I sent Arlene out to play the role of a lonely, prudish, love sick housewife for a sexually hard-up and inhibited college student who had been instructed to play the role of a Henry Miller; she came back exhilarated. She announced that the evening had been a total success, although she admitted that nothing much had happened for the first two hours and that she may not have stuck completely to her assigned role when she walked into the living room nude after taking a shower. She volunteered to assist in any way she could if needed further for the experiment and even agreed not to tell Jake.
Finally I decided that the old coach himself had to get off the bench and into the game. Someone had to get in there who could plug up the holes when they needed to be plugged or burst up the middle of a score. A hush fell over the crowd when I trotted onto the field.
Miss T. was required by the instructions to: `Spend the evening at the apartment of Mr. O., age thirty-five. Man will have paid one hundred dollars to spend the evening with you. Mr. O. is a lonely college professor whose wife died a year ago. He knows nothing about this experiment and believes a friend has provided him with a young, inexperienced call girl. You are to try to give yourself to him as completely as possible. Examine closely your own attitudes and emotions and fill out the questions contained in the enclosed envelope.'
According to her answers on our attitude questionnaires, Miss T. was nineteen years old, had never had sexual intercourse, had `necked heavily' with only two boys, had kissed `less than ten' boys and had never had any conscious lesbian inclinations or experiences. She believed that premarital sexual intercourse was wrong because `God punished it finitely,' it was `psychologically unhealthy' and there was `danger of pregnancy.'
She affirmed that as a positive attribute it procreated the race. According to her she had never masturbated because `God punished it finitely.'
She was vaguely intolerant of all sexual deviations from the heterosexual norm, extremely conventional in most other attitudes and indicated no close relationships with anyone except her mother, to whom she seemed quite close. She reported that she was a believing Catholic and hoped to be a social worker for emotionally disturbed children.
It seemed to me unlikely that Miss T. would even show up. Of the seven other subjects to whom I had given similar instructions (to meet each other or hired help), three had never appeared; and two of the desertees were quiet types like Miss T. The assigned time, was `around eight o'clock.'
I, in a generous act of self-employment arrived at seven-thirty, and, after fixing myself a small drink, was settling down for a long wait when the bell rang. At the door I found a young woman who announced that she was `Terry Tracy.'
It was five of eight.
Terry Tracy looked up at me brightly like a teenager arriving for a baby-sitting assignment. She was short and pert, with wane brown eyes, soft brown hair and a nervous grace which reminded me of Natalie Wood. She was wearing a skirt and loose turtleneck sweater and carrying her homework crooked in her left arm (it turned out to be her sealed manila folder with the questionnaire.) I awkwardly invited her in, feeling like a decrepit and obscenely lecherous old man.
`Can I fix you a drink?' I asked. It occurred to me that this girl might have misunderstood the instructions.
`Yes, please,' she said and, walking into the middle of the room, looked around at the absolutely conventional modern couch, chairs, bureau, bookcase and rugs as if they had been imported from the moon.
`My name is Robert O'Connor. I'm a professor of history at Long Island University.'
`I'm Terry Tracy,' she said brightly, looking at me for all the world as though I were an interesting uncle about to beguile her with sea yarns.
1 tried to meditate with pseudo-serenity upon my drink but felt ridiculous.
`Seen any good movies lately?' I asked.
`Oh no. I don't go to movies very much.'
`They're very expensive these days.'
`Oh yes. And a lot of them are … well . . . not very worthwhile.'
`That's true.'
She looked over at the fireplace. I looked at the fireplace. It had a little wood-burning grate that looked as though it
hadn't been used since the apartment had been built ninety years ago.
`Would you like to have a fire?' I asked.
`Oh no. It's warm enough, thank you.'
I sipped at my drink and licked the sweat off part of the outside of the cold glass. It occurred to me that this might be
the most sensuous thing I would do all evening.
`Come over and sit by me, why don't you.'
A hippopotamus eating a daisy.
`I'm very comfortable here, thank you.'
After looking nervously at the fireplace for a few moments she added `All right' Balancing her drink carefully like a
child with her first cup of milk, she came over and seated herself about a foot from me on the couch. She modestly
tugged down once on her miniskirt, which remained, however, a few feet above her knees. She seemed incredibly
small. At six four I was used to looking down at people, but looking down at Terry Tracy to my left all I could see was
her curly brown hair and her two seemingly nude legs.
`Hey,' I said.
She looked up-with a smile, but a certain vagueness seemed to have crept into her eyes, as if her yarn-spinning uncle
had just used the word bordello.
`May I kiss you?' I asked. At a hundred bucks a toss it didn't seem too much to ask.
Her eyes went vaguer and she said, `Oh yes.'
I pulled her little body to me and leaned down to meet her lips. Without premeditation I found myself kissing only
with my lips upon her lips. Her mouth was small, her lips dry. After a few seconds I straightened up.
`You're awfully pretty,' I said.
`Thank you.'
`Your lips are very nice'
`Yours are too,' she said.
`Now you kiss me.'
She looked up and waited for me to lower my head, but I remained upright and even leaned back against the couch
while still looking down at her, sexily. After a moment's uncertainty, she placed her drink on the coffee table and got up on her knees. Putting her hands on my neck she slowly leaned towards me. My arms circled her, one hand closed hard around a buttock and I pressed my mouth and tongue against hers. For ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty seconds I kept my tongue in her mouth and moved my hands over her back, buttocks and thighs. Her body was small but firm, her little behind round and rubbery through the woolen skirt. Finally I pulled back and looked at her.
She smiled the smile of a straight-A student.
`That was awfully nice,' I said.
`Oh yes. It was good,' she replied.
`Put your tongue in my mouth,' I said, and as I slid sideways to a horizontal position on the couch, I pulled he her over
on top of me. She was remarkably light and her tongue came out of her small mouth in little tentative darts like a snake trying to frighten someone. I bought both my hands up under her skirt and panties and exploring between her legs, got lost. That is, of the two caves traditionally located in the underbrush, I was able to locate only one, and that, in the immortal words of Robert Frost, The one less traveled by.'
Had she been sewn up? I discovered and caressed a slippery crack, but it led not to the warm-cushioned opening of a
Lil or Arlene but to a dead-end: a virgin with a vengeance. She pulled up a few inches away from me.
`Please don't touch me there,' she said.
`I beg your pardon,' I said and delicately withdrew my hands and smoothed down her skirt.
She hesitated, a moment and then brought her little mouth down warmly on mine, her hands framing my face. Her
abdomen pressing down on my extended penis began to create climactic feelings so I broke our kiss and rolled us both
into sitting positions again. She looked up at me brightly, as if pleased by having brought home a good report card. Of