd gotten, she was still in a good mood, still smiling.
"You win, Ossie," she said. "You ain't the biggest, but you sure are the meanest."
"To the victor belong the spoils," Ossie shouted. "No sloppy seconds for me tonight." He grabbed Mavis by the hand and was ready to lead her to the privacy of our bedroom.
"Don't go stealing off with her," Lou said. "You can fuck her right here. We'll watch and tell you what you're doing wrong. She can work on us, too, while you're fucking her."
With one sweep of his hand, Lou cleared the table. His efforts made a considerable sound with breaking glasses and dishes, but the whole group only laughed.
Ossie pushed Mavis against the table and up on it. He took hold of the clothes she was still wearing and pulled and yanked on them until they were ripped off her. She was totally naked, lying on the table on her back. Ossie climbed up on the table, pulled his pants down and got between her legs. "You're gonna get fucked like you never been fucked before," he said.
"Do it to me, baby," Mavis said. "Do it to me hard." The little gal was really turned on.
She didn't have time to say any more, because Joe had moved up to the one side of her and was pushing his cock against her mouth, again. She turned her head and swallowed the long prong he was offering her.
Ossie moved as close in between her legs as he could get. He spit in his hand and rubbed the wetness over the head of his cock. He was ready. He pressed against her pussy and with one rough shove was buried deep inside her. As he plunged into her, Mavis let out a "whoosh" and then groaned with pleasure. It was a muffled groan, though, because she still had her throat filled with Joe's cock.
Ossie fucked into her maybe twenty or twenty-five times before one of the unoccupied gentlemen in the room started to complain. "I ain't got nothin' to fuck," Lou shouted. "I want me somethin' to fuck."
"Me, too," Carl said, joining him as they both stood close to the table where the action was.
"Share her, boy," Lou said, looking at Ossie who was still pounding against Mavis's cunt.
"How the hell am I gonna share her?" Ossie asked, the question coming out in gasps.
"Shit, she's got two hole down there," Lou said. "You keep the one you're in and let me have the other."
Ossie had never done anything like that in his life, but in his drunken condition, it sounded good. "How do you do it?" he asked after stopping what he was doing.
"Let me get on my back, put her on top of me on her back and I'll stick it up her ass. You do the fuckin' in her cunt from the top. Easy as that."
Mavis heard what was being said, despite being busy with Joe's cock, and she didn't especially appreciate the idea. "Hold it," she said after dislocating herself from Joe's rigid prick, "what you're suggesting isn't lady-like."
"Fuck bein' lady-like," Lou said and took hold of her and forced her to the edge of the table. He got on his back, "Put her on top, boys," he shouted and the three other men took hold of Mavis. They raised her up in the air-she was kicking like hell-and lowered her on the cock Lou was holding straight up. He had wetted it good.
The cock slid right up Mavis's ass-hole, but not without her making a lot of noise about not liking it, and about its hurting her. But once she got that thing lodged deep inside her and with Lou not doing too much moving, she sort of took it in stride. Mavis was one good sport, and really turned on. She spread her legs and let Ossie climb in the saddle again. He got into position and plunged his cock into her.. He could feel that her cunt had tightened. He could feel his own cock rubbing against Lou's cock as he fucked into her. It was a weird, but a good, sensation.
While Lou and Ossie fucked her, Mavis took turns on Joe and Carl. She sucked them off, first one and then the other. Then both at once. At one point she had four cocks inside her body.
Ossie, fucking hard and working harder than he ever had in his life, shot off first. He groaned like he was being killed and then lodged his cock into her as deeply as he could. He shot what seemed like a gallon. His body lurched in pleasure spasms. It was one of the greatest comes he'd ever had in his life.
As soon as he was finished, he felt himself being pushed aside and Carl climbed up on top of Mavis. He aimed his prick and shoved it in. She let out a gasp and then started to move with him, without even taking her mouth as much as a centimeter away from Joe's cock.
Carl, excited by the sucking he'd gotten and by what he'd seen the other guys doing, shot off fast. He yelled like he was being killed and then spasmed his way through a giant orgasm. He barely had two seconds to recover before Joe was pushing him aside and getting into Mavis's cunt.
All this while, through three fucks, Lou was on his back, with his cock stuck up Mavis's ass, enjoying. He didn't move much and he didn't shoot. But when the last of the three was finished, and he still hadn't shot off, he started to move and twist and to shove Mavis until she was on her hands and knees on the table, with her ass sticking up in the air, and Lou was standing on the floor. He took hold of her hips with both hands and started to fuck her ass with what almost seemed like hate. He fucked and fucked and Mavis screamed and screamed. But as he continued to stick his prick into her ass-hole, the feeling must have gotten better for her, because she stopped screaming with pain and started to groan with pleasure.
With one brutal plunge into her, Lou screamed out and started to shoot his stuff right up her ass. She backed up to him, seemingly wanting even more of his cock up her ass. When he'd finally pulled his cock out of her, he stood there, tired, and grinned. "You have to try it, boys," he said. "You'll like it a whole lot."
Mavis stayed in the same position she'd been in for Lou, so she must have wanted some more. Ossie stepped up behind her. He had never fucked an ass and this was as good an opportunity to try as he'd ever have. He spit into his hand again and wet his cockhead good. He pushed his cock up against the entrance to Mavis's ass. He shoved. His cock slid into her nicely. Neatly. It was smooth with Lou's come.
He was a little shorter than Lou so he had to pull Mavis's ass down a little to a convenient fucking position. Then he held on to her hips and fucked her as hard as he could.
Lou had been right. Her ass-hole was tighter than her cunt. It felt terrific. He plunged into her again and again and as he fucked her, he reached in between her legs with his hand and shoved a couple of fingers up her cunt. Mavis seemed to appreciate that; she liked the fucking in the ass even better.
It took no time at all for Ossie to shoot off a second time. He was worn out when the orgasm was over. He pulled out limply. Almost immediately Carl stepped up and shoved his hard dick right into her. Mavis protested a little; she had shot off herself any number of times and was getting a little worn out, feeling used. There was no way she was going to stop Carl from fucking her ass, though. She had to give in to them all before they'd let her alone. She knelt there, no longer getting a kick out of the fucks they were throwing to her, but withstanding them.
She only rebelled once. It was after Joe had gotten into her. He pulled his cock out and then walked toward her face. He stood there, his cock still half hard, and shoved it at her mouth. He wanted her to suck off his cock after he had fucked her with it in the ass.
"No way, buster," she said and knelt up quickly. "The party's over."
That was fine with the rest of them. They were damned tired and coming down from their booze highs. They all left without making any trouble about wanting "more" of anything.
The next morning, all four of the men woke up with agonizing hangovers and guilty consciences. They felt bad about the scene the previous night, especially the perverted way they had used Mavis. In actuality they felt a little ashamed of themselves.
That night, they all met in the bar. They were all still embarrassed and feeling tremendous pangs of regret.
"I hope like hell she don't get mad and leave," Lou said. "I feel really bad about it, especially since I was the first one to do it."
"First or last, it don't make any difference,"-Joe said. "We all did it and we're all feeling rotten."
Apparently, while the men's agony was mental, Mavis's was physical. She came walking into the bar about an hour later than they had, and she was visibly limping. She came to the table and sat down cautiously. She told them her ass-hole hurt her so bad she could barely see straight.
"We have to come to some arrangement," Mavis said. "That scene last night was too much. Even without the ass-fuckin', it was too , much. We have to come up with some schedule for you animals."
That was all right with the men. Feeling so guilty, they were liable to go along with almost anything Mavis suggested. "Tell you what, boys," she said, sounding now very much like Mae West on a bad day. "Let's say that each of you had a night. Lou, you come on Monday. I'll feed you and you can throw a fuck to me. Tuesday will be your day, Joe. Wednesday, Carl, and Thursdays will belong to Ossie. Then on Friday we can start all over again. How's that sound? I really don't go too much for that group action shit."
The arrangement was fine with the boys. They were just glad that she hadn't decided to take off after what they'd done to her.
For two weeks, everything went fine. Mavis would have a meal ready for one of them each night. They'd head to bed after that and spend a good couple of hours fucking her. That's what they needed, and they didn't get too much of her so that they never got bored.
The opposite was true of Mavis. Her life had become ore giant routine. She did the same thing every night; the only things that changed were the mouths she had to fill and the cocks she had to satisfy.
She rebelled, but she didn't do it in the open. First, she started to have headaches every once in a while when the guys would arrive. "It hurts too much for me to cook," she'd say, so the guy would tredge over to the bar and get his meal. Then, when he went back to get his lay, the headache would have forced her to bed and sleep. No fuckee that night.
Eventually, they were getting it only half as often as the plan had called for. Maybe once a week. Then it got to be even less than that.
One night, as they were sitting around the table in the bar, discussing how lousy the situation had gotten, Mavis came walking in. She sat down with them. "I've got a new plan, boys," she said. "From now on, you'll only come over to my cabin when you're invited. And you'll eat there only when I feel like having you. And I want some new curtains for the place." With that, she got up and walked out without so much as a good-bye.
"Who in the hell does she think she is?" Joe asked. "She's makin' one hell of a lot of money off us, and we ain't even gettin' what we're payin' her for. Now she even wants new curtains. That's the kind of shit I left home because of."
"Yeah, but if you think about it," Lou said, "havin' her up here and available at least some of the time is better than havin' nobody and nothin' available."
At that point in time, they all came to agree with him. After all, Mavis's demands weren't that great, yet, and she was entitled to something as simple as a new pair of curtains. Having her around was worth that
Another month passed and the weather had gone from horrendous to unbelievably bad. It was dark most of the time except for about two and a half hours in the afternoon. The boys were gathered again around the table.
"How many times have you been with Mavis in the last two weeks?" Ossie asked pointedly. "Once," Carl said. "Once," Lou said. "No times," Joe said.
"And I've been over there once myself," Ossie said. "You know, boys, it's gettin' to the point where Mavis just isn't worth what we're paying her."
"But like I said a long time ago," Lou said. "Just havin' her around here and maybe available to us is better than havin' nobody at all."
"Is it?" Ossie asked. "Have you taken a look at her in the last few weeks. She sits over there and eats a whole box of bonbons every day. Do you know how much they cost us? Fifteen dollars a box. That's fifteen dollars a day she's swallowing without us getting any pleasure at all. And all that shit candy is doing is making her look like a fat elephant. She must have put on thirty pounds since she got here. Gentlemen, I have the feeling we're being taken advantage of."
"Maybe we could get some new girl to come up here," Joe suggested.
"Maybe we could," Ossie agreed. "It sure wasn't hard to find Mavis."
They sat around without talking for a while, then Ossie finally came up with a solution. "Let's talk to her," he said, "and tell her that we don't want her anymore. If she agrees to go, fine. If not, we'll just cut off the money."
Everybody agreed and Ossie was sent to be the spokesman. He walked through the heavy late-autumn storm and knocked on the door to Mavis's cabin. He was invited in, but Mavis wasn't glad to see him.
She was lying on the bed in some sort of dirty nightgown. A box of chocolates lay on the table next to her. She was drunk and dirty. "I'm sick," she said. "Nobody's going to get anything from me tonight."
"Nah, you got that wrong, Mavis," Ossie said. "Or at least you're only half right. We're not going to get anything from you and you're not going to get anything from any of us. Ever again."
Mavis sat up quickly. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.
"Just what I said. The boys got together and decided that you're not worth anything to us any more. And we're tired of paying just to see you get fat, old, and dirty. We want you out of the cabin on tomorrow's flight." He turned and headed for the door.
He walked back into the bar with a big smile on his face. He was surprised as hell that Mavis had given in as fast as she had, but as he thought about it, he realized she hadn't had much of a choice. There was nobody and nowhere for her to go with her grievances, even if she'd had any real ones.
What a difference, Ossie was thinking, between here and where I used to be. Clarissa had tied him up completely. If he had stayed she would have been an albatross around his neck for the rest of his life.
He walked back into the bar and to his friends. "She's leaving," he announced, "and fellows, I want you to know one thing for certain. I sure do enjoy living on the last frontier."
He was very sincere in that last remark.
The feminine mythology victimizes not only the women it supposedly celebrates, but the men who perpetuate it As a wife and chattel, the woman abandons all attempt at self-survival, and in return our present society has compensated her for her parasitic existence by creating divorce laws that, while working in her favor, all but destroy the man who dares to break his marriage vows. The thinking behind these laws is not altruistic. like most laws, they are devised to protect the society from the individual.
In this case, no society could successfully care for a surplus of helpless women who have spent the major portion of their adult lives in the servitude of a particular man. They are unsuitable for the labor market; if they are well into the middle-age when their protectors abandon them, they are rejected by their Peter Pan society as unsuitable for remarriage; and they live as outcasts. They have been trained as parasites and parasites they remain. They are permitted one alternative: a legalized form of financial shakedown. Society then places the burden of care for the parasites it has spawned on the male. If nothing else has had a negative effect on the male attitude toward female servitude, the divorce laws have. As men are more inclined to openly indulge their freedom from repressive Victorian sexual codes, they will more and more feel the weight of the helpless female, the wife. Perhaps this will push them, from a desire to exploit their own sexual freedom, into encouraging women to assume responsibility for themselves as people, rather than contain themselves within the subservient female sexual role.
Osgood Fenner is a typical victim of his own trap. He is a highly competitive, aggressive and acquisitive product of the patriarchal environment, one he approves of without question until he becomes a victim of it. Through legal process, his betrayed wife destroys his life by divorcing him and reducing him financially from a place of comfort to a virtual subsistence level. Even then, rather than question the validity of the system, he still accepts what he has promoted and rejects his environment rather than the erosive system which has defeated him. He tolerates his financial rape (which parallels his psychological and emotional rape of his wife) for a brief period, then lacking her conditioning, he gets out from under the burden by seeking a new frontier; a primitive environment which will provide him with the license to indulge and exploit his chauvinistic tendencies to his heart's content.
When he arrives in the small Alaskan village, and eventually adjusts physically to the harshness of his life, he and the other four men in the community begin to consider their sexual and emotional deprivation and seek solutions to their problems. After a lengthy stint in civilized society, Osgood and his friends are now involved in a primitive way of life; they find themselves in circumstances similar to those faced by a primitive man, where for various reasons there is a surfeit of males in the population and financial resources are limited.
There are no women available to them in the small village and their assets are minimal. They decide, as any primitive man would under the circumstances, to pool their resources and take on a single wife to be shared by all. The wife will not be an object of love or respect, but will serve them sexually as well as afford them some of the more mundane but endearing niceties of civilized life, such as home cooking. There is no problem of possessiveness since there is no question of love involved. It's interesting that even primates treat their females, although they are subservient to the male, with more respect and concern. Osgood and his companions are simply looking for relief from sexual frustration and what could be called, with reservation, cultural deprivation.
Osgood returns briefly to civilization in order to acquire the group's wife. His choice is a young woman who, for reasons which are beyond the grasp of her intelligence, is completely bored with her life. Without considering the consequences, she accepts his offer in an attempt to find relief from her malaise; which is the result, in reality, of the repressive society her deliverer represents. like many women, rather than take on the arduous task of redefining a life role and making an effort to change it-an effort in contemporary society that is usually met with resistance-the young woman, Mavis, takes the easy way out. She acts on impulse, one of the few pleasures given women in their bondage, and returns with Osgood to the small village.
Soon after her arrival, with her drunken consent, she is sexually brutalized by the five men. They experience slight guilt pangs afterwards, more out of fear of reprisal than out of regret for their behavior. And Mavis, true to her conditioning, takes advantage of her momentary triumph to augment a system of visits which will give her a certain comfort while still maintaining the bargain. The men accept her proposal because they have been conditioned to indulge acts of brutality and then pay for their outbursts later. Mavis is installed in her cabin and takes up her role as wife to five men. Gradually, however, as she adjusts to her surroundings, with the absence of mental stimulation, respect, or even affection and communication, she begins to behave much in the manner of the wives they previously abandoned. In unconscious retaliation for their contemptuous treatment of her, she denies them sexual gratification with barely obligatory excuses; she loses interest in her physical appearance; and rather than diminishing, her malaise engulfs her and she becomes a vegetable.
There is only one difference in the society she has recently joined and the one she left: Her current one is primitive, and in primitive surroundings the male remains supreme. Unless the woman delivers according to the bargain, she can quite easily be cast out with nothing; a process that is more difficult in highly populated areas, governed by remote bodies of law. She is denied the option of financial blackmail which, although degrading, is her sole protection against total dominance among the patriarchs. When the men's dissatisfaction with Mavis peaks, they dispose of her as efficiently as possible and get a replacement. The woman, like any other object, has become useless; and like any useless tool, is abandoned.
In seeking this new frontier and a way out of the financial trap in which he found himself, Osgood merely extended the system to his primitive surroundings giving himself greater control. Under these conditions, as lawmaker, he can insure his power by denying women any rights at all. In this case, polyandry reflects the needs of the dominant male rather than the desires and needs of a woman. Mistress to several men, she holds even less power than the subservient wife to one; she is more an object of contempt than before.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Stud Stable
Even at school, Ines Mareastegui evinced an interest in men which troubled the good nuns and put her on the carpet in Monsignor Peralta's study a number of times until finally her parents were requested to remove her from the convent as incorrigible.
Heart-to-heart talks with her father and mother resulted for the most part in crying spells and recrimination. After three other parochial schools had refused to take her as a student, the harassed parents engaged a governess; a mature, sensible woman who did her best to keep her man-struck young charge in the path of propriety and learning.
Because the child loved her father and hated her mother, the governess balanced the one-sided relationship and thus incurred a sort of adoration on the part of her wayward pupil; for a while the family breathed mutual sighs of relief and the Mareastegui menage progressed in peace and harmony.
Unfortunately, the truce was temporary. As Ines developed from a pretty adolescent into a beautiful young woman, her male admirers created fresh problems. Expecting the worst and dreading it, both parents were overjoyed when one of her richer beaux sent a male friend to request her hand in marriage.
The Mareasteguis were connected to the poorer side of one of Peru's most distinguished families. They had much prestige but only a prescribed amount of pesos. The prospect of having Jose de Lerma Ulloa as a son-in-law was therefore gratifying in the extreme, only exceeded by the fact that their daughter with her brazen flirting would at last be off their hands.
The de Lermas, originally from Cuernavaca where a perspicacious ancestor had grabbed off a few thousands acres of prime pasture land and stocked it with imported Miura bulls, were rolling in money. Added to their fortunes in Mexico, the family's influence in Lima was attested to by Jose's uncle Ramon; at present Minister of Public Works and a first cousin who was a presidential aide. That a scion of this all-powerful house should deign to notice a Mareastegui, even though she was both socially and physically desirable, was somewhat in the nature of a miracle.
The fact that Don Jose was considerably older than their daughter, and a widower whose last wife had been even farther along in years, made no difference to the parental decision. The ambassador was informed that his friend's suit was acceptable and from that stage matters developed in a hurry.
According to custom, Ines herself was not consulted in the choice of her future husband. When she was told that Don Jose had been granted permission to come awooing, she made a face and swore that she would not accept him. "He is almost as old as you, Papa." She stamped her foot and stormed out of the room and refused to eat her supper.
The governess, who by this time had become almost a member of the family, was sent to make peace and try to talk some reason into the rebellious girl. They came back to the parental presence, hand in hand and smiling. "I have changed my mind" was all that Ines would say. But she was polite to Don Jose when he called that evening with his emissary, who made the formal introductions, then took his departure.
Senora Mareastegui envisioned an elaborate wedding. She began to make out the guest list as soon as the engagement was announced. Her husband made plans to cash in on the practical aspect of the union, already thinking in terms of his son-in-law's fortune and seeing himself presiding over corporations in a manner which he considered to be his birthright.
They were rudely disillusioned when Don Jose announced that urgent business made it necessary to fly to Paris. He wished to take his bride with him and there would only be time for a civil ceremony attended by the families. The formal wedding and reception would have to wait until the couple returned.
So it was that Ines found herself making her first flight across the Atlantic, bothering the stewardesses for things she did not really want while her husband snored gently in the seat beside her.
She had been even more disappointed than her mother at the postponement of the wedding, but the fact that she was now Dona Ines Mareastegui de Lerma, entitled to all the privileges that the combined names demanded, more than made up for the indecent haste. And dear Jose had been lavish in the matter of gifts. She stroked the sleeve of the chinchilla coat he had given her, and made a mental note to ask for a mink at the first opportunity. She would not be eighteen until after Easter but already her acquisitive instinct had far outstripped her age.
They had gone directly from the registrar's office to the airport and emplaned within half an hour of their arrival. Jose had kissed her for the first time when the ceremony was over and that, except for the meeting of hands now and then, was her only physical contact with him so far. During the brief courtship, their meetings had been closely chaperoned, for both families still adhered to the old customs which banned physical intimacies until the principals were safely married.
Now, though, it was going to be different; very different. She stole a glance at her sleeping husband, wondering not for the first time if he could still satisfy a woman. He was past forty, she knew, and in her way of thinking, any person that old must necessarily be past their prime. The realization that he had had two other wives and no children from either caused her to wonder if he was impotent or sexually cold. She had read about men like that in books she borrowed from a married girl friend. In fact, for a virgin whose closest contact with males had been dreaming about them, she knew quite a lot of things about sex.
Her mother had advised her to get pregnant as soon as possible. "He will love you more if you give him a child." The way her mother phrased it sounded like blackmail. But Ines was not ready to have a family yet. There were so many exciting things to do in the new world that marriage had opened to her. Her paramount interest, the urge which had barred her from attending school, was to have a man possess her body. She was. not concerned about her soul. If the man was not her husband, he could now be someone else, as long as he was physically acceptable and they used discretion.
The knowledge that she was finally in a position where she could indulge her erotic imagine exhilarated her. It was as though at long last the wall of taboos and restrictions which, until now, had separated her from the physical world had crumbled, leaving her free to exercise her desire and still retain the guise of respectability.
She had been brought up to believe that wives of any social standing were supposed to observe their marriage vows implicitly, eschewing all other romantic interests in order to make a comfortable home for their husbands while they bore sons to carry on the family name. The unfairness in that arrangement was that the husbands could have their imagine women, their queridas, in any number, depending only on choice and the availability of money.
This double standard might be acceptable to most devoted spouses but not to Dona Ines Mareastegui de Lerma; not by a long shot. She watched Jose, feeling a rush of gratitude not only for his generosity but for the bestowal of his name, and the consequent chance to cheat on him with impunity.
The de Lerma family kept a suite year-round at the Grand Hotel and the management, warned by a cable from Jose's mother, had added a few deft touches to turn it into a place suitable for a bride. There was even a wedding cake beside a champagne cooler, and a note from the management that a nuptial supper would be served on the house.
Ines expressed suitable approval of the arrangements made in their honor, but her heart was not in it. All the way into the city in the Orly limousine, she had been running over a mental list of eligible males, most of them former suitors, to whom she intended to write individually as soon as she had a moment to herself.
She was a little heady on champagne when they retired for the night. The wine had put an edge on her erotic appetite and she was more than ready for intimacy when Jose put out the light and took her in his arms.
Only the experience of intercourse was new to her. The foreplay and the positions she knew by heart, having pored over them by the hour as depicted and described in the smuggled marriage manuals her friend had given her.
She was a little disappointed when Jose proceeded to take her after only a minimum of preparation. However, she enjoyed it almost as much as she had anticipated and when it was over, and he went to sleep without any suggestion of doing it a second time, she lay wide awake, thinking about several things.
In the first place, she was secure in her position as his wife now that she had surrendered her virginity. With that proof that she was pure when she came to him, even should they later be married by the church, it would take a special dispensation to procure a divorce. This, of course, was important to her plans for the future. As Dona Ines Mareastegui de Lerma, she could pick her lovers at will. With her beauty and social standing, the field should be wide and exciting. As a divorcee, always regarded in Peruvian circles as fair meat for any wolf, she would be drastically limited; especially if there was no provision for money.
Second, but perhaps equally as important because he would keep his physical interest in her, Jose was as virile and vigorous as she could have expected in a much younger partner. If he tired easily, the fact remained that he desired her and that desire could lead to tolerance and generosity in the future.
She had no illusions about his conduct if he ever found that she was dallying with other men. Latin men were jealous not only of their women but of their pride, their machismo. Adultery, while the mere thought of it roused her ego, was something which must be treated as though it did not exist.
An opportunity to test her sexual mettle presented itself the very next day. Jose had taken her to the botanical gardens, then left her in their suite while he went to call on a business associate. He had hardly taken himself off, after telling her to call for anything she needed, when a knock came at the door.
There was a quality in the knock which told her it was not a bellboy or a maid seeking admission. She resisted an impulse to call out and inquire who was there. Instead, she threw a robe on over her negligee and opened the door.
The man was a stranger, although she thought she might have seem him during the tour of the gardens. He was young and good-looking enough to have caught her attention. He bowed formally and said, "If madame will excuse me, I have something important to tell her." She stepped aside automatically and allowed him to enter.
He looked around the luxurious suite with evident admiration, then came to the point with a mixture of Gallic frankness and sheer effrontery. "I had the good fortune to notice madame and her husband strolling through the Jardin des Plantes and I was so struck by madame's beauty that I followed you back to the hotel. When your husband left, I could not resist the opportunity to pay my respects." He smiled and put a hand over his heart and bowed once more.
Ines's first reaction was to call the management and have him thrown out. Then she noticed the fashionable tailoring of his expensive dark suit and the unstudied ease with which he handled himself. After all, he had done nothing wrong so far, unless his rather flowery compliments could be classified as objectionable behavior.
Before she quite realized what she was doing, she had offered him a chair and a glass of champagne and was listening to further encomiums which sounded even more flattering in French, a language which she had managed to assimilate in school because the nuns had rapped her knuckles until she became proficient.
Her visitor hurried to introduce himself as Pierre de Savignac, lately of the Sorbonne medical school, now interning at the Hopital de Dieu and her very humble servant.
The champagne magnun was empty by the time they repaired to the alcove, where Pierre proceeded to give an exhibition of sexual energy andingenuity which Ines had not thought possible. After he left her with fervent promises to return whenever she wished and repeat the operation, she lay on the bed practically exhausted, for the first time exquisitely and completely satisfied. She had been possessed at last to satiety, by an expert.
When Jose returned, she was bathed and perfumed, sitting demurely by the window, reading a copy of Baedeker. She got up to greet him, receiving his kiss with apparent enthusiasm and returning it dutifully. "I hope you were looking at the volume on Spain," he said over his glass of Pernod. "We're leaving for Madrid in the morning."
A qualm of disappointment shot through her as she realized that meant not seeing Pierre again. A pity, because he was such a wonderful lover. But there would be others and he had left his card so she would be able to write to him. Spanish men, she had heard, were even more passionate than Frenchmen.
She liked Madrid because it reminded her of home and the sun was warmer on the Prado than on the Place de la Concorde. Hearing Spanish again was a relief after the somewhat effeminate Parisian French. She was disappointed again when Jose whisked her away almost overnight to visit Seville. There had been a promising encounter with one of her husband's commercial contacts which she wanted to follow up. But the Sevtllanos had a reputation for being great lovers.
When one of them proved this by serenading her under the window of her bedroom in the private house where they were staying, she was enthralled. Jose, fortunately, had gone out with their host to inspect a herd of young fighting bulls and had not returned.
When the music stopped, she looked out of the window. The courtyard was full of moonlight and her admirer was standing so that his face was clearly visible. She was not sure, but she thought he was the younger son of the family, a surmise which was verified when he knocked at her door a few minutes later and asked if he might come in.
When her husband arrived, all smiles because he had closed a deal which would improve the Cuernavaca herd, he informed her regretfully that he was tired after riding horseback all afternoon. He drank a glass of wine and kissed her good-night. She was glad when he went to sleep without touching her, because after the incident of their host's precocious son, any intimacy would have been anticlimactic.
She expressed a wish to see Rome and Jose indulged her because he was interested in a wine-importing negotiation and wanted more information on the tariff and duties from his Italian agent.
Ines did the city in the approved manner, not like a gawking tourist but guided by members of the agent's firm for a full week, until she had seen everything from the Palazzo Farnese to the Lateran and points in between. Two of her enthusiastic conductors on alternate days were junior clerks from the shipping and forwarding department. She managed to seduce both of them before the tour was finished and still respond convincingly when Jose claimed his marital privileges.
She did the same thing in Athens and wondered fleetingly afterward how many other married women had been taken on top of the Acropolis, in full view of the white city stretching out below. She made further conquests in Venice and London, so that by the time they returned to Lima, she had bedded more than a dozen grateful men in addition to her unsuspecting husband. She congratulated herself on the European trip being more than a tour. It had seemed more like an exploration, a triumphant proving of her power over men and her ability to maintain Jose's interest in her. After Paris, the manhunt had become doubly exciting. Now she was sure of herself. Life was bountiful. She would make it even better.
She was astute enough, in spite of her constant urge to find new sex experiences, to know that excessive extramarital adventuring could induce carelessness and set tongues to wagging. In order to reduce the risk of exposure, she confined her immediate exploits to a discreet probing of her previous suitors, learning which of them had married in her absence and which were still ripe for the plucking. Much to her relief, the head count was almost the same as it had been before she left.
Thus is happened that when plans were complete for the postponed wedding and reception, she had prevailed on her mother to invite several of her old admirers, giving as an excuse the pretext that she wanted to show them how happy she was. Jose had never met any of them, so there was no danger of any scandal as long as her parents kept their mouths shut, which they assuredly would do rather than embarrass their rich son-in-law and their now valuable daughter. If they had known what was going on inside her pretty head, they would have been horrified.
She managed to dance with each of her old flames after the elaborate ceremony. Every time, she left the impression that her marriage need not necessarily constitute a barrier against further meetings. To prove it, she allowed one of them, whom she would have preferred to her husband if he had had any money, to make physical love to her in an anteroom while the reception was still in progress.
Afterward, she wondered if Jose suspected her of being unfaithful. His decision to close the town house and go to Mexico, to live in Cuernavaca for the rest of the year, seemed precipitate. His reason was that the herd he had purchased in Seville had arrived and he was anxious to oversee the disposition of the bulls and supervise their training for future capital corridas. It sounded logical enough.
Ines did not like Cuernavaca. In the first place, having to go there had interfered with her plans to descend on Lima's young manhood. Added to that frustration was the feeling of isolation, of being buried in the country like a peasant. Her discontent increased as the weeks passed, until she began to hate her husband for bringing her there.
Fortunately, because she was no longer interested in Jose's infrequent marital demands, he spent most of the day out in the fields with his foreman and a troop of vaqueros, teasing the bulls into charging and otherwise readying them for sale. By the time he came home, he was usually too tired to do more than drink some wine and eat and go to bed.
His physical neglect of her caused her to speculate that he might have a mistress or .two whom he was visiting instead of going to the pastures. She hoped it was true. Such dallying would make it easier for her to go her own way when she returned to Lima.
Another discouraging fact was that she did not meet anybody except that branch of the family and callers like the parish priest and the mayor and a few other cattlemen friends of her husband's; all too old or too decrepit to interest her. After Lima, life in the Mexican provinces was so boring that she wanted to scream.
Ines had almost made up her mind to go to work on the foreman's son, a husky clod of seventeen named Pepino, who reminded her of a horse when he whinnied instead of laughing, and tripped over his own feet on entering or leaving a room. Nevertheless, he was young and vigorous, two qualities' which Ines admired above all else in men, and beggars could not be choosers. The lout's strong back should more than compensate for his lack of grace.
She was laying careful plans to bring about the lad's defloration when .one morning, shortly after he had bade her a good day, Jose was gored and killed by one of his imported Miuras, leaving her a widow after less than a year of marriage and one of the richest women in Mexico or Peru.
His will left everything he owned to her, including the town house and a considerable fortune in negotiable bonds and ready cash. After mourning him for a decent period, Ines shook the country dust off her feet in a hurry and went to the capital, Mexico City. She opened the big" villa on Insurgentes and ordered it to be completely refurnished. Even this early in her sudden widowhood, she was beginning to feel the power that money gave her.
She settled a handsome annuity on her parents back in Lima and then proceeded to forget them. Her ex-husband's family received the same treatment. Her redecorating was typical of her desire to burn her bridges and start out on a new tack. Independent at last, with sufficient money to procure anything she set her heart on, she would build her own world. As long as her health remained, nothing could stop her.
A year after Jose's tragic accident, almost to the day, Ines Mareastegui viuda de Lerma dispensed with her dreary widow's black and dressed herself becomingly in a new creation from Paris. She called for her town car and had the chauffeur leave her in the Zocalo. From there, she made her way on foot to a house on Isabel la Catolica, enjoying the walk because the sun was warm and the air fresh after the recent rain.
When she let the knocker drop three times, the door opened and shut quickly behind her. The man who had let her in stood aside for her to pass, then followed at a discreet distance as she walked along the hall to the living room and took off her mink coat.
He caught it as she flung it at a chair, then waited while she peeled off her gloves. He turned to place coat and gloves in a closet, then disappeared with.a murmured apology as she seated herself and picked up a fashion magazine.
She looked up as he returned carrying a silver tray of vodka and ice and glasses, with a soda siphon and bitters in the center, in what looked like a special arrangement. She inspected the tray with a critical eye, then nodded. "You remember things. I like that."
"I am here to serve. Madame knows that." He placed the tray on a rosewood taboret and proceeded to do deft things with the contents.
Ines took the frosty glass, pausing to admire the amber tint of the bitters before she sipped appraisingly. "You have the touch." She drank until the ice rattled in the bottom. Then, as though afraid that she was being too condescending, she set the empty glass down and got up. "Has the bed been aired?" she demanded.
"The sheets are fresh, dried in the sun as ma-dame prefers." She caught the little bow that accompanied the assurance. He knew his place, thank God.
"I shall be ready in fifteen minutes. Please be punctual." She turned away and went along the hall to the master bedroom.
It was a large, rather dark room until she opened the blinds and let the sunshine pour in. It was warm on her skin as she removed her clothing and stood nude in the middle of the old-rose carpet, with a hand on a foot post of the canopied bed, which might have accommodated
French royalty before the guillotine put an end to such effete institutions.
She could have been admiring the decor. Actually, she was pondering how to put some new enjoyment into the afternoon's performance. She realized with some surprise that she "was becoming jaded in her appetites, which must never be allowed to hamper her intimate pleasure. Perhaps-
Ines was still standing there, posing unconsciously against the bright windows, when a knock came at the bedroom door. She glanced at the diamond-and-emerald watch she was still wearing. He was on time.
She was lying in the center of the bed with a corner of the silk sheet covering her lower body when he came in and stopped as though waiting for orders. Languidly, she studied him for a minute, then asked, "Are you feeling capable today?"
"Always, where madame is concerned."
"You are sure."
"Certain, my lady."
"Very well." She rolled over on her side so that she could see him better. The sheet slipped, exposing an enticing buttock but she did not trouble to adjust it. "You may start to undress," she said.
He unbuttoned his coat and took it off, then bent to get rid of his shoes. When he tried to remove his socks, she stopped him. "Later. The rest first."
He stripped to the waist, exhibiting a well-muscled chest and torso tapering to the hips. After stepping out of his fashionably creased trousers, he hesitated. When she nodded, he dropped his shorts and stood there naked except for his socks.
His penis, she noticed, was at about half-mast. The foreskin was starting to peel back over the head. It was a good prick, large enough to fill her yet not so enormous as to cause undue pain. In Athens, she remembered, one of the Acropolis guides who had taken her was hung like one of her late husband's stallions. He had plowed her so hard that the pain had caused her to come before she was ready. She preferred a normal orgasm, one that seemed to grow of itself until she forgot everything except the ecstasy and the sense of relief.
His erection was becoming harder now. Perhaps it was the sight of her lying there practically uncovered that was stimulating him. And it had to be in his mind, too. That was one of the exciting things about intercourse. Foreplay, penetration, reciprocal action were at a bare minimum unless stimulated by anticipation. "Turn around," she ordered.
Dutifully, he wheeled about until his rippling back was toward her. "You may now take off your socks." She put a hand under her chin. She wanted to enjoy this.
He bent down, spreading his feet a little, so that the brown sack of his testicles hung visibly between the parted thighs. Next to a prick, balls fascinated her. She liked to play with them, stroking them gently and feeling their fullness and wondering how much semen they had made since the last draining.
The man stood up with the socks in one hand, and she had a fresh view of his stiff prick as he gathered his clothes and hers and hung them in a Louis Quinze armoire. When he came back, she had moved to one side of the bed and pushed the sheet all the way down.
The sight of him undressing and the anticipation of feeling that hard prick thrusting into her made further foreplay superfluous. She was ready, wanting him hungrily, yet she was careful to maintain the master-servant relationship she had established from the beginning.
"Lie on your back." She nudged him with a, not-teo-gentle hand as he stretched out beside her. She had not tried-the reverse position with him before because, until now, the regular one had been more than satisfactory. But today, that bored condition must be corrected. Variety, she thought, might be the answer.
She waited until he had settled his head en the pillow before straddling his hips and fitting the jutting prick into her hot vagina. When he made a motion to help, she pushed his hand away. This was her coupling, her moment of ecstasy and she needed no interference.
Long ago, she had stopped trying to please her bed partners; she was wholly selfish, intent on self-gratification to the exclusion of everything else. The only reason she waited for the man to spend was because the jet of the warm semen deep inside brought her to final, delectable climax, no matter how many times she had come before. Had this action not been the case, she would have interrupted the action as soon as enough preliminary orgasms had blunted the edge of her ardor. Later, if the urge returned, she would have taken another man.
Sensing her mood and quick to interpret her slightest whim, he lay still beneath her, moving only to maintain his position when her urgency threatened to tumble them over. He knew how she resented uncoupling, once the penis was completely inserted. Once, when through no fault of his, they had lost contact just at the critical moment, causing him to spend on the sheet, she had slapped his face and cursed him roundly.
He was particularly careful when her vagina contracted around his hardness. He knew she was about to come for the first time and it needed all his willpower to avoid thrusting up to meet her. Only the conviction that she would hate him if his penis slipped out kept him from working with her. He could have spent then, timing the release of his sperm to the peak of her excitement. But she liked to come three or four times before the final frenzy struck them together and ended the interlude.
Then, as a rule, she would come back for seconds and if he dared to come before she was ready, she would be furious and as like as not, cut him off for several weeks. That in itself was punishment enough. In spite of her quick temper and domineering manner, she was the best he had ever had anywhere, which was saying a lot. Also, he was fairly certain that he loved her.
She shuddered in the thrill of the initial climax. Then she settled back without missing a stroke, fucking steadily with her mouth half-open and her eyes closed. After a minute, she cupped one of her snowy breasts in a hand and leaned forward so that he could take the hard nipple between his lips.
The contact seemed to stimulate her even more. The bed trembled and creaked as she quickened her thrusting. This time, whether because he had not had her for several days or due to the vision of that perfect body poised above his own, he felt his own desire build up until he had to spend or die.
They came together in a flurry of giving and receiving. Toward the end, when her vagina was milking the semen out of him, he threw caution to the winds and rolled over on top of her, spreading her thighs and holding her into the vigorous stroking with an arm under her back, so that his balls battered her crotch and he could feel the opening of her womb against his still-spurting prick.
For once, she did not scold him for taking the upper hand. She lay there beneath him, smiling to herself, eyes closed, breathing as though she had just run a footrace. Presently, when he eased his weight off her and uncoupled, she pushed him away and got up and disappeared in the bathroom.
An hour later, after he had helped her with her coat and handed her the gloves, she took a checkbook out of her purse and wrote a check payable to Pierre de Savignac. During the several months since she had brought him over from Paris and set him up in this house, he had been nothing but considerate and effective. She must remember not to slap him again.
She had visited Pierre on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, she took a taxi to Reforma, deciding against the town car because she had plans for her chauffeur which had nothing to do with driving and did not want to make him jealous.
The apartment building was one of the city's most modern co-operatives. Luis lived on the top floor and she took the elevator. She had not troubled to telephone because her men were supposed to be at home when she called, even if it were four o'clock in the morning. If they were out, as had happened twice since she had begun importing her stable of young studs, they were fired. A word in the right ear at the department of immigration was sufficient to get them out of the country. Even Pierre, whom she was inclined to favor because he had been the first, had been under fire until he convinced her that he had only gone out for a few minutes to buy cigarettes.
Luis opened the door as soon as she rang. He had gained a little weight since the evening he had serenaded her in Seville but he was still a fine figure of a man and handsome as one of Velasquez's young princes. A standing joke between them when she deigned to drop her arrogance and exchange conversation with him was that his family never did find out what had happened to their youngest son after he received her generous bank draft. He had been living in the apartment she bought for almost three months.
He inclined his lithe body in what could have been a bow as he stood aside for her to enter. It was different now, he reflected. When he had taken her in his father's house, she had been warm and responsive. Now it was like having sex with a machine. But the money was good. And the service elevator was useful for bringing up more exciting things than furniture and luggage.
Today she had worn the chinchilla because there was a breeze blowing off Popocatepetl with a suggestion of snow in it. Luis took the coat with a sort of reverence, having noticed that similar ones in the display windows of the Re-forma started at six hundred thousand pesos. The whisper of soft fur against his face as he hung it up gave him a quick erection.
This afternoon, Ines was all business. She accepted a brandy and soda to warm her after the drive, then went directly to the bedroom after telling him to follow her.
One of the several things that she admired in Luis was his passionate way of fucking. Their first encounter had been brief but eminently satisfying and they continued to achieve orgasm in quick, delightful encounters which were a change from the more deliberate couplings with other males of her harem.
He took her in the style he preferred, removing only the wisp of lace covering her neat crotch and pushing her down under him fully dressed, even to the shoes she was wearing. He came before she had a chance to indulge in her usual preliminary climaxes but the hot, spurting juice of him made up for the hurry. He came again almost at once without uncoupling, then got off her and left her alone to smooth the wrinkles out of her up-flung dress.
On Thursday, she called Reginald to take her boating at Xochimilco. It was a glorious afternoon and they stopped for tea and biscuits at a little English cafe on their way to his place on the Calle Londres.
Reginald had been one of her conquests when Jose took her to London on their swing back from Venice. He was supporting himself miserably in a Soho flat by selling an occasional painting when she met him. In fact, the purchase of one of his watercolors was what brought them together. He was the slowest fuck in her stable but she enjoyed his British style, especially when he threw in some extras after inquiring politely, "Shall we go down now?" or, "Would you prefer a walk-in on the edge of the bed?"
His manners even when fucking were impeccable. He did nothing to vary the routine of fore-play and intromission without consulting her, so that of late she had been reserving him as an additional thrill when the distressing feeling of boredom threatened to take over. His prick was the longest of all her men. Out of sheer disbelief, she had measured it once when it was fully erect and found it to be nine inches from head to hair. His "walk-in" maneuver, therefore, which involved her sitting on the bed side with her thighs open while he stood in front of her and guided his enormous length into her cunt, consisted of two steps forward before he was fully inside her. In one of his irrepressible outbreaks of humor, he explained that his super-elongation was due to a duck attempting to swallow it when he was a child.
She left him almost regretfully because his steadfast refusal to take himself seriously amused her at the same time that his probing prick drove her to near-frenzy.
Zorba was one of the Athenian guides who had fucked her in the shadow of the Parthenon. She had tried to locate the other, the one with the thick penis who had hurt her until the pain made her come. But he had moved from the guide service and was somewhere in the Piraeus where her cable failed to reach him. Zorba, though not so generously hung, apologized for his friend and tried to make up for his absence by obeying her every mood and wish.
As a rule, she visited him every Saturday afternoon but her seemingly insatiable desire for intercourse drove her to take the subway to Chapultepec a day early.
He was strumming on a balalaika, an instrument which he claimed to have inherited from his Russian father, when she arrived. He stopped playing at once but she motioned to him to continue. The lively music, combined with the glass of retzina he poured for her, exhilarated her and temporarily banished the boredom which had bothered her all day.
Zorba's prick, which he also apologized for, was short and thick. He was envious of men with larger organs but she found his fucking quite exciting once he got over his humility and remembered that he was a man.
They fucked and drank wine and he played for her all afternoon. When she left, he was dancing by himself, quite drunk and completely happy. She would keep Zorba, she decided. He and Reginald were about the only people in the world who could make her laugh.
On Saturday, she had her chauffeur drive her to Chapultepec park and leave her there. Benito, the one-time clerk who had shown her Rome, met her there when she telephoned him. He showed up shortly after the car had driven on. She knew he had waited on purpose. Benito was the soul of discretion. She sometimes accused him of closing his eyes before he mounted her.
Today, he was wearing a new suit, perfectly tailored to his athletic figure. She was proud of him, as she was of all her collection of strong backs and durable erections.
They sat primly on a bench beside the lake, watching the crowds and the children sailing their boats. Passing men stared frankly, admiring her beauty but nobody really recognized her. Since Jose's death, she had deliberately kept herself out of the news. While she had no regard whatever for public opinion, she preferred anonymity. No one, not even her parents, suspected her of supporting a stable of imported pricks.
Later, she ordered him to call a taxi and accompany her to the National Theater. Strelski, a Polish youngster who could do half a dozen entrechats like Nijinsky, was going to dance The Afternoon of a Fawn. The earthiness of this particular ballet never failed to inspire her.
Also, she had designs on Strelski. This evening, without fail, she must contrive to meet him.
She sent her card to his dressing room after the show, using Benito as her go-between. When Strelski opened the door, looking even more masculinely gorgeous at close range, she told Benito to get lost and went inside.
On Sundays, Ines had made it a duty to go to early Mass. After being with Strelski nearly all night, however, she was constrained to take a rain check on her chance of final salvation. She turned over in the silken bed, stretching like a cat and went back to sleep.
She got up finally and took a stinging hot shower. By the time her maid had finished kneading her stiff muscles, she felt better. Always after an interlude with a dazzling man, she liked to go to the other extreme. Only one of her kept man could provide that. She drank a long glass-full of vodka laced with cold orange juice and put on a peasant ensemble.
Pepino had improved since the Cuernavaca days. His father knew that Ines was keeping him in Mexico City but he valued his foreman's job too highly to jeopardize it by any interference. When the lad opened his apartment door, he inclined his head respectfully making it plain that "La seriora" was honoring him by her visit.
They fucked without preparation or preamble for the remainder of the afternoon. Afterward, Ines gave him some money and told him to amuse himself elsewhere. Of a sudden, her boredom vanished. Perhaps the contrast between the Pole's courtly seduction and the farm boy's unpolished performance had helped. In any case, she was glad to be alive ... and rich.
In South American countries, where the patriarchy still flourishes, the prohibitive attitude toward female sexuality is compounded by the repressive approach to sex inherent in Catholicism. Ines, since childhood, is protected from contact with males by being placed in a convent school, and until she marries is not even permitted to be alone with a man. The subject of sex is not even acknowledged.
In a country where the female assumes a completely subordinate role to the male-and where female sexuality is not considered a healthy drive worthy of fulfillment but as a faintly evil necessity that must be accommodated in order to procreate-the woman's virginity becomes her bargaining point and is carefully protected. Sex after marriage then becomes a duty; to be tolerated in order to assure herself, through marriage and the bearing of children, a secure social and economic position. In the latter sense, the attitude of the respectable woman under these circumstances is no different from that of the prostitute, although the demands made on her sexually are not so diverse. She need only perform and continue the line in order to maintain her end of the bargain.
It is understandable then, that Ines's curiosity toward sex is aroused rather than diminished by the attempts of society to shroud it in. secrecy. It is also understandable that when she rejects society's efforts to curb her sexual needs she rejects the feminine role entirely, except in gesture, and becomes imitative of her father rather than her mother.
Immediately following her marriage, while on a honeymoon trip to Europe, Ines methodically goes about collecting lovers. Having been conditioned to consider her sexuality as a product to be acquired by the highest bidder, and once she has satisfied her husband on their wedding night with proof of her purity, she can, without guilt, then seek gratification of her own sexual needs. She spends her honeymoon exploring her sexuality with a variety of pickups; still maintaining the facade of devotion and fidelity for her husband, keeping up her end of the deal.
When a year later her husband is killed by one of his bulls, Ines finds herself free of the need to deceive him, and also one of the richest women in Mexico. She continues to uphold the facade of respectability by observing the mourning rituals of her country, and much like a businessman she carefully disposes of her own family and her in-laws by providing them with an annuity. She has made certain that everyone involved in the "sale" of her body has received their profit. She is now a free woman. As a token gesture of compliance with the rules of society, she maintains some semblance of secrecy while installing the lovers she acquired on her honeymoon in various dwellings.
In her search for gratification and her rejection of the female sexual myth, Ines assumes an extremely dominant role, one made possible by her economic independence. She is completely without embarrassment about paying for her pleasures, and even goes so far as to dismiss a lover for not being at home when she calls. The men have become her possessions and she maintains them with as much disdain for their needs as any sultan kept his harems in ancient cultures. She is unconcerned with satisfying her lovers sexually and concentrates solely on her own gratification. Her men have become the sexual objects. Essentially, what she has accomplished-with the aid of economic independence and a shrewd grasp of the advantages of anonymity in a patriarchal environment, where public opinion would be violently opposed to her behavior-is to reverse the double standard. She has not necessarily freed herself from the prohibitions of her society, or exempted herself from a part in the master-servant ritual, but she has managed, within the rigid sexual mythology of her environment, to assume the male role. This at least affords her a greater freedom in the fulfillment of her intense sexual needs.
Her' sexual drives, which were evidently strong even before she was able to indulge in sexual intercourse, might at one time have been labeled a product of nymphomania. However, that myth has been shattered to some extent; first by Kinsey, who made the revolutionary claim that not only were women capable of sexual pleasure but of multiple orgasms as well. This theory was later confirmed by Masters and Johnson. Through carefully controlled experimentation, they discovered that women were physically capable of indulging in sexual acts with more frequency than men, and for more prolonged periods of time. It must also be taken into consideration thai some people simply are physically, regardless of sex, more highly sexed than others and find it difficult to be fulfilled by sexual relationships with one person. In Strange Loves, Dr. Eustace Chesser says of hypersexuality:
The Victorian attitude was expressed by a popular medical author who said it was "a vile aspersion" to suggest that women experienced pleasure in the sex act.... A woman who showed a healthy responsiveness was even suspected of nymphomania. This is not to deny that hypersexuality occurs but the problems to which it sometimes gives rise are social rather than constitutional. Some women, like men, cannot satisfy their strong sexual urge with one partner.
Chesser goes on to say of nymphomania:
We must distinguish between the kind of hypersexuality which gives genuine satisfaction and the morbid continuation which leads to a vain and frenzied search for satisfaction. In the one case, sex follows its normal course from excitation to climax. Instead of orgasm being followed by relaxation there is quite soon a recurrence of desire. There may be as many orgasms as the partner is capable of inducing.
Obviously, Ines falls into this category; however, she lives in a society that cannot tolerate her individual sexuality. So she is forced to assume a dominant role, and in a sense, disassociates herself from her own femininity in order to find gratification for her relatively normal sexual desires.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Marsdale Hills Seraglio
At first it was a lark. I had been drinking and I could excuse myself. Then it became sort of a talisman, a lucky thing out of which I built my own superstition. Finally, it worked into a game sometimes lucky, sometimes not. For a while it was guilt-ridden. Now, it's not. It's a necessity. I cannot live without it.
And-I don't want to.
It's easy to recall that first time, but thinking back to that moment I have to realize it was like the shot that is supposed to start a war. Wars start long before a shot is fired and I know that my peculiarities, if you want to call them that, started long before I ever began to show any of them.
Maybe they began when I was a small girl in Kansas. They could be what the shrinks call psychological. I don't know and I don't really care because I still believe they have been helpful to me, not only in private life but in business as well. If I'm an oddball or if I'm wrong, I can honestly say that I have hurt no one. Also, I have made a lot of people wealthy and famous.
For ten percent, and my personal cut, of course.
When I first came out of Hollywood, I was on the paying end of that ten percent and thought it would stay that way. I was one of those hundreds of thousands of shiny-eyed girls who, having been told somewhere in the toolies that she was pretty, hoped that she could achieve fame and fortune on the silver screen.
It's amazing how long a dream can last. I spent my savings for drama lessons, managed to get a room in the old Mime's Club just off the Boulevard in Hollywood, and read the trade papers like anyone else. It was a long routine of dancing lessons, plus what they used to call elocution, and constant heartbreaking trips to studios and casting offices.
All that I came up with after two years was that I was "too"-too short for this part, too tall for that one, too old for another, and too young for a fourth. It seemed that no matter what the casting offices at any studio wanted, I was just "too" something or other to play the role.
But I had faith in myself. Back in those days I was well aware of my face and figure. I wasn't just pretty then, I was damned beautiful; but I wasn't conceited about it. I had long dark hair and good facial bone structure. My eyes are blue and when I was young, back in my twenties, I had a figure that very few women would hope to compete with. Most of the equipment is still there, thanks to a lot of luck, exercise and the right food, but the years have taken a certain toll. If I do say so myself, I'm a pretty sharp middle-aged woman, still slender and still sometimes able to get whistles by just walking down a street. Life hasn't been all that bad.
But I realized even in those early days that Hollywood wasn't a place where a girl can make it alone. I was still somewhat buried under my mother's education about the whole thing. I had heard all the rumors about casting couches and girls who made stardom by waking up in the right beds at the right times after having done the right things for the right people. But then I was determined that I was going to be true to what my mother had told me, and keep my love life out of my dreams for a career.
Anyone who knows me-I mean knows me well-today might laugh, but when I first came to town I was a virgin. Not only that, I stayed a virgin right in the middle of everything for two full years.
At that time sex wasn't a problem. If you've tasted no candy you don't crave it, and nobody has ever seen an alcoholic who has never tasted a drink. My real problem was a business matter. Sex came into it, of course, and that's when it became a business problem.
like anyone trying to crack into the amazing world of show business, I needed an agent. I wanted a hard-working person who honestly believed that I had the looks and talent and, yes, charisma to succeed and who would push for me and push for me hard.
The first agent I went to was referred to me by one of the girls at the old Mime's Club. Sally was a pretty little thing from New England who, although she had had absolutely no theatrical experience at all, seemed to be doing moderately well after only a few months. Oh, she wasn't on her way to stardom by any means, but she did manage to get a bit or two very frequently and when she mentioned her agent, a woman, Drayhamond, I thought it sounded good.
The following day I dressed in my best clothing, walked to the U.T. & R. Building and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. I stopped before the thick door and inspected my makeup as well as I could in the gleaming brass plaque announcing: Harriette Drayhamond Associates, Talent Representatives.
As I fully expected, the receptionist asked me to take a seat in the outer office for a few minutes and I sat there leafing absently through that morning's issue of the Reporter until Mrs. Drayhamond buzzed her secretary to send me into the inner sanctum.
Harriette Drayhamond was a woman in her early fifties, short, fat, and so thoroughly ugly that there was, paradoxically, a strange aura about her that might even be called beauty. Certainly she appeared confident and even dynamic as she first glared at me across her huge desk. Her graying hair had perhaps at one time been blonde. It was close-cropped in almost a masculine manner and the horn-rimmed glasses she wore gave her both a studious and something of a menacing look.
She looked at me for several seconds, giving me the decidedly uncomfortable feeling that her inscrutable black eyes were carefully, even sadistically, ripping every bit of clothing from my body.
"Jill Dean," she finally said and then grunted.
"It's my stage name," I started to say. "My real-"
"Never mind," she snapped. "Turn around."
Obediently, I turned slowly so that she could see the thrust of my breasts and then the line of my hips from the rear. I wasn't at all embarrassed about what I had to offer the motion picture industry; still I didn't like Mrs. Drayhamond's authoritative, arrogant attitude. Still, I needed an agent and from what little I had heard, she was both hard-working and good.
Again I faced her and again she grunted, still letting her cold black eyes roam my figure. "So you want to be a star?" Her voice held an almost sarcastic challenge.
I decided to meet her attack with fire of my own. "Yes," I told her. "I do."
"And you think that I can make the entire motion picture industry fall right on its pratt begging to offer you the job."
"That's ridiculous," I snapped. "Look, I didn't come here to listen to a lot of nasty innuendos. You're supposed to be a good agent. I need a good agent."
"Let's clear up the air," she said in a tone that for her was almost kind. "I deal with people who have something to offer the industry and I don't waste my time on clients who won't cooperate. What do you have to offer?"
I started to tell her of my three seasons in summer stock in Kansas, of the one radio show I had done there, and of the other minor theatrical jobs I had done, but again she interrupted.
"How old are you?" she demanded.
"Twenty-two," I said. Lord, how long ago that interview was!
"And you think you're talented?"
"Yes," I said. "I certainly do."
Perhaps something in my tone let her infer something I had no intention of implying, or perhaps she simply heard something that wasn't there although she wished it to be. But again she looked at me for a long, uncomfortable moment before she grunted again and said, "We'll see."
I stood silently waiting for some time as she scribbled something on a scratch pad on her desk, snapped the top sheet of paper off like an offending bit of dust, and handed it to me across her wide desk. "That's my address," she said flatly. "You be there tonight at eight-thirty. We'll discuss this over dinner."
"I don't under-"
"I said," she announced very quietly, "I only deal with cooperative clients."
Naive as I was, I couldn't mistake the crystal clarity of her invitation. It was one I wanted no part of. I took the little slip of paper and tore it to shreds, scattering them over the blotter of her desk.
"I'll never need a job that bad," I announced and started out of her office. My hand was actually on the doorknob when her voice arrested me.
"Jill?"
I turned, feeling somewhat more secure now that a distance of some fifteen feet separated us. "Well?"
"It's too bad," she said. "You might have had some fun." She shrugged. "There are lots of other girls, though," She nodded her head in dismissal.
I can never really describe how I felt leaving the office and riding down the elevator in the U.T. & R. Building. Something had not necessarily been kicked out of me, but it certainly had been kicked at. I literally couldn't believe what had happened or even that it could happen at all.
Certainly, she had been right. I was naive, but I wasn't that naive that I hadn't heard of women like her and had some idea of what they enjoyed doing. The whole thing was completely and totally disgusting to me to the point that when I reached the street, I was almost physically ill.
The implications of the matter never really hit me until that evening when Sally and I were sitting down at dinner in the Mime's Club dining room. like a flash out of the blue I suddenly began to connect shreds of evidence. It was Sally who had referred me to Harriette Drayhamond; it was Drayhamond who had propositioned me. I couldn't help but wonder about the dyke's relationship with Sally herself.
I was never one to accuse unjustly, but my repugnance about what I myself felt was edged by a deep curiosity. Had Sally, I wondered, accepted Harriette's invitation? Was the pretty and vivacious and very feminine young girl I knew one of those strange and depraved women?
I thought of several ways to broach the subject and finally decided on the truth. I turned to Sally.
"I saw Mrs. Drayhamond today," I said in as matter-of-fact a voice as I could muster.
"Hey," she said. "Great. How did it go?"
"I'm sort of confused," I told her. "She propositioned me-wanted me to come to her house for dinner."
Sally took a bite of her salad, chewed it with a complete lack of concern and swallowed. "Oh, that's nothing," she announced. "She always does that."
"You mean all her clients-"
"Gosh, Jill, I just thought you knew. I mean, you do want the work, don't you?"
"Of course," I snapped, "but not at the expense-"
"Expense!" She almost laughed. "What expense? The old girl's pretty good, you know. Besides, what difference does it make. She's only after you once or twice. After that there's always a new client."
"It's disgusting!" I picked up my plate and rose from the table, hardly able to believe my ears or Sally's completely casual, devil-may-care attitude.
"Suit yourself," I heard her say as she went back to eating her salad.
I walked upstairs to my room and stood for a long time looking out the window. What a terrible, terrible place the world really was, I thought. Here I was trying to do my best, willing to work hard and study even harder, and then to be thought of as nothing more than a sexual toy for a fat, old, and ugly woman. She didn't care about me, she simply wanted to satisfy her disgusting urges while using me to do so.
The whole idea was revolting.
At least then, when I was a lot purer and more starry-eyed than I am now, it seemed disgusting. Now, my views have relaxed a bit. I still wouldn't want to do anything like that, but I certainly can't condemn Sally anymore. After all, I have to accept that nobody got hurt. Sally got parts and Drayhamond got her peculiar kind of sexual relief. Then, however, it was difficult. After my hurt and shame, my disgust and confusion wore themselves down, I simply remained cold and polite to Sally; but I decided that I would never again risk the humiliation of approaching a female agent.
Men were something I knew at least a little bit about and thought I could cope with. Certainly if one of them approached me with lust in his eyes, I could always think of him as normal even if I didn't share his lusty feelings.
I won't detail all the incidents when similar scenes occurred in the offices of male agents, but I did go on a lot of interviews with men I refused to cooperate with, until I met Sidney Merryinton. Frankly, by that time, I was so accustomed to and prepared for a sexual overture, that Sidney literally overwhelmed me by limiting our initial conversation to discussion of my background, my goals, and my potential as a performer. He looked over the pictures I had had taken when I first came to Hollywood, told me they simply wouldn't do if he was to represent me and referred me to a photographer.
At that time I simply did not have the money necessary to have new photographs taken and I told him so.
I remember the incident as if it had occurred yesterday. Sidney leaned back in his swivel chair, the entire panorama of southwest Los Angeles spread out behind him through the huge window of his lavishly appointed office.
He placed the tips of his carefully manicured fingers together in front of him and touched his thumbs to his large even teeth. His eyes, as they stared at me, were kind and considerate but held an expression of mild amusement in their blue depths. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm-no, I should say almost paternally tender.
"Miss Dean," he said, and then seemingly sorting his thoughts, he offered me a cigarette from a polished box on top of his desk. I refused, but he lit one, exhaled and again leaned back in the large chair, this time placing his feet on the desk's top. "There are a few things we'll have to clear up right at the beginning. First of all, you are what is known as an unknown commodity."
"I know I haven't--"
"Wait. Hear me out, because I want perfect understanding with each of my clients. I want absolute cooperation-"
"Listen," I said as I started to rise, "I've already been through that bit before. I came here as an actress, not as a plaything for your sexual whims!"
"Sit down!" His voice struck me like the blast of a cannon. When I looked up, he was leaning across the desk, his blue eyes boring into me with enraged indignation. "You listen to me and listen clearly," he said. "I'm not in this business to gratify my personal urges. I'm in it to make money and to build stars-stars, incidentally, who will continue to make a lot of money and who will continue to pay me ten percent of everything they make. I'm not about to ruin a fat pile of cash because some Kansas clodhopper thinks she's the most desirable bit of flesh who has ever walked into my office."
"Be quiet! My business is like any other. It's not just making telephone calls and interviewing a lot of pretty, empty-headed people. It's built on investments. I don't peddle stars, Miss Dean. I make them. I create human products that the producers and directors and most of all the public wants. All I want from those products is absolute unfailing trust and cooperation. I don't know what that means to you, but to me, Miss Dean, it has nothing to do with my sex life. As far as your body is concerned, you can do anything you want with it as long as the measurements remain the same, as long as it maintains its health and as long as it is where I want it to be when I want it to be there. I can assure you, Miss Dean, that my bed will never be one of those places."
"I didn't mean-"
"I told you to be quiet, Miss Dean. If you make one more remark before I'm finished you can forget any idea of Merryinton Company as a theatrical agent. Your pictures are amateurish and ordinary. For my purposes they are worse than no pictures at all. Your clothing shows a distinct lack of taste and your makeup indicates that if you don't have at least some instruction within the next few years your complexion will be completely ruined. You will go to George
Norlyth for composite photos and I personally shall oversee a limited wardrobe for you. The expense involved will be my investment. In return you will sign an exclusive contract with Merryinton Company for twenty years with one-, two-, five and ten-year options. If we are not worth it to you after a year, chuck us. If you're not at least a featured second lead within a year, we'll chuck you. Is that clearly understood?"
I was overwhelmed. I couldn't speak for several moments. "Miss Dean?"
"Yes, yes," I said. "Yes, it's clear."
That afternoon, I signed my professional life away to Sidney Merryinton and probably, if I had given the matter any more thought than merely professional elation, would have realized that I was signing myself away as well.
Over the next few months we were together almost constantly, selecting particular dresses to be worn at particular interviews, overseeing photographers, going to beauticians. He literally remade me to the point where I could hardly recognize myself as the girl who had come from Kansas only a few years before.
But then after a year, my balloon not only exploded but soared to the very heavens. I had begun during that first year with Sidney to get parts. It seemed that I was working all the time and that the parts I was getting were better and better. Still I must admit that they were bits-one or two-liners that were often left on the cutting room floor. Still, I thought I was on my way up until Sidney called me into his office one day.
The year was up, he explained, and I had not made enough money for the agency to justify his exercising the first option on me. "Frankly," he said very kindly, "I would like to offer you some advice."
Sidney had been like a father and a brother to me. He had always been the perfect gentleman in all things. He had held my hand when I needed security, had given me courage before frightening interviews. I knew that any advice from him would be honestly offered and, if followed, beneficial for me: "Of course," I told him. "You know how much I respect you."
He cleared his throat and turned to look out the window. For an older man he was still in remarkably good physical shape. His hair was thinning, of course, and his shoulders stooped slightly; he looked out over the darkening panorama of Los Angeles and I gazed at his back, a surge of tenderness welling up in me.
Abruptly he turned and stared at me directly with his piercing blue eyes. "This is no place for advice," he snapped. "Let's go over to Groninini's for dinner. What I have to say could use a martini."
That evening, seated across from me in the lush Neapolitan Room of Groninini's candlelit intimacy, Sidney Merryinton gave me his advice.
"I have two things to say to you, Jill. First, get out of show business. You are a hard worker and dedicated, but you simply don't have it-not as far as acting is concerned. I've pushed as hard as I could and frankly most of the jobs you've had were the results of paying back personal favors from me."
I was shocked. I had never even considered such a possibility. I couldn't control my hurt, but I bit my lips to stifle the almost volcanic anger I felt for him at that moment. Somehow I managed to pull myself together and smile, although it probably looked more like a sneer. "And," I said with vicious sweetness, "what's your second bit of advice?"
He reached into the right hand pocket of his suit coat and produced a small package. He handed it across the table to me and smiled. "My second bit of advice is to marry me," he said. "I have loved you for a long time, Jill, ever since that first time you came to the office with a chip on your shoulder, thinking that you were about to be propositioned."
I was shocked, overwhelmed, flattered, and thoroughly confused. Sidney had been perhaps the best friend I had ever had in my entire life, but there had never been a romantic attachment on my side. I knew he was speaking the truth when he told me I was a no-talent. I suppose I had known for a long time, but was simply unwilling to face it. He was years older than I, but the gentlest, most kind man I had ever met. I opened the package and saw his diamond ring---
I accepted and I never regretted the time we spent together even though there was never any real romantic love between us during all those years.
Sidney treated me to luxury and, frankly, spoiled me as any woman would love to be spoiled. He never forgot an important date and even invented some of them that were just our own. I suppose our love life was normal, but it wasn't spectacular. I never had a complete release with him, but other things compensated for this minor lack. While he was still healthy, we took our vacations to Tahiti and France, to Japan and England. We associated with the jet set and the fabulous stars he had created.
Then he began to waste away and I knew the end could not be too far away. I suppose I knew it before the doctors or Sidney himself. A woman senses those things and I wanted to make sure that when Sidney did die, his work would not die with him. I began to show up at his office and little by little help him with his work. Surprisingly, for someone who really didn't have performing talent, I did have a nose for the agency business. It seemed that I was able almost from the first to sense a potential star-that one face and body out of a thousand every agent meets who has that certain charisma no one can really define.
Gradually Sidney deteriorated to the point where I was handling all the agency business and then, finally, he died after several months of unspeakable agony.
I was alone, childless, a woman then in her early forties, but Sidney had been both kind and appreciative. Not only did he leave me his entire estate and his insurance, but gave me the business as well. I was the president and chief functionary of Merryinton Company which consisted of myself and three secretaries.
That's when the bottom fell out of my life and that's when I tried to patch it. I began to drink more than I was used to, not to brace myself against the hazards of the day, thank God, but simply to relax myself against the empty nights. I was trying to fall back against my mother's moral code, learned in what seemed Like centuries ago in Kansas, but a mature woman has desires and even the unsatisfactory sex life I had had with Sidney couldn't be taken away without some sort of personal frustration on my part.
All the agony, yes, all my repressed lust almost exploded that first time Lance Klaymouth walked into my office and changed my life.
How can I describe him?
He was tall and lean, narrow in the hips, and obviously smoothly muscled underneath his tight-fitting clothing. His jaw was strong and yet showed a tenderness under sensuous lips. His eyes seemed to twinkle at me with unspoken promise. I couldn't keep my own eyes away from the barely concealed bulge in his groin, or my thoughts away from the pleasures his thick and beautiful lips might give.
I was trembling at that first interview, I remember, and funnily enough never thought about what I was doing. I literally propositioned him in the same way I myself had resented so much almost two decades before. But I was helpless. I was afraid of turning into a dry old woman, unloved and unwanted. I took him out to dinner and thank God he was not so reluctant as I. That very night he came with me to my home in the Marsdale Hills and like two beautiful animals wallowing in unbearable and absolutely insatiable heat, we joined our bodies together in a kaleidoscope of rapture I had never even dreamt was possible.
I had thought Lance to be smoothly muscled, but when his flesh touched mine I almost orgasmed; the sheer thrill of him was so unlike anything I had experienced with Sidney, older than I, always less resilient. And that first moment when the hard power of Lance's penis slowly plunged into me, touching, it seemed, every fiber of my being from toes to my very heart, I cried out aloud with such rapture it even frightened me. I could only mumble half-syllables as Lance thrust his firm flesh against me and into me, and almost instantly made me spasm again and again in a release of frustrations that had probably been building up over the past twenty or twenty-five years.
Not once did he stop his attentions. He was with me, a beautiful Adonis, a machine devoted entirely and exclusively to love and sex and to teaching me all that he knew. Only after I had spasmed to complete and explosive fulfillment no less than five times did I feel the extra hardness of his thrust and the high hot spurt of his seed within me, which in itself brought me to both a peak of arousal and an abandoned screaming release.
But if I thought a mere ejaculation would end his prowess, I couldn't have been more mistaken. He continued to move within me for a moment, then withdrew his still hard member to slide down and minister to my still throbbing groin with his sensual lips.
At first I tried to stop him. Nothing like that had ever happened before, but when his hot tongue touched my quivering flesh I was putty in his hands. Again he pulled me from quivering exhaustion to the high plateau of orgasm so sweet I knew not whether I was suffering pain or experiencing pleasure too divine for a human to know.
But even then he refused to stop. He got up from the bed, walked downstairs to my bar and returned with two drinks. He lay down, sipped one and in his calm, sensuous voice whispered, "Okay, Jill, now how about a little head."
I was still so naive at age forty-one that I really didn't know what he was talking about. But he guided me, whispering gently that I should take his manhood in my mouth and pull him to sweet erection again. I learned, and I think well, for I could not resist the sense of power it gave me to feel his partially soft member stiffen in my mouth and then as I sucked on it, snap like a bowstring shooting his sweet sperm down my throat.
Finally, spent, exhausted and more thrilled than I had ever been in my life, I lay beside him. I knew I would be his agent, but I also knew that he must remain as my lover. Whether I found I could like him as a person or not seemed immaterial. He offered so very much in the way of sexual satisfaction, was so very open and thrilling with every word and move, that I could not resist him. He moved into the house with me and often on weekends I would ask him to slip out of his clothes and move around naked. I was obsessed by his body and I knew that I had absolute control over him. Without me he would be virtually unable to work. He had very little real talent and enjoyed living in the luxury that the business and Sidney's fortune had offered him.
Sometimes in our more intimate moments I would be compelled to ask him personal questions. Where had he learned all the many subtle skills he showed me? How could he, one man, know so much about caressing the human body and thrilling a woman?
And one time while we were both drinking, he told me. "Shit," he said. "You're a nice girl, Jill, but you've got a long way to go. Bet you've never had a woman, have you."
Although I was not so disgusted with the remark as I would have been twenty years before, it was still upsetting to me. I remembered my one interview with Harriette Drayhamond and my attitude toward Sally at the Mime's Club after that. "No," I said. "I don't like that sort of thing."
"You just like cock. That's it?"
"I like yours," I said, reaching over to fondle the now soft length of his member.
"But you'd take anyone just as good, I'll bet."
Something in his tone annoyed me. I was a power over him. I didn't want him getting any ideas that he could dominate me. Certainly he may have thrilled me physically, but he had to come to the realization that when it came down to the wire, he was little more than a sexual slave to me. I controlled his food, his clothes, and even the roof over his head. I didn't want him to forget that.
"Yes," I said very firmly. "I would, jet's understand something right now, Lance. You're a good-looking boy and you're good in bed, but I'm running your life. You're not running mine. Step out of the lines I draw and you'll be out on the Hollywood streets in a worse way than you ever were. No studio will touch you and I'll make damned sure no agent handles you either."
"Gosh," he almost whined. "I was only trying to do you a favor. I thought you'd get tired of just me. Thought I'd introduce you to a guy I know. He's got a cock as long as your arm."
"What!" I snapped. "You really think-"
"Here," he said, thrusting his suddenly hard member toward my mouth, "suck on that a while and think about it"
Much as I would have wanted to control him absolutely, there was no way to keep an upper hand when he dominated me sexually. I slid my lips over his beautiful hard flesh and sucked it into my eager mouth.
The following week life began as I know it now. I came home from the office to an empty house, poured myself the usual stiff drink and waited for Lance to arrive. I had sent him on interviews that day and knew that he should get back to the Marsdale Hills within the hour. He didn't show up on time and I began to get annoyed. I poured myself a second drink, trying to dull the edge of my sexual frustration. Just thinking about that lean, young, muscular body always made my groin ache and the hot wet eagerness seep from between my thighs. .
Lance came home about seven o'clock and I would have screamed at him immediately had I not seen that he was with a companion; a young man equally as handsome in a dark, almost Latin way. Lance introduced him as. Larry Tic-man, an old schoolmate, and wondered if he could stay for dinner.
God, how I wanted to leap into the bed with Lance and forget that Larry Ticman ever existed, still I wanted to be polite and-there was something about Larry that intrigued me. It could have been his youth, his coloring, or the easy, animal-like grace with which he carried himself.
The three of us had a couple more drinks until my old butler, Carlton, announced that dinner was ready. Then we ate quietly, had some wine with dinner, and some cognac afterward. My head was warm and free. The cares of the week were gone and I was happily mellow. I told Carlton that he could clear up the dishes and then go home, and the two boys and I went into the living room
"Why not upstairs?" Lance said.
I was a little bit befuddled.
"Sure," Larry said. "We could make one hell of a big scene together."
Somehow, whether it was the liquor I had consumed which had befuddled my old-fashioned sense of Kansas morality, or whether they had simply mentioned something that had been in my mind all along, I don't know. But that was the shot that started the war. That first time I was drunk and happy. If I needed an excuse I could always use that, but the fact is I was probably more eager than they. The three of us climbed the stairs and an instant later were on my big bed with all the lights still on.
Larry lay on one side of me and Lance on the other. For the first time in my life I clasped two men at once. I delighted in pulling the flesh of their members back and forth, and then delighted even more to notice that Larry's was bigger and thicker than Lance's. I had a compulsion to take him in my mouth and suck on him, but as I bent over to do so, I was even more thrilled by the swift sweet sliding pleasure of Lance thrusting his beloved scepter of passion deep within my cavity of love.
What sweet revelry! Every single nerve of my own was being tingled at one time. I was both giving and receiving and the true and glorious sweetness of it was that at one and the same instant I felt the hot shoot of Lance's ejaculation within me as I tasted the powerful eruption of Larry's sperm fairly jolting my teeth and I-I, too-spasmed like a velvet cartwheel.
We lay quiet for a moment. I, somewhat satiated but still intoxicated by sex and the liquor I had consumed. I wondered about a question I had never dared ask before. "How do you do it?" I asked them. "I mean men together?"
They seemed happy to show me. I drank from my brandy snifter, watching in something close to childish delight as they sucked happily on one another. Then Lance mounted Larry from the rear and pumped into him, while at the same time jerking his friend's member back and forth in masturbation.
Just watching gave me a thrill so that I could not help but place my own fingers against my wet vulva and caress the delicate nub of my clitoris.
After that, I brought Larry to live in the big house with us. I suffered a little guilt from time to time, but what broke the three of us up was simply the fact that although they were both good in bed, I simply could not stand them as people. That's when I ordered them both to leave and my somewhat strange sexual passions changed from merely drunken and sensual revels to talismans. I had long had a knack for spotting potential talent. Now I wanted another lover-no, another two lovers-and I wanted to prove to myself that those I selected would be star material.
It worked. Young men who came to the office wanting me to represent them never seemed shocked or appalled when I told them what I wanted from them. I would make them stars if they would serve my sexual needs until I was tired of them. I would see to their photographs and their training and their clothing, and they would satisfy my every sexual whim.
I never had more than three living in the house at once and never kept the same ones for more than a year at a time. Three is the ideal group for me because I have to admit that Lance was right. In his own words, I do like "cock."
The greatest thrill for me is to have in me as many men as I possibly can at one time. I've done it often since that first time, but that experience will still always stand out in my mind. I won't mention their real names. I'll call them A, B, C-Al, Bill, and Charley-because they are all on contract now and all doing well.
Then, though, they were three wonderful sexual slaves for me and the first time they fulfilled me ultimately, I thought I would die-and die happy-with the total pleasure of it. Perhaps it was the way they set it up for me. Al simply lay on his back on my big bed playing gently with himself, sort of luring me to him. I was torn between watching his beautiful member and seeing the other two boys feeling their own bodies beside the bed. I tried to go down on Al's member with my mouth, but he wouldn't let me. He wanted me to straddle him so that I could get the whole length of it high up inside me, so I did that. But I still couldn't keep my eyes off the other two boys-so handsome and well-built-young gods in their middle twenties, so perfectly formed.
As I straddled Al, riding his member so firmly planted in me with an almost vicious abandon, Bill moved toward me holding his huge shaft in one hand and slowly, maddeningly moving toward my mouth. I couldn't control myself. I had to feel the hard flesh of his penis within my eager mouth. Then it was there-perfectly there! I was filled in my channel of love, rocking back and forth to receive the maximum pleasure of one rock-hard shaft against my clitoris, as I was caressing and sucking the hard love of Bill's member in my mouth.
I didn't care what had happened to Charlie. I was in such ecstasy that I ignored him until I felt my buttocks being pushed forward. I was down over Al's body, his shaft deep within my vagina, Bill's penis still in my mouth, when I felt the first hard pressure of Charlie's member demanding a third entrance, this time into the star of my anus.
When he pushed himself home, I was totally filled. I had a man in every part of me, more man than any woman had ever had, and the sheer passion of it drove me wild! I spasmed again and again with the impossible pleasure of it, soared to the pinnacle of ecstasy, crashed against exquisite pain, and then soared again.
My entire soul ruptured and broke, splashed over the world-was torn apart and rebuilt again, only to explode another time. I think I must have passed out that first time with the sheer thrill of it all!
Of course, those three boys are gone now on to their own paths of success-paths, I cannot deny, which I paved for them. I made them stars, and they for the few months they shared my bed, made me happy.
There are always at least two, usually three, young men in the house now and I know every one of them will be a star. They are my lucky pieces, if you want to call them that. They give me sexual luck and I give them luck in their careers. Some say I am running a harem and that they are my sexual slaves. There is a certain truth to that, but I work, too.
Yes, I've changed from the naive young girl who came here from Kansas over twenty years ago, but the change has been, at least as far as I'm concerned, rewarding, even maturing. There was guilt at first, but I don't feel guilt now. If anything, I'm worried about the possibility that it might all end one day. I don't think I could bear that. I have learned to love my little harems for the short few months each of them holds together, and I want to maintain the exquisite pleasures I receive.
I hurt no one. Everyone receives pleasure and a career from me. There are, of course, people in town who criticize me, but I don't care about them. I know I'm doing the right thing. At least it's right for me.
And for my boys as well.
As the Victorian sexual ethic gradually collapses, women are not only abandoning their inhibitions in the sexual act itself, but they are considering their sexual needs with an objectivity previously available only to men.
The myth that women need only one sexual partner to gratify their sexual drives, while men, on the other hand, need more than one partner, is being replaced by more realistic theories. The sexual drive of the female has been revealed as certainly equal to the drive of the male, and the expression these drives take have been shown to be sociological rather than biological. The submissive female and the dominant male are creations; a mythology that no longer applies to the social situation. Women are considering these facts, and with the growth of a sexual permissiveness in society, they are creating more novel ways to gain gratification from sexual relationships. Their alternatives depend to a great extent upon their economic autonomy. A woman who is confined to the role of wife and mother, and as a result is completely dependent upon her husband for survival, will have fewer alternatives to explore her sexual preferences than the woman who is self-supporting, obligated to no one but herself and, perhaps as a result of her involvement in a career, in a position to manipulate her surrounding with greater effect.
Jill Dean in her early years in Hollywood is still naively a victim of the propaganda surrounding the double standard. She is still a virgin at twenty-two, and when approached by agents and casting directors for sexual favors in exchange for employment, she is shocked and insulted. She still believes that her body is the future possession of her husband, that marriage is somehow a sacred bond rather than a financial contract under which she will surrender her intellectual, emotional, and sexual independence, in return for security in a male-dominated world.
She continues to maintain these unrealistic values and eventually manages to extend them into marriage with her agent when he tells her she's not going to be successful as an actress. Although she is not sexually attracted to him, she is fond of him and their marriage is successful. She is content with her role of wife to a considerate man, and she ignores her sexual frustrations. She puts them aside and buffers them by accepting, according to the standard by which she was raised, what she considers a good deal. Basically honest, she holds up her end of the deal with a sense of satisfaction. Without complaint, she assumes the subordinate position and becomes her husband's spoiled, but pleasant child. It does not occur to her that when she rejected the advances of agents who simply wanted to use her sexually in return for help with her career-and when she married a man she had no sexual desire or love for, beyond affection and trust-she was, true to her values, simply accepting the best of two deals.
Upon his death, she assumes control of his talent agency and in that process is given an independence she didn't especially seek, but one which Jill assumes out of loyalty and respect for her deceased husband. While she had come to realize a surprising degree of competence prior to his death, when she is later in total control of the agency her attitude undergoes a radical change. At that point, as she experiences economic independence, and intellectual and emotional stimulation through involvement in a demanding career, her natural competitiveness which had previously been suffocate within her feminine myth, comes to the fore. She simultaneously becomes aware of her sexual drives, which had previously been suffocated within her and with a newfound sense of authority she goes about fulfilling them.
She propositions the young men who go to her for representation exactly in the way she was propositioned as a young woman. She feels no guilt about repeating a pattern she previously found degrading, when she was on the losing end. She discovers that her powerful position is an efficient device for acquiring her sexual slaves. No longer a young woman, she is at a definite disadvantage in a youth oriented society. Without compunction she relies on her social and economic power to manipulate her sexual situation. Since she is not seeking either love or approval, or even companionship, from her lovers, but simply sexual gratification, she-like the men who had approached her in her youth-feels no inadequacy over the methods used in attracting lovers.
The traditional method of interrelation between the sexes in the patriarchal system is based on an acquisitive principle; accordingly, qualitative distinctions about ploys seem hypocritical. Why should a pretty young face be a more acceptable lure than money or success? Jill has managed, by the time she has reached this pinnacle, to disassociate her sexual desires from her emotional needs, and in this context is assuming a sexual aggression previously sanctioned only in the male.
After a period of experimentation, she finally decides that she prefers maintaining three lovers to one at a time. Closely adhering to her year-long time limit, she keeps a continuously changing harem of three young men in her home. They satisfy her sexual needs and she in return supplies them with a comfortable life-style and a promising career. The arrangement, much more considerate than the ones she was offered, is an equitable one for all involved. She is also, as a valuable and productive member of the community, immune to peer disapproval-a thing she feels but ignores, aware and dependent on the fact that outside of her personal life she holds a position of power within the community.
She is still unable to completely abandon the submissive myth surrounding her sexuality; but she does manage, by a chance of fate, to arrange her life according to her heeds-a status few women achieve. Although she is dominant in most aspects of her relationships with men, she still prefers to take the submissive role in the sex act itself. She protects herself, however, from extending this submissiveness further by choosing partners who do not stimulate her in any way other than sexually. This is a much more direct expression of the similar feelings often existing in the male, who performs dominantly with his wife yet seeks a prostitute to assume a submissive role.
CONCLUSION
Ideally, the metamorphosis of the female from that of sexual object to individual will produce an environment where choice will stem solely from the desire to successfully apply abilities, and fulfill the needs of a person according to his or her particular characteristics, rather than from a need to conform to a simplistic and uninspiring sexual stereotype. Hopefully, the need for a stereotype will be eliminated and replaced with a drive for self-development and expression, one tolerant of all forms of endeavor regardless of gentler.
The direction this sexual revolution will take depends on a variety of controlling factors. The threat of overpopulation diminishes the drive to procreate-a drive previously considered a natural urge in women, akin to instinct, but now viewed as a product of psychological conditioning. Women are no longer buying the myth of the maternal instinct, and no longer label themselves as sexually deficient if they are not consumed by a need to bear children. In addition, as they become absorbed into the economic power structure-one that has evolved into a highly organized technocracy since the Industrial Revolution-they will feel the impact of an increased mobility and the anxieties produced by the concurrent fracturing of continuity.
like men, women are now choosing employment where it is available. Rather than identifying with a particular location, they identify with a particular career and will find themselves moving over the globe, according to the availability of employment. They too will become victims of a kind of permanent jet lag. This intensely rapid mobility inhibits, to a large extent, the ability of both men and women to maintain traditional home lives and relationships, in addition to the pursuit of their work. The impact of this fractured continuity is less abrasive to the male psyche; men have been conditioned since childhood to fulfill the role of provider. Although denied physical connection with his family, the male is content that his wife is maintaining his home in his absence; he is living up to de demands of his sexual stereotype, and this sense of the familiar cushions the shock. The woman who pursues a similar life, however, not only experiences the same emotional isolation, but she has, unlike the male, stepped outside of her stereotype. She is treading on unfamiliar ground, and there is nothing to protect her when panicked from assuming total emotional detachment. Unless a complete psychological transformation is effected-one which provides a new and realistic definition of femininity, in conjunction with this radical freedom-women may find themselves in a state of emotional suspended animation, resorted to out of self-preservation.
Although stimulated by the expression of a previously inhibited competitive urge, the diminished importance of permanence in relationships enhances this confused state of isolation. Even though women are assuming aggressive roles outside of the home, they still tend to fall victim-in an attempt to reassure themselves that they are still women-to the stereotype in their emotional relationships. Deprived of the variety of options provided by a revised definition of the feminine myth, most career women are driven in one of two directions, both of them equally defeating. They either continue to pursue an emotionally submissive position with a man-one inevitably doomed to fail because of the demands made by intense involvement outside of the home-or they rebel completely and avoid involving themselves in any fulfilling relationship with the opposite sex. The former is often the forerunner of the latter.
The danger in such a mindless rebellion is obvious. In avoiding to redefine their sexual role, women will begin to assume the role of the male; they will become victims of their own freedom. Forced to behave aggressively in situations not deserving of it, they will begin, due to inner panic and isolation, to view vulnerability as weakness, and they will tend to choose a sexual partner purely for convenience and ego gratification, rather than for emotional and sexual exchange. Out of this peculiar combination of power and imprisonment, a deep and intense resentment for the opposite sex is bound to emerge. The contempt of the woman for the man will be no different from his for her in the past. Rather than realize the original goals envisioned in this freedom of choice-a society free of sexual prejudice and mystique-the double standard will continue to prosper. It will simply be reversed and rather than replace the vanishing patriarchy with a society free of sexual stigma, a matriarchy may well rear its repressive head-supplying a new sexual myth, equally as unrealistic and degrading as the one it is usurping.
Women have begun, during the past ten years, to view themselves as a repressed sexual minority, denied the choice and fluidity of movement given men within the power structure of society. When dealing with any minority demanding upward movement within the system, the society creates another to take its place. There has always been an underdog to fill the ghettos and to perform the menial labor abandoned by the group moving into the mainstream. The system, although not particularly humane or enlightened, does function to a certain extent as long as the dissatisfaction of the group at the bottom doesn't become too violent. It is to be hoped that one day a superior system will evolve; one where "underdogs" are no longer considered necessary to the smooth functioning of society. In the meantime, however, when dealing with the upward surge of a sexual minority-unless the entire master-servant syndrome is eliminated-as one sex assumes dominance the other is destined to be subordinate.
Unless both men and women move thoughtfully with this new freedom-as women are released from the submissive stereotype and no longer view themselves as an inferior sex-the emergence of large numbers of women as competitors could bring out a squaring off of the two, intensifying existing resentments rather than obliterating them, and promoting contempt and suspicion rather than the desired acceptance and equality.
Even considering the less positive aspects of this change,' it can still only be seen as a constructive move. Women for the first time are given the privilege of developing as individuals, and in this process both sexes are moving away from myth into the realm of an individual mystique; the forming of emotional ties for pleasure and growth rather than out of a demand to conform to an imprisoning and unsatisfying sexual generality.
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