by Henry Miller
Before we dozed off I learned that she had had her hymen broken at the age of fifteen. That too was her mother’s fault. Yes, they had been driving her crazy at home by their talk of money, money, money all the time. So she had taken a job as a cashier in a little cage in front of a movie house. It wasn’t long before the proprietor, who owned a string of movie houses throughout the country, had taken notice of her. He had a Rolls-Royce car, wore the best clothes, spats, lemon-colored gloves, a boutonniere and everything that goes with the part. He was rolling in money. Always peeling off hundred-dollar bills from his big wad. Fingers studded with diamond rings. Nails beautifully manicured. A man of undefinable age, probably in his late forties. A highly sexed man of leisure who was always on the prowl. She had accepted his gifts of course—but no monkey business. She knew she could twine him around her finger.
But then there was the pressure at home. No matter what she threw down on the table it was never enough.
So when he asked her one day if she would like to go to Chicago with him and open up a new theater there she consented. She was certain she could handle him all right. Besides, she was dying to get out of New York, away from her parents, and so on.
He behaved like a perfect gentleman. Everything was going beautifully—he had given her a substantial raise, had bought her clothes, had taken her to the best places, all just as she had imagined it would be. Then, one night after dinner (he had bought tickets for the theater), he came out with it bluntly: He wanted to know if she was still a virgin. She had been only too eager to tell him yes, thinking that her virginity was her protection. But to her amazement he then began a most frank and brutal confession in which he revealed the fact that his one and only obsession was to deflower young girls. He even confessed that it had cost him a pretty penny and had got him into serious scrapes. Apparently, however, he could do nothing to curb this passion. It was perverse, he confessed, but since he had the means to indulge his vice he had not bothered to cure it. He insinuated that there was nothing brutal about his procedure. He had always treated his victims with kindness and consideration. After all, they might well regard him as a benefactor later on. Sooner or later every young woman has to surrender her maidenhood. He would even go so far as to say that, since it had to be done, it were better to entrust the operation to a professional, a connoisseur, so to speak. Many young husbands were so clumsy and ineffectual that they often caused their wives to become frigid. Many a marital wreck might be traced back to that first night, he insisted smoothly and with undeniable truth.
In short, to hear her relate the incident, he was a most excellent pleader, skilled not only in the art of defloration but in the art of seduction.
“I thought to myself,” said Mona, “that if it was to be just once I could let myself do it. He had told me he would pay me a thousand dollars, and I knew what a thousand dollars meant to my mother and father. I felt that I could trust him.”
“So you didn’t go to the theater that night?”
“Yes, we did—but I had already promised him that I would go through with it. He said there was no hurry, I wasn’t to worry about it. He assured me it wouldn’t be too painful. He said he could trust me; he had been observing me for a long time and knew that I would behave sensibly. To prove his sincerity he offered to give me the money first. I wouldn’t accept it. He had been very decent to me and I felt that I ought to go through with the bargain before accepting his money. As a matter of fact, Val, I began to take a fancy to him. It was shrewd of him not to push me into it. If he had I might have hated him afterwards. As it is I’m rather grateful to him—though it turned out to be worse than I had imagined it would.”
I was wondering to myself what she meant by this last when to my surprise I heard her saying:
“You see, I had a very tough hymen. Sometimes they have to operate, you know. I didn’t know anything about such things then. I thought it would be a little painful and bloody . . . a few minutes. . . and then . . . Anyway, it didn’t go like that at all. It took almost a week before he was able to break it. I must say he enjoyed it. And he was gentle! Maybe he was just fibbing about it being so tough. Maybe that was just a gag to prolong the affair. Then too he wasn’t so powerfully built. It was short and thick. It seemed to me he got it in all the way, but then I was so jittery that I really couldn’t say. He would stay in me a long time, hardly moving, but hard as a rock and twitching like a jigger. Sometimes he took it out and played around with it on the outside. That felt marvelous. He could do it an ungodly long time without coming. He said I was built perfectly . . . that once the skin was perforated I would be wonderful to go to bed with. He didn’t use foul language—like that other brute. He was a sensualist. He watched me, told me how to move, showed me all sorts of tricks. . . . It might have gone on much longer, God knows, if I hadn’t got terribly excited one night. It was driving me crazy, especially when he pulled out and started rubbing it around the lips . . .”
“You really enjoyed it then?” I said.
“Enjoyed it? I was wild. I know I shocked him to death when finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and I grabbed him and pulled him down on me with all my strength. ’Fuck, damn you!’ I said, and I pressed against him and bit his lips. He lost his control then and he began to go at it with a vengeance. Even after he had pierced it, though it hurt, I kept on pushing. I must have had four or five orgasms. I wanted to feel it penetrate all the way. Anyway, I had no shame or embarrassment. I wanted to be fucked and I didn’t care any more how much it hurt.”
I was wondering if she would tell me truthfully how long this affair had lasted—after the technical side of it was over. I had my answer almost immediately. She was amazingly frank about it. It seemed to me that there was an unusual warmth about her reminiscences. Made me realize how grateful women are when they have been handled with understanding.
“I was his mistress for quite a while,” she continued. “I was always expecting him to get tired of me, because he had emphasized so strongly that he could only get passionate about a virgin. Of course I was still a virgin, in a sense. I was terribly young, though people always took me for eighteen or nineteen. He taught me a lot. I went everywhere with him, all over the country. He was very fond of me and he always treated me with the greatest consideration. One day I noticed that he was jealous. I was surprised because I knew he had had many women—I didn’t think he loved me. ‘But I do love you,’ he said, when I teased him about it. Then I became curious. I wanted to know how long he expected it to go on, this affair. I was always anticipating the moment when he would find another girl whom he would want to deflower. I dreaded meeting a young girl in his presence.
“‘But I’m not thinking about another girl,’ he told me. ‘I want you . . . and I’m going to hold on to you.’
“‘But you told me . . .’ I started to say, and then I saw him laugh . . . and I realized at once what an idiot I had been. ‘So that was how you got me, eh?’ I said. And then I felt vengeful. It was foolish of me because he hadn’t done anything to hurt me. But I wanted to humiliate him.
“You know, I really despise myself for what I did,” she went on. “He didn’t deserve to be treated that way. But I derived a cruel satisfaction in making him suffer. I flirted with every man I met—outrageously. I even went to bed with some of them, and then I told him about it and gloated over it when I saw how much it hurt him. ‘You’re young,’ he used to say. ‘You don’t understand what you’re doing.’ It was true enough, but I only understood one thing—that I had the better of him, and that even if I had sold myself to him he was my slave. ‘Go and buy yourself another virgin,’ I would say. ‘You can probably get them cheaper than a thousand dollars. I would have said yes if you had offered five hundred. You could have had me for nothing if you had been a little cleverer. If I had your money I’d choose a new one every night.’ I would go on like that until he couldn’t stand it any longer. One night he proposed marriage. He swore he would divorce his wife instantly�
�if I would only say yes. He said he couldn’t live without me. ‘But I can live without you,’ I answered. He winced. ‘You’re cruel,’ he said. ‘You’re unjust.’ I had no intention of marrying him, no matter how sincere he was. I didn’t care about his money. I don’t know why I abused him so. Afterwards, after I had left him, I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself. I went back to him once and I begged his forgiveness. He was living with another girl—he told me so at once. ‘I would never have been unfaithful to you,’ he said. ‘I loved you. I wanted to do things for you. I didn’t expect you to stay with me forever. But you were too headstrong . . . you were too proud.’ He talked to me the way my father would have talked. I felt like weeping. . . . Then I did something I never dreamt I could do. I begged him to take me to bed. He was trembling with passion. He was so damned decent, however, that he didn’t have the heart to take advantage of me. ‘You don’t want to go to bed with me,’ he said, ‘you just want to prove to me that you’re repentant.’ I insisted that I wanted to sleep with him, that I liked him as a lover. He could hardly resist any longer. But he was afraid, I suppose, of what would happen to him. He didn’t want to begin craving for me again, that was it. But I was thinking only of paying him back. I didn’t know how else to do it. I knew he loved me, my body and everything. I wanted to make him happy, even if it did upset him. . . . It was all very confusing. Anyway, we got in bed, but he couldn’t get an erection. I never knew that to happen before. I tried everything. I enjoyed humiliating myself. As I was sucking him off I was smiling to myself, thinking how strange it was that I had to sweat like this over a man I despised. . . . Nothing happened. I said I’d come back next day and try again. He looked at me as if he were appalled at the idea. ‘You were patient with me in the beginning, remember?’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t I be patient now?’ ‘It’s crazy,’ he said. ‘You don’t love me. You’re just giving yourself like a whore.’ ‘That’s what I am now,’ I said . . . ’a whore.’ He took me literally. He looked frightened, thoroughly frightened . . .”
I waited to hear the rest of it. “Did you go back?” I asked.
No, she hadn’t gone back. She never went near him again.
“He must have lived on tenterhooks,” I said to myself.
The next morning I reminded her of our proposed visit to the doctor. I told her I would phone her later in the day and ask her to meet me at the doctor’s office. I would have to consult Kronski about it. She was perfectly amenable. Anything I wanted.
Well, we visited the doctor Kronski had elected, we had blood tests taken, and we even had dinner with the doctor. He was a young man and not overly sure of himself, I thought. He didn’t know what to make of my cock. Wanted to know if I had ever had a dose—or the “syph.” I told him I had had the clap twice. Had it ever come back? Not that I knew of. And so on. He thought it best to wait a few days before doing anything. In the meantime he’d have analyzed our blood. He thought we both looked healthy, though looks were often deceptive. In short, he talked around and about, as young doctors often do—and old ones too—leaving us none the wiser.
Between the first and second visits I had to visit Maude. I told her all about it. She of course was convinced that Mona was responsible. She had expected as much. It was laughable, really, what an interest she took in my sick dick. As though it were still her private property. I had to take it out and show it to her, b’Jesus. She handled it gingerly at first, but then, her professional interest aroused and the thing growing heavier in her hand all the while, she became less and less cautious. I had to be careful not to get too excited or I might have thrown caution to the winds. At any rate, before permitting me to shove it back in my fly she begged me to let her bathe it gently in a solution. She was sure that could do no harm. So I went to the bathroom with her, my prick stiff as a rod, and I watched her pet it and pamper it.
When we visited the doctor again we learned that the signs were all negative. However, he explained, even that didn’t constitute a final proof.
“You know,” he said—evidently he had been thinking it over before our arrival—“I’ve been thinking that you’d be much better off if you were circumcised. When the foreskin is removed that stuff will come off too. You’ve got an uncommonly long foreskin—hasn’t it bothered you?”
I confessed I had never given it a thought before. One is born with a foreskin and one dies with it. Nobody thinks about his appendix until it’s time to have it cut out.
“Yes,” he went on, “you’d be lots better off without that foreskin. You’d have to go to the hospital, of course . . . it might take about a week or so.”
“And what would that cost?” I inquired, picking up the scent.
He couldn’t say exactly—perhaps a hundred dollars.
I told him I’d think it over. I wasn’t too keen about losing my precious foreskin, even if there were hygienic advantages attached to it. A funny thought then entered my head—that thereafter the head of my cock would be insensitive. I didn’t like that idea at all.
However, before I left his office he had persuaded me to make a date with his surgeon for a week hence. “If it should clear up in the meantime you won’t need to go through with the operation—if you don’t like the idea.
“But,” he added, “if I were you I’d have it done whether I liked it or not. It’s much cleaner.”
In the interval the nightly confessions proceeded apace. Mona had not been working at the dance hall for several weeks now and we had the evenings together. She wasn’t sure what she would do next—it was always the money question which disturbed her—but she was certain she would never return to the dance hall. She seemed just as relieved as I to know that her blood test had come out all right.
“But you didn’t think there was anything wrong with you, did you?”
“One never knows,” she said. “That was such a horrible place . . . the girls were filthy.”
“The girls?”
“And the men too . . . Don’t let’s talk about it.” After a short silence she laughed and said: “How would you like it if I went on the stage?”
“It would be fine,” I said. “Do you think you can act?”
“I know I can. You wait, Val, I’ll show you. . .”
That evening we came home late and sneaked quietly into bed. Holding on to my cock she began another string of confessions. She had been wanting to tell me something . . . I wasn’t to get angry . . . I wasn’t to interrupt her. I had to promise.
I lay there and listened tensely. The money question again. It was always there, like a bad sore. “You didn’t want me to go on staying at the dance hall, did you?” Of course I didn’t. What next? I wondered.
Well naturally she had to find some way of raising the necessary funds. Go on! I thought to myself. Get it over with! I gave myself an anesthetic and listened to her without opening my trap. It was all quite painless, strange to relate. She was talking about old men, nice old men whom she had become acquainted with at the dance hall. What they wanted was to have the company of a beautiful young girl—someone they could eat with and take to the theater. They didn’t really care about dancing—or even going to bed with a girl. They wanted to be seen with young women—it made them feel younger, gayer, more hopeful. They were all successful old bastards—with false teeth and varicose veins and all that sort of thing. They didn’t know what to do with their money. One of them, the one she was talking about, owned a big steam laundry. He was over eighty, brittle, blue-veined, glassy-eyed. He was almost a child. Surely I couldn’t be jealous of him! All he asked of her was permission to spend his money on her. She didn’t say how much he had already forked out, but she inferred it was a tidy sum. And now there was another one—he lived at the Ritz Carlton. A shoe manufacturer. She sometimes ate in his room, because it gave him pleasure. He was a multimillionaire—and a little gaga, to believe her words. At the most he had only courage enough to kiss her hand. . . . Yes, she had been meaning to tell me about these things for weeks, but she had
been afraid I might take it badly. “You don’t, do you?” she said, bending over me. I didn’t answer immediately. I was thinking, wondering, puzzling over it all. “Why don’t you say something?” she said, nudging me. “You said you wouldn’t be angry. You promised.”
“I’m not angry,” I said. And then I grew silent again.
“But you are! You’re hurt. . . . Oh Val, you’re so foolish. Do you think I would tell you these things if I thought you would be hurt?”
“I don’t think anything,” I said. “It’s all right, believe me. Do whatever you think best. I’m only sorry that it has to be this way.”
“But it won’t always be this way! It’s just for a little while. . . . That’s why I want to get in the theater. I hate it just as much as you do.”
“O. K.,” I said. “Let’s forget about it.”
The morning that I was to report to the hospital I woke up early. As I was taking my shower I looked at my prick and by crikey there wasn’t a sign of irritation. I could hardly believe my eyes. I woke Mona and showed it to her. She kissed it. I got in bed again and tore off a quick one—to test it out. Then I went to the telephone and called the doctor. “It’s all better,” I said, “I’m not going to have my foreskin cut off.” I hung up quickly in order to forestall any further persuasions on his part.
As I was leaving the phone booth I suddenly took it into my head to phone Maude.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Well, it’s a fact,” I said, “and if you don’t believe it I’ll prove it to you when I come over next week.”
She seemed to want to hang on to the phone. Kept talking about a lot of irrelevant things. “I’ve got to go,” I said, getting annoyed with her.