by Alice Adams
That winter, curiously, there was also a lot of talk about virginity in Megan’s Criticism of Poetry class. It came up particularly in discussions of Donne, and the sexual symbolism in the religious poetry: “I never shall be chaste, unless you ravish me.” And then, when they got to Auden, there was the difficult “distortions of ingrown virginity.” Well.
The professor, a dark, very pale-skinned man, almost luminous with intensity, had an odd gesture: with both hands stiffly outstretched before him, in a sudden motion he would dip them down, like opposing wings; he did this often, as he spoke of Donne. He talked about “the breaking through of virginity into wholeness,” a phrase that resounded in Megan’s eagerly receptive mind. Breaking through, virginity into wholeness.
Walking back along Garden Street to the Radcliffe dorms, in the wild blue air of a New England spring, Megan decides that what she and George have been doing is really dirty: perverted, wrong. All that squirming around together, tugging inside constricting clothes, pretending just to kiss. She decides that the next time she sees George they will go all the way. They will “do it.”
However, as she crosses Cambridge Common, past the benches of young wives, some with babies or little children, others pregnant, Megan then begins to think of practicalities: just how will she go about altering their usual procedures, especially if George really does not want to do it? As she thinks of it, he is the one who has remained untouched; she has never touched him there, touched his, uh, thing. He is always fully clothed, his khakis firmly zipped. Whereas lately, desperately, Megan has left off wearing a panty girdle; she bought herself some open-legged silk panties, to be worn with a garter belt, the sort that Lavinia wears, so that he can more easily touch her. There. How possibly could she be more available, should he want to enter her? Does she have to reach for him, unzip and grab? Can men be raped?
She smiles to herself, at that thought, and then she thinks, Well, maybe George just isn’t the one. But I have to stop being a virgin. A technical virgin.
Arrived back at the Radcliffe quad, and approaching Barnard Hall, Megan sees a man in khakis, a soldier, sitting on the front steps, and for an instant her silly heart leaps up at the thought that it could be George.
It is not George, of course, but someone smaller and thinner and far messier than George could ever be. Light brown curly hair, a big nose, thin face, and large, intense blue eyes. A face, in fact, that Megan recognizes, having so often seen its picture, on Janet Cohen’s bureau. Without thinking, Megan says, “Oh! You’re Adam Marr!” A severe infection on his left foot has brought Adam home from the Pacific.
“You want my autograph?” This comes in an exaggerated Brooklyn accent, with an Irish grin.
“Oh. I’m, uh, a friend of Janet’s. Megan Greene.” Abashed, Megan has muttered her name.
But Adam caught it. “Well, Megan Greene.” He looks her over, as Megan stares at his eyes. She is thinking that she has never before, on anyone, seen such a hot, hot blue; he has literally burning eyes.
Still not getting up, still looking at her, hard, Adam Marr then pronounces, “You know, Megan Greene—by the way, I like your name, are you going to be a writer?—if you’d take off a few pounds, you’d be one terrific tomato.”
He has a fairly deep, very attractive voice; the voice and the grin combine to make what he has just said inoffensive, so that Megan is more pleased than not. She is flattered, actually, at the attention being paid her.
She says, “I guess. I mean, I know I should lose some weight.”
“Yeah. Shed the baby fat along with the cherry.” Adam has said this in, again, a burlesque Brooklynese, and then, somewhat jarringly, he continues in what Megan has learned to recognize as “Harvard.” “But actually,” he says, “it’s nice to see a few young virgins around these days.” The grin appears and remains.
How can he tell, though; does it show, her “ingrown virginity?” Would he say such a thing to Lavinia? (Lavinia too is still a virgin, Megan is sure.) Wondering, and blushing, Megan is at the same time thinking that Adam Marr’s eyes are very sexy; he is an exceptionally sexy-looking boy—young man. Of course he and Janet do it. They go all the way. Make love.
“Well, I guess Janet will be along soon,” Megan manages to say. “I’d better go in and check my mail.”
“Okay. See you later, Megan Greene.”
“Well. Bye.” He is somehow hard to leave, perhaps because he continues to look at her, in his particular way. Megan feels herself transfixed there, but at last she does walk past him, faintly smiling, and she pushes open the front door.
Thinking of Adam Marr, and wondering if she should have stayed on and talked to him, Megan goes over to the wall of pigeonholes, where the mail is distributed.
In her box are a letter from her mother (that too familiar hand, small and rounded, reaching forward) and a postcard, in a hand that she also recognizes instantly, although she has seen it only once before, on another card. It is George’s writing, and with a swift closing of her heart, like a fist, Megan knows that what it says will cause her pain.
“Guess what?” the postcard begins; as on the postcard in which he wished her a Merry Christmas, there is no salutation. “It seems I’m going to be married, in June. Girl name of Connie. Then probably OCS. Hope you’re well and happy. All best wishes. George Wharton.”
“Men are very different from women, you have to remember that,” says Lavinia to Megan, that afternoon. Megan has been crying, in a messy, uncontrolled way; she still is, off and on.
“Actually,” Lavinia continues kindly, “I had heard something from Potter Cobb, about a girl named Connie, and George Wharton. But you know how people talk, it could have meant absolutely nothing. She could have been just some skiing pal, or something. And I knew if I said anything you’d be upset. Honestly, Megan—”
“But Christ,” Megan then gets out, between large gulped sobs, “what did he think we were doing? What was all that about?”
Cool Lavinia, in what has come to seem her habitual white, looks speculatively at Megan. “Now Megan, you’re not going to tell me—”
It is quite clear what she has meant, and so Megan answers, “No, of course we didn’t. But you know, almost. I just don’t see how he could.”
“Men are different,” Lavinia repeats, with emphasis. Her gray eyes are serious, and genuinely pained. She still suffers, thinking of Gordon Shaughnessey, although she is less pained by his death than by his previous defection (it has even occurred to her that if he had not died he might have married Marge); but fortunately no one, not even Peg, or Potter, knows how things were between them, at the end.
“I guess,” sniffs Megan.
“My old pal Kitty always says that the best cure for one man is to go out and neck with another,” says Lavinia, smiling wanly.
“Oh, maybe. But I really don’t feel like doing that. And I hardly know anyone else,” Megan accurately says. “But do you think that’s true? I mean, have you ever?”
“No, but I’m sure thinking about it.” Lavinia’s smile, which tearful Megan does not quite see, is both bitter and determined. It is high time that she gave up this pretense of mourning for Gordon’s death, Lavinia thinks, and next she thinks, Well, how about Potter, who is really in love with her, and rich? Her father would like Potter, very much.
“Janet Cohen’s going to fix me up with her brother, he’s at MIT,” says Megan, a little later, thoughtlessly having forgotten Lavinia’s not liking Janet.
And so Lavinia frowns. “Now Megan, you know that Janet is all very well, I’m sure she’s perfectly nice. But I’ve told you, you must not start going out with Jews. What you don’t know is, if you go out with one of them, all his friends will be after you.”
“But what’s wrong with that?” Megan has a sudden, vastly cheering image of herself, pursued by a host of Jewish men, all dark and brilliant and mysterious. And sexy, all of them: no problems there with zippers, no more ingrown virginity, her own virginity broken through into whol
eness. And everyone knows that Jewish boys are smarter; they have to be if they get into Harvard, what with quotas. And often they like music, even poetry.
A quick side thought distracts her then: Megan wonders, Does Irish Adam Marr have this same view of Jewish girls? Is Janet sexy for Adam, in a way that an Irish girl could never be?
“You really don’t understand about Jews,” Lavinia is saying. “It may be different in California. But if you’d ever lived in a big Eastern city, you’d know what they’re like.”
Megan begins to cry again.
7
After a couple of weeks, although occasionally a poem or certain music (Janet Cohen playing Beethoven quartets, on her record player) can still move Megan to tears, and although she still ascribes that emotion, that sense of loss and yearning, to the loss of George Wharton, in another way Megan feels considerably better for having digested his cruel announcement. She is given, really, neither to excessive mourning nor to self-pity, and she grasps at her sense of relief, at no longer jumping at the sound of the phone, or staying in the dorm and hoping he will call (well, she never did too much of that). Now she is free to do anything that anyone suggests.
Unfortunately, though, for a while, no one makes an interesting or plausible suggestion. It somehow does not work out for her to meet Janet Cohen’s brother, who is involved with a girl at Wellesley, or somewhere.
As she walks across the Yard, and in and out of classrooms, walks around the Square, Megan stares at the numerous handsome men and boys, and she thinks, Why is it that no one sees how available I am? Why isn’t it clear that I don’t choose to be an ingrown virgin?
She takes to wearing more makeup, pancake and mascara, and darker lipstick, even to classes, until Lavinia tells her to stop. “Megan, it isn’t you, you look kind of scary like that, and a little cheap.” Which was very likely true.
It is also possible, Megan later considers, that sheer need shows on her face, which could well be frightening, especially to boys as inexperienced as she herself is. She washes off her face, and she concentrates on a carefree look, a happy person who does not need anyone. She works on losing weight.
There is a man, though, who seems to be following her around. He is an instructor in her survey philosophy course, at Harvard what is called a section man. Mr. Jacoby, Simon Jacoby, who is at least ten years older than Megan. But everywhere she turns, there he is: in the poetry section of the book department at the Coop; in St. Clair’s; back and forth across the Yard—there he is, slyly ducking his head, saying, “Oh, Miss Greene. Good morning.”
Well, it can’t be an accident, can it? this always being where she is? Megan decides that in some way she will confront him; well, what the hell, she thinks. And so, late one morning in the Coop, in front of the few shelves of new poetry, new thin volumes of Auden and Spender and Delmore Schwartz, she says, “Oh, good morning, Mr. Jacoby,” with a very wide, blue-eyed California smile.
“Oh, Miss Greene, how are you? It’s, uh, really spring now, isn’t it?”
Megan agrees, having planned to agree to almost anything. She offers suggestively, “It’s really hard to study in this weather, though.”
He smiles and shrugs, his gesture saying, Yes, how true, how very right you are. “I live out near Concord,” he tells her. “I keep all the windows open and the country smells are, uh, really terrific. But very distracting. I’m from New York City,” he adds.
You are really terrific, and very distracting, is what Megan understands is really being said to her. And so she only smiles, in a pleased, receptive way. So that he has to continue.
“I don’t suppose,” he begins, “uh, would you ever be interested in a drive out there? Out to Concord?”
If you’ll promise to take me to bed, take off all my clothes, and really make love to me. These words occur to Megan, who does not say them, of course, but they make her smile instead—perhaps seductively. “Oh, I’d love to,” she says, quite possibly with more fervor than Simon Jacoby had expected.
“Well, um, are you busy this afternoon?”
She is not, and twenty minutes later—after a brief stop at Barnard Hall, ostensibly for Megan to pick up a sweater, but during which she actually changes from an ugly panty girdle to the silk pants originally bought for George’s ineptly probing hands—twenty minutes later they are racing along, over the wide highways, the broad and gentle hills that lead out to Concord.
Simon’s car is an impressively long, open, dark gray convertible, with red leather lining, smelling new. To Megan it is an exciting, almost an erotic smell, and it is reassuring to her that Simon Jacoby should turn out to be rich, as well as Jewish and interested in poetry, probably music. And maybe sex.
The true countryside, soon reached in that heavy, powerful car, is alive with spring: in steep meadows the long gray-brown grasses, beaten down all winter by the snow, now seem visibly to rise. White water leaps up from the swollen, rushing brooks, and on fruit trees the newest, palest boughs of blossoms sway very gently in the breeze.
Simon’s house is an odd box of glass and steel, set up on what look like stilts, at the edge of some thick dark woods. “I know, it’s terribly Bauhaus,” he explains (to Megan, incomprehensibly) as they leave the car and approach this structure. “Some students of Breuer’s did it for kicks, I guess. But the price is right—some friends of my parents own it. I like the privacy and the isolation. Sometimes.”
“There’s a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the Stanford campus,” Megan offers. “It’s really odd.”
Going up the steps Simon takes her arm, and at that very slight touch Megan thinks, Ah, good.
There is not much furniture inside, just bookcases lining the one wall not made of glass, a big desk, a record-playing machine, and records. On the floor there is a wide, wide mattress, covered over with bright wool rugs. Nowhere to sit but on that mattress, and so Megan does sit there; she perches rather primly, and crosses her legs.
Simon hovers about her; this host-guest phase of their time together was not quite anticipated by either of them. Nervously, Simon says, “I didn’t even ask, are you hungry? I always keep a lot of snacks around.”
Megan has never been less hungry in her life, and so she can assure him, “Actually not.” And, in a nice-guest way she remarks, “It’s really pretty here. The woods.”
“It was wonderful last winter,” he tells her. “The snow. Little animals.” And then, still an uneasy host and a not-quite-experienced seducer, “Well, maybe some wine? We can eat something later, if you want.”
“Okay. Swell.”
He goes into another room, as Megan thinks, This is extremely interesting—I am perfectly happy, I am having a good time, and it’s less than a month since I got the postcard from George. Am I shallow? or what?
Simon comes back with a tall green bottle on a silver tray, two glasses, a small dish of peanuts. He opens the bottle and pours, and hands Megan a pale yellow glass. He says, Cheers.
Megan sips. It is cold and a little sour, but she smiles, and is about to say, What delicious wine, when Simon leans toward her. “You’ll have to put down your glass,” he tells her. “I can’t wait another minute to kiss you.”
At some moment, after they have made love for the third or perhaps the fourth time (their passages together tend to continue, or to merge), Simon begins to talk; he is naked, they both are, between fine sheets, beneath dark blankets. “I have to tell you, Megan,” he says, raised up on an elbow, looking down at her, “you are the most terrifically amazing woman. You really are. I mean, you come the minute I do, or before. You’re a living sexual fantasy, you know that? And you feel so smooth and slick, oh, beautiful! Do you have any idea how extraordinary you are? Most women—well, you’re really exceptional.”
In a dazed, pleased way Megan smiles up at him; evidently he could not tell that she was a virgin, which she is sure is just as well. He may even think she has spent a lot of afternoons like this, with men she picks up in bookstores (which is, come to t
hink of it, exactly where she also met George Wharton, in the Stanford Bookstore). Curiously, it is perfectly all right with her if he does make these assumptions. If only there were something good to eat she would be perfectly happy, Megan thinks.
“I haven’t even let you drink your wine,” exclaims Simon, just then. And, telepathically—or perhaps he too is hungry?—“Couldn’t you eat something now? Let me fix us a snack.”
“Oh, sure,” politely agrees Megan. “That would be great.” She watches with interest as he emerges from under the bedclothes (on the way in, as it were, they were both too hurried to look at each other). Now she observes his thin dark muscular back, flat buttocks, black line between buttocks, black pubic hair. He has bent over to look for something on the floor, which he does not find. He mutters, Shit, and then, standing up, he turns to her. “I seem to have lost my shorts,” he tells her.
It is pointing straight up, pointing toward her. Dark red, with an interesting tulip-shaped head. Simon looks down at himself, and he smiles as he says, “You see? You’re a witch. A sex witch.”
He gets back into bed with her, and they do it again.
A little later he says, “Oh, here’re my shorts. No wonder.”
Getting up, he puts them on, and this time he makes it into the next room, which must be the kitchen.
Lying there alone, still somewhat dazed, Megan considers what he has told her: Could it be true, that she is in some way amazing? some sexual way? Certainly, if all women experienced what she just has, they would do it all the time, every chance they got. Instead of so often pretending not to want to. In the phrase then current, playing hard to get. And so, she, Megan, must be different, in this way?
Simon comes back with some cold sliced meats and cheeses, butter and dark bread, on paper plates. Satisfied love has made him less formal, as well as more loquacious.
“But maybe in a way I always knew what you would be like,” he now tells Megan. “I could never keep my eyes off you. I guess you noticed?”