What did those “sounds” sound like? What did it feel like when one’s body “burned with passion”? Just what did it smell like when “the sweet aroma of animal desire dilated her nostrils”? Such were the questions posed daily by her editing of romance manuscripts.
Eyen more disturbing was the point these confession stories drove home that any girl worth her salt had surely been deflowered by the age of twenty-one. Penny’s petals were intact. But why?
There was no obvious answer. It seemed to be a matter of fate. Shuffle the deck thoroughly and one card still ends up in the same place. Set the rooster to servicing the hens and still one female fowl produces no egg. Prune a cherry tree and always one cherry will somehow remain unplucked.
That was Penny. An unturned queen; an unlaid egg; an unplucked cherry. Penny Candie—the great unplucked!
Some queens, of course, remain unmoved by choice. Some eggs, naturally, remain unlaid because of physical difficulty. Some cherries, obviously, remain unplucked because they simply aren’t appetizing. However, none of these applied to Penny.
She was not determined to remain a virgin queen. Her doctor periodically pronounced her ovarian yolks Grade A. And as to her being appetizing, her own eyes confirmed her yumminess regularly.
Stepping out of her shower and gazing at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, Penny would blush prettily. The darling girl couldn’t help being reminded of the descriptions in the romance stories she edited daily. Yes, there was the “golden-haired innocence” and “blue-eyed naïvete” of the farm girl seduced in “SIN IN THE SILO”. And there were the “high cheekbones”, the “oval face” and the “kiss-pursed mouth” of the victim in “I WAS RAPED BY A TEENAGE GANG”. Yes, and the “satin-smooth shoulders,” the “uptilted, pear-shaped breasts” and the swaying, womanly hips of the heroine of “ADULTERY WAS MY FAVORITE INDOOR SPORT”. Her legs were “long and slender and lightly-muscled like a ballet dancer”, just like the limbs of Nina in “IF YOU WANT ME, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS WHISTLE”. Her waist was “tiny”, her belly “smooth”, just the way Lauras’s were in “HOW MY BODY BETRAYED ME”. And inside she felt as warmly willing as the multiple-orgy queen of “NUBILE NYMPHO ON THE TOWN”.
Yet no man had come along to sully her virgin perfection. That this was at best a dreadful waste and possibly a great sin of omission was confirmed to Penny by her after-hours reading. As if by instinct, she had filled her lonely evenings with a literary selection beginning with Gone With The Wind and Forever Amber, proceeding through Peyton Place and The Carpetbaggers, and arriving inevitably at Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and the works of Henry Miller.
It was this last-mentioned that truly convinced Penny that she’d somehow been diverted from the mainstream of New York life. In his Tropic of Capricorn, Miller succinctly identified New York in highly specific language, as the land of sexual intercourse. The evidence he offered to justify the name was overwhelming. Yet here was Penny, twenty-one years old, and she still hadn’t gotten the lay of the land.
In vain the sweaters a size too small and stretched over the pointy-tipped bras. In vain the hip-wiggling walk and the up-from-under look meant to hint at boudoir cooperation. In vain the long conversations insisting on emancipated woman’s right to a single standard. For three years Penny had been gobbling birth-control pills religiously And the only thing they’d done for her was give her heartburn. It all seemed to prove that virtue, if anything, was its own punishment!
Now, laying aside the manuscript with its still puzzling reference to the liquidity of love, Penny renewed her determination that her unwanted chastity would be breeched that very night. For this was the evening of her first overnight date with a man. And the man was Studs Levine!
Studs Levine was the advertising representative of the publishing company for which Penny worked. He was a tall, muscular young man with shoulders too broad to be hidden by the Brooks Brothers suits he wore. His smile was a testimonial to fluoridated toothpaste and he was always masculinely deodorized. His personality was modeled on Rock Hudson in any movie prior to the scene in which Doris Day neutralizes it with matrimonial honey. This combination underlay the aptness of his nickname.
Studs’ success with women was phenomenal. It was also frequently calculated. Explaining it in terms of business to male cronies, Studs was fond of telling how he “plowed my way through half the pertinent receptionists and private secretaries in New York to land my accounts. As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he would add with a wink.
With women, of course, he was not quite so blunt. Rather, he was the soul of subtlety. Seduction was an art with him, and like any good artisan he prided himself on his individualistic technique.
Nor were all his conquests in the line of duty. To the beautiful and shapely and willing, Studs could be a true philanthropist. Charitably, he bestowed his seed ’twixt many a thigh incapable of furthering his career. Studs was never stingy. He would not withhold the elixir of his potency from the world of thirsting femininity.
Correctly, he gauged the extent of Penny’s parch. The panting Bartletts ’neath her sweater weren’t lost on him. The sweet flush of her yearning was a plea he couldn’t disregard. And so Studs had invited her for a weekend at his bungalow in Arverne.
Penny had immediately recognized the implications of the invitation. She knew Studs’ reputation and realized that seduction was his aim. But this knowledge only made her all the more eager to accept. Thus she found herself alone in the bungalow with him, alone with her eagerness to experience, alone with the man most likely to vanquish her despised virginity.
“You just relax and make yourself comfortable,”
Studs told her when he’s closed the door behind them. “I’m going to fix us a salad and some steaks for dinner.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said impatiently.
“Well then, I’ll mix us some martinis.”
“I don’t need liquor,” Penny told him forthrightly.
“Umm. Well, just let me put some records on the stereo.”
“I’d rather listen to the sound of the ocean lapping the shore.”
“Oh?” Studs was stymied. There were certain rituals to be gone through. This girl was disregarding them. She wasn’t playing the game. Preliminaries were important. You have to learn to crawl before you can walk, he thought to himself irrelevantly.
“Aren’t you going to defile me?” Penny asked when the silence lengthened uncomfortably.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Defile me. You know, like in Fanny Hill.”
“I never read it. Never got around to it, I guess. I keep pretty busy what with business and all,” he finished lamely.
“I hear you do,” she told him archly. “I’ve heard about how busy you keep. But when are you going to get busy with me? When are you going to slip it to me?”
“Slip what to you?”
“It. Like in the Tropics, you know.”
“I’ve never been in the tropics.”
“I mean the Miller books. Come on! You brought me here to screw me, didn’t you?”
“Good grief!” Studs drew back, appalled at her frankness. “You don’t waste much time on romance, do you?”
“Romance? Oh, you mean like in Lady Chatterly? Okay. Bring on the floral arrangements. I’m ready to be twined and vined.”
“Penny, what the hell are you talking about?
“Going to bed with you. Isn’t that why you brought me here?”
“Well, sure, but—”