by Philip Wylie
In the early part of the century a sluggish effort towards some enlightenment, some candor occurred, some cleaning-up of the vileness vilely smeared on sexuality (by men and women of “chaste and pure minds”) in efforts to sanctify something (that merely made it diabolic). Small attempts were made to restore decency in an obscene nation. Even these met furious resistance, actual violence and its threat, from the “Godly.”
By the Twenties, and from then, through all the decades to the new Seventies, sexuality had been the principal bait of advertising. Female allure had sold more goods and implemented more services that all the other “come-ons” in the lexicon of merchandising. And as the decades passed the symbols, pretty girls, had become more specific, less subtle, till the point was reached (long since, Glenn reflected) when you were almost told by the ads that this number in her bikini would go to bed with you if you bought such-and-such a wire fence, plough, cigarette, car, anything.
The stress between sex-as-commerical-bait and the venerable and deep-imbued doctrine of sex as the nastiest and worst possible act—that, had to snap. And the break had come, Glenn thought, not in the current “sex revolution” which was largely a warmed-over version of the women’s emancipation-free-love-trial-marriage of the Twenties (before his time) but in a very different way. The Supreme Court (that perhaps only-remaining mover and shaker of the Peepul) had made plain the truth (pro tem, at least) that no one man’s definition of “pornography” was another’s, necessarily, and so none could be forced by one or many on one other or many others.
Almost overnight, and in very recent times, America had turned into an audience for “stag” movies and a market for every sort of previously-banned book or picture in the world, along with cheaper, newer, rawer imitations in paperback and a vast litter of pulp magazines aimed at teenagers, male and female varieties, that put the cost of sex at sadism, by inference, or put the ancient “moral” (for the young lasses) at the end of some explicit and totally arousing account of what the lady did—with what effect on youth, Glenn had asked himself and left unanswered.
His thoughts on the matter went on when he realized Rufus had departed. Went on, because he found a new insight. To him “obscenity” and “pornography” defined any kind of sexual act, description or inference that was pain-making, pain-causing, physically and literally dirty, as with dirty hippies, or banal, by which, he supposed, he meant sniggering, vulgar, without manners, taste, consideration or mere humanity. Aside from that, nothing was obscene or pornographic to him and a handsome volume of colored pictures of people engaged in obviously highly delightful, passionate, desired, and gratifying sexual acts was as pure and wonderful as—the same act, with a one-posture limit, was supposed to be, when two virginal persons were at last licensed by God as man and wife to share those joys … a sharing for which they had been so systematically corrupted, crippled and perverted that the likelihood of mere satisfaction, even after a year or two of painful trial and agony and flop, was very small.
But, here, Glenn had seen, the “flood” of “pornography” that was outraging the Godly and even getting politicians angry (in postures for their electorate) was, like the other use of sex in advertising, not a change in behavior but merely a use of the media to complete what they had so long invited. The lady in the bra you’d get, the ads implied, if you bought the product she advertised, had tempted America too long. Buying the goods didn’t ever achieve the advertised promise of the lass. Now, the “media”—books, paperbacks, movies above all, and, increasingly, TV—were performing the acts for the viewer-reader audience, but vicariously, as before.
The girl in the ad was doing her stuff on the pages. The moving picture stars, always sexy, always, or nearly, salesladies for a more affluent and abundance-owning USA, weren’t selling goods, now. They had sold sex on media for that aim so long that they had to supply sex, there, at last. And that, Glenn realized, was what was “happening.” Because he understood his fellow-Americans deeply and well (cherished them, too, in spite of their faults, sins, blunders and ignorances) he now understood this current thing. The girl who sold the cars, cosmetics, anything-everything, and her sister, the “cover girl,” who sold the magazine that sold advertising space for profit, had finally created an appetite for what they truly offered, sex, that had to be gratified. But not in reality. Not by deed. Impossible. Yet in the same way—vicariously—through the media! It was a startling idea—to a media-master.
And the next result, media-wise and man-woman-boy-girl-wise was already visible, Glenn mused. Once erotically stimulated by the new “candor” or the new “honesty” or what many called the new deluge of “pornography,” people would have no further cushion for their heated and educated libidoes but actuality. So, now, the kids were promiscuous or trying to resolve sexual “conflicts” by merging in “unisex,” as if there were no differences. Older people were playing the apparently common and fast-increasing games lightly described as “wife swapping” or “social sex”—the politest imaginable name for what, till just a few years ago, had been called “orgy.”
In this whole process, he finally reflected, there should be some guiding concept. But there was none, at present.
His own? Was he, as some said tauntingly, or even seriously, in a real or feigned, deep or blind way, “afraid of women”? Or was he a sort of sexual pirate who knew he could not settle for one and so had many? He could not say, being honest, which few are, about motives. Some, eluded him. But surely he was not afraid of women. And, as surely, he did everything he could to avoid hurting any one of them while he added all value he was able to those he came to know intimately.
He never pretended he aimed at marriage. Freely offered the truth, that marriage was out. Never urged a woman to an act with him, of any sort, or to act with him at all, if she had reservations. Never stole or borrowed the wives of friends. Rarely broke the statutory age of consent for the most conservative state, which was, of course, 21. Always entered a relationship with the greatest possible assurance on his part that it was just that, on entering, and might end with the evening. Often continued a liaison longer than he wished simply to save his partner the evident pain (in that case) of a swifter break. Was kind. Was generous. Was fond and thoughtful and perceptive and appreciative. Never “bought” women by wealth even though he had enjoyed the company of some call girls whom he paid in dollars and who, at that level and with his choice, were very frequently superior to nearly every other willing damsel, lass, divorcee, spinster or fugitive wife from some marriage that entitled her to such flight and fleeting ecstasies.
I love women, he told himself. I love to make it with them. If they love me to. But I am decent. I never cheat and if there has been cheating in any mating of mine, it is she who did it and failed to let me know till too late. I am fair. We are, we Americans, male and female, hornier than others—horny (as that spacecraft chap said he was, to the delight of the mass and the consternation of the dwindling bigots!) and nature made us for one and other and this relationship. I live to keep it pure and honest—or, if that’s out, I would refuse to act and would even rather not live, were dirtiness or disgrace implicit in sex, were sex relations mandatory for existing which, perhaps, they are—in more ways than those implied by reproduction.
The tangle of our mores and our morals!
“Hello,” a soft but resonant voice said.
CHAPTER TWO
THE VICE MASTER
The girl—woman—was in the pool. She had swum up to the edge where he sat and caught hold of the silver pull-out bar beside him. She had swum silently, her dark, long hair evidently streaming out behind, like a mermaid’s, and her breathing hushed as it can be by a deft swimmer. She had blue eyes, very blue eyes, set apart a little more than usual eyes with brows that sloped, and naturally, not plucked or added to. A mouth just short of being too broad for the elegantly modeled face, the high forehead and sinuous lines down to a small, neat chin. A turned up nose with nostrils that could perhaps flare,
that were mobile as she breathed from swimming—under water to here, from some other and distant point? The pool was enormous.
Her appearance was like stage magic. He had been theorizing about sex, about women as sex symbols, about the voyeur phase of presently erotic-peeping USA and the next one, acting. Here was the symbol, the chance to look, and, he knew, the other chance. That was why there were so many females at Boiling Springs Manor—to tempt, to serve and satisfy. In order—if Cooper meant what he’d just said—to act as therapeutic agents, as blotters who would simply take from brilliant, acquisitive and commanding minds, a specific handicap, a toxic distraction—and thereby leave the brains free to concentrate on—whatever. How to deal with congress, with foreign nations, with prices by fixing them but too cleverly to be caught out by Justice, with mergers, with market-dividing to end costly competition, with anything that tycoons and others in power whom they could use or who might use them might want to arbitrate, here or some other place, quietly, unobtrusively—though this place and its covert rules for assembly outdid anything in Glenn’s past experience.
“I’m Bessie,” she said. “Billings.”
“Hello, Bessie.”
“You haven’t had lunch. It’s after one.”
He made a body movement, that of starting to rise. He hadn’t realized the time and he was hungry.
“Wait a second. I came to give you a message. The meeting will be at three thirty, not, two o’clock.”
He relaxed, visibly but not consciously.
So she saw the silent language as he usually did: Glenn Howard was in no hurry to get away from her, now that there was ample time to eat.
“How about, you take a dip and I bring a tray to your cabana?”
He smiled. “Have you been checked out for mind-reading? Because that’s why I wasn’t in any hurry to eat inside with the mob.”
“You’d rather be alone?” Not any regret, but a sound of wistfulness.
“Bring two trays, Bessie.”
“At once, master!”
She spun like a fish, surface-dived, crossed the pool with wide, strong strokes and wide, strong legs kicking, surfaced and shot out and up onto the edge almost standing, in one lunge.
His cabana was on the “30” row—there were five aisles off the pool and ten such cabanas on each, fanned out so there was a view of the pool from each “porch” but designed so that a number of persons on any of the awning-shaded patios could retreat (by chair, wheeled lounge, on air mattress) to a screened place where no one could see. From there, Cooper’s guests could move into the dressing rooms, unobserved and, of course, beyond to the elegant, miniature lounge-salons, soft-carpeted, pillow-drifted, couch-abundant, music-supplied, accessory-abundant chambers where one could perform in private, soundproofed luxury almost anything erotic that wasn’t brutal or the cause of screams.
Perfect-host-Cooper!
And, Glenn thought, show-off Howard. For he had deliberately swum about and done a few test dives to enable him to dive when she reappeared (which she soon did, with a man servant pushing the luncheon-tray-cart). That was his signal to step up on the board, pause, rise on his toes, take the three standard steps and the leap, hit the board hard so as to shoot toward the green plastic sky above and then, in a dazzling splendor of timing and muscle, perform a front-twisting one-and-a-half somersault before entering the water as smoothly as a sea lion.
She applauded when he surfaced.
Toweled, in a robe, with the luncheon set out, the girl across the table, the man servant gone, the music low, Glenn felt a little challenged by something he slowly brought to awareness. It was as if Cooper had produced this tall, full-formed nymph by a trick, and chosen her by computer—what “type” is the Howard favorite?
Not any, Glenn reflected, and then he wondered if, perhaps, he hadn’t squired a few more dark-haired girls than blondes, redheads and others, a few more near this age—twenty-five, maybe?—a few more who were taller than average, a few more who did not have the explosive breasts so much in demand (incomprehensibly, to Glenn), a few more with their deep or husky or throaty voices—long hair—and, he mused, so on. Maybe Cooper did use a computer.
He sipped iced tea and asked her, smiling, “Is this a computer date?”
“How’d you guess?” She wasn’t abashed but not quite joking, either.
“Explain.”
“It’s … partly evident, isn’t it?” She said that with a slight and sudden flush. “I mean, all the girls here are here to be—available. And, well, suitable. If asked. It’s pretty plain.”
He thought it over. “In a generalized way. But that wasn’t my question. Are you—call it—targeted?”
“Why?” There was some mockery in the blue-blue eyes.
“Because, I daresay, if I’d been asked to invent a female—the colors and shape and age and style—as the one I’d most likely want, if I wanted just someone—you’d be close.”
“That’s nice. What else?”
“You tell me.”
They ate while she glanced up at him with varying expressions, rather, traces of them: mischief, interest, slight and passing fear, amusement, promise, hesitation, and the last, decision.
“Okay,” she said, “I will. Bessie Billings isn’t my exact name. That is Bessie Bitters. I am an assistant buyer for a San Francisco department store—furs and women’s coat. I am, also, a sort of occasional entertainer for the firm. If I choose to be. That is, like the candidate the firm wants to get a better in with. I had three years at Berkeley and got bored with the entire youth scene—years ago. Three. Got a job. Married a professional football player who was Adonis to behold and who was very good—at football. I left and we divorced and I tried the call girl racket for an adventure and that soon turned out to be tedious, in general. My parents are not dead or divorced or anything—happily married. I see them and we’re close—though I have sort of skimped on telling them a few chapters in the diary of their loving Bessie. I have brothers, two, and sisters, two, one of each, older, one of each, younger. My father is a lawyer and you can look him up. One other qualification for being here, I omit. Guess.”
“I couldn’t.” He grinned. He wasn’t startled and he didn’t doubt. This was a citizen of the New Scene and he suffered, though rarely, a generation-gap syndrome. “Clue me.”
“Well, what else would you like about a girl you might like—what standard operating procedure of yours is involved?”
That somehow embarrassed him. “How could I know in advance?”
“You do, though.”
“Well,” he leaned back and thought, pretended to at first, then did. “I’d want her to like me, perhaps.”
“Gold star! Legion of Honor! Ho Chi Minh Medal. What reward do you choose?”
“Well—maybe you.” He laughed. “I thought it was a computer date—and it is! With a vengeance! But you and I never met! So how do you program that last one?”
“We never met, true. But I never miss an appearance you make on TV. Or at some big gathering. I’m a fan, and have been for years, of the great media-monarch, Glenn Howard. All my likes. Older. Rugged. Dark. Craggy. Very sensitive. Almost too bright for me. Rich. But an idealist and so romantic! See. That—was part of the input required.”
“Again, Bessie. Input? I’m trailing.”
“Any well-informed, nubile, young-to-not-so female who lives in California and moves in the more aware circles knows all about the joys and rewards of an invitation to this”—she waved as if to include the glowing-coals of endless desert outdoors—“this gold-plated, copper-backed paradise. Ladies who have been done the honor are not supposed to talk—much. Just enough, to just the right … other damsels to create a … market? One hears, then. And, hearing, one realizes that one’s personal tastes and pleasures, given or received, are part of the composition. You need to match somebody—or several somebodies. In several rather … obscure, call it, ways. So, if somebody, man or woman, happened to ask you if you’d ever been out to
B. W. Manor or Estates, and you say no, but you’d love the trip, and then somebody asks if you’d like to meet, say, Glenn Howard—and you go all fluttery, that is to say, you get specifically damp—and indicate it … Well, here I am.”
“And that,” he replied softly, “is just marvelous. Do they take movies?”
“You can, if that’s your bag, which I doubt. But you know better than to suggest Coop has a vault of blackmail material.”
“Do I?” He rubbed his face with his hands and looked at her between his fingers.
“Of course! For one thing, there are vulnerable men, here. Women, at other parties. Not like you—difficult to … embarrass. And very shrewd people. For instance, I think that Mr. Gant is probably about as clever, in a big; league, sinsister way, as your steel trade journal says—though more pleasantly.”
He looked at her thoughtfully and she allowed that very candid, very calm but total examination as if she wanted it. She’d said she did, nearly.
“Sort of,” Glenn finally said, seeking words, “like a menu of women.”
“But not quite.”
“No? All your favorite … dishes.”
She laughed a little but shook her head. “Where, Mr. Howard, do you pick up a menu on which a dish says, ‘Eat me! Please!’”