‘Conscience is that little voice that tells you that someone may be watching.' (Anon and op. cit.)
And there was the problem of a satisfactory partner. Charles was a nice boy and I did offer him that encore, and even a third try at it for good measure. The second and third attempts were more comfortable but even less exciting - cold mush without sorghum and cream.
So after the third one I told Charles that someone had seen us on top of Marston Hill and had told one of my sisters... and a good thing that it hadn't been one of my brothers, because I had been able to cool things down with my sister. But he and I had better act as if we had quarrelled... or next time the word might get all the way to my mother, who would tell my father, and then there was just no telling. So you had better leave me alone until school starts, huh? You see, don't you. dear?
I learned that the hardest problem of all in dealing with a man is how to stop dealing with him when he does not want to stop. A century and a half of quite varied experience has not given me any answer that is totally satisfactory.
One partly satisfactory answer that I did not learn until much later than 1897 requires considerable skill, great self control, and some sophistication: the intentional ‘dead arse'. Lie there like a dead woman and, above all, let your inner muscles be utterly relaxed. If you combine that with garlic on your breath, it is likely - although not certain - that he will save you the trouble of thinking of a reason to break off. Then, when he initiates a break, you can be brave about it. A ‘good sport'.
I am not suggesting that lively hips and tight muscles constitute ‘sex appeal'. Such qualities, while useful, are merely equivalent to sharp-tools for a carpenter. My sister wife Tamara, mother of our sister wife Ishtar and at one time the most celebrated whore in ali Secundus, is the epitome of sex appeal... yet she is not especially pretty and no one who has slept with her talks about her technique. But their faces light up when they sec her and their voices throb when they speak of her.
I asked Jubal Harshaw about Tammy because Jubal is the most analytical of my husbands. He said, ‘Mama Maureen, quit pulling my leg. You of all people know the answer.'
I denied it.
‘Ali right,' he said, ‘but I still think you are fishing. Sex appeal is the outer evidence of deep interest in your partner's pleasure. Tammy's got it. So have you and just as strongly. It is not your red hair, wench, or even the way you smell, which is yummy. It is the way you give... when you give.'
Jubal got me so stirred up that I tripped him, then and there.
But in Lyle County in 1897 one cannot simply trip a darling man and have at it; Mrs Grundy is sitting up in every tree, eager to catch you and publish it. So the preliminaries must be more complex. There are plenty of eager males (about twelve in every dozen) but it is necessary to pick the one you want - age, health, cleanliness, personal charm, discretion (if he gossips to you, he will gossip about you), and other factor, that vary with each candidate. Having selected him for the slaughter you must cause him to decide that he wants you while letting him know silently that it is possible. That is easy to phrase but to put it into practice... You'll be honing your skills for a lifetime.
So you reach an agreement... but you still haven't found a place.
After picking a place to shed my virginity I resigned that aspect of the problem. If a boy/man wanted my immoral carcass, he would get his grey matter churning and solve it. Or he could go chase flies.
But I did risk chiggers and (once) poison ivy. He caught it; I seem to be immune.
From June to January three boys ranging from sixteen to twenty had me, and one married man of thirty-one. I added him in on the assumption (false) that a married man would be so skilled that he could set off those fireworks without fail.
Total copulations: nine. Orgasms: three - and one was wonderful. Time actually spent copulated: an average of five minutes per go, which is not nearly enough. I learned that life can be beautiful indeed... but that the males of my circle ranged from clumsy to awkward.
Mrs Grundy apparently did not notice me.
By New Year's Eve I had decided to ask Father to submit my name to the Howard Foundation... not for the money (I still did not know that the payments could amount to enough to matter) but because I would welcome a chance to meet more eligible males; the hunting in Lyle County was too poor to suit Maureen. I had firmly made up my mind that, while sex might not be the be-all and end-all, I did want to marry and it had to be a man who would make me eager to go to bed early.
In the meantime, I kept on trying to make Maureen as desirable a female animal as I could manage and I listened most carefully to my father's advice. (I knew that what I really wanted was a man just like my father, but twenty-five years younger. Or twenty. Make that fifteen. But I was prepared to settle for the best imitation I could find.)
There were two hundred days left in 1897 from that day Chuck and I climbed up into the judges' stand; that makes 200 x 24 x 60 - 288,000 minutes. Circa 45 of those minutes I spent copulated; that leaves 199 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes. It is obvious that I had time for other things.
That summer was one of the best of my life. While I did not get laid very often or very effectively, the idea was on my mind awake and asleep. It brightened my eyes and my days; I shed female pheromones like a female moth and I never stopped smiling - picnics, swimming parties in the Osage (you wouldn't believe what we wore), country dances (frowned on by the Methodist and Baptist churches but sponsored by jack Mormons who welcomed gentiles who might be converted - Father overruled Mother; I went and learned to swing on the corners and dosey-doh), watermelon contests, any excuse to get together.
I stopped thinking about the University of Missouri at Columbia. From Father's books I could see that there just wasn't money to put me through four years of college. I was not anxious to be a nurse or a schoolteacher, so there seemed to be little point in my aspiring to formal (and expensive) higher education. I would always be a bookworm but that does not require a college degree.
So I decided to be the best housewife I could manage - starting with cooking.
I had always taken my turn in the kitchen along with my sisters. I had been assistant cook for the day in rotation since my twelfth birthday. By fifteen I was a good plain cook.
I decided to become a good fancy cook.
Mother remarked on my increased interest. I told her the truth, or some of it. ‘Chére mama, I expect to be married someday. I think the best wedding present I can bring my future husband is good cooking. I may not have the talent to become a gourmet chef. But I can try.'
‘Maureen, you can be anything you want to be. Never forget that'
She helped me, and she taught me, and she sent away to New Orleans for French cookbooks, and we pored over them together. Then she sent me for three weeks to Aunt Carole's house, who taught me Cajun skills. Aunt Carole was a Johnny Reb, married after the War to - Heavens - a damn Yankee, Father's eldest brother, Uncle Ewing, now deceased. Uncle Ewing had been in the Union occupation of New Orleans, and had poked a sergeant in the nose over a distressed Southern girl. It got him a reduction from corporal to private and a wife.
In Aunt Carole's house we never discussed the War.
The War was not often discussed in our own house as the Johnsons were not native to Missouri, but to Minnesota. Being newcomers, by Father's policy we avoided subjects that might upset our neighbours. In Missouri sympathies were mixed - a border state and a clave state, it had veterans from both sides. But that part of Missouri had been ‘local option' - some towns had never had any claves and now permitted no coloured people; Thebes was one such. But Thebes itself was so small and unimportant that the Union troops had ignored it when they came through there in'65, burning and looting. They burned Butler to the ground and it never fully recovered. But Thebes was untouched.