In One Person

by John Irving

  "It feels nice," I told her. I wasn't lying; the training word had triggered something, though I wasn't sure exactly what I held in the palm of my hand. (I mean, how much of what I felt was her breast--or was it mostly the bra?)

  Elaine, as if heralding what our future relationship would become, must have read my mind, for she said--as always, loud and clear--"There's more padding than breast, if you want to know the truth, Billy. Here, I'll show you," she said; she sat up and unbuttoned the white shirt, slipping it off her shoulders.

  It was a pretty bra, more pearl-gray than white, and when she reached behind her back to unfasten it, her bra seemed to expand. I had only a glimpse of her small, pointy breasts before she put her shirt back on; her nipples were bigger than any boy's, and those darker-colored rings around the nipples--the areolae, another unpronounceable plural!--were almost as big as her breasts. But while Elaine was buttoning her shirt, it was her bra--now on the bed, between us--that captured my attention. I picked it up; the soft, breast-shaped pads were sewn into the silky fabric. To my surprise, I instantly wanted to try it on--I wanted to know what it felt like to wear a bra. But I was no more honest about this feeling than I'd been about those other desires I had withheld from my friend Elaine.

  It was only the slightest deviation from the norm that signaled to me a fallen boundary in our emerging relationship: As always, Elaine had left the top two buttons of her boy's dress shirt unbuttoned, but this time she'd also left the bottommost button unbuttoned. My hand slipped more easily under her untucked shirt; it was the real thing (what little there was of it) that fit so perfectly in my palm.

  "I don't know about you, Billy," Elaine said, as we lay face-to-face on one of her pillows, "but I had always imagined a boy touching my breasts for the first time as messier than it actually is."

  "Messier," I repeated. I must have been stalling.

  I was remembering Dr. Harlow's annual morning-meeting talk to us boys, concerning our treatable afflictions; I was recalling that "an unwelcome sexual attraction to other boys and men" fell into this dubiously curable category.

  I must have repressed the annual morning-meeting presentation of Dr. Grau--"Herr Doktor" Grau, as we boys called Favorite River's school psychiatrist. Dr. Grau gave us the same lunatic spiel every year--how we were all of an age of arrested development, "frozen," the Herr Doktor said, "like bugs in amber." (By our frightened expressions, we boys could tell that not all of us had seen bugs in amber--or even knew what they were.) "You are in the polymorphous-perverse phase," Dr. Grau assured us. "It is only natural, at this phase, that you exhibit infantile sexual tendencies, in which the genitals are not yet identified as the sole or principal sexual organs." (But how could we fail to recognize such an obvious thing about our genitals? we boys thought with alarm.) "At this phase," Herr Doktor Grau continued, "coitus is not necessarily the recognizable goal of erotic activity." (Then why did we think about coitus nonstop? we boys wondered with dread.) "You are experiencing pregenital libidinal fixations," old Grau told us, as if this were somehow reassuring. (He also taught German at the academy, in the same unintelligible fashion.) "You must come talk to me about these fixations," the old Austrian always concluded. (No boy I knew at Favorite River admitted to having such fixations; no one I knew ever talked to Dr. Grau about anything!)

  Richard Abbott told me and the cast of The Tempest that Ariel's gender was "polymorphous--more a matter of habiliment than anything organic." This later led Richard to conclude that the gender of the character I played was "mutable," and I was further confused regarding my (and Ariel's) sexual orientation.

  Yet, when I asked Richard if he meant anything at all resembling the "polymorphous-perverse phase" of the "bugs in amber" bullshit Dr. Grau had gone on (and on) about in morning meeting, Richard adamantly denied there was any connection.

  "No one listens to old Grau, Bill," Richard had told me. "Don't you listen to him, either."

  Wise advice--but while it was possible not to heed what Dr. Grau said, we boys were forced to hear him. And, lying next to Elaine, with my hand on her bare breast, and our tongues once more entangled in a way that made us imagine what the next most erotic thing to do with each other was, I became aware of my growing erection.

  With our mouths still pressed together, Elaine managed to ask: "Are you getting a hard-on yet?" Yes, I was, and I'd noted Elaine's impatience in her overloud utterance of the yet word, but my confusion was such that I was unsure what had initiated my erection.

  Yes, the French kissing was exciting, and (to this day) the touch of a woman's bare breasts is not something I am indifferent to; yet I believe my hard-on began when I imagined wearing Elaine's padded bra. At that moment, wasn't I exhibiting the "infantile sexual tendencies" Dr. Grau had warned us boys about?

  But all I said to Elaine, in the midst of our darting tongues, was a strangled-sounding "Yes!"

  This time, when Elaine broke free from me, she bit my lower lip in the hurried-up process. "You actually have a boner," Elaine said to me, seriously.

  "Yes, I actually do," I admitted. I felt my lower lip, to be sure I wasn't bleeding. (I was looking all around for her bra.)

  "Oh, God--I don't want to see it!" Elaine cried. This was sexually confusing to me, too. I hadn't suggested showing my hard-on to her! I didn't want her to see it. In fact, I would have been embarrassed for her to see it; I thought it would probably disappoint her, or make her laugh (or throw up).

  "Maybe I could just touch it," Elaine considered, more thoughtfully. "I don't mean your bare boner!" she quickly added. "Maybe I could just feel it--I mean, through your clothes."

  "Sure--why not?" I said, as casually as I could, though I would wonder (for years) if anyone else ever went through a sexual initiation of such a highly negotiated kind.

  The boys at Favorite River Academy were not permitted to wear jeans; dungarees, as we called them then, were not allowed in class or in the dining hall, where we were obliged to wear coats and ties. Most boys wore khakis, or--in the winter months--flannel trousers or corduroys. I was wearing a baggy pair of corduroys on this January Saturday night. It was a comfortable pair of pants to have a boner in, but I was also wearing Jockey briefs, and they were increasingly uncomfortable. Maybe it was the only men's underwear you could buy in Vermont in 1960--white Jockey briefs. (I don't know; at the time, my mom still bought all my clothes.)

  I'd seen Kittredge's underwear, at the gym--blue cotton boxers, the color of a blue dress shirt. Maybe his French mother had bought them in Paris, or in New York. "That woman has to be his mother," Elaine had said. "She could be Kittredge, if she didn't have those breasts--that woman would know where to buy boxers like that." And Kittredge's blue boxers were pressed; this wasn't an affectation of Kittredge's, because the school laundry pressed everything--not just your trousers and dress shirts, but even your underwear and your stupid socks. (This was talked about with a derision almost equal to that assigned to the advice of Dr. Harlow and Dr. Grau.)

  Notwithstanding this social history, my first erection inspired by Elaine Hadley (or by her bra) was stiffening in a tight-fitting pair of Jockey briefs, which were threatening to cut off circulation to my "inspired" hard-on. Elaine--with an aggressiveness I was unprepared for--suddenly put her hand on those very genitals that Dr. Grau had told us we'd "not yet identified" as our own goddamn sexual organs! There was no question in my mind concerning what and where my "sole or principal sexual organs" were, and when Elaine grabbed hold of them, I flinched.

  "Oh . . . my . . . God!" Elaine cried, momentarily deafening the nearer of my ears. "I can't imagine what having one of those is like!"

  This was sexually confusing, too. Did Elaine mean that she couldn't imagine what having a penis inside her was like, or did Elaine mean that she couldn't imagine being a boy and having her own penis? I didn't ask. I was relieved that she'd released my balls from her not inconsiderable grasp, but Elaine held fast to my penis, and I continued to fondle her breasts. Had we resumed the Frenc
h kissing where we'd left off, there's no telling what the aforementioned "gathering momentum" might have led to, but in fact we'd just begun to kiss again--tentatively, at first, with only the tips of our tongues making contact. I watched Elaine close her eyes, and I closed mine.

  Thus I discovered that it was possible to be holding Elaine Hadley's breast while I imagined I was fondling an equally permissive Miss Frost. (Miss Frost's breasts would only be slightly bigger than Elaine's, I had long imagined.) With my eyes closed, I could even conceive that the fierce grip of Elaine's small hand on my penis was in truth Miss Frost's far bigger hand--in which case, Miss Frost must have been restraining herself. And, as the French kissing quickened--both Elaine and I were soon breathless--I fantasized that it was Miss Frost's long tongue thrusting against mine, and that we were entwined on the brass bed in her basement hideaway in the First Sister Public Library.

  When the diesel fumes from the first of the returning team buses reached the cracked-open window of Elaine's fifth-floor room, I managed to think I was smelling the oil-burning furnace next to Miss Frost's former coal bin of a bedroom. When I opened my eyes, I half expected to be face-to-face with Miss Frost, but there instead was my friend Elaine Hadley, with her eyes tightly closed.

  All the time I'd been imagining Miss Frost, it had not occurred to me that Elaine might have been imagining, too. Not surprisingly, the name on her lips, which she somehow managed to say in my mouth, was "Kittredge!" (Elaine had correctly identified the diesel fumes from the returning team bus; she was wondering if it was the wrestling-team bus, because she'd been imagining Kittredge while I was imagining Miss Frost.)

  Elaine's eyes were wide open now. I must have looked as guilty as she did. There was a pulse in my penis; if I could feel it throbbing, I knew that Elaine could feel it, too.

  "Your heart's beating, Billy," she said.

  "That's not my heart," I told her.

  "Yes, it is--your heart is beating in your penis," Elaine said. "Do all boys' hearts beat there?"

  "I can't speak for other boys," I answered. But she'd let go of my penis, and had rolled away from me.

  There was more than one parked bus at the gym with its diesel engine running; the flickering light from the movie projector was still blinking from the basketball court, and the meaningless shouts and whoops of the returning jocks echoed in the dormitory quadrangle--the wrestlers were among them, maybe, or maybe not.

  Elaine now lay on the bed with her forehead almost touching the windowsill, where the draft of cold air from the cracked-open window was the coldest. "When I was kissing you, and holding your penis, and you were touching my breasts, I was thinking of Kittredge--that bastard," Elaine told me.

  "I know--it's okay," I said to her. I knew what a good and truthful friend she was, but--even so--I couldn't tell her that I'd been thinking of Miss Frost.

  "No, it's not okay," Elaine said; she was crying.

  Elaine was lying on her side at the foot of her bed, facing the window, and I stretched out behind her with my chest flush to her back; I could kiss the back of her neck that way, and (with one hand) I could manage to touch her breasts under her untucked shirt. The heartbeat in my penis was still pounding away. Through her jeans, through my corduroy pants, I doubted that Elaine could detect the pulse in my penis, though I had pressed myself against her and she'd thrust her small bum into me.

  Elaine had a boy's nonexistent bottom, and no hips to speak of; she was wearing a pair of boy's dungarees (to go with her boy's shirt), and I suddenly thought, as I kissed her neck and her damp hair, that Elaine actually smelled like a boy, too. After all, she'd been sweating; she wore no perfume, no makeup of any kind, not even lipstick, and here I was rubbing myself against her boyish bum.

  "You still have a hard-on, don't you?" she asked me.

  "Yes," I said. I was embarrassed that I couldn't stop rubbing against her, but Elaine was moving her hips; she was rubbing against me, too.

  "It's okay--what you're doing," Elaine told me.

  "No, it's not okay," I said, but I lacked the conviction I'd heard in Elaine's voice--when, only a moment ago, she'd said the same thing to me. (What I meant, of course, was that I was thinking of Kittredge, too.)

  Miss Frost was a big woman; she was broad-shouldered, and her hips were wide. Miss Frost did not have a young boy's bum; by no stretch of my imagination was I thinking of Miss Frost while I rubbed myself against Elaine Hadley, who was quietly crying.

  "No, really, it's okay--I like it, too," Elaine was saying softly, when we both heard Kittredge calling from the quad.

  "My sweet Naples--is that your blue light burning?" Kittredge called. I felt Elaine's body stiffen. There were other boys' voices in the quadrangle--in the area of Tilley, the jock dorm--but only Kittredge's voice stood out distinctly.

  "I told you he wouldn't watch the end of a Western--that bastard," Elaine whispered to me.

  "Oh, Naples--is your blue light a beacon for me?" Kittredge called. "Are you still a maid, Naples, or a maid no more?" he called out. (I would realize, one day, that Kittredge was mock-Shakespearean--a kind of faux Shakespeare--to his core.)

  Elaine was sobbing when she reached to turn off her lamp with the dark-blue shade. When she thrust herself back into me, her sobs were louder; she was grunting as she rubbed against me. Her sobs and grunts were strangely commingled, not unlike the yelps a dog makes when it's dreaming.

  "Don't let him get to you, Elaine--he's such an asshole," I whispered in her ear.

  "Shhh!" she hushed me. "No actual talking," she said breathlessly, between her half-strangled cries.

  "Is that you, Naples?" Kittredge called to her. "Lights out so soon? To bed alone, alas!"

  My dress shirt had come untucked from my corduroys; it must have been the incessant rubbing. The shirt was blue--the same color as Kittredge's boxers, I was thinking. Elaine began to moan. "Keep doing it! Do it harder!" she moaned. "Yes! Like that--God, don't stop!" she cried loudly.

  I could see her breath in that cold razor of air from the open window; I was grinding against her for what seemed the longest time, before I realized what I was saying. "Like that?" I kept asking her. "Like that?" (No actual talking, as Elaine had requested, but our voices were being broadcast to the quadrangle of dorms--all the way to Tilley and the gym, where the returning team buses were still unloading.)

  The flickering light from the movie projector had stopped; the windows of the basketball court were in darkness. The Western was over; the gun smoke from the shoot-out had drifted away--like the Favorite River boys, drifting back to their dormitories, but not Kittredge.

  "Cut it out, Naples!" Kittredge called. "Are you there, too, Nymph?" he called to me.

  Elaine had begun a prolonged, orgasmic scream. She would say later: "More like childbirth than orgasm, or so I imagine--I'm never having any children. Have you seen the size of babies' heads?" she asked me.

  Her caterwauling may have sounded like an orgasm to Kittredge. Elaine and I were still straightening out the bedcovers when we heard the knock on the door from the dormitory hall.

  "God, where's my bra?" Elaine asked; she couldn't find it in the bedcovers, but she wouldn't have had time to put it on, anyway. (She had to answer the door.)

  "It's him," I warned her.

  "Of course it is," she said. She went into the living room of the apartment; she looked at herself in the long mirror, in the foyer, before opening the door.

  I found her bra on the bed; it had been lost in the crazy patterns of the rumpled quilt, but I quickly stuffed it into my Jockey briefs. My erection had completely subsided; there was more room for Elaine's little bra in my briefs than there had been for my hard-on.

  "I wanted to be sure you were all right," I heard Kittredge saying to Elaine. "I was afraid there was a fire, or something."

  "There was a fire, all right, but I'm fine," Elaine told him.

  I came out of Elaine's bedroom. She'd not invited Kittredge into the apartment; he stood in the doorway
to the dorm. Some of the Bancroft boys scurried by in the hall, peering into the foyer.

  "So you're here, too, Nymph," Kittredge said to me.

  I saw that he had a fresh mat burn on one cheek, but the mat burn made him no less cocksure than before.

  "I suppose you won your match," I said to him.

  "That's right, Nymph," he said, but he kept looking at Elaine. Because her shirt was white, you could see her nipples through the fabric, and the darker rings around her nipples--those unpronounceable areolae--looked like wine stains on her fair skin.

  "This doesn't look good, Naples. Where's your bra?" Kittredge asked her.

  Elaine smiled at me. "Did you find it?" she asked me.

  "I didn't really look all that hard for it," I lied.

  "You should think about your reputation, Naples," Kittredge told her. This was a new tack for him; it caught both Elaine and me off-guard.

  "There's nothing wrong with my reputation," Elaine said defensively.

  "You should think about her reputation, too, Nymph," Kittredge told me. "A girl can't get her reputation back--if you know what I mean."

  "I didn't know you were such a prude," Elaine said to him, but I could tell that the reputation word--or everything Kittredge had insinuated about it--truly upset her.

  "I'm not a prude, Naples," he said, smiling at her. It was a smile you give a girl when you're alone with her; I could see that she'd allowed him to get to her.

  "I was just faking it, Kittredge!" she yelled at him. "I was just acting--we both were!" she shouted.

  "It didn't sound like acting--not entirely," he said to her. "You have to be careful who you pretend to be, Nymph," Kittredge said to me, but he kept looking at Elaine as if he were alone with her.

  "Well, if you'll excuse me, Kittredge, I should find my bra and put it on before my parents come home--you should go, too, Billy," Elaine said to me, but she never took her eyes off Kittredge. Neither of them looked at me.

  It was not yet eleven o'clock when Kittredge and I stepped into the fifth-floor hall of the dorm; the Bancroft boys who were loitering in the hall, or gawking at Kittredge from the open doorways of their rooms, were clearly shocked to see him. "Did you win again?" some kid asked him. Kittredge just nodded.