A Woman of the Future

by David Ireland

  He had a rabbit get stuck once, and no one was able to help him. He was taken to the University, but since no one knew the mechanism by which the animal grew, they couldn’t help him. The rabbit was agitated, and struggled, and its struggles exhausted Robert Gambling, who got weaker and weaker, all his strength going to the rabbit. I think they should have taken the risk and killed it, but they didn’t. The rabbit was stronger than Pale Robert, and lived off him until Robert died. After which, of course, the rabbit’s life was siphoned off by the power in Robert’s death.

  Some hours after tea on the day he was cremated I went outside and stood in the backyard looking up at the stars that seemed so cold and naked in the blue-black sky. And yet, I thought, their reality—their existence—is burning, and they will be dead when their fire is out, and they will grow cold. All over the sky there are stars forming; burning; fading; cold.

  Robert Gambling was now a gram or so of ash: and the rest gas. I stayed out a while longer, and found myself listening to the leaves unfold in October’s spring, and drinking in the sweetness on the night air. I felt a little guilty for being diverted so easily from Robert’s going—but not much.

  There Has To Be a First Time

  In all the enjoyment and excitement and playing around, the boys would try surreptitiously to touch us up—squeeze a breast or rest a hand on your bottom or manage to scrape their arm between your legs.

  I didn’t really have the softness that would allow me to let people do things to me when they felt like it. I was one who did things, not one of those to whom things were done, and I knew that if I expected to have any—or rather, enough—of the normal sex experiences I would need to overcome this fault.

  I resolved that when the first presentable boy wanted me, I would be obliging, however tempted I was to attack him for presumption.

  The First of the Month

  It was after school, Friday the first of December.

  He came up to me directly, then seemed to sheer off sideways, maintaining contact only with his eyes, which he let slide up and down my body. He moved forward, he moved back, getting different views. I looked him straight in the eyes, but he wouldn’t do the same to me. Finally he stood still in front of me, but his eyes never met mine. He seemed to want me to feed on the interest his eyes showed in my human form, never mind mental contact.

  His name was Roger Hardy. Don’t laugh. He was two years above me, in year ten. When we packed into Don Strong’s Beetle he was one of the kids under me. I guess touching me on the legs did something for him; it was no more to me than rubbing against a cat.

  As he performed this primitive mating display in front of me, I remembered I should have hurried home. Sonya, the neighbors’ Labrador, was due to have a litter, and I was to get whichever male pup I chose. Mother reminded me as I left the house.

  “If you’re late you might find they’ve all gone. Everyone wants males.”

  However, there was a male here who wanted me.

  It had to happen sometime. I don’t mean it was just a case of get it over with. Up to then the thing that all the older women had over us—even the hockey teacher—was that they’d had it, they knew what it was like. And most of us hadn’t. Even the Scripture lady had it every night, we assured each other.

  We’d had plenty of kissing, plenty of feeling, hands round our shoulders feeling a tit, or sliding off a knee down between the legs. They liked to touch us.

  “You know it’s got to be sometime. Well, this is it.” He put his arm around me. We were the same height. We went over to the grass behind the Assembly Hall.

  Roger told me very directly what he was going to do.

  “What I’ll do is this, I’ll take your pants down or you can, and I’ll put this little guy a little way in. Be sure to let’s know if it hurts.”

  He said the last bit with emphasis, to get me thinking about that aspect of it and to take my mind off what was actually happening, like an insurance salesman gets you thinking of loved ones and protection and takes your mind off the essential part of his operation, which is the regular installments of cash from you to him forever.

  He got me to lie down, pants off. I’d gone to the lavatory at lunchtime but I wish I’d had a wash. He said, “Hold these lucky coins for me.”

  He put one coin in each hand. They felt small, I had to clench my fist. Was he afraid I’d scratch if I had my hands free?

  His thing was out stiff already, I could see it pushing out the front of his grey school pants. He unzippered, and it burst past his white underpants. It looked like a thick blunt arrow, not as thick as father’s, or as brown.

  His face came close to mine and he grabbed round me with one arm, while he held his thing and steadied it to push it in me. When it touched me down there the end of it wasn’t hard, it was all soft. Like sponge rubber round the hard bonelike core.

  He pushed against me, but his thing didn’t find the entrance. He wiggled it about against the flat part that becomes the fold in your leg when you’ve got them together. But there was no way in there.

  I wondered if I ought to say anything. Like, “If at first you don’t,” or something. I didn’t want to laugh, but a small giggle wasn’t out of the question.

  I held the stupid coins and didn’t say anything. Flat on my back. It resembled an operation: he was the doctor.

  At last he got the idea to put his shoulder down on the ground beside my head, and leave his two hands free to work out the problem. I felt one hand at me, getting the hairs separated with a finger, searching for the lips. Labia major, the diagram said in the sex book. And labia minor.

  Then with the other hand he grabbed his thing and worked the tip around where there was some moisture. It wasn’t the moisture the book said was stimulated by this situation: it was sweat or the remnants of the pee I’d had after we were let out last period. Shortly he looked a bit less anxious and felt confident enough to bring one hand back to put it around my neck. I caught a familiar smell as the hand passed my face.

  He pushed. His face screwed up, it was hurting him a bit. I still didn’t like to say anything. Maybe it would put him off. I was supposed to just lie there and be sexy. I didn’t know how to be that, I guess it meant just being a female. That’s all they seem to need.

  It slipped in suddenly, and he looked relieved.

  “Did that hurt?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “No.”

  “Have you been done before?” I felt he wanted me to say no.

  “No.”

  “Do you ride horses?”

  “Yes. Do you?”

  “Got nothing to do with it if I ride horses. Only if you do.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Shut up and let me get on with it.”

  “I’ll pull away if you want to be like that.”

  “You won’t. You haven’t been fucked if you don’t cop the spunk.”

  It didn’t take long for his thing to yield results. He made several frantic grunts and one like a howl, that became joyful, then died away. He stopped, and breathed deeply, and eased back out of me a bit, but not right out. I couldn’t feel much, but I felt that much. I did feel—when the convulsive movements had stopped—the sudden expansions they call throbs. I think. I stayed still, wondering what the correct behavior was. I hadn’t noticed anything. I suppose I’d expected something burning hot in me, or something. I don’t know what I’d expected, really. The girls that had had it would never tell you the details you really wanted to know.

  Then I felt something wet dribbling down out of me, toward my bottom. I involuntarily turned a bit on one buttock, to have it run down more on the side. I don’t know why I did that. Respect for the seed of life, maybe.

  No. I wasn’t thinking of the seed of life, I only had my handkerchief to wipe myself, and I guess I didn’t want to wipe in there with it. There might be something left that would make a mess on my hanky.

  He was still in, and he was still stiff
.

  “Still got your lucky coins?”

  I opened my hands and showed him. His breath was not as neutral as father’s.

  He felt in my school tunic for anything in the way of breasts—there wasn’t much—grunted and put both arms round me and did it all again.

  I had to go back to a flat position. I felt the liquid drip down the crease of my bottom. I felt when it was on it. I didn’t like it.

  He pushed back and forward this time, a good deal harder and fiercer. He was more puffed at the end. Some of the time I felt his heart going. He made more noises. I don’t know how to describe them—these were rather like the reckless yells of someone excitedly going into danger.

  That made two, and his penis was still stiff. I heard a foot crunch on the edge of the bitumen path where it was crumbling into gravel. So did Roger Hardy. He must have thought it was one of the damn teachers. He twisted his body and wrenched away, stood up, zip-pered his school trousers, and ran.

  I pushed my school skirt down and pretended to be taking a rest. No one appeared. Whoever it was must have turned away up the fork in the path toward the school gate.

  Roger was gone. The intruder was gone. I remained, with a lucky coin in each hand. I put the coins in my schoolcase. I felt more wetness coming. I dabbed at it with my hanky, which was now quite sticky.

  I ought to throw it away, there were no initials on it. I sniffed at it. Funny smell, rather interesting in fact, though how much was mine I couldn’t tell. Their thing has to go past that part of you, so no wonder.

  I set off for home. Outside the school gates the other kids rushed at me from behind trees.

  “You sneaky bastards,” I greeted them. They threw themselves about.

  “Who fucked Al? Who fucked Al?” they chanted. “Spunky! Spunky!”

  Semen ran down my leg again. I felt it.

  When they’d calmed down, they asked why Roger Hardy ran off up the street.

  “Did you bash him?” they asked. I didn’t have to answer.

  “Did you get two lucky coins?” asked Sharon Jameson. I said yes.

  “He does that to everyone!” they roared. “They’re just the first coins he comes across in his pocket. They’re not lucky!”

  I was going to put them away in my drawer, just the same.

  When I’d crossed the bridge and lugged my schoolbag up to the Goughs’ house on the corner, Robert Gough was already at his piano practice. He was playing Mozart. I stopped. There was a recording playing, and he was playing over the pianist on the recording. It was K 488, the end of the first movement, where the orchestral part sounds like a huge mechanical process winding down and coming to a precisely synchronized stop. Robert took up the solo part after an excruciatingly long pause. Then the sad liquid notes lifted themselves slowly, so slowly, into their song, and their song was like something sung after heavy tears have gone, but only after.

  I pulled myself away from it. That pale, skinny little bastard! I would never be able to play like that. I was glad when I could hear it no longer.

  “You missed seeing the puppy being born,” mother said, when I got in the door.

  “When did it come?”

  “Twenty minutes ago.”

  “Oh no!” I complained. “Why did it have to be then!”

  “If you’d come at the right time you’d have seen it all,” she observed with calm. “I reminded you this morning.”

  But I didn’t come at the right time.

  I went next door to look at the puppy. I called him Creep. My hanky, when it dried, felt quite stiff. And had an interesting smell.

  As mother was speaking to me critically about not being there for the birth, there were a few moments when we were still enough, both of us, for me to look straight into her eyes, and there, sideways on as she was to the light, I saw myself reflected in the shiny center of her eyes, a light and glittering figure on her pupils.

  And yet, looking into those eyes, I was reminded of a mirror, a mirror with no eyes, a mirror that could not see me.

  Next day in the playground Roger directed a penetrating look toward my thighs and the place where, if they were scissor blades, they would cut things.

  One of the teachers saw this exchange and looked also. Others followed the eyes. I was some distance away, my back against the brick wall, standing in the sun outside the science block.

  Gradually, more and more of the student population turned and looked at the space between my thighs that males are so interested in. I spread my legs, enjoying the attention.

  After a minute I was tired of this and crossed my legs and went on talking to Marie-Louise.

  Monday afternoon he did it again. The girls waited for me in the same place, little bitches.

  He tried to give me two more coins.

  “Hold these two lucky coins for me.”

  “You said that before.”

  “Did I?”

  I’m surprised he remembered my face.

  He unzippered. I watched, my pants in a neat ball stuffed down the front of my school tunic.

  There it was, large as life. He had less trouble getting it in. He plunged to and fro smugly. I went home with another hanky stiffened up. Father didn’t notice when he put the washing in the machine.

  I thought at first I was abnormal when I didn’t like it much. I don’t mean I disliked it, there was hardly anything to dislike, unless you minded strange breath blowing in your face. I mean there was nothing in it that would make you jump up and down in one spot and clap your hands with delight. It was a very grey and indeterminate consolation to promise myself that I would persist until I got the taste for it.

  But I had had it: that was the main thing. No one could laugh at me for being scared or reluctant or inexperienced.

  That was the thing bothering me. I had invaginated a male, and I didn’t feel a thing. I mean literally. I knew there are no nerve-ends in the vagina, but somehow I expected something. There should have been a tingling at least, or the game wasn’t fair. All I had, and it wasn’t all the time, was a feeling of fullness. And, of course, the more vigorous strokes when the male pubic bone struck mine, cushioned only by the soft flesh and the hair.

  Pinch and a punch

  For the first of the month.

  Clotted Cream

  Tuesday afternoon my greatest wish was to see some of it. I said as much to Roger.

  “What?” he said aggressively. “This is what you’ll see!” fishing for it.

  I punched him in the side, where his lowest rib was.

  “Don’t get aggressive with me,” I warned him. “Or I’ll cut the stupid thing off!”

  He seemed alarmed, as well he might.

  “All I want to do is see it. I mean just some of it,” I said reasonably. “What does it take to get it to come out?”

  He relaxed, obviously glad we were talking of his precious penis.

  “Well, you could rub up and down it,” he said. “Specially if you have something a bit slippery.”

  I nodded, spat into my hands, and rubbed the sticky spit up and down. It elevated itself to its maximum, and from there on it was a minute or two and more spit than I had—he had to contribute—until he seemed to twist his body, bring his legs together somewhat, and said, “Ooooh. Now . . !”

  Next second it was a well spurting. It wasn’t terribly pleasant having it in my hands, but science is science. It was clotted. Not a consistent clotting: an uneven one. And the color white, but not a thick white, rather transparent in parts. Along with the clotted part there was a fine clear liquid, that felt much more slippery than the other material. It was the same as father’s, except there was more, and it spurted higher.

  I’d have saved myself all this trouble if I’d been with the other girls when they did it to little half-blind Fred.

  Somehow, after the first time, everyone seemed to know. I saw people glance at me on the way to school, even teachers at school, with that look in their eye, a knowing mixture of respect and slight contem
pt. How clever of them to manage it!

  I didn’t see the boys, or girls either, going round telling others, but more and more seemed to know. As if I carried a mark on me that identified me as someone who’d had it and therefore was in the running to be had.

  Sale Time

  After school resumed, and I was in year nine, Leonard Digges bought me off Roger Hardy. He gave forty dollars for me. Only forty!

  Leonard was a bigger boy, in year twelve. Perhaps that had something to do with such a cheap rate.

  “I don’t mind,” Roger said. “It’s all cop. I got you for nought. And when I’m in sixth I’ll have to pay younger kids to break ’em in for me.” And he went off looking for a first year kid. It was the time for sales of this kind, and other girls were offering themselves like obliging animals to boys they thought they might like. They weren’t always allowed to transfer.

  “I’m no animal,” Rosemary said when I asked her whose she was.

  When Leonard had me in his car, I was worried about people looking in, and let my school tunic fall down over me, which annoyed him. He liked us both to be able to see it going in and out.

  When he got in I watched his face for any sign that he thought I was satisfactory or otherwise. His expression told me nothing, and when he’d finished he said nothing, just took it out and wiped it on his handkerchief.

  I was glad when Hugh Holland bought me. He was a small rich kid and paid a hundred dollars for me. Leonard tried to lean on him and get more, but Hugh had the money in crisp twenties and went to put them back in his pocket and turn away, and that was too much for Leonard.

  It sounds disgraceful, I know, but I took the view that it was their private transaction. For me it was a passport to experience.