by PV
Finally I decided that the old coach himself had to get off the bench and into the game. Someone had to get in there who could plug up the holes when they needed to be plugged or burst up the middle of a score. A hush fell over the crowd when I trotted onto the field.
Miss T. was required by the instructions to: `Spend the evening at the apartment of Mr. O., age thirty-five. Man will have paid one hundred dollars to spend the evening with you. Mr. O. is a lonely college professor whose wife died a year ago.
He knows nothing about this experiment and believes a friend has provided him with a young, inexperienced call girl. You are to try to give yourself to him as completely as possible. Examine closely your own attitudes and emotions and fill out the questions contained in the enclosed envelope.’
According to her answers on our attitude questionnaires, Miss T. was nineteen years old, had never had sexual intercourse, had `necked heavily’ with only two boys, had kissed `less than ten’ boys and had never had any conscious lesbian inclinations or experiences. She believed that premarital sexual intercourse was wrong becaus��God punished it finitely,’ it was `psychologically unhealthy’ and there was `danger of pregnancy.’
She affirmed that as a positive attribute it procreated the race. According to her she had never masturbated becaus��God punished it finitely.’
She was vaguely intolerant of all sexual deviations from the heterosexual norm, extremely conventional in most other attitudes and indicated no close relationships with anyone except her mother, to whom she seemed quite close. She reported that she was a believing Catholic and hoped to be a social worker for emotionally disturbed children.
It seemed to me unlikely that Miss T. would even show up. Of the seven other subjects to whom I had given similar instructions (to meet each other or hired help), three had never appeared; and two of the desertees were quiet types like Miss T. The assigned time, was ��round eight o’clock.’
I, in a generous act of self-employment arrived at seven-thirty, and, after fixing myself a small drink, was settling down for a long wait when the bell rang. At the door I found a young woman who announced that she was `Terry Tracy.’
It was five of eight.
Terry Tracy looked up at me brightly like a teenager arriving for a baby-sitting assignment. She was short and pert, with wane brown eyes, soft brown hair and a nervous grace which reminded me of Natalie Wood. She was wearing a skirt and loose turtleneck sweater and carrying her homework crooked in her left arm (it turned out to be her sealed manila folder with the questionnaire.) I awkwardly invited her in, feeling like a decrepit and obscenely lecherous old man.
`Can I fix you a drink?’ I asked. It occurred to me that this girl might have misunderstood the instructions.
`Yes, please,’ she said and, walking into the middle of the room, looked around at the absolutely conventional modern couch, chairs, bureau, bookcase and rugs as if they had been imported from the moon.
`My name is Robert O’Connor. I’m a professor of history at Long Island University.’
��‘m Terry Tracy,’ she said brightly, looking at me for all the world as though I were an interesting uncle about to beguile her with sea yarns.
1 tried to meditate with pseudo-serenity upon my drink but felt ridiculous.
`Seen any good movies lately?’ I asked.
��h no. I don’t go to movies very much.’
`They’re very expensive these days.’
��h yes. And a lot of them are … well … not very worthwhile.’
`That’s true.’
She looked over at the fireplace. I looked at the fireplace. It had a little wood-burning grate that looked as though it hadn’t been used since the apartment had been built ninety years ago.
`Would you like to have a fire?’ I asked.
��h no. It’s warm enough, thank you.’
I sipped at my drink and licked the sweat off part of the outside of the cold glass. It occurred to me that this might be the most sensuous thing I would do all evening.
`Come over and sit by me, why don’t you.’
A hippopotamus eating a daisy.
��‘m very comfortable here, thank you.’
After looking nervously at the fireplace for a few moments she added ��ll right’ Balancing her drink carefully like a child with her first cup of milk, she came over and seated herself about a foot from me on the couch. She modestly tugged down once on her miniskirt, which remained, however, a few feet above her knees. She seemed incredibly small. At six four I was used to looking down at people, but looking down at Terry Tracy to my left all I could see was her curly brown hair and her two seemingly nude legs.
`Hey,’ I said.
She looked up-with a smile, but a certain vagueness seemed to have crept into her eyes, as if her yarn-spinning uncle had just used the word bordello.
`May I kiss you?’ I asked. At a hundred bucks a toss it didn’t seem too much to ask.
Her eyes went vaguer and she said, ��h yes.’
I pulled her little body to me and leaned down to meet her lips. Without premeditation I found myself kissing only with my lips upon her lips. Her mouth was small, her lips dry. After a few seconds I straightened up.
`You’re awfully pretty,’ I said.
`Thank you.’
`Your lips are very nice’
`Yours are too,’ she said.
`Now you kiss me.’
She looked up and waited for me to lower my head, but I remained upright and even leaned back against the couch while still looking down at her, sexily.
After a moment’s uncertainty, she placed her drink on the coffee table and got up on her knees. Putting her hands on my neck she slowly leaned towards me. My arms circled her, one hand closed hard around a buttock and I pressed my mouth and tongue against hers. For ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty seconds I kept my tongue in her mouth and moved my hands over her back, buttocks and thighs. Her body was small but firm, her little behind round and rubbery through the woolen skirt.
Finally I pulled back and looked at her.
She smiled the smile of a straight-A student.
`That was awfully nice,’ I said.
��h yes. It was good,’ she replied.
`Put your tongue in my mouth,’ I said, and as I slid sideways to a horizontal position on the couch, I pulled he her over on top of me. She was remarkably light and her tongue came out of her small mouth in little tentative darts like a snake trying to frighten someone. I bought both my hands up under her skirt and panties and exploring between her legs, got lost. That is, of the two caves traditionally located in the underbrush, I was able to locate only one, and that, in the immortal words of Robert Frost, The one less traveled by.’
Had she been sewn up? I discovered and caressed a slippery crack, but it led not to the warm-cushioned opening of a Lil or Arlene but to a dead-end: a virgin with a vengeance. She pulled up a few inches away from me.
`Please don’t touch me there,’ she said.
�� beg your pardon,’ I said and delicately withdrew my hands and smoothed down her skirt.
She hesitated, a moment and then brought her little mouth down warmly on mine, her hands framing my face. Her abdomen pressing down on my extended penis began to create climactic feelings so I broke our kiss and rolled us both into sitting positions again. She looked up at me brightly, as if pleased by having brought home a good report card. Of course it may have been the brightness of sexual excitement: certainly my gooey fingers didn’t indicate scholarly interests. Looking at her a bit drunkenly I asked in a husky voice; `Shall we go to the bedroom?’
��h no,’ she said, �� have to finish my drink.’
Further straightening her skirt, she reached forward and took a healthier swig from her gin and tonic. I rediscovered my glass on the floor at my feet and finished it off.
��re you a professor?’ she asked.
`Yes I am.’
`What of?’
‘
Of history.’
‘Oh yes, you told me. That must be interesting. What history do you like best?’
��‘m a specialist in papal bulls of the Renaissance. Look, can’t I get you another drink?’
��h really? I loved reading about Cesare Borgia and the Popes. I’d love another drink. Were the Popes really as bad as the books say?’
I walked liquor-ward a trifle aggressively but said over my shoulder: ��t all depends on what you mean by bad.’ ��
mean have children and all.’
��lexander I had several children as did Pope John IX, but before they became popes.’
The Church is much purer today.’
I poured her a huge gin, added a trickle of tonic, gave myself a bathtub-glassful of Scotch and marched back toward the couch.
`How much college have you finished?’ I asked.
`This is my fourth semester at Hunter. I’m majoring in sociology I think. Oh! - Er.’
`What’s the matter?’
For a moment I thought I must have spilled her drink as I handed it to her, but it wasn’t that. My fly wasn’t open. But she looked frightened.
`Nothing,’ she said and took a deep drink from her gin and tonic. `But. .. how did you … I mean why did you think I went to college?’
‘You seem intelligent,’ I said. `You couldn’t know all about the Renaissance just from high school.’
She looked away from me at the grimy, unused fireplace and didn’t seem to be as cheerful as she had been.
`Doesn’t it seem … strange that a college girl should be … here?’
‘Ah. Her breach of role playing was bothering her.
`Certainly not,’ I said firmly. ‘According to my fried, almost all the call girls he knows are college students, many of them straight ‘A’ students. Tuition costs being what they are, what can a girl do?’
This line of reasoning seemed to take some time to absorb. She blushed and turned away at the phrase call girl, but finally said quietly that’s true.’
��lso,’ I said, `college girls learn how irrational all sexual inhibitions are. They learn how safe sexual intercourse can be and how profitable.’
`But she said. `But - of course some girls still fear that God - that sex -‘
‘You’re right there, of course. But even many deeply religious college girls have also become call girls.’ She now looked up at me questioningly.
‘They realize,’ I went on, `that God always examines the reasons we do anything. If a girl gives her body to a man to give him pleasure and to earn money so that she may educate herself and thus increase her ability to serve God she is actually performing a good act.’
She looked away nervously. - `But God says adultery is a sin,’ she said.
‘Ah, but the Hebrew word for adultery, fornication, actually means sexual intercourse had only for pleasure. The Commandment actually should be translated: “Though shall not selfishly give yourself in adultery.”
Many of the girls at LIU in Bible History 162 have been quite surprised and pleased to realize the true nature of God’s command.’
She was hunched over on the couch beside me drinking her gin with absentminded abandonment. She stared into her glass as if it might hold the ultimate answers.
`But God says that…’ she started. `Paul says that … the Church says that-‘
��nly selfish pleasure. The Hebrew is absolutely explicit. In Second Corinthians, verse eight, the text reads: “She who lets a man know her for the glory of God is blessed, but woe unto her who in selfishness commits adultery. Verily the very earth will swallow her up.”
Again hesitation. Then:
‘The glory of God?’ she asked.
`Saint Thomas Aquinas interprets this as meaning any act which is intended to further the individual’s ability to glorify God. He cites the case of Bathsheba’s daughter who gave herself to the Aramite that she might convert him. He also cites the prostitute Magdalen of the New Testament who, according to tradition, continued to sell herself to men that she might better know them and testify to the Divinity of Christ.’
`Really?’ she said sharply, as if at last Truth were being touched.
��n Dante’s Paradisio, which you may have read, the religious prostitutes are placed in the third sphere of heaven, just below the saints, but above the nuns and virgins. In the words of Beatrice, his guide, “A fugitive and cloistered virtue can never reach as close to God as an active one. If the soul is pure the body cannot be soiled.”
��h I read that. Was that Dante?’
`Paradisio, Canto Seventeen I think. Milton paraphrased this verse in his famous essay on divorce.’
��t’s funny…’ she said and jiggled the remaining ice cubes in her glass before taking another swallow.
`The Church has naturally played down this tradition,’ I said, taking a satisfied swallow from my own drink. ��t has felt that young girls might be seduced unnecessarily in their dream of converting men, and although such an act would not be sinful, it was decided to create the impression that all sex was evil. The masses, of course, have thus lived in ignorance of God’s true purpose.’
At last she looked up at me and smiled sadly.
��‘m going to take more history,’ she said.
I turned to her, and with my right hand brushed away her hair from her cheek.
��‘d love to have a student like you in one of my classes. I get so lonely for someone with whom I can talk about things.’
‘Do you?’
�� feel spiritually lost, alone - since losing my wife. I’ve needed the warmth of a woman’s mind and body, but until this evening all I’ve ever met were dull, pedantic women that weren’t able to … unselfishly give themselves to me.’
�� like you very much,’ she said tentatively.
‘Ah Terry, Terry…’
I took her in my arms, spilling the last of her drink onto the floor and couch. I hugged her tenderly, my eyes, well above the level of her head, fixing idly on the manila folder on the bookcase. The radio was blaring, `Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?’
`Please, my darling,’ I said, `come with me now to the bed room.’
She held herself still in my arms and didn’t answer. The music stopped, and the radio announcer began running off at the mouth about the incredible power of Gleem toothpaste: he followed that without pausing for breath with kind words for Robert Hall’s.
`You’re so big,’ she finally said.
�� have a great need for you.’
She remained still. I released my embrace and looked down at her. She looked up at me nervously and said: `Kiss me first’ She reached her arms up around my neck, and as we kissed I slid heavily forward on top of her. We writhed together for more than a minute.
��m I too heavy?’ I asked.
�� little bit,’ she said.
`Let’s go to the bedroom.’
We disentangled and stood up.
`Where to?’ she asked, as if we were about to begin a long hike.
This way,’ I said, and after we had negotiated the ten paces into the bedroom I added: `That’s the bathroom.’ We look at each other. `You undress there. I’ll undress here.’
`Thank you,’ she said and walked into the bathroom, her shoulder just bumping the doorway as she entered. I undressed myself, dropping my clothes neatly in select piles between the bed and an old walnut dresser. Inside the king-size double bed, I but my hand behind my head and watched the ceiling swirl like cosmic nebulae. Five minutes later the nebulae were still providing the only active entertainment.
`Terry?’ I called neutrally.
�� can’t,’ she said from inside the bathroom.
`What?’
I said loudly.
She came out fully dressed, her eyes red and the lipstick on her lower lip completely chewed away. Standing stiffly halfway between the bathroom door and the bed she said: ��t’s been a mistake. I’m not who you think I am.
’
`Then who are you?’
��‘m - I’m nobody.’
��h no, Terry, you’re wonderful, whoever you are.’
��‘m - but I can’t go to bed with you.’
��h Terry,’ I said and started to get out of bed when I saw by her facial expression that she might run. Sitting up, I said: `Well then, who are you?’
‘I’m - I was sent here as part of a - an experiment of the Columbia Medical School.’
`No!’ I said; flabbergasted.
`Yes. I’m really just a college girl, a pretty innocent college girl, I guess. I wanted to do the experiment the best I could, but I can’t.’
`My God, Terry, that’s incredible, that’s wonderful. So was I.’
She looked at me blankly.
`So - were - you - what?’
‘I was sent here as part of an investigation into the nature of human sexuality conducted by the Columbia Medical School. I’m Father Forbes of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.’
She stared at my bulky, nude torso.
�� see,’ she said.
`The quirks of fate have sent together two innocents!’ I raised my eyes to the ceiling briefly; it responded with a swirl.
��‘ve got to go,’ she answered.
`My child, you can’t go. Don’t you see there is the hand of God in this. Have you ever given yourself to a man?’
`No, Father, and I must go.’
`My child; you must stay. By everything that is holy you must stay.’
I rose with stately dignity from the bed and with a look of great fatherliness and agape; arms outstretched in welcome, I approached Miss T.
`No,’ she said and held up one arm limply.
I never hesitated, but embraced her fully and fatherly, stroking her hair with one hand and her back with the other.
`My sweet child you are my salvation. Had I sinned with a prostitute I would be forever damned; the woman would have been acting selfishly and I would have been a cause of her sin. But sexual congress with a Catholic girl giving herself against her will, and thus unselfishly, is to liberate you from sin and me from corruption.’