I was prepared for a small place with inexpensive furnishings, but I wasn’t prepared for the mess. The door opened immediately to the living room-bedroom. The settee to the right was covered with books and papers, and there were books and papers on the floor as well. There was also a coffee cup, still with some coffee in it; the dish beside it was crusted with leftover pasta. The windowsill was caked with dust, and the rug was frayed clear through in spots.
“I got up late this morning and didn’t get a chance to clean up from last night,” he explained. “Otherwise, it’s comfortable.”
Comfortable? I thought. It would be easy to become claustrophobic here. We had closets bigger than Jack’s apartment. There was only one narrow window in the living room-bedroom, and the room itself was barely big enough to contain the settee, the bed, a table, and two chairs. Through an open doorway I saw a tiny kitchen with dishes piled in the sink and a small trash can stuffed so full that a take-out pizza box popped up and over the side.
Jack scurried about, clearing off the settee, chairs, and coffee table.
“Just give me a minute,” he asked. He carried the dishes into the kitchen and then hurried back to straighten up the bed. “Bachelors,” he said with an emphatic shrug. “This is the way we live, but you don’t know any real bachelors yet, I imagine,” he said. When I didn’t reply, he stopped and looked at me. “Do you?”
“What? Oh, no.” I couldn’t get over how messy his apartment was. A doctor should be concerned about cleanliness, I thought.
“I wasn’t raised to be a slob, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, reading my mind. “Just wait until you start your internship. You’ll see how little time you have for yourself. Unlike you, I come from modest means. My father worked on the oil rigs in Beaumont and was laid off so often that I used to think he was rich and had to work only a few months a year. Medical school is pretty expensive, you know,” he added.
“How did you manage?” I asked, feeling guilty for condemning him so quickly.
“My grandmother left a trust for me. When she first left it, it was worth something, but inflation ate up a lot of it and the cost of medical school climbed, so I had to borrow money. I’m in debt up to here,” he said holding his hand an inch or so above his head. “It’s a great advantage to attend medical school and not have to worry about financing,” he said. “But you’ve got to have more than money to become a doctor. Only thing is …” He stopped cleaning up and stared at me, shaking his head slowly.
“What?” I asked, concerned.
“You’re really too attractive.”
“What?”
“Seems like a waste,” he added. “You should be a doctor’s wife, bedecked with jewels and furs, running social and charity affairs,” he said and then laughed. “Just kidding. Although the only female doctors I’ve known could scare the germs away.” He patted down his bed, which was covered with a plain light blue quilt and two pillows. “Would you like something cold to drink? I’ve got orange juice, tonic water, and Dixie beer.”
I gazed at the kitchen. It looked contaminated.
His face broke into a laughing smile. “I’ll wash the glass first. I promise,” he said.
“Orange juice will be fine.”
“Great. Sit anywhere you like. Sit on the bed if you want,” he said and went to get my juice. I sat on the settee and started to peruse the medical books.
“I know it’s too soon, but have you considered what you want to specialize in?” he asked from the kitchen.
“I was thinking about pediatrics.”
“Good one,” he said returning. He had juice for me and a glass of beer for himself. “Especially for a woman. Mothers find it easier to deal with a woman.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it because of that,” I said with some testiness in my voice. “Women are capable of becoming good surgeons, good cardiologists, good—”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’m not a male chauvinist. I’m just practical,” he said, handing me my glass of juice. He sat beside me on the settee. “Hungry yet?”
I had been, but the sight of the room had churned my stomach and driven away my appetite.
“Not yet,” I said. I was thinking now that I would study with him for a while and then make my excuses and go home, where I could enjoy some of Milly’s leftovers.
“I happen to be a pretty good cook. All that chemistry,” he said smiling. He gazed at me and then let his eyes drop softly, moving like invisible fingers over my face, down my neck, and across my breasts. “I bet a beautiful girl like you has had lots of boyfriends, right?”
“No.”
“No? I thought girls were more promiscuous these days, collecting male trophies the way boys used to when I was in high school,” he said.
“I have always had more important things on my mind, although I did go steady for a while this year.”
“What happened? I don’t mean to be personal. I’m just curious about young people today,” he said.
“Let’s just say I wasn’t as committed to our relationship as he thought I was.”
“Uh-oh. I think I know what that means. Was he your first steady boyfriend?” he asked with a licentious smile.
“Yes, but as I said, it didn’t last that long.”
“I see.” He nodded, his right forefinger and thumb squeezing his chin. He was making me feel as if he were a doctor of romance and I had come to him for a love checkup.
“What do you have to study tonight?” I asked, feeling a little uncomfortable under such intense scrutiny.
“Hmm.” He thought a moment and then reached under the settee and brought out a textbook. “I know just the topic. During office hours, we had a female patient today who suffered from dyspareunia. I don’t suppose you know what that is,” he said thumbing through the book.
I shook my head.
“Another term used is vaginismus, affectionately known as the honeymoon injury,” he said, his smile widening. “Enough hints?”
I felt myself blanche.
“Now, now. Someone who wants to be a doctor must be comfortable with every aspect of the human anatomy. Our patient,” he said sitting back, “was a nineteen-year-old girl who had been recently married. You understand what dyspareunia is now, don’t you?”
“I think so,” I said. My heart was beating rapidly, but I felt as if my lungs had stopped working.
“Painful or difficult coitus,” he recited. “You shouldn’t be uncomfortable discussing any aspect of the human body,” he repeated. “Or any of our normal functions.”
“I’m not,” I insisted. I felt my spine harden into cold steel and sat up sharply.
“Good. Dyspareunia may be the subject of back alley and barroom jokes, but to us doctors it’s just another medical problem to solve, another form of suffering for us to end,” he declared with the dedication and authority of someone who had been part of the medical profession for decades. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course.” In my secret heart I wished he had chosen a different subject, but I wasn’t going to let him see that this topic disturbed me. That was just what he would expect, and he would tell me how my attitude illustrated why it was so difficult for a woman to become a doctor.
“Let’s continue, then.” He leaned forward. “The patient confided in me after Dr. Bardot had left the examination room. She felt more comfortable talking to someone younger. She said she had been raped when she was twelve years old.”
“Raped! How horrible.”
“Yes, and that left her with some deep psychological damage.” He handed the textbook to me and stood up. He started to pace like a college medical instructor giving a lecture. “This was important for me to know, because dyspareunia can be caused by psychogenic spasms. Please turn to page 819, top right corner.” I did so quickly and then looked up at him.
He paused and closed his eyes, grimacing hard as he searched his memory. “When dyspareunia is not due to local causes, or when local symptoms
are overshadowed by nervous symptoms, it indicates a psychologic defense mechanism developed by the patient.” He opened his eyes and looked down at me expectantly.
I read the first lines. “That’s right,” I said.
“Good. Let’s continue. The defense may be directed against sex and intercourse in general. The possibilities are listed: excessive egotism, ignorance of the anatomy and physiology of the reproductive organs, fear of pregnancy, aversion to the partner, possibly due to a previous love affair or something discovered after marriage. I think it says that even halitosis might form the basis of such an aversion, right?”
“What?”
“Bad breath,” he said. “You know. You’re in bed with someone, and he turns to you and—”
“Oh.” I read and looked up at him. “Yes.”
“So if you read between the lines there, before someone marries someone, she should be very familiar with him. They should conduct some test runs, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know that that’s necessarily the inevitable conclusion,” I said quickly.
He laughed. “Well, let’s use you as a case in point,” he said and sat on the settee. “Reading between the lines concerning what you told me about your boyfriend and you, I assume that you and he never made love. Correct?”
“I don’t want to discuss my personal life,” I said.
“You have to become purely objective, even about yourself, if you want to be a good physician. That’s why I say that some people are just not psychologically prepared to become doctors. They might be smart—valedictorians, even—but if they can’t bridge the psychological gaps—”
“I can handle the psychological gaps,” I snapped.
“Fine. Then you shouldn’t have any trouble discussing yourself. You’re human, right? Every reaction you have, other people have, too, people you’re going to examine and treat. When a man touches you, your body does the same things another woman’s body does when a man touches her,” he said and shrugged. “Don’t you see that?”
“Yes, but …”
“So. Let’s continue. It’s much better to work these problems out with real subjects than just to recite lines from textbooks. You might be suffering from frigidity,” he said nodding firmly.
“What?”
“It’s a medical term for the incapacity of the female to derive normal pleasure from sexual intercourse. It’s right there in the textbook, bottom of the page on the right side.” He indicated the passage with his right forefinger.
My eyes fell to the page, and I read it just as he had recited it. Then I looked up and shook my head. “That’s not my problem. I don’t even have a problem. I just didn’t feel—”
“Let’s not jump to any diagnosis just yet,” he said holding up his hand. “All right? We might have to refer you to a psychiatrist.”
“What?” I started to laugh, but he shook his head.
“One of the most important things you’ll learn as a medical student is when to recognize that your patient’s problem is beyond your ability and requires the attention of a specialist. Doctors get themselves and their patients into trouble when they don’t recognize that,” he added. “Are you following me? I don’t mean to go too fast.”
“I follow you. I just don’t see how I’m helping you study by talking about myself and why I broke up with my boyfriend.”
“Oh, but you are, because it’s a situation with which I must be familiar. As I said, we had this case just today, and I’m sure Dr. Bardot is going to test me on this first thing tomorrow. So,” he continued sitting back, his arms folded across his chest, “you never slept with this boyfriend. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever slept with anyone?” I blushed an even deeper red and hated myself for it. “I’m asking purely as a physician, not as a gossip columnist,” he added.
“No.”
“Aha!” he said, a sickly arrogant smile forming across his lips. “I’m sure you had ample opportunity, so what prevented you?”
“I don’t sleep around, and I’m not interested in sex for the sake of sex. For me it has to be part of something bigger, something …”
“What?” he pursued.
“Magical. Love. And don’t laugh,” I told him sternly.
“I’m not going to laugh, but you might just be rationalizing, making up excuses for your deep fears, your frigidity.”
“I am not frigid,” I insisted, practically bouncing on the settee for emphasis.
“You don’t tighten up when a man touches you?” he asked. I simply stared at him. “You do, don’t you?”
“No. No!” I emphasized.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” he said with a snide smile.
“You can be very infuriating,” I said.
“I don’t mean to be. Look, I’m a doctor and you want to become one. There’s nothing about your physiology I don’t know, and from what I already know about you, I feel safe in saying you are pretty well informed. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, however.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe because you are so intelligent, you are too aware of what’s going on, and therefore you lose the magic you claim to want so much. Maybe you are doomed never to find it. Maybe when you think of a human heart, you think only of ventricles and arteries.”
I felt my throat tighten and tears burn under my eyelids.
“Am I striking a sensitive note? Because if I am, I’m doing a good job of analyzing your problem,” he said.
“I don’t have a problem,” I replied, but not as firmly as before.
He reached out to take my hand. I started to pull it back.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He made me feel like a little girl going to see the doctor. I let him keep my hand in his. His fingers began to stroke the backs of mine.
“Let’s walk through this together,” he suggested, moving closer to me on the settee. “I bet you vividly remember the first time you kissed a boy, don’t you?”
I did. Freddy Mainiero and I had gone to the movies, and he had kissed me good night. I was only twelve. It was only a quick touch on my lips, but it sent a shiver of excitement down my spine, and I went running up to my room to look at myself in the mirror. My face was crimson, and my heart was pounding so hard that I thought it might split my chest open. I had always thought my first kiss would be long and romantic like the ones I’d seen in the movies, but after this, I couldn’t imagine surviving one of those luscious extended kisses.
“Tell me about it,” Jack Weller asked. He was only inches from me, his own lips softening, his eyes bright with interest.
“It wasn’t anything. Just a little kiss.”
“So, you felt safe in that sort of environment, having that simple and innocuous an experience, but alone with a young man, someplace where the lights are low and music is playing softly … when his hand touches your shoulder.” He let his hand touch my shoulder, and I cringed. “Relax. Easy. I know just what I’m doing.”
His fingers continued until he was touching my neck, and then they moved down to trace my collarbone. “You know about erogenous zones, I suppose,” he whispered.
“I haven’t made sexual activity a concentrated area of study,” I replied.
He smiled and nodded. “You can’t be afraid of your own body and how it reacts. Those feelings are only natural.”
“For the last time, I’m not afraid.”
“Actually, you’re lucky that you and I met. I can help you overcome this problem so you can be assured you will have a normal, active sex life. It’s very important when you get married,” he continued. As he spoke, his fingers found the buttons of my blouse and undid them. “Relax. Close your eyes and just sit back a moment. You have wonderfully healthy skin.”
My heart was pounding. His fingers slipped inside my blouse and traced the top of my bra into my cleavage as he leaned forward and kissed my neck.
“Wait,” I said, but his hands moved under my arms and around behind me, where, with a surgeon’s swift skill, he undid my bra and quickly swept his fingers under the elastic, lifting it way from my breasts.
“Yes,” he said lowering his lips to my exposed nipple. “Pearl … Pearl,” he murmured, sending tiny electric chills down my spine while his hand sought to stroke my thigh. “Everything is going along right; it’s all as it should be. Try to relax.”
My head was spinning. He had moved so quickly and so gracefully. I couldn’t believe I was half undressed in moments. My heart was pounding. Actually, it felt funny, as if I were betraying someone. I started to resist, to push him back. He stopped kissing me and looked into my eyes. We were only inches apart.
“From what we just studied, you can see how important the first time is. I’m glad you’re still a virgin. If the first time is clumsy and rough, it can scar you, give you dyspareunia, cause psychological damage that will affect your life forever.
“But with me it will be gentle, perfect. I just want to help you. I just want to make sure,” he continued and again, as he spoke, his fingers moved over my clothing, unzipping my skirt and gently lifting my body to slide it down my legs. “Your body is preparing itself. You’re ready.”
I felt a wave of weakness ripple through me, my resistance diminishing as his lips continued to glide over my neck, my cheeks. The tips of his fingers were slipping under the elastic band of my panties.
Finally that part of me that had been overwhelmed with his aggressive, smooth approach, regained a foothold. I heard myself question what was happening. Reality like a flash of lighting shot across the clouds of confusion, and I lifted my legs to press my knees into his abdomen to push him away, crying out at the same time. “No! Stop it!”
He lost his balance and tumbled off the settee.
I quickly pulled up my skirt and closed the zipper and buttoned up my blouse. Then I swung my legs over him and stood up. Still on the floor staring up at me, he looked foolish and my resolve strengthened.
Hidden Jewel Page 8