The Jaded Sex

by Fletcher Bennett

  Morton and the girl held their tableau for a few moments. Then, suddenly, he opened his eyes.

  It was time. And he was ready.

  In one motion, he leaned his body forward and stood up. It took her by surprise; she fell back onto a supporting hand. Her eyes were almost opaque with lust.

  “Huh,” she said, a small meaningless sound in her throat.

  “The preliminaries are over,” said Morton. “Now it’s time to really have some fun.”

  Her eyes cleared gradually, and her lips formed into a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll buy that.”

  He dropped his trousers, pulled them free of his feet, and tossed them behind him on the chair. Then he removed his shirt, and flung it after the pants. He wasn’t wearing any undershirt.

  Morton’s chest was plated with hard muscle. The girl looked up at him in admiration.

  “Wow,” she said. “You’re just all man, ain’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. While she continued to watch, he removed his shorts.

  “Now,” he said again.

  She looked down. “What about your shoes?”

  “Now,” he said again.

  “You’ll get footprints on the bed. Don’t you think . . .”

  “Now.” His voice was tight with command.

  The girl shrugged, and got to her feet in front of him. He felt himself tense, but fought the urge down. Not here—not in the middle of the floor. Over by the bed would be better. She was a big girl, and he didn’t relish the idea of carrying her any distance.

  “The bed,” said Morton.

  “Oh, you’re so right,” said the girl.

  She turned and crossed the room. He followed right behind her. The ballooning shapes of her buttocks shivered and flexed as she moved.

  At the bed, she turned again to face him. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes very bright. “Let’s go,” she said. “I have a notion this one’s gonna be a humdinger.”

  Her arms lifted to him, beckoning.

  He formed the fist at his shoulder, bunched up the sinews of his arm, then shot out with all the strength he possessed. The blow caught her full on her smiling mouth. Like a candle dying inside a jack-o-lantern, her features went out.

  She stumbled, slackened, but didn’t fall. He hit her again, as hard as the first time. When she spun off the impact of his blow and toppled back onto the bed, he saw with satisfaction a fairy-necklace of blood droplets arc across the air between his knuckles and her mouth.

  For Morton, the glaring overhead bulb was no longer white. It was red. The whole room was crimson, and so was the bed, and so was the trembling body of the girl lying on it. She was sprawled sideways across the red sheets. Her calves hung over the edge of the bed, her toes barely grazing the floor. Her toes were red, and her calves and thighs were red, and her breasts and shoulders and belly and arms were red, red, red . . .

  He lifted a knee, and climbed onto the mattress, kneeling astride her thighs. He clamped her legs with his strong calves, then sat back on her. He knew from experience she wouldn’t be able to move so long as he held position.

  Her eyes were starting to flutter open, the pupils unfocused and rolling in the sockets. A thin drool of blood pulsed from one corner of her mouth down onto the sheet. It left no stain, of course, because the sheet was as red as the blood, as red as her mouth, as red as the lust-fury Morton felt chained inside him.

  He waited until her consciousness returned, until the distortion of her features and the whistle of air into her lungs told him she was about to scream. He always waited between blows—he wanted to be sure his women felt everything he had to give them.

  He hit her again, planting the hard ridge of his knuckles across the bridge of her nose. The scream died in her throat, unborn.

  He opened his fist, set his knees firmly against the sheets, squared his massive shoulders, and began slapping her. face viciously. The flesh of her cheeks went light and dark by turns as his brutal palms beat against her.

  She made a moist bubbling sound, almost a moan, deep inside her mouth. He liked the sound.

  After a while, his savage palms left her face and descended to her breasts. The huge bladders hung lax and vulnerable on either side of her torso. His palm caught the outer edge of one breast, causing it to heave upward in a jellied tremor. His other hand did the same for the breast’s twin. In a moment, he had the rhythm again, and was raining slaps on her lolling breasts just as he had on her face.

  The sheets, his hands, her body, everything was a vibrant crimson. But now he noticed her breasts were becoming a darker shade than the rest of her, and the discs of the nipples, were turning darker yet. Darker red. Darker than blood. No longer the common color known as blood-red, but attaining that special shade, the color he loved so well—lust-red.

  He caught one of her bounding breasts in both his hands, shifted his body, and dropped his mouth on the tip. He drew against her furiously, feeling her tender Skin tighten against his teeth and lips and the fierce lancing of his tongue. In his mind’s eye, he could picture the lust-red hue blossoming under his savage kiss. When he lifted his head, he saw he had been absolutely right.

  The sight of it made something explode inside him, and he dropped his mouth again, performing the same ritual with leeching lips and brutal teeth on the other breast; until it, too, had flowered into the special crimson of lust.

  He mauled her breasts, bruising them, tormenting them, now catching them between His palms and forcing them together until the distended tips almost touched, now drawing them apart with palms cupped and pressing, flattening the shapes until the outer swells grazed her limp arms.

  But, inevitably, he tired of her breasts. He felt the need in him as strongly as he had ever felt it, and knew the moment had come for him to take his fill of her, let off all the savage pressure of his lust in one fierce violation of her semiconscious nakedness.

  He stood up from the bed, grabbed her knees and hauled her forward until the under-edges of her buttocks were even with the edge of the mattress. His hands, back to back, slipped between her knees,- wrenching them apart.

  He leaned forward, his palms on either side of her lust-red breasts, his hips thrusting forward into the fleshy angle of her thighs.

  He had her. She was only half-conscious and so filled with pain that her body wasn’t responding to passion’s signals, and so his use of her was a long grating process, a vile friction instead of arousement’s velvet glide.

  He loved it. It hurt him, but he didn’t care about that, because he knew he was hurting her; and that her hurt was more terrible than anything he could feel! He drove against her in a pistoning frenzy, sensing the protest of her flesh; and that only drove him to greater brutality.

  For her, he knew, it took forever. For himself, it didn’t take nearly long enough.

  lt ended in a burst of red-hot lust—a howling fury of release that made his face crimson with pleasure.

  Then, it was over. And when he could see again, most of the red was gone. The light in the ceiling was white and the room had returned to its normal color.

  But there was still a gratifying amount of red to be seen. Her mouth, for instance, was smeared with it. The sheet under her head was stained with it. Her breasts, too, were marked—with moist red circles where his fingers had carried the stain from her mouth, with angry bruises where his hands had left discolorations of their own.

  He had used her up completely. The thought made him very happy. He left her, went over to the chair, and climbed into his clothing.

  Before he left the room, he glanced back once at the girl. She was still lying in the same position. Her breathing was peculiar. From beneath her opened thighs, a scarlet circle was spreading gradually through the whiteness of the sheet.

  He smiled, and photographed the scene mentally in all its delightful details. Then he left the apartment.

  His car was parked near the corner, and he strolled toward it slowly. He could feel a slight irritation as he walke
d, and he felt it even more strongly as he opened the car door and slipped in under the wheel. He knew he would be sore tomorrow. But there was nothing unusual about that.

  His mind was relaxed and peaceful as he eased the car out of the parking space and began the long drive back to his Manhattan apartment. When he reached the city, he discovered that he’d left his cigarettes with the girl. He found a candy store, parked by a hydrant, and left the motor running as he went in to buy himself a pack of Luckies.

  While he was gone, a person put a small white card on the front seat. He didn’t even notice it when he returned to the car. But that was understandable.

  For Ted Morton, after all, it had been a pretty delightful evening.

  CHAPTER 3

  BY THE TIME two o’clock rolled around and Ginny went off shift, she had forgotten all about the watcher.

  She was tired. Her feet hurt from standing, her back hurt from stooping, and her hands hurt where the grease of the grill had spattered her. Most of all, her mind hurt from the sheer effort of staying awake.

  She threw her jacket around her waitress's uniform, said goodnight to Benny, and went around the corner to catch the subway home. The diner was in Flatbush, but her apartment was in Brighton, near Coney Island, and even though both sections were part of Brooklyn, it was still a pretty long train ride home. She dozed fitfully during the trip, and almost missed her stop.

  When she came down the elevated steps to the street, she began feeling a little better. The rain earlier had laid a fresh look over everything, and had produced a clean smell to go with it. She strolled along the glistening streets, yawning happily, and was all ready for a good long night’s sleep when she reached her apartment.

  It wasn’t much of a place, but Ginny was satisfied with it. The building and the area were shabby, but not tough, and the people in the neighborhood tended to their own business and left her alone, which was just the way Ginny wanted it.

  Now and then, some young hoods would wander over from Coney Island and make some trouble. Ginny had run up against a teen-aged Casanova or two on her way home several times. But it never amounted to anything. The kids were mostly noise and bluster, and she didn’t have any difficulty bluffing them down.

  All they wanted was the thing virtually every man who knew Ginny wanted—to make her.

  But they never got what they wanted.

  Ginny had never done it with a man in her life, and from the way things were going, she doubted if she ever would.

  Was the lack of sex an empty space in the pattern of her living? Ginny didn’t think so. She couldn’t speak with any real authority about sex, of course, never having had any—but she’d listened to the opinions of other people, more experienced people, and over the years she’d added up their observations until they produced an opinion of her own.

  Mother, for instance. Ginny’s father had died when she was five years old—she barely remembered him—and mother had taken over from that point on as the dominating influence in her life. And mother had some very strong opinions on the subject of sex. For example:

  “Watch out for little boys, Ginny. Little boys like to do dirty things to little girls.”

  “Don’t ever take candy from a stranger, Ginny, or take a. ride in anyone’s car. Sometimes, people are crazy.”

  “Don’t ever let anyone take down your panties, Ginny—don’t ever let anyone feel your chest. If somebody tries to lift? up your skirt, run away, or yell. If somebody even tries to just put his hand on you—just run home to me.”

  “Don’t allow the boys to play with you, Ginny. And don’t you play with them. Boys are dirty. Boys want to do dirty things to girls. And when boys grow up to be men, they want to do even dirtier' things.”

  “They’re all the same, Ginny. Boys are dirty. Men are dirty. And you’re clean, Ginny. Stay clean—always stay clean. Don’t let them dirty you, Ginny.”

  Men are dirty—Ginny could remember her mother telling ; her that, and she could also remember wondering at the time whether the statement applied to father. It was an interesting question, but she’d never gotten up enough nerve to ask it.

  Mother wasn’t the only one in Ginny’s past with opinions on the subject of boys, and men, and sex. Ginny’s schoolmates, girls her own age, had also been filled with stories about the terrible dirty things boys wanted from girls.

  “So then, would you believe it, he put his hand right here—right on my front—and he squeezed it like it belonged to him. I made him take it away, of course, but I could tell he wanted to feel me some more. I wouldn’t let him. I made him think I would, maybe, if he was extra nice to me—and now he takes me out all the time and buys me things and we have a good time, and he keeps waiting for me to let him feel me again. But I’m not going to let him.”

  “I don’t mind so much when they play with my front—I kind of like it, really. It’s something like kissing, you know? But it’s not nice when they put their hands under your skirt That’s real dirty. I know a couple of boys who tried to put their hands up my skirt, and I said I would tell their fathers if they didn’t behave, and now I can get just about anything I want from them.”

  “He said he’d give me a dollar if I took off my clothes. He was such a dirty boy, I don’t know where he’d ever get a dollar. Anyway, his folks were out and we were in his apartment, and he wanted me to let him look at me bare. So I told him I would if he got bare first. If he took off all his clothes, I said, then I’d take off mine. He really liked the idea. So he took off all his. clothes. He looked awful—all bony and hard and sticking out—it was disgusting. When he had all his clothes off, I screamed and screamed, loud as I could, until a neighbor came and found us. I told the neighbor he’d tried to do something dirty to me, and the man believed me, because I still had all my clothes on, and the boy didn’t. So that’s why he doesn’t come to school any more. I think they moved somewhere else. Anyway, he doesn’t bother me the way he used to all the time and that’s what I wanted in the first place.”

  Opinions, opinions, Ginny listened to her mother, and to her girl friends, and tallied up everything she’d heard.

  Boys were dirty. Sex was dirty. Ginny herself was clean. In order to remain clean, she must stay away from boys, and sex. That was mother’s contribution.

  Boys wanted sex. Boys wanted dirty things from girls. Boys were sometimes willing to go out of their way, be very at tentive, do nice things for a girl, if they thought she was going, to let them have sex from her.

  Sex, in other words, could be a weapon. And the promise of sex could be an asset. That was her girl friends contribution.

  No—living without sex didn’t bother Ginny at all. It was comfortable just being alone and unbothered, free to go anywhere and do anything she liked without having to worry about boys. Eventually, she thought, the day would come when she would find a man who had something she wanted, and when that happened she would put the second rule of her philosophy into effect. Instead of turning him away coldly, the way she always did, she would give him the come-on, dangle the plum of her sex in front of his nose, keep him hoping and desiring long enough to extract from him everything he had to give her. She would promise him everything, and he would give her everything, and then she would give him nothing.

  The opportunity to use her sexual arsenal had never arisen—maybe it never would—but if it did, Ginny was ready.

  In her bedroom, she undressed, tossing her waitress’s smock on a chair. The heat of the grill all evening had made her sweat quite a bit, and she really needed a shower. But she was too tired to be bothered with it. Tomorrow morning would be time enough. Right now, all she wanted was sleep.

  She removed her bra, panties, garterbelt, and stockings, and put on her pajama bottoms. Her breasts felt a bit tender from the restraint of the bra, so she didn’t bother with the pajama tops. She turned back the covers, slipped into bed, and switched off the light.

  She was alone.

  Some thinking about it. Other nights, she
would lay awake for hours, feeling the sensation. It was annoying, disquieting; in a way, it was almost frightening.

  Being alone.

  She was alone in the apartment, and that wasn’t so bad. But she was alone outside the apartment, too. If she let her mind drift, let her imagination roam beyond the walls and out into the streets, it simply made the feeling worse. The streets were empty. The buildings were vacant. There wasn’t a soul out there. She was alone.

  Because of her private rules, Ginny didn’t have any boy friends. And because all the girls she knew were preoccupied with the single subject of dates and dancing and boys—a subject Ginny tried to avoid in all its forms—she didn’t have any girl friends, either. In point of fact, Ginny didn’t have any friends at all. And mother and father were in the ground.

  And Ginny was alone.

  Tonight was going to be one of the bad nights. She could tell. Her apartment felt dark and void as a tomb, and the world outside seemed as empty as interplanetary space, as if she were, riding millions of miles from Earth in a two and a half room rocketship.

  She tried adjusting her bare back against the sheets, rolling her head on the pillow, crossing and uncrossing her legs. She tried holding her breasts for a while, because that frequently soothed her. But it was no use.

  Fifteen minutes after she had shut off the light, she sat up in bed and turned it on again.

  What now? she wondered, looking around the bedroom. The only thing to do was occupy her mind in some manner until the feeling of loneliness passed. If she could turn her thoughts in another direction, the sensation of being alone would go away after a while, and she would be able to sleep.

  The clock on her night table said three A.M. Too late to watch television. Too late to go out anywhere, even if there had been some place she wanted to go, which there wasn’t. Too late to do anything, really; except maybe to read, or putter around the apartment.

  Her eyes fell on her dress, which was still lying on the chair where she’d flung it. The side pocket of the skirt was heavy with silver, and she realized she hadn’t yet counted the evening’s tips. Maybe sorting out the change would occupy her mind for a while, and help soothe away the empty feeling of being alone. It was worth a try.