The Harrad Experiment

by Robert H. Rimmer

  We finished the wine, and for a long time, her back against a tree, her eyes closed, Beth said nothing. Then softly:

  “Harry, I think sometimes I am a very erotic person.”

  “way?” I asked.

  “I get very sensuous ideas. Once in the middle of winter, I took off all my clothes and ran out in our back yard. It was snowing and blustery. Drifts four and five feet high swirled into small knife-edge mountains. The snow was soft and powdery. For a moment, though I knew I was half frozen, I felt that I wasn’t me. I was snow itself, and I was whirling in a mad snow dance. Then you know what I did? I jumped and rolled in the biggest drift and rubbed the snow all over me.”

  “Did you catch cold?”

  “My, you are practical, aren’t you, Harry?”

  “I would have liked to have been there,” I said.

  “Would you have jumped in the snow with me ... or would you have watched?”

  “I guess I am practical.”

  “Well, jiminy I could have used you, anyway ... to snuggle against. Afterwards, I got into bed and shivered all night. Why did I do that, Harry?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you were all tense, and it relaxed you. You seem to have a wonderful ability to just let go. Everybody has to find some form of release.”

  “No, I don’t think so, Harry. I think it was a throwback.”

  “Throwback?”

  “Did you ever see a dog or cat roll on the ground ... right in the dirt?”

  “Or a pig or rhinoceros in the zoo just wallow in the mud?”

  “Sure. My guess is that it is a sexual response of some kind.”

  “Maybe masochistic?”

  “Ugh ... no! Just plain sensual. After all, man is linked to the earth. One’s body crying for the earth from which it came, and an ecstasy at being re-united.”

  “If you’d like to roll in the mud,” I said laughing, “go ahead. I’ll roll with you.”

  “Let’s play in the leaves instead. Did you ever play in the leaves when you were a kid, Harry?”

  “Sure. We had leaf houses, and burrowed in them, and had leaf fights and itched for days afterwards. But they weren’t our leaves. They belonged to the city. Maybe that’s why I never got the urge to roll in the snow. We have no back yard, and when it snows the city cleans it off the streets within a day.”

  “Come on, Harry,” Beth said. “Stop mourning your youth. Take off your clothes and follow me!” In seconds she stripped off her blouse, skirt, bra, and panties. Yelling with sheer joy, she plunged naked into huge piles of leaves. Tossing them about her in mad abandon, she sank deep into them and disappeared from view.

  Naked myself, I followed, burrowed in after her, and grabbed her. Laughing hilariously, we tumbled and leaped and jumped, and worked our way deep into the pile, tossing leaves at each other, and in the air ... and then we rolled together and Beth hugged me as we sank deep into the crackly pyramid. Sunlight filtered down through the leaves covering us. Beth kissed me fiercely.

  “What is love?” she whispered.

  “A girl, a boy, their hearts beating ... happy with simple things like leaves and each other,” I said.

  “You look like Pan ... or maybe like Bacchus. At least you’re full of wine,” she said. “Harry, you said a boy and girL Not a man and woman? Love is youth? When you are fifty, and a staid old Doctor, you wouldn’t roll in the leaves naked, would you? I guess not. Daddy and Mommy wouldn’t... but I will, Harry, because I believe love is laughter, too.”

  I couldn’t answer her. I could only see her through a film of tears that came in my eyes. Oh, Beth ...

  “Rub the leaves on my body. Harry,” she sighed.

  And she lay there, luxuriating, sensuous, while the leaves crumbled in my hands and turned her white breasts and shoulders and stomach dusty brown.

  “We’re going to need a bath,” she chuckled, rubbing leaves over me until I was as dusty as she.

  “Harry,” she whispered, lying back in the leaves, her legs wide apart. “I am a very devious person. I practiced with that diaphragm this morning. It’s kind of god-awful ... but...”

  “But what?”

  “I left it in.”

  “I never did it before, Beth,” I said.

  “According to everything I have read in the books, you are ready enough.” She grinned at me and carefully picked the leaves off my penis. “Please, Harry. We’ve waited long enough.”

  She shuddered and raked my back with her fingernails. “Harry ... Harry ... hold me ... I’m afraid ... I’m afraid ...” she whimpered, and then with a banshee wail she clasped her legs around me, rocked me fiercely, kissing me and sobbing while I kissed her dusty face and breasts and held her so hard that her poor body must ache even now. We lay together for a long time in our leafy womb, and I could feel the soft undulating movement of her vagina keeping me happily within her.

  “Was that love, Harry?” she asked.

  “Yes ... and this whole day, and yesterday and tomorrow is love, too.”

  She gave me one million two hundred and thirty-nine thousand little kisses, and then, laughing and screaming at the cold chill of the brook water, we washed the dirt and powdered leaves off each other, and dried ourselves as best we could with my shorts and her panties.

  And then last night she slept in her own bed; and today she has been very serious and subdued. When I said: “I love you, Beth,” she smiled affectionately, but she didn’t say: “I love you, too, Harry.”

  Oh, Beth ... why am I afraid to just ask you what you are thinking?

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BETH HILLYER

  November and December, the First Year

  Suddenly it’s no longer simple. Because I had intercourse with Harry, am I supposed to love him? I like him, in fact I like him very much, but I don’t have an overwhelming feeling of love.

  Making love in that mountain of leaves was more than just playful fun. I think I almost lost consciousness. I was no longer me. My brain lost control and I surged ... profoundly ... esctatically ... much like surf gathering on an ocean shelf, cresting unbelievably high, and then pounding helplessly on the shore, cresting again and again as if the mass of water rising toward the sky would never tumble back to earth ... and when it finally did I was swirling in a vortex, and a flood of tears unaccountably poured from my eyes. Nice. Not one orgasm, but a recurring series of orgasms ... for a moment, two Beths ... one helpless, a creature of emotions ... and the other a dimly perceiving and appreciating brain.

  But. Must there always be a but? I couldn’t relate it to Harry. He was the instrument ... the leaves ... the musky day ... the sunlight, were the exotic setting, but all the time I was really only interested in me, Beth Hillyer, whoever she is. Not once during that wild culmination did I care about Harry or what was happening to him. I was completely centered in my own emotions. It frightens me. Given the moment, the setting, the mood couldn’t any man have produced the same response? I am afraid that may be true.

  With Harry it was different. His awareness, even during his violent ejaculation, was mostly for me. He was afraid he might be hurting me. He was almost nauseating in his tenderness toward me, worried about the scratches the dried leaves were making on my body, later over-solicitous as he tenderly dabbed away the dirt and mud. How could I respond to tenderness when I would have welcomed a fury of passion equal to my own?

  And, now, in the last few days Harry has assumed a terribly proprietary manner toward me, not in a masterful way but anxiously, worriedly. I know he expects we should sleep together practically every night.

  “I love you Beth,” he said last night. He got into bed beside me. I lay on my back, and he snuggled against my breast like a child, kissing it and sucking it. When I didn’t respond he was unhappy. “What’s the matter?” he asked, still kissing, “Are you sorry it happened?”

  “No, I’m not sorry,” I said. “We’ll probably do it again.”

  “It was three days ago, Beth. I could make love to you every day.”
<
br />   “We aren’t married,” I told him. “If we do it every day it would probably get boring.

  “I guess I don’t understand you,” Harry sighed.

  “There’s nothing to understand.” But there was, and I knew what it was. Harry as a friend, as a room-mate, was fun ... someone to kid with. Harry as a lover, demanding, fawning on me, expecting me to hold his head against my breast and be a baby sucking a teat again, just didn’t inspire me to return his emotion. Oh, damn! I’m too confused to keep writing. What is the matter with me, anyway?

  I haven’t written in this journal for four weeks. The study pace at Harrad is so fast and so demanding that while we all live in a presumably titillating environment, most of us forget the sexual aspects much of the time. Harry finally stopped trying to probe into what was the matter with me. Do I know myself? We resumed our earlier friendly, bantering relationship. I like studying in our room at night with him. Harry has a wonderfully keen mind. We act as a catalyst on each other. I know that we will both finish the term with straight A’s. The kids in our chemistry course have labelled us Monsieur and Madame Curie. Several students at the university have tried to date me, and look at me incredulously when I tell them I am going steady with Harry. Wouldn’t they be surprised (shocked?) if they really knew!

  “You mean that you are going to marry him someday?” Jon Wainstrom, who sits beside me in Honors English, asked. “Good God, your children will be swinging from trees!”

  I got kind of angry at him. “Harry is just as nice looking as you, and, what’s more, he doesn’t have a face full of pimples.”

  Jon chuckled good-naturedly. “But Harry will always have an eagle’s proboscis.”

  Another boy in Chemistry laboratory, when I refused to go out with him, said. “But Harry’s a Jew. You won’t marry him. Jews only marry Jews.”

  I wonder if that’s true. Of course, I know it isn’t true. Anyway, I don’t plan to marry Harry. Why is it that every time I start to write in this damned journal I get all tangled up with my emotional reactions to Harry? I guess it is because I know that I am going to have to make a decision. Most of the room-mates, so far as I can determine, are enjoying sex with each other on a more or less regular basis. I have avoided Harry ever since that day in the leaves. What should I do? What can I do?

  Oh, dear ... oh, dear God! I guess I feel more like crying than writing. I couldn’t get it off my mind. After the Human Values course today I decided to talk with Margaret Tenhausen. I tried to tell her how I was reacting to Harry.

  “The truth is that I don’t really love him.” I said. “I don’t know why. I just don’t.”

  Margaret sat behind her desk and listened while I told her about this morning.

  “I was awake before Harry! I was half dozing, looking over at him in his bed and watching him sleep. Suddenly, I noticed his eyes were squeezed together tighter. His body had stiffened beneath the blankets. He jerked spasmodically, and then in a few seconds he opened his eyes and looked at me ... unseeing at first, and then bewildered. He blushed, ‘You know, I guess I’ve been thinking about you too much!’ he said. ‘I just dreamed I was making love to you, and it happened.’ He got out of bed and looked at himself ruefully. His stomach and his hand were wet.

  “ ‘Oh Harry, I’m so sorry!’ I couldn’t hold back the tears in my eyes.

  “ ‘No need to be sorry, Beth. It happens in the best of families. Besides, it was a nice dream.’ He took a shower, and at breakfast I asked him why it happened.

  “ ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Man knows very little of the whys and wherefores of the human body. Maybe if we ever become doctors, the interaction of the brain on the body would be worth studying.’ ”

  Margaret made no comment on my tearful recital. “Do you think maybe Harrad is a bad idea, Margaret? A boy and a girl living so dose together and not doing anything?”

  She smiled. “Harry would have seminal emissions whether you were rooming with him or not, Beth. It is a natural bodily adjustment for the male. Nature protests, perhaps, but provides the solution.”

  “I guess I should sleep with Harry whether I love him or not?”

  “What is love, Beth?” Margaret asked. “From what you have told me and the way you have reacted I think in many ways you actually do love Harry.”

  “I like him.” I corrected her. “Love is something else.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. Something more dynamic, all-consuming. Something that makes you want to kneel down before somebody, humble yourself to him. Give yourself irrevocably.”

  “In other words, the way Harry feels about you?”

  I looked at her puzzled. “Yes ... but woman to man ... not man to woman.”

  “I hope this happens to you, Beth,” Margaret said. “I think you may react differently if you ever experience this overpowering loss of identity to another person. If it happens to you at Harrad, I hope you will tell me your feeling then.”

  During the two weeks before Christmas vacations, I slept with Harry five different nights. Harry was delighted. Wonderfully gentle, deeply possessive, hungrily oral as he fell asleep on my breast. And all I learned is that I am a terribly passionate woman. I scare myself. Each night was a repetition of the fury of our introduction in our mountain of leaves. But while I was an explosive, sexually wracked body enjoying the demon Beth’s violent coupling, a part of my brain stood aside and watched. I was, unhappily, not in love. My God ... what is love?

  Sometimes I wonder whether I am fully responsible for what happened or whether Sheila Grove was purposely testing Stanley. A week before Christmas vacation she offered Stanley her Buick for the Holidays. He could drive it to his home in Detroit if he wished. Sheila wasn’t going to use the car since her father had invited her to fly down to Palm Beach for Christmas and New Year’s. To Stanley, who comes from a poor family, this was a king sized gift. He immediately planned a junket which included driving me to Columbus, and then proceeding on to Detroit.

  As Stanley’s plan grew in magnitude it finally embraced an idea contributed by Jack Dawes, who lives across the river in New Jersey, that as many as possible of us, meet in New York City for a New Year’s Eve blast. Harry was enthusiastic, and soon Jack had organized twenty of us with a contribution of fifteen dollars apiece to hire a hotel suite and provide food, liquor, and entertainment.

  We were all due back at Harrad January 5th. As many as wished could squeeze into Sheila’s car for the return trip. Those left over could fly or take a bus. Jack made reservations at the Hotel Astor because of its proximity to Times Square.

  By this time I think Sheila was sorry that she was involved with her father. While she couldn’t promise she was determined to try and fly back from Florida and spend New Year’s Eve with all of us. Some details of this junket would have to be glossed over with my family, who would much prefer that Beth spend a less merry time in Columbus, but I figured I could convince

  Pops. On a freezing cold afternoon of December 20th, after our final classes, Stanley and I, alone, in Sheila’s car, drove to the Mass Turnpike. We were on our way to Columbus. Neither of us had mentioned the obvious. Columbus was more than seven hundred miles away. We were either going to drive all night or stay overnight in a motel somewhere enroute. Stanley was singing as he drove and seemed unusually happy and gay.

  “Do you think Sheila approves of this?” I asked, snuggling into a comer of the seat near the window.

  “Why not?” Stanley asked. “She wanted me to use her car.”

  “But she didn’t expect that you were going to drive me home, and then pick me up a few days after Christmas and drive back to New York City.”

  “You aren’t saying what you really mean,” Stanley grinned.

  “Oh, you think not?”

  “I know not. You really mean: will Sheila approve of us sleeping together?”

  “What makes you think that we are going to sleep together?”

  “Beth, don’t be devious. Y
ou could have taken a train or flown home in half the time. Why were you so eager to drive with me?”

  I was silent. It is disconcerting to have the truth served up ungarnished.

  “Besides,” Stanley continued, “even if we don’t sleep together in the same bed, we will sleep together under the same roof, because we aren’t going to drive all night. And, furthermore, to the contrary, not withstanding, and all that gleek ... no matter what, the die is cast. Sheila will believe we slept together.”

  “Stanley, do you love Sheila?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do.” Stanley smiled at my reflection in the car mirror. “The Tenhausen theories have captured me. I love you, too, Beth. I loved you from the first night we got into that argument about American foreign policy. I thought what a wonderful thing it is that Beth is a girl ... that her eyes flash, and for this moment we are two interacting, thinking human beings.”

  “You mean you like me ... not love me.”

  “I love you. I couldn’t love you if I didn’t like you.”

  “You can’t love two women.”

  “I think you can love every woman ... every man, if you really try. I honestly believe that the Tenhausens are right. Both you and Sheila evoke a responsive chord in me. As females you make me feel male ... protective.”

  “Ha ... you have vanquished your own argument!”

  “How?”

  “You couldn’t love a girl like Valerie Latrobe, who is quite blustery and dominant.”

  “I do love her.” Stanley chuckled. “Aren’t you confusing love with going to bed with someone?”

  “I don’t think you can love everybody, even the way you term it, what ever that may be. It sounds kind of lucky to me. Like the Salvation Army or Candide. Anyway, so far as going to bed goes, I don’t really enjoy going to bed with Harry. I like him ... but I don’t love him. He doesn’t make me feel feminine ... only motherly. The sad fact is, I have no mother instincts. At the moment, anyway.”