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

by Lawrence Block

  I wish now that I knew more about her, the life she led and all. I don’t know anything about her first marriage but I gather that it wasn’t a good one. I was never told this, but I somehow have the impression that her husband left her. And she didn’t have a close relationship with her son, he never wrote to her or anything, and it’s possible that I never did meet him when I was a small child but just have some vague false memory of it. She must have married young, very young, to have a son who was twenty before she was forty. It’s my impression that she married when she was around sixteen and got divorced after only a year or two of marriage, but I don’t know why I think that’s what happened. I just do, for some reason.

  If I had any sexual experiences as a child, I must have blocked them out, because I can’t remember them. I don’t recall playing doctor with the other kids or anything like that. I began to learn about sex when I was eight or nine, the way most kids do. Girls would tell each other things. I learned how babies were conceived and I learned about menstrual periods. I didn’t have any really good understanding of what was involved. Also, I didn’t know then that sex was a source of pleasure. I thought it was something you did just because you wanted to have children. I remember seizing on this as proof that my mother had wanted me, or otherwise she would never have put up with something like that. But I decided it meant she wanted me beforehand, and then didn’t like me once she had me. I felt she had wanted a boy, and I think that’s probably true—that she would have been closer to me had I been a boy.

  I also thought at the time that my father would have preferred a boy, but this I’m sure was not the case. He wanted me the way I was.

  I think he placed me in the role of being the one thing that had gone right with his life. In a sense he used me as proof that he was not completely a failure. He would put me on his lap and hug me and say, “Well, there’s a lot that’s gone wrong but I must be doing something right to have a perfect little angel like my Cathy.” He must have said this hundreds of times.

  I used to think that when I grew up I would marry my father. I understand this is a very common thing for little girls. Also for little boys, that they’ll marry their mother and take care of her when they grow up. It never occurred to me in these daydreams to wonder what would become of my mother in the course of all this. I’m sure I never consciously wished her dead or anything like that.

  But it must have been in the back of my mind or something because I remember the enormous load of guilt I felt when she died.

  She had cancer. and it was a terrible death. It took her over a year to die. She wasted away and died by inches. Toward the end she had to have so much morphine for the pain that she didn’t make any sense. She didn’t recognize me or my father half the time. When she died, it was almost a relief. It was as though she had already been dead for months.

  My father was completely shattered by her illness. Looking back, I think I resented this. I must have decided before that he didn’t really care much for her, but I’m sure I was wrong about this. When I think of the two of them now, I try to be objective about them. And I come to the conclusion that they loved each other very much, even though they never should have gotten married because they were so completely different. I think she must have been some sort of mother figure in his eyes. Not merely because she was older than he was but because he seemed to rely on her strength. He even called her “Mother.” Not just when he was talking to me about her, but when he was talking to her.

  He started drinking during the last months of her illness. He had never been a drinker. I don’t think there was ever liquor in the house before. But the drinking was his way of dealing with the strain. He would come straight home from work and sit up with her constantly except when she was sleeping, and then he would sit in his chair in the living room with a bottle of rye whiskey on the table beside him, and he would keep drinking until it was time for him to go to bed. That’s how he got through those months. Then two months before she died he either quit his job or got fired, and he didn’t bother looking for work again until after she was dead and buried. He wanted to be able to spend time with her and he had to take care of the house because she was completely bedridden then, so he stayed out of work and sat around the house, and he started drinking earlier in the day. He never got really drunk, though. He would just nurse one drink after the other and never be drunk and never be sober either.

  The one time he got drunk was after the funeral. We both cried a lot. Then we came home and he told me it was just the two of us now, that we were all alone in the world and would have to take care of each other. He opened a bottle and started drinking, and after a while he walked me upstairs and tucked me in and went back downstairs again. I fell asleep right away but I had bad dreams and woke up a couple of hours later. I went downstairs and he was staggering around the living room with the bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and he would stop now and then and drink straight from the bottle. He talked a lot but didn’t say anything that made any sense. I don’t remember what he said. I don’t think he knew I was there.

  The next day he stopped drinking. Once later on he told me it was something he had had to do while she was dying, but afterward he knew it would be dangerous to let the liquor get a hold of him, so he cut it out completely and never had a drink again, except for social drinking like a cocktail at a business lunch or something. And he would have a few beers while he watched television at night, the way he always did in the past, but that wasn’t anything because beer never had any noticeable effect on him.

  I was almost thirteen when my mother died. For the next six months or so we just went on with no change in our relationship. He had told me that I would have to be the woman of the house now, and of course I relished my new role. I would get up early and make breakfast for the two of us before I went to school, and I would make dinner and have it ready when he came home from the office. He managed to get a job almost immediately after her death. I made the beds and did the general housework. He had hired a woman to come in once a week and do the heavy work, and she still came once a week, but I took care of everything else.

  As far as I know, my father didn’t date at all after my mother’s death. I have the feeling that she was the only woman with whom he ever had a serious sexual relationship.

  When I think back on what happened, it’s very hard for me to decide which one of us seduced the other. Years ago I was certain that I had led him on, that I had been the aggressor, but I don’t really think this could have been the case. Nor do I think he purposefully seduced me. In a sense, I think we were both very innocent people, and what happened just happened because of the situation we found ourselves in and the way we felt about each other.

  It’s very hard for me to talk about this.

  Let’s see. Well, after dinner he would read the paper while I did my homework, and then I would sit on his lap and we would watch television or talk if there was nothing on television that we wanted to see. And I suppose that in itself was sexual. I didn’t think of our cuddling in those terms at that time. As to whether or not he was aware of it, I can’t really say. If he got erections from it, I didn’t notice them. I didn’t really know about erections at the time, that the penis got hard during sexual excitement.

  Sometimes he would get moody and talk about how the two of us were all alone in the world. “It’s you and me against the world and we’ve got to stick together, kitten.” Things like that. He would be depressed when he said it, but the idea didn’t depress me. On the contrary, I would get a warm feeling about the two of us being together this way.

  Other times he would say that some day a boy would come along and take me away with him, and then he’d be all alone. And I would insist that I wasn’t interested in boys, which I wasn’t, and that I would stay with him forever. He’d say that I would have to have a life of my own, and I would say all I wanted was to be with him and cook his meals and keep house for him.

  One night I had a bad dream a
nd I woke up yelling. I was still half inside the dream when he came into my room. I started telling him about the dream. I don’t remember what it was about but it upset me at the time. He got into bed with me and I curled up in his arms and went back to sleep, and in the morning when I woke up he was back in his own room.

  My breasts were starting to develop then, and one night he commented on the fact that I was growing up and sort of alluded to the fact that I was becoming a woman, and hinted at having a talk about menstruation. I had already gotten my period, and although I was embarrassed to talk about it I managed to tell him that it had happened and that I knew what to do about it and everything. After that he would frequently smile in a funny way and tell me how I was really a little woman and not a girl anymore. I was slightly embarrassed when he talked like that but also very proud of myself.

  Then one night I was sitting on his lap and we kissed a few times as we always did, and he put his hand on my breast. Just holding it. I didn’t know what to think or do. He just held it for a moment and then took his hand away and we didn’t talk about it. The next night, or maybe it was the night after, I realized that I wanted him to do this, so I took his hand and placed it on my breast. Nothing was said. For the next week or so, he would put his hand on my breast while we sat together.

  He must have known that this was wrong. I knew it myself, I guess, that a father and daughter were not supposed to feel this way about one another. I’m trying to remember exactly how I felt. I think it was sexually exciting to me. I had never felt sexually aroused before this. I had never masturbated or anything like that or had strong sexual feelings that I was able to recognize as such. I knew that I felt very safe and warm when he held me, but I felt something else, which must have been sexual excitement.

  Finally one night during summer vacation he came into my bedroom to kiss me good night. It was very warm and I was sleeping without any sheet over me. I was wearing thin cotton pajamas. He sat down on the bed next to me, and he kissed me, and it was a different kind of kiss. I don’t mean a soul kiss, just that there was passion in it that both of us felt. After the kiss was over he held my shoulders in his hands and we looked into each other’s eyes for a long time, and he finally started talking in a low voice about all we had in the world was each other, and then without anything being said I took off the top of my pajamas and he lay down beside me and kissed and sucked my breasts.

  We gradually got more and more involved this way. For a long time we got closer physically without either of us saying a word about it. We would act the same as always toward each other during the day, talking about lots of things but not about this, and then at night he would come in to kiss me good night and we would do things for a half hour or so, and then he would go to his room and I would go to sleep. I never had trouble sleeping after we did this. I would get very relaxed from it and feel very good. I must have had reservations about what we were doing but I can’t remember them.

  About this time most of the kids my age were starting to date. I was not asked out often because I was a very quiet kid with no real friends and I wasn’t a raving beauty. When I did get asked out I would explain that I had to stay home and take care of the house and my father. It didn’t happen that often, anyway. I know I had no urge to go out with any of the boys I knew.

  I guess it was shortly after school started in the fall that we actually began sleeping together, and that our relationship carried out into the open between us. By this I mean we would talk about it. Or rather, he talked about it at length and I listened to him. He said it was considered a terrible thing for a father and daughter to be what we were to each other, but that we were special and maybe the ordinary rules didn’t apply in our case. He said he loved me in a very special way that was completely different from what the ordinary father felt for his daughter. He said a man needed a woman and there was no woman for him since my mother died, and that there were ways we could be loving toward one another without worrying that I would become pregnant, and that we could do things in ways that I would still be a virgin when I got married. I said I never wanted to get married but he said things would change when I was older.

  I didn’t believe things would ever change.

  He also told me how neither of us could ever tell anybody about what we did, but that was unnecessary, because I already knew better than to say anything to anyone.

  The things we did would be called petting to climax. We would take off our clothes and kiss and hug, and he would caress my breasts and touch my genitals, and he taught me to bring him to orgasm with my hands, and he would do the same to me. We would do this at night before going to sleep. Then I would sleep all night in his arms. We never had any sex in the mornings. Even if he woke up with an erection we would both pretend not to notice it. We never said anything to this effect, but it was as if we were father and daughter during the daytime and lovers only at night.

  Eventually we got into oral sex, which I enjoyed thoroughly, both fellatio and cunnilingus.

  Sometimes he would touch my genitals with his penis. But he never tried penetration. He must have been dying to do this but never did.

  I would have let him do anything.

  Just after my fifteenth birthday he told me we would have to stop being lovers, that it was unnatural and had been going on for too long. I started crying the minute he said this. I just cried uncontrollably. He said it was for my own good, that he didn’t want to stop but felt we had to, and this made me cry more than ever, and we wound up making love again.

  He dropped the idea of stopping, but he did insist that I go out with boys if I was asked. I told him I didn’t want to but he said something to the effect that if I didn’t go out on dates people might suspect what we were doing. I think now that he just invented this as an argument to start me dating, and that he wanted me to date because he was worried that our sexual relationship would deprive me of a normal life. At any rate, I started dating. I couldn’t get at all interested in the boys I went out with. None of them meant anything to me and they all seemed very childish, and at the same time they seemed more mature than I was because they were at ease in social situations where I was not, due to my lack of experience.

  As far as sex was concerned, I wasn’t attracted to the boys I dated. I don’t suppose they were attracted to me much either, since I was so obviously uninterested in them, but boys that age are interested in sex first and foremost and don’t too much care who it’s with. Or at least it was that way when I was growing up. From what I understand, it’s a little different with kids nowadays, they have more honest sexual relationships. The boys I knew didn’t care much for girls as people but just as something to fuck.

  So there were passes made at me, but it was very easy for me to handle them. And I didn’t steady date anybody, so there was no progressive intimacy. I made it clear I wasn’t interested in making out in parked cars, so guys would take me out once or twice and then give me up as an iceberg, and then I would go home and go to bed with my father.

  We were both dying to have complete sexual intercourse long before we got around to it. I wanted it not out of a physical desire for the experience but because I wanted our relationship to be complete. I’m sure that in the back of my mind I still fantasized about eventually marrying him and spending the rest of my life with him, and I wanted to be everything to him, which included sexual intercourse. I believe he wanted it in a more physical way, because emotionally he fought the desire to have intercourse with me, but finally he couldn’t fight it anymore. And, as he put it, we belonged to each other in every way, so there was really no reason to deny ourselves this one particular form of love, so long as we were very careful that I didn’t get pregnant.

  The first time we did it was just beautiful. The pain was much less than I expected. I didn’t have a climax, but what I had was better than a climax—this beautiful feeling of completion when he had his orgasm and lay exhausted in my arms. I felt like, I don’t know—a queen, a goddess, I don’t
know.

  Our relationship continued on this level for about six months. Then we had an accident. Specifically, the condom broke during intercourse. Condoms were our only form of birth control, and they had not been a problem at all, and then this one broke.

  I was lucky. I didn’t get pregnant. But for two weeks we waited for me to get my period, and during those two weeks he must have gone through sheer unadulterated hell. This was long before you could get a legal abortion and I don’t know what we would have done if I had turned out to be pregnant. I was worried, but not nearly as worried as he was because I felt he would figure out what to do. So I didn’t have the responsibility the way he did.

  Then I got my period, and we were both enormously relieved, but our relationship was over.

  I think it was the scare that did it. I was absolutely certain of that at the time, but looking back I’m not so sure. Because it would have had to end sooner or later. I didn’t know that then but I know it now. His guilt feelings were getting greater all the time and he couldn’t stand it indefinitely, and the pregnancy scare just brought things to a head that much quicker.

  We had a long talk during which he told me all the reasons why things had to stop between us. We both did a lot of crying that night. Then for the next couple of nights I consciously tried to seduce him. I thought it was what he really wanted and that if I could just seduce him once, things would be back the way they had been to begin with.

  But it was impossible. He had made himself turn off completely, and he almost shuddered when I went to kiss him. It was terrible and I didn’t know what to do. I thought about killing myself and planned the kind of suicide note I would write. I couldn’t decide whether to make it a note that would tear his heart out or one that would make him understand it was not his fault. I was dramatizing myself to a ridiculous extent, of course, but that’s the way girls are at that age, whether they’re sleeping with their fathers or not.