The key words in that quotation were those in italics. While Geraldine can achieve the greatest sexual pleasure only through anal intercourse, she does not restrict herself to that mode. She occasionally fellates her boyfriends and also performs vaginal intercourse, though her enjoyment of these is never very marked. Within the strict framework of deviancy as defined above, she would have to be labeled as “non-deviant.” For all that, she definitely has problems in the sexual area. As we have seen, the source of these problems lies rooted in her past. The chances of her overcoming those problems and learning to function sexually in a more orthodox pattern are very slight, especially since she does not want to change. Without the desire to change, little can be accomplished.
Chapter Five
“Ever since I can remember, almost, Madge has had this fear that. I’m going to lose my cherry. Madge, she’s my stepmother but you’d think that she’d given birth to me herself, she’s so protective! Maybe she’s just trying extra hard to see that I don’t get into serious trouble, though I sometimes think that there’s something else working in her mind. The way she carries on you’d think that the worst possible thing that could happen to a girl would be for her to get screwed.
“What makes it even more ironic is that Madge herself is one of the most sex-minded women I’ve ever known or heard about. For a while I didn’t know that. You see, she married Daddy when I was seven-my real mother had died about three years before-and for a while I honestly didn’t know how to take her. I’ll say this for her-she isn’t a hypocrite! When I finally caught on to the meaning of those sounds that came out of their bedroom every night and confronted her with it she never even blinked.
“What’s so awful about doing things with a fellow?” I asked her one morning when she’d launched into one of her lectures about how awful it was to let a fellow do it to you. “You and Daddy do it to each other, don’t you? You both seemed to be enjoying it last night!”
“Of course we were,” she admitted. “It’s a wonderful thing, making love.
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t enjoy it. I’m sorry, though, that we disturbed you.”
“She went on to give me a long song-and-dance about how screwing was really an expression of love and that when two people screwed without being in love it was just an expression of animal lust. There were some more arguments she handed out but I don’t want to get into all that right now. The essence of her point was that screwing is not for kids. You’ve got to be grown up before you can do it.
“I don’t know why it is but every time I’ve ever heard that old crap about ‘Wait till you get older, you’re not mature enough,” I’ve just wanted to get into it all the more. Look at it this way-with the Pill being so available, you’re not likely to get pregnant, right? And if you watch what you’re doing, check the guy out a little and look for the signs, you’re not going to get the clap or the syph, are you? And even if you do, what’s the big worry? A couple of shots of penicillin or something and you’re as good as new. I know several of my friends had the clap and they’re not any the worse for it.
“Finally there’s the big thing about Madge’s way of looking at things. I’ve got this cherry and she swears that I’ve got to keep it for my husband. But what if I don’t get a husband? What if I decided to work a while after college before I get married? Christ, the dumb thing could rot off by that time. The kids would talk about me carrying a museum piece between my legs! Can you feature anyone making so much out of a little piece of membrane? It doesn’t make much sense to me.
“From what I can gather, I’m something of a rarity. I don’t mean just because I’m still a virgin, though that’s bad enough. I mean because I’ve got this cherry. The stuff I’ve read and the girls I’ve talked to all agree pretty well that it’s a biological accident, having one. I don’t know where Madge picked up this phobia of hers, that fixation or whatever you want to call it, but she’s determined that I’m going to keep mine intact. And all this when most of the girls I know never had one to start with! Why, Julie Monroe-she’s my best friend, I guess-she swore that she never had one at all and I believe her. She says that when her periods started she began using tampons and never noticed a thing. It was the same way when she first spread for a fellow. He just slipped the prick to her and she never felt anything pop or rip or tear. And I could name you several other girls who’ve had just about the same experience.
“You might say, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and do it with Ken, or Ricky, or Phil, or some other guy, and just pretend that it never happened?” Well, that’s where it gets sort of complicated. I’m a little ashamed to say this but the fact is, I can’t go ahead like that. In the first place, neither Daddy nor Madge want me to let a fellow do it to me and I hate to disappoint them. In the second place Madge checks me regularly. Yes, after every date, we’ll go into my bedroom and I have to spread out and let her run her finger up my hole so she can be sure the cherry is ‘still there! “A lot of people will probably think that’s just awful and maybe they’re right, I don’t know. I don’t mind that so much, letting her see me and run her finger in my hole. After all, we’re all nudists-that’s where Daddy met Madge, at a nudist lodge up in the mountains- and we’ve never been very shy about letting other people see our bodies. The main objection I have is that it’s just… well kind of humiliating, laying there and having her check me out. The only nice thing about it is that she’s got a nice touch. I sort of like the way she does it, especially if I’ve been out with a guy and we’ve been acting horny.
“You might think I’m rather silly for putting up with it but, damn it, they’re nice people in spite of their obsession with cherries and that stuff. I just hate to have it out with them. And besides, it isn’t as if I were missing all that much, I guess. You know, Madge showed me how to finger myself off. Yes, she came through herself and told me that if I became really excited, so much so that I might feel like giving in to a fellow and letting him screw me, I ought to just ram my hand between my legs and do myself! I’m pretty good at that. I like to imagine myself in bed with a handsome man, usually someone in his late thirties or early forties, and we’re doing all those groovy things to each other. Except that all the while I’ve got both fingers over my clit, running down beside it, and after a while I get so excited that all I have to do is just nudge my hips upward a little and rub my pussy into my fingers, and wham! There it is, just rolling out of me! “Except that all this ‘doesn’t set too well with the fellows. So far I haven’t met a single boy my own age that has the slightest understanding of the position I’m in. Madge says that’s because they’re so fired up that they can’t think of anything but fuck, fuck, and fuck! And I believe she’s right there.
I’ll have to give her credit for that. Usually my experiences with guys all run to just about the same pattern.
“For the first few dates everything is all right and we’re progressing about like every other couple at Miller High. The guy will take me to a football game or two, ‘maybe some dances, and we’ll love it up afterward, usually in his car.
After the third or fourth date we’ve gotten to a pretty intimate stage. I don’t believe in letting a fellow get too intimate until we’ve been out three or four times. And then it begins to get sticky. I usually manage to put them off for a while and to get by with just giving them hand jobs. I just love the feel of a prick in my hands, so hard and hot, and I’m real good at jerking them off. I know how to rub myself up against a fellow while we’re kissing, letting him know that I really dig him, and I let him see that I’m getting hot too.