Love at a Tender Age (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  The next day I arranged to take the three of them to dinner. I went over to Ellen’s house and chatted with her for a couple of hours. She was obviously nervous about seeing me and anxious about my meeting her father, and told me that she had explained me as a correspondent she had met at a rock concert somewhere.

  Around five-thirty Grace picked us up and we drove to a tacky franchise restaurant where Louise was to meet us, with a stop en route to return something from the car to Grace’s mother—who evidently wanted a look at this older person who was mucking about with her daughter. Louise’s parents had insisted on delivering her to the restaurant and picking her up from the restaurant. We ate dinner, conversing about nothing very illuminating. Louise went out to the parental car and went away. Grace and Ellen and I drove around looking for some male bisexual friends of theirs who had evidently been dispossessed from their apartment. We did not find them. We then drove around looking for a liquor store. We found one, but it was closed. They then dropped me at my motel and went away.

  It was one of those states where they don’t sell liquor by the drink, and the state package stores are open only during those hours when I prefer to be asleep. I had a few beers, played a little solitaire, and went to my room. The maid had never gotten around to making the bed. I slept inconclusively, got up early in the morning, and got the hell out of there.

  As I said, at once worthwhile and depressing. Worthwhile because I did want to meet the three of them and form some firsthand impression. Depressing because I had become quite close to them through correspondence, and found myself unable to know them at all in person, because of the lack of time and the very real undercurrent of anxiety. Depressing, too, because of the way all their parents had concurred in labeling me as the Bearded Menace from the East, the Dirty Old Man bent on corrupting their daughters. It was a role in which I had never before found myself, and I didn’t much care for it. I certainly don’t make a habit of seducing adolescents. (I won’t say it never happens, but it’s not my characteristic life-style.)

  Some physical impressions of the three might be worth recording. First of all, all three girls are distinctly attractive. Ellen is robust and strikingly blond, Louise dark and slender, Grace also slender with a flowing and typically Piscean beauty. It was inconceivable to me that Ellen could ever have been the ugliest girl in the eighth or any other grade, or that Grace could be as convinced as her letters indicate of her own unattractiveness.

  My trip marked the termination of my correspondence with Ellen and Louise. I suspect that, just as they had found it a simple matter to reveal aspects of themselves to me while I remained a faceless stranger, it became impossibly embarrassing for them to do so when I had become someone they had actually met. No doubt this was an element in their general uptightness during my visits.

  The incongruity of the parental response, the damned injustice of it all, still rankles. Here they were, the three of them, balling boys one day and each other the next, and it was an avuncular old writer whom their parents feared.

  I have received further letters from Grace, and they may be of some interest.

  Dear Jack.

  Enjoyed your company very much, but had a feeling you didn’t exactly enjoy it. I hope you did. I did.

  My mother didn’t really say much about you. Don’t care what she said about you. I like you. That’s all that counts.

  That night that Ellen stayed over at my house, the night we all had dinner, we didn’t do any love making. We couldn’t because of Mom and the kids. Didn’t even kiss, but had tickle fights, and all.

  Parents are outside with neighbors having a party. I’m bored and depressed sitting up in my room. My boyfriend is still a little sick . . .

  Love,

  Grace

  Dear Jack,

  High, how are you. I’m fine . . . Ellen and I haven’t seen much of each other, or of Louise. Only had sex once with Ellen, and none with Louise. I think Ellen and Louise dig men too much to say they are bisexual. I like men and I also like women a lot. Maybe they like the thought of making it with women. Although I feel that way, I love both of them very much.

  I go out with men mostly, because I don’t want people getting to think about me. It’s normal to them to see a man and a woman together. People think you’re a queer or a faggot if you only go around with women . . .

  Love,

  Grace

  Dear Jack,

  High there . . . Going to school, and working, and not having any time to spend with friends. Ellen’s moving to the other side of town and Louise is moving out of state in a few months. Neither has called me in a month. Ellen’s involved with a new boyfriend, and Louise with different men. And I am not involved with a man. If I go out, I’m usually out with another girl. Ellen doesn’t call me hardly anymore.

  I would like to date a man, but it doesn’t work out. They say they like me a lot, and after a while they don’t call or even talk to you, or bother with you. I hope in future years everything will work out between men and me.

  I’m not putting men down. I think about Ellen’s and Louise’s feeling toward them. They like men a lot. I do too, but I can’t understand them. I think how nice it would be if I had a man of my own, but I know it would be hard to hold onto one. I’m not pretty at all from my standpoint.

  What I don’t understand about men is the way they treat some women, or talk about them. Cutting Women’s Liberation down and saying they belong in the house.

  Another thing is you have to be beautiful to catch a man you want. Got to be a Miss America in order to be really happy, to get a good-looking man.

  This is the way I feel now. Ellen has at least one boyfriend a month. She can attract, so can Louise. But it’s hard for me. I don’t have good looks, but maybe a good personality and opinions about things. This situation makes me think things out. Maybe I should become a full-blooded lesbian, but that would be impossible. I like men too much. I am bi, but I think Ellen and Louise are beating around that subject . . .

  Ellen and I only made it once, and that was that, and I don’t think she wants to do it again. She’d rather do it with Louise than me, and I don’t blame her. I am not much in lovemaking. I’m scared of sex. I just like to think and talk about it, but not do it. This is the problem. I’m going to have to face it some day. Not think or talk, but do it!! I wanted to talk to you about this, and see what you could come up with . . .

  Love,

  Grace

  Three little maids from school. Three sweet and pretty and sensitive girls who have flirted with bisexuality for their own individual reasons and with varied results.

  It is risky to infer behavioral motives from that tip of the emotional iceberg revealed through a series of letters written to a stranger. I would suggest, though, that Ellen embraced bisexuality in an attempt to arrive at a more complete definition of self, that Louise did so in a mood closer to pure experimentation, and that Grace joined them because her low estimate of self convinced her she could not compete successfully in a heterosexual world. Now Ellen has further identified herself, Louise has tried on a new outfit and will take it back to the store, and Grace is . . . alone, I’m afraid, and more firmly convinced than ever of her own lack of value.

  And how utterly mistaken she is . . .

  A Letter from Ruth

  Dear Mr. Wells,

  I just finished your book Come Fly with Us. You encouraged your readers to write to you, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m probably not one of the people you had in mind, because I just had my sixteenth birthday. I just want to tell you what happened to me between my fifteenth birthday and now. Mostly, just to tell someone, but also to let you compare those stewardesses with someone my age.

  About a month after I turned fifteen was the first time I spent the night with anybody. He was about sixteen. Everything was sort of perfect that night, so there really wasn’t any reason not to. As far as I can remember, it wasn’t what I expected, but it wasn’t awful, either.


  After we broke up, I only screwed with a couple of guys I was dating, hoping they’d think I was still a virgin. I started screwing more often. At certain times it just seemed like the thing to do.

  I guess I should tell you I began getting into drugs at about the same time. Sex and drugs seem to fit together.

  Around Thanksgiving I met Eugene. Eugene is ten years older than me. For two months my world revolved around him. My other world, the one with parents and school and all that, caved in at the same time. My parents were on my back constantly about him and started me taking the pill. (The pill was my and Eugene’s idea, too.)

  It wasn’t until I was really in love with Eugene that he told me he was married and his wife was going to have a baby in February. You know, I didn’t care a bit. I knew I loved him, and of course he loved me.

  Eventually we started seeing less of each other. When I hadn’t seen him for about two weeks, I had a choice of two reasons. One, his wife must have had the baby and he turned sentimental, or he didn’t want to see me after I told him I had contracted gonorrhea.

  I still don’t believe Eugene gave it to me, but everyone who knows I had it thinks he did. It went by far too long before I went to a doctor, and it took a long time and different treatments to get rid of it. It was so complicated that now there’s not much chance of having children if I wanted them.

  Getting back to Eugene, I’m not the kind of girl that suffers from a broken heart for very long.

  I was skipping school one day, just goofing off downtown. I met a man that was about thirty or so. I’ve got kind of a bad habit of telling someone I know I’ll never see again a lot of bullshit. The trouble is, I’m pretty good at it. I told him I just got into town trying to look up my old boyfriend. I had no money and didn’t know a soul in this town. (I’ve lived here for twelve years.)

  Well, he told me he could get in touch with some of his business friends, and if I agreed I could make enough money for a bus ticket home or a place to stay or something. He was first. He gave me ten dollars and paid the hotel bill. I agreed to meet him the next day and work out of a downtown hotel. All his friends were nice and well-dressed. At about twenty dollars a trick, I made close to a hundred and thirty dollars in two days. I haven’t seen any of them since. As far as they know, I’m back in New Orleans.

  The money was damn good, but that’s not the kind of life I want to live.

  I learned a lot about life last year. I’ve learned how to be absolutely sure about choosing who to fall in love with. And I know that I want to finish school and go on to college. I don’t think settling down and getting married is for me, at least not for a while. I had a lot of fun last year. My only regret is that I’ll never be able to have a baby. If I get married, maybe we can adopt a little girl.

  Thanks for listening.

  Sincerely,

  Ruth

  Like Father, Like Son

  “There was a boy, a frequent visitor to the men’s room, whom I nicknamed ‘Nymphomouth’ because he never seemed to be able to get enough cock to stuff into it. He was like an oral nymphomaniac. Once, acting the role of watchman, I saw him suck off five guys in a half-hour period . . . It is unfortunate that I couldn’t have gotten together with this kid, but I was afraid to take him home because of his age. Only once did he start to suck me. He sucked for about two minutes when we had to quit. He was exceptionally good at blowing for one so young, and of course his youth seemed to turn on anyone being sucked by him, even those opposed to ‘chicken.’ He had told me briefly that he had been sucking an older brother for four years—a brother then eighteen years old—and both of them loved it.

  “He is the only very young boy I have ever seen suck with such gusto and avidity. He also seemed to love semen and would take every drop. Had it not been for this experience, I might have doubts about some of the things I’ve read about young boys greedily consuming semen, but this kid was proof of it for me. He was a red-haired, freckled kid, not particularly good-looking but very cute to me because of his passionate interest in cocks. Sometimes I had to turn my head to keep from laughing at the expression on his face when he would be making overtures to some man at the urinal. Few of the men ever expected a proposition from one so young. Of course, the boy’s social inexperience made his sexual overtures much more direct and shocking. He seemed innocently to assume that every guy came there with the express purpose of being sucked off, and sublimely ignorant of the fact that his age should prove any shock or barrier to this accomplishment.”

  • • •

  Malcolm, the author of the two paragraphs quoted above, is a singularly interesting study in sexual obsession. He is a very charming and refined man of about forty, with a soft Southern accent and a pleasant manner. Since earliest childhood he has been fascinated by the subject of father-son incest, and in a sense has devoted his life to a study of the practice. Readers of Doing Your Thing will be familiar with his own abortive attempts to seduce his own father, and with his other childhood sexual experiences, as well as his description of a case of father-son incest with which he later became familiar.

  Malcolm was kind enough to prepare for me an extended monograph on his experiences and observations. He is not a pedophile himself and has no particular enthusiasm for sex with boys, but his father-son fixation is such that he does find boys appealing in the context of that relationship, as we shall see below. On one occasion he was able to meet with a father and son and have sexual relations with them both.

  I have elected to reproduce his remarks verbatim. I don’t doubt that the material which follows will strike many readers as violently offensive; one man’s meat, after all, is another man’s emetic. But this particular case is so unusual, and so well rendered by its author, that I feel its importance overshadows what some might consider its obscenity.

  It should be noted in passing that Malcolm is a writer of more than a little ability. He has published a few erotic novels and has written and illustrated shorter erotic fiction for the amusement of himself and friends. This endows his narrative with a fictive skill that might lead one to question its veracity. Having met Malcolm and talked with him at same length, I feel safe in assuring the reader that what follows is the literal truth.

  • • •

  I will call this second incestuous father George, although that is not his real name. I met him through a mutual acquaintance who was himself a pedophile. Since George was also a pedophile, he felt no compunction at revealing the incest to his friend. This mutual friend was rather cautious, not revealing names or places involved, merely telling me that he knew of a father-son relationship that was current and that the boy was a twelve-year-old doll. Since he knew my interest was sincere and intense, he gave in to my pleadings and gave my name and address to this father.

  I was quite thrilled when I received the first introductory letter from George. He was still cautious, though, giving no return address. Our correspondence continued through our mutual friend for about four months before George finally felt he knew me well enough to divulge his identity and address. I was elated to discover that we lived only a day’s drive apart, so I planned to meet with him and his son, Mike, during my vacation.

  We made arrangements to meet in a drive-in. I was sitting in the car and was quite startled when a young boy came up from behind me and asked if I was Malcolm. I answered in the affirmative and he said, “My dad’s been waiting for you. We all have, really.” He smiled and I was pleased. He was indeed a doll. His hair spilled over his forehead and was straight and blond. His enormous eyes were brown, which contrasted with the hair color, and his lashes were long enough to drive a glamour queen to suicide with envy. He was nude except for a pair of torn, faded pants ripped off just above the knee. He was indeed twelve, though he never admitted to this. “Goin’ on thirteen,” he always said.

  His father could not drive, so they had hiked the distance from their country home to the drive-in. They lived on the fringe of the city. It was a hot Saturday morning
when an incestuous father and son got into my car and gave directions as I drove us to their home. I was pleased with the house. Rather large, it was set back about a hundred yards from the road and surrounded by tall pines. I was trying to control my emotions though I knew my hands were shaking.

  The father turned out to be quite attractive in a lean way. He was thin, tall, about my age, had blue eyes and a very quiet demeanor. He became more talkative only when one of his favorite topics of conversation arose.

  I learned to my disappointment that I was to meet George’s wife, who was Mike’s mother. My fears turned out to be groundless. She was rather harmless and quite nice once I made friendly overtures. I found her to be shy and hesitant with strangers, but within a few hours she was talking to me as if she had known me all her life. I learned enough to suspect she knew of the incest. But, since her husband had been in trouble for pedophilia early in their marriage, I think she felt his relationship with Mike kept him from getting into trouble with other boys. And, since her son evidently enjoyed it and found it agreeable, she was not about to make any fuss over it. She was definitely not stupid, albeit bashful and reticent in manner. She had no reason to suspect that I was interested in the incestuous relationship or indeed in anything pedophilitic.

  During an after-lunch walk with George, I learned that he was a well-practiced pedophile. I also learned he preferred his boys young, much younger than his son was then, though he still enjoyed sucking Mike because he was such a sweet boy and also because he felt indebted to the kid for the years the boy had allowed his father to suck and play with him.

  George told me that he had always been sexually attracted to boys but had only had them as young as five or six before Mike was born. When Mike was born, he had his opportunity of having a boy available who was younger than anything he’d ever had sexual access to. He discovered that even at a few months of age, Mike could and did get erections. Then alone with his son, he stimulated the boy’s cock. He had had a fight with the doctor because he insisted on Mike’s being left uncircumcised. He would masturbate the tiny penis by working the foreskin back and forth, and claimed that even at a few months Mike experienced orgasm. He also took to sucking the boy’s cock and discovered that this took longer to bring him to orgasm than by hand. Once, upon having the entire day alone with the baby, he wanted to see how many climaxes he could have and masturbated him to nine “recognizable” orgasms. According to George, Mike’s legs would stiffen and his entire body would elongate as he approached climax. His little arms would get stiff also and he would wave them about. There would be a spastic motion during orgasm itself, followed by a release from tension, a general relaxation of the body, and then, usually, a crying spell. Possibly the babe feared what he was experiencing, but he gradually got used to it.