This is what Sigmund Freud taught me: the newborn child lives and loves with its mouth. It does this in five ways-by sucking, closing, holding on, biting, and spitting out. Adult hunger may result from not getting enough love during infancy. Or food. In short, deprivation.
This fixation with the oral stage leads people to do a lot of funny things-they are always gratifying themselves through the mouth. A cigarette, a bottle of beer, an ice cream cone, a stick of chewing gum, even singing songs-these are just substitutes for something else. Not that it is "bad" to sing songs or drink beer. Occasionally I like to do that myself. Even Freud smoked a cigar.
Anyway, an adult individual, especially a girl, can never be satisfied as long as she is dominated by these infantile oral drives. And whatever she may be acquiring-whether money or fame-it is only a substitute for what she really wants.
P.S. And you know what that is.
-Dr. Young, in an unpublished letter to his mother.
Picture Linda Lovelace: just the sound of her name, Love-lace. Love. Lace. Panties. Close your eyes and hear her name; roll it around on your tongue, savoring it. Linda. In Spanish, beautiful. And love? A special kind of sweetness mixed with heat. Picture this woman, then: Linda Lovelace. Her name sticks somewhere on your taste buds. The tongue has a memory of its own, after all.
Linda Lovelace: young, slender, beautiful. But more. There is a charm to her that remains hidden, like the sun in the early morning hidden behind a cloud. Hidden, until she finds her special kind of happiness. And then she smiles, wrinkles her nose. For a moment, mere mortals are allowed a glimpse of heaven on earth. A glimpse of that smile is enough to make slaves of men privileged enough to see it-doubly so if they are the cause of it. A man wants to take her by the hand and sail off to a desert island.
But it wasn't always like this. For this is the story of a modern girl with a Problem and how, through the wonders of medical science and her own zest for life, she was able to find a Solution for it.
PART ONE
Linda's Problem
CHAPTER ONE
Her search began in Miami Beach, Florida, that dream city of conventions and Geritol, high-rises and retirement in the sunshine, where it never rains and no one ever cries. Linda Lovelace, driving her new blue and white Caddy convertible down its broad breezy boulevards, tanned and slenderly scrumptious, presented an image of beautiful, restless youth that made the dream seem even sweeter.
Linda was shopping. It was something she did whenever she felt a little blue. She went into dozens of expensive stores looking distractedly at items she knew she wouldn't buy, emerging with packages only when some shrewd saleswoman guessed her state of mind-which was almost trance-like-and guided her to the nearest cash register. Linda threw the packages into the back seat of her convertible at each stop, until, tired of shopping, she headed for home.
As she drove, she occasionally glanced at herself in her rear-view mirror, as if to reassure herself she was awake. On the surface, she had it made: she was young, good-looking, and had a father back in Texas who paid her bills. But deep down she was desperately unhappy. Even the few freckles on her pert nose seemed somber. When she had cried as a child her father had told her that if she didn't smile and put some sunshine in her face, her freckles would grow together into one angry blotch. That had scared her.
She smiled experimentally and wriggled her nose; the effect was so wonderfully charming that motorists passing her in the other direction got that momentary glimpse of heaven on earth.
But hell and damn, she sighed to herself, frowning again, I'm not happy, no matter what I'm supposed to have going for me. I'm just different from other girls, I guess.
Linda was still thinking about her problem when she made the turnoff into her neighborhood in one of Miami Beach's better suburbs and drove slowly to the handsome split-level house at the end of Calico Drive. The house, near Biscayne Bay, was small but luxurious. It was pleasantly landscaped with a variety of palm trees and colorful tropical shrubbery set around a cool blue swimming pool.
A delivery truck was parked in the driveway. Not wanting to have to move her car again, Linda beeped for the driver as she collected her packages. She could guess why the delivery boy-a virile young Cuban named Jose-didn't come running. Helen was at it again. Linda couldn't be upset at her roommate's obsession with young boys, but she did feel a prickle of jealousy irritating her depression.
She swept with her armful of packages through the motel-like living room and into the large kitchen. She had been right. Helen was at it again. The big brunette was sitting on the kitchen table with her head thrown back and her dress up, her knees spread wide as the delivery boy munched eagerly at her delectable sweetmeats. Sacks of groceries sprawled around her on the table.
"That's a pretty sight," Linda said brightly. "Am I interrupting anything?"
The boy looked up like a startled rabbit, but Helen coolly pushed his head back to her business.
"No, not at all," she said. "They're your groceries, too. Give me a hand putting them away, will you?" Without losing her position, Helen casually handed Linda a bag of groceries and watched as Linda carried it to the cupboard and began storing cans on the shelves.
"There was a special on vegetables this week. I bought their entire stock of creamed corn. I hope you like it as much as I do."
"I hate the stuff," Linda said, picking up on Helen's regal detachment. "But I'm on a diet, anyway, so I'll just have salads this week."
"Hard day today?" Helen couldn't have been more nonchalant.
"Oh, I just wandered around. Really in a daze. I don't even know what I bought." Linda's eyes fixed on what was happening on the kitchen table.
She tried to pull her gaze away from the scene, but her attention was drawn to Jose's head. She could feel her own long fingers sliding through his black, greasy hair, as Helen's fingers were doing. She ran her hands down on her thighs, caressing the velvety skin under her dress ever so lightly. Somewhere deep inside herself she felt a faint warming tingle which she attempted to smother with conversation.
"I went into one shop-you know the one, Hester's Beachwear-for some beach towels, and I was so dizzy I let the woman sell me a bathing suit. I don't even remember what it looks like now."
"Why don't you try it on?" said Helen. "I'm sure Jose wouldn't mind. And would you hand me one of my cigarettes, love?"
Linda reached for the Virginia Slims pack and passed a cigarette to her roommate.
Helen lit up and blew the first puff of smoke at the delivery boy's buried head.
"You mind if I smoke while you're eating?" she asked him.
Jose looked up like a puppy who'd been interrupted at dinner. "No, not at all," he mumbled muffledly.
Helen pushed his head down again, throwing her head back as his tongue touched the most sensitive thrill spot she possessed. Linda watched greedily as her roommate exhibited the signs of passion she had observed so many times before: the closed eyes, the outthrust tongue, the arched body, the secret little glistening smile of a woman well satisfied.
Linda's face felt flushed and warm, and her thighs and underarms were hot. She decided it was time to leave. She'd try on her bathing suit and see if that cheered her up. Watching Helen only made her feel more miserable.
"Where you goin', love?" Helen asked. Her eyes squinted open momentarily, her hand pressing down hard on the back of the delivery boy's head.
"I'm going to slide up and down the banister in case he wants a warm supper," Linda joked nervously. "No, I'm just going up to try on my new bathing suit."
"Well, come down and show it off when you're ready."
"Don't worry. I will. Maybe Jose will want dessert."
Up in her room Linda slipped off her dress. She stepped out of tight purple under things and paused to examine her body in a full-length mirror. There was a chance it would be scrutinized by the insatiable young Latin, whose eyes would take in every detail: from her luxuriant black curls to her perfect aspic-tipped breasts, down her gracefully curved hips and over her succulent behind where her soft thighs joined. She was made to model bathing suits, especially this one, which showed off her sides and back to such advantage. She tugged it on and rushed downstairs.
Helen was sitting at the table drinking a dry martini and looking pleasantly exhausted and happy. Jose sat across from her gulping down Oreo cookies with milk. His teeth looked whiter than the milk.
Helen whistled when she saw Linda. "Honey, I don't care if you were dead drunk when they sold that to you. It's perfect. I'm green with envy. What do you think of that, Jose? Does that turn you on?"
Jose grinned. Now that he had eaten, he seemed stronger, more sure of himself. "I like it very much," he said. "You are sure to make a hit on the beach."
"Oh, I never go to the beach," Linda said. "I can't swim, and I hate sand. It's just something for the back yard."
"I would surely like to be in your back yard when you wear that."
"Oh yeah?" Helen said. "What would you do?"
"Well, first I would take it off," Jose said, showing his teeth.
Linda brightened. For the first time in a week, she felt the black clouds that had been hovering over her head lifting.
"Honey," Helen put in, "that sounds like an offer to me. If I were you and hadn't been laid in a week, I'd take him up on it. He's got a tongue like an anteater."
Linda looked at both of them. Helen winked encouragement while Jose stoked his fires and waited for the inevitable decision. His fingers began to climb the front of her suit.
"I'll take it off," Linda said. "You might tear it."
CHAPTER TWO
The following day Linda sat in a lounge chair beside the pool, thinking about the evening before as she painted her toenails a deep purple. Helen thrashed energetically back and forth in the water, paying her dues-as she called it-for drinking and fornicating whenever she chose.
Jose had proved himself a very athletic boy. He had delivered the goods with great Latin gusto, beginning with the soup course and proceeding to the more filling meat courses. He had given Linda-at twenty-four-an appreciation of eighteen-year-olds she hadn't had before. But despite his youthful enthusiasm and high energy, he hadn't managed to disperse the black clouds, which was what she wanted to talk to Helen about. Helen was not only a roommate; she was a sister confessor to Linda. Linda counted on Helen's greater experience, and she often went to her for advice. She searched for a way to tell Helen what was wrong.
Helen emerged dripping from the pool.
"Boy, that was good. Washes all my sins away, and some of my fat, too. Why don't you take a dip? It'll cool you off."
"No," Linda said. "Maybe later."
Helen took a towel from the side of the pool and began drying herself. She looked sympathetically at Linda, who was concentrating on the third toenail of her left foot.
"Got any more lotion?" Helen asked. Linda didn't answer. Once again she seemed lost in her own world, which, Helen had noticed, had been happening with increasing frequency over the past few weeks.
"Hon..."
"What?" Linda answered, finally looking up at her roommate.
"Do you have any suntan oil left?"
"Oh ... yeah. Here." Linda handed her the Bain de Soleil.
"Say, do you feel all right?" Helen asked with concern.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Why do you ask? Do I look dopey?".
"You certainly do. The way you've been moping around all day. Didn't you get it on with Jose last night?"
"Oh, he was all right. It was just me."
"What do you mean, it was just you? Was he invisible?"
"No, I don't mean that. He was super ... as a body."
"So what else is there?" Helen was genuinely puzzled.
"I don't know exactly. It's just that I feel cheated, somehow. like there has to be something else, you know?"
"Like what? I mean, what the hell's wrong with the way we live? Between my alimony check and your father's allowance, we've got this swank house and a big pool and a man who comes in once a week to take care of the weeds. We do all right. Who do you know who's better off? We live like queens, and the disgusting fact is, we don't do a damned thing."
"All right, all right," Linda cut her short. "But what are you doing this evening?"
"Oh, hell, I don't know. Maybe dinner and the dog track."
"With whom?"
"Oh, you know-what's-his-name. The one who does the magic tricks."
"That's just it. like that joke, I'll never forget what's-his-name. Look, Helen, I just know there's got to be more to life than just a lot of one-night stands. If there isn't, I don't know what I'll do."
"Oh, honey, you sound as breathless as a June bride. like you're ready to settle down and take care of a house full of kids. Well, maybe you're still young enough to think of things like that, but I've already been through it, and it's not for me, I can tell you. My old man thought if he worked forty hours a week, bought me everything I wanted, listened to me night and day, and made love twice a week, he was a good husband. I can tell you, honey, he was wrong."
"Why?" Linda said. "He sounds like every girl's dream."
"Yeah, he was. But he was dull."
"It just doesn't sound dull to me, Helen. But it really doesn't matter. I can't get married, anyhow."
"What do you mean? There's at least a half-dozen guys I know of who would jump at the chance of marrying you."
"But it just wouldn't work. I'd be miserable, and I'd make him, whoever he is, miserable."
Linda's thin, sweet voice, with its slight Texas twang, sounded so forlorn.
"Why would you make him miserable? You've got everything going for you. You've got money, you're young, you're attractive. What else is there?"
"Happiness," Linda said. "And sex."
"Sex...? " Helen said the word as if it were the name of a new brand of laundry detergent.
"That's right. I don't enjoy it. No, that's not altogether right. It does make me feel kind of tingly all over, but then..."
Helen's eyes were big, expectant. "Then ... what?"
"Nothing. I'm disappointed. Shouldn't there be more to sex than a lot of little tingles?"
"Maybe it depends on the size of your tingler."
"No. There should be bells ringing-big bells-dams bursting, bombs going off ... big things, big explosions."
"Honey, do you want to come, or wreck a city?
Sex is great, but maybe you're expecting too much."
"Be serious, Helen. I'm asking your advice."
"Well, it sounds to me like you're saying you've never gotten off."
"I haven't."
"Never."
"Never."
"I can't believe it. I really can't. Maybe you're not doing it right."
"I do it like anybody else. I just don't feel big explosions like everyone else seems to have. I read articles in Reader's Digest about the perfect orgasm, and it doesn't sound like what happens to me."
Helen shook her head. "First of all, you should stop reading dumb magazines like Reader's Digest, and read something serious, like Cosmopolitan." Helen chuckled to herself. To Linda, Helen seemed so experienced in the area of sex that she hung on her every word, waiting for the right one. Sometimes she felt like a little girl beside her friend.
Helen stood up and stretched. "Honey, I hate to see you so gloomy. like I always say, you've got so much going for you. But if you've never had an orgasm, no wonder it's stormy weather. Let's see what Aunt Helen can do about the problem."
CHAPTER THREE
Helen had plans for Linda, all right. She worked all week making phone calls. In the eighteenth century she would have arranged an intimate soiree. In her own time, she arranged an orgy. Helen took friendship very seriously. After all, if a friend was unhappy, wasn't it her duty to lend a hand somewhere? She knew a lot of guys-so many different guys, in fact, that surely one of them would be able to put a smile on Linda's face.
The next Friday at least a dozen cars and trucks of varying vintage were parked in the driveway of Helen and Linda's house. A passing motorist might have thought a wedding or a bar mitzvah was going on inside.
Helen was pleased with herself. She had invited the right number and variety of men to Linda's coming-out party. Surely one of them would have the right combination of expertise, passion, and staying power.
Helen met the guests at the door, and led them with some practiced ease into the living room, where the men who had already arrived were seated. To each she gave a drink and a number she had printed on a file card.
"You're number eleven and you're number twelve," she said to the last two men to arrive, one a swarthy man who could have been part Indian, the other a bleached blonde who looked like a weight lifter. "As a matter-of-fact, number twelve," she said to the blonde, stroking his rippling arm, "you're number one with me."
Linda was already working with number two in her bedroom. Number one had come and gone just that quickly. Number two had some staying power, however, and Linda was counting on him to provide the extra thrust that would boost her into outer space. It helped a lot that the man's name was Heinz, and that he worked as a technician at Cape Kennedy. He wasn't bad-looking, either. Linda thought he resembled Spock on Star Trek. What really turned her on was the way he kept using terms like "thrust."
"payload."
"fuel," and "propulsion."
His rocket was long and thin, and at the moment when Helen brought number three into the room, Linda was just beginning the countdown by the skillful application of her warm tongue to Heinz's nose cone, which was pointed to the stars. She felt so good whenever she had something in her mouth that her insides seemed to slide apart. So good that she was oblivious of everything else going on around her, even the presence of number three, a scruffy man with a beard, attired in a cowboy hat and Levi's, with an army patch sewn to the sleeve of his frayed denim shirt. His name was Dove, although before he hit thirty people in his home town knew him as Fred, the vacuum-cleaner salesman.
Dove watched Linda's attempts to launch Heinz's rocket with an extremely loving eye for every detail of her body: her long, slender legs, one ankle circled by a beaded ankle bracelet; her round little behind; her naked cleft, which seemed to blush like a rose at dawn as Heinz's fingers soared into it and the countdown reached its climax.
Dove dropped his cowboy boots to the floor as Heinz began to lift off. His back arched; his eyes bulged; he muttered in German, "Gruss Gott!" and he was off into the stratosphere. Dove had never seen such a reaction. He guessed the man to whom Linda was paying such fine attention hadn't been in orbit in a long time. Dove dropped his Levi's, and moved toward Linda, who seemed to be in a minor delirium. She was trembling as she licked up the fuel that had spilled over Heinz's rocket, and muttering to herself: "Rockets went off for him, but what about me?"
Then Dove clasped her breasts and began to ease his sweeper into her hairless nook, wondering if he should wait until later to mention that he had brought along a special attachment-the French tickler he'd bought in New Orleans and never used.
Linda instinctively pressed back against Dove as she felt his nozzle force its way into her frustrated little cranny, bending over the couch where Heinz had just dropped his payload down her throat. Heinz lay back groaning in contentment, scratching his thighs, his eyes closed in extraterrestrial ecstasy.
Then Linda heard Dove whispering to her in his thick southern accent, "You're the purtiest creature on God's green earth. Your whole body feels enlightened from head to toe." He shivered with good feeling as he felt Linda suck him in. "Ohhhh, there ain't nothin' like a sweet woman to get old Dove to feelin' true cosmic bliss."
Meanwhile, in the living room, Helen had become the filling in a delightful triple-decker sandwich: the blonde muscleman she had begun the evening's raffle with was sprawled at one end of the long couch relaxing, doing isometric exercises. He'd been a good old horse, Helen thought, but he done gone lame. He'd been replaced by the Indian, a Seminole named Joe, who at the moment was filling her behind with a stout war club, while at the same moment, moving underneath her, was a vacationing brassiere manufacturer from New York. He looked a little overdone, with his sculptured silver hair and goatee, but he knew his way around her underthing. Helen salivated, biting down on a short, stubby Italian hero she'd lusted after for months. Her eyes rolled back in her head so that only the whites showed, and she moaned over the hero moving in her mouth. The bra manufacturer under her eased his cock out and began playing with himself, while at the same time applying his long red tongue to Helen's clitoris. Giving parties for other people was great fun, she decided, blindly reaching for the muscular penis that was just stirring again between the iron thighs of her blonde superman. She was glad she hadn't invited any more girls to her party for Linda, even if some of the men did end up watching the Dolphin game on television while they waited.
In the bedroom, Linda's feet were pointing to the ceiling as Dove practiced what he had learned of tantric yoga on her. As he moved rhythmically in and out, he spoke: "It's all part of the divine flow. You just got to relax, center your being, and let yourself flow with that old current, that billion-year-old current. If you can just do that, you'll get such a charge when you come that it may even be a little painful."
"But how do I learn to relax and like it?" Linda panted. "I think I am pretty relaxed. I could do this twenty-four hours a day."
"You have to find yourself a guru," Dove said confidently. "You can't go lookin' for him, though. He'll find you."
"But I don't want a guru," said Linda." I just want to have a great orgasm like other women."
As Dove was preparing to give Linda the benefit of his innermost essence, Kurt, the bra manufacturer, walked into the room, eating a piece of Sara Lee chocolate cake he had ferreted out from its hiding place in the kitchen. There was nothing he enjoyed more than swinging scenes, except food, and perhaps money. As he munched the cake, he watched Dove instruct Linda on the attainment of transcendental bliss. Linda looked like a classy broad; too bad, he thought, that she was occupied with the over-the-hill hippie. He looked like he hadn't had a bath in months. That was a cliche, Kurt knew; but he was fond of thinking in cliches, because they made the world easier to deal with.
He had satisfied his appetite for the moment, although he knew it would return at any time-that craving for food that he had always identified with sex. Perhaps Linda was hungry, too. He walked over to the couple on the couch, and just as they strained for ecstasy, asked, "Do you mind if I join you? It looks like there's room for one more here."
Dove was fit to be tied. "Shit, man!" he said: "Can't you see we're just gettin' into something?" He reared up on his knees and gave Kurt the full force of his angry third eye, while continuing to stroke in and out of Linda with the concentration he'd been telling her about. "This chick can't come like the rest of us, and I'm concentratin' all my being on helpin' overcome that problem."
"Sorry," Kurt said. "I just thought I might be able to help. After all, this isn't a private party, is it?" In tight situations, Kurt became aggressive; and at such times, nothing could stand in his way. He reached down to stroke Linda's hair, and as he did, he knelt on the couch and fed his circumcised salami into her hungry mouth.
"Well, hell, join the party, man," Dove said good-naturedly. "If it's all right with her, it's cool with me. Name's Dove, and I'm a Virgo with Scorpio rising."
"Kurt-brassieres. Peace, brother."
Helen lay sprawled on the couch in the living room like Catherine the Great, who, too, was known for the number of men she could exhaust in an evening. The blonde muscleman sat at her feet like a mastiff, and on either side of her like bookends, sat Seminole Joe and the Italian. They were watching Johnny Carson smirk his way through a commercial.
The blonde at her feet raised his hand. There was a ticket in it. "Who's number fifteen?" he asked. They all groaned, but no one answered him.
Dove stepped into his cowboy boots with a puzzled look on his face. He had never failed so miserably with a Venus in Scorpio in his life. She had been so eager, and he had let her down. Despite the high energy level he'd brought to his encounter with her, she just hadn't reached nirvana. It was something to rap about with his guru. He'd never had such difficulties as a vacuum cleaner salesman, and he felt a flash of nostalgia for those simpler days before he became one with the cosmos.
He watched jealously as Kurt continued to feed Linda his Hebrew National. It reminded Dove of a father feeding his little girl. Linda lapped it with obvious relish, occasionally going lower down to where the brassiere manufacturer's testicles nestled between his legs. Feed the hungry, Dove thought, as Kurt shifted his body so that he could tongue and taste Linda's girlish pubis. "Food's the answer, man," Dove said to Kurt. "That's where it's got to be at. You're really right about that."
Kurt lifted his head. "Food? Did you say food?" He was hungry again.
"Wow, man, you're a trip. You say 'food' like other people say 'God.'" Awed, Dove rocked on his boot heels.
"Now that you mention it," Kurt said, "I'm starved." He looked at Linda, who regarded him with one eye as she continued her tongue bath. "How about something from the refrigerator?"
Linda raised her head, her mouth softly propping as it left his sausage. "Gee, I don't know. We've got plenty of food in the house. Helen bought a load of creamed corn the other day."
"I love creamed corn," Kurt said, his mouth watering.
Dove regarded Kurt with reverence. Maybe this guy's a master, and he don't know it, he thought.
"Uhh, what do you want from the kitchen? I'll bring it to you," Dove said, convinced that whatever was about to happen would be a revelation, and that he'd better stick close.
"You're the strangest man I've ever met," Linda said to Kurt.
"Food is an aphrodisiac. Just wait and see. I guarantee you'll come until this corn drips out of your ears, or my name's not Kurt Salmon."
"Is that your name?" Linda asked.
"No," said Kurt.
"I just don't understand what eating has to do with sex."
Kurt puffed himself up. "I'll tell you what it has to do with sex. You see, my theory is that sexual satisfaction is really just getting enough to eat, which I never did when I was a kid."
"Yeah, but it looks like you've made up for it since then. You could stand to lose some weight, you know." Linda poked his larded ribs.
"That just means I'm sexually satisfied."
"Well, anyway, I still don't see what one has to do with the other."
"Look. You like to eat ... sexually, don't you? I mean, you have a real taste for ... sex, right?"
"I guess that's right. I like giving head. It turns me on."
"That's exactly what I mean. Somewhere in your childhood you didn't get enough to eat. Maybe your mother didn't breast-feed you, and you felt deprived, even though you didn't know it then. The point is, now that you're grown up, you like to have something in your mouth. I do too."
"Do you give head?" Linda asked, in surprise.
"I'm a man. Men don't give head."
"Well," Dove said, arriving with a tray full of food, "come and get it!"
Dove watched in amazement as Kurt took food from the tray and applied it to various parts of Linda's body. On each delectable foothill of a breast he spooned out some creamed corn; on her belly, Jello with banana slices and cherries; on each thigh, coleslaw; in and around her hairless pantry, whipped cream; and finally-the piece de resistance-he pushed a kosher dill pickle up her tight little cornucopia. Linda emitted a little scream at this last item on the menu, but as she thought later, better a cold pickle than a hot knish.
Dove watched like a maitre d'hotel as Kurt nibbled Linda from knees to neck, biting the pickle, slurping the creamed corn, lapping up the whipped cream. Linda responded like a smorgasbord. She was obviously enjoying herself. But was this the nourishment she had in mind? Dove wondered. Had Kurt succeeded where he himself had failed? His answer came from Linda, who screamed softly-in frustration, "Pickles, whipped cream, creamed corn! But no rockets going off, no dams bursting, not even light bulbs popping!"
The vibrations were too much for Dove. He had to leave. He had so much to digest. So did Kurt, who burped apologetically. Linda slid her fingers in and out of the whipped cream in a frenzy of frustration.
* * *
The morning after, Linda and Helen decided to take a walk, in order to recuperate from the activities of the previous evening. Strolling through Flamingo Park, they compared notes.
"Well, what now?" Linda asked. "Christ, I don't know. How many was it last night?"
"Fourteen, not counting those who went twice."
"That's terrible English," Helen complained.
"All right, not counting those who came twice." Linda wasn't used to walking, and the exercise was putting blisters on her heels. "Look, it was your idea, having that party. But it didn't work. Now what?"
"You mean you didn't get off once? I don't believe it." Linda made a face. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, Helen, you know that. A hundred times I came close ... it was all great ... but..."
"But what? All those different guys-you mean none of them rang the bell?"
"No. It just wasn't real."
"How about that hippie? Dove."
"Oh, he was all right, and he sure was raunchy, but he talked such funny talk, I just couldn't get turned on."
"What do you mean?" Helen inquired, kicking a few pigeons out of their path as they cut across a football field. "He wasn't a pervert or anything, was he?"
"Oh, he was okay. He talked about cosmic consciousness and stuff like that. It was that guy Kurt I was worried about. He was like a cannibal, the way he liked to eat."
"Oh. Him. I thought he looked a little weird-like, a little faggy, you know?-but he seemed like a nice guy. Maybe insecure, but everybody is who comes from New York. It's the background."
"And you should have seen the way he liked to eat!" Linda went on. "It was perverse! Whipped cream, creamed corn, pickles...."
"Not my creamed corn!"
"He loved it."
"My god, he was a pervert."
"But I thought perverts knew about sex! He satisfied his appetite, but I didn't feel any more than the usual. All that eating, ugh." Linda shook her head in distaste.
"So you don't like eating. What do you like?"
"Oh, Helen, be serious. What am I going to do?"
"I don't know, honey. Let me think...."
"You'd better come up with something good. I'm about ready to go home to Daddy."
They walked in silence for a while, listening to the birds and absorbing the warm sunshine.
Suddenly Helen snapped her fingers. "I've got it!"
"What?"
"You know. The answer to a young girl's prayers. Dr. Young."
"A doctor? I don't know, Helen," Linda said doubtfully.
Helen assumed a sisterly tone. "Oh, don't worry, he's hip, even if he is a little crazy. Dr. Young is one of those new sex therapists. I went to him once, when I was worried about being frigid. Can you imagine that? Me frigid?"
"But I don't need a doctor. I just need to get laid the right way."
"Look, honey," Helen said reassuringly, "have I ever steered you wrong?"
"I still don't understand. Why do I need to see a doctor?"
"Maybe you have a mental block or something."
"Maybe, but I just want what every other woman wants."
"What's that? You don't mean the bells and the bombs?"
"That's exactly what I mean," Linda said, her voice vibrating with emotion.
CHAPTER FOUR
On the following Monday, Linda went to Dr. Young with her problem. She went with some trepidation because of what she'd heard about him from Helen, and also because of the unusual nature of her difficulty.
It hadn't helped her fears, either, to call his office for an appointment and hear a message on tape that sounded kooky, to say the least: "Good afternoon. This is the sensuous voice of Dr. Young, inviting you to enter a world of total sexual freedom and health. At the tone you have exactly thirty seconds in which to leave your worries on my doorstep. My secretary will call you within the hour for an appointment. Good luck, and bring your checkbook."
Fortunately, the minute she entered his office in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Memorial Pavilion, she felt reassured. He had to be a real doctor, she thought, looking at the framed diplomas on his walls. His office was decorated in dark wood paneling, modern paintings, and strange and expensive furniture. He couldn't be a quack.
While waiting to be called, Linda buffed her fingernails and studied the people who passed through the waiting room. The doctor's nurse, a big blonde in a white pants suit, had the biggest bosom Linda had ever seen; she couldn't take her eyes off it: the way her breasts moved so awesomely as the nurse walked across the room to her files, the way they drooped, as if embarrassed. They made Linda feel inadequate. She was glad her arms covered her own small doves. Why couldn't Dr. Young have a nurse who didn't make his patients feel even more upset than they were? Then she realized why.
The doctor's patients were mainly male, and of course they'd like a nurse with boobs like hers, especially since their problems were sexual. In the hour that she waited to see Dr. Young, six men were in and out of his office. Men of every description. Young, old, fat, thin, handsome, ugly-she guessed they all had problems, despite how they looked, problems as serious to them as her were to her. Did everyone have problems with sex?
Finally the nurse called her name. Linda stood up nervously, fumbling with her purse as she put away her emery board and followed the nurse-who also had a large rear end-into the doctor's inner chambers.
She wasn't prepared for her first sight of Dr. Young. He was dressed in a white T shirt with a picture of Sigmund Freud on its front, and faded jeans. She guessed he might have been forty, but he was in such good shape he could have been younger. He was leaning back in a swivel chair behind a large desk, with his hands behind his head.
"Sit down," he ordered. "Thank God you're female, and you're young. I've had enough men today." His eyes popped admiringly. "What can I do for you?" Dr. Young had a strong, resonant voice, but something about the way he spoke made Linda want to cry. Maybe it was his authoritative tone, as if all the problems that came before him were solvable. Whatever it was he did with his voice and eyes, she trusted him immediately. His confidence was very reassuring.
"I have a problem, doctor, that I hope you can help me with. But it's very embarrassing...."
"It must be. You talk like you got a hot potato in your mouth. So many of my patients talk that way that I want to give up and move to Bermuda. I got a house there, and I can walk out in the afternoon and watch porpoises screwing in the bay. Happy little buggers, not like the people I see." He swung his feet off the desk and looked wearily at Linda.
"So you can tell me your problem, and don't feel embarrassed. I have plumbed the depths of human passion. If not the depths, at least seven inches." As he said this, he laughed into his hands. Linda felt she was in the presence of a mad scientist. It was a novel experience, but somehow it only made her want to draw closer to him.
"My problem," she began in a choking voice, "is that I can't have an orgasm like other women.
I guess ... that's all there is to it." She felt short of breath, saying those few words. She'd just torn her heart from her chest. She closed her eyes so that she wouldn't have to see Dr. Young's reaction. It was as if she'd just said the most horrible thing in the world. She felt naked and totally defenseless.
Dr. Young said quite calmly, glancing straight into the heart of her problem, "Maybe you have a mental block or something."
"That's what my friend Helen said, but what does that mean?" Linda asked.
"How should I know? I'm only a doctor. That's what I say to all my patients when I don't know what else to say. You got a better idea, maybe?"
"But you're the doctor...."
"That's right," Dr. Young said. "Thanks for reminding me. As I was saying, perhaps you have a mental block. It's quite common. Perhaps some traumatic event when you were a child...."
"I don't think so."
"Nothing at all? An unpleasant experience, that might possibly have turned you off sex."
"I'm not turned off sex. I enjoy it, as a matter-of-fact, I could really spend the rest of my life getting laid."
Dr. Young leaned back in his chair and relaxed. This is going to be easy, he thought. "Then what's the problem?"
"I don't know ... something's missing."
"Missing?" He was all ears.
"Yes. There should be more to sex than a lot of little tingles."
"Tingles?" Dr. Young sat up straight.
"Yes, that's right. I want to hear bells."
"Bells?" the doctor said. He'd never heard of such a notion.
"And bombs."
"Bombs?"
"Dams bursting..." Linda gushed.
"And the rockets' red glare," Dr. Young exclaimed, getting into the mood. "Bombs bursting in air," he continued. Dr. Young stood up behind his desk with a wild look in his eyes. He took a small American flag from his pencil holder and began waving it about, with patriotic zeal.
"Gave proof through the night, that our flag was s-t-i-l-l t-h-e-r-el" he sang out.
Linda was aghast at the doctor's loss of control. Just my luck to get a loony shrink, she thought, as he paraded around the room with the little flag in his hand, singing the national anthem.
"Please, Dr. Young," she shouted, "be serious!"
"Sorry, my dear, I got carried away. None of my patients give me that freedom."
"But aren't you here to help me?"
"Yes, yes. Quite. Sorry about the flag business. It's just that I was at Iwo Jima, and was off peeing behind a bush when they raised Old Glory. Really, I think I understand your problem. You want out of sex something more than you're getting now. More than a lot of little tingles."
"That's right! Maybe you do understand, after all. I want more. I want bells, and bombs, and..."
"Let's not go into that again," said Dr. Young. "Maybe your problem is not psychological. It might be purely physical. Have you ever been examined internally?"
"No ... I don't think so. Not by a real doctor, at least."
"You don't think so? If you had, you'd remember it, my darling. Especially the way I do it."
"Well, when I was little, I played doctor a lot."
"Not the same thing at all. Just come with me into my examining room, and we'll see what the problem is. If you don't have a problem, we can always create one for a small fee."
Linda followed Dr. Young into his examining room, which wasn't decorated like any room in any doctor's office she'd ever been in. Instead of the usual table, there was a water bed, with stirrups at the foot covered in velvet. The ceiling and walls were lined with mirrors, and the fuck carpet she walked on was soft and deep.
"What kind of music do you like when you're being examined?" Dr. Young asked, going to a stereo set on a low table by the bed. He looked through various tapes. "How about Hawaiian steel guitar? Does that turn you on?"
"I ... don't know. I've never heard it. And I've never seen a doctor's office like this, either."
"Well, I'm a very special doctor. Now, please undress. As you know, time is money, and money is sex, and vice versa, cha-cha-cha."
Despite her misgivings, Linda began to unbutton her dress. Dr. Young rang for his nurse, who appeared almost immediately. She had a bored, cow-like expression on her face.
"Bring me something to sterilize my hands with," he ordered, and then turned to look at Linda, who stood naked right down to her goose-bumps before his probing gaze. From his pocket he took a pince-nez and held it up to his eyes.
"Nice legs. Very healthy little chest you got, too. And no pubic hair! Amazing! Are you bald on top, too?" he asked, snatching at her hair.
"Ouch! No, I'm not bald." Linda winced. "Some crazy Indian I dated-like, from India, you know-said it would turn him on if I shaved myself. Now I like it too much not to shave. Do you think it's awful?"
"Not at all. He was quite right, the damned fakir. Do you use Gillette blue blades?" Linda blushed.
The nurse returned, carrying a pan of hot water with a towel draped over her arm.
"Thank you, Elsie," said Dr. Young. "Now, Miss Lovelace, just he back on the bed, with your feet in the stirrups. That way I can consider your problem from the best angle."
He carefully dipped the tips of his long fingers into the basin his nurse held for him, and then dried them daintily. The nurse looked from him to Linda, disgust curdling her bovine face.
"Don't you want me to stay?" she asked jealously.
"No, nurse. That won't be necessary. Just close the door behind you, and keep your brown eyes away from the keyhole."
"But I'd like to have her here," Linda protested as the door slammed. She was beginning to wonder if she shouldn't jump up and run. But it was too late. Dr. Young's hands were already probing her problem. She raised her head and gasped: the doctor was holding an enormous magnifying glass in one hand, and a small flashlight in the other. The magnifying glass distorted his features grotesquely.
"Don't worry, my darling," he reassured her as he delved between her soft thighs. "Dr. Young will find the problem. Just relax, and think about how you're going to pay me for my time and trouble."
Linda lay back on the water bed and tried to keep from being seasick. She had slept on a water-bed once, with a wealthy Cuban who had bought one for his house ten minutes after they became fashionable. She'd nearly drowned when he fell asleep with a Jamaican cigar in his hand, and since then she'd been suspicious of anything that looked solid and wasn't. Dr. Young was rooting around in her loveshaft like a miner looking for a mother lode. What was he doing in there that made her feel so warm and itchy? She raised her head again just as he looked up and put his tools on a nearby table.
"Hrammmm ... amazing. That's one for medical science, Miss Lovelace. Because of you, I may go down in the annals of medicine. Wait till the boys at the next AMA convention hear about what I've stumbled on!"
Linda sat bolt upright on the water bed, sloshing gently with indignation. "If you tell me someone forgot his watch, I'll..."
"No, it's truly amazing. Never happened before, as far as I know. You simply don't have one!"
"You cluck," Linda said exasperatedly. "I knew you were crazier than hell. I'm a woman. I'm not supposed to have one."
"No, no, no ... a clitoris. You don't have a clitoris."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. As a matter-of-fact, I'm positive. Here, take a look for yourself with this mirror."
Linda bent herself almost double looking for her missing button. She looked high, and she looked low, but she couldn't find it.
"Well, I'll be damned!" she exclaimed.
"No wonder you have trouble hearing bells. You have no tinkler."
"It's not funny," Linda said, her voice quavering, her lower lip trembling, and large tears forming in her eyes. "It's just not funny!"
"I didn't mean to be," Dr. Young said. "Tell me, when you're making love ... having intercourse ... what excites you the most?"
"Giving head, I guess," Linda said, almost ready to blubber.
"What do you feel when you're giving head?"
"I don't know. Sort of excited."
"Where? Where do you feel excited? You must tell me everything. I'm on the verge of a very important discovery." Dr. Young rubbed his hands together in anticipation. "I can see my name in the medicine section of Time already."
"You'll laugh."
"No I won't."
Linda pointed to the delicate hollow in her throat.
"I get excited here."
"Let me have a look." Taking a jeweler's eyepiece from his pocket, he stuck it into his right eye and squinted at her with the other. "Open wide," he ordered, placing a Popsicle stick on her tongue, and peering deep into her throat.
"But..."
"Don't worry, it's a clean Popsicle stick. I just had it this morning."
"Uggg glugg uggg," Linda gagged.
"Mmmmmm ... wider ... open very wide for the doctor."
"Uggg glub ug." She thought she would choke. "There it is!-the little bugger," said Dr. Young, savoring his Nobel prize. "What? What do you see."
"Your clitoris. The little fun button is down at the bottom of your throat!"
* * *
Linda couldn't stop sniffling, even after Dr. Young's nurse had brought her a sedative and a glass of apple juice. She was fully dressed and sitting beside Dr. Young on the couch in his office. He was trying to comfort her and at the same time restrain his glee at the discovery he'd made. His nurse hovered in the background looking daggers at Linda whenever Dr. Young patted her thigh.
"Now, now," he murmured comfortingly. "Having a clit at the bottom of your throat is better than not having a clit at all. And besides ... anyone can see that your heart's in the right place," he said, patting her breast.
"That's easy for you to say. Suppose your balls were in your ear-would you say that's better than having no balls at all?"
"Of course. Then I could hear myself coming."
Linda bawled and bawled. Had there ever been a woman in the history of the world in such a predicament? Was she a freak?
"All right ... all right," Dr. Young broke in. "Enough with the crying. Now that my genius has discovered the problem, it'll be that much easier to find a solution for it, won't it, dear?"
"Like what?"
"Deep throat."
"Deep what?"
"Throat, throat," he said impatiently. "It's a technique I learned while I was on occupation duty in Japan after the war. I met some very lovely Japanese girls who had been trained in the technique of deep throat, so that they could swallow a man's penis during the act of fellatio with no trouble at all. Believe me, the first time I encountered deep throat, I saw rockets and heard bombs. Of course, I was still suffering from shell shock at the time."
"But how did they manage to do it?" Dr. Young had piqued Linda's curiosity, thereby stopping her snuffles. "I'm pretty good at giving head-no one has ever complained, at least-but I always choke when I try to go all the way down."
"It's just a matter of discipline. You have to relax totally. Maybe I could get you in some yoga courses. That would help. You have to relax the muscles in your throat and regulate your breathing to the movement of your head."
"You make it seem so easy." Linda was impressed.
"It is. American women just don't have the discipline for it. They want everything done for them-as if a man could give himself head."
"You sound like a male chauvinist."
"But I am," said Dr. Young, thrusting his chest at her. "I'm the last of a dying breed. Which is why I'm able to help so many women."
"Can you help me?" Linda asked, forgetting the politics she'd gotten from the news magazines. She was desperate.
"I think so. But you must do everything I tell you. Would you like to try deep throat?"
"You're the doctor," Linda said, her voice full of hope.
* * *
Dr. Young spoke of his deep-throat treatment in such hallowed, reverential tones that Linda thought she was back in Texas again. That was the first time she remembered giving head, around the time of her first period. The occasion was so vivid because it had been a guest preacher at the Central Baptist Church on Front Street in Dallas, who, upon finding out about her period, had introduced her to the art of putting her mouth on a man's penis. The man's name was Glenn T. Long. He had been young for a preacher, and he wore his hair very short, so that she could see his skull beneath the bristles. He breathed fire and brimstone-and had a funny-looking organ. Kind of like a shovel. After feeling around in her panties following a Wednesday-night revival meeting, and finding them stained and moist, he'd unzipped his trousers and pushed her curly black head down to his crotch, intoning harshly, "Except that ye be as little children..." His body smelled of Vicks Vapo-Rub, she remembered; but his divine rod had been a key to men from then on.
Since that time, Linda had had a mouthful of men. So she was properly skeptical when Dr. Young began directing her in his deep throat technique. She was so depressed at finding out that her clitoris was buried in her throat instead of between her legs, however, that she would have done anything.
His directions were right to the point: "Now, we could do this very clinically, but I'm afraid that wouldn't make for relaxation on your part. So we'll have to pretend I'm a man you've just met. A man who's taken you out to supper and spent a lot of money on you. A man you would like to see again. So I would like you to just pretend that you're at home, on your own couch with this man, and he is attempting to seduce you. You, being a free woman, naturally resent his seductive efforts, because you want to give of yourself freely-your mouth, your breasts, your vagina...."
Linda's directions were also to the point.
"All right. Then just he back and relax. I like games."
Linda felt confident. After all, she had experience in this field.
"That's good," she said. "Now, just let me open that zipper." Dr. Young lay back, and Linda applied herself to his needs. She pulled his zipper down as she stroked his testicles beneath the thin cloth of his jeans. At the sight of his silky pubic hairs, her tongue curled expectantly, but when she found his cock, her mouth fell open in wonder. Dr. Young had at least seven inches, long enough to tickle her imagine and thick enough to tease her palate. The way it stood up and practically saluted as soon as she touched it made her think that his patriotism must be genuine. She bent her head to her work, her ears pricked to receive her instructor's directions.
"That's it. First the tip. Everything depends on the tip, because it's there that you convince yourself that you're going to go farther."
Linda worked the sharp point of her tongue back and forth in the tiny slit at the tip. A drop of dew had formed there.
"Now start to get lower down. Use your tongue every moment. Your tongue should be like a flamenco dancer tapping her way around a stage. Use suction, too. Keep sucking, no matter what your tongue is doing. You're creating a vacuum the man's penis is filling. And keep the shaft moist. Play with my balls. After all, this isn't amateur night."
Linda felt like telling him that she knew her way around a cock, but she kept her mouth full, and silent.
"Now you're getting to the difficult part," said her instructor. "You can't take any more in without opening your throat. Just remember to relax the muscles, and take it slowly."
Down between his legs, Linda attempted to relax. It wasn't easy, because she felt she was going to gag at any moment as the thick column of smooth flesh teased her tonsils. His silky pubic hairs tickled her nose. Millimeter by silly millimeter, she took it down, hoping to see fireworks at the end of the display.
At six inches she felt-but only for a second-that her throat might revolt. Then she closed her eyes and relaxed so totally that she might have been dreaming. Her lips were nibbling the flesh at the base of his cock when she opened her eyes again. She had reached the bottom. She felt on top of the world.
"That's it! That's exactly it!" Dr. Young shouted. "Now you've got it! Oh, ohhhh!"
She had done it! She didn't know how, but she had taken a seven-inch cock in her throat, and she was feeling an extremely arousing sensation there, as if she might come any minute. It tickled, kind of, the way it had felt when she was ten, and her twelve-year-old cousin, Luther, had fingered her budding breasts. Her throat ached, and her eyes teared. Her insides slid around as if they wanted to get outside. Could this be the real thing at last?
Her head moved up and down on the good doctor's caduceus, coming to the penultimate inch and then sliding past it. Linda felt so carried away that it could have been a mere tongue depressor sliding over her tongue. She was filled with greed. She had to have more. The stiff prod in her throat made her feel stretchy, a hundred feet tall, caressing clouds. It was agonizing, too: was this what having an orgasm was like? She couldn't have stopped if she wanted to. Nothing in her life compared to the excruciating sensation of Dr. Young's cock sliding in and out of her throat. She was on the top of the roller coaster, and then, as she worked faster and faster, she plunged to the bottom. Her stomach turned over, her heart was also in her mouth, and electricity thrilled every nerve.
She was coming! like never before, like elephants dancing in the streets, like silver wolves howling in the silent north woods, like astronauts stepping on the moon, like Balboa seeing the Pacific, like Timothy Leary taking acid for the first time, like skating over a frozen lake for miles alone, like standing on top of a mountain, like cannons saluting Napoleon's death, like pigeons bursting into the air, like the first kiss, like when a war is over, like the sun setting after a perfect summer day....
No superlative was adequate to the immensity of the feeling that shook her. The energy coursing through her body made every nerve dance, so that she didn't know whether to laugh or cry-and she couldn't do either. an atomic bomb went off in her head. Big ben boomed over the Thames. A rocket roared off its pad headed straight for the moon.
She had gotten off! A thrill coursed through her vibrating body, which rose and fell with the movements of the cock still in her mouth. Then she felt: Niagara Falls roaring down her throat.
She looked so radiantly happy that Dr. Young had a brief glimpse of heaven. Her smile was bliss. She saw stars.
* * *
Like a groupie with a rock star, like a seeker with her guru, Linda wanted to patent Dr. Young's miracle worker. It seemed the fount of ecstasy to her.
"How can I ever repay you?" she said, still savoring Niagara's last rush.
"Linda, you have given me enough to last a lifetime, already." Dr. Young beamed. "That was more treat than treatment."
"You saved my life, Dr. Young. I was getting desperate."
"Don't go overboard, Linda."
"But you really saved my life! I want you to marry me. I want to be your slave," she implored. She was a believer.
"I don't want a slave. Believe me, it's enough just to have a housekeeper. In my house, the housekeeper runs everything. It's getting so I hate to go home, because Freda will be there. She burns my TV dinner when I'm late."
"But you've given me something no other man has ever given me. A taste of ecstasy."
"Maybe I should bottle it," scoffed Dr. Young. "What I gave you, you can get on any street corner. You've worn me out, Linda. I can't do it. I'm just a weak mortal, a man of science."
"But I can't let you go! My throat won't let me!"
"Quiet down, Linda. Easy. ... I can't marry you. My nurse won't let me, and besides, how much of that deep throat do you think I can stand?"
Linda looked at Dr. Young like a piranha fish scouting a lifetime supply of food. Dr. Young looked frazzled, definitely worn out after using himself as the guinea pig in this particular experiment; but to Linda he was the very promise of spring.
"Oh, no, you're not getting off that easy. You've shown me the way, and now you want to throw me out, just when I'm beginning a new life. You want me to walk the streets-go from one man to another...." Linda felt betrayed.
"No, I don't want you to do that." Dr. Young sat on the couch with a painful grimace on his face, both hands protecting his devastated crotch. He wriggled like a little boy who has to pee.
"Oh, it's all your fault," Linda pouted. 'You showed me the way to happiness. I need it now. I can't live without it. I need love. I don't care how it comes."
"Calm down, calm down," commanded Dr. Young, gaining control. "I'm not throwing you out. Someday you'll find love and happiness. In the meantime, you can work for me in the office. I'll let you make house calls."
"I don't understand." Linda was puzzled; she was in ecstasy, and Dr. Young was talking about a job. It was like a Jehovah's Witness talking to a Fuller Brush salesman.
"Don't worry. I'll teach you. You'll love the work."
"But I just want to be with you. Don't you understand? You've done it for me! You're it, as far as I'm concerned. You showed me how to come, when I didn't even know where I was going."
Dr. Young put his arm around Linda, one hand clasping her breast, and spoke to her like her father: "Listen, my dear. I've enjoyed many women in my time. Some of them weren't even my patients, God forgive me. But you-you are my contribution to medical science. You are my immortality. And besides, my nurse wouldn't let me fuck around with just any woman with a clitoris in her throat."
Linda cast a careful eye in the direction of Dr. Young's nurse, who sat on a chair in the corner like a chaperon. "You mean her?"
"Yes."
"Dr. Young, I'm disappointed in you. You could do a lot better than that cow."
"Shhh. She might hear. I couldn't bear to make her unhappy. She has the best tits I've ever seen."
Linda decided she was getting nowhere. Quite coolly she asked about the job he'd offered her. She hoped that if she couldn't have him, she could at least be near him. "Would you teach me? Whatever it is, I'll learn. I'm sure I'll be good at it."
"There's not very much for you to learn, Linda. A bedside manner, perhaps. A little patience with male frailties."
"When can we start?" She tried to sound bright and fresh.
"Right now, if you want to."
"The sooner the better. I need all the practice I can get," she said with a hopeful little gulp in her voice. "Will I need anything?"
"Just a nurse's uniform. You know, a short skirt that shows your ass...."
"No equipment?"
"Linda, my darling, you were born with all the equipment you'll ever need."
PART TWO
Dr. Young's Solution
CHAPTER FIVE
A week later Linda could have posed for a before-and-after advertisement in one of the Miami papers. She was so happy that she reeked of it. Helen complained as she made her breakfast of toast and mint tea, "You're so goddamned high, you act like your rear end is a church cushion. What'd that doctor do to you, Linda?"
Linda smiled that delightful, nose-wrinkling smile Helen had seen so much of since her roommate had come home that evening after seeing Dr. Young.
"I told you what he did for me, Helen. The man's a god."
"Yeah, yeah, I know that, but you've been going to his office every day. What's up? I know I've been busy, but I'm not so busy that I haven't noticed that silly grin you're always flashing. And you're never home anymore. Just what are you doing with your time?"
Linda smiled. "I'm Dr. Young's physiotherapist. You want to see my uniform?"
"Uniform? Physio-what?" Helen looked bewildered.
Before she could get an answer, Linda was gone. When she came back, white from head to tail in her nurse's cap and mini-uniform, Helen whistled.
"You look like Florence Nightingale as a Playboy bunny!"
"Isn't it exciting?" She spun around so Helen could get the full effect of her new identity.
"But what do you do? Dr. Young already has one nurse. And you don't have any training, as far as I know."
"Dr. Young trained me. He says I have all the equipment I need-right here." Linda pointed to her throat and winked.
"You mean that deep throat stuff? But what's that got to do with dressing like that and working for a doctor?"
"Dr. Young deals with patients who have sexual ... maladjustments he calls them. You know, hang-ups. What I do is travel around and give therapy to the guys with the hang-ups."
"Deep throat therapy?"
"Oh, yes! Isn't it great?" Linda squealed with excitement.
"You mean you get paid for getting your rocks off?"
"Dr. Young says that's what all smart people do."
* * *
Linda drove through Miami like an angel of mercy, helping the sick and succoring the hung up. On the seat beside her, Dr. Young's voice spoke from a tape recorder. Occasionally Linda patted the machine affectionately. She listened to it constantly when she was driving from appointment to appointment, the way she had listened to the Top Forty stations before she discovered deep throat. On her way to each patient, she listened to Dr. Young's description of him and his particular problem. It made her feel very professional, just like a real nurse. Well, she was better than a real nurse now!
The sun was shining, the weather was balmy, her problem had been solved, she had interesting work to do, and she was young and beautiful: everything was coming up roses.
She was so happy that she sang a little song she'd made up to express her satisfaction with life: "Deep throat, deep throat, deeper than deep is your t-h-r-o-a-t...." She giggled, and then turned her attention to Dr. Young's voice. He was describing the case she was on her way to visit.
"Case number 653. Jacob Maltz, widower, age fifty-two, no children. Fast pay. Has not had sexual intercourse, oral intercourse, anal intercourse, bestial intercourse-nor played bingo or seen a movie-since his wife passed away three years ago. Will not shake hands for fear of venereal disease. Sleeps with a life-sized rubber replica of a woman, and carries sugar in his pockets to feed to horses. A simple case. Four-star credit rating.
"Mr. Maltz has recently developed severe pain in his groin ... believe pain to be caused by sexual abstinence. Your job, Linda: help Mr. Maltz to come again."
Linda had to visit Mr. Maltz in a motel room off the ocean rather than in his home, because he didn't want his wife's ghost to know that he was cheating on her. He kept her ashes on the mantel in the living room, and he had no reason to believe that death had dulled the sharpness of her eye.
Linda felt herself to be on the threshold of a new adventure as she pressed the doorbell to his room. In the white mini-uniform that barely covered her cuddly ass, and the cute little nurse's cap that perched precariously on her curls, she was a vision of loveliness, and she knew it. When Mr. Maltz opened the door to her, he knew it, too.
"Ach," he grunted. "With a body like dot, they let you walk the streets? Come in; please come in."
Linda smiled. She liked being appreciated. She liked Mr. Maltz, too. He reminded her a little of her grandfather. He was stocky, like a bear, with a little pot above his belt that he rubbed as he talked. He smiled at her like a lecherous but kindly grandfather.
"Would you like something to drink?" he asked. "I'm not allowed to touch a drop, but I thought you might like a glass of something."
"No, thanks, Mr. Maltz. I never drink on the job. Dr. Young says that..."
"Dr. Young? A mensch, a real mensch. I got such respect for dot man. He's a genius. Now, look at what he sent me! An angel from heaven!"
"How do you feel, Mr. Maltz?"
"Ohhh. Lousy. All the time lousy. It hurts right down here all the time." He pointed to his groin and made elaborate faces.
"You mean here?" Linda asked, reaching for the afflicted area. It was rock-hard. Mr. Maltz groaned.
"I think we can fix you up in a jiffy, Mr. Maltz. Why don't you just get undressed?" Linda smiled reassuringly, and reached behind her head to unzip her dress.
Mr. Maltz looked disturbed. "Oh, please, darling, don't be in such a hurry! It's been three years ... and ... and my poor Sarah is watching. I got to do this right, in honor of her memory. She would feel terrible if I didn't do things right. She was such a stickler, my poor Sarah."
Linda was puzzled. Mr. Maltz was kneading his potbelly anxiously, and looking very worried. She stepped out of her dress and stood there, holding it in front of her.
"But what's wrong, Mr. Maltz? Don't you want the treatment?"
"Do I want the treatment? Does a bird want to fly? She asks if I want the treatment, like I got a choice. I got to have the treatment, darling, But first humor an old man with pains in his gut, okay?"
"But, Mr. Maltz, I'm here to help you. Anything you say."
"Well, then, this has got to be like our wedding night. Dot's the only way it's gonna work."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, darling angel of mercy"-he gave her cheek a pinch-"dot you got to act like this is your first time. Do you think you can do that? You're Sarah, and I'm Jake, and we're on our honeymoon in the Catskills twenty-five years ago. Poor Sarah, today is our anniversary, and where are you? Cancer-I had the best doctors money can buy...." He looked ready to break down.
Linda spoke quickly. "All right, Mr. Maltz ... Jake. Anything for the patient."
"You're a doll! Now, go in the bathroom and get ready, and I'll get ready out here." He looked so happy that Linda would have done anything for him.
like a shy bride, she spent a long time in the bathroom-doing her nails.
Finally, he called, "Sarah, Sarah, are you ready, my love?"
"Yes, Jake, I'm coming," Linda answered, and walked into the bedroom. Mr. Maltz lay in bed with the sheets pulled tight over his pot, anxious as a new bridegroom.
"My darling Sarah! Our first night together!"
"Jake! I ... I love you," Linda improvised. After that, everything proceeded according to plan. When Linda uncovered Mr. Maltz, she was a bit disappointed: his poor old putz looked so shriveled and tiny, she couldn't see how it would ever make her see fireworks. But where there's a will, there's usually a way, and in what seemed like no time, Mr. Maltz's cock was moving in her throat with the vim and vigor produced by years of abstinence. When-after a marvelously long time
-Linda felt the familiar throb beneath her tongue, she had changed her opinion of Miami's senior citizens. They could get it up if there was anything to get it up for, and once they got it up, the cows came home.
Afterward, Linda dressed hurriedly-she was late for her next appointment-while Mr. Maltz lay in bed watching her and sighing contentedly to himself. He looked so satisfied, relieved, and happy, that Linda beamed with pride.
"How do you feel now, Mr. Maltz?"
"Wonderful. I haven't felt this good since my poor Sarah passed away."
"I'm so glad. You don't know how good it makes me feel to know that I've been of some help."
"You're an angel. That's all there is to it. Tell me, could you give me a treatment like dot maybe two or three times a week?"
"But, Mr. Maltz, you mean you're ready now to forget your wife?"
Mr. Maltz exploded. "Sarah! Fuck Sarah! The no-good bitch ruined my life! Twenty-five years married, and I never saw dot woman naked! When I get home, I throw out those ashes, and I get some chicks in!"
Linda was shocked. "But you didn't sleep with anyone for years because of her memory."
"Nuts! I didn't sleep with ladies for years because I couldn't get it up! But with you, I did. Dot woman put a curse on me! I got to see you every week, at least. I feel like a new man. You are marvelous I"
"I'll be glad to, Mr. Maltz, but are you sure you can afford it? These are expensive treatments, you know."
"Don't worry. Price is no object. I got Blue Cross."
CHAPTER SIX
Linda felt flushed with success after dealing with Mr. Maltz's case. However, Dr. Young hadn't told her that she would have to get so emotionally involved with her patients. Her new job wasn't as simple as it looked. When Mr. Maltz had finally splashed three years' accumulation of salty memories down her helpful throat, she had felt on top of the world; but getting to that point had been more difficult than she expected. Administering her deep throat therapy wasn't all there was to the job, apparently. She hoped her other cases weren't so complicated. All she wanted was the rockets' red glare, and the feeling that she was helping people-not all these complications.
She flipped on the tape recorder before she started the big blue and white Caddy, hoping to hear the description of a simple case. She was immediately comforted by the sound of Dr. Young's voice, but as she drove out into the traffic, she had a vision of him as he dictated each of his cases, a vision that made her mouth dry with jealousy.
In the vision he sat behind his desk blowing bubbles-he said it relaxed him-while dictating cases into the tape machine. As he dictated and blew bubbles, his nurse knelt between his legs under the desk, his thighs pressing her large, pink ears as she nibbled and sucked at his patriarchal penis. Linda could see the scene in such clarity of detail that it was like a pornographic movie: the bored look on the nurse's face, her long blonde hair whipping over her shoulders, her giant breasts clapping together in time as she chewed his cud.
What Linda wondered about was why Dr. Young wanted such a large milkmaid around. If it was just to milk him, why not her instead? Men were funny sometimes.
She guided the big Caddy through the light traffic with ease, her mind back on the tape she was playing:
"Case number 358. Albert Finster, bachelor, age twenty-five. Fast pay. A Coke freak. Has deep obsession with the real thing. Was once arrested for forcing a prostitute to urinate into a quart-sized bottle of Coca-Cola and then jouring it on her. Collects Coke bottles, signs, lamps with the Coke emblem, etc. Can think of sex only while drinking this noxious beverage. A real jerk, in other words. Three-star credit rating. Your job, Linda: transform his obsession with Coke-drinking into an obsession with cocksucking."
Albert Finster lived in an expensive apartment on the twentieth floor of one of the high rises that gave Miami Beach the appearance of a paradisiacal graveyard from the air. The knocker on his door was a tin cut-out of a Coke bottle. After she'd rattled it a few times, he opened the door, dressed in the green apron of a soda jerk. He wore glasses and had the blonde hair-with cowlick-and freckles of a million Midwestern boys. His voice was as high as Harold Teen's.
"Are you ... Miss Lovelace? Please come in. I can't tell you how excited I am that you could come and share my hobby with me."
He was so wholesome that Linda was disappointed. But she had a job to do.
His living room was set up like the soda fountain in drugstores in small towns from Ohio to Iowa.
"Please, won't you sit down?" Albert said. "What would you like?"
Linda sat on one of the stools in front of the soda fountain. He'd had real marble installed for the counter. The syrup spigots glistened. The effect was so triumphantly realistic, Linda thought, that it took her back in time to the drugstore on Montgomery Street in Dallas, where she'd spent so much time teasing the local boys over a Dr. Pepper.
Albert Finster, soda jerk, bustled behind the counter, obviously in the first stages of sexual delight.
"Cherry Coke is still a dime, miss," he said, grinning idiotically at her. She gaped as he walked back and forth behind the counter, pushing a rag back and forth over the marble top.
"This is quite ... interesting, Mr. Finster," Linda commented, at a loss for more glowing words.
Albert beamed. "Really," he said, "you can have anything you want."
"I'll have that cherry Coke," she told him, smiling demurely. Maybe this will be fun, she thought, if he just doesn't go too far.
"Certainly, miss," he said. He spoke in a high voice and almost chirped. Linda had begun to study how people spoke and looked. It was a clue to what would happen next. More and more she noticed how she could tell a lot about a person simply by paying attention.
Mr. Finster was a harmless boy, she decided. He'd just stopped growing when he was fifteen. At least, he was honest in his adolescent enthusiasm.
He delivered her cherry Coke. Sticking up from the large glass were two plastic straws, both a merry red.
"Here's a glass of Coke"-he spoke the word with the emphasis most people his age placed on "money"-"for the sweetest girl in town." Linda took a sip and almost choked. It was so syrupy that only a goat would have found it potable. "Isn't it beautiful?" he asked, in the awed tone tourists save for their first glimpse of the "Mona Lisa." Linda didn't know what to say.
"You do like Coke, don't you, Linda?" He sounded anxious.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Finster. It's ... my favorite drink." Linda was careful to keep her fingers crossed behind her back as she spoke. At the moment, a glass of milk of magnesia would have looked more refreshing.
He sighed. "That's good. I'm so glad to meet a pretty girl I have something in common with. All the girls I meet are so stuck-up."
"Well, I'm not stuck-up, Mr. Finster. And I like Coke," Linda lied through her straw.
"Call me Albert. I don't like the name, but my mom named me after her father, so I guess I'm stuck with it. Besides, I like to be on a first-name basis with the prettiest girl in town."
Linda gagged on her second sip of the cherry Coke. Even deep throat training wasn't any help in getting it down.
He sat down on the stool next to her. She glanced at him and saw his forehead looming close to her face. Then it made contact, with a slight bump, and the other straw was in his mouth. He sucked at the liquid thirstily, making strong sipping noises like something sucking down a drain. They sat together over their shared drink like two small-town kids going steady. They pressed damp foreheads together and looked into each other's eyes, until their straw-sucking became sexual, and Albert's glasses got steamed up.
"Gosh, Linda, you're just the cutest," he said, as they emptied the glass and made that climactic slurping sound that signals the end of the pause that refreshes.
"You're pretty nice yourself, Albert."
"Oh, wow, Linda, I could just bust, I'm so happy!"
Linda thought it was time to get to the point of her visit. "As a matter-of-fact, Albert, you're pretty sexy, too. I'd love to make out in the back seat of a car with you."
"Wh-at, Linda?" He sounded nervous suddenly.
He spun on his stool, his knees catching under the low counter.
He bent his straw into a figure eight.
He blushed. And then he said, "I don't like to talk about sex, Miss Lovelace. That is a dirty topic. And Dr. Young told me such good things about you! He said you were understanding. He said you were the best physiotherapist he'd ever employed." He paused for a moment, chewing on his lower lip. The sound of his suddenly grown-up voice frightened Linda. She kept her head down to the empty glass, sucking at the ice through her straw, as he continued.
"No one understands me. I just don't like the world I live in. That's the key to me. I'm not sick, Miss Lovelace, and I don't want you to treat me like that. I just like nice girls, and they're so hard to find." He colored and winked at the same time.
His statement sounded heartfelt to Linda, like a valentine someone would send to a psychiatrist. She didn't know what to say or do. She was afraid, because his fantasy was so total. She'd once seen a movie-Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-in which the difference between fantasy and reality had been fatal for a few women. She decided that the only thing she could do was to ask him about his real life. She tried to sound light.
"What do you do, Albert? I mean, for a living?"
Her question went over like a rock. Albert spun in a half-circle and lost his balance. He almost fell off his stool.
"Albert?" she asked timidly after a few seconds, during which Albert drummed his fingers on the counter, stared at the hand-painted signs over the soda fountain, and kicked the toes of his Hush Puppies against the railing.
"What's wrong, Albert? I'm sorry if I said anything to bother you."
There was no response to her apology. The silence fizzed in the little soda parlor. Then Albert erupted. Reaching across her, he grabbed the Coke glass, and, thrusting it into his mouth, bit down on it like a teen-age werewolf breaking the mastoid of the high-school principal. Coke and blood bubbled from his lips.
"I'm a sales manager for the southern division of the un-cola!" He looked at her like a murderer called before a hanging judge.
Linda smiled tentatively. She thought about what he'd said.
Then she laughed out loud. "The un-cola!" she roared, helpless with laughter. "Seven-Up!"
Albert looked ready to cry, but she couldn't stop. She burbled with laughter. Every attempt she made to stem the flood only caused another break in the walls. And she thought she had a problem! Here was a twenty-five-year-old man pretending to be a teen-ager.
'You're no different from the rest of them," Albert whined. "You're like the rest of those terrible, awful people I see on television. No respect for anything, i can't stand it when people have no respect for things!"
Linda stopped laughing and considered the situation: he was a hopeless case, but-as far as she had seen in her new world-so was almost everyone else. She was a professional, she decided.
"Not another word, Albert, I promise. I don't know what got into me"-she wiped the tears from her eyes-"but it won't happen again." She choked on her contrition, but after all, the client was always right even if he was wrong.
He was still wary. "Are you sure?"
"Oh, yes, Albert. I'm on your side, after all."
"Well, then; well..." he said, his Adam's apple bobbing.
Linda had a flash of inspiration. "Let's pretend we're at the prom, Albert. As a matter-of-fact," she said with an inviting smile, "Let's pretend we've gone out to your car for a moonlight drive or something."
She looked at him. He seemed a little calmer. "You do understand, Linda," he said.
A half-hour later the soda fountain was dark. Linda had not only managed to pull Albert to the big couch on the other side of the room but also had succeeded in getting him out of most of his clothes. He was holding on to his Jockey shorts, however-literally holding on with both hands-as Linda tugged at them.
"Oh, Linda, you're going too fast for me," he said.
"Albert, be a good boy and take off your shorts for Linda."
"Oh . . "Albert!"
Thus, by dint of playing every role with her patient from prom queen to cheerleader, Linda at last had him ready for her therapeutic attentions. She looked at him: he lay back on the couch, a fifteen-year-old virgin, trembling, both hands guarding his spigot, taking no notice of her charms.
"Albert, you'll have to let me see it if I'm going to give you the therapy," she said coaxingly. "C'mon now," she said, prying his hands away. "Oh, what a lovely one!" she said, trying to divert his attention. He looked away bashfully, and she took the opportunity to lower her moist lips onto the cap of his fizzing tap.
"Ouch! No, don't do that!" he screamed "I can't stand it!" He pushed frantically at her head. She mumbled a protest and kept working her fingers into his thighs. She let go when he pulled her hair.
"You're a vampire!" He shuddered. "I don't want you to do that!"
Linda was distressed. Surely all this effort was beyond the call of duty. Never in her life had she encountered a man who didn't want to feel her lips on him.
"You hurt me," she complained. "I thought you wanted this treatment." She rubbed her head and looked accusingly at him.
"I want you to play my game!" he said. "That's what I'm paying you for, isn't it?"
"But..." Linda sputtered. She didn't know what to do next. She was ready to give up.
"I thought you wanted deep throat therapy," she told him, looking perplexed.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I told Dr. Young I needed someone to sip a Coke with. I'm not a pervert. I don't like nasty things like that."
"Well, Albert. What do you want? I'll do anything just to make you happy."
"Are you sure you wouldn't mind?"
"Anything. I swear, Albert. At this point, I'll do anything. I feel like a failure." She played for sympathy.
"You won't laugh?"
"No."
"Oh, I feel so good again I Wait just a minute!" He patted her and walked across the room to the soda fountain. Linda wondered what he had in store for her, but she was sure that no matter what it was, it couldn't be nearly as bad as total failure with him.
He returned with an intricately curled piece of plastic tubing and a bottle of Coke. Throwing it on the couch, he perched next to her and began clumsily caressing her thighs.
"I want you ... to be the real thing. No one else has ever been that for me. That's why I went to Dr. Young. I've never..."
"Never what, Albert?" He had aroused her curiosity.
"I've never made love to a woman. Maybe this way ... at least, I hope ... I can."
"What do you want me to do?"
The rest was easy, if more than a little strange and new to Linda, who decided she was getting quite an education. Albert had her spread her tanned young thighs, and after a moment of looking in horrified wonder at what lay between them, inserted the plastic tubing into her pinkly glistening inner lips. Then he used a siphon to pour Coke into the tubing, and watched ecstatically. Linda felt the liquid bite as soon as it touched her tender tissues, and she squirmed. Before she could protest, however, Albert had removed the tubing and had plunged his head between her legs. She felt his cool tongue licking the Coke from her as it bubbled and fizzed. She was surprised when Albert raised his head, smacking his lips in thoughtful disappointment.
"No, that's not quite it," he said, looking between his own legs. He was limp. "I know what!" He went into his bedroom and returned with a small plastic cup. "This should do the trick."
Placing the cup in her candy store, he poured Coke into it. Then he inserted the plastic tubing and began to sip, his eyes rolling with joy and pleased amazement. Linda looked between his legs: his small bottle was trembling and about to burst.
Five minutes later, Linda's triumph was complete. While visions of hundreds of people standing on a mountaintop singing "I'd like to sing the world a song..." danced through Albert's head, she had the satisfaction of knowing she had succeeded where every other woman had failed. As Albert pumped his syrup into her, she smiled that familiar nose-wrinkling smile which made the world a better place to live in.
"everything does go better with coke I" Albert shouted.
"Give me Seven-Up anytime," Linda sighed to herself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Later in the afternoon Linda walked into Dr. Young's waiting room, still feeling on top of the world. Ostensibly she was there to pick up her next assignment, but she thought if she could get him to herself for a few minutes, she might be able to ask his opinion about the thoughts going through her head. She might even get an opportunity for some further training in deep throat from him.
But when she opened the door to his office, she knew she was out of luck. He was standing at his desk with his jeans around his ankles, slowly moving in and out of his nurse's blonde fur patch as he spoke into his tape recorder. Linda looked with disgust at the big blonde heifer lying sprawled across Dr. Young's desk. Her expression was as vapidly cow-like as ever.
"Dr. Young?" Linda said, clearing her throat as impolitely as she could. He turned and winked at her, and went back to dictating. Linda listened carefully as he spoke. He was probably describing her case for the day. She found herself listening eagerly. She was discovering that the world is full of interesting people-to a girl with talent.
"Case number 666. Marco Polo. Alias Nathan Vaseline. Age thirty-five, no children. Writer of erotic poetry. Slow pay. Patient reports that he is bored with sex. Feels jaded after a hyperactive sexual life. Says that nothing can turn him on. "After such experience, what satisfaction?" is his favorite line. Considers himself an explorer of inner space, but recently his lifelines have become tangled, and he feels lost. Has recently turned to movie-making in order to document his desperation. Bisexual; loves to play games. No credit rating. A difficult case. Your job, Linda: help Mr. Polo to feel the simple pleasures of life once again."
Dr. Young snapped off the machine and withdrew from his nurse's clutches, shaking himself like a dog. The nurse climbed down from his desk and put on her uniform. While she dressed, she looked disdainfully at Linda, who had remained standing during the performance. Linda wished she'd say something, if only to see if she mooed. She was surprised when the nurse opened her mouth.
"What's the matter, aren't you getting enough?" she asked, and flounced past Linda as if she'd delivered the most telling fine since Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara he didn't give a damn.
"That bitch is so dumb," Dr. Young said, "that I'm thinking of donating her brain to my alma mater, P.S. 39. She wouldn't miss it at all, and she might have a better disposition without it."
"Why do you keep her around?"
"Did you see those tits? I have a weakness for women with such pillows attached to their fronts. I'm growing older and I expect her to be a great comfort when I'm in my wheelchair."
Linda didn't like to think about old age. It was one of her private taboos. She particularly didn't like to think about Dr. Young as an old man. She switched topics.
"Is that the only case you have for me today?" she asked.
"I'm afraid so, Linda. It's been a slow month. The sexual revolution may put me out of business-all these teen-age sluts handing it out for free. I wish I had become an abortionist. Now, there's a profession: they print their own money."
* * *
Mr. Polo lived in a section of Miami Beach inhabited by hippies. It took Linda a long time to find his house, which was located on a nameless side street off Collins Avenue, lined with small shops selling candles, incense, leather goods, records, posters, and T shirts. The house was dilapidated; an old Volkswagen was parked outside in a muddy front yard, and a one-eyed tomcat sat in the window next to the door. She knocked timidly at the door, affixed to which was a card reading: theater of life; enter at your own peril.
The door opened. A small man who looked almost Chinese with his shaved head and inscrutable, sensuous smile bowed slightly to her. He wore an orange jumpsuit and an earring in one ear.
"Mr. Polo?" Linda asked nervously. She'd never met a hippie before, and she didn't know what a poet looked like.
"You came," he said. "I'd almost given up hope. I need you. I hope you can live up to my expectations. When I talked with Dr. Young, he said marvelous things about you." He smiled, like a child enjoying a game he's made up. Linda was so charmed that she wanted to play whatever game he was playing. She made an attempt to look more clinical, but it was unsuccessful. The room she stood in was so exotic that all she could do was gape. She smelled the incense, took in the posters and books and tie-dyed curtains and covers, and almost fled in fright.
Mr. Polo led her to a low table in the center of the room and asked her politely if she wanted tea. She felt his black eyes probing her body for the possibilities of pleasure. When the peppermint tea came she sipped it demurely. She felt unusually silent. His eyes made her feel uncomfortable, because they seemed to take in everything. His smile was even more unsettling; it was as if he had a private joke with the universe.
"I understand you're interested in movies, Mr. Polo?" she said.
"Oh!" he shouted angrily. "Is this what my doctor sends me? A little boob who asks about the film art? I'm looking for a savior, Miss Lovelace.
Nothing else will do. You want movies? Vivian, show her movies!"
At his command, bright, hot lights flooded the apartment. Five feet away from her stood a woman with a camera held to her eye. She had frizzy hair and was draped in an American flag.
"Are we being filmed?" Linda asked nervously.
"Of course," Mr. Polo answered. "Your sins are known to the universe, woman. There is no way you can hide from the drama of life."
"But, Mr. Polo, I'm not trying to hide anything. I'm a physiotherapist. I'm here to help you if I can."
"Ah, yes, I've heard of your talents. Dr. Young tells me that you can take a sword of any size and swallow it. I've tried it, but my ambition exceeds my performance."
Linda thought he talked like a book, but she felt incapable of making further comments. She listened to him like a disciple hearkening to the Buddha. It didn't hurt that she also felt great sexual desire for the dark little man who talked so dramatically. She was very much aware of the camera eye trained upon her. Her head buzzed with the stimuli.
"Tell me, Miss Lovelace," he asked. "Is that all you do with your life-swallow cocks? Do you know the teachings of the Buddha? Have you drunk as deeply of Krishnamurti as you have of the male reproductive fluid?"
Linda had to admit that she hadn't. She was at a loss about how to get down to business with this patient. He sat across from her and positively glared. She decided to be aggressive. "Dr. Young says-"
"Dr. Young is a fool. Don't talk to me about that man. He has a good front, but no back."
"Dr. Young says you've given up sex. Is that true?"
"I don't know what you mean. I try to maintain a sexual relationship with the universe. Everything is sexual."
"Even the camera?"
"Especially the camera. It's the prick that penetrates every dream."
"Dr. Young says you're tired of life."
"I'm tired of the lack of challenge. I've tried everything, and everything is sour."
"Have you ever been married?"
"Married? Dr. Young sends me an innocent in a white uniform, and she asks me about marriage! The effrontery of the universe!" He appealed to the gods with a mystic gesture.
"I just meant that maybe if you had a good wife and some kids to come home to, you'd be happier."
Mr. Polo rose and moved to sit next to her. Linda felt uncomfortable-and a little frightened-with his arm around her neck. He seemed so intense, so violent. Then, as if reading her thoughts, he said, "You're such a child. I've watched your kind in college, on the beach, at protest demonstrations. You're so vacuous."
"No, I'm an Aquarius. What sign are you?" The question was her last defense. She felt helpless under the onslaught of such a demonic force. She wondered if she shouldn't run.
I'm a Scorpio. It's the sign of sex, and power. We're either home-bound or rootless, according to the books. Right now I'm rootless. I feel like a grasshopper, tasting a little of many experiences and then hopping on."
With this he squeezed Linda's breast surreptitiously, and stood up. He began to hop like a grasshopper, and the camera followed him. Linda felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
"I'd like to get on with the treatment," she said. She clung to the practical in a world gone crazy.
Mr. Polo stopped in mid-hop.
"You mean you want to suck my cock in that gorgeous throat of yours?"
"I would like to give you your treatment."
"Woman! Your nostrils are pinched, and so is your cunt!"
"Whatever-"
"You're like the rest of them! You're nothing but a woman, with a mouth, breasts, and cunt. Give me a man any day! Men are closer to whatever secrets there are in life. Women are things, another race men have to deal with. The first Martians."
"Well, if you don't need me, I'll leave," Linda said. This patient was clearly ready for the loony bin.
Mr. Polo said, "No, you can't leave. Not until the performance is over. We're hoping to find some truth in the evening. Don't deny us that."
"I feel like I'm being played with."
"You're being stimulated. You can't leave now. This might be the most important night of your life."
Linda felt overwhelmed. She didn't know what to say.
"I'm uncomfortable," she bleated.
"You mean you're uncomfortable because you're not doing what you came for? Because you're not sucking my cock like a call girl making her rounds?" Mr. Polo's tongue was sharp. His words burned in Linda's head.
"I'm not a call girl," she said angrily. "I'm a physiotherapist!"
"Well, whatever you call yourself, come over here and suck me off." He lay back on the floor where he'd been squatting, and pulled open his zipper. like everything he did, it was a challenge. The woman he called Vivian brought him a cushion on which to rest his head.
Linda hesitated.
"Well, what's wrong?" he asked angrily.
"Can't we have some ... privacy?"
"Oh, you're so dull for someone who is supposed to be so good at the highest sexual art. Vivian and I are one person. Can you understand that? I'm her male manifestation, and she is my female manifestation-although I must say, being a woman interests me much more at present. Come, join me on the floor. Vivian will be unobtrusive. Or she might join us. We'll have a lesbian grope." He smiled at the thought, and Linda thought he looked just like a puppet she'd had as a child.
Linda went to sit on the floor at Mr. Polo's feet.
"Undress, please," he said. "And, Vivian, why don't you bring us some grass? I hope to achieve ecstasy with this woman, and for that I will need every aid."
Linda sat up and unzipped her dress. The rug was rough and cold on her bare thighs. All she wore was a slip and a black garter belt. Mr. Polo's eyes took in every detail of her body with the hunger of a collector. Vivian sat beside them and offered two white, twisted cigarettes. She wanted to refuse, but she was afraid of arousing Mr. Polo's anger. He exerted a strange spell over her. She decided she'd pretend to smoke if the pot was passed her way.
As they lit up, she studied Vivian. She thought Vivian looked very feminine. Her face was so composed, her smile so peaceful, that Linda liked her immediately. She didn't know if she liked the idea of having a patient's ... wife? lover? ... present when she administered her therapy, but she felt too mesmerized to protest. Once again she was learning that the patient was always right.
When it came her turn to take the marijuana, she tried to fake it. She barely inhaled, but the acrid smoke went up her nose and into her eyes. Mr. Polo was stroking Vivian's thighs and playing with the dark root that grew between his legs. She saw that, and felt like an intruder on their intimacy. Then she was passed another joint, and she felt so funny that she tossed fear to the winds and inhaled deeply.
The next thing she knew, she heard strange, exotic music filling the room, and Vivian was naked and sitting beside her, playing with her hair and stroking her neck. It felt so good that Linda purred like a kitten.
"Don't be so frightened, little one. Lady Vivian won't harm you."
"Let her be frightened!" Mr. Polo said, his voice seeming to reverberate around the room. "We are animals, and fright teaches us our condition."
"Oh, Marco," Vivian said. "Be cool."
This seemed to quiet Mr. Polo. Linda giggled in the silence. She realized that she must be high, and that made her giggle some more. If Helen could only see her now! In a few short weeks, her whole life had changed. She realized that she had been reborn in the last month; she felt as lucky as anyone could feel.
Vivian's hands ran over her body like rain over a flower. Linda responded to her touch, while she watched her patient, who seemed to be manufacturing storm clouds with his eyebrows. It was such a luxurious sensation, being handled and petted by another woman. It was like kissing a mirror. Slowly Vivian undressed her, very slowly and sensuously. Then her hands moved over Linda's small breasts, circling the nipples, toying with her belly, moving into her groin, where the soft hands paused and then became hard. They were like a man's hands suddenly-rough and demanding, impatient and almost hurtful. Linda moaned. She had closed her eyes. When she opened them to thank Vivian, she saw Mr. Polo. His hands teased the soft lips between her legs, so that she began to feel a small ache there.
"You're a lovely object. I want to hold you in my hands and turn you around and around. I want to have the finest, most ecstatic orgasm of my life in your mouth."
Linda turned her body toward him. Vivian's hands stroked him from behind.
Then Linda screamed. Marco had sent his fingers to explore the secret rosebud that blushed between her buttocks. It felt like he had stuck a kitchen match up her fundament.
"My name is Marco Polo because I'm an explorer of forbidden worlds," he said. "If that turns you on, there's a lot more waiting for you."
"But"-she felt silly saying it-"I'm here to give you therapy."
"Nonsense. Women are so pretentious. More than I am in my worst moments. You're here to suck my cock. Why don't you get down to business, if that's what you want to do?"
Linda moved toward him over what seemed a great distance. His root seemed to glow. Her throat ached, anticipating the feel of it. Her lips began to move as she put her hands on his knees and got into a comfortable position on the harsh rug. She felt someone's hands on her body-were they Vivian's or Marco's? It didn't matter. She snuggled up in Marco's warm crotch, her cheek on his lean thigh. Her behind rose in the air like a ghostly ship in the night. She was oblivious, in her cloud of marijuana, to anything but the angry penis rising out of Marco's zipper. She licked its head, tasting the smoky fluid which had oozed from the tiny slit in anticipation of her ministrations. Slowly, her mouth took in the metaphysical wonder of it, until she had achieved full communion with it. She felt like a maiden in the harem of a king.
She also felt something familiar prodding against her buttocks. She thought-briefly-how can he be in two places at the same time? It had to be Vivian. She went back to her king, while the hard object pushed into her hot, jellied lovespot. She was enjoying herself too much with her patient to pay much attention to what Vivian was doing. Whatever was happening, it felt too good to complain about. She began to feel totally fucked, as if every part of her was sexual.
She became one large clitoris. The thrill was almost painful. It was so total.
Once she raised her head and looked around like a frightened animal. She felt like Bambi. She wanted to know what was happening to her-just for future reference. It felt so marvelous. She saw Vivian looming behind her with an apparatus strapped to her waist, and projecting from the harness, a giant rubber male organ, glistening wetly at the tip.
"I love making love to you," Vivian whispered.
"No secrets! No female secrets!" said Marco.
"No secrets," Vivian agreed, shoving the rubber dildo into Linda.
"Now I'm going to show Linda-who has a talent for what she does, like no one I've ever had-the face of true bisexuality! Look closely, Linda. There's something about me you have to understand. No one else does-yet. But they will."
Marco wriggled out of his jumpsuit and lay back like Maria Montez, winking in a parody of seductive camp movies of the forties.
Linda laughed. "That's not what being a woman is like," she said, and regretted her words as soon as they had escaped her lips.
Marco was enraged. "Well, it may be that women just don't know how to be women any longer. And anyway, I'm the first member of the International Lesbian Conspiracy. I'm also bisexual, which adds to the complications."
"It doesn't sound very complicated to me," said Linda.
"Well, look more closely, then," Marco said.
Linda looked at Marco's dark, wet flesh. "It's a cock. So what?" The marijuana had made her into another person. She felt free, and even a little aggressive. But she looked again at the dark enraged flesh between her patient's legs.
Her fingers slipped into something wet and open. She held her fingers in front of her face, as if to make sure that she hadn't slipped them into her own cranny without thinking. Then she probed again under Marco's testicles, which hung like potent, wet jewels over her inquisitive fingers. It was true.
There was a slit under Marco's balls that very much resembled a woman's vagina.
She gasped. "What is this?" she asked, shocked to her core.
"That, my dear," Marco answered in a heavy, patronizing tone of voice, "is the sexual apparatus of a being who has transcended all sexual categories. I am a man, and I am a woman. You must choose who you wish to deal with."
"Why don't you just go fuck yourself then?" Linda suggested good-naturedly. Then she screamed. "Oh, God!" Her scream was made doubly fierce by the harsh stroke of the artificial phallus Vivian was jabbing into her lately neglected lovespot.
"What can I do?" she cried, her ululation echoing the cries of hundreds of thousands of modern women looking for an Answer. "I'm so confused!"
Marco answered her question very directly. He grabbed her ears and pushed her dazed head down onto the masculine half of his being.
"Om," he intoned. "Om."
She threw her whole stoned being into the one thing she knew she was good at-deep throat. As she did it, she felt a little less inadequate about all the other things that had come up. Marco responded like any other man to the deft manipulations of her tongue. He was human, something she had begun to doubt.
Vivian plunged into her like a man long imprisoned.
The combination of sensations affected her more strongly than any experience she had ever had. She was consumed by man, woman, and woman-man. And by her own feelings, which, she had to admit, were mixed up. Marijuana clouded everything, made everything possible, somehow.
She felt like a top being spun carelessly by two children.
Marco said to Vivian, "We've finally done it, haven't we?"
"I think I have to go now," Linda said nervously.
Marco took her hand. "I have to thank you, Linda-and I don't thank anybody, no matter what they do for me-you've brought Vivian and me closer, now that we've had the experience of being one flesh through another person." He reached for Vivian's hand. The expression on his face was so glorious that Linda knew she would remember it the rest of her life. She felt complete.
"I hope I've been of some help," Linda said modestly.
"Oh, you have," Marco said. "You don't know. For the first time in three years, I feel truly married. We couldn't have done it without your throat. Now we can really love, regardless of sex." He sounded happy.
On such a hopeful note, Linda began dressing.
"You still talk like a book," she said.
"I hope the book has taught you something," he responded.
"I've learned a lot. I really have; and I appreciate it. But you're not quite human, for all of that."
"That's the idea," Marco said. He watched appreciatively as Linda covered her body with her slip and dress. When she carefully tapped her nurse's hat on her head, he chuckled. "God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. . .
Marco's face was transfigured. Linda felt easy as she made ready to leave. Marco walked with her to the door, grinning like a child who knows the secret of the universe. Vivian smiled, cat-like, in the background.
Everyone smiled. Something good had happened in the unpredictable universe.
* * *
Linda drove home that night to Calico Drive with new ideas in her head. She was immensely grateful to Marco-although she'd never tell him that-for taking his sharp stick and scratching something larger in the sand of her emotions. For the first time in her life, she was aware that she had no emotional background, that she'd been programmed from birth to walk and talk like a sexy Barbie doll.
As she went to sleep, she felt so new she was sorry for the rest of the world-the world that didn't know what she did. She slept a peaceful sleep, which passed very much like a marijuana haze.
In the morning she couldn't wait to talk to Helen. She was at the first stage of awareness.
"Ohh"-she yawned-"I'm so happy, I don't know what to do."
"I'll tell you what to do," Helen said. "Don't bother me at breakfast with a sales pitch for paradise."
"But, Helen," Linda said. "You just don't know how much I've grown in the last few weeks. I feel like a rocket going to the moon."
"You mean you're back to the rockets' red glare again?" Helen said. Whenever she had a hangover, she felt mean.
"I feel like I've been to the moon," Linda said quite seriously. "And after yesterday, I think I have the equipment to walk on it. It's so wonderful, Helen. I wish you had been there. This patient of mine taught me things that don't even appear in Cosmopolitan."
"You mean he fucked you in the ass?" Helen grinned nastily.
"Be serious," said Linda. "It went way beyond sex."
"Where could it go after that?"
"Helen, I'm talking about the face of bisexuality. Haven't you heard about that?"
"No. And I haven't heard about diamond mines in the Bronx. So what?" Helen bit down hard on a grapefruit section, and the juice went straight into Linda's eye.
"Ouch! You don't have to get violent about it! Just because I've had the honor of meeting a man who has some brains as well as balls."
"That's just it, honey. The kind of guy I meet, I wouldn't want to hand out potato chips to. I fuck 'em, and I say good night. It's just wham, bam, and thank you, man!"
"Oh, Helen," Linda said, "you're too cynical for me."
"Isn't it amazing what coming a few times will do for you?" Helen picked up the morning newspaper and turned to the sports section; she liked athletes.
* * *
After breakfast, Linda went to visit her employer.
"Dr. Young, do you think it would be possible for us to talk sometime?"
"We're talking right now, aren't we?" he said, moving defensively behind his desk.
"Well, yes. But I don't mean about my job."
"What's the matter? Already you don't like the work? I know these guys are creeps, but they pay the bills ... and I got a lot of bills, Linda. Have a heart, help a poor man pay for his retirement."
Linda was exasperated. "Dr. Young! I like the work! I really do!"
He relaxed, smiled, put his feet up on his desk. Then, as if playing his best hand, he said, "Well, what's the problem then, honey?"
"Gosh, Dr. Young, so many things are going through my head because of the people I've been meeting. I feel strange, and a little scared. It's all ... so new. I realize now what a dumb bunny
I've been all these years. Marco ... Mr. Polo, showed me so much."
"That pervert!" Dr. Young hissed. "Don't talk to me about him!" Linda watched in amazed horror as Dr. Young turned almost purple and began to beat his boot heels on the desk. In a minute or so he had gained enough control of himself to reach into his desk drawer and pull out a .45-caliber automatic pistol, which he thunked heavily in front of him.
"Next time I see that grease ball, I'm gonna blow a hole in him the size of the Grand Canyon!"
"But, Dr. Young, what did he do?" Linda couldn't imagine what Marco had done to cause such rage.
"He tried to fuck my nurse! Nobody fucks that cow but me!"
Linda sighed. The extent of foolish male jealousy always amazed her. Didn't they realize that sex and love were two different things?
She left Dr. Young fondling his .45 and decided to return on a better day.
Dr. Young was really dumb sometimes, she decided, for such a smart man. He was as jealous as any man she'd ever met. She found herself wishing that he'd be that jealous of her, but she guessed her breasts weren't large enough. It made her want to take one of those bust developing courses she'd seen advertised in the movie magazines she'd read as a teen-ager. It took so little to set him off! And there were so many facets to him! She was always a little surprised, she realized, at whatever he said. He was the most interesting man she'd ever met, and she knew she had a lot more to learn from him than deep throat.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Linda's new job had given her the kind of confidence she'd never felt before. She was a somebody, she thought, as she looked at herself in her bathroom mirror. And all because, she mused, of my throat. Sex is really the key to everything, even when the door does prove a little hard to open, as in Albert Finster's case.
She gargled for three minutes after she brushed her teeth. Since entering her new profession, she had begun to apply tender, loving care to her most valuable asset. If she felt the raw tickle of a sore throat coming on, she worried more about it than any opera singer.
She looked at her body, prolonging her morning ablutions in order to think things out. Then she began to shave her pubic area. People who worked with their bodies had to pay attention to them. As she applied the shaving lather, she reviewed the last few weeks. She wanted to talk more to Dr. Young. He had shown her the road to happiness, and-in such a short time-that road was forking out in all kinds of wonderful directions. She had seen poor Mr. Maltz; and strange, stimulating Marco, who'd forced her to think for the first time in her life; and Albert. ... What about Albert? She decided there were a lot of people in the world with hang-ups, people in need of her services. She repressed a tiny shudder at the thought of Albert; he was a special case. She would never forget him.
What confused and excited her most were the possibilities Marco had hinted at, and she wanted to discuss them with Dr. Young. She felt newborn, like a baby, with access to the answers. There was so much more to life than just lying around on Calico Drive and sleeping with every stranger who asked her out. She suspected the existence of other worlds, and she knew that her job-and her throat-could take her to them. Dr. Young had opened Pandora's box, and Pandora would never be the same.
CHAPTER NINE
"Deep throat, deep throat, deeper than deep is your t-h-r-o-a-t...."
Linda stopped dead in her tracks at the kitchen door, with the tune still vibrating in her throat. Helen was leaning on her arms over the kitchen table while a man dressed in white moved behind her in the old familiar manner. He was whistling a happy tune and waving his arms about. Linda could see enough of her roommate to see that her robe was pushed up and that she was fully cooperating.
"What is this, the milkman's matinee?" Linda asked.
"No, I'm the juice man, ma'am," the man said, without looking around. Linda shook her head and went out to the pool. She felt like swimming for the first time in months.
* * *
"The juice man!" she said to Helen, amazement in her voice and fun in her eyes. "Helen, you're getting desperate!"
"Honey, I'm the same old Helen, no matter what you've turned into. My needs don't change. Chuck just came along when I was feeling the itch."
"But the juice man?" Linda asked again, pretending that she couldn't believe it.
"Nothing wrong with Chuck. He's a good lay, when he's feeling his Cheerios. It's just that you have to catch him early, before he's delivered his juice to every other woman on the block."
"Helen, I wouldn't talk to you like this if I didn't know you, but it sounds like you're really hard up."
" 'Hard up' isn't the word for it, Linda. I'm desperate!"
Linda was genuinely surprised to find her hard-boiled, easy-living roommate so close to tears. It shook her up. Helen had always been her big sister-the tough, no-holds-barred, confident sister who had all the answers. Now, looking at her in her pink bathrobe and fluffy pink slippers, Linda thought she might be near collapse. She hadn't put on her make-up, and her hair was a mess. She looked her age, and more.
"What's wrong, Helen? You're not your old self."
"I will be," she said, noisily sipping her coffee, "after my morning coffee. And don't be so fucking patronizing, if you please. There's not a problem in the world I can't lick."
"I'm sorry, Helen. I'm just a little worried about you."
Helen looked up from her coffee, ready to cry or fight; Linda couldn't tell which.
"Do you mean that?"
"Of course. You're not yourself lately. Maybe if you'd talk to me, it would help."
Helen looked at her as if she were perfectly aware of the reversal of roles. Her cold, appraising glance shot shivers through Linda, who didn't know whether to shut up in the face of it, or proceed.
"You've changed a hell of a lot in the last few weeks, kid. You know me. I'm rough-and-ready Helen, right? Able to handle anything, right? Now I look at you and it's like looking at my old self. I don't know what's happened to me."
"What's wrong, Helen?"
"What's wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong. Ever since that day by the pool--right there in the backyard-when you said that you knew there was more to life, I've been thinking. ... So, in a way, all this is your fault, because I'm not used to thinking. It fucks me up. And the problem is, I'm no good for anything right now because of it. I'm smart, too. I know there's got to be more to life than just a bunch of nameless cocks, and lying on my ass all day. But I don't know where to start, and..."
"Helen!" Linda blurted.
Her friend had her face down to the table. "I feel so lost," she said.
* * *
Linda was a very sober driver on her way to Dr. Young's office. Helen's words played in her mind in the same way Dr. Young's tapes usually filled her ears. "Lost," Helen had said. The word knocked around inside Linda. Now that she'd found something, the four-letter word frightened her. It made her feel very insecure. When another driver tried to cut her off as she turned, she honked dozens of times in anger and frustration, like a goose forced slightly off course.
CHAPTER TEN
Dr. Young's office had received a new paint job. The smell of newness made her feel even more insecure. His nurse sat at her desk looking very starched and efficient, a role Linda hadn't seen her play before. What was worse, the cow even smiled at Linda when she saw her. What was up? She frowned at the new paint smell, and frowned at the nurse, and stumbled on Dr. Young's new carpet as she strode into his office.
He sat behind his desk dressed in a natty new suit, bent over an account book. He winked at her when he looked up.
"Sit down, Linda. I'll be with you as soon as I'm done counting my money. It's a heavy task you've imposed on me. I've never been any good at figures."
Linda just looked at him, trying to get up her nerve to ask what in hell was going on.
As usual, he read her thoughts, and had an answer.
"You're probably wondering what's going on," he said. Before she could say anything, he interjected, "I'll tell you what's going on. You're the hottest thing to hit the sex therapy field since Dr. Kinsey. You're going to make me rich, my little thrush-throat, my little mouth-of-plenty. On the little feedback I've gotten so far, I'm convinced you're going to go over bigger than Freud." He sounded like a hotshot promoter.
"I don't understand," Linda said. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about money, my little tickle-tonsils: the one thing in the world as important as sex. That's what I'm going to make-hand over fist-with you."
"Is that why you've..."
He didn't let her finish. He was too excited.
"Yes! A new paint job, a new carpet, even a new high-toned attitude on the cow. She knows I can afford to replace her pretty soon."
"All because of me? But what did I do?"
"What did you do? What did you do? Open your mouth, and stick your finger down your throat, my little goldmine. You saved me from poverty row! Every patient you've seen has called me to rave about you! At first, I admit, I thought they were talking about me-but it was you! They all report amazing results-results I've never gotten in my entire professional life."
"But I've seen only a few people."
Linda felt blown away by the unexpected turn of events.
"Yes, I know you've seen only a few people. That was my fault."
"Fault?" she asked, suspicious of the word.
"Yes, fault. I gave you some of my roughest cases, just to get you off my hands. Oh, I'll admit it was my mistake, but it's one I'm glad I made. The point is, Mr. Maltz, Mr. Polo, and Mr. Finster-three cases I'd had for years without any success-report miraculous results because of your therapy."
Linda still didn't know what was going on.
"Don't you see, girl?" Dr. Young asked, closing his account book.
"No ... I'm sorry, but I don't."
"I mean," Dr. Young said, still flying high, "that Mr. Maltz has gotten a new toupee and is seeing ladies every night-he's thrown those ashes he kept on his mantel in the garbage. He's gone from being a total recluse to being a sexy senior citizen."
"I mean," he said, continuing in the same vein, "that Mr. Polo, who used to be so turned off on women that he planned to set up his own homosexual community, is now planning to have a baby with his wife. Of course, he's having the baby. And furthermore, that creep Albert Finster-that little Coke fiend-tells me he had his first orgasm with you. I regard him as your ... my ... our biggest success, since he makes the most money. What's more, he's now reconciled to working for Seven-Up, and he'll refer everyone he meets to me. To us!"
Dr. Young beamed. In his expensive new suit, Linda thought he looked like Marcus Welby, M.D. But maybe it was just the smell of money emanating from him. She didn't know how to respond to what he was telling her; she supposed she should act pleased, but instead she felt cheated, because she couldn't ask him the questions she wanted to ask.
"...In other words, my dear, when I touched you, I touched gold. I have big plans for you, believe me."
Linda just stared at him. Why was he talking about money? She didn't understand.
"I tell you, Linda, in a few weeks we'll have Masters and Johnson calling us. I'll finally be recognized for my real worth. I'll show those rotten bastards!" He shook his fist at nothing in general, looking winded from his five-minute tirade about instant success.
Linda thought he sounded as crazy as he had the first time she met him, which made her realize something she hadn't seen before; everyone she'd met since the day she walked into his office was crazy in one way or another. Kooks, weirdos, she would have called them six months before. Was that what she had to learn in order to satisfy the cravings within herself? How to be crazy? Was that the secret to finding "something more" in life?
"Dr. Young?" she said to him.
Without bothering to look at her, he spun around in his swivel chair, so that all she could see of him was his back. "Yes, my dear." His tone was almost spooky, Linda thought.
"Why are you turning your back on me? I have some things I want to ask you."
"Don't worry," he said, picking up a hand mirror from a table behind the desk, "I can see you. I'm turning my back because I suspect you have some very gloomy, dull things to say to me, and I just can't bear looking at your face when you say them. It would depress me too much, just when I was beginning to feel mildly exuberant about this latest turn of fate. But, go ahead, feel free to unburden your little soul. I guess I have to pay the handling charges if I want the freight."
So Linda had to tell the back of his head about her experiences with Marco-the bewildering, fascinating things Marco had said-and the new thoughts and feelings stirring in her. She felt like a little girl confessing she'd been naughty while out playing. When she'd finished, she sat with her hands jammed nervously between her knees, waiting for his verdict.
He spun around, looking so furious he was almost apoplectic. "Rot! That's all greasy kid stuff you're talking about!" he screamed, and picking up the heavy .45 that was still on his desk from the last time she mentioned Marco to him, he pointed it straight at her.
"You d-don't have to get mad about it," she stammered ready to wet her bikini pants.
"Get mad about it! You're giving me a heart attack, and maybe an ulcer, and definitely a headache, and I shouldn't get upset?"
He fired. There was a deafening roar, and Linda was struck in the center of her forehead by a rubber dart. But she had already fainted.
* * *
When she awoke, she felt something heavy and soft rubbing across her lips. Her eyes fluttered open. Was this heaven? A friendly male organ winked at her, only a few inches from her face.
"That's better. I thought that would bring you back to life," said Dr. Young, stuffing his reviver back into his expensive trousers. He zipped up with a flourish. "Now, if you promise not to do that again, I may let you feel it later."
She was lying on his couch. The blonde nurse stood at her feet trying to look concerned.
"You shot me."
"Shock therapy, my darling. A desperate measure, I grant you, but the situation seemed to call for desperate measures. I saw all my money going down the drain. If I ever see that degenerate poet Polo again, I'll use real bullets."
Linda's head swam. "But what about what I said to you?"
"You found something better. Me-and money. You're going to be wading in dough before I'm through with you."
"Money." A light bulb was lit.
"You know. The stuff that doesn't grow on trees. I've got plans for you-that is, if you'll just do what you're told and stop trying to think with that inadequate brain of yours."
"But, Dr. Young," Linda protested, making her last stand with the amazing man. "There must be more to life than money."
"Nonsense. I don't want to hear that crap. You'll make me rich, and I'll make you happy."
"How?" Then she saw what he meant. Happiness fluttered like a dove under his zipper. She surrendered at once.
He moved toward her, barking instructions like a surgeon handling an emergency case. "Nurse, undress her!"
"Dr. Young," Linda said.
"Take it out, Linda. I'm going to show you happiness-all the happiness there is."
Carefully, lovingly, delicately, treating it as if it were nitroglycerin, Linda extricated his therapeutic tool from his silk shorts. Then, beginning with a delicate lick, that of a kitten lapping milk, she began her ascent to ecstasy.
Dr. Young's enormous instrument was probing the top of her lungs. He was in so deep that he was a part of her. And into her neuter fount of love, his blonde nurse had thrust her plump, long red tongue so deeply that the thrill echoed in her stomach. She burned at both ends, and it cast a lovely light. Never had she thought that one day Dr. Young might be paying so much attention to her, or that his bovine nurse would be a part of her happiness; but she'd imagined it. As she moved her curly head up and down on his tremendous implement, she felt cleared-at each movement-of her questions and doubts. This was happiness, she decided, as she accidentally broke south wind over the nurse's tongue. This was solid, she thought, scraping her teeth just below her mouthful's head; the rest is just crazy. None of her thoughts was worth the feeling of Dr. Young throbbing in her mouth.
She came, and all the noon whistles of a dozen small Texas towns went off at once.
Sirens screeched metallically, and kicked dogs howled.
"Freud, Jung, and Homey!" he hissed, coming. "Horney! Krafft-Ebing! Horny Horney, fucking Freud! Jung and Young!"
His juices dripped over her tongue, down her lips, over her cheeks. Linda shone.
* * *
Dr. Young sat at his desk with his feet up, looking tired but blissfully relaxed. His nurse stood beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other buttoning her uniform. Linda sat in front of them, totally sated. Dr. Young had managed to wipe her worried slate clean, as she had wiped her mouth. For the moment she listened dutifully as Dr. Young spoke to her of his plans.
"That was just a taste of what's in store for you if you can managed to do exactly what I tell you. I may be a cripple by the time I'm ready to retire"-he felt gingerly for his crucified crotch, and made a face-"but I'll be rich!"
"What do you want me to do?" Linda asked, completely under his power.
"That's the spirit!" Dr. Young was suddenly exultant. "Bring her the contract and a pen that works, and then break out the champagne, Elsie."
In a flash, one page of fine print was put in Linda's lap, and a ball-point pen was placed between her fingers.
"Contract?" she asked, in a happy daze.
"Sure, you know, like a marriage contract-it binds us for life. I'm your agent, the impresario of your talents. I have great plans for both of us."
Linda signed, gurgling agreeably deep in her throat.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Number one on Dr. Young's list of plans for Linda was the case of the Flying Gaston Brothers, three members of the internationally renowned family of circus acrobats. Dr. Young thought she needed a little more experience-which would result in better references and better word-of-mouth before she took her first step into the big time. What that was, Linda wasn't sure, but Dr. Young had mentioned movies, and famous sex clinics, and famous people. He had become so expansive with a glass of champagne in him that-once again-Linda had to blink at the swiftness of his costume change.
"A little more experience, kid, and you'll be ready. You'll love these jumping beans, the Flying Gaston Brothers. Good luck, and don't ever shout, 'Hey Rube!' in a crowded ladies room."
Before she could think twice, she was on a plane to Sarasota, winter quarters of the great Canetti and Perlman Circus, the principal attraction of which were her next clients, the Flying Gaston Brothers.
On the plane, she listened to Dr. Young's taped description of them.
"Case numbers 631, 632, and 633: the Flying Gaston Brothers, Tibor, Sandor, and Szabo. They are the three youngest members of the ill-starred family of Hungarian acrobats whose feats have amazed the world. ... Sorry to get so carried away, Linda, but I just love a circus. ... Extravagant pay. The patients report that, individually, they are unable to have a meaningful relationship with a woman because of their desire to have simultaneous intercourse. It seems that they have grown extraordinarily close through their years of performance because of the danger they face during their nightly shows. Your job, Linda: satisfy them separately, and collect their money."
Once in Sarasota, Linda wasted no time on the local tourist attractions-the tawdry shops and littered avenues. She took a taxi directly to the headquarters of the Canetti and Perlman Circus, which-she was surprised to find-consisted of a small tent (they undoubtedly called it "the big top") and a dozen house trailers. She had the driver let her off at the main entrance. As soon as she walked inside the tent, she knew she was going to enjoy herself with the Flying Gaston Brothers. The smell of sawdust excited every gland she possessed, and the bleachers, tightropes, trapezes, spotlights, and rumbling animal cages touched a nerve that had been dormant since she was nine. She wanted cotton candy in her mouth, and brave men swinging through the air above her head while the lions roared.
"Here comes the circus," she chanted, walking into the center ring and looking up at the men swinging and walking spider-like so far above. She stood and watched with her neck craned as they moved through their routines, until one of them noticed her and called down. "Hey, you! You got to pay for your ticket, you wanta watch the acrobats." And with that, he grabbed a bar held up by thick strands of metal and swooped over her head.
"Dr. Young sent me-from Miami Beach," she shouted up, cupping her hands over her mouth.
She watched the man who had called to her swing back and then drop. She screamed as he fell, averting her eyes. Then he was at her side, as springy as a super ball, with a smile so broad that she could have swung a kiss across it.
"Peanuts, popcorn!" he barked good-humoredly.
"...and beautiful ladies from Miami Beach. I'm Sandor, the greatest of the Gastons, and the handsomest, you betcha. Are you Linda, the answer to a triple-swinger's prayers?"
He spoke with what Linda assumed had to be a Hungarian accent with a little Rubbish thrown in.
"I'm Linda," she agreed, moving her tongue over her lips and looking seductive, as Dr. Young had coached her. It wasn't difficult, after all: Sandor had the best body she'd ever seen on a man. Muscles rippled across it like an oil slick on the Gulf of Mexico. He was hairy everywhere-something she'd always thought a sure sign of virility. She was glad she had come to the circus, she decided, despite what Dr. Young had said about the Flying Gaston Brothers.
"They're like dogs in heat. They'll fight over you the first hour. To them, women are like sheep. You'll be lucky you don't end up scraps for the lion."
Sandor smiled at her the way matinee idols used to smile at women, and she began to feel very cozy in his company. She moved closer, and then leaped into his marvelous arms when she heard a Tarzan-like shriek.
"Het seksovuli!" she heard, in a tongue she assumed to be Hungarian, and then a half-naked man dropped to earth beside her. Protected by Sandor's strong arms, she glanced at the new arrival. He was half Sandor's size, and sported a big black bushy moustache above a sneering mouth that properly belonged on a warthog.
She looked at Sandor for help. "This is my crazy brother, Szabo," he said, introducing him grudgingly. "But he's a louse who thinks he's the brains of the family. Pay no attention."
"Enchanted, I'm sure," Szabo said to Linda, bowing from the waist. He was one of the ugliest little men Linda had ever met, but something about him-perhaps the skeptical, knowing winks he was giving her over his glasses-prevented her from dismissing him.
"You're some tomato," he told her. "That high-priced four-flusher Young got us somebody this time, not those bimbos he was shipping us COD. You look like a classy broad."
Linda stood nervously at attention, with Sandor's ridiculously strong arm supporting her, as the awful little man inspected her.
"What is this, a slave auction?" she asked, as Szabo leeringly grabbed each small breast and hefted it like a butcher weighing a brisket.
"Just making sure we're getting first-class goods, sister," he told her, taking a cigar from the waistband of his trunks and sticking it between his yellow, irregular teeth. He wriggled it in her direction as he felt her thighs and rubbed a lecherous hand between her legs. Finally, he stuck two sweaty, callused fingers in her mouth and pulled open her teeth. He leered as he looked down her throat. "That a great epiglottis she's got there, Sandy."
"Don't call me 'Sandy'! " his brother protested. "I'll forget to set your net, you little elephant turd."
"What am I, a horse?" Linda asked, her mouth still open wide.
"If you were a horse," Szabo told her, "I'd bet his week's salary on you. But you're not a nag, you're a girl, and girls are losing propositions. Still, I'd recommend you to any horse doctor in town." As he spoke, he waggled his heavy eyebrows in a way that made Linda's stomach do flip-flops.
Horrid little man, she thought, looking around for the third Gaston brother. If they were so inseparable, where was number three? She was going to ask for Tibor, when she was goosed like she'd never been goosed before, except once-at an American Legion convention when she was eighteen.
"Oooh!" she shouted to the bleachers. "Oooh!"
The hand had penetrated at least two inches into her wet cleft, through sheer panties and a skirt striped like the American flag. She leaped to new heights.
"Filthy man!" she exclaimed, feeling like a mouse had just run up her trap. She shook herself, causing Sandor's and Szabo's mouths to wince at the unexpected sight of her soft breasts jiggling. When the same hand that had goosed her reached for a tender tit, she swung around and slapped his face.
"Awful creature," she shouted at him, out of her head with surprise. Then he smiled.
Linda took one look at the beatific smile on his simple face, and she knew she was in love for the twentieth time in her life. Tibor's smile contained all that was left of innocence in a knowing world. Even through his leer-which was as pure as a caveman's-Linda saw a heart unalloyed.
He beeped at her.
"What is he?" she asked his brothers. "Clarabel the clown?"
"He doesn't talk," Sandor told her. "One day when we were kids, he landed on his tongue, and since then, not a word has come from him. He's smart, and he's good on the wires, but all he does is beep that silly horn at people."
"But can he hear me?" Linda was anxious to know.
"Just say something to him-something dirty, especially-and you'll find out."
"Why did you goose me?" Linda asked him. His reply was a variety of beeps, long and short, that sounded like pornographic Morse code.
"All right, all right," she said, grinning at him. Tibor was so cute, with his dark curls and leering, angelic face. He was in pretty good shape himself, she noted. What am I going to do with three guys at the same time? she wondered.
Then she said it aloud: "What am I supposed to do with the three of you? You're all crazy."
"we'll show you!" they roared, as if on signal. Looking at each other, they unbuttoned and moved toward her in unison, tugging at their trunks as they advanced. In the background, Linda could hear the lion roar jealously.
"wait!" she said, holding her hands up for them to stop.
But they just kept on coming. And coming. And coming.
* * *
A few hours later Linda was having gulydsuppen with the three subdued Gaston brothers, as well as their mother, father, and grandmother. They sat in a modern house trailer near the big top.
Linda had heard a lot about the family in the space of a few hours. She'd heard about the family's exploits in every circus in Europe-the trapeze acts Tibor and Szabo specialized in, Sandor's lion-taming, cannon-balling, and tight-wire walking; but most of all she had heard about Mama and Papa Gaston, who had three very proud sons. She heard stories about the old couple's great romance in Budapest, about how they became the best trapeze act in Eastern Europe after World War I, about how they had immigrated to America during the Great Depression, about how they'd fallen into each other's arms after hurtling through the air on trapezes, after being shot from cannons, and even during a tumbling act; and to top it off, Szabo told her in cruel and lavish detail about his father's injuries over the years, injuries that included a broken spine, one leg snapped four separate times, broken collarbones, and smashed fingers; but after all these stories, Linda still regarded them with a kind of dumb awe. They seemed so composed, so majestic, with the dignity one usually finds in primitive stone heads. Linda thought their faces looked different from any she'd seen in Florida or Texas. She had asked Szabo about them, after trying to talk to them before dinner and getting nowhere.
"They're deaf as posts, that's all," he told her. He tapped the ashes from his cigar onto the toe of his shoe and kicked them at her. "We keep them around because it looks good. They don't eat much, and besides, they earn their keep.
We've already sold their bodies to Duke Medical School."
Linda made a face at him for teasing her, but after looking at them sit like old gravy lumps for a while, she began to wonder if he had been. She watched their faces for any flicker of response as Szabo told them his story about meeting her.
"So listen to this, Mama, Papa, Baba: after I called down at her, I jumped into the net! She must have thought I was superman! And there Sandor was, trying to sell her the sawdust on the ground, and then ... then Tibor sneaked up behind her and gave her a big goose!" He roared with laughter, his eyebrows rocking with it. His brothers roared in response, slapping each other on the back. Grandma cackled like a hen. Only Mama and Papa Gaston failed to join in the laughter.
Then Linda saw-like the thundering dawn coming up out of China across the bay-mirth playing across Papa's face. Slowly, slowly, the flicker of amusement became a tentative smile, which grew and grew; and then the old man laughed, two minutes after his son had finished talking.
"That's it," Sandor encouraged. "There's life in the old boy yet," Szabo said proudly.
The old man bellowed and shook with laughter, gathering life as he laughed, pounding the table with his heavy fists.
"My three idiot boys," he said in croaking, heavily accented English. "My three stumblebums! Tibor, he stuck his finger up her pussy and don't even know about his cock! That he swings on, that he pole-vaults with in bed so his old man can't get no more sleep than a donkey! Three boys I got, three fine sons, and they are like fairies of the circus, can't mount a woman without the other two being there!"
He poked his wife in the ribs, which tickled her enough to cause a grin to slide from ear to ear. When he had her giggling almost noiselessly, he stood up slowly, as if in great pain, and glared at the three sheepish men sitting across from him.
"Tonight, this is your last chance. No more money from me if this Miami Beach hook don't do the trick. I mean business!" he thundered, suddenly picking up pieces of goulash and throwing it into their stupefied faces.
In their dressing room, Linda asked the boys about their father. The dressing table lights were in her eyes.
"He acted like he could kill you," she told them.
"He'd have to catch us first," Szabo said, admiring himself in the mirror. Linda watched Tibor's eyes widen in horror. His mouth made a silent O of protest.
"I don't understand," she said.
Sandor volunteered, "Papa wants another generation of Flying Gastons. He sees the act dying out if we don't have kids. But what can we do? We have a unique problem, which is why we've been going to see Dr. Young as often as we can. How can we have kids if the only way we can fuck is together on the same woman? Only women we can do that with are whores, if you'll pardon the expression."
"Not like you, baby doll," Szabo said to her, following that up with a lunge for her breasts that she decided not to repulse. It was clearly time for her to go to work, but she had no idea where she should start.
"I don't know what to do," she told them.
"Shucks, that's all right," Szabo said as he continued to maul her breasts. Sandor smiled at her, puzzled.
Tibor beeped, and beeped again. The brothers looked at him as if he'd just told them about a gold mine.
"that's it!" they shouted.
"What's it?" Linda asked, as they advanced on her for the second time that day.
* * *
They'd given her a tight, tiny, spangled suit that her breasts kept falling out of, and once she had changed into it--after they'd all grabbed at her until she could feel nothing but hands everywhere and had to keep shutting her eyes-they had helped her up the ladder to their trapeze platform under the big top.
There she sat, shivering with cold and fear, looking over the empty bleachers. Once, she had the feeling she was falling. The brothers had told her their idea, and Linda, putting her life in their hands, agreed it was a good one.
Two of them-Tibor and Szabo-did a trapeze act, while Sandor specialized in getting shot out of a cannon. Linda was to perch on the trapeze platform, and as Tibor and Szabo swung to it with the other's help, she was to reward their daring with a deep throat massage. Linda asked why her therapy had to be given under such dramatic circumstances.
Szabo said, poking her nipple, "Because that's where the boys are separated from the men. It gives us all a charge. I don't feel sexy without it."
"I hope you feel sexy enough with it, because I don't intend to do anything that scary twice." She wasn't happy about the idea, but she didn't want to fall down on her job, or make Dr. Young angry at her; and besides, she did look awfully good in the trapeze artist's outfit. Kind of like Gina Lol-lobrigida in Trapeze.
So here I am, she thought, ass up on a tall pole, waiting for two Tarzans to swing to me so that I can give them head. The brothers seemed to think that the competition of their work might give them the charge necessary to swing separately.
In the still of the arena, Linda imagined she heard a flare of trumpets, and the grand voice of the ringmaster below her, announcing: "the flying Gaston brothers! the most stupendous, breath-taking trapeze act in the world!"
She braced herself for a practical joke-like Szabo flying in cigar-first, or Tibor coming at the platform from another angle and sending his foot up her third ring.
Then she heard a rush of wind, and the thunk of feet on the platform. Tibor grinned at her, stuck out his tongue, and unbuttoned himself. His pole stuck straight out at her, bent with tension. Linda took it in both hands and guided it into her mouth. Her tongue went pitter-patter against it like rain on the roof of a tent, and then he stepped back and swung off into space. Her eyes followed him with horror.
'You're sticking out!" she cried, but he couldn't hear her. He swung toward his brother with his pole projecting, and as Szabo let go of his swing in order to do the famous Flying Gaston Brothers act of catching Tibor's legs in midair after a triple flip, Tibor's airborne shaft clubbed him in the face.
"It was lucky I didn't fall," Szabo told her when he was safe on the platform. "We're not using a net. Gave me a bloody nose, that club of his." He loomed above her in the same wet space his brother had recently occupied.
Linda rolled his hot saber around in her mouth.
"Can't you guys stay a little longer, and give me a chance to get something going?" she asked.
"Wish I could, sweet lips, but this act is all precision timing." And off he swung, her lips following him. Szabo hadn't buttoned up either! And there came Tibor! It was as if the two brothers were dueling in midair. Their swords crashed together. Linda closed her eyes.
Once safe on the ground, Linda fainted. She came around to the smell of salts, sawdust, cotton candy, horse manure, and lion piss. She was in a little tent at the base of a big black shaft.
Was it a cannon? Oh no. ... She sat up, brushing sawdust from herself.
"Is that a cannon?" she asked Tibor and Szabo, who stood smiling beatifically down at her, their arms around each other's shoulders.
"That's Sandor's cannon, all right," Szabo said. "Now it's his turn. If he has the kind of luck we had with you, we'll all be cured."
"What happened up there?"
Tibor beeped. "What happened?" Szabo asked incredulously. "We came, that's what happened in midair. What a thrill! A whole new act-the first flying fuck!"
They led a weakly protesting Linda to the ladder that rose to the mouth of the cannon. Sandor was already inside, positioned for Linda's mouth. She crept up the ladder and peeked down into the large hole. She saw nothing.
"Come on in," Sandor boomed from what seemed like a long way away. "Just slide right in, and keep you mouth open. This is gonna be some real fireworks, you betcha!"
Consigning herself to the mercy of the gods, Linda stuck her head, then her shoulders, into the hole, and pushed herself in. She looked like Alice going down the rabbit hole.
Something sharp scratched her shoulders. It was Sandor's toenails. She gasped, but kept on going. All in the line of duty, she told herself, pulling her way up his legs until her chin rammed into the end of his own popgun. She closed her mouth on it for dear life, as she felt a great roar and shaking.
The next thing she knew, she was sailing through the air-over the center ring-with her head still clamped between Sandor's thighs, and her mouth still tight on his projectile.
It was a Canetti and Perlman Circus first.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"I was terrified," she told Dr. Young. He had prescribed a weekend of complete rest, but even in bed with the covers pulled over her head, she kept seeing herself flying through the air.
Dr. Young laughed. "I would love to have seen it. The very thought of you shooting through the air with your mouth clamped down on a cock is enough to make me laugh even in my grave."
"Dr. Young! I could have been killed! Aren't you even the least little bit concerned about me?"
"I'm sorry, darling. I need a little laugh now and then." He choked his last chortle and wiped his eyes. He was wearing another new suit, Linda noted.
"But you hit the safety net," he told her. "And you're here safe and sound. That's what counts. Now, to work!"
But Linda refused to be jollied into listening to his plans. She heard him talking enthusiastically about her going to St. Louis, but she didn't listen. She put her head in her hands and cried softly to herself, feeling more depressed than she'd ever been in her life. He doesn't care about me, she finally understood. I'm just a tool he can use. She wanted to curl up and lick her hurts, like a panda licking a burned paw.
Finally Dr. Young wound down. She couldn't look at him. He had been so unfeeling that she was afraid she'd really break down, and she couldn't bear to do that in front of him. She loved him too much. What she was finally realizing, after all her weeks of seeing him, was that he didn't feel the same way about her.
"Linda? You haven't heard a word I've said, have you? What's wrong? I'm sorry if I offended you; my sense of humor is rather conscienceless, I'm afraid. It's my training ... and my disappointments."
Linda heard the concern in his voice, but she didn't raise her head, afraid that she'd see from his face that it was another one of his many tricks.
He rose from his desk and walked softly across the thick carpeting to where she sat. Gently he pulled her hands away from her face.
"You're crying. Was I that cruel? My poor baby," he said, kneeling beside her and pulling her sweet curls to his chest. "My poor baby. Tell me what's wrong, and I'll try to fix it." He sounded so much like the father she'd wanted rather than the one she'd had, that Linda couldn't stop herself: she poured out onto his broad tweed chest the accumulated frustrations of the past few weeks.
When she had finished, he stood up, sighing. Linda steeled herself for disappointment, but his eyes projected such kindness and understanding that they made her tremble for an unbearable second. She had an impulse to bolt out of the room before he could say a word.
Instead of speaking, however, Dr. Young did something Linda had dreamed of, and had begun to think would never be realized: he began to remove his clothes.
"We must talk, Linda. But before we talk . .
His words trailed off as he pulled his powder-blue silk undershirt over his head. He disrobed so slowly that Linda had the feeling he intended it as a form of lovemaking. As he arranged each article of clothing neatly on a nearby chair, he looked at her to make certain she was watching. Finally he stood naked before her, more beautiful than she'd imagined in her dreams. His chest was broad, with a fine tangle of soft black hair covering it. His belly was flat and brown, and his legs long and well-proportioned. He was slender but muscular, giving the impression of force combined with an almost feminine delicacy.
Linda was entranced. It was as if she'd never seen a naked man before. So this is why men like to see women undress, she thought. She found the moment so delicious that she didn't want to break the mood by touching her own buttons. She was aware that inside her some defense was breaking, like a spring wound too tight over the years. She felt weak, and a little frightened. In its own way, this was worse than being shot from a cannon.
Dr. Young walked across the room toward her.
She was so happy and so confused that she felt panicky: what was she going to do? It was like dreaming of being a romantic heroine in a movie, and then one day being magically transported from the audience into the film.
She reached out a tentative hand and touched his thigh, unwilling, in her reverie, to look at his long love wand.
"It's a dream," she whispered to him as he pulled her up from the chair, touching her eyes where the mascara had run, and dropping his hand to the zipper that ran down the front of her green velvet dress. As he opened her dress, he opened her. She felt hot honey running down her legs. As he gently removed the rest of her clothing, she stood with her eyes closed, trembling like a fawn rendered immobile by a wolf.
No one's ever made love to me in my life, she thought. This is the first time. I don't care who he is behind all his masks. I'll do anything for him. Then, like the prince awakening Sleeping Beauty, Dr. Young kissed her.
It was a fairy-tale hour. After his first kiss, Dr. Young had moved lovingly down her body with his lips, tasting first the vulnerable little hollows on each of her trembling shoulders, and then the russet nipples which rose from each sweet, soft breast; down to her navel, beauty mark on the whiteness of her belly, until finally he was kneeling before her, with his mouth pressed to her exquisitely throbbing lovespot, where his tongue did things that made her forget her clitoris was elsewhere.
As Dr. Young made love to her, the darling girl pinched her arm: she wasn't dreaming. Not even when he lifted her off the ground and carried her to his couch, where he finally lay beside her and pressed her close, insinuating-ever so gently-his hardness into her aching softness. When he finally rose and moved so that his love wand brushed gently against her cheek, Linda felt on the verge of an orgasm she had decided was impossible. Her body shook with it, as she felt his hard flesh glide over her ready tongue. He moved so gently past her lips and into her throat that she was barely aware of it, for she was in the throes of the strongest, most powerful orgasm she'd ever had.
Afterward they sat on the couch, still naked and flushed, talking. Linda felt better than she ever had in her life.
"What happened?" she asked.
Dr. Young seemed a little overwhelmed himself. He took his time before he answered. "Linda, you're a remarkable girl. There's something about you ... I've never seen in any other woman. You're a believer, in a cynical world."
"But why? Is that bad? Being a believer?" she asked, stroking his thighs and his hand, which was draped carelessly over her shoulder.
"Being a dolphin in a pool full of sharks is bad, yes."
"But what can I do? All I want is to be happy."
He chuckled. "You echo the sentiments of millions of people. The difference is, you're actively looking for happiness. You realize-unlike most people-that you're a blank sheet of paper, and go around looking for someone to write on you. I wrote on you: deep throat. Marco Polo wrote on you: complexity, possibility, ambiguity. And so forth. You're easy to use, because you're so vulnerable."
"Did you use me just now?" As soon as she had asked the question, Linda knew she didn't want to hear the answer.
"No, I don't think I did. I'm such a cynic, it's hard for me to know, but I think if I weren't me, I'd be in love with you."
Linda held herself very still. Hot tears ran down her cheeks.
"Do you think you ever could be?" It seemed the most important question in the world to her. She held her breath.
"I don't think so, my dear. I know myself too well. I don't believe in happiness. I believe in money and sex, as I just demonstrated. That was a temporary aberration. In a few minutes I will have recovered enough to be my old cynical self."
"Oh, please..." Linda felt the world slipping through her fingers.
It was no use. Dr. Young stood up and began dressing, being as methodical with each item of clothing as he had been when undressing. As he stepped into his trousers, he began to whistle. Linda recognized the tune: "There's No Business like Show Business."
When he had finished dressing, he sat down behind his desk and looked appraisingly at the naked, crumpled innocent sitting on the couch. He rubbed his hands together.
"That was a nice interlude in a busy day. Now, I think, it's time to get down to business."
"I don't want to 'get down to business'! " Linda protested, crossing her legs and looking as defiant as she felt. She felt like a child on a merry-go-round, appealing to the operator to stop the ride so that she could get off before being sick.
"Linda, please. Be realistic. Look at me: a hard-nosed man. You don't want me. You want someone who can bring you happiness like a present from a far-off place."
"Then making love to me didn't mean anything to you?"
"You're being difficult. It meant a great deal. But I'm not an innocent. I don't kid myself that a little afternoon nooky is going to change my life. I'm too old to change my life. But I can help you find what you're looking for, if you'll just listen to your old father figure."
Pride and a need for time to think made Linda wait until she dressed before she answered him. She'd never had to make many decisions in her life, and now here she was faced with the biggest one: if she had to forget about finding happiness with Dr. Young-with her awakener-could she possibly find it with anyone else? Her mind shifted like the keys on a typewriter, from uppercase to lowercase. She had no choice. She was a chess piece on someone else's board. She'd have to jump from space to space until she found the right one; but she wouldn't give up.
"All right, I'll listen," she said, her voice a metal tong sliding over a block of ice. Quite suddenly, she felt grown-up, and much wiser. She listened with skeptical ears.
"Thank God. It's the only path for you, if you're looking for the Bluebird of Happiness. If youll just forget about me as a lover, and think of me as a guide on the royal road, you may find your Shangri-La."
"I said I'm listening," she said impatiently. "I'm not as dumb as you think."
Just that quickly, with all the instinct of a panda for survival, she had changed her thinking about her life. She had closed her emotions to him, snap! She tapped her fingers impatiently on the arm of her chair.
"Sex therapy," he said expansively, "is a field wide open for innovation. You must have read about the famous sex clinic in St. Louis?"
Linda hadn't.
"Well, what it is is a place where married people go who are having sexual difficulties." He paused. "Usually, the man's problem is that he comes too soon. As a result, or maybe vice versa, his wife is frigid. The people who run the clinic-Mrs. Olson and Dr. Jannings-claim that theirs is the only therapy that works for sexually troubled people. Of course, I dispute that. I've spent ten years of my life working with the same nuts, with a great deal of success."
"How do I fit in?" Linda asked, cool as a professional killer waiting for her next assignment.
"I'm getting to that. I'm glad you're so eager, but you must listen carefully. What they've been doing in their famous clinic is hiring prostitutes to give certain male patients another view of sex. What I've arranged to do is to get you a job like that. Your special brand of therapy will certainly make a sensation. And sensation makes for fame, and fame makes for money, and money-as I've said-is what I'm interested in."
"But I don't want all that; what do I care about being a star?"
"My dear, you sound un-American. If you're not a star, you're nobody. If you're nobody, you'll never be happy."
"All right, all right," Linda said, an instant prima donna. "I get the point."
She surprised herself by sounding so tough. She didn't feel that way at all. She felt smashed up.
"But what about me?" she asked. "I want more from life than that kind of stuff."
"I know you do. There's another reason for you to go to St. Louis. The other reason is that maybe you'll find with Olson and Jannings an answer you haven't found with me. After all, it's a real sex clinic. Those people aren't quacks. I read that in Time magazine."
Linda was not convinced.
* * *
A tougher Linda-as charming as ever, but wiser in the ways of a disappointing world-drove home to Calico Drive that evening. She held her chin up, as she thought she should, but she was a rain forest inside. She slammed the door behind her going into the house, hoping against hope that her roommate wasn't entertaining anyone. She needed to talk. She heard the television going in Helen's bedroom, and felt reassured.
"Hi," she called, walking lightly, like the blithe spirit she wasn't, into Helen's room.
"Hi, kid," Helen answered from her bed. Helen was lying on her circular bed eating chocolates from a Maud Muller box and watching Perry Mason. She looked like a four-car collision, all by herself. Linda sat on the edge of the bed, choosing her words.
"Helen, how would you like to take a trip with me?"
"Where?" Helen's voice sounded listless, but Linda knew her well enough to guess that she was game for anything.
"To St. Louis."
"Why St. Louis? I've been there. It's hot."
"There's a clinic there, a sex clinic."
"Oh, you mean that place where guys who can't get it up go."
"You've heard about it?"
"I read a lot. What else is there to do?" She pushed a button on her remote-control switch, and Perry Mason waggled his finger in the face of instant darkness. Linda thought Helen looked worse than she'd ever seen her.
"Dr. Young wants me to go there and be one of those sex therapists."
"You mean because of what he showed you about your throat? That stuff?"
"Oh, Helen," Linda said, ready to cry all over again. She just couldn't hide all her feelings. Helen sat up in bed and held out her arms to the wet kitten, and Linda rushed into them.
"he made beautiful love to me! but he doesn't love me!" she cried into the safe harbor of her friend's shoulder. She had never realized how much she needed a friend before.
"What'd the bastard do?" Helen asked, all sharp needles.
"He laughed at me, and then he made love to me, and then he told me he didn't love me, and then he told me about being my father, and then he told me about going to St. Louis so I could be a star!" Linda sobbed, pouring out her heart on Helen's pajama front.
"Sounds just like a man," Helen commented, before releasing Linda and sinking back into her pillow. The subject turned her off.
Linda felt rejected for the second time in a day. One moment, arms had surrounded her lacy fragility, and then they were taken away. But Helen wasn't mad at her, as far as she knew; Helen had fallen into the same hole she had.
"What's wrong, Helen?" she asked.
"I told you what was wrong, Linda. Life is a big fat zero. Now, leave me alone." With that, she pulled the electric blanket over her face and stopped talking.
Linda felt so dumb. How could she be so insensitive to her friend's problems? No wonder Helen had hidden under the blanket. She was suffering, too.
"Helen?" Linda asked, stroking her friend's thigh.
"What!" Helen bleated.
"Go to St. Louis with me tomorrow. Dr. Young says this clinic takes care of all kinds of problems connected with sex. You don't have anything to lose."
The old argument brought Helen's head up from beneath the covers.
"That's true," she said thoughtfully.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next day the two roommates were winging their way toward the capital of the Midwest. Helen felt expansive, now that some hope had been thrown her way. She ordered double Scotches for both of them. Linda thought about her last plane trip, and hoped this one wouldn't climax in anything so dramatic as being shot from a cannon.
"I hope this place is all it's cracked up to be," Helen said. "I'm really counting on it."
"So am I," answered Linda. "So am I." When the pilot announced their arrival over St. Louis, she looked eagerly out her window at the sprawling, smoky city below.
They took a taxi directly to the Olson and Jannings Clinic, located in the university area of the Gateway City on the Mississippi.
Linda walked into the clinic three strides ahead of her friend, feeling both optimistic and anxious. She had heard enough on the flight from Miami to Missouri to make her realize the seriousness of Helen's predicament. Helen was at the same point Linda herself had been the day after the orgy, when she'd told Helen that there was more to life than a succession of bodies. She hoped the Olson and Jannings Clinic would be able to help Helen as Dr. Young had helped her. Linda wondered, as she stood waiting for the receptionist to pay attention to her, if everyone got so screwed up when they realized there was more to life than what they'd been used to. Maybe it was better not to know, to remain miserable. But she was an optimist; she dismissed the thought.
"Yes, may I help you?" asked the receptionist. The woman was so matronly and respectable-looking that she might have worked in a bank. She was hardly the kind of woman Linda expected to find working in a sex clinic.
"You're sure we're in the right place?" Helen whispered, obviously thinking the same thing.
Linda shushed her and told the receptionist she had an appointment with Mrs. Olson and Dr. Jannings. The receptionist picked up her phone and spoke into it, and almost immediately a cold, antiseptic-looking man with white hair, dressed in a white-coat, opened the door to his office.
"Miss Lovelace?" he asked, arching his white eyebrows. "You may come in."
Linda pulled Helen into the office after her. It resembled a dentist's office: all hard surfaces, clinical, cold, and white, like the man who walked so stiffly to his desk and sat facing the two women. He picked up a pencil and pointed it at Helen.
"Who is she?" he inquired. His voice was commanding, icy.
"This is my friend Helen. We live together. I asked her to come with me because she's got a problem that I thought you might be able to help her with."
"What is the nature of the problem?" He sounded like a computer.
Helen spoke up. "Sex doesn't mean anything to me anymore, doctor. When I make it with someone, it's like I'm numb. And the thing of it is, sex is the only thing that makes life worth living for me. But lately, I've just been feeling really low. ... like there has to be more to life than just body after body. Do you see what I mean? I'm confused about it myself."
Dr. Jannings studied the friends, with the pencil between his teeth. Linda wondered if his breath would be as icy cold as his manner. She decided that he frightened her, the way she'd always been frightened of doctors when she knew she was going to get a shot. Well, it's not him I have to work with, she thought. But I do have a question to ask him.
Apparently he was still considering how to answer Helen, who smoked nervously as she waited for him to say something.
"I wanted to talk to you about the same feeling, Dr. Jannings," Linda ventured.
He raised his eyebrows at her interruption. "Yes, yes, Dr. Young told me about you. Good man, Dr. Young. A comer in the field. But excuse the digression ... your problem was physiological, was it not? Your clitoris is located in your throat, I'm told.
Which, of course, was why I was interested in hiring you as a therapist for our program. I've found one or two girls with clitorises up their asspardon the expression-but never in the throat. We're going to have to phase out our therapy for single men and women-there's been too much of a public outcry about us providing our single patients with professional ... women-but there are a few more aspects I want to study. Which is why, when Dr. Young called to tell me about the amazing success he's had with you, I was interested. It seems you're a phenomenon, Miss Lovelace.
"As for your friend," he said, aiming his pencil at Helen, "all I can say is that we'll try. You brought her without an appointment, and we're really quite jammed up. We have a long waiting list."
"But what about my problem?" Helen asked plaintively.
"Oh, your problem is quite common. Almost epidemic, I'd say. The sexual revolution has brought with its increased sexual activity this feeling that there must be 'something more' as you put it. Happiness, etc. Many people come to us with this problem."
"And what do you tell them?" Linda and Helen held their breaths, waiting for his answer.
"I tell them that the answer to their quest for 'something more' is one of the oldest in the world: get married."
"get married?" The girls shouted in astonished unison. They looked at Dr. Jannings to see if he was kidding, but his face remained frozen. Linda imagined she could see cold air vapor emanating from his nostrils. After that big buildup-to which they had listened so attentively-all he could offer was marriage?
"My mother tells me that all the time," Helen said. "You mean that's your answer? That's the conclusion you've come to after all your research, all the people you've seen? You make a bundle telling people that?"
Linda was crestfallen. Some help this clinic was going to be to her. Dr. Young had tricked her again. Well, at least she could do her job. Poor Helen had spent all that money on air fare for nothing.
"That's it, I'm afraid." For the first time, Dr. Jannings smiled. It was like a refrigerator door opening.
"You mean I came all the way to this crummy town just to hear that? Marriage?" As she always did when she ran into something she couldn't deal with, Helen became angry.
Just as she was about to explode, the door opened, and a pleasant-looking woman in her early forties entered the room. She stopped when she saw Linda and Helen, and spoke to Dr. Jannings.
"Oh, I didn't know you had visitors, Edgar."
"That's all right, Claire. Why don't you join us, as a matter-of-fact?" He introduced Claire as Mrs. Olson. She smiled broadly at Linda and Helen and sat down on a molded plastic couch across from them. She seemed such a contrast to Dr. Jannings that Linda wondered how they could work together. Everything-from the way they dressed, to the way they looked, to the way they spoke-was different. He wore white, she wore a floral print dress that seemed to contain all the colors of the rainbow; his voice was icy and authoritative, hers was warm and sympathetic; his hair was white, hers was fiery red. What a pair.
"Miss Lovelace is going to work with us as a surrogate for a few days," Dr. Jannings told Mrs. Olson.
"Oh, good!" she said. "I think I have a patient for her-he just flew in this morning."
"What about me? You got someone for me?" Helen asked, feeling forgotten, and sounding hostile.
"Well, I don't know-" Mrs. Olson began.
Her partner interrupted her, "She didn't come as a therapist, Claire. She came to consult with us."
"Some consultation," Helen grouched.
"There's nothing physically wrong with you, is there, my dear?" Mrs. Olson asked.
"I'm fit as a fiddle. It's my head that's messed up."
Tve already told her there's nothing we can do, Claire," Dr. Jannings said, but his voice was no longer so authoritative.
"Maybe not, but perhaps she and I could just have a woman-to-woman chat. Sometimes you're so abrupt, Edgar." She looked at Helen. "I hate to see anyone leave our clinic disappointed. Would you like to stay and talk with me? Perhaps we'll run some tests on you."
Linda could see that Mrs. Olson had charmed Helen. She had relaxed a little and was listening hopefully.
"Sure. What else can you do in St. Louis?"
Helen remained behind to talk with Mrs. Olson while Linda went out to visit her patient, who had flown in that morning. Dr. Jannings had filled her in on the man, whose name was L. Morey Haskins. He was a film producer from New York whose problem was an obsession with fellatio. Dr. Jannings thought that after a session with Linda he might either be able to submerge his obsession in a more varied sex life-"there is no such thing as a 'normal' sex life," Dr. Jannings told her-or he would accept his obsession and not feel so guilty about it.
He was staying in one of the plush old hotels in St. Louis, the lobby of which was filled with some of the Midwest's plushest and oldest people.
In her white mini-uniform, Linda cut quite a figure. The desk clerk looked coldly at her until he heard her client's name, and then he sneered down his nose, as if everything were perfectly clear. He shrugged and called up to the room for her.
Outside the door of L. Morey Haskins's suite, Linda heard the voices of what seemed to be a great number of people. She stood and listened for a moment, before knocking, to snatches of strange conversation:
"...now take your pants off and dig your fingers into your..."
"...you ain't got no boobs! People who pay good money don't come to..."
She knocked, wondering what her throat had gotten her into this time. She hoped Mr. Haskins wouldn't be as strange as her other cases.
An expensively ill-dressed man wearing large rings on all his fingers opened the door. He was balding, but his sideburns were long and thick, surrounding a plump child's face. He snarled at her, "Yeah?"
"Mr. Haskins, please?"
"Who wants him?" He eyed Linda suspiciously. "My name is Linda Lovelace, and I'm from."
"Linda who? "Lovelace. L-o-v-e-"
"Oh. You're the girl from Olson and Jannings. Call me L. Morey." His expression changed from one of truculence to one of apprehension. She followed him into the hotel room. Four women in various stages of undress stood around chatting and putting on their clothes.
"All right, ladies, that's all. I'm done with you. You'll get your checks in the mail." He explained to Linda that he had thought he might as well test some of the local talent while he was in town. Kill at least two birds with one stone, heh, heh. As he moved about hustling the girls into their clothes and dealing with their complaints about being paid by check rather than cash, Linda had a chance to study him. She had seen his type in expensive restaurants and nightclubs in Miami Beach. They came down from New York for a weekend on the beach, and a few nights with the local call girls. They invariably were loud, and talked a great deal about their business, whatever it was. They were so much alike that she had stopped dating them.
Finally the room was empty, except for the two of them. L. Morey busied himself putting a very expensive-looking camera and its attachments into leather bags, while he worriedly looked her over. She sat expectantly on the couch.
He's afraid of me, Linda thought. She couldn't believe that anyone could be afraid of her. Even with the odd experiences she'd had as a therapist, she had remained her harmless, sweet self. She smiled at him.
"You're a charming girl," he said in a strained voice.
"Thank you. Did I come too early or something."
"No ... no."
She tried again. "What kind of movies do you make?"
"Movies?" he asked nervously, as if he'd never heard the word. Slowly he moved toward the couch.
"Dr. Jannings said that you make movies."
"Yeah, I guess I do. I make X-rated films with sex in them."
"Really? You mean dirty movies? I've never seen one."
He seemed to take encouragement from her interest.
"Yeah, I've made twenty-two films, and twenty-one of them made money. That's a good track record. Not many guys in the business can say the same thing."
He sounded like he was selling himself to her. Linda wondered-as always during a new case-how to get down to business. Surely a man who made dirty movies would know his way around women.
He made it to the couch, after much hesitation, and sat tentatively on its edge, four feet away from her.
"About your problem, Mr. Haskins..." Linda began.
"What problem?" His voice cracked. "I ain't got no problems. I make money, and I do my thing, like everybody else, I guess."
"The problem you came to see Jannings and Olson about. They say-"
"I know, I know. I know about my problem-I should, shouldn't I? It's my problem!"
"Well..."
"My problem is that I can't make it the usual way-with a woman. I mean, I ain't no faggot..." He sputtered incomprehensibly.
"I understand," Linda said reassuringly. He was so embarrassed about his problem, she thought. If there was one thing she had learned from her encounters with her patients, it was that everyone was really human beneath their defenses. They thought their problems were special, that they had never happened before. It made them awkward and shy. She felt very smart about certain things.
"I like being..."
"Sucked?" she finished seductively, moving closer to him on the couch.
"That's close," he said, watching her advance toward him out of the corner of his eye. He was so shy, poor man!
Linda put her hand on his knee. He jerked it away as if he'd been burned.
"Don't be so shy, Mr. Haskins. There's nothing wrong with liking what you like. That's why I'm here. I like it too."
She touched him again. He held still for a moment, and then moved away again.
"Mr. Haskins, don't make me chase you down the couch. All I want to do..." She stopped, because he'd started to sniffle.
"What is it?" she asked, puzzled.
"I've really been lying to everyone."
"What do you mean?" She couldn't imagine what he could be so scared to talk about.
"Promise you won't tell anyone?" he asked, like a child.
"I promise," she said in a child-like voice. "You can even whisper it to me."
"Well," he said conspiratorially, whispering in her ear, "what I like is for a girl to stick her tongue in my bellybutton, and to rub my belly, and..."
"And what, Mr. Haskins?"
"And say"-he made his voice very teeny" 'Mummy loves baby bear's tummy.' "
Linda smiled and wrinkled her nose. If only everyone were so innocent!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Linda played with L. Morey all afternoon. They played hopscotch in the large bathroom, follow-the-leader around the living room furniture, and hide-and-seek in the bedroom. She enjoyed herself tremendously, laughing as she hadn't in months. L. Morey was one of the nicest men she'd ever met, she decided, even if he did seem a little narrow-minded at times. At the end of the afternoon, when she told him she'd have to leave-she was a little worried about Helen-he begged her to go out to dinner with him; when she hesitated, he licked her cheek and confessed that he had fallen head over heels for her, and that they should "talk business." Linda was having such a good time, and felt so flattered by L. Morey's declaration, that she agreed to go out with him.
She called Helen at the clinic, hoping to catch her before she left; after some waiting, she heard her friend's voice, strong and confident, on the wire.
"I'm doing fine. That Mrs. Olson is some smart lady. You know what the hell she's talked me into."
"What?"
"Getting married again-going back to my old man, if he wants me."
Linda was speechless. In one afternoon Helen's whole attitude had changed. She sounded almost happy. Definitely very up.
"I think I like this town, kid," Helen bubbled. "What're you doing?"
Linda told her about L. Morey. Helen giggled and then said, "Hey, that's kinda sweet. What are you, crazy?"
* * *
Linda had dinner with L. Morey in one of St. Louis's few Chinese restaurants. He was all business as they talked over a steaming bowl of Moo Goo Gai Pan.
"Linda, you've got to come back to New York with me. I'll put you in a film, and we'll make a mint. You got talent like no one has seen yet. Not only that, you're a sweet kid."
"But I can't act, L. Morey," Linda protested, halfway intrigued with the idea. Imagine-Linda Lovelace in movies I
"Baby, you don't have to act. That's what L. Morey is telling you. We'll just take advantage of your natural talents. You shouldn't hide your light under a bushel basket, like it says in the Yellow Pages or someplace."
"I don't know..." Linda said, wanting to be coaxed.
"C'mon, what else are you doing with your life?" He looked around as if hoping to find someone to back him up on this ultimate question. Just then a grinning waiter brought them their fortune cookies. Grabbing one, he cracked it open and read aloud, guffawing as he did so. "Listen to this! Fantastic! A dirty fortune cookie! I heard about them, but I thought they were just in California. This St. Louis is a filthy place. It says, 'If you're good in bed, it's because you've used your head.' It's like I always said, those Chinese are smart people-they have to be, or they couldn't make such good food. How about it? Isn't that the fickle finger of fate goosing us?"
Linda had to admit that she was impressed. She'd always believed in signs, and she read the newspaper horoscopes faithfully.
"What would I have to do?" she asked.
"I won't tell you. I'll do better than that: I'll show you. Let's go to the movies, okay?"
L. Morey took Linda twelve blocks away from the restaurant into the bowels of downtown St. Louis. As their taxi crept block by block, the streets became brighter and seedier, until they came to a row of four movie theaters crowded on one block that advertised: femmes. mona. hot lips on black satin. mary's poppin.
L. Morey took Linda's hand and pulled her into the first theater, sliding them into a back row. Linda's eyes grew very round at the first glimpse of the action on the screen. The theater wasn't very crowded, she noted, before the film pulled her into its world. Around them, middle-aged men sat with empty seats between them and their neighbors. She felt relieved that no one had taken notice of their entrance. She was the only woman in the theater, and she could see why.
She blushed the color of an early rose, and squeezed L. Morey's hand. Her wide eyes got wider and then they sparkled in the beams thrown by the projector as she began to make the inevitable comparisons between what the women on the screen were doing and what she knew she could do.
"They're not very good at that, are they, L. Morey? I can do better."
L. Morey chuckled and pulled her hand onto baby bear's tummy. "That's what I've been telling you, sweetheart."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next afternoon, L. Morey took the plane back to Miami with Linda and Helen. In the morning the three of them had met at the Olson and Jannings Clinic to say goodbye to the good doctors who'd brought them such temporary relief. L. Morey was very appreciative, and wrote it out on a check with another zero more than they expected. Helen gave Mrs. Olson an impulsive kiss on the cheek, and Linda even smiled at chill Dr. Jannings.
He wanted her to stay on longer. "I thought you were going to be with us for a few weeks at least." He smiled, making Linda's teeth chatter. "I was hoping to do a little research with you myself."
"It's better when you don't smile," Linda told him.
She was glad she'd come to the clinic, if only because Helen felt better, and because she'd met L. Morey. But as a result of the experience, she decided if there was any happiness to be found, she'd have to find it on her own.
Dr. Young will sure be surprised to see me back so early, she thought. Maybe I won't even call him.
The three of them discussed making the movie. L. Morey had decided to go to Miami instead of having Linda come to New York, because, as he said, "I can work anywhere. I know some local guys there-I'll get together a crew, and we'll be all set. Miami Beach will make a nice place to shoot-I don't think an X-rated flick has ever been made there."
He smiled happily and patted both women on the legs.
He had already talked Helen into being in the movie with Linda. She wanted to return to her ex-husband in style, and the money would come in handy. "Besides," she said, "I've got nothing to hide, and plenty to show off."
"But what's the movie going to be about?" Linda asked.
L. Morey chuckled his businessman's chuckle. "That's the beauty of it, Linda. It doesn't have to be about anything-it just has to show people what they want to see."
Linda frowned impishly. "But wouldn't it be even better, L. Morey, if it had a kind of story, too? I'd be more interested in watching a movie like that."
"That's not a bad idea. Of course, a lot of them do." He considered. "It wouldn't cost that much to hire a few more people, I guess. You got any ideas about what kind of story? I saw one last week about a Vietnam vet coming home without legs. How's about something like that?"
"Well," Helen said, "it seems to me if Linda's going to star in the movie, it should be about her, and her throat."
It hit L. Morey like a light bulb popping. "That's a fan-fucking-tastic idea!" he yelled. "We could put in that doctor Linda went to, and some of those nut cases, and..." He pulled open the briefcase he always traveled with and began to write on a yellow legal pad. "I'll jot down some ideas," he told them enthusiastically. "You got any?"
Linda looked at both of them as if they were crazy. A movie about me? she thought. She'd be so embarrassed. No, she couldn't do it. She resisted the idea as L. Morey and Helen became more and more enthusiastic about it. Nothing they could say would make her budge from her position, she told them.
But Linda was essentially a softhearted, agreeable girl. When Helen told her she was being selfish, her defenses began to fall. As Helen pointed out-in the argument that finally convinced Linda-if Linda had found a way to "something more," who was she to hide it from the rest of the world? Maybe other women didn't have clitorises in their throats, but they had problems, and many of them felt the same dissatisfaction with their lives that Linda had felt.
"If it'll help somebody else, I'll do it," Linda said, her sweet eyes dewy with emotion.
* * *
After deciding to let L. Morey film her progress from misery to deep throat, Linda knew it was time to talk to Dr. Young. She thought about going to pay him a surprise visit, but she was unsure of the welcome she'd get, and afraid he would treat her so badly she'd end up hating him. But she had to tell him about L. Morey's film; she decided that the safest way to do it was to call him. It took her quite awhile just to get up the nerve to dial his number. There was so much confusion in the house with L. Morey's crew setting up lights and moving furniture around that she hardly knew what to say to him when his receptionist put through her call with a surprised sniff.
"Linda? Where are you?" Dr. Young demanded.
"Right here."
"Right here where? You mean here in Miami Beach? You're supposed to be in St. Louis, for God's sakes."
"I know, Dr. Young. I know. But the people at the clinic didn't have any answers, and I met a man there, and we're making a film now." Her voice pleaded with him for sympathy.
"What kind of film? What film?" He was snarling.
"It's about deep throat-about me, and you, and Helen, and Albert Finster, and Mr. Maltz, and Marco...."
"You should be locked up! It's too soon for a movie! You're not ready yet. I was just bringing you along." Hot sparks flew from the receiver into
Linda's ear. She couldn't listen to his rage any longer. She hung up.
* * *
The first scene they filmed that day was of the time Linda had come home from shopping to find Helen with Jose, the delivery boy. It hadn't been necesary to find someone to play him. He offered to repeat the scene for free, obviously impressed with all the equipment around him and the seriousness of the crew, which L. Morey had assembled in no time.
L. Morey had told Linda, "Let's just start shooting from the time when you first realized you felt the need for something more in your life. We'll do it exactly as it happened."
He had grown more enthusiastic about the film as he prepared for it. He saw exciting possibilities everywhere.
"I'm gonna make this the best X-rated film ever made. I'm shooting it in color, I'm hiring some boys I know to write music for it-I got big plans for this one. This is the one that could make it really big. I feel it in my tummy."
He was a happy man. He was staying with Linda while shooting the film, and every night he got his belly rubbed and patted. Helen was happy too. For the first time in her life she was doing something more than just "horsing around," as she put it. And she was saving her money. Linda didn't know what she was feeling. She was enjoying the making of the film, but she still wasn't any closer to true happiness; and Dr. Young was angry at her. She was so confused that she didn't have time to worry about being embarrassed because five men were watching her as she did her love scene with Jose.
She barely noticed the boy, in fact, as he put his entire eighteen-year-old being into his part-and into hers, for that matter. She felt so moody that even calm, understanding L. Morey asked her what was wrong.
"With that look on your face, no one is going to be convinced you're making love, baby. For all they're going to know, he could be putting a Band-Aid on your pretty little behind."
I'm sorry, L. Morey," she said. "I'm just not feeling so hot today."
"All right, all right. If you can't, you can't. We just won't shoot your face in this scene. I'm sure the kid will be glad to take all the close-ups."
Jose smiled, with the smile of one who had already given up his delivery route for a new career. He looked around at the long-haired young man behind the camera.
"And you get paid for doing this?" Jose asked.
"And you get paid for doing that?" the cameraman shot back enviously.
* * *
L. Morey had had difficulty finding someone to play Dr. Young.
"The problem is," he told Linda one night after filming, while they were playing a game of Cat's
Cradle, "getting someone good-looking enough with the size sex organ you say Dr. Young has. That size is very important, if we're going to convince people you're not faking deep throat."
He had already brought up the idea of asking Dr. Young to play himself in the film, but gave that up when Linda told him how angry Dr. Young was at her. He hadn't called back.
Linda felt quiet and empty inside. She was interested in the film and did her work every day, but something was missing. As L. Morey and his crew filmed the events that had been so shattering in her life, re-creating them stirred her to the same discontent she'd felt then. Would she ever be truly happy? Then it was time to film the scene with Marco. L. Morey had already persuaded him over the phone to play himself-with his ego, Linda knew he couldn't refuse-and she looked forward to talking with him again. After all, he had opened her mind the way Dr. Young had opened her throat.
The whole crew went to his house to film the scene. When he opened the door, the intense little man was wearing a long white dress. Linda noticed his eye looked darker. She kissed him on the cheek and asked him what was wrong with his eye.
"That's mascara. I'm half-woman and half-man."
L. Morey, who was following Linda with a heavy camera, nodded routinely to Marco and then did a double-take.
"Mascara and a dress? We don't need any female impersonators in the film." He stopped dead and signaled the other men not to get out of the station wagon.
"This is Marco?" he asked Linda. She nodded. "No way," he said. "No way I'm going to have perversion in this film."
"You dullard! You fail to understand the significance of..." But Marco spoke to thin air. L. Morey had turned and was walking indignantly back to the car.
Linda stayed that afternoon and talked with both Marco and Vivian, relating the latest of her adventures for their comments. Marco was interested in hearing about the Olson and Jannings Clinic, but otherwise he seemed bored with her stories. He said nothing enlightening to her until the very end of her visit, when she asked him if he thought she'd ever find real happiness. She had just been telling them both-over some particularly fine grass-about the making of the movie.
"The only contentment you'll find in life is through art. You have an art, but you must develop a style for it."
"What about marriage?" asked Linda.
"Marriage is like a fish," said Marco inscrutably.
* * *
In two weeks the filming was over, except for the big scene with Dr. Young. For that, L. Morey rented the office of a doctor who was on vacation. He had finally found the actor he was looking for to play Dr. Young. His name was Freddy, and he was a good ten years younger than Dr. Young, and definitely more handsome. When Linda saw him wearing his costume-L. Morey had decided it would be better to have him wearing a white coat, because the audience wouldn't believe a doctor who dressed the way Dr. Young did-her heart went pitter-patter like a sixteen-year-old's. He was so good-looking, and tall, and he had a ... Well, she'd see about that soon enough. For the first time during the filming, she went about her work eagerly.
She didn't have a chance to talk with Freddy before they began shooting, but her excitement rose as he played the scene with her-putting her very much on edge as they arrived at the climactic moment when he asked her to try deep throat on him. She gasped when she saw it: bigger than Dr. Young's. More breathtaking and lovable. She felt a thrill of pure bliss in her throat as she opened her mouth and lowered her head expectantly.
* * *
Finally the shooting was over. Linda kissed all the men on the crew goodbye, and spent an exhilarating half hour alone with Freddy, who had proven to be too narcissistic and ambitious to satisfy Linda's emotional craving. Helen had left for California the day after her last scene was shot, full of high hopes for a reconciliation with her ex-husband. Linda and L. Morey celebrated that evening by ordering Chinese food sent in, along with a big bottle of Yoo-hoo.
"Well, kid, that just about wraps it up, all except for the technical end of it. In another three or four months we'll have a film ready to show. How do you feel about maybe being famous? It could happen, you know, with the kind of heart you put into this film, and with that dynamite theme."
L. Morey was worried about Linda. Something seemed to be gnawing at her insides.
"I wish you weren't leaving, L. Morey."
"I feel the same way, Linda. But business is business, and now I got to take care of the hard part. But we'll see each other in a few months, when everything's done. Till then, here's to you." He raised his glass of Yoo-hoo to her.
That night Linda snuggled up with L. Morey they way she had with her favorite teddy bear.
Before she drifted off, she asked him a question about the film that had occurred to her on the last day of shooting.
"L. Morey...."
"Ummm?"
"What are you going to call the film?"
"I don't know, baby. I haven't given it a thought." He sat up in bed and looked at her. "You got any suggestions?"
"How about Deep Throat?"
"That's nice, but you got to know this racket.
It won't pull them in like, say, something really romantic and artistical. That's it! Simple as that!"
"What?" Her eyes were closing.
"The title for the picture! What's wrong with calling it just plain Something More? That's what you're always saying you want out of life." L. Morey was excited. It was surefire box office.
But Linda had fallen asleep, smiling sweetly. She knew what she knew.
PART THREE
Linda's Search for Something More
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Linda made a brave attempt to keep busy in the months that followed the completion of the movie. Anything to keep her mind off her problem. She went deep-sea fishing with a vacationing stockbroker, motorbiking with some neighborhood boys, and scuba diving with a married man she met in the supermarket. One day she even got into her Caddy and drove north to spend a day visiting the new Disney World.
She wrote a lot of letters in her charmingly childish scrawl to Helen who was making a go of it in California with her ex-husband; to L. Morey; and to her father. In her letters to her father she told him of the changes she was going through. He wrote back: Get married.
She didn't see Dr. Young. She couldn't get up her nerve to visit him, although she realized she had to. He had started her off up this yellow brick road; now she held him responsible for her progress on it. And there was a more practical consideration: she'd remembered the contract he had made her sign, naming him her agent. Now that the movie was going to come out, she had to settle that. She'd written L. Morey about it, and he'd called long distance to tell her it probably wasn't worth the paper it was written on, but to get it back if she could. Otherwise, his lawyers would deal with it.
So one day when she had exhausted every possibility for distraction, and felt like screaming if she didn't talk to someone, she got in her Caddy and drove to Dr. Young's office.
The first thing she noticed when she stepped hesitantly into his reception room was that it had been remodeled. It looked so plush and large that if she hadn't seen Elsie sitting at her desk she would have thought she was in the wrong office. Her feet got her across the room; her head wasn't able to. The nurse didn't bother to look surprised at seeing her. Her look said: Where have you been? We've been expecting you.
When Linda walked in on him, Dr. Young was standing in the middle of the room-which was also completely redecorated-dressed in English tweeds, pitching darts at a board on the near wall. Seeing Linda, he stopped, with a cluster of darts in his hand. He smiled sarcastically.
"Well, to what do I owe this great honor? My protegee visits me at long last." He waved her to a chair and went behind his desk.
"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I was scared, I guess."
"Scared of what? Of me?" He laughed at the possibility.
"You were pretty mean on the telephone the last time I talked to you."
"Oh, that. I was just surprised."
"Do you still feel that way?"
"No, not at all. Everything has been working out very well. Very well." He was complacent, amused.
"Are you mad about the film?" Linda was confused; he seemed to be chuckling over some private joke he'd played on her.
"No, no, not at all!"
"But why not? I signed that contract, and I did the film without even asking you."
"Don't worry about it. I tore that contract up the other day when I was cleaning out my files. You're as free as the wind." He waved his hands in the air as if throwing away the pieces of the contract. Flapped his arms.
Linda felt as though he'd stolen something from her. It was as if he was throwing her away, too.
"But I don't understand, Dr. Young." Her pretty brow wrinkled painfully.
"Of course you don't! How could you? You don't know my inventive genius! That film you made-you got into it more quickly than I wanted you to, but it all worked out for the best in End. Last week I saw a screening of it-flew up to New York-and I loved it. You're going to be famous, and I'm going to make a little something. I bought a quarter interest in it, I was so impressed. The public is going to love it, because it's the first sex film that's got more than sex going for it: it's got you, my darling."
Linda didn't like the feeling that so many forces having to do with her were moving around in the background of her life. But what she did like was that Dr. Young wasn't being sarcastic when he told her about the film. She relaxed as much as she dared when she was with him.
"I'm glad that you're not upset with me anymore because I didn't stay at the sex clinic, and because I made the movie without asking you, but..." She didn't quite know how to say what she had to say to him.
"But what? Tell Daddy." His voice was reassuring. She could tell he was being sincere, because he was leaning back in his desk chair, blowing bubbles. She knew his moods, and she trusted him in this one.
"It's just that it's not me up there on the screen. I'm flesh and blood, and despite everything I've done because you've told me to do it, I'm still not happy. Something's missing. You've got to help me some more."
"Linda, I'd do anything for you. You should know that by now. Tell me."
And so for an hour Linda talked, as Dr. Young took out a game of Chinese checkers and played against himself. She had reached a level of self-awareness in the months since she had first gone to him that surprised both of them. For the first time, she told him about her childhood, the theme of which even then had been "something more."
She told him about coming to Miami Beach after a Texas girlhood, and how for a few years the contrast between the two places had kept her excited about her life, no matter how vacant it really was. For a while, "just screwing around" had seemed enough. Then-about the time she met Helen and moved in with her on Calico Drive-things had begun to seem flat, and even sex went sour. Since sex was so important in her life, going to Dr. Young and discovering that her clitoris was located in her throat had made everything brighter for a while. Then, working as a physiotherapist had exposed her to other points of view.
"What it really did," she told him, as he bent over his game, "was make me aware of the rest of the world. You know, possibilities. But the trouble is, once I found out all about that, I wasn't satisfied anymore with what you showed me."
"Ahhl" he shouted. He'd won the game. He regarded her with a victor's smile on his face. "You mean deep throat?"
"Yes. Because of what I found out about life because of it, sex wasn't enough. There has to be morel" she finished disconnectedly, desperately.
"You women are never satisfied," Dr. Young began philosophically.
"Oh, Dr. Young, don't..."
"I know, it's unfashionable to say such things these days. But the only answer I can offer you, Linda--and now I'm being as serious as I'm capable of being-is something just as unfashionable."
Linda's heart leaped. She had finally done it! She was about to get a real answer from a very serious, thoughtful-looking Dr. Young. He had saved her once, and now a second time. Was it possible? She felt like the hick at the circus who bangs the heavy hammer on the rigged scales and rings the bell. She waited for her cigar.
"The only thing I can think of that would satisfy you both sexually and emotionally, Linda, is finding the right man." Dr. Young harumphed wisely. "Marriage," he said. "That's the ticket."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When the film opened in New York at the New Caledonia Theater off Times Square, Linda was suddenly propelled into an exotic new world. L. Morey met her at Kennedy with a limousine, and the strangeness accelerated from there.
"Baby, am I glad to see you! You're a sight for worn-out eyes, and a balm to a worried mind."
"What are you worried about, L. Morey?"
"Success. Plain and simple success. This is the biggest thing to hit New York in a long time. I don't know how to deal with it, and you know Uncle L. Morey. It's too big-it's been playing for a couple of days, right? Already we have capacity business, and the media people are calling all day long. We got porno chic on our hands!"
Since her talk with Dr. Young, Linda had felt much more at peace with herself. She was even comfortable with the idea of knowing she was exposed to strangers six times a day on a movie screen. If it got her message across, she wasn't embarrassed about it; Dr. Young had taught her that much. Her only anxiety about the film was that women might avoid it. She wanted to reach them, to share her discoveries and liberation with them.
Otherwise, she looked forward-like a teenager in love with the movies-to the plans that L. Morey had for her.
"One of the reasons that the film is going to be such a killer is that Studs Gordon-likes it. He gave it a rave review in his column." Linda had heard of Gordon from Helen, who subscribed to his newspaper-the biggest sex paper in the business. She was as impressed as any woman could be with such a fat ego. She knew that if Gordon liked it, it would draw a lot of people who trusted his word on sex films.
"Here's the deal: Gordon wants an exclusive interview with you. I said fine, when I talked to him; but there's one hitch."
"What's that?" Linda asked, musing on the round figure of Gordon as she'd seen him in his paper.
"He wants a demonstration of your technique." L. Morey confessed this last item as if he were ashamed of something. It was just that Linda was such a sweet baby, he wanted to protect her.
Linda laughed. She thought it was funny. She'd often thought about Gordon after reading his paper. He seemed so vulgar, so crudely direct; but he did seem honest. She wanted to meet an honest man in New York. It would be a good introduction to the big city.
* * *
L. Morey had gotten a room at the Plaza for her. She loved ordering ice cream sundaes from room service and walking around the hotel observing people. On her second day in New York she took a bus for tourists and was overwhelmed with the size and variety of the city, and how clean it was. At night L. Morey took her to see some sex films. She was no longer shocked by them, but she knew they had a long way to go to equal hers.
"They're freaks," she told L. Morey, as they were leaving a film in which women did unusual things with pedigreed dogs.
The next afternoon she was to have her interview with Gordon. L. Morey insisted on chaperoning her, so they were together when they greeted the man whose review had done so much for the film. "
Linda was immediately impressed with him. Gordon-"Call me Studs," he said-projected such animal immediacy that she wanted to get down on her knees and purr. His leonine scowl intimidated her as they made introductions, but it wasn't long before she felt she had his number. He wasn't a lion; he was a bear who changed his coat according to his moods. Sometimes he was a teddy bear, and sometimes a grizzly bear. There was a lot of humor-and a great deal of anger-in him.
"That's quite a trick you do in the movie," he told her at the beginning of the interview.
"Thank you," she said self-consciously, not sure how honest to be with a big-time journalist.
"You don't have to be polite with me, Linda. I'll say what I want to say about you, so just say whatever you feel like saying when I ask these stupid questions."
Linda smiled her nose-wrinkling smile. The effect was so devastating on Studs that he didn't care what else Linda said during the interview. He leaned back with microphone in hand, but he might as well have shut off his machine.
"How did a nice girl like you get involved in all this?" he asked, with his last ounce of investigative willpower. He tried to make his tiny eyes glint with the kind of knowing humor that would draw Linda out, but all he succeeded in doing was looking cutely lovable.
"Just lucky, I guess," said Linda. Although she kept checking with L. Morey to see that what she said was acceptable, she told Studs the story of her search-with its attendant successes and failures-with nothing held back. When she finished, Studs flipped his tape recorder off with a gesture of finality and smiled at Linda.
"For a woman, you're all right, Linda," he told her. "You've got more brains in your throat than most people I know have in their heads."
Linda couldn't take him seriously, no matter what he said. He wasn't complicated enough. He was just brash.
"Could I have a demonstration of this technique I've made famous?" he asked L. Morey.
"I don't do it," said L. Morey. "It's up to Linda."
Linda grinned at Studs, the grin of a real Texas girl fresh to the big city.
"Sure," she said. It was the least she could do. And she liked the idea that she'd have the upper hand over the brash bear who was her introduction to the mass media. Confident of her powers, she told Gordon to lie back on the hotel bed. He followed her directions without a murmur. Then, with deft fingers, she undid his zipper and gently teased his soul into life. It sprang up eagerly ready at the first touch of her soft lips. Joyfully, her throat greeted the public at large, and its reception was kind.
"Linda," Studs gasped just before he cast his seed into the warm recess of her throat, "you're the best thing that's happened to sex since me."
* * *
Linda felt very good about her maiden introduction to the press, but she learned very quickly that there were more sophisticated hurdles to get over. She thought of the film as something of a personal crusade, but the critics didn't think so; at least, not until the audience for the film began lining up a long way down the block, composed-for the first time in the history of such movies-of men with their wives or girlfriends. When the critics got the message from the public, they began to trickle in, asking for interviews or background material on the film.
Every time she saw L. Morey, Linda became more worried about him. He was constantly raising his hands to the heavens and saying, "It's a success! Who was to know?" The interest of the respectable world in the film worried him, because it was something he'd never had to deal with before. He couldn't accept the idea that The Johnny Carson Show wanted to interview Linda for a possible appearance. He couldn't accept the idea that Time, Playboy, and Newsweek were all preparing stories about the film. Success on such a scale in the respectable world shook his belief in America, home, and family. He had pains in his belly.
But Linda didn't share his worries about what the respectable world's reaction to what she thought of as the sexual revolution meant. She was a part of it, after all, being young, idealistic, and sexy.
She welcomed every attention, large and small. She was feeling exuberant, as if she'd finally crossed the bar between hope and realization.
"What you represent, Linda," Dr. Young had told her in their last meeting, "is the revolution of rising expectations. You can't keep it down, and you're a perfect example of that."
Now she knew what she needed, and while she waited for it, why shouldn't she have a little fun? She enjoyed being in New York and meeting new and interesting people every day; she was finding that they were basically the same as anyone else beneath their public skins of authority and pretentiousness. When the film had grossed enough to be a story in Variety, even the electronic pundits called L. Morey to ask if they could interview her.
Linda was flabbergasted-in her innocence of opinion-makers-to find that these men, men she had watched telling her what was happening in the world all her life, were so naive. They asked dumb questions like: "Tell us, Miss Lovelace-by the way, is that your real name?-what do you think about the sexual revolution? Will it last? That is, in your opinion-as a leader of the current permissiveness-do you think your film will be able to be shown in the United States in ten years?"
Linda answered these questions the best she could.
"Well," she began, and realized she had no words, "well..." She smiled at them pleadingly.
A television reporter asked her: "Miss Lovelace, do you as an actress identify with the theme of the film?"
Still another asked her: "Do you think that what you do in the film is an indication of a trend in American sexual life?"
Finally Linda realized that none of them took her seriously, and she stopped trying to give them straight answers. She kidded them, and they loved it. Now they could fit her into a familiar slot.
"I have a special talent," she would tell them, "and it's one every woman in American can develop."
Linda was so sincere that even when she tried to joke, it came out serious. Yet even her attempts at humor were appreciated by the basically cynical reporters. They crowded around her, asking question after question with their television eyes beamed straight at her; but not one of them was as crudely honest as Studs Gordon. Finally Linda got tired of them and refused to see any more reporters. L. Morey begged her to see various "special people," but she was adamant. As she pointed out to him, none of the interviews she had given were ever aired anyway.
She was in a strong position, and L. Morey didn't argue. Despite the faintheartedness of most of the media, the film got bigger every day. It was so hot that most newspapers wouldn't even print its full title. One large tabloid changed the title, in a last-ditch attempt to prove itself morally pure. Nothing affected the amazing success of the picture, however; it continued to break all box-office records. The public loved it, and because it did, the celebrities soon came to gawk. Famous actors, writers, and sports figures-they all came, because if they didn't, they would have nothing to talk about at parties. Linda met quite a few of them; as New York's controversial figure of the moment, she was invited to some of the best parties, where she was invariably surrounded by glamorous women asking her how she "did it." She hadn't thought that her talent was extraordinary until she talked to so many women who confessed that her ability made them gulp with envy.
At one of the parties-at a television producer's town house in Greenwich Village-she met one of her dreams walking. He was a young movie actor with a big reputation, whose eyes were slightly crossed. His name was Zack, and Linda had fallen in love with his demonic sexuality when she saw his first movie. At first she was thrilled that he wanted to meet her-this was told her by her hostess-but when he came closer, she found that he was surprisingly ordinary. His approach to her was certainly awkward, but then, Linda realized, that was one of the reasons she had loved him in his films.
"Hi. You're Linda," he said. "I'm Zack Nickel."
Linda winked cutely at him. She had learned that men loved it coming from her. And besides, he was slightly drunk.
"Are you drunk?" she asked him.
"Never impairs my performance," he slurred. "How's about going to bed with me?"
Linda didn't mind his approach. What bothered her was the difference between the way he was on screen and off. Even in the middle of the crowded party, with dozens of eyes glued on the two of them waiting to see what would happen, Linda could concentrate on an inner vision of him, a vision lifted straight from the screen.
"You're not like you are on the screen," she told him. She was still fresh enough, despite her month in New York, to say such things.
"You're kidding. Did you really say that?"
"But..."
"But what? That's very funny. You know that? Well, you know what? You're not like you are in your movie, either. I've been here two hours, and you haven't gone down on anybody yet."
He was speaking so loudly that Linda was conscious of everyone hearing him.
Linda blushed. "That's not funny," she said, almost ready to cry. He looked at her in astonishment, with a drunken grin on his face.
"Hey, you're embarrassed, aren't you?" he said. He couldn't believe it. He was so enchanted with her reaction that all he could do was take her in his arms-in front of the whole staring party-and offer to take her home. With a mollified sniffle, she accepted.
In the taxi on the way to his apartment she told him how cruel he'd been.
"I'm sorry, I guess," he said semi-apologetically. "It's just that I've heard that bullshit so many times before, I didn't expect to hear it from someone who does the same thing. After all, you're a pro, just like me."
"No, I'm not," Linda said. "That's really my life up there on the screen." She proceeded to tell him about her life until they were in his apartment and he had furnished them with drinks.
"You're beautiful," Zack told her. "You know that? I find good people in the strangest places."
Now that Linda had told him her feelings about the movie, and explained to him as best she could who she really was, she felt comfortable with him. She even felt able to appreciate his seductive powers, which were considerable. He didn't waste time on games. He sat very close to her and smiled his famous semi-evil sneering smile, meanwhile caressing her breasts with hands that felt so innocent on her that it was like being sixteen again, and in love with the high school rebel. His hands were rough, and his smile was expectant, but something about him was vulnerable and maddeningly gentle. She found herself wanting to urge him to rape her, but she couldn't say the words. She had never felt that way about a man before.
When he undressed, she thought of the day in Dr. Young's office when he had undressed for her. But this was different: even more sensual, because it was more demanding. Zack removed his clothes as if he were playing a scene in a movie. His black eyes remained on her-appreciating her body-while he threw his clothes about the room, in a rush to get to her. When he was naked, she gasped at the size of his glamorous penis. It looked so fierce, its needs looked so urgent, that she moved as if hypnotized by it.
Then he was all over Linda, like a man who hasn't made love in years-but an experienced man, with knowing hands. She was overwhelmed by him. She lay back on the couch and submitted willingly, because the Pacific was pouring over her thirsty body. At the point in his lovemaking when he raised himself to offer the best part of him to her lips, she moved toward it hungrily, with tears in her eyes.
She was no different from a million other girls her age, and yet she was in the arms of a movie star! Her throat dripped with the romance of it, with the realization that everything good in her life had begun with the simple complaint that there had to be "something more."
The next morning she woke up in Zack Nickel's bed feeling slightly hung-over, and no longer star-struck. Zack had already left for the day's shooting on his new picture, after gulping down day-old doughnuts and coffee and caressing her throat while she slept.
She remembered that in the middle of the night she had asked him if he would marry her-snuggled comfortably in his arms-and his answer had been short and succinct. "You're awfully cute, and I like you a lot, Linda, but what else can you do?" It wasn't a question she could answer.
It was then that Linda decided she'd had enough of instant success, and enough of glamour. In the harsh clarity of a New York morning, she knew what the next step in her search would have to be.
Why was Dr. Young always right?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Linda straddled the toilet seat in her bathroom on Calico Drive shaving her tenderly plump pubic area and whistling the Old Spice song as she worked. She was alone in the dark house, and aside from her whistling, it was silent. She thought without regret of her time in New York and of the people she'd met, and happily of what was about to happen. Once again-hopefully, for the last time-she had called upon Dr. Young for help.
She heard footsteps in her bedroom, and smilingly ignored them, while toweling the soap from her delicate lovespot.
"Oh, I'm so lonesome. I wish I had a man tonight," she said loudly and dramatically. She'd never acted before, but her delivery sounded sincere to her.
"Ooh," she said, "I need a big ... strong ... man."
On cue, the door to the bathroom opened, and a slight young man dressed in black, with shoulders hunched and a bandanna tied around the lower part of his face, walked in on her, waving a pistol.
"Who are you? And what do you want?" Linda gasped.
"This is a stickup, lady. Your money or your life," the masked man said. His voice threatened to fall apart at any moment, it sounded so frightened.
"Okay," she said. She couldn't resist a small smile, however. "Please don't hurt me. You can have anything you want, but please don't hurt me."
"Now I'm gonna rape you ... don't yell, I've got a gun." His hand trembled so badly it was doubtful he'd have the gun for long.
"I'll do anything you say," Linda agreed, breaking into self-conscious laughter. She couldn't keep up the pretense any longer.
"No, no, no!" the man shouted, throwing his gun onto the carpet and tearing off his bandanna. He looked near tears.
"I'm sorry, Wilbur. If we could do it one more time, I think I'd get it."
"No, you always spoil it. You don't want me to have any fun." He sounded like a petulant child, and Linda loved him for it. She had decided that marriage was what she'd been looking for, and Dr. Young had prescribed Wilbur, the son of the Miami sweet-roll king. Wilbur had his hang-ups--he was exceptionally shy, as Dr. Young had warned-but he was also gentle and not bad-looking, and very sincere.
She couldn't help looking at him as yet another case however. Especially when he wanted to play the same old game with her; if he didn't feel that he was overpowering her, it was very difficult for him to make love. She felt very bad about that, since Wilbur, in addition to all his other qualifications, was the possessor of an enormous whang.
Still, she had already accepted the idea that everyone had flaws-or were they needs? She wanted to be in love with Wilbur, and she wanted to marry him, so she had to deal with his needs.
"You're so masterful, Wilbur. I just can't help myself. I get weak when you come in with that mask and all. Please, can't we go to bed?"
Wilbur forced himself to look stern.
"Okay, but remember, I'm raping you, and if you don't do everything I say, I'll shoot you. I really will." He added the last promise like a child threatening another child while playing a game of cops and robbers.
"Okay, Masked Marvel. Anything you say. You know I'd do anything for you."
She was quite sincere, but Wilbur was doubtful, being unaware of her long search for happiness.
"Would you really?" he asked. "You're not just kidding?"
Wilbur certainly lacked self-confidence, Linda thought, for the umpteenth time since she'd met him.
"No, Wilbur. I really mean it. You've got me all tingly inside. You're so masterful."
Wilbur went down on one knee. He was fond of the grand gesture.
"Linda, I love you. Marry me. I'll make you happy, I promise." His eyes begged her.
"Oh, Wilbur, I like you, but I can't marry you."
"Why can't you marry me? You know I love you."
"I know, Wilbur. And I want to get married. It's just that ... well ... the man I marry has to have a nine-inch cock."
Linda found it very difficult to say what she had to say to Wilbur, but she knew she'd be unhappy if her conditions weren't met. Dr. Young had warned her to be very certain that whoever she married met certain stipulations.
"Look, Linda," he had said, pointing out certain realities to her, "you have certain basic and unusual needs. You have to make sure that whoever you marry can satisfy them."
Wilbur blinked the tears away from his eyes. "Oh ... I see. In that case, I don't blame you for not wanting me." He looked broken-hearted.
"I'm sorry, Wilbur. It's my fault, not yours."
"It's always something. All my life, something has always messed me up."
Linda patted his shoulder in an awkward attempt to comfort him. What was she going to do with such a big baby? Could she marry him, really?
"Just think," he said, I'm only four inches away from happiness."
Linda had an inspiration. "You know, Wilbur, it's ail Dr. Young's fault. Why don't you call him.
Maybe he can do something. An operation or something."
"Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I'll do anything at this point."
Wilbur rushed to Linda's bedside Princess phone and dialed Dr. Young's number, looking hopefully at Linda, who stood watching him and feeling very undecided. Was this the right step? She knew what Dr. Young would say.
"Hello," Wilbur said, speaking confidently into the phone, "Dr. Young? It's Wilbur. You've got to help me. I'm in love ... Linda. We want to get married. ... Thank you. ... I know she is. There's only one problem: She needs a nine-inch cock. Please, Dr. Young, help me. Only four inches. ... What, you can? Any size I want? When? Tomorrow? I'll be in your office first thing in the morning. Oh, yeah, I'll bring you some fresh rolls from the plant. I'm so happy ... you've made me a happy man! Thank you, thank you very much."
Linda didn't know what reaction to have to Wilbur's elation when he hung up the phone. She knew she was at one of the crossroads in her life, especially when Wilbur stood up with a bolder gleam in his eye than she'd ever seen before. He unzipped his trousers like a man who's found salvation.
"Linda," he said, "he can do it! He says there's no problem. He said he could cut it down to any size you want. It won't be long now, darling!"
Linda had no choice at the moment but to surrender to the situation. She knelt before his baker's dozen like a woman who had finally found Something More.
