GORDON: I had had the same thought, but I don’t think it came from a desire for a baby. I was beginning to want to go to bed with June and looking for a reason for it. I couldn’t just let myself think that wanting her was reason enough. I had to make up something else.
RITA: Oh, now, as far as that goes I had the thought before either of you. In Dayton, even, before there was anything in the air at all. I would get depressed and think, well, if I can’t bear him a child, well, every man needs to be a father, and maybe he could have it with June.
JUNE: But once I started with that thought, I knew what it was that I wanted, and that was that I wanted to have sexual intercourse with Gordon. And when I faced the thought I knew it was something I had wanted all my life. Then it came to me that I was very glad that I was a virgin. That I had never given myself to anyone, because now I knew that I had saved myself for a purpose. That I had all along been saving myself for Gordon so that he could be my lover.
The night it happened. It was this warm summer night with all the humidity in the air, and that afternoon Rita had gotten the curse. She was more depressed when it happened than I ever saw her before. She was really feeling terrible about it, all down in the mouth and miserable.
RITA: I thought I might be pregnant. Every month I would have the hope, and somehow this time I really thought I was, and then it turned out I wasn’t.
JUNE: Rita went upstairs early, and Gordon went up with her and came down a little while later with a face like an old hound dog. My heart just went out to him. I was so sad for him, and I felt so much for him.
We got to talking. I said how I knew Rita had the curse, and we talked about that, and about not being able to have children, and he asked me something about when was I going to get married and have a mess of kids. And I said I wanted to have kids maybe someday but I wasn’t looking to get married. He asked why not, and I said I couldn’t find a man I wanted, and he said maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places.
And then I just knew he felt the same way about me that I did about him. It wasn’t what he said or even the way he said it. Maybe it was the spaces in the conversation. I don’t know what it was but I looked at him and I knew.
I told him how I was a virgin. He didn’t even seem surprised. He just nodded as if everything was the way it should be.
And I talked a little about the men I had been with. I didn’t say exactly what I did with them. It was just that I had been with a lot of men and felt nothing for them and all, but that I was still a virgin. And he talked some about the waitress, and we went on that way, and I looked at him, the way he was crossing one leg over the other, and I saw the way the front of his pants was bulging, and I knew he was excited, that he was hard.
The rest of it just happened. I didn’t plan it or anything. I didn’t even think about it. It just happened and I found myself doing what I did.
He was sitting on this couch. I went over to him and sat next to him on the couch. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking off across the room.
I didn’t say anything and neither did he. I put my hand on the front of his pants and felt him. He just sat there and let me touch him. I kept touching him and he sat there and this wonderful feeling came over me. I loved him so much at that very moment.
I opened his pants and took them down and his underpants too. I looked at his face and his eyes were closed. I took his penis in both my hands and just held it. I could feel a pulse beat in it.
I got off the couch and got on my knees in front of him. I put my arms around his hips and took his penis right into my mouth. I took it in deep and just sucked on it and I felt so contented. I felt like a baby on the breast, I felt so completely contented and at peace with the world.
And I thought, I’m doing this for him, I’m doing this for him, this is all for him. But it wasn’t. It was for me, too, because I wanted to do it so much.
GORDON: I couldn’t believe what was happening. I would close my eyes and then I would have to open them to make sure this was really happening, and then I would close them again only to open them again later. I couldn’t believe this.
Rita had never done this thing.
RITA: You never asked for it.
GORDON: I know. I never thought, I never thought of it as something a wife would do. I had had it from a whore in the service and also the waitress did it two times but that was all, and I had enjoyed it all three times because there is no sensation like it in the world, but afterward I would feel strange about it because I guess I always thought of it as dirty. I had known boys in the service who had gotten this done for them by queers, fairies, and I guess I always thought of this as a fairy thing, and although I had only had it done by girls I guess I thought it was a fairyish thing for a man to enjoy it even from a woman.
But it wasn’t dirty when June did it. It was different, completely different. I never had the thought of it being dirty, not while she was doing it or ever afterward. I had some thoughts later about having relations with June, that this might be a wrong thing, a bad thing, but not that the act was wrong because of the way she did it. I never had the thought in that form.
RITA: I would have done this at any time if I had known it was something you wanted. But I never even thought of it.
GORDON: Neither did I. It was not something I thought of as something for us to do.
JUNE: Now this was something I had done often before, sucking a man. As I have said. But it was never like this before because I had never felt about anyone as I felt about Gordon.
My whole mouth was loving him. Loving him. My lips and my tongue.
When he shot in my mouth I had an orgasm. I wasn’t even conscious of any feeling between my legs until then but the minute he shot I had the strongest orgasm of my life. It just like to picked me up and tore me apart. I didn’t know that was what an orgasm could be. I had had little orgasms before, and I thought that was all there was, and then this came along and I hadn’t even expected to have any kind of an orgasm, and now this came along and it almost killed me. I swallowed every drop. Not even thinking about it but just wanting to do it without even knowing that this was something I wanted to do.
Swallowed every drop.
RITA: You’re sure giving enough of a description of it.
JUNE: It’s like it was happening now. I can remember it that clearly.
RITA: You’ll have everybody coming if you keep talking like that.
JUNE: I’m sorry.
RITA: Oh, I was just teasing. It’s nothing to be sorry for.
GORDON: In the morning I got up and went to the store and kept thinking on what had happened and trying to figure out what to do next. I first off decided that we would have to act like this had never happened, and it would never happen again. And then I would think that I loved June and wanted to have intercourse with her. And I knew I loved Rita too, and how could we keep all of this a secret from her?
I didn’t know what to do. I had never before in my life had a situation where I was so completely torn in different directions like this. I couldn’t go off with June because Rita was my wife and I loved her, June and I both loved her. I couldn’t move off with Rita, either, and I didn’t see how we could all go on living together without my having relations with June, because she and I both wanted each other so much. I didn’t see any solution whatsoever.
At dinner we acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Rita was still down with the curse, still depressed from it, but not so bad as the night before. She didn’t take to her bed right off but sat watching television with us until around midnight, and sitting there I just couldn’t get it all straight in my mind. I would look over at June and remember what had happened the night before and I would look at Rita and wonder if she had any idea and I just couldn’t put it all together so it would make sense to me.