Born in 1904 in the Ozarks and christened Harriet Helen Beck, Sally longed to be a ballerina from the first time she saw Pavlova dance the dying swan in Kansas City. At fourteen, she ran off with the carnival. Her wits and her blonde good looks took her as far as Hollywood, where Cecil B. DeMille himself renamed her, thanks to the Rand McNally atlas that caught his eye.The advent of the talkies proved disastrous for Sally – she had a lisp – and the Depression hit her as hard as everyone else. It was out of desperation for work that she first walked onto the stage in Chicago’s Paramount Club, naked but for her trademark feather fans.
Something more than desperation made Sally a star. Chicago was to host a world’s fair, and she dreamed of a share in its riches. She applied to perform through official channels, but the city fathers turned her down. City fathers: I always imagine plump, sober-faced men atop Louis Sullivan skyscrapers, spraying the metropolis with semen, their dicks as fat as fire hoses. No doubt most of them sported tent poles in their trousers when Sally crashed their gala opening ceremonies as Lady Godiva on a white horse. The acclaim for this daring display of nudity forced the worthy gentlemen to authorize her show at the Streets of Paris. Most sources agree that Sally helped the fair turn a profit. She didn’t do so badly herself. By the end of the summer, her salary had soared from $125 to $3,000 a week.
But Sally was more than a naked body, more than a clever manipulator of male fantasy. Another reason she rode as Lady Godiva was to protest the publicity shots of city matrons in their gala gowns, a callous gesture when so many working people were starving. One night that summer, she refused to let her friends be bumped from the best table in the house by FDR’s son and his wedding party. Either the friends stayed put or she wouldn’t do the show. As always, Sally got what she wanted in the end.
I, on the other hand, was born in a prosperous northeastern suburb more than sixty years after Sally. I never ran off with carnies. I never earned my keep exposing my small – but, to my lovers’ delight, very sensitive – breasts. I never endured an arrest on obscenity charges – much less four in one day, like Sally. I did put on plenty of performances for my teachers and advisers. And I pulled off an impressive masquerade for my father-figure husband, who seemed, with the twenty-year age difference, to be the perfect partner for a scholar of mid-century American studies.
He wasn’t.
Now I’m on my own again, my fortieth birthday looming. I’m supposed to be courting the tenure committee with the same old song and dance. But I find myself thinking of Sally and itching to be as daring and shocking and free.
The History of Desire
After we gave our papers, fielded questions, and kissed the requisite asses of the powerful eminences in our field, Mario, Chris, and I went off to do what we really came to the conference for – a long-awaited reunion dinner at a charming Italian place on M Street.
Things had changed in the two years since we’d last seen each other. Mario was being courted by Columbia and was complaining about how slow they were to make an official offer – rather bad form, since he’s scored tenure and Chris and I are still waiting for the decision. Chris made dour jokes about his ongoing search for the right antidepressant. He made no secret of the fact that estrangement from his daughters after his divorce tore him apart. I leered at the young waiter, then regretted it. I didn’t want it to be too obvious that I hadn’t had good sex with anyone other than my hand in quite some time.
With the help of a few bottles of chianti, however, we gradually found our younger selves still very much alive beneath the older, tougher skin. We laughed and said clever things and confessed that we’d never found the same fellowship with anyone since. It was Mario, of course, who made the first light-hearted reference to another dinner à trois, some ten years before. A piece of history, I must confess, that was on my mind as well.
Mario had just turned in his dissertation and was flying off to take a plum job at Duke, while Chris and I still languished in the bog of research. Of course we were glad for him, glad to celebrate with pasta and wine. We were lounging about afterward on throw pillows on the orange shag rug of his apartment when suddenly Mario took me in his arms and kissed me.
It was more than a goodbye. It was a real kiss, slow and soft and piquant, with red pepper and Côtes du Rhône. The kind of kiss you feel in your pussy, or rather, the kind that makes your whole body feel like a pussy, tingling and melting and hungry for more. It took me by surprise, for Mario had been unfailingly faithful to his harem of bubbly undergraduates, all blonde and busty with a fuck-me-now wiggle to their hips, all very different from me. Fate would have it that the phone rang, and the voice of his latest young conquest trilled through the answering machine.We jumped apart, and he went to pick up the phone with a regretful shrug.
I turned to Chris, my lips pleasantly sore, my cheeks hot with arousal and shame. I was wearing Bill’s engagement ring. Chris’s wedding to Shannon was two months away. I suppose I was expecting to see judgment in his eyes for my sluttish behavior, but I met instead the second surprise of the evening.
Call me easy, and some have, but a man gets inside me first with his eyes.That silver flicker of desire sinks straight into my belly, and – if I want it to happen – he has me right then and there. The rest of it – spreading my legs with his knees and pushing open my wet, pink cunt lips with the swollen knob of his cock – is pretty much an afterthought.
Desire is exactly what I saw in Chris’s eyes. He wanted to fuck me, fiancée or no. And I realized I wanted to fuck him. More than anything in the world.
Mario came to the rescue. His girlfriend needed him to come over right away. She was freaked out about an exam, and the newly minted Dr. Mario had the cure. We all rose, smoothed out our clothes, and left to be with the people we were supposed to be fucking, our bland smiles promising we would forget everything that had just happened.
But I still remembered very well that Mario and I kissed. And I remembered even more keenly, with the yearning of ten long years, that Chris and I did not.
Why Not?
In fact, Chris and I had been exchanging wary, questioning glances all evening now that both of us were free, or as free as two people with battered hearts can ever be. But Mario saved us again. His cheerful chatter lubricated our path from the restaurant to my hotel room, where the party continued. We raided the minibar and talked on through the evening. Midnight found me sprawled on my king-size bed, my feet in Mario’s warm lap as he rubbed the arches with his strong thumbs, sending sweet, electric twinges running up my legs. Chris, who’d been nursing the same glass of well-watered whiskey all night, had crawled onto the bed beside me, joking that he was waiting in line for a massage too.
“You’re looking tired, Chris, my man,” Mario said with his lovely smile. “Don’t you think you should be getting back to your room?” Though he’d put on weight and his lush hair was touched with snow at the temples, Dr. Carbone was still very easy on the eyes.
“Hell, no, I’m waiting for you to stagger out of here first so I can finally make my move.”
I gave Chris a sidelong glance. He winked at me, to let me know that was a joke too.
“Then I guess Elizabeth will have to choose which one of us gets the boot.”
I wiggled my foot against Mario’s thighs.There was a bulge there.Through the alcohol haze, I realized I was glad.
“Why?” I murmured.
“Why?” Mario echoed.“Because Chris won’t be a gentleman and admit defeat.”
“No, I mean why do I have to choose? I want you both to be with me tonight.”
“I think she’s kidding,” Chris said too quickly.
Historians spend a lot of time asking “how,” which inevitably leads to “why,” and there was, no doubt, a tangle of complex reasons why three middle-aged academics were about to engage in group sex on this particular night. But there, in the moment, the decision – and it was mine – to finally do a three-way with my two best friends was frighteningly simple
. Because the real question that stokes the engine of history is not “why,” but “why not.”
Why not, indeed.
I sat up and put on my most seductive smile. Sally’s smile. “There’s obviously a lot you don’t know about me.”
My gaze flitted from one to the other, to make sure I had them where I wanted them, jaws slack, their eyes fixed in that primal, my-god-is-she-really-going-to-let-me-do-it-to-her amazement. I slowly unbuttoned my blouse. Their eyes followed, as if bound to the movement of my hands with steel cable. I pulled my shirt down over my shoulders with a shimmy and, still smiling, I traced the lacy edge of my bra with my fingertip. Could Sally have done better?
Mario’s face had gone scarlet. Chris was up on one elbow, staring. He swallowed with a wet, slightly strangled sound.
Sally would have teased more. Sally would have them howling with their tongues on the floor before she gave any more, but the world moves faster in the twenty-first century. I unclasped the bra and let it slide over my arms, then took my breasts in my hands and arched my back, offering myself to them.
Mario whistled softly, like a distant train. Chris’s face was tight, as if he were about to cry, but he was still staring.
“She’s not kidding,” Mario said.
Chris nodded.
“Come on, boys, get yourselves out of those clothes before I change my mind.”
It was then they pulled their eyes from me and looked at each other.
What do you say, mate? Are you up for taking turns fucking our old friend Elizabeth in full view of each other?
Mario rose and began to unbutton his Oxford shirt. Chris pulled off his sweater. I watched them unbuckle their belts and wriggle out of their khakis. Mario wore briefs; Chris, boxers.
I pulled down the sheets and lay down in the middle of the bed. My friends joined me, one on each side.
Something wasn’t right. In the lamp’s glare, it was all too clear that Mario had grown a paunch, that he was too hairy for my taste. Chris had the smooth skin I prefer, but his ribs stood out like Jesus on the cross, the body of a man who’d endured hard times. I’m sure I disappointed them with my scrawny form. For all my feelings of sisterhood with Sally, I doubt anyone would ever pay to see me naked.
The three of us lay quietly for a moment, listening to the sounds of traffic rising twelve stories from the street below.
But history has its own momentum.
I nudged Chris to turn off the light.
The darkness made it easier for the show to begin. For Chris to reach over and cup my left breast gently. For Mario to trace my collarbone with his finger, then press his lips to my neck.
It tickled a little, and I laughed.They laughed too.Two male voices, one female, filling the room with the sound of pleasure entwined with disbelief.
Dreams Before Bedtime
Before I get to the good part, I have a confession to make.The truth is, I’m used to crowded beds. Just the week before, I’d treated myself to a group encounter.There’s nothing like it for a good night’s sleep.
I’d been making good progress on my paper for the conference with a close reading of the text for Sally’s Tru-Vue photo poster from 1933.The caption writer had indulged his own fantasies with a description of Sally’s “proud, arched body . . . floating among the moonbeams . . . gliding, turning, skimming.”
It got worse. “Bewitched by her own beauty,” Sally spread her feathery wings for the finale “fluttering wildly, heart racing madly – pulses pounding.” And then her joy was over, and she was serene again.
You don’t have to have a PhD to figure out we’re talking 1930s euphemisms for masturbation and orgasm, as if the male voyeur were observing her subjective pleasure and not merely projecting his own. This fantasy of orgasmic flight, I decided, would make the perfect conclusion to my talk. Couldn’t it be seen as a symbol of the audience’s desire to escape the grim realities of the Depression? That would explain why they gave Sally their money and their love, men and women alike.
Bewitched by my own cleverness, I shut down the computer and crawled into bed, my brain still flickering with images in vintage black-and-white.
It was then she came through my bedroom door, so lightly and gracefully, “skimming” might indeed be the right word. She perched herself on the edge of my bed and smiled. Her flesh gleamed white in the shadows. I smelled her powder and the faint musk of female sweat.
I should have been tongue-tied in the presence of my idol, but the words gushed through my lips like a fountain, the question no interviewer ever asked her, the question I longed to have her answer before she flew off again. What was sex like seventy years ago? Tell me. Make me feel how it was for you.
Sally’s smile widened, but her eyes looked sad. Of course she could no longer tell me. She hadn’t come to give me something. It was her turn to watch the show.
On cue, two more bodies climbed onto the bed. Male bodies, dressed in antique clothes. Slowly, their faces shifted into focus.They seemed like old friends.
The name of the sturdy young man in the worker’s cap changes, depending on the night – Stan or Paolo or Johann – as does his job, one he’s lucky to have – meat packer, baker,WPA construction worker. Maybe he helped build the fairgrounds. But he always lives in a boarding house. He’s in love with the landlady’s daughter and is saving every penny to marry her. He used to think of her white hands kneading bread when he lay on his narrow cot at night, pumping his cock in his fist, wiping himself guiltily afterward with a rough handkerchief.
But the summer of the World’s Fair, all he thinks of is Sally.
The young man stretches out beside me and holds me in his arms, pulling me into his skin, so that suddenly I’m with him – I am him – wandering through the midway at night. He saunters under the sixty-four-story towers of the Sky Ride, past the Toboggan Glide and the Slide for Life, a ticket to see Sally clutched in his calloused hand. He takes his place in the back of the club.The front tables are for the rich men and their fancy ladies, even a few society wives who come to be titillated. He hates these men who spoil themselves with luxuries while so many starve, but he likes this place, because here, he knows he is their equal.When Sally appears, every man here will feel the same liquid flame shoot straight down his spine, melting his kneecaps, turning his cock to aching wood. A poor young worker can never have her for his own, but neither can the bosses, try though they may to clutch at her with their pale, fat fingers. For Sally’s beauty, glowing with an opalescent sheen that reminds him of the drops of semen on his belly in the moonlight, belongs to everyone. To a future where all will enjoy her bounty in an endless feast of image and light.
Now the second man moves behind me, pressing his hard-on against my ass. His hands encircle my waist, and he tugs, tugs me out of the young workman’s skin, into his own body, sprawled on a café chair, half-drunk on champagne, close enough to Sally to touch her. His name? Usually something like William B. Worthalot III, son of one of the city’s most prominent men of business. Young Worthalot was at the opening gala, one of the first to spring a woody at the sight of Sally as Lady Godiva.
He’s been to the Streets of Paris many times since. Once he brought his favorite mistress, a shop girl so lovely she needs no corset to mold her body to perfection. Afterward, William convinced her to pose for him like Sally, wearing nothing but feather fans, and later nothing at all. At first he had to coax her to show herself – You have such natural beauty, my dear, you’re a born star. Show me. Let me see you as you really are. In the end, he could tell it aroused her, those rosy nipples standing up so stiff against the creamy white of her breasts. It made him hard too, very hard, a condition he could no longer rely on as he once did.
Tonight he has brought college friends from Denver. More than the fan dance, he enjoys their discomposure when Sally swishes by the table, as well as their moist-lipped gratitude when he offers to guide them to his favorite brothel after the show.
He himself observes Sally with a
cool eye. On the face of it, she’s no different from Chicago’s other favorite daughters who bare all – Margie Hart, Ann Corio, Sunya “Smiles” Slane. How has Sally put herself above the rest? A certain twinkle in her eye, a secret swivel of the hips? The answer eludes him, which is why he keeps coming back, to grasp that thing and understand her strange power. And as much as I dislike him, I recognize myself in him, a man of untold riches who will never be satisfied.
I looked to Sally, watching us watching her.
Did I get it right? I asked.
She bobbed her head lightly – in assent or farewell – then vanished into air.
How These Things Really Happen
In dirty stories, threesomes are always the same: three sets of mouths and hands and asses and whatever combination of cocks and cunts joining in every possible way so you’re no longer sure what belongs to whom, which is probably the idea.
In fact, I wouldn’t have minded seeing Mario bend Chris over the bed, then vice versa, or picking up a few insider tips as they sucked each other’s cocks, or being witness to the most forbidden turn-on of all: a slow, loving, man-to-man soul kiss.
But it would have taken a lot more wine – and a lot more honesty – for us to go there.
Not that I should complain with a man on each side focused solely on my pleasure, an abundance of hands and lips and the heady scent of male flesh. But it wasn’t at all like the fantasies in one crucial respect. My friends had divided my body in two, North and South Korea, and stretching from my neck to my clit was a DMZ that neither would cross. So far, our frolic was less a threesome than two one-and-a-halves on the same bed.
I would have to be the one to get the peace talks moving.
I sat up and turned, positioning myself between them, studying their cocks openly for the first time. Mario’s rose red and thick against the dark curls. Chris’s dick was longer and curved, reminding me oddly of the parking brake in my car, smooth and pale golden, eternally erect.
“What beautiful cocks,” I murmured and leaned over to suck Chris. He filled my mouth with heat, the spices of male crotch. I started to hum. At first he laughed, then sighed.
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