Chapter Three
About three years after they met, their relationship took a dramatic turn suddenly when Sarah picked up the annual Saints Newsletter at the Post Office. It carried the announcement of Hunter’s marriage to one of her classmates, Sylvia Enderley, a member of the Thyolo tea planter community. When Sarah read the news, it was like a thunderbolt. She felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water over her, and couldn’t gather her thoughts about it together at all. Hunter couldn’t be married. He couldn’t! He was going to come to his senses and marry her. She had been as sure of that as she was sure of the sun rising every day. In a single moment, her world had been shattered into a thousand pieces. She just couldn’t take it in. For him to marry that stupid shallow bitch was just not believable! Granted that she was very attractive, but underneath the surface she was interested in only one thing. Herself. What was he thinking of? It had to be a joke. That was it. Someone had put it in the Newsletter as a prank. But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true.
She burst into tears right there in front of the Post Office where she had collected her mail and sobbed entirely oblivious to the amused or pitying looks of passers-by. Eventually, however her anguish was replaced by anger. How could he do that to her! After all that she had done for him – the dieting, the exercise, the money she’d spent on clothes! After all that, how had he dared to marry that idiot? She dearly wished she could abuse him physically, kick him in the balls or hit him with a cricket bat.
She let her imagination roam, and briefly it gave her some satisfaction, but since he wasn’t there to abuse physically, she began to psychologically abuse herself instead. What an idiot she’d been! What a mindless, spineless dolt! Most of all, what had possessed her to keep her precious virginity, saving it for an asshole with an I.Q. of a baboon, a macho cretin who was too gross to appreciate her? How could she have been so totally inane, or was it insane! She thought of all the times she and Eric had shared a room on Mulanje. What a waste! What a lost opportunity! All those romantic nights in the moonlight miles from anyone else! What delights they could have shared! She had fantasized just such romantic interludes with Hunter! What a loss!
Well, that was something she could fix right away! She ran to her car, dived inside, slammed it into gear, and headed out into traffic, nearly ramming a city bus. By the time she reached Eric’s flat she was a little calmer, but not enough to consider that Eric might have his own ideas on the subject.
When he got to Eric’s she found him cooking dinner. Without even greeting him, she practically shouted, “Do me! Do me now!
Shocked out of his wits, Eric asked, “What on earth are you talking about? “
“I’m talking about sex. I want you to screw me! You know what that is!”
“Well, of course! But why?”
“Don’t ask me why! I’ll tell you why later. Right now, I want you to do it!” And suiting her actions to her words, she began to strip off her clothes, scattering them around the room, and was soon naked.
“But I don’t have any condoms.”
“I don’t care about condoms, Eric. I just want to have sex.”
Eric’s mind was racing. He didn’t want to have sex with Sarah, at least not just now and not in a frenzy. On one hand he loved her. She was his best buddy, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. On the other hand, he was practically a virgin and she was a virgin and it was bound to be a disaster. But, it would be a disaster if he didn’t. He figured he had no choice, but with grave foreboding he said, “OK, Sarah, I will, but give me a minute to turn off the stove.” He was glad he’d had the presence to do that, at least. However disastrous the sex was going to be, it would be more disastrous with a stew burning to a crisp on the stove.
With a desperate thought that she might change her mind, he moved slowly to turn off the burners and remove his apron. He walked into the bedroom to find her splayed out supine on the bed, legs akimbo, arms stretched out to him. No chance of her changing her mind, that was clear. He unbuttoned his shirt and began to fold it.
“For God’s sake, Eric. “Hurry up!”
“Ok, Sarah, Just give me time to get my jeans off.”
“Don’t bother! Just unzip them and come here.”
He made one last attempt at doing the thing with whatever grace might be possible. “What’s the hurry, Sarah?”
“I don’t know. I just know that if I don’t do it right now, I’m going to start screaming!”
Wanting to take no chances of that happening, Eric unzipped his jeans and moved to lie down beside her. But before he was fully down, she threw her leg over him and straddling him, took his manhood out of his Y-fronts – a task that was more awkward than she expected, and began to pump it frantically. For a terrible moment there seemed to be no response, but Eric closed his eyes, and recalled the sex scene from “The Piano” which they had seen just the night before, and willed himself into an erection, or at least enough of one so that she could lower herself on to it successfully. Fortunately for them both, her hymen ruptured easily with only a momentary prick of pain. From then on, thanks, perhaps to his youth and chronically horny state, his natural responses took over, and within a few moments he came, and then deflating rapidly, so that she was unable to keep him in her any longer.
Sarah burst into tears. “That isn’t the way I imagined it. It wasn’t beautiful like I imagined it. It wasn’t a glorious act of love. It was horrid!” She lifted herself off him and caught a glimpse of his deflated manhood. “I’m so sorry, Eric. I’m, sorry! What a useless inadequate excuse for a woman I am. I can’t do anything right. I’ll go away now. If you ever want to see me again, give me a call.”
Eric, filled with relief that it hadn’t been as bad as he feared it might be, and chuffed that he’d been able to perform, was now in his element. He grabbed her arm before she could get off the bed and pulled her back next to him. He put his arms around her and comforted her as he had many times before, assuring her that she was a wonderful woman, both beautiful and talented. He agreed that the sex hadn’t been first rate, but he argued that first sex hardly ever was, despite what the romances said.
And then he got the idea that was to save their relationship. “Listen, what we need to do is learn how to have sex. I’ll buy a sex manual, and we can read it together and put it into practice. I know there are ones that explain everything. Then with a lot of good sex under our belts, so to speak…” Realizing his unintended pun, he began to laugh, and soon she saw the joke and they were laughing hysterically together. When he could go on, he said, “We can make this nothing but a funny memory.”
It wasn’t until the dinner had been fully cooked and eaten that Sarah, encouraged by half a bottle of pinot noir, got up the courage to tell him why she’d raped him, which she insisted over his protests she had done. Whatever Eric may have thought of her story, he accepted it with every sign of understanding. “Ah,” he said, “I’ve always suspected that there was something important in your life that you weren’t telling me. Now I know what it was.”
“I’m sorry, Eric. I’m afraid I used you inexcusably.”
“Oh no, it was entirely excusable. Entirely! I’m glad I was around to be used. That’s what friends do. They use each other without hard feelings. But I’m glad you can put it all behind you now that what you wanted isn’t going to happen. It’s a blessing in disguise.”
“I think I can, but it may take some time. He’s been a major motivating force in my life for a long time, and right now the disguise is pretty good. “
“Yeah, I understand that. Maybe our sex classes will help.”
“I’m sure they will.” Sarah said with a sly smile. Soon after dinner, Sarah left. And after a hot bath with chamomile for soothing aromatherapy, she mulled over the whole incident. She was momentarily tempted by the idea that she should give up on all her self-improvement initiatives, since the object of them no longer existed. What difference, after all, did it make now? But reason soon as
serted itself as she realized that though they had failed in their prime objective, they had been very valuable to her in many ways. She liked looking better and feeling physically fit; she felt much happier about herself than she had, and certainly didn’t want to give that up. She cringed when she thought about what had gone on in Eric’s bed, but was comforted by his very loving reaction to it. He really was special. With that thought, she fell asleep.
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