Joan Harper started young, moving to New York City at the age of sixteen. It was easy for the shapely, sensual-looking girl to land a job as a waitress. Soon Joan noticed that the customers were more interested in her body than her bill of fare, especially Maximilian J. Tower, a regular customer who could not take his eyes off the young beauty.
Maximilian was a jazz musician, an occupation that intrigued Joan Harper. He took the girl to a party in his hotel room and Joan stayed late, knowing that it was time to disencumber herself of virginity. Maximilian seduced the young girl easily, and then found himself head over heels in love with her. Two months later, they were married.
However, Joan was not willing to share her husband with the man's career. Rather than seek a divorce or confrontation, she allowed herself to be picked up and then seduced by Russel Walker, an upper-class Englishman, living in New York with his estranged wife. Russel gave Joan her first orgasm, and then his wife took up the slack.
Joan was shocked to be approached in sexual terms by a woman, but it did not take long for her to yield to Sonia Walker's undeniable charms. The tall, sophisticated woman showed Joan that she could be happy in a woman's tender arms. Their affair was brief and tempestuous going on until Joan realized that she could deceive her husband no longer.
CHAPTER ONE
I was only sixteen when I arrived in New York, full of dreams and "ambitions, meaning to make it big. That was the only thing on my mind and I didn't care how it happened. I've changed my standards a lot since those days, but that's another question, one that will have to wait awhile to be answered.
The first thing that happened to me, the thing of any real importance, was meeting Maximilian J. Tower, the man who was to become my husband. I was working in a restaurant at the time, as a waitress of course, and Max was an up and coming jazz trumpeter. He was also a handsome, domineering, sexy man, almost impossible for me to resist.
I didn't think too much of myself in those days, but Max seemed to like me just fine. The thing is that I was pretty womanly at a young age, almost hated my big tits for the trouble they caused me. Anyway, Max was one of the regular customers at the coffee shop, and it didn't take long for him to invite me to a party being held in his hotel room.
I went without thinking much of it, and was glad when Max greeted me personally. Most of the people there were musicians which left me pretty well out of things. But Max was solicitous as hell, explaining things to me whenever necessary. Of course I'd had the usual education along classical lines, but I didn't remember much except for Elise. I stood listening, therefore without turning around, without wanting Max to know I was eavesdropping, yet curious to understand more of what it was that held these people together and gave such a spark to their existence. Any thing that was lively, that radiated pleasure in life, I wanted to know about.
While I was feeling this and drinking the rye I felt a hand touch my shoulder. A big, warm, possessive hand that came down on me strongly, but somehow lightly, giving me enough room to move beneath it and to pull away if I wanted to.
It was Max's hand, and I didn't want to move at all.
"Well, Ellen, having a good time?"
I was rather tired and dragged out and pale and the resemblance between my appearance and how he was looking at me was strictly on the humorous level.
"Come here, I want to show you something," Max continued, turning me around with the pressure of that hand. The fingers slid down from my shoulder to the elbow. I sensed how that sensitive touch was learning me, learning my body in rapid, almost intuitive streaks of experiment in tactile observation.
The hand finally stopped at my wrist, and held me there as though I were three years old while he led me though the crowd to the window, and pushed aside dusty, double curtains.
We were on the seventeenth floor. I could see out along Broadway, which to me was still a novel and exciting panorama of syncopated light rhythms.
"Do you like all that out there?" said Max and his voice dropped a decibel or two to a reverberating intimacy.
I felt flattered that Max was speaking to me of his personal feelings. I did not know, could not know that people, particularly showmen are able to let loose and talk at anyone, to anyone, who will give half an ear or plain silence of acting the audience role. The people I had know were strictly self-contained, and so was I at the time, even more so than I realized.
"I love it," I answered quietly, wanting to encourage Max to keep on talking.
"Sure you do," he said. "The whole world loves Broadway, and believes in it, but that's not what I'm feeling. Princess, I want you to know what I'm feeling so that you won't say I never told you." He took my hand and pressed it to the windowsill into a filmy layer of soot. In his enthusiasm and self-absorption, Max did not realize that we were touching dirt. "The secret of Broadway," he continued, "Is to possess her but not to love her. If you give your heart to the bitch, she eats you alive and spits out the bony parts bit by bit." He shook his head slowly and with that utter calm confidence that I was to learn about so very personally, "No, I don't love Broadway," he continued gently with a rationality and cool sense of distance. "I don't love her and I don't trust her, and that's why she's going to come to me. Understand?"
I thought I understood. Most of all I was simply turning around inside my own feelings. Max had begun to open a door just enough for me to peek through into his world, and the tiny bit I saw enchanted me. I sensed possibilities. I sensed involvement, all of it combining into a strange alertness as though I had just come out of the eggshell and was standing in the daylight.
"I know you'll have everything you want," said I.
"Thanks kid," Max laughed and there wasn't any smirk in the laughing either, but something serious as though my statement of faith were a conviction projected into the world, and reverberating there as a directive to fate that it comply.
Max took the glass out of my free hand and drank down what remained in it without bothering to concern himself about my own interest in the whiskey. He seemed to know that I wasn't a drinker, or maybe he didn't want me to be one, or, if I am to be utterly realistic, perhaps even at that stage of our friendship, Max was not particularly interested in my personal needs, or desires, where they were divergent from his own.
He let go of my wrist, and touched me lightly on one hip in a kind of pat, as though he were telling me that I was all right, maybe a little more than all right. That he liked me, of course, and that I would do.
I can think back upon it and say that the game was stacked against me, or in Max's own language, that the bastard had gall. It must have been easy to impress a youngster. That Max didn't care who I was, what I was, or the state of my utter availability. He just didn't care. Blindly could not care. The fact is, I don't really blame him either. I had come to New York. I had taken the job. I had accepted his invitation to the party, and I was listening to him with both my ears and all my reflexes waiting to be redirected into the channels most conducive to his satisfaction. I might have been young and inexperienced but never, never was I without free choice.
That is the meaning which comes through everything that I have done in my efforts to find my own balance on this earth. I do not and cannot offer excuses for my behavior and intend to set down here exactly what I did, how I did it and the resultant consequences.
The inescapable link of cause and effect which dogged me is all the punishment or justification that I have been able to find. The consequences of extramarital affairs were, for better or worse, never predictable.
Summer went quickly. I did not see as much of Max as that first evening promised. He had club dates out of town, a string of small places cross country. Sometimes I would receive a postcard with a picture of the Grand Canyon, or a Kodachrome close-up of a pineapple. He never wrote anything except, "Thinking of me?" and it never occurred in my head to respond otherwise than "Yes I am. When will you be home?"
The fact is that when Max finally came home, we did not see each other for the first nine days. I know what kept him occupied a great deal of the time-women, as I later found out. In fact, so much had to do with women that it is a wonder to me that he was at all interested in pursuing a girl who did not know what sex was all about. I was a novelty, I suppose. I was making malteds, but wasn't a malted-maker by profession, if you know what I mean. And Max probably sensed some kind of a double life running through me which intrigued him.
When he did at last come into the coffee shop, I was taking off my apron and preparing to leave for the night. When I turned around and saw his big rosy face grinning at me, sparkling with that diamond-like sparkle, leaning over his elbows which he had rested on the counter. Neither of us remembered that there was anyone else in the place.
I would have done what was expected of me and I wanted to do it, anyhow. I came racing around and flung myself into his arms with that illusive delight of loneliness suddenly unexpectedly relieved.
He kissed me all over my face, lots of delicious little statements of his pleasure at seeing me again. There was no one else in New York who cared to see me at all, one way or another. And I believed that Max had actually missed me, and looked forward to returning.
"You look beautiful," he said. "Come on, I want to talk to you. Let's go upstairs."
And I believed that too. That he wanted to talk to me.
I went upstairs without thought, without any premonition that my life was about to turn a detour and enter the heart of a passionate wilderness that I could never have expected lived in my own body.
At sixteen and a half, I was one hundred per cent a virgin. I had the trust and the utter faith, because I had never been mishandled, that my body would do whatever was right.
Max's room was dark and quiet with a faint hint of dead air, heavy with cigar smoke and garlic sauce. I guessed he hadn't been home very long, certainly had not stayed in his room very long. When he put the lights up, I saw as though for the first time the essential condition of upheaval in which Max lived. The room looked like a party had just exploded here, but I knew it was the remnants of some part a few weeks old. I let my mind play around with these trivial thoughts because I sensed a certain closeness pressing in upon me as though my clothing were suddenly too tight.
"You missed me?" Max said without ceremony.
I answered yes, by nodding my head rather than speaking the words, for it was true that I had missed him and I was too riddled with emotion to say anything.
"Good."
I knew it was good.
"Yes, I missed you too, Princess,', he said. "I didn't think I would, but I did."
What had there been to miss, I wondered.
In answer to my question, he came over to me, put his arms around my waist, and lifted me up from the floor as though I were made out of wicker.
It was the first time in my life that I slid along the length of a man's body, and I felt all of him, all at once, against all of me.
Something in me came to a dead halt. It was as though my body were taking a deep breath before diving deeply. I remember that sensation of being suspended in a limbo of eternity during which I looked deep into Max's eyes. They were eyes which usually smiled, and they were smiling now. I felt as though I were drowning in those eyes, possessed by them.
"Sweetheart, you look so good to me," His voice had a tremulous, breathy note, which I had never heard before.
I wanted to say, Max I love you. But even then, in the midst of this strangeness, this newness of physical sensation, I somehow held my voice back from speech.
I don't know how long a time passed before we kissed. I felt my head moving slowly toward his face, again with that sensation of being drawn toward him by something larger than my own will. And yet it was my will. I knew that then, I know it now. It was the will and desire of my body taking possession of . me, leading my brain and stifling all thoughts of discretion. I had no need for intelligence when my flesh so strongly demanded its due, so strongly asserted its right to find expression.
His arms, which were holding me tight to his body, began to move as our lips touched. I was braced by the strength of his forearms and hands. I became aware of everything simultaneously. The suction of his tongue as it drew mine into his mouth. The exploratory circling of his large palms along my spine and ribs. The rise and ease of his chest as my tits flattened against his broad muscle. I wanted to withdraw the touch of my breasts from him, yet I could not, and suddenly I sensed something dangerous, something astir and challenging.
Of course, I had kissed men before, or should I say I had kissed boys. Boys my own age who did not know, could not have known how to overwhelm me. The kissing I had done before had given me little experience as to what to expect when I would finally be in the arms of a man.
The tingling that spiraled through my tits found apex in prickly sensation at either nipple, and I was consumed with anxiety to relive the thrust of growing desire.
I felt the pressure of his mouth arching my head backward. His tongue dug deeper now past the edges of my teeth invading my own mouth. Max became like an army, driving forward. Somewhere in the back of my throat, I gasped, but the sound never came up. I was overwhelmed and yet I was also strangely equal to what was happening for I wanted it to continue wanted to know the sensation of victory over the new drive which was my response to our contact.
I flung my arms around his neck, hardly aware that the equal and opposite force of my own body was meeting Max's demand. He to enjoy keeping me up off the ground, holding me in his arms with all of my weight dependent upon his use of me. He walked with me to the couch. It was but a few steps away.
I became aware of the ease with which Max handled me as he lowered me onto the cushions of the sofa. I did not, however, have a second to pull clear of him, even if I had wanted to. He lay me down on the couch and immediately covered my body with his Own, bracing his enormous weight straddling my thighs. I felt the radiation of his body heat penetrate my own flesh, burning, it seemed through our clothes. He had not made a single move to undress me, but I felt already naked in front of him. Perhaps it was that I yearned so to be disrobed, to be visible, to be touched, and appreciated by this man who was conquering me.
Expectations had no place to go except outwardly toward him.
"How are you baby?" he said. "Tell me how you are. Feeling good?"
It was not a question really, but soothing reassurance. I sensed that he wanted me to talk to him, to tell him what I was feeling, that I was all right, that I wanted him to continue.
I sighed, unable to find the enormous words to express the enormity of my feeling. I was possessed by tremors of pleasure that stole to my lips. All I could do was make sounds. Small animal cries, they were, telling Max that I loved what he was doing and wanted more of it, wanted more of whatever he chose to give me.
"Talk to me, baby. Tell me."
Why was he insisting, I wondered. And yet I felt that Max needed something, a gentle reassurance too. Yes, even he needed to know that it was all right, that I was all right.
I had no way then of knowing that what concerned him was my age, my lack of experience. I thought with a sense of flattery that Max was interested and focused upon the mysteries and integrity of my small life.
It was a beautiful thought, and one which permitted me to move on among the delights of self-expression which hitherto had been unknown except in my dreams. In fact, I believed then I was half dreaming because the sudden condition of being flung from loneliness and aloneness into the security of a beloved's arms, into the protection of a greater, more experienced and knowledgeable being, what could it mean except that I was being blessed with permission to live and extend myself from the inner world of my yearnings into the external stage of life.
Such happiness. I can hardly speak of it now without trembling at the naivete of those moments. I believed in Max, believed in him, and by extension, believed in myself.
It was easy to give him my nakedness. Not only the nakedness of my body, but the bared desires which had lain restlessly beneath the surface, waiting for just this moment, for this man, for this opportunity to make themselves known.
"Oh, I want you. I want you. Darling, I want to make you happy." The words came from me in a muffled slur of growing passion. I was squirming beneath him, knowing that I had to talk because he had asked me to, and struggling to speak out the confusion of feelings and hopes was almost more of an effort than I could manage.
"Let's get you undressed." he said.
I was suddenly aware, when he spoke of my clothing that I was not dressed in a seductive fashion of which I had sometimes dreamed. How I had wallowed in imagining myself the proud possessor of black lacy undergarments which would seduce my lover. But my clothing, the real me, was of so simple and unassuming a nature, that I blushed to have Max's hands come upon my cotton bra and underpanties. Why had I not thought to prepare for the moment? How had I managed to be such a romantic and so inept?
But there was nothing I could do except let him find what there was to find, and I began to undo my dress.
"Let me help."
His lingers covered my own hands and together we fumbled with my clothing.
"Do you want to use the bathroom?" I said.
"Oh, yes," I said eagerly, grasping at straws. I wanted to do something, anything which would heighten my attractiveness.
He let me out from underneath him. I stumbled toward the small John where I could be alone and try to pull myself together in some attempt at the glamorous.
His bathroom was a place more for convenience than anything else. I opened the medicine cabinet, a small box over the sink. What had I expected to find there? Perfumes? Powders? Of course not. Some bottles of hair oil half open, a shaver, aspirin. My eyes glanced hopelessly helplessly over the array of pharmaceutical products which had no relation at all to my need. At last, with a desperate plunge, I ducked my cupped hands under the faucet and splashed my face and neck with warm water, then combed my hair back smoothly. The sight of my face in the mirroj; showed a creature half wild. I was dizzy.
Everything blurred to my view. I sighed, knowing that there was nothing more I could do to improve upon myself, and I returned to the room where Max waited for me.
He had, I saw, taken off his own clothing.
The sight of Max in the flesh jolted me. What had I expected? What shreds of prudishness still clung that I would expect him not to have disrobed? Yet my eyes were strangely honest as they searched the sight of his body, finding the proportions of him strong and his prick already half erected.
Yet I myself had not removed one shred of my clothing.
"Well, now," he said, "Let's get those things off you."
And the nakedness of him came toward me.
His hands which had been so gentle before, so magnetic, were now demanding, and directly adequate. He whisked off the dress. His thumbs slipped into the straps of my bra, pulled them from my shoulders. They did not move readily, and I suddenly alive with helpfulness and eager need, reached down behind and opened the hook that would finally loosen the bandeau. The bra fell. I heard Max sigh as my tits came into view.
"This is the first time," I said, speaking to myself. I sensed air touching my tits, and playing with my nipples, and knew the hungry stare of Max's eyes, as they focused first upon one and then upon the other of my heavily fleshed breasts. He bent over. The sigh turned to a grunt as he made contact with my left nipple. I shuddered, felt my eyes close. Dizziness started again.
One of my hands reached out and clutched into Max's hair, hung onto him to keep myself steady. It was all so beautiful, so frightening. I knew what to do without really knowing if there were a book of rules or a procedure to follow, which would make our love more beautiful.
His fingers reached inside the elastic band of my panties, while his mouth played with my tits. I felt the underwear yanked away and his hands grasp the flesh of my hips kneading with strong fingers that took me as though I belonged to him, as though he had purchased me, as though I was his to do with as he pleased. It was so, I felt. He had bought me from life, owned me, could use me. As long as he would keep me and cherish me, he could do what he wished with my body. And I would be glad.
I felt the underwear slipping down around my knees. Without realizing it, I stepped out of the confinement as it fell the rest of the way to my ankles. His hands, meanwhile, slid over my behind, grasped me firmly, high on the backs of my thighs. He came to his knees in front of me. His tongue pressed against my flesh, moving in a circular pathway down between my breasts to my belly over the curve there into the triangle at the top of my thighs.
I began to tremble and did not wish to remain standing. Suddenly, there was no strength in my, only the fluid current of passion which rushed wildly through my flesh and bones. I grabbed at Max's shoulders in the hope of steadying myself.
"All right, baby," he said. His voice seemed to understand what was happening to me.
He stood up. Now I felt the brush of him directly along my legs. That firm cock like a magic wand, drew currents of passion from the depths of wells which I had not known existed. My hands with their own will reached to grasp him. I sighed and groaned and made other sounds that I cannot even describe as my fingers caught hold of his vital part.
"Do you like it honey?" he said. "Hang on to it. It's yours. Hold it tight."
He did not have to tell me. I was imbued with a second spirit, it seemed. As though I were a knowing woman, with wanton needs which came rising to the surface and took control of my thoughts. Not only did I hold onto his erected prick, but I reached with my other hand for the pendulous sac and rolled it over my palm. Max laughed with appreciation.
"Good girl," he said. "Stay with it."
I did not recognize his tone, but knew only my own sense of urgency. I tingled and quivered with need to be touched and kissed and fondled and taken.
"Let's lie down," I said, the words slurring. "Anywhere, please."
Before I knew it, Max had pulled me down to the floor. There was a rug of sorts, enough to protect my bones from bruising against wood. I didn't care, didn't much care if we were lying on cold tile or beds of pebbles. It was a relief to be off my feet. I was lying on my side, and kissing his chest, my mouth finding its way through the curling mat of hair. I could hear the vibration of his heart beat. I knew it was reflecting the pounding of my own. I felt so voracious and gave into it, so hungry and gave into that, climbing over him, straddling him between my thighs, which trembled and quivered and clung.
Did I want to ride him? I didn't think of it in exactly those terms. Only that I wanted to become part of him, and join his cock. I lusted with a high sea of passion, whose waves carried me aloft, beyond myself.
But Max couldn't wait.
With a sudden, fierce clutching of my hips, he sat me down firmly upon his dick. Our bodies met. I shrieked with the onslaught of sharp pain, felt flesh tear as he landed me with his hard cock.
"No, no." I yelled but I didn't mean no. I meant only, stop the pain and give me back my pleasure.
He began to raise and lower his hips lifting the slight weight of my body easily. I was riding a torrent and could not escape it now. I was impaled upon masculinity, flung into a chaos of conflicting sensations. Suddenly I knew that my virginity had been shattered, that I had given it away, that I had surrendered myself completely, that I was in the process of being marked forever by the male genital, that there was no turning back. I must fling myself further forward. Crawl through the trial by passionate fire, and pray, pray to come out on the other side a woman.
How well, I still recall the fear and the drive interlocking. I trusted my body not to betray me, trusted that my feelings had not led me into the wrong channels. Yet the fullness that filled me, the stiff, pressing dagger-like object which speared me wide was not kindly, not loving.
Although he lay beneath me and was thrusting upward, Max still had the reins, so to speak, and was driving me. I was on top but it was Max who was riding, and I the whipped, dumb creature certainly knew that now. I knew that he might have been gentler if he'd tried. But I didn't know then.
At that time, I thought it was I who commanded the action, I who with my consent and body had turned Max loose inside me to run wild there between my thighs. I felt the pressure of him all the way up through my belly and wondered if I was to be split wide. There were some few drops of dark red, but I didn't know where they came from or what they meant except that the smear along the inside of my thigh gave me a second's pause. Then I forgot about it, could not focus upon something so trivial as blood.
My kneecaps were pressed to the carpet on either side of his body, and I hunched forward, or rather fell. My breasts dangling forward grazed across his open mouth. He caught one nipple between the edges of his teeth. I gasped and my body seemed to give up its energy for in being penetrated fully, the pain suddenly eased, did not stop entirely, but eased sufficiently for me to relax and relinquish fear.
"Move your hips, baby. Move 'em. Move 'em."
His voice commanded and I obeyed. "What are we doing honey? Go on, tell me. Say the words, say them."
All of a sudden, I knew what he wanted. He wanted dark words, the obscenities, the descriptive four letters forbidden at other times but necessary now. And I wanted to say them, wanted to yell them aloud and bathe in the words, too.
Well?" he coaxed. "Come on, tell me Princess. What?"
The words tumbled from me.
"Fuck," I said. "Fucking, fucking."
To me it was a magnificent statement, a capturing of what we were involved with. The echo of the words in my own ears magnified the meaning, intensified the physicality, in which I was drowned. I became a willing part of the drama of sex. My oozing flesh opened like a hungry maw so that he eased even deeper into me, and I, pressing downward took him to the hilt. It was a wonder to me that there was so much room, that my vaginal capacity could stretch and hold so much maleness as that which was filling it now. For I recalled quite suddenly, the trouble I'd had once in trying to use internal protection for the menstrual flow. I had been unable to take a Tampax within me. But now there was all of him filling the space, and somehow, incredibly I was yearning for more.
The yearning made my shake my behind in response to Max's movements. He seemed alive and transcendent. The obscenities I had given him had done their job. He smiled a grin of greed and fulfillment.
"You want me to turn you over?" he said. "You want me to fuck you on your back?"
I didn't know, couldn't know how best to please him. What he wanted I would give. There were so many actions, experiences yet to be learned. But I was a willing pupil, and said, "Yes, Max, turn me over, please," thinking that whatever he wanted, I wanted too. I don't recall exactly how he managed it, but Max got me on my back. Lying there, looking up into the broad face, the broader hunching shoulders, the flat, intense drive of his chest and belly, then lower, I knew that wherever life would lead me, I would inevitably have come back to this man, my very first lover.
It was but a few seconds later, when Max suddenly hung suspended above me quite motionless. I felt a pulsing within him. His face contorted, sprang beads of perspiration. He held his breath. I saw his lips pressed tight into a grim line which looked to me like pain but which I knew could not be that.
And then he relaxed.
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
I did not know what to answer. Was it okay? Was this everything? I was suddenly being told by him that we were going to stop what we had been doing.
"Not yet," I said, speaking from the depth of my need.
Max said," Don't think you're gonna come the first time, honey. It doesn't work that way."
I was dumbfounded, confused. How could I answer his greater knowledge with my lack of anything at all? And yet my body, the hunted had not been caught. I knew I needed, knew that this could not be the end, that he dare not stop, that I dare not allow myself to be left as empty as I felt now, with action so abruptly halted.
But my confusion could not voice itself so sensibly. I flung arms around his neck, and pressed my cheek to his and began to sob.
Feelings of emptiness and despair and hunger were normal feelings. In my position, any healthy woman would have responded as I responded. To be left unsatisfied at the height of one's youthful abilities is a torment that cannot be written off, even after these many years, without the torture of its repeating itself just as vividly in the realm of recollection.
I would imagine that years put pain at a respectful distance. Yet, if I think back to those first weeks of my initiation into the world of love, I become wretched with its torments once again. For I could not have known that Max meant to tie me to him by keeping me in a state of sexual excitement. He knew, I later discovered, that to satisfy me might mean to lose me. My youthful excitement, my youthful curiosity could have taken me beyond him to other love affairs, but he didn't want to lose me and proceeded to chain me to him via my hunger.
What Max did not know or could not realize was that even I as young and confused as I was, would stumble out of the forest, and into the light of day whether he wished for me to do so or not.
CHAPTER TWO
Maximilian and me got married shortly after that little scene, although even at the time, neither of us were too enthusiastic about the idea. The thing is that I was young, really young, and needed whatever security I could get. Max seemed willing to oblige me, up to a point.
After that, we began to travel together, the first time I had ever had a chance to change scenery. Of course, it was pretty lonely, traveling with a group of musicians, no matter what most people would think about it. I was left on my own a lot and that helped me grow up fast.
Returning to New York was really good for me. I walked the familiar streets with a feeling of joy, looked up a few friends, did all the things I had missed out on the road. We were living in the same hotel room Max had always occupied but I didn't let that bother me either, figuring that we'd get a decent apartment sooner or later.
But then I met Russell Walker and everything did an abrupt about-face. I had been strolling through the midtown area, and had stopped in an antique shop before I noticed him.
As soon as I saw the man, I knew we were going to end up fucking. Don't ask me how I knew or why I wanted him so badly. It just worked out that way. He stared at me quizzically, and it was all I could do to keep myself from responding obscenely.
Opportunity pounded through my veins with a hard, demanding pulse. Opportunity in the form of an aloof, handsome stranger. And yet I had no knowledge, no assurance of what I was walking into if I chose to start something. He might be a married man. I could be a home-breaker. All manner of evil might fall upon my head.
Yes, I admit here in writing that it didn't matter to me. I was too selfish, too embroiled within my own growing thoughts and troubles, and facing, one might say, imminent hysteria. And that hysteria said to me, no matter what the price I would pay, I must break free and find myself. Regardless of the consequences. I would have the answer to my frustration and have it soon.
And so it came to pass that I was the aggressor in this first foray outside of marriage.
I left the antique shop without buying anything and walked with lingering steps along Madison Avenue thinking about the gentleman who had admired me. My thoughts were working at a high level of tension, for I had been addled by those first signs of flattery. Love-starved and attention-starved, I was to excess. Now when someone had, as it were, thrown me a bone, I was overreacting. The combination of my need, my essential youth and my determination not to be drowned in despair, all worked together creating a high voltage, so that I was, in part, driven to meet this stranger and would soon settle for nothing else that day.
Flashes of Max now passed guiltily across my mind's eye, but did not remain. My love for him apparently was not as strong as my love for my own self-preservation. I paused at a shop window and glanced to the right, hoping to see the stranger approach me. My trepidations and exultation were as though I had been a prisoner, who had just climbed over a wall.
At first, I was disappointed. No sign of my admirer appeared. I told myself that he had found something to purchase and knew that I would linger, wait for him, until he could catch up with me. I told myself that I had gone about this in much too hurried a fashion, that seduction was supposed to be languishing and certainly subtle, neither of which I was. I repeated that this eagerness on my part would be balanced out by a romantic nature on his part. I had only to wait and keep my patience intact.
A wind bustled about the busy street, but I had no interest in weather or mass humanity. Although Madison Avenue was alive with a variety of traffic, I felt as though I stood alone in the world, separated by miles from any contact with the feelings of others. I knew only one point of focus. He alone held my thoughts. And as I waited hopefully, small prickles of nervousness crept along my flesh, for now I saw that I was vulnerable. If he came forward, I would be his without question. If he did not approach me then I was open to any man who might be interested to fill the vacant place where my expectation fluttered.
I did not recognize all this specifically in words, or rationality but knew it through the tremulous sensations that contained me I did not recognize that I stood on the verge of committing a nameless yet indisputable crime, but I felt as though I had given up my integrity.
I crossed diagonally into the patches of sunlight that fell on dress shop windows clustered near the corner, thinking that I could watch better from here, and perhaps even see into the antique store without making my interest too readily apparent to those who had no business knowing my intentions. Turning up my coat collar and clenching my fingers inside the pockets of my coat, I stood both with shame and yet in shamelessness waiting, openly waiting.
Sometimes I think that Russel Walker knew exactly what was happening, and purposely delayed coming to me.
When he appeared at last upon the street, a small smile of triumph crept to my lips for he stood there, looking to the right and left of him for signs of me, and finding none, shook his head with a certain apparent consternation.
I knew without doubt that he obviously was indeed going to chase me down, if he possibly could. I continued to smile now on my little hill of triumph, for it was I who suddenly had the advantage over him.
It did not occur to him to look across the street, for me. When he finally started along the avenue, moving uptown, I parallelled him on the east side of the street, until we reached the corner at which point I crossed, and as though by the merest accident, passed in front of him, where he could see me.
At that point it all became clear to him. His long, somewhat austere expression changed into a grin that appreciated my little game. How could he know that I really wasn't playing at all?
How I managed through it all to keep my desperation from showing I cannot say. But Russell was convinced that I was an impish one.
"So there you are," he said, coming up to me now, as though we were old friends.
I felt him touch my elbow, and through the cloth of my coat, I thrilled at the contact.
"Oh, I was nearly gone." said I lightly. "What happened to you?"
"The little bitch in the store," he said, "kept me over the Tiffany shade, you know."
I could tell it was true, yet not exactly true; that he was playing back at me, with me. I looked up into his face, and enjoyed the music of his nonchalance which was partly a hint of a British accent. I had been right. He was no American, and yet something about him, a certain easy deviltry, was very American. Altogether, I was charmed and considered myself as having leaped the gap between gray reality and bright dream.
"Shall we have lunch together?" he asked. There was something in his voice that took me for granted, that knew I would say yes, and this conviction of his partly swept me along.
For the first time, I felt like an adult meeting another adult on equal footing. This strange man could have no secrets deeper than my own, nor a greater need. Whether I said yes or no to his offer, I realized that he must feel and share my desires for companionship and for more than companionship.
Of course, I thought when he asked me to join him for lunch, that he meant in a restaurant. Foolish assumption. We strolled around the corner to Fifth Avenue, where I expected that he would open the door to his parked car or hail a taxi. But no. He linked his arm through mine and walked me beneath a canopy and into a large, old building that faced Central Park.
Why hadn't I expected this? Why was I so surprised at the directness with which Russel pursued our mutual object? I felt a sudden sense of pause and inwardly dug my feet into the earth as though to break the forward speed with which I was lunging into something I had indeed bargained for, looked for, and even urged, but in some peculiar manner, did not expect to come to pass while I was still in a teetering state of unreadiness.
Yet, I said nothing, did not hesitate, did not make an excuse or suggest that we have our lunch outside on more neutral and safer ground. No. I went along with the game smiling, casual, chatting about antiques and furniture and travel as though it were the most common experience for me to go marching up to a strange man's apartment at the first nod of recognition.
A muddle of conflicting thoughts were distracting me so that I did not pay too much attention to the rather plush surroundings which was Russel's apartment. I don't know how I would have responded otherwise. Perhaps all the attributes of material comfort would have been too reminiscent of my childhood, for me to be entirely relaxed. And yet, and yet there was always the possibility that part of my original interest in Russell Walker was exactly this subliminal reminder of my early years.
He lived on a high floor. The apartment that opened to me had more rooms than could be counted with a single cursory glance. The furniture was typical of many such homes I had seen in its old-fashioned mellow comfort. One had the sensation of many generations in the mellow, wood-paneled walls and soft leather chairs. I had, perhaps, three minutes to absorb this atmosphere before I realized that Russell and I were not alone.
The woman who came through an archway smiled at me with warm welcome. My insides cringed guiltily as I realized she was quite young, quite beautiful, and quite possibly, Russell's wife. In a flash I wondered if I had made some dreadful mistake. But if I had read Russell's interest in me incorrectly, for what reason would he have brought me home? I could not imagine.
Mustering every bit of calm and actress ability, I met the oncoming smile of her with one of my own, while Russell introduced me to Sonia Walker, who extended a warm hand and took mine, placing her other over my fingers in genuine hospitality.
Involuntarily, I glanced down at those hands to look for a wedding ring, but found none. Then, I thought, well maybe this woman is his sister. But they did not look like sister and brother. She was dark and small-boned, and her warm manner was in fine contrast to his natural coolness.
"Lovely," said she," to have you here. I was just setting up for lunch."
Before I had a chance to make the usual remarks of courtesy, Russell interrupted us to tell Sonia a concise summary of information regarding Madison Avenue furniture.
We were in the large dining room, where a buffet of silver serving dishes were set out with various cold meats and salads.
Sonia served me abundantly, while they continued to chat about interior decorating. It all seemed so out of place and beside the point that I began to relax and believe myself mistaken about Russell's original intention toward me. What I set myself to doing then was in the nature of discovery. I purely and simply wondered about Russell's intentions while trying, as hard as I might to stifle my own.
I did not realize till much later how frequently the phone rang, interrupting our talk and the meal. But it gradually dawned on me that most everyone who called was invited to visit that afternoon.
I saw my original intentions with Russell Walker begin to go down the drain and decided to make the best of my disappointment. It seemed my fate to be with people who were overly convivial. First Max with his drive toward public relations, and now Russell and Sonia Walker with their drive toward social gatherings.
I could not know, of course, the underlying reason for that conviviality.
Soon, men and women, equally attractive and all seeming at ease, began to arrive. I did not feel any of the high tension, in the atmosphere, which had always been part of Max's parties. No, here in the Walker household, the feeling was one more of self-interest than of anxiety to impress, and I had the sensation of being part of a salon, or late afternoon soiree.
Since I was familiar with parties from the very earliest years of my life, I glided easily I among the newcomers, and gathered through bits and pieces of conversation that Sonia and Russell were in fact divorced, though still living under the same room.
I sensed that neither Russell nor Sonia were ever very far from me.
One or the other of them was keeping a protective eye on my comings and goings. I felt amused by this, and gentled into the beginnings of affection for both of them, though I continued to ask myself what Russell Walker had had in mind originally for me.
Admittedly, I was having a good time, simply conversing with new personalities. That one took my mind off the desperate problem of my entrapment in a marriage where I had, seemingly neither individuality nor a voice. Russell's considerable attention to me was a powerfully convincing overture of affection and without realizing it, I wanted to shine for his benefit. My conversation became animated, driven by the high intensity of heat that was my sexual urge in sublimation.
I have since learned to observe the drifting pattern that gatherings assume, how they change and rechange again like the shifting of sands beneath a continuing breeze. Men and women who had come in couples did not remain so. Those who had come alone found interests sufficient for the afternoon's easy pace. But mostly, I noticed that the center of attention was myself in a bland and unstartling manner, of course. I was spoken with by most everyone, with more than the usual interest of social amenities. I was, as it were, an object, not a curiosity exactly, but perhaps a novelty. That's what I thought then, anyhow. For I could in no way account for the specific interest which was readily apparent between myself and every other person who came to speak with me.
Soon, Sonia and Russell knew my history, I should say my background, for although I had mentioned where I came from originally, I did not speak a signle word of my marriage. Yes, I wore a ring, but no one inquired about this.
I realized that the gathering was composed of people of the highest discretion. I felt that everyone here had a personal story better left unsaid. This understanding gave me a certain relaxation and security. I sensed, for once, that I was not the only one with troubles, that there were others also disturbed and trapped and seeking, each in his or her own fashion, an escape or some suitable answer to how best to manage the dilemma of living.
"You know," said Russel to me, as he handed me my third scotch and water, "You have charmed Rogers out of his shoes. Just look at him, poor thing." Russell laughed in a quiet friendly manner. "Why don't you have a little pity, and spend some time with the man?"
I followed Russell's gaze, to Rogers and saw that Russell was not exaggerating as I had expected.
"Now, now," I said with a touch of deprecation for I wished to avoid the sweet but rather elderly gentleman, "It wasn't Rogers who smiled at me in the antique shop, was it?"
A direct, frank offering on my part had slipped out of my lips. I had not intention of speaking them, the words which would put myself on a platter for Russell. Vet, for all the sweet music of conversation, about me and warmth and good food, I could not forget my original intention and hoped that Russell's reason for his original interest was the same as mine.
"You mean you won't sooth Rogers' despair?" Russell grinned.
"Don't play with me, dear," I said, with sudden adult directness and with a touch of annoyance too. "You don't want me to spend my time elsewhere, I hope."
I noticed then, how Russell's laughing eyes changed.
The lids lowered a perceptible fraction, and their easy, charming attitude hardened into something almost forceful.
"Of course not, darling." he said.
I heard the quality of his voice, the 'darling.' Did it ring true? It was hard to tell. I didn't want to reach conclusions, especially negative ones, without sufficient evidence, for despite myself, I felt a tremulous response to Russell so very different from the man who had been and still was my husband.
The lids lowered a perceptive fraction, and their easy, charming attitude hardened into something almost forceful.
"Of course not, darling," he said.
I heard the quality of his voice, the
"darling." Did it ring true? It was hard to tell. I didn't want to reach conclusions especially negative ones, without sufficient evidence, for despite myself, a felt a tremulous response to Russell, so very different from the man who had been and still was my husband.
"You know," I said, dropping my own voice to an intimate but steady timbre, "I really would like to be alone with you, Russell."
My teeth ground together. There. It was said. I had put my true feelings out for him to do as he wished. Just as long as he would do something conclusive. I had spent an afternoon being as charming as I could manage, but felt that my spirit for socializing had its limitations. I could never go very far from my original intent. It was up to Russell to join with me as his intentions had promised or cut me loose so that I would not waste any more of our time.
"I'd love to be alone with you," Russell answered, "but how are we going to manage it."
"I suppose that's up to you," said I, wondering if he meant what he said. For it occurred to me with no trouble at all that, were I in his place, or in possession of the money he seemed to have, I certainly would not bring a woman back to an ex-wife and a party.
I should have understood, should have felt suspicious but I was not one to lift the rock and look beneath it for crawly things.
"Well, you must have a back bedroom," I said with a sub-acid, teasing quality to take the edge off my challenge.
"You're perfectly right," said Russell. "I'm a fool for neglecting-"
I didn't hear the end of his sentence and thought I didn't have to hear. I had made my point and accomplished my purpose as he steered me across the room and into a corridor that attached to back apartments. I wasn't concerned at the obviousness of our departure. Nor, apparently, was Russell. Yet all the strangeness together in a single lump beneath my breast seemed to gather and caused my heart to pound with conflicting emotions as I became increasingly close to what was about to happen.
How shall I describe the apartment in which I found myself?
Perhaps surroundings are not always important or even often of influence. But in this case, I was definitely caught up by the suddenly exotic atmosphere. I had expected Russell to take me to a bedroom. Instead he brought me into a suite all done over with black and gold velvet. I felt like something in a Chinese movie theater and became immediately self-conscious as though some secret current in the air, some mysterious incense were enlarging upon my original feelings.
When he began to kiss me, I returned his ardor with concern that I might not be able to live up to what he expected of me.
Heaven only knew what it was that he expected, but it must be something quite unusual in the realm of sexual experience. And here I was, willing, certainly eager, definitely, but with flooding pulses that did not quite know how to take control of the situation. What I had to offer was my body and it was up to Russel to teach me how to use it.
As he kissed me my eyes kept rolling around in a semi-stupid stare. I was trying to understand and make something out of the draperies and dark painted walls and gold figurines upon the mantel pieces. The air was warm but there seemed to be a current moving about as though it were being blown in from someplace else. I could not tell how many rooms were devoted to this decor, and Russell's embrace was urging me to abandon myself to the moment, and not try to think too much or too deeply.
How willing I was. With all my heart, I wanted to give in and become what he wished me to be. Yet something stronger than my desire prevailed for my body remembered that once before I had given myself to a man with complete trust, and what had happened then-
"Kiss me harder," said I to Russell, my voice strangely not my own, but strong and demanding beneath its hoarse whisper.
My hands played along the back of his neck. I sent my fingers into the soft hair, and held his head angled so that I could press his lips with my t ongue.
Little did I know my desperation or its strength. I knew only that it was about time that I got my way in some small portion. Russell was to be that portion here and now.
I inhaled the subtle aroma of his after-shave lotion, a gentle citrus smell, perhaps Royal Lime. His body, much narrower than Max's, was easy for me to embrace, and draw toward my own. I wanted to encompass him as one contains a favorite toy for fear that someone will come along and steal it. I began pressing my lips around his mouth. Then moved my tongue across his cheeks to his ear, and back to his eyes, kissing him openly, unashamedly, and with the abandon that seemed so much part of our surroundings. A faint inner voice whispered from time to time what was to become of me, but I paid it no heed. For I, in the end, would provide all the answers myself, and would not need a conscience to keep my on the path that would lead only to unhappiness and sterility.
"Do you like my tits," said I rubbing against him. "Touch me. Tell me how they feel."
His lips were against my throat as I pressed his hands to my bosom, and moved them around on my boobs. The material of my undergarments made a rubbing sound against my dress, and Russell seemed to enjoy that. He reached his fingers in between the wool material and the nylon and lace, fingering the difference in textures there and then finally touching my flesh where it puffed out over the top of the bra. He was taking his time about undressing me. I suspected that he wanted me to reach my highest peaks of desire before we actually met in naked contact. How little he knew of me.
Yet how could he know that I was bursting with excess of passion? I had made very attempt to be a loving partner, and at the same time, not reveal the dimensions of my need. I wanted to control myself.
Yet I could not.
I began to tremble and felt my face flush as his hands played over the brassiere beneath my dress. While he held each tit in each palm, he paused and suddenly looked at me with a new curiosity, cocking his head at an angle like a bird listening for some distant sound.
"Is there something the matter?" said he in that gentle voice with its musical accent.
"No, darling, nothing. Just make love to me and I'll be all right."
I meant exactly that. My voice quivered as I gave the words to him.
"So," he murmured half to himself.
And then, I was hardly aware of the motion, he began rapidly to take off my clothing until he had me stripped down to bra and underpanties.
These were much prettier than what I had been accustomed to wearing not many months before. I felt almost prideful to be standing revealed in the low cut nylon bikini with its elastic band that cross-cut my pubic area. I put my hands to my belly where the smallish curve rose and pressed my palms inward as though to contain myself within the burning confines of flesh that theatened it seemed, to give way and spill in liquid passion at Russell Walker's feet.
"You take your clothes off, too," I said, hoarsely. "Hurry."
I was giving myself away, but now I could not care, dared not bother to worry about propriety.
"Hot little girl, aren't you."
"he said curiously.
I grinned and nodded, trying to make light of his sudden gutter attitude. But I could not drive off the truth. I was exactly that, a hot little girl. One who had to have her way.
As I nodded, my own fingers stole down to the tops of my thighs, and began to creep along their curves toward my cunt. I saw his eyes watching me, his casual, aloof grin freezing.
"Yes, do that." he said. "Move yourself. Let me see how you do it. Touch it. Go on, touch it." His voice purred, softly, with furry edges, enticing, encouraging, instilling confidence that I would find satisfaction here in this outlandish room and in these unreal circumstances.
Everything strange, and yet so desirable. Strange and familiar and inevitable as though my whole life had been pointing to this confrontation.
This strangeness, the inevitability that took charge of my will, moved my hand to inside the elastic top of the bikini underwear. I drew them down slowly past my thighs and knees and calves. I stepped out of the bit of lace, and let them stay where they had fallen upon the carpet. I stood with my legs spread wide, so that Russell could see the twin labial curves of my body.
I wanted him to see, wanted to arouse him to the same fevered pitch where I trembled.
"Look at me," said I, "and don't take your eyes off my cunt. I'll do everything you like.
Everything."
And then it occurred to me that it was I who should undress him. I ambled forward in my nakedness, to where he stood watching me from the heights of his lean, cool desire.
That's what I couldn't bear, the possibility that he might remain more detached than myself. I opened his shirt collar, while loosening his tie and took off his jacket and shirt. He had a lithe, long chest, still with residual tan from some winter holiday. The Royal Lime essence touched my nostrils. I leaned into it, put my lips and tongue to the blonde, soft matting, ran the tip of my tongue down to his navel, continuing to kiss him there, while I undid the buckle of his trousers and then the zipper. But it was he who pushed down his trousers and pulled them off.
To see the male erection, to see that quickening life blurred my vision. My throat became dry and tight.
"Don't make me wait for you," I rasped.
"Go ahead," Russell urged me. "What do you want to do? Do it. Do it all, baby."
The "baby" was so out of place with his accent, that I smiled right through the searing heat of my passion. But even as I smiled, I was dropping to my knees before him.
Without rein, I began to kiss his legs, the long tight muscle of his thighs. My hands grasped the backs of those legs, and moved up to the hard, tight buttocks. I knew where my face was going, what my mouth wanted as preliminary sustenance. It was there waiting for me, high and hard and large in proportion to Russell's natural body length. Even on my knees, his prick was somewhat above me. I thought to myself, high and mighty, with prickles of pleasure running down to my tits and circling the nipples with streaks of lightning or so it felt.
One of his hands caught my shoulder, the other one reached to guide his prick where I wanted it. I opened my mouth, grasped hold of his bulbous tip. My tongue touched that point where a salty exudation had stood in one glistening droplet. I felt my own cunt growing moist, and came away with three slippery fingers. Yes, today I would have it, have everything. Be filled and fulfilled to orgasm. As I tasted the hard extension pressing in on my tongue, I believed that the gates of heaven were swinging open for two of the devil's chiefest advocates. We were going to storm the heights of vaulting passion together, and in those preliminary moments of mounting desire, I prayed that there would be no end to this day.
He pressed his hands to either of my cheeks and his fingers curved past my ears. Then he began moving my head back and forth upon his totem. I continued this action as though nodding in slow obeisance to the god of virility.
"I like your tongue," he said above me. "Come on, use it."
I was glad to curl my tongue around the hot, phallic protuberance that filled my mouth. I wanted to stimulate him into mad need to take me. I, intent upon shattering his aloofness, pressed my hands into the curve of his buttocks, and clung to him. There was much I had learned from Max about male orgasm. How to bring it on, how to delay it. I dredged this knowledge up from the deepest recesses of my brain and brought it all to bear now upon Russell. I felt gratified as the tendons and blood vessels grew rapidly more taut, became increasingly sure of myself as the progress of his mounting need grew from the manipulation of my rigid tongue tip.
And then I stopped clinging with my lips just behind the bulbous head. I opened my eyes and looked up into his face, which was hunched over with his chin pressing toward his chest. I saw that the color had drained from his cheeks and they were lined with tension. At the edges of his eyes were crinkles of concentration as though he were surging directly toward ejaculation.
As I paused, his eyelids opened. He shot a startled look at me, that was filled with annoyance.
I knew exactly what I was doing, and intended to continue the action my way, not Russell's.
I lifted my mouth off him and said softly, "Darling, I'm an inside girl. That's where I want you, okay?"
I saw the bobbing of his throat as she swallowed but he had no choice except to agree with me. The essential selfishness of passion was something with which he had to struggle as, I suppose we all do.
"Whatever you wish," said Russell. "I want to make you happy dear."
I don't know if he wanted to make me happy, but I took his words at face value for I intended to be happy, whether he would have it so or not. I thought love, I thought contact. I thought come.
For the first time I noticed that there were no beds in the room, but a double divan, in an L-shape against two walls. Russell and I stumbled toward the black and gold striped object which was to couch us. I fell upon it eagerly and bounced upon the unexpectedly resilient springs of a firm but accepting mattress.
I was overwhelmed by some final explosion of freedom inside me. If I'd had any hesitancy before, I lost all vestige of it as Russell landed beside me on the bed, and the full length of our bodies touched.
I opened my arms and legs to him.
He began stroking my body with his hands that assessed me as though I were an object of art. His fingers lingered around my tits, and caressed my belly, reaching round my waist to the back and sliding low over the soft flesh of my ass.
"You are a lovely woman," said Russell.
I didn't want to hear that I was lovely, but that I was desirable. His flattery meant nothing for I had been flattered too often before to no avail. I put my thumbs on his eyebrows and stroked them outward into the depression of his temples and then around the tops of his ears, while my fingers caressed his forehead.
"Make love to me, Russell, do it now." I said.
But this time the voices had drifted off, and I assumed were gone for good, nor did I know what Russell meant by being a sport just yet unless he was not accustomed to women being as immediately available as I was. But what had that to do with sportsmanship exactly. I wasn't going to pause in my activities with him, in our love making, to analyze his view of the matter.
"Let's not talk anymore," I murmured for I was awash with eagerness.
He grunted acquiescence and began to embrace me then, drawing me hard ot his body.
I loved the feel of him, the litheness. Although he was direct and forceful, there was a certain gentle quality. He was not like Max, not a bulldozer. Russell gave me room and opportunity to express my feelings and desires and immediately I loved him for this.
I think it is true of all women, this need for a sense of recognition by the object of her love. It is not so much that the female needs to be appreciated as she needs to be recognized for her separate identity and value as an individual, equal to me, equal to her man. A woman who is thus respected, will give her life for the lover of her choice. She will do everything and anything to help him, needing nothing in return other than that certain sense of existence which raises her higher than an abject for sexuality, on Jane's shoulder, "What's It was in Russell's nature, I think, to accord this quality. I felt from him a lovely awareness of my presence and needs. I kept thinking to myself how blind I must have been not to recognize its total absence from Max's nature. Now, with hindsight, I appreciated that lack in my husband and realized that no matter how many compliments, how much he showered me with attention and trinkets, he never had believed in my flesh and blood existence as separate from his own welfare. I felt suddenly heartsick with a rush of despair and flung myself for compensation into Russell's embrace.
"Lovely, lovely bitch," he whispered.
"I need you. Take me. Do something."
I wrapped my legs around his and tried to draw him into my body, lifting my hips in such a way so that his hardened and straightforward member jabbed against my waiting thighs where they met, high up. I wanted him inside me fast, hard and totally. Somewhere I heard a sound of appreciation. A female voice it was, but none that I recognized. I assumed that there were other couples in other rooms, of the apartment, that the afternoon was perhaps one of those moments in Shangri-la, when people met love partners and had the courage to take romance as it came, directly, and without the pretenses of civilized ritual. I, for one, was somewhat blessed a adequate in this realm of conforming amenities. I had no interest at all in appearing respectable. To be a good girl had never held any charms for me. I had never noted that being good had helped me to achieve anything worth possessing. For even in the very few years of my maturity, I sensed that the only way to be available for happiness was to be honest and honesty meant being open and direct.
With Russell I intended exactly this, to let him know what I needed and how much I needed of it, in order to give him a chance to fulfill me. If he would do that, my life would change. Otherwise, I knew with the hardened drive of practical self-preservation, I was perfectly capable of leaving him.
His narrow body slide between the widening of my thighs. I clasped him with the insides of my legs, and brought his body to bear against my own, sighing with unadulterated pleasure as he guided himself into my waiting and desiring cunt. I felt like a riverbed that needed its dryness watered. I myself was oozing liquid and wished for the juices and sap of life to fill and nourish me. He was large and hard, I felt as he began to enter. The probing head of his rod began to insinuate itself, at the tender muscled rim of the vaginal tract.
"Relax," he said. "Let me be inside you."
I was and was not relaxed. The tension of sexual need was much too high to allow me ease. I withstood a small amount of pain because I could not take the time to relax as Russell wanted me to. attempted "No, I can't wait," I said in answer to his laugh of recognition. "I really need you. You must know it. I need you."
I tried. Biting down on my lower lip I attempted to loosen the sphincter muscle that was clenching round him and succeeded sufficiently so that he could press deeper into my waiting twat.
"Lift your legs up," he continued, "that will help."
I did that also, lifting my legs at first wide and then wrapping them together around his hips. With the inside of my calves I pressed on his hard ass, needing to push him as far in as he would go.
"How long had it been?" he said, suddenly curious. "You're so hungry."
"Oh God, don't ask, Russell. Just do it. Kiss me. Hold me. Come on, help me. Do it. Do it."
I was mumbling, muttering, making sounds without sense as the energy of my desire transmuted into vocalization. I was everything, all things, nothing and nobody all simultaneously. I was love and emptiness. Enraptured by my own erotic vibrations, I was Venus incarnate and felt, for the first time, beautiful.
I'm sure that Russell sensed this. How could he not pick up the intensity of my radiations, the charisma that comes and goes, emanating from the essence of soul as well as physicality.
I believed that Tom was enchanted for he sighed against my throat and began to do what I needed him to do working himself hard, driving directly into me, giving that which I so desperately wanted. Heaven knows I had been stimulated beyond bearing for too long and, in a sense, I don't believe I was responsible for the extreme height of my magnetism. It was a conglomerate force created by Maximilian's sadism as well as by nature's hand. Of course, I alone was responsible for the means with which I used this electricity which would be neither lowered nor turned off. as my body encompassed Russell's prick, I began to feel an increasing sense of power. My physicality would not be denied and it could do no wrong.
The yielding mattress became like soft earth. I would have given anything, I think, if Russell and I could have been trapsported to some country place far from the curiosity or intrusion of others. When I opened my eyes and saw the expotic and dramatic atmosphere in which we were making love, I refused to accept the truth, that we were not acting as part of nature's great design but were, in some way, creating an artificial set of circumstances. While this disturbed me in passing, it certainly in no way deterred my exuberant possession of the maleness that plied my body.
My skin began to prickle with sensations of growing tension. I felt increasing belief in Russell, the thrust and knowledge that he would stay with me, stay inside me and continue to work me until I reached the state of ultimate satisfaction along with him. In Maximilian's case it had always been a matter of some few thrusts, a few minutes of activity and then finished, leaving me, as I have said, empty, alone, unsatisfied.
But with Russell I knew it was not going to be that way.
Sensations of my drive toward completion began to gather their stream and force. My tits, rubbing against the pressure of his hold on me, tingled with hot life. I was floating in a film of perspiration that lubricated me from top to toe, leaving out no part. I remember a specific twittering through my chest, the flutter of bird-like wings running up and down in circles and swoops and soarings. I was an animated creature set loose from gravitational forces into a wonder world of my own physical capacities for love. As slowly, slowly I climbed the ladder, I began to tell Russell the obscenities which Maximilian had taught me well. I did not know whether or not Russell wanted to hear those words tumble from my lips but the action was a learned part of me by then, almost reflex reaction and I babbled out four-letter nouns with full abandon until, in sudden explosion of satisfied desire, I screamed with all my heart the name of what we were doing.
Who can understand the human heart? Even as I burst the ripened bonds of my flesh I knew that Russell was only a stepping stone on my way to other lovers, though I had no idea where or why I needed to go to them.
This was but a passing flash of thought. Soon I felt quiet and easy and interested to repeat what we had just accomplished. I was full of wonderment at my capacity for gratification and lay on my stomach with my chin balanced on the knuckles of one hand staring silently across the exotic carpet into one empty corner of the room, thinking my thoughts with no urgency to speak, knowing that Russell was beside me smoking a rather acrid cigar and watching me from a small distance away. No, I didn't care what he thought. Nor did I much care how he felt. I was in a vacuum of isolation, trying to absorb what had just occurred, what it might mean to me and to my relationship with Maximilian. For now, in this ebb of satisfaction, I understood the ultimate pull of sexuality to humankind and realized or rather sensed, I think, for there were no words attached to it, how important was this relaxed state of being; how in the future I would do anything at any time to alleviate the tortures of physical frustration.
Conclusions dripped slowly through my body as though I were percolating into a ripened intelligence about life.
At last Russell said, "How are you over there?"
I sighed and turned slightly to look at him. I realized the closeness of my partner and wondered what would come next between us.
"Russell," said I, "do you like me?"
He smiled a crooked smile as though my question were unexpected as well as childish.
"Of course I do," said he, patting my behind. "You must know that."
"I don't know." My voice trailed off. "No. I don't know what I know."
"Don't worry about it, dear," said Russell crisply, in command of things again. "You'll find out whatever you need to know."
"I'm sure of that."
"Yes. You're the type who manages, you know."
I couldn't really fathom exactly what Russell meant by manages, but I didn't question that. I said aloud what I thought.
"Well, where do we go from here?"
Russell shrugged. "That's up to you."
For once I had no answer. It was indeed up to me, that much I realized. But I was too overwhelmed by my new abilities to be able to think freely or realistically about my situation. All I knew was that I had somehow gotten my hands into real living and I sensed that, for better, for worse, I would never let go.
CHAPTER THREE
After my scene with Russell it was still easy with Maximilian. We were in our own worlds and just didn't get in each other's way. Of course, I had expected a lot more than that from marriage but I was young and still resilient in those days, emotionally and physically.
And I continued to see Russell, having no intention of giving up fucking the first man who had managed to make me come. I dug him a lot and I liked his sister as well. At first I was pretty clumsy and nervous about arranging our meetings but after awhile I got good at it. Max was not the jealous type and it didn't take a hell of a lot to deceive him.
Then he went away on tour and that gave me free rein. Oddly enough, I didn't bother to see Russell for the first two days of my freedom. I wanted to put it off and make our first unworried fuck all the better. Finally I gave in, putting on my coat and deciding to pay him a surprise visit.
Russell wasn't home but Sonia was there and we got into a conversation immediately. I trusted her more than I did her husband and soon I had told her a lot about myself, especially about my rotten fucked up marriage. She gave me a little advice and then told me about her relations with Russell, which were not exactly beer and skittles either. Eventually I asked her why things were fucked up between them.
"Russell was very good to me, patient and understanding. But I think by the time we found each other it was just," she shrugged, "a trifle too late in my life."
"Too late?" I asked with a simple, direct curiosity of a child.
Sonia nodded. "I don't suppose you understand me, do you?"
"No," said I slowly, wondering what I had missed and whether she was going to fill me in.
"Well time enough for that later." She dismissed the subject lightly. "The fact remained, neither Russell nor myself could bear each other during the earlier years when we were getting into bed and trying to find ourselves there. Both of us were demanding people. Russell loves his women," Sonia looked me directly in the eye as she said, "and so do I."
I thought in my naivete that Sonia meant that she loved her men as Russell loved his women. I let the sentence make that kind of sense in my brain. I waited for further elucidation, waited for Sonia to continue her story. For awhile there was a silence between us which I saw she was in no hurry to fill.
Part of the relaxed attitude in a person is the ability to allow silences to fall where they may without needing to clutter them with conversation. And that particular silence between us was strangely comfortable, though at the time I did not realize exactly how much at ease I was with this woman who was so very different from myself. I knew only a generalized sensation of well-being in her company and was not, therefore, unhappy because of Russell's absence. T suppose I needed friends as much as I needed lovers and
Sonia was going to fill that particular emptiness for me. Little could I know how well she intended to try.
The tea was soon brought to an end by Sonia who asked me, did I want to join her, for she was going to meet Russell at their country place some thirty or so miles north of New York.
At this distance of recollection it seems very strange that I did not think in terms of questions but was only agreeable. Perhaps that was my early failing, this willingness to participate in anything offered me. Perhaps it was only another symptom of my essential loneliness. At any rate, I leaped at the chance to see Russell again, of course, and felt a small curiosity about their country home. It was getting on to winter and Sonia's description of the ski area where they lived put a light into my eyes. I have always enjoyed the outdoors. Physical activity of any sort was always good for whatever ailed me, using up the excess energies, giving me a chance to breathe the nippy outdoor weather and generally come alive with nature as my ally. And so I was pleased to join Sonia and also felt a certain deliciousness about not having to be concerned at the hour, what time we would get home or if we would, indeed, even return to the city that night.
Sonia called downstairs to the doorman through some intercom unit. By the time we came out of the building, her black Lincoln convertible was waiting for us. It was not a new car but one of those classic models built in the early forties. I could tell by its new top and other equipment that the car had been custom designed.
She looked small behind the wheel but was far from inadequate when it came to driving. Her gloved fingers handled the wheel with ease and confidence. Soon we were cross town and on the highway heading north.
I reclined against the soft leather and gazed out the windshield at the crystal clarity of stars sprayed in the distant dark. For some minutes I thought about Max, wherever he was, playing his licks and riffs with the driving passion that made him such a dynamo on stage. How different Max's urges were from my desire at that moment. Yes, at that moment, I yearned for peace and wondered why I was always so far from it. Sitting beside Helen, however, was a soothing place to be. I drank in the quiescence which dominated the mood in the automobile. A certain closeness, an indescribable kind of intimacy prevailed. We drove for many minutes in silence, then spoke some few words that had no particular relevance but strengthened the bride of contact which was growing rapidly between the woman and myself. I found myself wondering how old Sonia Walker had been when she'd married and why she had chosen poorly. I thought about how popular she must have been with men, how desirable. With her coat collar turned up to the curve of her chin-line she seemed, though demure and petite, sturdy in a special sort of way. I had the feeling that Sonia Walker could prevail above most any trouble and, indeed, the method in which she had salvaged the relationship with Russell was both unique and enhancing to her self-esteem, I thought. They were vague, illogical thoughts, admittedly, and derived from my intuitive core rather than from any deductive conclusion. It is amazing how little I knew about either of the Walkers while at the same time I felt as though I were gradually drifting toward becoming part of their inner circle.
We had traveled for, perhaps, half an hour when Sonia asked me, did I wish to stop for coffee. I shook my head no and said I would rather just continue if she didn't mind.
Sonia replied in a murmur that she could hardly mind anything which would make me comfortable and I returned her smile without comment.
"Russell will be surprised to see you," she said some few minutes later. "It'll be a happy surprise too, I think. He does like you very much."
I felt embarrassed to add how much I, in turn, liked Russell. It seemed peculiar to be talking to a woman about her ex-husband in this way. What a strange triangle we were, I thought. How fascinating to be part of a shifting pattern of relationships where there was neither hostility nor jealousy nor urge to possess. I had never known so agreeable a time with anyone. There had always been some need to conquer or impress or push oneself forward. But in this case, cash and desire to make others comfortable were the dominating feelings; an irresistible milieu, of course, tantalizing and hypnotic to someone as pressured as I was. I daresay I would have given my life to remain within the social circle of the Walkers if only for the benefit of this relaxation which drifted down upon me like spring rain from one or both of them.
It was somewhere between eleven and midnight when Sonia turned the car off the main road and onto the narrower tributary which she said would lead us to the house.
When she asked if I were tired, I shook my head no and meant it, explaining how Max's hours had made me accustomed to being up at any time of day or night without strain. And it was true. I felt bright and alive and ready for anything, ready for greeting Russell in his country home.
The road continued to narrow until it became hardly more than a dirt path over which the car slowly jounced as Sonia guided it up a steep and winding hill grown over with what I judged to be acres of trees. Soon the tree-line stopped. Beyond it in a clearing I saw a sprawling old-fashioned house which might at one time have been the high point of a rural compound. There were many gabled pitches to the roof and these were outlined by lights in windows. Now the driveway widened from the dirt road. The car slid into a crescent. Came to a halt in front of the wide porch.
"Russell is expecting you, isn't he?" said I.
Sonia smiled. "Why yes. Yes of course."
I had a moment's hesitation because certainly Russell was not expecting me for company. Perhaps he would feel intruded upon. Then I brushed this thought away, for since I had not considered it earlier I had no business considering it now when obviously my trepidations were too late to deal with.
I took the three steps up to the porch while Sonia came around the other side of the car and then moved ahead of me to unlock the door. I stood there wishing that she would knock instead of barging in with me, but no such thought seemed to occur to her and I took solace that she expected Russell would welcome me as warmly as I wished him to.
Inside, a warmth blossomed and surrounded us. There was a smell of roasted chestnuts, I thought, or perhaps it was just the aroma from a fireplace that had burned a fragrant kind of wood.
"Russell?" Sonia called. Her voice traveled lightly through the sprawl of rooms on the first floor.
When there was no answer she shrugged. "I didn't see his car outside," said I helpfully.
"Well perhaps he's gone into town for something, but hell just be a moment."
She was so light-hearted that I could not but agree that all would work out for the best. I gave Sonia my coat without second thoughts about staying.
She did not seem at a loss simply because Russell was not present and proceeded to show me through the house which was furnished with American Colonial antiques.
I've always liked the cozy comfort of braid rugs and Windsor chairs and the deeply burnished woods of solid, hand-crafted tables, the flowered prings of overstuffed sofas and chairs. Each welcomed me. In the living room, Sonia, without ceremony, bent to her knees and rekindled the fire which had recently gone out, I saw, for there were still sparks glowing in the dead ashes. Obviously, Russell had let it die and I began to wonder if he indeed did intend to return shortly.
I watched the new flames catch and crackle among fragile twigs, spreading their thrusts of orange points into increasing intensity until the back log seemed all at once to take light again. The radiation of warmth and the incense-like smell were hypnotic. I did not realize that I was, in fact, tired, not from the ride as much as from the sense of pressure which had dominated my life until Max's leaving.
Without waiting for Sonia to invite me I stretched out on a nearby sofa and gazed into the fireplace, letting my thoughts ride and roll where they would.
Sonia's light footstep was a comforting presence.
"Would you care for a little nightcap?" said she in the most casual of tones.
"Um hun." I hardly paid attention to either . the question or my answer.
She came to sit beside me, handing over a mug which she directed me to hold still while she poured liquid into it, then heated the concoction with the red end of a poker.
"Mulled wine," said I smiling. "We used to have this during the holidays."
I enjoyed the warm, strong brew with more than my share of appreciation. Sonia, sitting close to me, seemed dearer than an ordinary friend because of her ability to anticipate my desires and fill them.
"I wonder what could be keeping Russell?" she said after awhile. Then she began to laugh more to herself than aloud.
"What's so funny?" said I.
"I'm just wondering," Sonia explained, "whether we have crossed our circuits tonight."
"What does that mean?" I asked, still at ease, mildly curious, expecting nothing but pleasantry for that was how I was geared.
"Well, life can be funny sometimes. It's just possible," said Helen looking at her watch, "that Russell thought I wasn't coming tonight and took off for the city again."
"You're not serious."
"Why should I be joking?" said she softly. "Well?"
"yes, I'll phone and see if he's home."
I was so innocent, so trusting that I believed the whole picture exactly as Sonia delineated it to me and watched her with true interest as she dialed, then waited for an answer at home. I was, of course, genuinely startled when I heard her speaking with Russell.
She hung up and we looked at each other, both our faces saying: Yes, that's what has happened.
"All right," Sonia said. "No harm done."
I didn't trouble to hide my disappointment. So much did it show on my face that Sonia came to me and patted both my cheeks and said, "Don't you think we can make do without Russell, just until tomorrow?"
Her eyes as I gazed up into them were so warm, so attentive, so concerned with my discomfort that I could do nothing but say, "Of course we can."
She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the forehead. "I'll try to pleasure you this evening, my little one. Perhaps you will learn something that will delight you as much as it does me."
I was stupid and sluggish, not wanting to understand what Helen was telling me so clearly.
The mouth that kissed my forehead slid slowly down along the bridge of my nose, kissed my cheek and grazed lower to one corner of my mouth.
Then, as I heard the increased depth of her breathing I began to understand.
How strange it all was and still I did not believe because Sonia was so femine, so gentle. The women I had seen in New York who were homosexuals had nothing in common with this gem of a creature. I did not feel as though I were headed into a strange debauch but seemed more to be floating disoriented. I had no background out of which to respond. Sonia's lips moving to center upon mine, touched me so lightly, so delicately, I felt as though my face were the surface of a calm lake and hers a gauzy winged creature coming to land, with the lightest brushing of wings. Because there was no barbarism, no rough gruff pressure upon me I felt no urge or need to pull away from this new love being offered to me with such gentle, intimate affection. There was no fear in me, no trepidation. I found myself accepting her kisses and inhaling the faint residual perfume from her hair and skin.
She lifted her face perhaps an inch or two from mine and looked upon me, her eyes peaceful, without question, somehow calm with the certainty that I envied.
"I know you want Russell," she whispered, "and you'll have him tomorrow. I promise."
Is it believable that I, in that instant, had forgotten Russell and was completely involved with sensations of the moment? As I recall that scene I must admit that Sonia in her unique way had intrigued me and drawn from me responses of a nature I never knew I had possessed. There was not the leaping of familiar passion but rather she had drawn from me a gentle but profound secret, the hidden secret of my own nature.
I sighed. Sonia touched my shoulder. I leaned against the couch as though my body were made of paper and she had become the breeze that blew me backward. Something in me, I know, gave Sonia the signal. I touched her wrist, I think, and my fingers squeezed with a pressure that meant I was available if not downright vulnerable to whatever she wished to offer me that night.
If I were shocked, if I felt unfamiliar, if I did not know what to do or what I would receive, I also understood that one evening carved out of a lifetime would not necessarily change the entire course of my existence. There was something rock solid inside me which would always keep me in line with my own identity and this night's foray into a realm of love with another woman could not shatter my innate strength and knowledge.
I was willing to give myself up because I would rather have something than nothing.
I did not have to tell Sonia, of course, that I.d never had a woman.
She leaned again toward me. Her lips were parted, perhaps half an inch, just enough for me to feel the very fine tip of her tongue as our mouths again made contact.
I kept thinking to myself, You'll do anything. You'll do anything. Won't you? Anything to be free of Max ... and it was true.
She did not take me upstairs to a bedroom. In fact, we did not sleep at any time during that night but remained in front of the fireplace glow, bathed in the warmth, protected from the night winds that rattled the small window panes.
Our undressing seemed to follow naturally from our kisses. I watched with curious eyes the slow revelation of Sonia's body to my view, knowing that between two women there could be no danger. It was more like the dalliance of a child's game occurring between two adults.
When I, myself, sat at last naked on the couch, Sonia stared with open admiration upon my tits. Then she put out her hands to touch each simultaneously.
I shuddered as her words reminded me of Russell. She said, "How beautiful you are," and her mouth came down into the lift of my bosom. Her lips pressed lightly into the soft flesh of each boob until she had taken full, direct focus upon one nipple.
As her tongue played there I could feel my response leaping without hesitation. But it was a woman's mouth kissing me, a woman's hands caressing me, a woman's love reaching out for mine. It made no difference then. I had already consented and my availability reached tentacles toward Sonia as though I were a flower stretching toward sunlight.
In the final analysis, I do not know what courage possessed me. Perhaps I needed to cater to an urgency and merely did so. I look back upon it with neither shame nor excuse, remembering the pleasures which were mine during that moment. Pleasures far greater than any pain later on.
I gave myself up to Sonia for the first feminine embrace of my life. It helped, I suppose, that we were far from New York, far from anything familiar. The unaccustomed sensation of soft tits pressing to my own seemed right in the far away atmosphere. What a curious sensation it was at first, the unexpected softness, the small frame within the circle of my arms, small yet radiant with desire as large as anything I'd ever known. She whispered soft, cheering words along my skin, nothing evil or obscene but simple encouragements of affection and reassurances. While she spoke her hands began to move exploringly over my body. Her fingers were naturally facile and the skin warm. Easily she undid my clothing. I was hardly aware of it coming loose but observed the disrobing of my body as though it belonged to another person.
Crazily I kept thinking to myself: in the morning I'll go back to Russell. In the morning it'll look different.
Yet the morning was so far away. I thought it would take until eternity to reach daylight.
The sexual pact between two women had never interested me and I wondered at my own eager responses. The key was that I had never known a woman such as Sonia. She removed my dress and my bra with loving gestures that caressed me continually and somehow, miraculously, took off her clothing too.
Now the naked pressure of our breasts, each to each, confronted me with unexplored sexuality. My mind floated with the images of what was to happen next. I dared not think ahead.
"What do you prefer?" Sonia whispered, her lips and tongue touching my ear.
My laughter held a low, apprehensive twinge mingled with expectations of delight. For answer I made the plunge, pressing my mouth hard and aggressively upon Sonia's while moving my hands down to catch hold of her buttocks. I pulled her body up and onto my own.
I was lying in one corner formed by the sofa back and its arm and we were diagonally stretched out. One of my naked feet rubbed against the braid rug which had taken on warmth from the fireplace.
Sonia lay with most of her weight on top of me. She had her arms around my neck and kept looking into my face, I suppose to see what my reaction was and if I needed any further attention to propping up my morale. I couldn't help smiling at Sonia's concern and kissed her lingeringly upon one eyelid then the other to assure her that I did not have to be coddled at this time.
To assure her of this in my own way, I lifted her head and slid down until my own face was pressing upon the compact and fragrant bosom that seemed to be waiting for me. I heard a small gasp from her as my mouth made contact with the swell of her flesh. That sound of pleasure drawn inward reflected my own, for as my lips sank into the yielding beauty I was suddenly swept underneath a current of passion that came upon me with an unexpected rush. So forcefully was I Overwhelmed that I bit into her tits. The gasp turned into a sound of pleasure-pain.
I felt a cold, dreadful shiver of power. For the first time in life it was I who inflicted rather than received, I who was in a position to dispense pleasure or pain, I who could stop the proceedings right at that moment if I so desired and leave another being as frustrated as
I had myself been left.
This knowledge of my own command and awareness of my own power filled me with new strength. I seemed to be moving from peak to peak. First, with Russell I had experienced the release of orgasm and now with Sonia I was living through the sensation of being in control. It was as though I had suddenly become immortal.
I lifted my hips. Sonia slid off from my body onto her side, caught between the sofa cushions and the full length of me. I pressed myself forward so that I rubbed against her, eager now to touch all of her with all of me and know the full depth of the lesbian experience.
She sighed and whispered, "I'm glad you like me."
I had no answer. There was much more to what I felt than mere liking. There was a thirst for taking that which was being offered to me, a hunger which seemed to stretch, to encompass that which was being given, the unknown was suddenly desirable and waiting for me with loving, open arms.
Our mouths and tongues met in a mutual suctioning and we clung thus. Sonia began to roll her hips and her belly. She tensed her things and the small but high mound reached for mine. She lifted one leg and I slid between her thighs, aware, very consciously aware that there was no extension, no protuberance, nothing to jab forward and press deep into the love canal. Yet, surprisingly, it seemed unnecessary to possess a prick. The sensation of her dampness encouraged me and instilled the knowledge that we were sufficient between us, needing neither phallus nor maleness to complete the passion whose flame we shared.
"Open your legs to me, darling," Sonia whispered.
I did so and she slipped her hand between my thighs, cupping me with eager, knowing fingers that began to massage my moist labia. I felt the slip and slide of her touch. Her fingers became firm and began to press into the opening that waited for her.
"Oh darling," Sonia murmured as her fingers went easily in.
I shut my eyes and gave myself up to my feelings. I lifted my hips with a natural swing and let my legs spread to give her all room and access to me. Raising one leg high, I began to move my ass in the classic fashion of intercourse and then, realizing and feeling Helen's heartbeat, I searched down with my own hands for similar entry into her body.
She was easy to find and warm, and just as willingly did she spread to me. I saw her prop one leg upward and onto the back of the couch, catching the corner of a cushion with her heel. That leg, so shapely with its pulled, taut calf and thigh muscles with their resilient tendons made a graceful design in flesh and bone and muscle, a design that poured upward into the lovely curve of her hip. I did not have a free hand to stroke her, for with one arm, I held her close to me and the other was seeking deep inside to where the secret moisture and tremulous pulse of a sphincter muscle needed my touch. She was wide and sucked my inward. Her hand reached down and placed my thumb upon the small protuberance of her clitty. Her hips began circular motion which told me how she needed to be rubbed as well as invaded. I understood. How well I understood a woman's need. I saw in Sonia a reflection of my own frustrated months with Max and felt a tremulous sympathy. This woman would not be frustrated tonight. I would be the bearer of good will, of fulfillment. I would give her everything so that she would dream of me with loving tenderness in times to come when there was no one around to please her.
Yes, I saw in Sonia a reflection of myself. I saw an alter ego, an identity, a chance to wipe out the tortures and torments of my own suffering.
"Tell me what you want me to do," I echoed Sonia's question. "I'll do anything. I will. I will."
My hand was moving with increased speed as I spoke and I knew that Sonia's thoughts had left the practical. They were with me in the realm of dizzying passion.
Before I had a chance to find out what else Sonia might have wanted from me, I felt the convulsions begin in the pit of her stomach and knew that she had been catapulted into orgasm.
This observation took me by storm. As I felt Sonia riding my hand, the sphincter muscle tightening and releasing and tightening in steady rhythm upon my fingers, I too began with similar response. We clung to each other in desperate, steady outpouring of love at its peak of ecstasy.
I suppose that among my readers there are many who can see no especial thrill in what amounted to mutual masturbation. And for those who are not sufficiently imaginative to realize that love-hunger and loneliness were the operative factors, I will not attempt to explain how it was possible for me to give myself up in wanton delight. But for those who do understand, who are sympathetic to the peculiar feminine need for continuing warmth and attention, I will say that the night spent with Sonia gave me an essential inner balance which had been missing from my relationship with Russell.
I bring up the name Russell with a faint smile because, after that night with Sonia, I realized that I did not wish to see Russell again, that I wished to completely sever myself from this husband and wife team which operated in much too much of a sharing capacity for my taste. They had come into my life, both Sonia and Russell, at a time when I needed someone, anyone, anything to free me from my bonds. But I knew that I could not endure for very long the bouncing back and forth between male and female which was what they had intended for me in the very beginning, from that first moment when Russell had spotted me as a likely source of pleasure in the antique shop.
It was not without regret that I parted from Sonia the next morning and returned to the hotel room which I was maintaining until Max's return. Almost sadly, I said farewell to this overture into the world of free-love. And I mean 'free' in its ultimate form, for I felt launched and on my own at last.
CHAPTER FOUR
I was through with Russell and Sonia Walker but that didn't mean that I was any happier with my husband or home life. Actually, there wasn't much to speak of in the way of domestic arrangements. Even when Max was in New York I hardly saw him, busy as he was with rehearsals and performances.
I liked it better when he was out on the road, even though I didn't have anything going for me at the time. Plenty of men were interested in me but I had decided half consciously to take a vacation from sex. Unfortunately, Benny Davis, the publicity man, had other ideas in mind for me.
At first he was pretty shy about coming on to me, being my husband's good friend and business associate. But that man really had the hots for me and I got to enjoy leading him on. However, Benny wasn't the kind of man you could do that to. He was smart as a fucking whip and it didn't take long for him to convince me that it was time to split from Max.
We used to sit in the hotel room together, playing cares, watching television, everything but fucking, which is what we both really wanted. One night I smiled at Benny and told him I was going to move out on Max in the man's absence. Benny offered to drive me to a new hotel or apartment. He left soon after and I was glad to get rid of him. Five minutes more together and we would have been naked, fucking in my marriage bed.
He agreed without objection and I immediately relaxed for I was looking forward to getting out of this evening's confrontation with him and I suppose the relif showed on my face.
"I never saw you so glad to get rid of me,"
Benny grinned, putting his eyeglasses into his shirt pocket and taking the jacket that I handed him, a tweed, sporty affair. It was springtime, I remember, and even though there was no fragrance of green there in the center of New York, it was certainly warm enough to realize that somewhere in the world nature was turning pleasant.
He left without much ceremony. I closed and locked the door and sighed, then walked to the window and looked out upon Broadway, remembering how Max had called it a bitch not to be trusted, a bitch that he would one day possess.
Then suddenly I was gripping the window sill and asking myself the same question that Benny Davis had put to me. What was I doing here? Why was I living a nothing life with no where to look forward? I could pack my bags and walk out on Maximilian J. Tower. Find a decent future or, at least, make the attempt at one. Why did I hang on to thin air? Was I crazy? Was I masochistic? Was I just plainly a fool?
The turning point had come whether I willed it to do so or not. Benny had found the crack in my pretensions. Now thoughts began leaking through that crevice. Increasingly as the days passed I felt that I had to do something concrete to change my way of life. A dozen times I packed a suitcase and started to walk out of the apartment with nothing left to Max except a note saying I had gone. Once I even did get out of the apartment and spent the night in a hotel on the east side of town which seemed to me like a thousand miles away. It was obvious that I was running but it felt as though my feet were attached to a treadmill which I could make spin faster and faster while I myself got exactly nowhere. I suppose these were the preliminaries to an actual change of status. But, at the time, I felt like a woman in a cage who could not find the lock and, wherever I turned, wherever I ran, there seemed no getting out from my sense of entrapment.
Benny Davis saw me in action. How could he miss the signs?
Eventually the moment came when he was-striding down the corridor toward me just as I was leaving with suitcase in hand.
It took him two seconds to see and know the complete picture. Then a light went on behind his shrewd eyes.
I knew that I could no longer deny the truth.
Benny took the suitcase out of my hand. "Come on, kid, I'll help you," he said. I didn't want Benny to help me. I didn't want him to be part of my reason for going or my crutch.
"Thanks," I said, trying to take the suitcase back from his grip, "but this is one thing I'd better do by myself. You understand?"
"I understand, baby, but I don't agree."
That valise was passing back and forth between us like a medicine ball. Both of us saw the humor in the situation and relaxed. We laughed as we stood opposite each other in the hallway while people from other apartments came and went and glanced at us as though we were having a lover's quarrel.
There are some people one gets to know later on in life. Yet one feels they have always been around, always been part of things. Somehow, they are mysteriously important.
Unreasonable though it may have been, this is how I felt that afternoon about Benny Davis. So I let him, at last, take the bag from me and went with him into the elevator thinking that he would drive me to the new hotel cross town and leave me there to my own devices until I was ready to phone him for help, if that time should ever come.
Without questioning me further, Benny put my valise into the back seat of his car. I got in beside him and we started into the midtown traffic crush.
I didn't mind him making fun of me. In fact it took the dreadful gloom off things, for, in leaving Max, I was facing up to defeat. And though in the long run I might feel better about it, at the moment I was feeling pretty much the prisoner of despair.
I gave him the name of the hotel, a small place but a good place near Madison Avenue.
Benny whistled when I said the name and threw me a wise-aleck grin which seemed to ask, did I have a John who was picking up the tab for such a splurge.
The fact was that I had managed to get some few dollars together out of the rather decent allowance that Max sent me now that business was picking up for him and the clubs in which he played were becoming larger and more opulent. But this was none of Benny's business, however, and I didn't bother to explain to him the source of my revenue but let him think what he would, hoping to keep some sort of wall between us that way. But Benny wasn't affected by my own standoffishness, took in stride that I didn't want to say anything about anything just now. He settled for getting through Central Park and over to the address I'd given him.
When he pulled up in front of the hotel I said, "I don't suppose I have to tell you not to write to Max about this. I'm doing it myself."
Benny lifted his shoulders and said, "Do I butt in?"
I could have laughed in his face, knowing how easily Benny Davis would butt in if he felt so inclined. He wasn't the kind of a man to have trepidations about anything that could be interesting or useful or practical and I felt that my warning was not out of place.
"Look, you're Max's best friend," said I, and those last two words dragged from my tongue. "He'll know that you know where I am."
"No he won't baby doll. Max knows that I don't mix into his personal business."
Benny was relaxed behind the wheel. He looked at me standing there on the sidewalk. And yet there was something in his gaze which held me fixated.
"Well, so long, Benny," I said.
There was so much misery that seemed to pour directly from my soul into that farewell that we both broke up laughing at its over-exaggeration.
"Look, I'll take you to dinner," he said, glancing at his watch. "Give you half an hour to set that valise on the bed and pull out another pair of shoes. How about it?"
Stubbornly, I insisted no. I was breaking all ties, I explained and ties with Benny were almost as personal as ties with Max.
I'm flattered," said Benny, disregarding the fact that I was making an effort to dismiss him. "I didn't know you really considered me to be such a close friend."
I turned around so that Benny wouldn't see my expression for I knew my face would be showing all kinds of feelings which were part of the moment but not really part of me. I had no compunction about leaving Benny Davis, certainly. If I could leave Max; I could leave his public relations man and that wasn't what bothered me. What bothered me ultimately was, indeed, leaving Max. Heaven only knows shy. Call it love. Call it stubbornness. But because I was not certain about leaving Max, I therefore, could not leave Benny Davis who was, so to speak, his stand-in and the symbol of my marriage.
Benny saw my hesitation and leaped in. Actually he got out of the car and caught hold of my arm, the arm that was not holding the valise. He walked with me to the lobby entrance, telling me all kinds of sweet sounding verbiage about needing friends and having people to lean on and how it had been when his marriages had broken up, etc., etc. It was a lot of garbage, a lot of Benny Davis garbage and I didn't fall for any of it and yet I fell for the whole business because I wanted to.
"All right," I said, relenting. "But give me a couple hours, Benny. Meet me at eight o'clock, will you? Just have the desk clerk ring and I'll come downstairs."
Benny's lopsided grin told me he recognized the fact that I didn't want to be put to the test by him coming upstairs to the room. My own, very private personal room. The place where I could roll in the hay without any guilt concerning Max because I had officially cut the ties. Only the legal papers had to be gone through. But because my intentions were clear cut, I was free to make love with whomever I chose. Finally.
Yes, all these cross-currents of feeling and situation were thick between Benny and myself in those couple of minutes before I pushed through the revolving door and left him standing outside.
As I walked to the counter for my room key and to sign the register, I purposely did not look back to save so long. I felt that I really was going to date Benny Davis tonight through some kind of external coercion. I would have preferred to have dinner with someone entirely strange, with a new face out of the future rather than an old one out of the past.
But one doesn't always have one's way, exactly. And the future seemed to be hovering reluctantly out there ahead. I could not yet see what it had in store but I could feel. And I felt that, in having left Max at last, I had made one stumbling step in a direction suited to my best welfare and enhancement.
I signed the register with a flourish and wallowed in a sense of selfishness as though I were standing up to my knees in delicious hot fudge sundae.
I entered my hotel room on the crest of a secret thrill as though I were walking into a palace. I sensed that these four walls with their nondescript furnishings were my secret refuge and that nothing could reach in to dissuade me or alter the determined direction in which I was facing. I was a ship headed out to sea, to vast unlimited possibilities. All I required was time to organize my thoughts. Soon thereafter I would determine upon a means of self-support and possibly a career so that I would be independent at last.
I tipped the bell hop and went immediately into the shower, meaning to scrub from my flesh all traces of Max and wishing I could erase his memory as well. But that, of course, was impossible. The most I could hope for was that time would blur the painful images upon me. As I stood beneath the needle spray and turned my face upward into the stream of cleansing water, I decided that I would stay in action, keep moving, keep doing things and the momentum itself would carry me over the first humps and obstacles to change.
As I passed the small cake of hotel soap over my breasts, I seemed to feel again the many caresses, the many mouths which had lingered there upon them, some gently, some less so. I realized that the time for romance had somehow slipped away. I would never be able to live contentedly with some young man who believed in me and in our togetherness.
It was a jolt to feel this wave of cynicism verging on impatience with the notion of love. I tried to rationalize by telling myself that certainly now, in the first stages of separation from Max, I could not be expected to be available for anything reminiscent of my starry-eyed availability to him.
I did not realize it but I was considering myself something less than desirable because I was, in effect, a divorced woman.
I dried and dressed leisurely and put on my most attractive dress, more for my own sake than for my evening's date with Benny. I knew I had to do everything possible to keep myself optimistic and decided that the best approach would be to cater to any whims which might indicate the direction my fulfilment was to take.
I don't know what it was about Benny that looked different when he called for me but there it was. Maybe the fresh shirt and the pressed suit made a difference. I was surprised at the glow that surrounded him and, for a moment, I wondered if this were the same man I had left earlier.
The amusing part was that he seemed to be looking at me with the same thought. We greeted each other like two friends who hadn't met face to face for months.
I almost blush to describe how Benny wined and dined me that evening. Though part of me partook of the invigorating atmosphere of the imagine restaurant, another part of me was sitting back and watching as though I were engaged in some kind of game that I could not lose no matter what I did. Benny, with his attentive manner, his purposeful steering of conversation away from all topics that might associate with Max, gave me a sense of being invincible. I could make no mistakes. I was surrounded by a buffer of protection in the form of Benny Davis himself.
After dinner we did the rounds of small clubs and then, somehow, before I realized it, dawn was breaking over the city.
To watch the first paling, bruised tones of light lifting slowly over the jagged horizon of buildings gave me my first awareness of desolation. I slipped my hand through Benny's arm and instinctively, certainly without awareness of what I was doing, I squeezed him, looking for some minor bit of momentary protection. The city air smelled as clean as it would at any time now with traffic at its slowest ebb, cool with hints of warmth presaging the sun. Without speaking much, we strolled along the wide thoroughfare of Madison Avenue where sleepy doormen sat behind glass enclosed entry ways. When we reached my hotel I said without Benny having to ask me, "Won't you come up?"
My affair with Benny Davis was a tempest of flesh.
I recall with extremes of pleasure and chagrin our love making, our arguments, our moments of tenderness and the many promises we made to each other, made I think only to be broken as though the purpose of promise was to find ultimate fulfillment in disappointment. In my own way I loved Benny, not for what he might have been but for exactly what he was, a hustler with a heart.
My hotel bed was large and comfortable, always with fresh sheets and plump pillows. I remember how Benny used to drag one of the pillows down, place it behind me, propping up my buttocks so that my spread thighs pointed that central orifice upward to full view. He liked to sit back upon his knees and look at me there, stare at me thinking, heaven only knows what thoughts behind his motionless face. It was the only time his expression was ever dead-pan, the mobility drained into depths and distances of his dreaming. Would you believe that I felt afraid to ask Benny what he dreamt those times when he looked and reached a tentative finger to touch the place.
He liked to see my quiver and jump to his fondling.
I was sensitive, extremely delicate in the sexual area. My cunt seemed overly alive with desire flashing through. The hotel room its impersonal atmosphere, aided that quality of abandon in which I was immersed.
Benny would keep his hands upon my labia and lower his mouth to it, play his tongue slowly, languidly all along the outer edges and my nerve endings would strain to reach and re-direct him. But he knew what he was doing and how to seduce me properly.
I demanded much of him also for he was one of those who could maintain an erection inside me for hours at a time it seemed, so that I rolled with him until my thighs and buttocks and back ached with fatigue while mind and spirit went on endlessly. There was no bottom to the well of my desire. Sex was the train on which I traveled far from my surroundings.
Benny's arms provided a comforting protection, a cradle within which I writhed out my infinite desires. I enjoyed clutching his hair at the roots, pulling back his head and biting into his lower lip, crying into his mouth my sounds of passion, later, whispering while the spring air cooled our naked bodies.
Our relationship was clandestine in the classic sense for we knew too many people in common who also knew Max. Though I had left the requisite note of departure in our old apartment, Max had not yet returned to find it.
The logical question is why I had not gotten in touch with Max wherever he was and told him directly of my separation. Somehow I couldn't face up to that. I didn't want to speak with him, didn't want to-go through the imagined tortures of his protests against my so solid conviction that I had to get away. But I didn't think of this often, didn't think about the real and precarious position in which I was now dangling. And Benny, of course, with his lively company, protected me from thinking too much about what I ought or ought not to do. I allowed myself, therefore, to slide into an uneasy contentment with my semi-divorced status.
Separation had its rewards. Strangely, I felt a pressure to be not only with Benny Davis but to deceive him with others. I didn't think in terms of deceit. Yet as I examine back upon my feelings I can see that it was deceit, the deceiving of Benny that I craved.
How well I remember Benny leaving me at two ayem of a morning. When he had gone my own urges would rise anew, as though we had never made love that night. I would dress again and then go out simply to walk and walk, I told myself. And it would start out that way. Inevitably, however, I would find a lonesome friend.
Basically my deceit was a degrading state of affairs. I went through a phase of what might be called prostitution without reimbursement. I simply could not get enough of men, and wondered if within my soul I harbored a secret nymphomania. Of course, it was a childish thought. Yet I felt almost convinced that there must be something pathological in my make-up. I remember faces clearly; the rough stubbly chins that rubbed down along my tender flesh ... the smooth cheeks of younger men probing my body as though exploring a new country ... the married ones, secretly gleeful to be engaged in something dirty ... the single swingers who took me as though I were their right.
My life was in bed. My position, a wanton spread of legs and offering of breasts and belly and hot, receiving thighs. I whirled in a thick ooze of sexuality and wondered if I would ever skid to a halt or hit bottom or catapult over some brink into disaster.
Strange to say how much I enjoyed my variety of lovers when I wasn't concerned with self-preservation. I was like the essence of woman, fulfilled within her fertile yearnings. I could almost feel the ejaculation of semen leaping forward and swimming to die in the jelly of the diaphragm that protected me from my lascivious self. That's the word for it, lascivious. Lecherous. I was a wench rolling in the hay at random. My riches, the riches of plentiful orgasm as though, like an army waiting to burst through the gates into triumphal possession of my body.
I think that Benny Davis suspected but was too shrewd to ask me directly. He must have seen the signs of wear and tear on my face. I certainly did. Make-up could hide just so much but it could not camouflage the tautness around my mouth and the deep growing pockets beneath my eyes. Thank heaven my face was too young to succumb to the ravages of dissipation, and the look I took on was one of a deepening thoughtful maturity, which was a laugh.
I do remember the night he sat on the edge of the bed after we had made love, and said to me, "I hate to break the news to you, doll, but Max will be home day after tomorrow."
I felt a shudder of cold dread race through where there had been warmth and relaxation. I looked down upon my bruised thighs and thought of Max who had never been so good as to damage me.
"Well, it'll come to a head now won't it?" I mused.
"He'll find you if he wants you." Benny's voice held a warning.
"So he'll find me," I repeated, mustering all the courage and bravado that I had. "What can he do? Jail me? Shoot me? The most he can manage to do is demand a divorce. Which is exactly what I want anyway. So, all is looking up, Benny. Never fear."
I sounded like I knew what I was talking about, like I understood myself and the situation and Max too. But I didn't understand a single, blessed thing, and how men are when they've been cheated upon. I did not understand, could not have predicted Max's response to what I had been doing behind his back.
Benny, on the other hand, had a very good idea, partly I suppose because he'd been through it a number of times, but, mostly, because he knew Max and had known him intimately for many years.
"You don't want to mess with that man, honey," said Benny.
"You're right. I surely don't," I agreed with an attempt at keeping the thing light. "Just let him stay away from me and I'll be glad to do the same."
"You want me to carry that message?" Benny's grin, with its lopsided deviltry told me I was living in a dream world.
"No. You don't have to make out as a go-between, Benny, thanks. But if you want to give me the name of a good lawyer, I'll be happy to take it from you."
"The lawyer is the least." Benny stood up, went to the bureau where a damp towel lay in a heap on top of my underclothing.
I watched Benny wipe down the film and residue of our love making with careful, cleansing gestures. It occurred to me that Benny could walk in and out of our love affair with the greatest of ease, that he had nothing to face or deal with concerning Max.
But I had responsibilities which one day I would have to take the burden to manage into my two hands, look Max square in the eye and tell him that he no longer had any control over me. I was willing to do it and, in a sense, eager to get the worst over with. So it did not really make sense that some small voice inside of me whispered that I was not quite ready.
How am I to account for the fact that I stared with nervous anxiety at Benny's schedule? He was to return on a Wednesday and each day leading up to it sounded, at dusk, like the death-knoll of a heavy bell. How am I to account for the fact that, though I had taken major steps-had packed and moved and been unfaithful so often-nevertheless, I was not up to that confrontation with Max which I knew was inevitable.
I do not pretend here to be able to analyze why I was not yet ready to make the total break from Max. I simply record the truth and let the mystery of it ride. Yes, Max was due back on a Wednesday and on the day prior to it, on a Tuesday, I returned to our dingy hotel room and settled my clothes once again in their old, accustomed places. I looked at the note I had left and laughed at myself with a twinge of bitterness. Then I tore it into a million pieces and set a match to those pieces, driven to demolish every vestige that might give away my intention.
And so my life for awhile settled into a pattern of pretense and double dealing. When Max was home, I played all the necessary roles. When he took me to bed I was sufficiently separate from the act of physical love to watch him go through the motions and not suffer myself the pains of physical frustration. My heart, however, continued to break at the outrageous game in which I partook.
Very subtly, gradually, hardly aware of the changes, certainly without sensations of acute pain, I adjusted to my Jeckyl and Hyde arrangement. But there were differences, differences I could not avoid as Max became more and more successful in his career.
CHAPTER FIVE
I remember how my desperation for privacy increased as Max's reputation grew. As much as he loved being the center of attention and having all lights focused upon his comings and goings, I, completely opposite to him, cringed from any examination. Of course, I was afraid. Afraid that inadvertently my personal life would be revealed. And the nature of that area of my existence had begun to take on the kinds of wild activity which would never withstand scrutiny by strangers. I realized that my reputation as an adoring and admiring wife was important to Max's interests and sometimes, late at night when I was off upon my adventurous travels, I would think how easy it was or might be to set Max's career back a dozen years.
You see, it was inevitable that sex with men, that normal, predictable heterosexual adventure would lose some of its interest to me in time. Without love the physical act must begin to pall, and then one seeks for novelty to take up the empty spaces.
The kind of novelty I sought was very different from the kind that found me. I was looking for the perfect male and found, instead, entree into the gay bars, the secret love-caves uptown on the fringes of Harlem where people went who had nowhere else.
I remember that first night. It must have been about two-thirty in the morning and felt like five ayem. had consumed a good bit more of beer than usual and wandered into a bar that seemed to promise a little bit of life and cheer for the late night hangers-on.
To my surprise I saw that there were no men at all at the bar, only a variety of women with blunt, short hair and heavy, rough, masculine clothing.
Immediately I remembered Sonia Walker and how beautiful our night together had been. These women were not reminiscent of her at all and I didn't think I would be able to make the scene. But I was in a warm place on a cold night and another beer or two was what I wanted immediately. I hiked myself onto a stool and signalled my wants to the bartender, a raven-haired beauty, once you could see through the shapeless sweater and apron wrapped round her midriff.
I drank my beer and kept watching the bartender, associating the dark hair with Sonia's dark hair, and lulling gradually back into memory. There was a brand of slow music on the jukebox, the kind that echoed lonely hearts and was conducive to close dancing. But no one was dancing. I don't think anyone had the inclination and, besides, it was a small, narrow bar with no space provided for anything besides spending money on booze.
It wasn't long before the bartender struck up a conversation with me in that easy fashion for which bartenders are noted, and we chatted on and off about whether or not it was going to snow soon, the latest in Forty-Second Street movie styles and, inevitably, women.
I don't know how she steered me around to it but soon we were on the subject of artificial limbs and this led, with the greatest of ease, to artificial genitals. I had no idea what was in store for me but I was new to the place, obviously quite femme and, I suppose my friend the bartender, Lee, was just seeing what she could see with a new woman.
I didn't mind. I drank my beer and told myself to be content with the two men I'd already had that night. Tomorrow, I consoled myself, would be better.
But Lee wasn't interested in my thoughts and didn't try to probe into them.
She set one foot up on the rail and leaned across the counter to me. I saw her eyes were a very luminous dark blue. That Irish combination of black hair and blue eyes was completed by a beautiful fair complexion. And though the features were large and solidly formed, and she had done everything possible to erase every feminine trace from her appearance, nevertheless, a certain female softness came through and I was intrigued.
She told me small details about herself, the kind to give one an appearance of familiarity. I discovered that she was in from Chicago and was living alone just around the corner. I didn't give her details in return but merely listened. Lee didn't seem to mind that I was absorbing everything and offering nothing. She simply rattled on with that glib, easy style of conversation and even took in to our circle comments of the other women who were listening.
It didn't seem to me that Lee was on the make for my body. Everything was so casual. I simply assumed that she would know I had toddled into the wrong place by mistake. I did not realize, however, even if she understood the situation she would refuse to respect it as a hands off state of affairs.
But I didn't really expect it. I know that I was listening with both ears, not to what she was saying but to the massaging tone in her voice. The more I listened, the more I thought about how she would be in bed, what those hands would do, and that mouth. What she would pull out from underneath the pillow and use on me. I could see that Lee was not a hesitater. She had the experience and the confidence to go along with it. Bed with Lee would be a new and different kick for me.
And I felt ready.
So I drank more beer. More than anything else, it made me tired and pushed away any real thinking. The sharp edges of life became softer and more accommodating. The ache of loneliness, the sensation of empty insides began to ease off as I considered that my night would not wind up back in the hotel room, but in an apartment around the corner with this woman.
I sat patiently on the stool, listening and talking and drinking until it was closing time. The women wandered off in various directions, disappearing into the night like stray cats. Lee did the locking up and then put one large, consoling arm around my shoulder and steered me across the street. Obviously we both had known that I was going home with her.
She lived in a brownstone walk-up, of course, on the third floor. We took the steps slowly, not talking now, leaning against each other not because we were drunk or overtired so much as to begin that intimate prelude.
The knowledge of a female form beneath the masculine clothing sent prickles of shuddering desire through my own flesh. I did not know what was going to happen to me but could guarantee myself a strange, marvelous time tonight, which was enough for me in my mood of desolation.
I let my hands reach along the woman's sides and found the curve of one breast well hidden beneath the baggy shirt. She wore no bra, I suppose, because she didn't want those contours to be lifted and, therefore, more noticeable. As I touched her, she cringed and I realized that the fact of my recognizing her tits was something of an insult.
Despite myself I grinned and said, "But, honey, let's face the facts."
"Yeah, sure," Lee grunted. "But I got my preferences, you know. like anyone else."
Of course I knew and decided that I ought to respect Lee's desires if I wanted her to cater to me. Besides, it was no fun to irritate her; I wanted to turn her on, not cause pain. Although, of course, with some people the two are synonymous.
The apartment was like every other furnished place I had ever seen. It had that elusive musty smell of dead bugs in the wall, I suppose. The furniture was dark or light, I don't remember, but seemed to be dark. It seemed also to be solid though when you touched things they swayed. I remember a large, bubble-filled, yellow stained mirror of an old-fashioned dresser. There were snapshots curling in the frame of the mirror, pictures of young girls mostly, probably conquests of Lee's. There was also a large, glossy photograph of Ava Gardner and one of Johnny Weismuller as Tarzan.
"You want some refreshment?" Lee said, opening the door of a small refrigerator and bending into it.
"Let's get on with it," I said, suddenly frank and direct.
Lee jerked her head around to me. The softness in her eyes took on a gem-like hard glitter. "You're my style," she muttered. "Okay."
And the next thing I knew, I was in the woman's arms being pressed to her large body with a fierce, hugging embrace that took my breath away.
I felt her through her clothes. She was tough but all woman, whether she wanted to admit it or not. There were the hips, something I could grasp onto, and the hard buttocks jutting out in back with a solid curve, all meat. Meat-rack, I think they call it.
She had my clothes off in a minute and her mouth was on my nipple. I felt the edges of her teeth nipping at my skin and my flesh began to quiver with delight. Yet my eyes searched hungrily about the room, wondering if I would see that object which she had insinuated she would use upon me if I wanted it.
I was standing in the middle of the room and she began to lower herself along my body, remaining completely dressed, not wanting me to get her clothes off, not wanting to reveal her feminine body to my own. I couldn't make it clear to Lee that I was interested in the fact that she was a woman, that I liked the idea. She resented it. I don't know what she wanted to be to me, since she could not really be a man. I suppose a make-believe man was her idea of a success., and I had agreed to go along with this notion.
"Well do something," I said. "What are you going to put into me? What are you going to shove inside?"
I was abrupt, quite cruel I thought. Yet Lee didn't think so, because she was prepared.
I cannot explain to you the compression of time. I don't know whether we were dallying with each other for seconds, minutes or hours. I only know that she did not want me to touch her, and it gave me a feeling of impatience because I did not quite know what to do with my hands. I could not, obviously, use them upon myself, nor did I need to. She was everywhere on me. Everywhere all at once, and I was giving in gladly but wanted Lee to do her stuff, to show me everything she had to give. I was bargaining for big-time action, not any of the simple kid stuff with fingers up and tongues on.
But Lee wouldn't say anything just yet. She wanted, I suppose, to see me squirm for it and perhaps to beg and plead. I was willing to play that game. Why not? Master and slave. A little bit of sadomasochism thrown in for kicks.
"You must have it, honey," I urged. "You have it somewhere. Why don't you go and strap it on?"
Yes, it was all jumbled just like I am describing. No dalliance. No logical build up. Just this rough-house back and forth. like a game of jai-lai, the ball of passion bouncing off walls at high speed, coming at you from sharp angles, aimed right at your head, threatening to knock you over if you aren't agile enough to cope.
But I was up to m Lee's standard of swift retort and retaliation. She heard me, saw me and knew it.
"You know, girl. You, I like," she said, and there was decision in her voice.
My challenge brought Lee up short. She went to the dressing table and from a bottom drawer extricated a long, erected object made of rubber, I thought. The color was quite convincing and the proportions implied that I was really going to have the time of my life.
With her back to me she got out of the clumsier portions of her clothing and, indeed, did strap on that which she promised to use.
I scrambled onto the bed and lay back. The preliminary hour of talking and dwelling upon subjects related to sex had already primed me for this. I touched myself and felt the moistness, the waiting, open condition of my cunt.
I watched her come toward me now and my throat went dry involuntarily as she walked with that thing bobbing up and down. She held it with one hand as a man would hold it and, if I squinted, did not press too hard the reality of the situation, I might believe that this woman had gone through a major transformation.
She touched the edge of the mattress with one knee.
"What do you want to do, baby?" she whispered hoarsely. "Suck it first?"
I tell you I went into a frenzy of desire, stimulated by the fairy tale situation in which I was flung. I was not making love with a man; I knew it, could not forget it no matter how much I saw resemblances. It was very well within my awareness that I lay with a woman who had added to her body. And what I did was grasp hold of the object as she wished me to. But with my left hand, I reached low and found her own natural body.
She tried to pull away but I wouldn't let her go. I was going to touch her and make her come every bit as realistically as she would do to me. That was my pleasure. The finding of her hidden behind the masculine role. The ripping off of the mask, the destruction of the charade, the revelation of female truth and beauty, the rising of Phoenix from the dregs.
At first, of course, she fought me off tooth and nail, with both knees and hands pushing, but I would have none of this and told her so.
"You're a woman, damn you Lee, and I'm gonna have it. I'm going down on you. Do you hear me? I'm going to make you come."
I thought she would punch me at one point and knock me senseless, but that moment passed in a shuddering, livid flash. And then as she jabbed forward to press the dildo inside of me, my own hand slipped around and made contact with her where I knew it would do the most good. So that was the compromise, you see. She was inside of me and I had her by her own cunt.
I began to massage her clitoris in rhythm with the hunching movement back and forth of that dildo within my own body. I can't say which it was that gave me the greater pleasure, but certainly the combination was a kick and a half, I kept telling myself, using that light, impersonal language to make sure that I maintained the proper mood for the moment. After all, this was fun and games, wasn't it?
Yes, I vacillated between accepting my responsibility and my position with a rejection of all that was happening. I rejected it by not admitting that either Lee or myself could be serious about what we were doing. And yet our bodies were dead serious. I felt my own responding with leaps of lust. The muscles of my love-chasm clung to the item inside me as though it were a living totem instead of a more than reasonable facsimile. My flesh perspired. My legs clung to the outsides of her thighs. And though she would not remove her shirt, would not bare her boobs to me, I nevertheless felt them. The cloth of her shirt was not sufficient to detract me from knowing, from experiencing, the full length of Lee's feminine body.
Despite herself, she began to grow tense to my touch and I knew that her own flesh was climbing toward orgasm. I adjusted the massaging motion of my fingers upon her so that she and I would experience climax simultaneously. It was a neat trick to pull off, and one that would pleasure my instincts for hedonism. I pressed my nose to her ear, inhaled the aroma of Vitalis, I think it was, from her slicked back hair which was no longer slick. I whispered encouraging words to her and heard them returned to me. We were united in a unique fashion which I knew would never again be repeated by me. And this, all by itself, was sufficient to stimulate my senses to their utmost.
I began to lunge into orgasm and told her so. At the same moment, I dug my fingers deep into her own body, rubbing her harder, more insistently with a demand in my touch. She could not resist me, could not resist the onrush of my sexual command of her and began, in turn, to respond with the shuddering contractions.
I had the feeling that this was Lee's first orgasm in a long while. I suppose she was the type who had taken pleasure merely from satisfying other women without looking to be stimulated or touched by them. But I was having none of this one-way stuff, and when it was over I sat up and looked down into Lee's face and said, "Well, girl, how did you like that?"
She grinned. And then I watched Lee drift off into sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
Benny got my husband a few bookings in Europe and we all decided to go by ship. It would have cost a lot to take the various musical instruments on an airplane and we had plenty of time to make the journey. I can see now that a kind of fate was planning the whole thing out for me. If I had gone by plane, I never would have met Marcel.
Marcel Durand was young, younger even than myself. I saw him the first day we were on ship, but didn't think too much of it one way or the other. I had met plenty of good-looking lads in my day. Still, there was something about Marcel that kept nagging relentlessly at the back of my mind.
We spoke briefly on the A deck and I didn't get too much out of the boy, other than that he was French and had spent a lot of time in New York. I figured that he was a rich woman's son, used to having the best. We hung around together a bit and met a few other people, including a couple of young college girls who immediately made me feel old and jealous.
Anyway, I knew that I had to have Marcel, had to fuck him sooner or later. He knew it too, but was very cool about the whole thing, going so far as to let me introduce him to my husband, which went over fairly well. I had to be careful with all our friends on the boat, but that was not going to stop me. Max was ignoring me more than ever, giving me every chance in the world to cheat on him right under the bastard's nose.
Max has never been an early riser and was resigned to missing breakfast every day of our seven day trip. I, on the other hand, was glad to leap out of the bunk bed, dress and run from the small room as fast as I could go.
The morning air, true sea air by now, was fresher than fresh, completely odorless and we were out of the sight of land.
I walked the decks with my hands thrust deep into my pockets and scanned all the horizons. I wasn't looking for anything, but just enjoying the sense of space and distance uncluttered by the cluster of New York buildings, free of exhaust fumes and sounds of traffic.
As I walked the decks, I was quite consciously thinking of what I would say if I ran into Marcel. But it wasn't Marcel I met at that hour, it was the two girls.
They were easy to talk to when I approached them, each turning faces like rosebuds to me, open and expecting nothing but good things. I introduced myself by name and they returned the offer of acquaintanceship. The blonde one, Jennifer, had a slight Bostonian flatness to the vowel sounds and Liza spoke with very hard r's. She was from Vermont and, in a sense, reminded me of the tall trunks of maple trees, although of course she had a fragile quality in her slenderness.
Our conversation had to do completely with the goings-on aboard ship. Both were on their way to France for eight weeks holiday and then off to England for further school. At that point, I had a twinge of regret at the lack in my own education, at the opportunities that I had senselessly yet willfully tossed aside in order to find myself. But I was long since past stages of remorse on that score, and I listened to their sprightly chatter with a growing pleasure and enjoyment of youth at its threshold of maturity.
No mention of Marcel was made in that conversation. Neither of them had reason to do so, since they did not know I had met him earlier. In a few moments, girl-talk amongst us revealed to me that both Jennifer and Liza had not yet decided upon a shipboard romance but promised each other to remedy that situation as fast as possible, hopefully tonight at the get-together dance in the combination bar and ballroom. As they spoke of this, I asked what time it was to be held. .
"Oh not till way past dinner," said Jennifer. "If you want to see today's schedule it's posted beside the purser's office."
I quickly recalled Max's conversation and knew that after dinner he would be busy rehearsing with the boys in the library. So I would be free then to join Jennifer and Liza and, more importantly, Marcel.
It was this thought that buoyed me up throughout the long morning and afternoon while I watched the ship plow its way through the seas on what appeared to be an endless voyage.
Because it was a small, classless and therefore informal ship, I did not have to be concerned about getting dressed in such a way that would provide question from Max. I donned a basic black which is every woman's best friend and, when after dinner Max left me to go about his business, I proceeded toward the ballroom with hopes rising high. I had not even caught a glimpse of Marcel all day. It seemed to me that our meeting had to be tonight or never.
The barroom was already crowded. Everybody on board was eager to meet everybody else and they were jammed three feet deep at the bar, buying drinks for maybe one fourth of what liquor cost in the United States. A large percentage of the crowd was young and mixing with that special ease and nonchalance of youth. I caught the feel of the atmosphere in five seconds and was glad to give myself up to it. I even began to think that if I didn't find Marcel, there might be someone else to interest me. But I didn't really believe this. For though I gazed upon many a handsome face, none of them seemed to have that special personal quality to make me want to reach out and stroke a cheek or forehead.
But I didn't have to look for long amongst them. There was Marcel standing with his side to the bar, holding a tall glass of something and sipping at it while his gaze traveled from one female face to another.
In that moment I realized that his morning's encounter with Jennifer and Liza had been casual enough and that he had already forgotten them, probably would not think about them unless they met again. Quickly, I made comparisons and wondered if he would even remember me if I worked my way next to him at the bar.
Well, I was willing to take my chances. Certainly, I could renew our acquaintanceship or start it again from scratch if necessary. I only knew that I wanted to make the attempt and see what might come of it.
I did not, however, plow directly through but eased my way, bit by bit, closer until I was sure that Marcel would have a clear view of me. It would have been a small point of satisfaction if I could have Marcel make an effort in my direction first. But I did not depend on this. I merely gave him the opportunity if he wished to avail himself of it.
I turned and looked at him between the heads of others. At last his gaze met mine.
I felt a flush of satisfaction as his face wrinkled into a smile. Immediately he lifted his glass overhead and began to come toward me like a swimmer moving through shoulder high waves.
"Ah, good evening. How do you like this for a party? What are you drinking? Scotch, I hope. They have good scotch here. And where is your husband, not with you tonight?"
Marcel said all these things not waiting for me to answer, I suppose, because he didn't expect he would be able to hear my answer very clearly through the din of voices combined with the ship's band, a very formidable group that was amplified and augmented by tape recordings.
I showed him my glass; that it was still half full.
"Shall we find a table?" he asked.
I realized then that Marcel had certainly not forgotten me or, at any rate, was pleased to renew our acquaintanceship. Obviously if we were going to sit at a table, he was offering me the information that he was quite content not to meet anyone else new, at least this evening.
I accepted his invitation in my own apparently nonchalant way. We, found a small rectangle of space which seemed hardly large enough to hold our two glasses. Moments afterward he was asking me if I wanted to join the others milling around on the dance floor.
I saw no reason why not. I knew where Max was and that he was safe from seeing me.
Besides, who would take this boy seriously? Would I?
All superficial factors pointed to the conclusion that Marcel was my appointed shipboard distraction. Our relationship would not, nor could it, go any further than the time limit of our Atlantic crossing. I felt certain that the moment we docked at Le Havre, Marcel's path would diverge from mine and we would never see each other again. It was a pleasant fairy story to tell myself and I almost believed it. How sensible it seemed to believe that a young man would not have the patience to last in a long-time affair with a woman, especially a married woman so much older than himself.
How little I knew of Marcel then.
How little I suppose I wanted to know of him. For would I have proceeded had I been told anything of the future that we were to share?
And how little I knew of myself.
Meanwhile, at that moment all was light, almost innocent. I moved onto the dance floor and entered the circle of his arms, feeling the warm effects of the whisky but none of the giddiness.
He did not dance in the American style, but insinuated his body against mine with such subtlety that I felt the first warning thrills of sensation, the first indications of our sexual interplay.
I did not ignore these signals, but neither did I give them weight of meaning. Touching against any male body was bound to do something to mine and a young, handsome lithe man inevitably had to stimulate my own keenly sensitive nerves.
I did not try to pull away, nor did I press forward. My body became like sand fitting itself to the contour of the container that held it. When two bodies blend as ours did, the inevitable becomes apparent and I became suffused with the warm glow of expectation. My flesh began rapidly to heat in intimate places. The tell-tale hardening of my nipples inside the tightness of the bra cup served as irritants. I could no longer resist the urge to press against him somewhat in order to relieve, if I could, the surface tensions that had already begun to plague me. Perhaps you think that plague is an exaggerated term and that a woman with as much diversity of sexual experience as I'd had up to then would be able to withhold herself, certainly control the flow of her desire. But I tell you that control was beyond my means and not part of my nature. That was the torture of it all. I had formed the habit of being able to satisfy my needs as they rose. Here, with Marcel, was simply another case in point.
I hesitated to look up into Marcel's face. My gaze settled upon the Merchant Marine style sweater. I put my cheek to the shoulder where rough wool could rub me and take my mind away from other regions of my anatomy, on. She Or so I hoped. But truly I did know better. I knew that any touch, anywhere, on any part of my body would only stimulate responses in other places. Each nerve had a connection with every other one. I was a network of cravings that had lain in waiting for proper stimulus. And now I had that stimulus.
"Do you like the music?" Marcel said against the side of my hair. But he was not serious. He was telling me that the band was really awful and we both knew it and could laugh at it, not take the music seriously, perhaps not take each other seriously.
"I don't mind," I said. "You want to stop? You want to go outside?"
"No, I like it here." His voice was gentle yet there was that fine undertone which really said, I like holding you in my arms.
I knew it. Didn't I know it though. That he liked me. How could he help liking me when I was giving off such strong emanations of desire. I think that the secret of my small success with men has been just exactly the fact that I am never able to withhold my feelings from view. I may not stare brazenly into a man's face and say, I want you. I need you. But somehow the meaning seems to exude from me as though I were a rosebush giving off the incense of my passion.
Thus was I with Marcel.
We did not talk for another little while. I noticed that he tightened his grip upon my back. I felt the spread of his large fingers there, low where my spine curved and I could also tell that his arm around me was really appraising the fullness of my body. I knew what he knew now, that I had large eager breasts, at the rest of me was perhaps a bit too slender for them except where the hips jutted out. He also could feel my hips with the edge of his forearm. What he had not accomplished with his eyes he was accomplishing with the tactile sense and I wanted him to complete his searching to his fullest satisfaction.
Where do we go from here, Marcel? Where? You must know by now that I want you. What do I know of you? Nothing. Yet everything. And you must know everything of me. Everything that's important anyhow.
Hours slipped by, eons, until the selection of music, I think three songs, were completed and the orchestra paused for a break. The end of the music was like a thrust of my head into cold water. Marcel and I were suddenly not moving against each other any longer but standing on the dance floor reluctant to part yet forced to do so because of the circumstances.
"Yes, let's go outside," I said. "Let's go for a stroll."
"I'd love it."
We wormed our way through the crowd, out and up a few steps onto the deck where the night air was blowing chill, whipping my clothing and my hair against my cheek. It was a brisk night, not exactly pleasant to be out in. Yet for the first few moments I felt a welcome relief from the heat, the noise, the smell of whiskey, the closeness of cigarette smoke.
For awhile we strolled beneath the lights. Then approaching the prow we walked into darkness where there was nothing except the sound of water rushing past the hull. Suddenly we were in the center of utter blackness, total except for a high, red eye of light which was a warning signal to other ships, I suppose, and had nothing to do with the passengers.
I sensed the presence of couples necking in corners, boys and girls who had found each other and were busy exploring possibilities.
Was this what Marcel and I were going to do? Is this what we were going to mean to each other? Was that all? Was it enough?
Yes. Yes. More than enough. I could only live one day at a time, one hour at a time really and an hour could be a lifetime in my schedule of events.
Marcel had ceased talking. I sensed that he did not feel any press for conversation. Nor did I. I was the last one on earth, I thought, who needed the time consuming waste of conventional talk.
I leaned back against a metal pole and looked up at Marcel and waited.
He understood. Perhaps in his youth and willingness to live he understood more of the essentials about survival than I.
And then his hand touched my waist. His fingers curved. My body leaned forward.
And I was in his arms.
The first kiss, when it is meaningful, is in a sense always a shock to the nervous system. It eats you alive, draws the blood right up through the marrow of your bones. It sucks you dry, leaves you hollow, shaking with weakness and need. When this happens it is the signal that all which may follow will be important in some way, will leave its mark upon your being for better or worse.
I opened my lips and felt the entrance of Marcel's tongue into my mouth. Abruptly I became aware that I was not involved in some casual physical connection but had embarked upon a romance which would take its toll of my flesh and spirit.
His tongue sought eagerly about inside my mouth and I returned the pressure of his kiss with the rigid point of my own. He knew what to do. His pliant lips and flexible tongue played with my lips and tongue and told me that when taht mouth reached other parts of my body I would be sent to heaven, or drop to hell if you'd rather look at it that way.
I took a deep breath and leaned forward with the full length of my body, pressed my rib cage to him, felt the flatness of his stomach and the sharp corners of his belt buckle against my dress front. Lower along his body there came to life that certain tell-tale bulge and as his erection grew into full stature I began to tremble.
Sometimes my body needs to be toyed with but there are other times when the simple, direct entry of the male organ into my waiting flesh is what I crave. That moment with Marcel was one of those times. I could have slipped to the deck and spread my legs for him right then and there. But .of course such an act was out of the question and it was this conflict between what I must do and what I so strongly needed that set me to shivering.
Marcel whispered in my ear, "Come downstairs. Come to my cabin. The boy who shares the room with me won't be true, promise."
I wanted to go. Needed to go. But ghosts and trepidations raised their threatening heads. All of them had Maximilian's face.
"I can't. Can't," I said, my voice tremulous and barely audible.
"Surely you can. What's to stop you, dear? Who'll see you? Who'll know."
"Please, don't tempt me." Marcel sighed and abruptly let go of me altogether. We stood with some inches of space between our bodies and it felt as though we had gone miles from each other never to talk again or touch. I couldn't bear it. I was alienated, alone and in need. The familiar dread of my physicality rose and roared in my ears. Other larger more dangerous demons that Maximilian grinned at me from inside my head, threatening to end my survival.
I sighed aloud. "Marcel," I said. "Marcel, how are we going to manage this."
"Oh, it's simple. Just come along." What could I do? I was a lamb eager for its own slaughter. I allowed Marcel to lead the way back into the light of the center deck and down the metal stairs to the level where his cabin was.
I listened to the clicking of my heels on and off the carpeting and wondered why it was that I hadn't already run into Mike or Jim who , would tell Maximilian, if not Maxie himself. I realized that it was long past practice hours. Perhaps Maxie was looking for me right now, at this very moment while here I was chasing off with a boy, for he was really hardly more than a boy, completely oblivious to the threat of being discovered. Oblivious, caring but not caring, beyond the ability to care, beyond the ability to watch out for myself with the good sense that I ordinarily possessed.
Marcel's cabin was on B Deck, one lower than Maximilian's and mine but located in the center of the ship. The key to the cabin was hanging in the case of keys on the wall which told us that the boy who shared it with Marcel was out.
I did not look either to the left or right as Marcel opened the door for it was too late to try to cover my footsteps, too late to attempt being sensible, besides which I was alive with desire and not capable of any other thought than immediate privacy with Julian.
He closed the door behind us. Before he switched on the light we were in each other's arms, holding madly close, unable to think about any of the formalities of comfort. In the moment of that first abandoned kiss, I understood Marcel needed me as much as I did him but, as yet, I did not understand the reason for it. I knew only what I sensed, that this hunger of his was as deep as mine. It was the hunger of youth of course, that all-consuming passion for experience.
Our hands groped and found each other's bodies. Eagerly we touched and clung, felt and probed. I was flattered that Marcel was so hot for me that he could not wait but pressed me up against the wall with his body. His hand, reaching down, went beneath the hem of my dress and lifted it. I felt strangely naked in this way, completely dressed and yet utterly accessible to his fingers. They climbed along my leg, beneath the slip, over the top of my stockings and into the elastic band of my underwear. Stretching that elastic, they found me, those sensitive searching fingers and pressed deep between my labia to the very center of my vulva. I felt the strength go out of my knees and leaned against Marcel for support, wanting him to continue feeling me in this fashion yet wondering if I could manage to remain standing under the onslaught of his relentless massage. Sensations were too large, too overwhelming, too strong for me hot to surrender completely right where I was, as I was.
"Marcel, can't we lie down?" I whispered. "Whatever you say."
I stumbled through the darkness toward the bunk and fell upon it. There was another one overhead and I grazed my temple against its sideboard but hardly noticed the bruise in my eagerness to be horizontal with Marcel.
"Hold me. Kiss me," I murmured.
"I'll do everything you want of me. I want to love you the way you like to be loved."
"Oh gosh, you're marvelous. I love the feel of your hands. Do you want to take my clothes off?"
"Just your panties."
"Don't you want me naked, darling?"
For answer he lifted my skirt high over my hips and pulled down my underwear, undoing the-garter belt and the stockings. His hands, amazingly skillful, moved rapidly with the clothing until I lay exposed from the waist down with Marcel on his side very close.
He took his time, playing with the curves of my thighs and my hips, squeezing the flesh here and there as though he were modeling me in clay or seeing me through the tips of his fingers. I felt the sensation of being touched as it had never come upon me before, as though Marcel were reaching down through my skin to my heart. His hands seemed to grow larger and to encompass all of me as though I could fit into his palm and be held there upon it. He was surrounding me with his hands, loving me, enjoying me, using me as I was meant to be used. I was woman and like Venus, Marcel was responding to me with total physical adoration.
My body reacted. My tits seemed to grow and the cavern of me widened with infinite yearning to encompass and possess Marcel.
"Slide between my legs, darling. I want to feel you," I whispered, reaching for his belt buckle, finding the tab of his pants zipper and moving it down.
I felt no shame or hesitation about reaching inside to find and grasp hold of him. My fingers came in contact with his warm but hard muscle which had stiffened and seemed ready for its part in our love making. I enjoyed the largeness, fin ding in it a certain security and basking in the difference between the sexes, that eternal, blissful difference.
"You have a good body," he said, "firm, lovely."
"What did you expect?" I laughed. "An old woman?" I was in the full flood of confidence, for though I was an older woman I certainly had maintained the firmness, the resiliency of flesh which makes a woman desirable. Being on the slender side had made it easy for me to keep in shape. Now with Marcel's hands and then his face roving my flesh, I felt glad for the first time of how well nature had endowed me.
"Where would you like me to touch you?" he murmured, his mouth against my belly.
It was rhetorical, I knew. For answer, I sighed, touching my palm to his skull and resting myself there, letting Marcel do with me as he wished.
"I have a lot to learn," he said. "I want you to teach me. I want you to show me how to be an ardent lover."
I knew he was offering me a courtesy, for Marcel, despite his lack of years, seemed quite knowledgeable in the realm of female need. His tongue lingered on the curve of my belly, moving gradually lower into the triangle of hair. His hands pressed the hardness of the mound and continued to find again their initial place of refuge between my thighs. He wanted to linger, I law, with hands and lip and tongue upon me. I spread my legs to give him room to do with me as he wished, enjoying his wandering, his lack of hurry, his appreciation. It was the European style, I suppose, to give a woman everything that she could possibly dream of, and was very much, therefore, in contrast to my life with my husband.
I suppose if ever I really had the strength to run away and leave Maximilian it was during my liaison with Marcel. I felt so secure with him, so sure of myself, so loved. And yet, what was it? Only an atmosphere, an aura, an illusion because Marcel loved womankind and loved me, therefore, as its exponent. I say exponent because in my own way I carried the flag for feminine rights, the feminine right to find fulfillment.
It was a narrow unresilient bed upon which we lay yet that made no difference. We were as though stretched out on a great field beneath sunlight as we lay, in fact, in the cramped, dark. I felt the hot, pulsing flesh of his erection. I held and guided it toward my cunt knowing I would be able to take him inside me' and keep him there for hours and hours, never to have enough of that lovely virile strength which promised Elysian fields of satisfaction.
My mind lingers over the details of our first union as though I were leafing back to a golden moment, unique in all my sexual history. Will you believe I felt pure, almost virginal with Marcel? His hands touched me and it seemed that I was, being touched for the first time. His magnificent penis with its large, seeking head found the opening of me and slipped into the ooze of my lascivious twat which, though indeed carnal, nevertheless partook of some ancient mystery. My body was a sibyl forecasting futures of bliss. Marcel, the idolator, who, with his totem, gave himself up to me not in sacrifice but in god-like offering of blessed pleasures.
I felt down between our stomachs to guide him more deeply into my orifice then lifted my legs wide so that he might press into deepest entry. I wanted him inside further than anyone I had ever known.
"Do it harder," I whispered. "Harder, please."
My small breathless cries told Marcel that I meant what I said. I backed up my demand upon him with solid swinging movements of my hips which lifted me closer, closer to blending into a single body with his own. The bed groaned beneath its unaccustomed burden but held us securely as we continued the act of coitus with utter abandon of ourselves for the night. The sound of water banging against the sides of the ship seemed to come through to me. I do not know whether it was in fact the ocean or a roaring of passion inside my skull. I am inclined to think it was the latter, of course, for I was outside myself, beyond my normal limits and overreaching every passion I had so far experienced. Yes, as I say, I felt virginal and pure in the sense that I was giving Marcel every part of me and not a single thought of Maximilian entered my mind during our love making, not a twinge of remorse, not a twitter or flutter of guilt or regret. I had come to Marcel. Somehow fate had led me to him and brought him to me. All I could do was ghank my lucky stars that I had at last found a man who could understand and love and fulfill and cater to those needs which nature had given me, certainly not for the purpose of lying to rot unused, to decay in some hidden corner unfulfilled. No. I was made for love. Now I was coming into my own, giving my all to this boy of the night, this mysterious stranger who had drifted into my arms and who had taken me, uplifted me, saved m from the depleting sensation and degradation of remorse which was, I felt, not rightfully my portion.
I covered his face with eager, wet kisses and murmured love sounds into his mouth. I pressed my lips to his eyelids and his nose and his cheeks and chin and the side of his neck. My hands moved along the material of his clothing and I regretted that I had not been able to wait long enough for both of us to undress I regretted that neither had Marcel been able to linger long enough for us to have come to each other in that proper state of nudity. Yet we were naked in our souls toward each other, facing one to the next wit open heart and mind and eager, giving bodies. Yes, although we were lying clandestinely in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, neither Marcel nor I felt any sense of being lost. On the contrary, each of us, I know, felt alive and discovered at last one by the other.
It is often said that women are unlike men in their sexual drives and needs; that women require security of home and appreciation in order to give the most of themselves in love. My experience agrees with this. But there is also another possibility and it was this other possibility that I felt in Marcel's presence. Together we had only each other. No possibility of marriage existed for us, of course, nor did I ever think in those terms with him. And yet, I had my home and it was a secure, quiet refuge existing within Marcel's heart. I would look into his eyes and know the high esteem in which Marcel regarded me. I basked in this appreciation and, when we were not together, my memories would return to images of him and I would feel inspired. I remember the first time when he held me, driving himself home within my fuck box. There was within my abandonment an utter trust which had never before occurred with any man. The feeling emanated from passion of course, yet seemed to come from a deeper, more profound source. It was as though I had reached the bottom of my well and had found there a new vein of richness. I thought how strange that here, with this boy, with this unlikely partner, I was at peace and felt so right. It only goes to show how little one can predict of what one needs or when one will be able to find it.
Those days aboard ship, I led a double life of the most extreme sort. I did not sneak out of Marcel's cabin at four in the morning but walked forth as though I had every right to come from where I had come; certain that even if I confronted Maximilian in the passageway, there would be on my face such a look of purity and lack of guilt that he would not be able to believe that I had just emerged from a tryst.
Of course, fortune favors one at the unlikeliest of times.
I left Marcel feeling alive, exhilarated, yet I knew my face was pale from all the exertion that had gone into the physical aspect of our meeting. I walked along the corridor, stroking my hair into place and dreamily re-living what had just transpired in its uniqueness. I couldn't have cared less about Maximilian. I felt as though I were alone on the ship. Except for Marcel, no one else mattered. Not my husband. Not even my individual being. For the first time I was complete and lived only in relationship to another, so that, as I walked I felt as though I were sharing the length of an invisible cord along which passed electric sparks of life between myself at one end and at the other end Marcel. Upon reaching A Deck, I forced myself to remember my surface responsibilities and proceeded with lagging steps back to my own cabin. I saw that the key was still hanging in its place and knew, therefore, that Maximilian had not yet come in. I wondered with a sudden little twinge of irritation if Maximilian had completely forgotten my existence. But the irritation was not with my husband really but with myself as I came face to face with what it feels like to be ignored. And I was indeed ignoring Maximilian as much certainly, some might say more, than he possibly could have been ignoring me.
I had no urge to go to sleep but I did feel a great desire to be alone with my thoughts to relive my love sensations with this new, marvelous person who had entered my life. This man who understood my womanly needs and who seemed to fill them with unerring instinct. I unlocked the door, threw on the light and went inside. For awhile, I stood gazing at my face in the small mirror over the sink. Then I poured water from the pitcher into a glass and began preparations for bed. My body was languid, drained and seemed ready for sleep, I thought.
Yet, on another level, I was so exuberant, so exhilarated, so tremendously, poignantly alive that sleep was the last possible condition which I could secure for myself. like a robot I began to take out my nightgown but could not really resign myself to lying there in that empty bed alone when I should have been sharing Marcel's bunk, lying with him silently, arms entwined, not saying much or even thinking much. But simply being together.
The unnaturalness of my single state got to me. Instead of putting on my night things I changed into sweater and slacks, re-combed my hair and went out of the cabin again thinking that I would go find a nightcap or someone to chat with before calling an end to this momentous day.
Retracing my steps to the ballroom where I had found Marcel, I ran into Mike and Jim from the band, who had each found a female companion. The four, seated at a table in the semi-deserted ballroom were obviously in the last stages of social chit-chat before separating into couples and going off for the obvious conclusion to the night. I saw empty liquor glasses, littered ashtrays, bits of sandwiches still cluttering the small table. There was that tell-tale tension in the group and I wondered how long they had been seated there, how long ago they had finished practice and had separated from Maximilian.
For the first time, I began actively thinking about my husband. Being on a ship, we were flung together into a strange proximity of which I wanted no part but which I could not dispel. I found myself walking over to the table to confront Mike and Jim.
"Hi, looking for Max?" said Mike. "Yes."
"Did you try the card room?"
"No," said I hesitantly. It was the first time that the idea had been mentioned to me. I didn't even know that Maximilian was a card player. I'd never seen him do so.
"Oh sure. You'll find him there," Jim grinned. "Go on. Go break it p if you can."
Jim and Mike had spoken as though with one voice and the feeling they shared about Maximilian's card playing was obvious.
"Oh, quit kidding," said I. "Don't make it sound so serious." But I thanked them for the tip, turned and started for the other end of the deck wondering exactly what I was going to find there. Was Maximilian a gambler? How strange. How irrelevant to my life.
And then, wickedly, I thought, so this is what takes up Maximilian's time. No wonder he doesn't care to keep tabs on me. He has a bigger and better passion than sex.
I came to the door of the card room and could barely see through the smoke to the players where they sat at various small square tables. Sure enough there amongst them, his face bent in creased concentration, was my dear husband.
A stack of chips sat in front of him. I knew immediately that he was in the midst of poker. I understood little about the game, must the barest details of the rules for I had never been interested in betting anything except myself.
I sauntered up to where the players were. They are the last people on earth one can disturb with impunity. As I silently watched the procedure there was no doubt that Maximilian's intensity of interest was nothing casual in his life. He didn't see my approach. I stood for some minutes behind him, observing the deals a d plays, not much concerned with whether or not Maximilian were winning but whether or not he was going to end this soon and come down to bed. It seemed to me, privately, that it would be a total waste of time to go back to the cabin if Maximilian was not going to know the difference. I might just as well live the night out with Marcel as long as Maximilian had no intention of joining me, of being my jailer.
I think I would have told him so had he turned and asked.
Yet nothing of the sort transpired. He did notice my presence at last, glanced up at me and gave me an impatient grunt, saying, "What time is it?"
"Quarter of five."
"Late."
I didn't answer. There was nothing to reply. Maximilian's obvious distraction meant that if he gave up the game it would be begrudgingly. It had nothing to do with the hour but more with the stamina of his opponents at the table.
I looked them over and realized that Maximilian's absorption was not only shared but intensified by the group feelings .
"I'll see you later then," said I, quite quietly an without the least amount of challenge.
Maximilian didn't even bother to reply. I sauntered out of the card room feeling both consternated and relieved. All of a sudden I understood. Maximilian had a life that was quite complete without me. In one area he had his music and his career, wit the driving ambitions and various complications that had to be met. Then he had this other, equally strong obsession. And between the two it was suddenly quite a surprise to me that he found any time at all to spend with his wife. With new clarity and insight I saw why he had been just as willing for me not to come along with him on his various tours through the States. Having me around would have included the necessity of spending time with me. My company would never be as interesting to him as these other occupations.
I grinned with a devilish glee as the burden of Maximilian seemed to lift forever from my shoulders. He was just as glad, I felt sure, that I did not bother him, that I found modes of keeping myself occupied. The little game he had played with sex, the titillating me and not fulfilling me had, with time, lost its fascination in the total scheme of things. He had wanted to tie me to him out of a basic lack of interest in my sexuality. Because he had not really wanted to be bothered with the responsibilities of a wife, he had sought to control me by artificial means.
That he had succeeded, did not enter Maximilian's head, not because he was stupid but because he was not really interested. I understood that he was just as glad if I could amuse myself without including him.
And so, Maximilian and I were at last on equal footing, I thought, inhaling the night about on the deck and listening to the waves rush by in the darkness. He did not want me. Nor I him. Our marriage was a puppet's game. A farce. Not even a melodrama. A nothing, really. Too empty to think about, much less describe. I leaned over the rail and felt the cool, stinging spray and understood that whatever I might do with Marcel was perfectly acceptable to everyone, including Maximilian. And I believed it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
We docked in Le Havre during a rush and frenzy of preparations. The press and push of people and baggage was lit by the fire of excited arrival. Marcel had given me his Paris address, but except for the approaching weekend, I had been unable to tell him where we would be staying.
I disembarked with a mixture of enthusiasm and downheartedness. At best I would not be seeing Marcel for the next couple of days. In the single week we had spent together I had already begun to realize that I would find it difficult to relearn how to live without him. In one short week I had created a new way of life. Now I seemed to be walking in limbo as I followed Maximilian through customs.
The French are a vociferous people and very attractive in their unique fashion. I remember being pleased by the herds of small cars with their shrill beeping horns. Dockside was a busy place. I was caught up in many human flurries until we were finally on the train that would take us directly to Paris.
I settled down with Maximilian and Jim and Mike in the dining car, drank coffee and tried to eat a sampling of the French cheeses that the waiter brought us with much flourish. But my heart wasn't in any of this. I gazed out the window at the countryside rolling by, thinking only one thought, the phone number that Marcel had given me.
Paris in the fall was more beautiful than even I had expected. After we were settled in the small hotel, Maximilian bestirred himself sufficiently to take me on a sightseeing tour of the city of lights. He made the effort. That much I must give him credit for and I did not even sense in him an impatience to be through with the responsibility he had assigned himself for my amusement. I let Maximilian play the role of custodian to the hilt and dutifully walked through the exhibit at Notre Dame, at the candied nuts for sale on almost every street corner as well as a French style hamburger at the Drug Store which was mobbed with young, beautiful people. It seemed to me that Paris was the city of youth and my heart ached for Marcel who so much embodied the romantic feelings that stirred me. I was walking with Maximilian and listening to the boom of his personalized guided tour while inside echoed Marcel's soft, loving voice.
It was after dusk when Maximilian brought me back to the hotel. Night had crept up slowly and my body had not yet become accommodated to the time change between hemispheres.
Maximilian kissed me goodbye, and I waited in the hotel room while he and Mike and Jim went off to their first night on the job.
I waited half an hour and then went to find a telephone to fumble my way through my minimal French to Marcel. My heart fairly crashed about behind my ribs as I listened to the phone ring, wondering if he might be out at just this moment, or otherwise engaged. He had to have a family and friends waiting to see him, eager to take up his time. I thought that he must also have a girl, something blonde and fragile and beautiful in a trench coat, something that outclassed me in chic.
And then I heard his voice saying hello in the French way.
"Marcel." I only said the one word and that was enough.
"Where are you? Where are you staying?"
"I told you. Yes, I told you, Marcel. Are we very far from each other? I don't know where you are."
"Only fifteen minutes by bus," he laughed. "I'll be right there."
"No, don't come to the hotel. That's too risky."
"All right, I'll meet you somewhere else, if you wish."
He gave me directions but I was not sure that I could follow them.
"Supposing we meet at the Drug Store," I said.
Marcel laughed into the phone. "So you've been there already?"
"The ninth wonder of the world," said I. "Yes. All right then. Half an hour."
"Yes, Marcel, yes."
I felt like a fool. All I had been able to say to Marcel was the voicing of my fear of losing him and the yessing and yessing of anything he might wish. But that was exactly how I felt, completely open to him and agreeable, willing to do whatever Marcel might ask of me, anything as long as we might continue the Elysium which had begun aboard ship.
Bless my lover. He arrived at our appointed meeting place before I, and so spared me the harassment of waiting, of being nervously stimulated by the fear of missing him in the crowd.
No, my Marcel would never disappoint me. He was there, dressed in a very French cut suit, easy yet fashionable. He had also taken a haircut and was exceedingly trim and beautiful. His face was open as always with its familiar eagerness to see me and gladness at" our meeting.
I realized as we ran toward each other that all my fears had been based on one single fear: that the atmosphere of shipboard romance would come to an end with a shattering thud for him at the sight of me on land where we were surrounded by so many other people and such a myriad of different opportunities. I must say that because of my fears I did not do Marcel justice. I had not given, him sufficient credit. I had worried that he survived on novelty as was prevalent amongst those of his age. Why should he wait for me, depend upon me when there were so many women, younger, more beautiful? The French beauties were shining like lights all around and Marcel, himself no slacker, would have been able to start a dozen different affairs if he had wanted them.
But I saw immediately that Marcel had eyes only for me and I thanked the fates that had given me such good fortune. I allowed my dazzled brain to accept Marcel as my true husband and I flung myself into his embrace as we came together.
Arm in arm we walked to the corner and around to where he had a small blue car, a Renault I think. I folded myself up into the front seat, ready and willing to go wherever Marcel chose to drive us.
"I'm taking you home," he said. "You'll like my place."
"Of course I will." My heart leaped again but this time without the crashing and pounding of nervous fear. It leaped instead with the renewal of my passion.
Marcel was taking me home, to his home where we would be alone, where we could embrace as we needed to embrace and fulfill the desires which had outlived the separation they had encountered.
Yes, some things are forever. Some things are like a diamond, hard and bright and forever of value in a special way with which nothing else can compete.
Id did not even look around me at the sights as Marcel drove but leaned against the door and stared at him, eating him alive with my gaze and unashamedly telling him how much I had missed him even though we had been separated for hardly a day. Already he was an obsession with me and I would have Marcel regardless of the cost.
He drove past the Sorbonne and into an attractive street of small houses. I remember what a haze it all was to me, parking the car, walking half a block up a hill, climbing stairs of an old fashioned hallway, entering an apartment with a skylight. A small apartment with rooms at odd angles to one another, I don't know how many there were but the cozy atmosphere was exactly what went well with Marcel and we were again united as the door closed with a soft click that seemed to lock us from the world forever.
We had that capacity with each other, this ability to float off into Shangri-La, untouched and untouchable by anything beyond the four walls that protected us from view. All existence became meaningless except for this limited yet limitless world which we created and shared. Out hands touched again. Our fingers entwined as Marcel's lips met mine, gently at first, ever so gently in greeting as friends greet friends.
Our lovemaking took on the climate of something extra-special, extra-precious and we began to draw out the process to make it last as long as we might. Our mouths lingered in touch. We undressed each other slowly, fondling parts of the bodies that we contacted in the process of disrobing. I pressed my lips to Julian's chest and closed my eyes, sighing against his warm solid muscle and laying my cheek upon him. The bed which was beside the window gave me a full view of the sky and the Paris rooftops, those crooked, beautiful patterns f shadow. Marcel held me in his arms and together we looked out at the night while feeling each other's closeness and warmth and desire.
His hand played over my tits and I am sure that he felt the heartbeat racing inside me. Filled as I was with love for him I knew that I would have to express it in some ultimate major way for I wanted to manifest my love completely. It seemed so incredibly total in its possession of me that I needed, I thought, to externalize my feelings so that I could hold them in my palm and look them over and examine all their details. But the manifestation was Marcel's body. I realized that this was enough. That he existed and that I had found him and that we loved each other was indeed sufficient for me. I rolled over and, lying on my side now, pressed against him. I lifted one leg and put it over his hips feeling the beginnings of life that stirred in his maleness. There was a certain special secret that transported itself between my body and his, a current of passion perhaps yet more, certainly more. I felt myself given over to a sense of immortality. In Marcel's arms I could do no wrong, would never be harmed, was free to love with every inch and depth that I possessed. I massaged the inside of my calf up and down along his prick .enjoying the feel of its growing size. I knew intimately every response of his and had examined his body with the curiosity which emanates from love but I never tired of looking at him, of stroking him and probing my love object. Now I reached my hand down and took hold of the sac beneath his erection and felt the warmth and the weight upon my palm as though I were holding a bag of golden nuggets of priceless value.
"How I missed you," I murmured, which was really senseless to say and yet meant everything to me to say it.
"Have you been busy? What were you doing? Tell me. Do you like my city?"
"Oh so you think of Paris as your city? More so than New York?" My voice inadvertently rose on a nervous pitch.
"I didn't say that, my love. I do think of
Paris as my city though. Paris has been good to me in so many ways."
"You have your friends here."
"Many. But I have friends in New York also."
"Yes, you say you divided your time between the two. But I don't think you said equally, did you Marcel?"
He stroked my hair and tried to soothe my nervous prodding.
"I have very close friends in New York and family too, remember that dear. Don't be afraid."
"Am I?"
"Of course you are. And why shouldn't you be?. It's strange to you here, so new, so different. How could you help but be uncomfortable in some ways?"
"But I'm in your arms and that's all that matters to me Marcel. You must believe it. I don't care what city in the world we're in or if we're lying on a desert as long as I'm here like this with you."
I began a frenzied kissing of his body as though I could with my mouth and ardent passion dispel whatever disturbing thoughts had began to ruffle me. It was the wrong time to be disturbed. I did not want to mar our first meeting this way. Our reunion was supposed to be something special and especially intimate.
Yet here I had flung a discordant tone into our essential harmony and, having done so, I also instantly regretted my act. Yet it had come from somewhere inside me, somewhere honest. There was no questioning my insecurity and I had to accept Marcel's word for the fact that these undesirable sensations were due only to the fact of being in a different place. I tried to imagine how comfortably at ease I would feel if we were in a hotel room in New York City. But try as I might, the fact was that we were in Paris, that I did not know how long we would be together or exactly where in the country I would find myself from one week to the next. How would I be able to keep Marcel informed of my whereabouts? And even if I could do that, would he be able to respond always to my call? Of course not. He had his own life. No matter how much I might try to overlook the fact, the truth lay there, big and bulky as a baby elephant between us. Marcel had his own life. And what did I know of it? What could I know of his life? How little time we had spent asking each other questions in the realms which had seemed at first of no immediate importance. Now, suddenly looming large and pressing against me with an insistent sharp nudge all the unmasked questions rose.
"Oh my, oh my,. ' said Marcel trying to quiet me with kisses upon my mouth. "We'll talk about it. We'll talk about everything. But later, my darling ... Afterward."
I agreed with Marcel. Time enough afterward. Time enough.
I agreed with Marcel. Time enough afterward. Time enough.
Our bodies rubbing against each other had stirred the cravings that were there so close to the surface waiting only for contact to again leap into life. And now Marcel was kissing me, from one nipple to the next and underneath the weight of my breast into the secret crevices there. He stroked my arms and the armpits and down my sides, feeling the rib cage and the convexity of my belly. He pressed his mouth to the navel and lingered a while as his hands went around my hips, caressing my buttocks. Separating the two halves and inserting a finger there he felt me carefully where I was not accustomed to be felt except by him. Yes, Marcel had brought a newness, a kind of novelty in our sexual explorations. To Marcel I had given my total freedom and would permit him access to every part of my body in any way that he chose.
"Spread your legs, darling, wider."
I did so and Marcel's hands proceeded now deeper inside while his mouth continuing down the front of me widened the crevice so that his tongue could fit in between the inner labia until it touched and began to massage with its rigid tip the clitoral point of female sensation.
I, without shame, made Marcel turn around so that my mouth could be upon his prick at the same time. My lips, forming themselves around the stem began to move in long stroking action so that I felt the stiffened muscle and all its various components yielding to me and giving me what I wanted from him. Yes, I wanted Marcel to reach the heights of pleasure. I wanted him to believe that only from me could he get everything of what he wanted. I wanted to bind Marcel. I wanted Marcel to become addicted to what I gave him and what I had to give. I wanted. I wanted.
And everything came to pass physically between us. I had no compunction about his orgasm as it spurted and hit the roof of my mouth. The pulsing stimulated me to respond in kind and I began to tremble and rise to that ultimate peak until, as though something squeezed me, I began also to expel in writhing undulation the epitome of ecstatic fulfillment.
Our first orgasm, happening almost simultaneously, took place I think only a very few moments after we had begun to fondle ome another. Both of us were expectant and able. Afterward there were moments of complete quiet. Then I left the bed and wandered about the room, aware that Marcel was watching me in my nakedness, surveying my shape. I put my hands upon my hips and turned and looked at him and enjoyed watching him look at me. The few lights in various strategic places illuminated my body and cast it into becoming shadow. It was a room to compliment a woman and I knew that I could live here forever, cook dinners for Marcel and me in the small adjacent kitchen. I could be happy ever after in this fairy tale of love if the fates would let me.
And Marcel seemed to understand my thinking for he said, "What time do you have to be home tonight, darling?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "Not any time especially," said I. "I seem to be more of a free woman than I had hoped."
"Good."
The single word did not carry all the weight of pleased reception that I had subconsciously expected Marcel would show me.
"In fact," said I pursuing the matter with a sudden urge to reach my goal, "I can probably stay through the night if you'd like me to do that."
"Of course, my dear, of course."
His laconic, unexpected monosyllabic retort was so unlike, so abruptly unlike Marcel's previous attention to me. I felt disconcerted, almost angry but didn't know what to do, didn't know how to deal with something I could not quite put my finger on.
"Only if you want me to stay," I repeated. "Do you darling?"
"But you know I do," Marcel had propped himself up on one elbow and was reaching for a small telephone book. "I have only a call to make," he said, "and I'm yours the rest of the night."
I knew I had better not ask Marcel who he was dialing. It was none of my business and, since Marcel did not press to know what was doing in my life, I had no reason to assume he would welcome any investigation on my part. Beside which I had a husband. He knew I had a husband. My relationship, by the very nature of that previous tie, was limited in what it could offer Marcel in terms not of feeling but of time. Had I, therefore, caught him off guard? Had he expected to be with me for an hour or two or three or more but to be eventually free for someone else?
Why not?
My heart sank as I listened to him speak in French. The' words made his face mobile and beautiful and I could only catch the meaning of two or three in the long stream of rapid fire sentences. I had no way of knowing whether he was speaking to a male or female but I simply assumed it was a woman and he was canceling out on some later appointment. Yet there was the ugliness of it. Any later appointment would have to have been one which included a physical relationship. What kind of woman would he be seeing him at three or four in the mourning? Not a sister certainly. Not an aunt. It had to be a girlfriend.
I turned my back upon the telephone conversation as though to show Marcel that I didn't care, would refuse to care, could never acknowledge that anyone who took his time could take it up as importantly as I.
My first signs of jealousy barbs were sharp ones.
How they dug into my flesh. How I trembled inside. How I didn't care whether the trembling showed or not because I was so powerless to control it.
After what seemed like an eternity, the receiver was cradled.
Marcel said. "All right, darling, stay with me till morning. We'll go out for breakfast then and I'll drive you through the city at dawn. It's beautiful, you know. You'll love it. I know you'll love it."
I turned slowly and said, "Marcel, am I disturbing your life?"
He laughed an uneasy laugh. "Of course you are. You have to. Love always does that. I love you."
I heard his reassurance but it did not reach me where I might respond in kind. I thought: well he's telling me these things to keep the relationship smooth. Marcel is a gentleman and he doesn't want to hurt my feelings. Not now. Not so soon. I thought all manner of ridiculous female fluttering but there was no way out for me. I knew that I would have to remain with Marcel until the grim fangs of truth bit and tore my flesh, until the blood ran and there was nothing for me to do but run, run for my life.
Was it happening so soon? Was my own true love rejecting me? And can one's own true love reject or must it be a mutual act?
"Marcel," said I, taking my last stand with him, "would you prefer it if I were single?"
All this he could provide and when he laughed aloud and stared at the ceiling and ran his hands through his hair and seemed at a loss as to what to answer me.
"Well tell me the truth, for heaven's sake, Marcel. Speak. Answer me. Tell me. You are not at a loss for words, not you, not the Frenchman."
The bitterness was already in my voice. I was running rapidly downhill. From my Elysian peak I was tumbling headlong into the depths of unhappiness and powerless to stop the cumulative landslide.
"Oh my dear girl, you must never ask me such a thing."
"Why not? Can't you answer me yes or no? It's a simple question." I was staring at him. "Isn't it simple?"
"All right," Marcel sighed, "I would prefer it if you were single."
"Are you telling me the truth?"
He shook his head from side to side and I could tell by the puzzled expression in his eyes that he could not understand what had come over me so suddenly. And I was the last one on earth who could enlighten him. It was as thought I were suddenly possessed of an ancient devil who was going through its ritual of torture acts upon my psyche.
"Oh, I'm sorry," said I, sinking to the bed, "I'm sorry, Marcel, my very dearest love. I don't know what's gotten into me. I really just don't know."
It was the truth. Here I was in the midst of the most promising love affair of my life, certainly the one that was touching me more deeply than any experience I had ever known but I could see myself willfully proceeding to destroy the closeness of that very love and felt powerless to turn myself off.
I suppose you can imagine the horror that struck me as I saw this unexpected undercurrent in my nature surfacing to contradict everything about myself I had believed up until this moment.
Marcel, I realized, could not possibly understand, as hard as he might try. Marcel with his straightforward spontaneous nature saw only the black and white of our relationship and his was the more satisfying view.
"Darling," he said in his attempt to reassure me, "why don't you relax and try not to worry?"
I was not worrying. I was stricken as though a great dragon inside me were breathing fire and consuming with that fire my hopes as well as my love. I flung myself back into Marcel's arms praying that with kisses and passion I could erase this rising threat, destroy it before I was destroyed by it. My mouth sought with desperation to suck in all that was Marcel's life force nd love for me. I pressed him close to my heart and with eyes shut tight I clung to his warm, lighe strength.
"Oh, hold me tight." My voice was a sob.
I think that Marcel knew better than I that sexual passion would not erase my troubles. Nevertheless, he gave in to the new outburst of desire that overwhelmed me and we sank down onto the throw rugs. Soon we were entwined and half connected in the sexual act.
To make love out of desperation, to earnestly pray that one will be consumed in the flames was like a child swearing in blood that he will be forever true. With all my strength I squeezed my thighs around Marcel's hips pressing him to blend with me and surely, it happened in the act that I rose above my distraught condition and loved Marcel truly, completely.
Shortly after the realization that I bore within me the seeds of my own destruction, my behavior began to change.
I began to look not to Julian for love but to the streets again for expiation as though by giving myself up to strange lovers, people without names, I would someday in some way destroy that counter-current which I understood had ruled me all these years, ruled me secretly with a primeval shrewdness. I recognized that if I saw Marcel continually I would allow him to see too much of this negative nature and, eventually, he would have to let me go.
Because I could not bear the idea of that separation, because I could not survive, I thought, if Marcel rejected me, it was I who created the very conditions for rejection and initiated our arguments.
We were walking through the Tuilieries one sunny afternoon, talking about nothing important. Having just come from the Louvre we were both filled with the exquisiteness of human endeavor, some forms of it anyway, and Marcel was in the midst of a sentence on Leonardo do Vinci when I tugged at his jacket sleeve and said, "Darling, you know this is to be the last time we'll see each other."
Marcel stopped short and looked down at me, his face so expressive and open, was more bewildered at the moment than anything else.
"What are you saying?"
"Yes, it's true. Today is our last day together."
"Why? Are you leaving for New York? I go, too, soon, on the thirteenth of next month."
I shook my head, unable to control my voice as a harsh lump seemed to rise. I could not bear the sight of his profound puzzlement. In his mind there was nothing that could keep us apart. Yet here I was, doing it all by myself, making the separation, taking full responsibility for it.
I glanced away from Marcel and stared through blurred vision at the rapid darting of those small cars I had learned to love. Marcel misunderstood my silence and continued.
"Is it your husband?" he said. His fingers squeezed my arm with strength that demanded I answer. "Has he found out? And even so, you can leave him."
I had never heard those words from any man, that I could leave Maximilian, that I ought to leave Maximilian.
My blood went cold. My heart seemed to stop in the middle of a beat. My thoughts went blank. I was the shell of a human being, without notion or feeling or direction. I was a silent point in the center of time, empathy meaningless. Leave Maximilian '? I should have left him years ago. I should have left him before I had married him. And here was Marcel, my very own true love, telling me that I should leave Maximilian now. Did that mean what I hoped it might mean?
"If I leave him," said I very softly and with hesitation, "what then, Marcel? What will I do?"
"Oh-ho, you know very well," he said trying to take heart from my question.
"I know nothing," said I abruptly, the brusqueness hiding my hope.
I was thinking: Tell me Marcel. Tell me what's on your mind. You seem so certain of yourself and you know I'm not at all sure. I need your certainty., Marcel. Spell it out for me. Tell me what you are thinking.
Ah, but you must know," He was not impatient so much as at his wit's end because of my seeming lack of direction..
"I suppose I would leave Maximilian," said I taking the plunge, "if I could run to you, my darling."
Marcel's laugh had a ring of discomfort like a haze around the moon.
And so I knew the truth, knew the inevitable. How had I dared to conceive that Marcel felt himself in any posit on for marriage. And if he did, why would he marry me? I was fine for a love affair, for a clandestine thrill, for a heart to heart romance. But marriage? Marriage was a practical venture, a statement that one was ready to settle down and take all the rottenness along with the good times and Marcel wasn't ready for that. I knew it. He knew it. And now because I was cornered by my own nature, I flung this knowledge in Marcel's face to let him see that I was desperate perhaps, but nobody's fool.
"I would think," said Marcel, "that you would enjoy having your freedom for awhile so that you might," he hesitated, "get to know yourself a little better, my dearest."
"I've had enough of freedom," I answered, my words exploding with conviction. "I know what it's like to . ... " The sentence trailed off as my imagination brought to mind all the men I had seen and known in my lifetimes. My marriage had not been real, and the horizons of my experience were not beautiful. Quite the contrary. Because of my peculiar relationship with Maximilian I had taken wing. What I wanted now was not to be free but to be tired to someone I enjoyed, someone to whom I could willingly and devotedly give my all. Yes, I wanted to be married. The state of marriage was everything, every opportunity, every atmosphere, every security. And to be a woman on the loose, roaming the world, picking up lovers and dropping them was not my idea of freedom. It was not my nature.
"You must think your thoughts through," Marcel said.
"I am clearer now than I have ever been, my darling," said I, tugging his arm. "And I think we are clear about each other now also, isn't that so?"
It was so. We both fell into silence, facing the reality that had been pushed so far away by our mutual love. How strange it felt to know that we adored each other, that we were everything to each other but that what we felt was not based on any foundation that might develop into a solid home life. I had a rude jolt to see how possible it was for love and marriage to be utterly unrelated one to the other. This awakening shook me and turned my values upside down. Would I ever see Marcel again. No. Today was indeed the last day. I was leaving him not out of fear or disappointment. I was leaving Marcel because our love, as heated and profound as it was, had nowhere to go. And because I was I, there had to be someplace.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I recall with humor as well as sadness the variety of Frenchmen that I picked up and discarded during the next few frenzied weeks. With Marcel out of my life, there was a vast emptiness that had to be filled and I also had to content myself with doing it clumsily. Something was better than nothing, I decided, and rushed headlong into every affair that offered its smiling face. Of course, because I had nothing more to lose, I grew increasingly careless in my protective covering, almost hoping that Maximilian would catch me in the act and confront me at last with the inevitable.
I suppose one might say that I even set up the situation, for when it happened, although I did not realize that I had done so purposely, it is easy to see at this distance how I had constructed events so that Maximilian would have nowhere to walk except right into the center of my unfaithfulness. I no longer blame him for my fate but I cannot say what sort of life we might have had together if Maximilian had been more interested in me, in us, in our marriage.
Yes, I began bringing men home to the hotel room during the hours when Maximilian was out on a job. You know how hotel clerks are. They discretely turn and look the other way when a woman wishes to indulge in romance.
My routine was a simple one. Maximilian would leave the house at a specified hour. I would leave maybe fifteen or twenty minutes after he did and return often in less than an hour with someone new. Oh, there was a variety of men I brought back, of every size, of every social level. I didn't care. Rich ones, poor ones, rough ones, they were men and that's what mattered. I suppose the management began to think of me as Mrs. Tower the nymphomaniac and perhaps that description was accurate. When sex is used to take the place of other facets of living can it be called anything else? I didn't know I was rushing through a forest of phallic delights, embracing each as though it were a magic wand that would transform me, lift' me out of my whirlwind of confusion up into the rarified air of peace and understanding.
How futile a gesture. How thoughtless. How helpless. Yet, as I have said, subconsciously the mind was working on my own better behalf. Little could I know that the impending trial by desire would draw me through its flames and out on the other side burnt but in some strange way purified.
It was a Friday night. The man I held in my arms was, as usual, faceless but strong. There was a faint aroma of brandy on his breath as he kissed my hair and ears and explored along the sides of my neck down to my bosom. The lips felt like many another set of lips upon my flesh, seeking, stimulating. His cheeks were somewhat rough with a beginning stubble of beard. The hairs had a blonde glint in the light of the bedside lamp. I smelled of Chanel No. 5 very strongly, very alluring to him. He held my skull in his giant palms, turned my head this way and that. I moved my shoulders and my breasts jiggled beneath the bed sheet. He sighed at the sight of my nipples outlined by the sheet as puckered points grew harder in twin erections of need. He was not a Frenchman but, of all things, an American, a teacher on sabbatical leave. But that wasn't important. It seemed to me nothing could be important except the physical. And the part of him that interested me I was touching with my knee, enjoying the response of his torrid cock coming to life as I rubbed against it. His body covered with a thick matting of hair had a certain smooth, soft resiliency to it. I was moving my hand through the pubic area and sighing with shivers of expectation. I'd had a few brandies myself and though sober my blood was exceedingly warm. Desire climbed youthfully. I felt that my female powers were in their prime and would remain thus at their peak for a long time to come. I was satisfied with the condition of my craving. I enjoyed the fact that I was excited, that I would become even further aroused and that this faceless, nameless male would penetrate me shortly and bring to a peak my ecstasy.
CHAPTER NINE
Yes, I had no business feeling so abandoned to the moment, so secure that the door would not open, so certain that Maximilian would not come home before daylight.
But he did.
Does ii matter the reason? I think that Mike and Jim later told me that they had, in fact, not gone out to play that night. Maximilian had simply neglected to inform me that he was off to a card game. Only the card game for some reason had not materialized. The players had left from some casino or other which Maximilian would not go to and instead returned to the hotel.
Anyway, as I say, the reason is immaterial. Only the fact of Maximilian's sudden presence in that bedroom is important now.
How well I remember not believing it as the door which I hadn't bothered to lock simply opened and in stepped Maximilian. I remember the funny thing, that he was carrying a bottle of wine and a long unwrapped loaf of bread as the French do. He was starting to say something about having a late snack with me and was holding the bottle aloft when he saw what he saw.
It was a death-like moment.
There was no covering anything of course. I was naked, stretched out, the strange man lying half on top of me just about ready to enter. Maximilian, stricken speechless and rigid, stared with unblinking, large penetrating sight upon the scene which made no sense to him for a minute. I could tell how his brain refused to register the meaning of what his eyes took in.
I felt the man beside me swallow. I merely lay as I lay, looking back at Maximilian feeling an icy dread combined with a certain strange challenge on my face. I knew. A challenge that said to Maximilian, well you never would. Somebody had to.
He lowered the bottle slowly and set it down on the bureau, put the bread beside it. I heard the bottle clatter as glass hit glass top and I knew his hands were trembling with an attempt to control his rage and outrage. I believe that in that moment he would have been capable of murdering me but I tell you he never would have succeeded My own ambitions for self survival were stronger than I realized and they rushed to my defense.
He stood staring at the wall, then turned and said, "So this is what you need?"
I didn't answer. And because I didn't answer, Maximilian was free to find his own direction.
"Now I know what's the matter with you," he continued, "What's been."
"Nothing's the matter with me," I flung back suddenly, clinging to the man for an instant then thrusting him aside. "I'm a normal, healthy woman. Nothing's the matter with me." My voice was raised with strength and belief and the knowledge that I would not be dominated by Maximilian ever again.
"You're a lousy, rotten," he said more softly now, "fucker."
It was true. I was what he told me. "Yes, I'm that. What are you going to do about it?"
"Do about it?" He echoed my thought which seemed to strike him as though his brain were a drumhead. Abruptly, without another word, he slammed out of the room.
I heard the heavy footstep go down the hall and then stop. I knew Maximilian was standing there in blood red fury. And then I heard the sound of the steps again, returning. He entered the room like a bull. All reason, I saw, was gone. His blood was up. Maximilian, in full feeling, assailed me.
"You wanna fuck?" he rasped, gripping the bedpost. "Well, go ahead and do it. This I gotta see. This I gotta know. Bitch. Go on sonny," he said to the man. "Stick it into her. Go ahead. Make her scream. I want to see that bitch come. I want to see it happen. Go on. Screw her. Screw her until she chokes on it."
I could hardly believe that what was happening were real. It seemed as if it were a dream and that this were something out of a nightmare.
His voice was harsh and brittle and he was seething with hatred for me.
But something about the thought of making it with this faceless stranger while Maximilian watched was something that intrigued and thrilled me.
"Alright," I said. "I'll fuck him and you watch."
A pallor came over his face. He could not believe that I had actually said that and that I had every intention of carrying it out.
I was willing but that cock that I was with was not.
He looked between Maximilian and me and mumbled something about not wanting to get involved with a couple scene.
He dressed quickly and left in a hurry.
I was left to face Maximilian alone.
"What do you think you're trying to prove?" he asked me, his voice seething with violence.
There was nothing I could say. I wasn't trying to prove anything at all. I just wanted to fuck.
He began gathering his clothes, threatening to leave me high and dry in this city.
"Calm down, Max," I said to him. "We can work this out. Just try to be more understanding about this whole thing."
He was furious. He was boiling with anger and that self-righteousness of being wrong by an evil woman.
"That act went out with Queen Victoria," I said to him. "Where the hell have you been the last thirty years," I said.
"You fucking slut. Can't you keep your hands off anybody's cock. Do you have to fuck all the fucking time?"
"Yes. I fuck when I want to and with whom I want to. You can do the same."
"I'm leaving," he said.
"Go then. If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen."
"Don't hit me with that kind of bullshit," 'he said. "Don't give me some stale axiom trying to make excuses for the slut you really are."
"Alright then, Max. Pack your things and leave. I'm tired of making up with this shit."
He got as many things together as he could and then split.
I was left alone and in a way that was what I wanted. I was now left to do anything I wanted and with anybody I wanted.
Men were all that mattered to me and I knew that as long as I could fuck I would have little to worry about in the way of being sheltered or clothed.
I could always find some man to take me in for a few days, give him a good time in bed and then go off searching for another guy.
It was a good enough life for me and I knew that one of these days, if I played my cards right I would be able to latch on to some real man with a lot of bread.
That would be just fine for me. I knew that there were a lot of lonely old men with nothing to do but spend their money of women.
Being kept appealed to me and that was what I wanted. There's no shame in it. There's only satisfaction for me in knowing that some man wants my cunt badly enough to be willing to pay for it and support me in a way that I want.
I feel that if a girl can do it she should be able to go out there and make it with some rich old fuck that has nothing better to do than throw his money away on her pussy.
