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From: apuleius@poboxes.com (Apuleius of Madaura)
Subject: Corrected RP: The Recurrent Fall of Eve, by Caroline Ashbee (f-solo)
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Reposter's note:

The author has indicated that the original repost of this story was corrupt (the
opening was omitted). I was unaware of this situation, having based the repost
on the qz.to copy. The following is the correct version, based on the Dejanews
copy. The author may be contacted at the address listed below.

- Apuleius

-------------------------------------------------

From: Caroline@ardgrain.demon.co.uk (Caroline Ashbee)
Subject: The recurrent fall of Eve: 1952
Date: 11 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMT
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Archive-name: fall-of-eve

The recurrent fall of Eve: 1952

by Caroline Ashbee

Two schoolgirls in the photograph, both wearing gymslips and
blouses with ties, wearing blazers, strap-over shoes, and
ankle-socks, white gloves, and panama hats, smiling, the way
we used to smile then, uncertainly. They are side by side,
rather stiff, close together, almost standing to attention,
facing the camera. The blazers are very smart, bottle-green,
bound with dark orange corded-silk ribbon round the edges,
at the pockets, and rings round the sleeves, but you can see
the colours only in memonry, not in the picture. One of the
girls has the coltish, a shire-horse coltish, look of beauty
foretold, a heavy beauty, comely, motherly: glossy dark
hair, cut straight and square, at the forehead and  behind,
a helmet, a dusky rosy complexion seen through a rectilinear
visor. The other plain: not tall, not small, not fat not
thin, not dark, not fair, plain; no need to coluur her in:
the photograph tells it all.

	Of course it wasn't Miss O'Callaghan's fault, but
somehow she never seemed not to be thinking about it, or
rather never seemed not to be thinking about not thinking
about it, and she made such a meal of thinking about not
thinking about it that you couldn't help not not thinking
about it.

	It wasn't really Marina's fault either, though she
didn't make things any better.  She was a good mimic, and
had Miss O'Callaghan off perfectly.  After lights-out, in
the dorm, she would sit up in bed and have us all in
fits---I had to stuff a handkerchief into my mouth to stifle
my laughter---as she did the mistresses in turn, but Miss
O'Callaghan was her piece de resistance, at least it started
off as Miss O'Callaghan but it became what Marion---She's
the clever one---called surreal.  It wasn't Marion's fault
exactly either, though her mother was partly to blame.

	Marina started first.  Some time after that, by
coincidence, I suppose, but they must have had a pretty fair
idea when most of us would be starting they took us into the
school hall and showed us that ancient flickering cartoon
film called _The meaning of womanhood_ and afterwards Miss
O'Callaghan had stood up on the stage to answer questions.
Of course there weren't any.  It wasn't that we didn't know
about it, that was so disturbing---It was the openest of
open secrets, and besides, some of us had started
already---it was the sense that it wasn't just the personal
disaster for each of us separately, it was the common fate
of all of us; and we were all silenced.  She stood for a
while, and must have felt that she had to say something to
us, so then she told us about purity.

	'It is the punishment of Eve, our first mother, who
picked the apple.' she said, very solemn, stretching up her
little dumpy body with its gigantic bust to make herself as
imposing as possible, 'and a reminder to keep ourselves
pure.' I denied to myself that it would happen to me. 'What
are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and all things
nice...'  not wombs with linings that break down once a
month to be flushed out like a bloody lavatory.

	'It is the curse of Eve,' Marina would say, with a
pillow stuffed up the front of her nightie, her arms folded
under, and we would collapse into giggles.  'And a reminder
to keep ourselves pure, and not to go fiddling about down
there with our fingers or our fountain pens or the handles
of our hairbrushes.' Then she would pause, and Miss
O'Callaghan's faraway look would come into her eyes and she
would say

	'I remember when I was a girl in Ireland there was a
girl who lived in our village, such a bonny girl, much
admired, and she took to touching herself. First she went
pale, then she got dark circles under eyes, and people began
to wonder, and then she went thin, and people began to
suspect, and then she became a hopeless imbecile, because
the jelly of her brain was melted by what she did to herself
and flowed away, and then people knew for certain.  Now she
has to be handcuffed for 24 hours a day.'

	We didn't really believe the story but it did have a
thrill about it.  Afterwards Marion said 'Don't be silly.
That's all wrong, your brain has nothing to do with it, all
that happens is it stunts your growth, you start to grow
sideways, and get an enormous bust.'

	For weeks afterwards it was hard to look at Miss
O'Callaghan and not giggle.  In the refectory, at supper
time, the mistresses would sit with us, a group of girls and
a mistress or a prefect,  making eight in all, at a table,
and we were expected to try to make polite conversation.
Marion, and Marina, and I were among 'Miss O'Callaghan's
girls'.

	'I thought Miss Robertson was looking tired this
afternoon during our Latin lesson.  I hope she isn't
indisposed.' Marion would say as though in all
innocence---and we all knew: _indisposed_: the curse.
Circles round the eyes: we know what she's been doing---'I
do hope that she is not overtiring herself.  Do you think
that Miss McIntyre is losing weight?' and of course there
was Miss Martin, thin, tired, and with shaking hands.  We
knew what she spent all her free time doing, and there would
be more suppressed chuckles, and if we weren't discreet,
Miss O'Callaghan's eyes would dart about, take it in, and
she would ask somebody

	'What's so entertaining, Angela?' and Angela or
Elizabeth, or whoever it was who had been spoken to would
reply as we all did,
	'Oh, nothing Miss O'Callaghan'.
	'Well, in that case, compose yourself, child.'

	I suppose that I was lucky in a way.  I started
during the Summer holiday at home, and my mother looked
after me.  Some months before she had shown me how to put on
the belt and pad, and everything was ready and waiting for
the dreadful day.  She wasn't very sympathetic, I can see
why now.  Every other woman in the world had to put up with
it as matter of monthly c(o)urse.  Every other woman had to
hide it from the men in the house.  Every other woman had to
feel the tension, and the drawing, and the besmirching by
the blood and mucus, and had to carry on as if nothing was
happening, looking like a princess in pretty clothes, with
aching body, and a bloody pad pressed up up between her
legs. She was having to experience it twice over, on her own
behalf and on mine.

	The worst thing was that my father knew the very day
it happened.  Before I went to bed, while my mother was
clearing up the supper things, he would read aloud to me.  I
loved climbing up into his lap, and lying in the crook of
his left arm, and looking down at the pictures in the book
as he read the story to me.  He didn't read me girls' books:
he read the exciting books he had read as a boy, big
old-fashioned cloth-bound books with gaudy chromo pictures.
I even remember the book. We were reading _King Solomon's
Mines_.  That evening he didn't sit down in his armchair, he
sat down on the sofa and beckoned me towards him.  I went to
sit in his lap as usual but he said gently,

	'Not tonight, Meg, that's just for little girls.
Your mother tells me that you are a grown-up woman now, and
so I must start to treat you like a lady.  Come, sit here
and we'll carry on with the story.'

	I sat down beside him because I didn't know what else to
do. I was very sad.
	He started to read, but it was a meaningless string
of words.
	'I love you, Daddy.' I said.
      	'I know you do, my dear,' he said, 'and I love you.'
He closed the book. 'Perhaps you have too much to think
about now...tomorrow, maybe?'

	I went to bed bereft.  We never finished _King
Solomon's Mines_.

	'Is that all?' said Marion, 'You're lucky: you
haven't got a brother', and she went on tell about her
brother Ranald sneaking into her bedroom and finding the box
of tampons and hiding them.  'And then he stole the
instruction sheet---You know the one: the one with drawings
of the girl putting it in, and showed it to all his friends.

	'What instruction sheet? Mummy got me pads.' I said.
     	Marina said 'I asked if I could have tampons, but my
mum said that she didn't want me putting anything in there
just yet.' She grinned and added 'I couldn't think what she
meant.'
	'You're awful', Marion said, 'and so's your mother.
	'Well anyway, I've never had to have pads and I
think tampons are best.  I've got a box in my locker, and
I'll lend you the instructions and you can read them after
lights-out in the dorm.'

	That night, under the sheets with my torch I looked
at the blue-printed drawings of the girl wearing the
baby-doll nightie and the slippers with the pom-poms,
squatting down and inserting the tampon.  I thought her
posture was absolutely obscene, but I remember feeling
curious, I remembered Miss O'Callaghan and I remember
wondering about touching myself.  I switched off the torch,
put it under my pillow, with the leaflet, and composed
myself to go to sleep.  Judging from the even sounds of
breathing the other three girls in the cublicle were asleep.
I was puzzled about touching myself.  What was the point in
that? I turned on to my side, and tried to go to sleep, but
I couldn't get the picture of the squatting girl out of my
mind. Would starting a baby be like that? I wondered. I knew
that the man had to put his penis into the woman's vagina,
and that spermatazoa come out of him and fertilised the
ovum, but I couldn't understand why anybody would want to do
anything so obscene even if they wanted to have a baby.
Penis and vagina, dick and quim. Then I wondered about how
he would get it inside. I caught the hem of my nightie with
my toe and flexed my knee bringing the hem up the bed to
where I could get hold of it with my fingers and pull it up
to my waist.
	I touched myself, feeling the disgusting hair that
had come, and I was shocked to find myself wet.  If felt
sick, as if I had become incontinent, I could foresee that
for the years to come I would seep and leak between my legs
and be completely unable to control it. I found the opening
of my vagina---all those ugly words, _vagina,_  _vulva_. Is
there ever a word uglier than 'vulva'? Nasty name for a
nasty thing---and pushed my finger into it. It was very
tight and very slimy. I tried to dry off the wetness with my
fingers and there it was, in an instant, a curious tension
demanding some kind of resolution, but how? I touched
myself, and the tension developing, tenser and tenser,
until, encountering the beach, a long crescent of deserted
sand in the moonlight, the slow sea-swell began to shear, to
tumble, foaming into guilty fulfilment.

	'But once won't turn me into an imbecile...' I
hoped, prayed, remembering what Miss O'Callaghan had said,
'First she went pale, then she got circles under her
eyes...' as fingers and quim decided together, independently
of my conscience or my wishes to seduce each other a second
time, a third time...

	Before my eyes long parallel bars of gold were
sloping gently downwards to the left, resolving into shafts
of sunlight shining on the wall through curtain-gaps---A
beautiful Summer morning, tennis in the afternoon---to the
cold-shower shock of recollection: I had still been touching
myself when I had fallen, exhausted, into sleep, some time in
the small hours of the morning. I looked at my watch, forty
minutes to go before the Rising bell. I wondered if my mind
had been damaged, if I had forgotten anything that I was
sure I knew. I declined _mensa_, and _dominus_, and _rex_; I
could remember them so that seemed all right. We were
'doing' Tennyson in English literature; so without thinking
about its content I recited _The  Lady of Shallott_
to myself, and then of course when I got to '..."The curse is
come upon me" cried the Lady of Shallott...'---fits of
suppressed giggles in the classroom, but here and now not a
giggling matter at all---and  my mind turned back to what I had
been doing. But perhaps things weren't too bad, I hoped;
perhaps nobody would notice. I wondered if the circles under
the eyes had come in the night, and if my hands had started
to shake  already. I turned over on to my side and resolved
to keep my fingers away from my quim. There was a small
sound, and I looked across to Marina. She was lying on her
left side, her back towards me. I could see that under the
bed-clothes her right arm was moving rhythmically...and I
knew. As I watched the rhythm accelerated until she sighed
and stretched under the covers and lay still.

	In the middle of the afternoozn we were changing for
tennis. I always stayed close to Marina when we got changed.
I always change quickly: off with the skirt, unbutton the
blouse, slip my arms out of the sleeves, pull my bra down,
pull the back round to the front, unhook it, reverse the
process with my games bra, step into the back of the tennis
dress, pull it up, blouse pulled out before the tennis frock
zipped up, and I was changed.  Marina always seemed to manage
to be more naked than the rest of us. She would unbutton her
blouse and take it off. Then she  unhooked her bra, always
from the back, and would stand self-consciously
un-selfconsciously cupping her breasts and she would
complain to me,in secret pride, it seemed, about their
weight, and about having to wear a D-cup bra already, and
how lucky I was not to need the support---and she would slip
the straps over her shoulders, lean forward slowly, easing
herself into the cups of the special sports bra she needed
for tennis,  hooking it together behind her back.

	I used to watch pinned in a balance between
fascination, and revulsion at her flesh, her fatness; but
she wasn't fat. I don't suppose that I was the only one who
stared at her. I think Miss Milligan was fascinated a little
because there always seemed to be a pause before she would
say 'Come along, girls, we haven't got all day.'

	That day we were standing together. Nobody else was
close enough to hear. I was changed and she was changing. As
lightly as I could---My heart was pounding so hard I could
see the front of my frock shaking--- I asked
	'What were you doing this morning?'
	'Nothing...' but the contradicting blush surged
to the tops of her very shoulders, her skin
thickening with the scarlet 'When do you mean?'

	I felt hot myself. I suppose that I was flushed as well.
	'This morning before the Rising bell.' I felt fluttery
inside, different from the anything I had ever felt before,
changed.
	'I saw your arm moving. You were touching yourself
weren't you?' but before she could say anything,
	'Come along, girls, we haven't got all day.'

	So Marina finished dressing quickly and we went out
to play tennis. We were playing doubles, and we had separate
partners, but we were in the same foursome. It was while we
were playing that I remembered what Marion had said about
touching yourself: it made your bust grow and I could hardly
look away from her to watch the ball. We had laughed when
Marion had said it; I thought it was just a joke, but then
Marina had such a large bust...

	Later that evening Marion and Marina and I were
sitting together in the common room in the half-hour after
prep before bedtime. I was feeling skittish and, I suppose,
spiteful.

	'Would you like to know a secret?' I asked Marion.
	'Not especially.' deflating me; but I went on anyway,
	'I saw Marina touching herself this morning.'
	'It's not _touching yourself_' said Marion,
contemptuously, 'It's "frigging". That's the word for it, and
if you weren't such a baby we'd have told you about it
before, but you're so infantile... My mum told me about it.
She said that it's perfectly normal so long as you don't do
too much of it. I frig, Marina frigs, you're just too
immature. You're probably the last girl in the form to start.'

	'But I frig.' I said, without quite knowing why I
said it. 'I've done it for ages.'

	We all stopped. Somehow we had all confessed to more
than we had intended to, but there was no way to bite the
words back, to unsay them. We looked at one another not knowing
what to say next.
	'I think I'll read until bedtime.' I said and left
them. I was feeling fluttery again, and I could feel my
insides were melting. I yearned to go somewhere quiet with
Marina and hug her and apologise, and be hugged by her and
forgiven.

	Later, that night, I was thinking about Marina,
about her bosom. I didn't want to be like her, but my bosom
was like two little cones with sore pink tips. I would have
liked a proper B-cup bosom. I felt very sorry that I had
messed things up: it was hard to understand my former mood.
I didn't think that I was spiteful normally; and the
annoying thing was that I wanted to ask so many questions,
but didn't because I was scared of showing my ignorance. I
wasn't sure about what to make of Marion's mum's advice
about not doing too much of it. I was lying on my side, and
under the bed covers my fingers were gathering my nightie in
little tucks, my arms staying quite still. 'Perhaps it won't
do me any harm if I don't do it too often, and it might help
my bust to develop.' I thought. But it wasn't a question of
what I wanted any more. It was the conspiracy of hand and
quim that demanded the touching. I swore before Christ and
all His angels that I wouldn't touch myself again; but my
fingers and quim had sworn no oath and would not be bound by
mine: they were ravenous for each other. They managed the
matter discretely---I'm sure that even the closest scrutiny
could not have made out the cycle of my hand beneath the
sheet---and my soul was transported on the breaking wave of
pleasure---such self-extinguishing intensity of bliss; and
afterwards self-ravished, heart pounding, sweating, sighing
in satiation, the guilt, the state of sin overwhelmed me: I
had sworn and broken the oath at the very same moment, and
now I was damned. I lay a long time in the darkness on my
back. I folded my hands across my breast as they would fold
them when they put me in my coffin, and imagined Hell.
After a while, recognizing for the first time that I, my
very own self, was going to die, I was dazzled by the blaze
of my own mortality, and groaned aloud and had to look away.

	I woke up to the angled bars of gold and felt the old
voluptuous pleasure of rising into consciousness from
innocent dreams. I was free of all restraint: damned by my
oath-breaking I was free to frig as much as I liked because
Hell was absolute: nothing I could do could make it any
worse so I could do whatever I liked. I felt like frigging,
and I was frigging when the Rising bell rang.

	The others got up as usual but I would not get up until I
had completed my exercise.

	'Are you all right? Should I call Matron?'
	 Marina asked, and then realising whispered 'Golly,
don't get caught or you'll be for it.' I seized my pleasure
and weak-legged got out of bed and dressed myself.

	In the weeks that followed I spent most of my free
time alone in the two places in school where there was any
privacy, the lavatories, and the chapel, and there I spent
hours, in solitary ecstasy, experimenting with myself, hard
and soft, quick and slow, plumbing, at first with tentative
fingers, the limits of my quim.

	Sometimes I would leave my knickers off and spend
the day smiling enigmatically, sitting demurely, with my
hands folded in my lap. Somehow my whole body had become
sensitive: aware of the slightest brushing of a sleeve
against my arm, a cat's-paw breeze in my hair; and by that
time the slightest movement, the tensing of one finger of
the hand resting in my lap was enough to dislodge the pebble
that dislodged others in the fall, cascading into one more
variation on the theme of bliss.

	The days were dreams of pleasure, but at night I
would awake to Hell. At first I simply lay, in the coffin
posture, sweating in horror, but then one night, sore and
satiated though I was, I frigged until I came, in defiance.

	For a while, after I disclosed her secret, Marina
was too shy to frig in bed before the Rising bell. Most
mornings I woke early and whiled away the time, in pleasure,
waiting for the bell. And then when I was lying on my side,
facing towards Marina's bed, one Summer morning, discreet,
beginning the sequence of devotions that would punctuate my
day, I saw her stir, look drowsily towards my bed, turm over
on her left side---And so thrilled I wanted to sing, cry
out, to gather up all my strength and halloo at the top of
my voice with happiness, I watched her right arm moving,
almost imperceptibly, linked, it seemed, telepathically
with mine; and I willed it to be my fingers at her quim,
hers in mine. And though she seemed not to know it, we
shared the ecstasy together.

	On the back of the photograph: 'From Marina to Meg,
with _all_ my love. xxxxxxxxXXXXXXX June 1954.'

--------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) Caroline Ashbee 1997
--------------------------------------------------------



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