These are my favorite parts of the Novel, The Godfather, by Mario Puzo, 1969. Don Corelone, notoriously straitlaced in such matters, though his stout wife was screaming joyfully with the others, disappeared tactfully into the house. Seeing this, Sonny Corleone made his way to the bride's table and sat down beside young Lucy Mancini, the maid of honor. They were safe. His wife was in the kitchen putting the last touches on the serving of the wedding cake. Sonny whispered a few words in the young girl's ear and she rose. Sonny waited a few minutes and then casually followed her, stopping to talk with a guest here and there as he worked his way through the crowd. All eyes followed them. The maid of honor, thoroughly Americanized by three years of college, was a ripe girl who already had a "reputation." All through the marriage rehearsals she had flirted with Sonny Corleone in a teasing, joking way she thought was permitted because he was the best man and her wedding partner. Now holding her pink gown up off the ground, Lucy Mancini went into the house, smiling with false innocence, ran lightly up the stairs to the bathroom. She stayed there for a few moments. When she came out Sonny Corleone was on the landing above, beckoning her upward. [Tom] Hagen saw Sonny Corleone whisper in Lucy Mancini's ear and their little comedy as he followed her into the house. Hagen grimaced, debated whether to inform the Don, and decided against it. Out in the garden, Hagen searched anxiously for Sonny Corleone. He told the waiting Bonasera to be patient and went over to Michael Corleone and his girl friend. "Did you see Sonny around?" he asked. Michael shook his head. Damn, Hagen thought, if Sonny was screwing the maid of honor all this time there was going to be a mess of trouble. His wife, the young girl's family; it could be a disaster. Anxiously he hurried to the entrance through which he had seen Sonny disappear almost a half hour ago. Lucy Mancini lifted her pink gown off the floor and ran up the steps. Sonny Corleone's heavy Cupid face, redly obscene with winey lust, frightened her, but she had teased him for the past week to just this end. In her two college love affairs she had felt nothing and neither of them lasted more than a week. Quarreling, her second lover had mumbled something about her being "too big down there." Lucy had understood and for the rest of the school term had refused to go out on any dates. During the summer, preparing for the wedding of her best friend, Connie Corleone, Lucy heard the whispered stories about Sonny. One Sunday afternoon in the Corleone kitchen, Sonny's wife Sandra gossiped freely. Sandra and the other women teased Connie about the terrors of the nuptial bed. "My God," Sandra had giggled, "when I saw that pole of Sonny's for the first time and realized he was going to stick it into me, I yelled bloody murder. After the first year my insides felt as mushy as macaroni boiled for an hour. When I heard he was doing the job on other girls I went to church and lit a candle." They had all laughed but Lucy had felt her flesh twitching between her legs. Now as she ran up the steps toward Sonny a tremendous flash of desire went through her body. On the landing Sonny grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hall into an empty bedroom. Her legs went weak as the door closed behind them. She felt Sonny's mouth on hers, his lips tasting of burnt tobacco, bitter. She opened her mouth. At that moment she felt his hand come up beneath her bridesmaid's gown, heard the rustle of material giving way, felt his large warm hand between her legs, ripping aside the satin panties to caress her vulva. She put her arms around his neck and hung there as he opened his trousers. Then he placed both hands beneath her bare buttocks and lifted her. She gave a little bop in the air so that both her legs were wrapped around his upper thighs. His tongue was in her mouth and she sucked on it. He gave a savage thrust that banged her head against the door. She felt something burning pass between her thighs. She let her right hand drop from his neck and reached down to guide him. Her hand closed around an enormous, blood-gorged pole of muscle. It pulsated in her hand like an animal and almost weeping with grateful ecstasy she pointed it into her own wet, turgid flesh. The thrust of its entering, the unbelievable pleasure made her gasp, brought her legs up almost around his neck, and then like a quiver, her body received the savage arrows of his lightning-like thrusts; innumerable, torturing; arching her pelvis higher and higher until for the first time in her life she reached a shattering climax, felt his hardness break and then the crawly flood of semen over her thighs. Slowly her legs relaxed from around his body, slid down until they reached the floor. They leaned against each other, out of breath. It might have been going on for some time but now they could bear the soft knocking on the door. Sonny quickly buttoned his trousers, meanwhile blocking the door so that it could not be opened. Lucy frantically smoothed down her pink gown, her eyes flickering, but the thing that had given her so much pleasure was hidden inside sober black cloth. Then they beard Tom Hagen's voice, very low, "Sonny, you in there?" Sonny sighed with relief. He winked at Lucy. "Yeah, Tom, what is it?" Hagen's voice, still low, said, "The Don wants you in his office. Now." They could hear his footsteps as be walked away. Sonny waited for a few moments, gave Lucy a hard kiss on the lips, and then slipped out the door after Hagen. Lucy combed her hair. She checked her dress and pulled around her garter straps. Her body felt bruised. her lips pulpy and tender. She went out the door and though she felt the sticky wetness between her thighs she did not go to the bathroom to wash but ran straight on down the steps and into the garden. She took her seat at the bridal table next to Connie, who exclaimed petulantly, "Lucy, where were you? You look drunk. Stay beside me now." The blond groom poured Lucy a glass of wine and smiled knowingly. Lucy didn't care. She lifted the grapey, dark red juice to her parched mouth and drank. She felt the sticky wetness between her thighs and pressed her legs together. Her body was trembling. Over the glass rim, as she drank, her eyes searched hungrily to find Sonny Corleone. There was no one else she cared to see. Slyly she whispered in Connie's ear, "Only a few hours more and you'll know what it's all about." Connie giggled. Lucy demurely folded her hands on the table, treacherously triumphant, as if she had stolen a treasure from the bride. ******* Sonny was worried about other things. His wife was giving him a hard time because the rumors had gotten to her that Lucy Mancini had bewitched her husband. And though she joked publicly about her Sonny's equipment and technique, he had stayed away from her too long and the missed him in her bed, and she was making life miserable for him with her. ************** Lucy Mancini, a year after Sonny's death, still missed him terribly, grieved for him more fiercely than any lover in any romance. And her dreams were not the insipid dreams of a schoolgirl, her longings not the longings of a devoted wife. She was not rendered desolate by the loss of her "life's companion," or miss him because of his stalwart character. She held no fond remembrances of sentimental thoughts, of girlish hero worship, his smile, the amused glint of eyes when she said something endearing or witty. No. She missed him for the more important reason that he bad been the only man in the world who could make her body achieve the act of love. And, in her youth and innocence, she still believed that he was the only man who could possibly do so. Now a year later she sunned herself in the balmy Nevada air. At her feet the slender, blond young man was playing with her toes. They were at the side of the hotel pool for the Sunday afternoon and despite the people all round them his hand was sliding up her bare thigh. "Oh, Jules, stop," Lucy said. "I thought doctors at least weren't as silly as other men." Jules grinned at her. "I'm a Las Vegas doctor." He tickled the inside of her thigh and was amazed how just a little thing like that could excite her so powerfully. It showed on her face though she tried to hide it. She was really a very primitive, innocent girl. Then why could he make her come across? He had to figure that one out and never mind the crap about a lost love that could never be replaced. This was living tissue here under hand and living tissue required other living tissue. Jules Segal decided he would make the big push tonight in his apartment. He'd wanted to make her come again without any trickery but if trickery there had to be, was the man for it. And in the interests of science, of course. And, besides, this poor kid was dying for it. "Jules, stop, please stop," Lucy said. Her voice was trembling Jules was immediately contrite. "OK, honey,' he said. He put his head in her lap and using her soft thighs as a pillow, he took a little nap. He was amused at her squirm. Feeling, the heat that registered from her loins and when she put her band on his head to smooth his hair, he grasped her wrist playfully and held it loverlike but really to feel her pulse. It was galloping. He'd get her tonight and he'd solve the mystery, what the hell ever it was. Fully confident, Dr. Jules Segal fell asleep. Lucy watched the people around the pool. She could never have imagined her life would change so in less than two years. She never regretted her "foolishness" at Connie Corleone's wedding. It was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her and, she lived it over again in her dreams. As she lived over and over in the months that followed. Sonny had visited her once a week, sometimes more, never less. The days before she saw him again her bothered her. She was in torment. Their passion for each other was of the most elementary kind, undiluted by poetry or any form of intellectualism. It was love of the coarsest nature, a fleshly love, a love of tissue for opposing tissue. When Sonny called to her he was coming certain there was enough liquor in the apartment and enough food for supper and breakfast because Sonny would not leave until late the next morning. After he had his fill of her as she wanted her fill of him. He had his own key and when he came in the door she was in his massive arms. They would both be brutally primitive. During their first kiss the, fumbling at each other's clothing and he would lift her in the air, and she would be wrapping her legs around his huge thighs. They would be making love standing up in the foyer of her apartment as if they had to repeat their first act of love together, and then he would carry her so to the bedroom. They would lie in bed making love. They would live together in the apartment for sixteen hours, completely naked. She would cook for him, enormous meals. Sometimes he would get phone calls obviously about business but she never even listened to the words. She would be too busy toying with his body, fondling it, kissing it, burying her mouth in it. Sometimes when he got up to get a drink and he walked by her, she couldn't help reaching out to touch his naked body, hold him, make love to him as if those special parts of his body were a plaything, especially constructed, intricate but innocent toy revealing some known, but still surprising ecstasies. At first she had been ashamed of these excesses on her part but soon saw that they pleased her lover, that her complete sensual enslavement to his body flattered him. In all this there was an animal innocence. They were happy together. un by Sonny's brother Freddie. It was Tom Hagen who Now, after nearly eighteen months in Las Vegas, she was surprised to find herself almost happy. Some nights she dreamed about Sonny and lying awake before dawn continued her dream with her own caresses until she could sleep again. She had not bad a man since. But the life in Vegas agreed with her. She went swimming in the hotel pools, sailed on Lake Mead and drove through the desert on her day off. She became thinner and this improved her figure. She was still voluptuous but more in the American than the old Italian style. She worked in the public relations section of the hotel as a receptionist.. she would not be bothered any further. It was shortly after this [] that Dr Jules Segal came to work as the hotel physician. He was very thin, very handsome and charming and seemed very young to be a doctor, at least to Lucy. She met him when a lump grew above her wrist on her forearm. She worried it for a few days, then one morning went to the suite of offices in the hotel. Two of the show girls from the chorus line were in the waiting room, gossiping to each other. They had the blond peach-colored permanent Lucy always envied. They looked angelic. But one of the girls was saying, "I swear if I have another dose of the clap I'll giving up dancing." When Dr. Jules Segal opened his office door to motioned one of the show girls inside, Lucy was tempted to leave, and if it had been something more personal and serious she would have. Dr. Segal was wearing slacks and an open shirt. The horn-rimmed glasses helped and his quiet reserved manner, but the impression he gave was an informal one, and like many basically old-fashioned people, Lucy didn't believe that medicine and informality mixed. When she finally got into his office there was something so reassuring in his manner that all her misgivings fled. He spoke hardly at all and yet he was not brusque, and he took his time. A week later be saw her in the coffee shop and sat next to her at the counter. "How's the arm?" he asked. She smiled at him. "Fine," she said. "You're pretty unorthodox but you're pretty good." He grinned at her. "You don't know how unorthodox I am. And I didn't know how rich you were. The Vegas Sun just published the list of point owners in the hotel and Lucy Mancini has a big ten points. I could have made a fortune on that little bump." She didn't answer him, suddenly reminded of Hagen's warnings. He grinned again. "Don't worry, I know the score, you're just one of the dummies, Vegas is full of them. How about seeing one of the shows with me tonight and I'll buy you dinner. I'll even buy you some roulette chips." She was a little doubtful. He urged her. Finally she said, "I'd like to come but I'm afraid you might be disappointed by how the night ends. I'm not really a swinger like most of the girls here in Vegas." "That's why I asked you," Jules said cheerfully. "I've prescribed a night's rest for myself." Lucy smiled at him and said a little sadly, "Is it that obvious?" He shook his head and she said, "OK, supper and then, but I'll buy my own roulette chips." They went to the supper show and Jules kept her amused by describing different types of bare thighs and breasts in medical terms; but without sneering, all in good humor. Afterward they played roulette together at the same wheel and won over a hundred dollars. Still later they drove up to Boulder Dam in the moonlight and he tried to make love to her but when she resisted after a few kisses he knew that she really meant no and stopped. Again he took his defeat with great good humor. "I told you I wouldn't," Lucy said with half-guilty reproach. "You would have been awfully insulted if I didn't even try," Jules said. And she had to laugh because it was true. The next few months they became best friends. It wasn't love because they didn't make love, Lucy wouldn't let him. She could see he was puzzled by her refusal but not hurt the way most men would be and that made her trust him even more. She found out that beneath his professional doctor's exterior he was wildly fun-loving and reckless. On weekends he drove a souped-up MG in the California races. When he took a vacation he went down into the interior of Mexico, the real wild country, he told her, where strangers were murdered for their shoes and life was as primitive as a thousand years ago. Quite accidentally she learned that he was a surgeon and been connected with a famous hospital in New York. All this made her more puzzled than ever at why he had taken the job at the hotel. When she asked him about it, Jules said, "You tell me your dark secret and I'll tell you mine." She blushed and let the matter drop. Jules didn't pursue it either and their relationship continued, a warm friend. Now, sitting at the side of the pool with Jules' blond head in her lap, she felt an overwhelming tenderness for him. Her loins ached and without realizing it her fingers sensuously stroked the skin of his neck. He seemed to be sleeping, not noticing, and she became excited just by the feel of him against her. Suddenly he raised his head from her lap and stood up. He took her by the hand and led her over the grass on to the cement walk. She followed him dutifully even when he led her into one of the cottages that held his private apartment. When they were inside he fixed them both big drinks. After the blazing sun and her own sensuous thoughts the drink went to her head and made her dizzy. Then Jules had his arms around her and their bodies, naked except for scanty bathing suits, were pressed against each other. Lucy was murmuring "Don't," but there was no conviction in her voice any more. Jules paid no attention to her. He quickly stripped her bathing bra off so that he could fondle her heavy breasts, kissed them and then stripped off her bathing trunks and as he did so kept kissing her body, her rounded belly and the insides of her thighs. He stood up, struggling out of his own bathing shorts and embracing her, and then, naked in each other's arms, they were lying on his bed and she could feel him entering her and it was enough, just the slight touch, for her to reach her climax and then in the second afterward she could read in the motions of his body, his surprise. She felt the overwhelming shame she had felt before she knew Sonny, but Jules was twisting her body over the edge of the bed, positioning her legs a certain way and she let him control her limbs and her body, and then be was entering her again and kissing her and this time she could feel him but more important she could tell that he was feeling something too and coming to his climax. When he rolled off her body, Lucy huddled into one corer of the bed and began to cry. She felt so ashamed. And then she was shockingly surprised to hear Jules laugh and flatly and say, "You poor benighted Eye-talian girl, so that's why you kept refusing me all these months? You '.,,,,dope." He said "you dope" with such friendly affection that she turned toward him and he took her naked body against his saying, "You are medieval, you are positively medieval." But the voice was soothingly comforting as she continued to weep. Jules lit a cigarette and put it in her mouth so that she choked on the smoke and had to stop crying. "Now listen to me," he said, "if you had had a decent modern raising with a family culture that was part of the twentieth century your problem would have been solved years ago. Now let me tell you what your problem is: it's not the equivalent of being ugly, of having bad skin and squinty eyes that facial surgery really doesn't solve. Your problem is like having a wart or a mole on your chin, or an improperly formed ear. Stop thinking of it in sexual terms. Stop thinking in your head that you have a big box no man can love because it won't give his penis the necessary friction. What you have is a pelvic malformation and what we surgeons call a weakening of the pelvic floor. It usually comes after child-bearing but it can be simply bad bone structure. It's a common condition and many women live a life of misery because of it when a simple operation could fix them up. Some women even commit suicide because of it. But I never figured you for that condition because you have such a beautiful body. I thought it was psychological, since I know your story, you told it to me often enough, you and Sonny. But let me give you a thorough physical examination and I can tell you just exactly how much work will have to be done. Now go in and take a shower." Lucy went in and took her shower. Patiently and over her protests, Jules made her lie on the bed, legs spread apart. He had an extra doctor's bag in his apartment and it was open. He also had a small glass-topped table by the bed which held some other instruments. He was all business now, examining her, sticking his fingers inside her and moving them around. She was beginning to feel humiliated when he kissed her on the navel and said, almost absentmindedly, "First time I've enjoyed my work." Then he flipped her over and thrust a finger in her rectum, feeling around, but his other hand was stroking her neck affectionately. When he was finished he turned her right-side up again, kissed her tenderly on the mouth and said, "Baby, I'm going to build you a whole new thing there, and then I'll try it out personally. It will medical first, I'll be able to write a paper on it for the official journals." Jules did everything with such good-humored affection, be so obviously cared for her, that Lucy got over her shame and embarrassment. He even had the medical textbook down off its shelf to show her a case like her, own and the surgical procedure to correct it. She found herself quite interested. "It's a health thing too," Jules said. "If you don't get it corrected you're going to have a hell of a lot of trouble later on with your whole plumbing system. The structure becomes progressively weaker unless it's corrected by surgery. It's a damn shame that old-fashioned prudery keeps a lot of doctors from properly diagnosing and correcting the situation, and a lot of women from complaining about it." "Don't talk about it, please don't talk about it," Lucy said. He could see that she was still to some extent ashamed of her secret, embarrassed by her "ugly defect." Though to his medically trained mind this seemed the height of silliness, he was sensitive enough to identify with her. It also put him on the right track to making her feel better. "Think of it as a piece of elastic in your body that has lost its elasticity," Jules said. "By cutting out a piece, you make it tighter, snappier." "I'll think about it," Lucy said, but she was sure she was going to go through with it, she trusted Jules absolutely. .. "I haven't the facilities here for surgery like that and I'm not the expert at it. But I have a friend in Los Angeles who's the best in the field and has facilities in the best hospital. In fact be tightens up all the movie stars, when those dames find out that getting their faces and breasts lifted isn't the whole answer to making a man love them. He owes me a few favors so it won't cost anything. Listen, if it weren't unethical I'd tell you the names of some of the movie sex queens who have had the operation." Lucy felt an overwhelming affection to him for being so kind and she was able to say, "You don't have to sleep with me, you know you won't enjoy it the way I am." Jules burst out laughing. "You dope, you incredible dope. Didn't you ever hear of any other way of making love, far more ancient, far more creative. Are you really that innocent?" "Oh that," she said. "Oh that," he mimicked her. "Nice girls don't do it. Manly men don't do that. Even in the year 1948, baby, I can take you to the house of a little old lady here in Las Vegas who was the youngest madam of the most popular whorehouse in the wild west days, back in 1880, I think it was. She likes to talk about the old times. You know what she told me? That those gunslingers, manly, virile, straight-shooting cowboys would always ask the girls for a 'French,' what we doctors call fellatio, you call 'oh that.' Did you ever think of doing that with your beloved Sonny?" For the first time she truly surprised him. She turned on him with what he could think of only as a Mona Lisa smile (his scientific mind immediately darting off on a tangent, could this be the solving of that centuries-old mystery?) and said quietly, "I did everything with Sonny." It was the first time she had ever admitted anything like that to anyone. Two weeks later Jules Segal stood in the operating room of the Los Angeles hospital and watched his friend Dr. Frederick Kellner perform the specialty. Before Lucy was put under anesthesia, Jules leaned over and whispered, "I told him you were my special girl so he's going to put in some real tight walls." But the preliminary pain-killer had already made her dopey and she didn't laugh or smile. His teasing remark did take away some of the terror of the operation. Dr. Kellner made his incision with the confidence of a pool shark making an easy shot. The technique of any operation to strengthen the pelvic floor required the accomplishment of two objectives. The musculofibrous pelvic sling had to be shortened so that the slack was taken up. And of course the vaginal opening, the weak spot itself in the pelvic floor, had to be brought forward, brought under the pubic arch and so relieved from the line of direct pressure above. Repairing the pelvic sling was called perincorrhaphy. Suturing the vaginal wall was called colporrhaphy. wrong. Kellner was trimming away the excess vaginal wall, tying the fastening-down stitch to close the "bite" taken of the tissue of the redundant angle, insuring that no troublesome projections would form. Kellner was trying to insert three fingers into the narrowed opening of the opening, then two. He just managed to get two fingers in, probing deeply and for a moment he looked up at Jules and his china-blue eyes over the gauze mask twinkled as though asking if that was narrow enough. Then he was busy again with his sutures.