“Well, of course, you never can tell.” Dr. Golden laughed. “As I said, under the proper circumstances, I suppose there’s a possibility that any one of you would prove capable of murdering me. Still, I don’t envision those circumstances ever really arising . . . ”
There was more to the tape and Durango heard it out. But the topic had turned from murder, and there was nothing he heard that he thought might be of value to his investigation. When it was done, he turned to Debbie and found himself looking at her helplessly.
“Start at the beginning,” she advised him.
“What?”
“Play the first tape of the group. That way you can straighten out Who’s Who.”
“Now, look! I told you before. I’m the detective. You’re a murder suspect. So suppose you stop telling me what to do!”
Debbie shrugged.
“All right. I suppose I can’t lose anything,” Durango granted grudgingly. He fished out the first reel from the cabinet and put it on the recorder playback.
“Well, we’re all here.” Dr. Golden’s voice again. “Now this is the first experience with group therapy for any of you, so naturally you all feel awkward. As you can see, we’re a well-balanced group. Four men and four women, not counting myself. I’d suggest we begin by introducing ourselves and telling something about ourselves and being as frank about the problems that led us into analysis as we can. Dave, why don’t you start?”
“I’d rather not, but — Well, all right. My name is Dave Evers. I’m twenty-four years old. I’m a graduate student at City College, going for my doctorate in chemical engineering. I live at home with my parents. That’s a big part of my problem. But the main problem is that I’m still a virgin. Technically speaking. And it’s eating me up inside . . .”
CHAPTER 4
The Reluctant Virgin
“. . . My name is Dave Evert. I’m twenty-four years old. . . . I’m still a virgin. . . It’s eating me up inside . . . ”
Dave Evers sat in the armchair from the TV set and stared vacantly at the movie on the Late Show. A few paces to the right of the set, the door to his parents’ bedroom was wide open. The lights were on, and Dave could hear his mother’s and father’s voices quite clearly. Their large double bed was plainly visible through the open door. They were preparing to make love.
Rabbits! Dave thought bitterly, biting his lip. Rabbits! That’s what they were! That’s what they’d always been. As far back as he could remember, that’s what they’d been!
Even before he could remember, from what Dave had been told, sex had come first with his parents and he, their only child, had come second.
“The doctor says it would be best for the baby if I nursed him,” Molly Evers had told her husband Stewart back then.
“But won’t that pull your breasts all out of shape?” Dave's father had asked.
“That’s what I said. Baby or no baby, I told him, my husband comes first. And my husband doesn’t like women with droopy bosoms. He likes me just the way I am.”
“Then you won’t nurse?”
“Of course not, honey. You’re the only baby’s gonna nibble on Mama. Just like always.”
So Dave had been a bottle-baby, suckled by a rubber nipple, deprived of his mother’s flesh before he even knew enough to yearn for it. Did he really remember, or was it only that he imagined he could recall struggling to pull cold milk through a choked nippled while his parents, uncaring, thrashed about on the bed beside his crib? No matter, there were more than enough such incidents later so that he was sure he did remember the way they really were. These were the incidents which twisted his own sexual desires, which made him fearful and unsure of himself, which made him regard all women as relatively taboo, almost as off-limits to him as his bed-bunny mother was off-limits to him.
Dave had been ten or eleven, just beginning to feel the first stirring of puberty, the night those limits were made clear to him by his enraged father.
“My back aches,” his mother had said. “I wish your father wasn’t working late. If he was home he’d rub it for me.”
“Let me do it, Mommy.”
“It wouldn’t be the same. You’re only a little boy.”
“Please let me. I can do it. Honest.”
“Well . . . All right.” She’d taken off her robe and stretched out face down on the bed in her nightgown. “Rub hard now, Davey,” she’d said, “but don’t scratch or pinch.”
Dave had straddled her, putting his weight on his knees on either side of her small waist. He’d started with her neck and shoulders, Working his fingers slowly down her spine on top of the silk nightgown. He found himself strangely excited, and his pajamas began to bulge like when he wore those corduroy pants that were too right for him and they rubbed up against him.
“Oh, that feels good,” his mother had sighed. “You’ve got strong hands, Davey, just like your father. But wait a minute. This damn nightie is tickling me.” She’d risen on her elbows and pushed the nightgown up so that it was bunched under her chin and over her shoulders and the back of her neck. “That’s better.” She settled down on her stomach again, and Dave stopped staring at where her bare breast had momentarily hovered over the sheet.
He had resumed rubbing her naked back then, kneading the flesh and taking pleasure in the feel of it under his hands. She too was enjoying the massage, her small sighs and little contented movements testifying to the fact. “Lower,” she’d instructed when his hands were at her waist, and Dave had followed her spine down between the beginning rise of the hillocks of her small, plump buttocks.
“To the left,” she told him. Then, “And right, too.” Finally, “Lower, lower . . . Ah, yes.” Her breathing came more quickly now, and her sighs had turned into pronounced little moans.
Dave sensed her enjoyment and rubbed the rosy cheeks eagerly with both hands. He moved downward, the better to manipulate his mother’s flesh, and her legs parted so that he might close his knees to kneel between them. He was able to put more pressure on the area then, and his mother’s responses became more pronounced.
Her moans became rhythmic, and her hips began describing little half-circles in the same tempo. Instinctively, Dave’s stroking also matched the rhythm. Her muscles tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed as she ground her body harder and harder against the mattress. “Oh, yes-yes-yes” escaped her lips without her even realizing she’s spoken aloud.
The throaty murmur excited Dave to commit an unplanned act. He leaned forward and kissed the rippling surface he’d been caressing. His mother laughed sensually, lost in the thrill of the sudden sensation.
And from the doorway there came a sudden roar of rage from Dave’s father!
Dave was never to know how long he’d been standing there watching. At the bellow, the boy had scrambled hastily from the bed, filled with a sense of guilt, but childishly confused as to just what he’d done that made him guilty. He’d backed off to a corner of the room and stared at his father, afraid.
“Just what the hell do you call this, Molly?” His father’s voice had been trembling with anger.
His mother had turned over then and smiled innocently at her husband. Despite his fear, Dave couldn’t tear his eyes away from her large breasts with their straining red tips and the still-throbbing, moist womanhood discernible under the lightly-matted black curls above where her legs began.
“Hello, Stewart, darling. I thought you’d never get home,” she cooed.
His father too had stared at her pulsating nudity and licked his lips. “That’s not right, what you were doing with the boy,” he said, the anger suddenly gone from his voice and replaced by a note of longing.