She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

I know, it’s ripped off from the title of a Beatles song. But it’s true. It’s an objective statement of fact; simple, exhaustive, and succinctly accurate. I had just gotten out of the shower and was standing nude in front of the mirror wiping away condensation with one hand while trying with the other to razor-etch the straight lines and angles of my goatee. At first I ignored the tapping; I had no idea where it originated and assumed it had nothing to do with me. But the sound continued and suddenly it dawned on me that it came from the window.
The window was also fogged over with condensation, but there was still light enough in the early evening that I could see what appeared to be a female silhouette. I wrapped myself in a towel and opened the window, which was no easy task since the frame was swollen from too many years of similar showers and condensation.
“Hi.” From where I stood she appeared to be short, about five feet, a round face, ample chest, nicely proportioned figure, but a bit too chunky to be rated above a six or seven on the notorious ten-point scale. “Can I come in?”
“Hi. We have a front door.”
“Well, actually, you don’t. Exactly.”
Damn. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The first word out of her mouth was “Michael,” and I had a pretty good idea what was to follow. Something to do with the destruction of property, and it would be my problem because I was the resident property manager. She stood there in the alley just outside the window and explained at length how she had helped Michael home from Swanky’s where he had gotten so blitzed that she was afraid he couldn’t make it on his own. A Good Samaritan. Yea, right. Michael was the pick-up king par excellence; the envy of his gender. Freakin’ mystery too; he was not especially good looking, broke most of the time, must’ve been his personality. The short girl said that when they got to the house the door was locked and Michael’s solution to this problem involved putting his fist through the beveled plate glass. I guess that was less frustrating than looking for his keys. I must not have heard the crashing glass over the sound of the shower. Now, apparently, Michael was bleeding and passed out among the scattered shards. I loved the guy, but there’s no question he was an ignoramus.
According to the girl in the alley, the back door to the house was locked and no one else appeared to be home – not surprising for a weekend evening in a college town. “So, can I come in?”
“Why don’t you climb through the rather large hole which apparently exists in the front door?”
“I’m barefoot.” I looked down. She was. Late model hippie-chick: bell-bottoms, head band, turquoise earrings and all. By the early seventies the hippie phenomenon was virtually over, so those who dressed as hippies, usually the younger set, came across as wannabes. I still had fairly long hair, but it was neatly groomed; the bushy beard I had once sported had shrunk to a deftly trimmed goatee, and there was neither a pair of bell-bottoms nor a patched item of clothing in my closet. Little did we know that soon we would be yearning for polyester and pointing toward the sky with John Travolta and the Bee Gees.
While I’m struggling to pull her through the window (she was too short to make it on her own, too busty and hippy in the other sense to make it easy), this might be a good time for a little background information. The time is the early 1970s, around 1972 I think, the location is a Midwestern college town which had just been awarded the distinction “Party Capital of the World” by Playboy magazine, I was a last-semester senior thinking about graduate school, and I am now telling this story from the vantage of thirty-five years’ perspective. The story is not fiction, but neither is it true; it is what remains after time has done its corrosive work for more than three decades, and even I cannot separate reality from paramnesia from poetic license.
I pulled her through the window like toothpaste oozing out of a tube, man-handling strategic parts of her anatomy in the process while my towel slipped dangerously. Soon we were standing chest to chest in the bathtub (the window was over the tub), an unusual position to be in with a complete stranger. She blushed, I smiled, then she said, “Michael’s bleeding.”
“Oh, yea. I’ve got to get some shoes.” She headed toward the front of the house while I adjusted the towel and ran up the back stairs to retrieve a pair of thong sandals; I never heard them called “flip-flops” till maybe the mid-eighties. When I returned to the bottom of the stairs she was examining the supine body of Michael from well inside the door, at a safe distance from the randomly strewn glass; Michael seemed to be most pleasantly asleep. I could see the blood in the fading light, but he wasn’t hemorrhaging. Switching on the porch light for a closer examination, it appeared that he had jammed a rather large shard deeply into his right hand between the knuckles of the middle- and ring-fingers. “That is gonna hurt like shit tomorrow.”
“Maybe he’ll learn something.”
“Michael? No, he’s invincible to learning.” Michael, whose last name was O’Malley, was the classic drunken Irish charmer, minus the Irish accent. These guys are stock characters in Hollywood; I’m trying to think of an example, but the best I can come up with is an episode of Columbo (the one with Peter Falk) in which the charming, drunken Irish poet turns out to be a murderous gun-runner for the IRA. Unfortunately, I do not recall the name of the episode.
Michael was a townie, not a student, but he lived and loved among the student population. When he worked, Michael always did something very blue-collar, usually some kind of labor, but he never seemed to hold a job very long. I’m not sure if that was because he was working per diem or because he got into trouble, drunk on the job or something. Probably both. Michael was absolutely care-free, fearless, held categorically no regard for authority, ebulliently happy or tail-spinning into despair. He was energetic, a risk-taker, an adrenaline junkie, always on the go, always looking for something fun, and he regarded fighting as a form of recreation. I think part of the reason we got along so well was that he couldn’t take me in a fight, so he respected me. I was a wrestler in high school and college; I never wasted time throwing punches. I’d tackle my opponent and get him into an especially painful hold. In those days I could pin an untrained or drunk opponent almost instantly. This skill came in handy for a property manager in a college town known for partying; I often had to wrestle someone for rent or utility money which they’d rather keep to spend on pot or other party supplies. More often than not, it was Michael I had to fight.
There was also something about Michael that eludes my description, something boyish, some je ne sais quoi that caused people, especially women, to like him immediately. That, combined with his adrenaline addiction and general fearlessness, drove him to hit on the most gorgeous women with remarkable success. I can’t count the number of mornings I’d see some disheveled beauty built like a cover-girl exiting his room, but, to reiterate my prejudiced heterosexual opinion, he was nothing special to look at; rugged, maybe, but pretty average. And God knows he wasn’t rich.
Writing from thirty-five years in the future, I know how the story of Michael ends. A few years after the events to be recounted here, he got into a bar brawl, one of dozens. During the fight someone hit him upside the head with a beer bottle, a full one according to some accounts. Michael reeled but fought on. I don’t know if he won. Does anybody ever win a bar fight? Later that night he went home, went to sleep, and never woke up. Apparently he had a subdural hematoma and was too drunk to notice – I guess he could’ve missed it even if he’d been sober, and Michael was not the cautious type, not one to go to the emergency room “just in case.” The funeral had been huge and the wake riotous, drunken; a live band and a stripper would have been perfectly in keeping with the climate. Hell, so would a steam calliope and acrobatic clowns.
Michael was the kind of guy you couldn’t help loving, but you’d find yourself rolling your eyes quite often. This one was a real eye-roller. When other residents of the house would later ask what happened to the door, all I had to say was “Michael.” That was sufficient explanation.
“What do we do?” she was still viewing Michael from a safe distance.
“Well, no one here owns a car, do you?”
“No.”
“I guess we call an ambulance. I don’t want to remove that glass from his hand,” I didn’t want to admit I was too squeamish, “he might bleed out. I’m going to go make the call. Listen, when they get here we say he was drunk and fell through the glass, o.k.? Nothing about vandalism, I don’t want to deal with the cops.”
“O.k.”
But we had to deal with the cops anyway; they arrived well before the ambulance. I had almost forgotten I was wearing a towel until the cop examined me with a raised eyebrow. We told our prepared story; they stayed till the ambulance arrived and left with no trouble. Michael was lifted onto a stretcher and raised into the ambulance. We watched the vehicle disappear as I mused on the fact that Michael had no medical insurance. His problem, not mine.
“Would you like help cleaning this up?” My towel had slid to a jaunty angle, and as she spoke her eyes seemed fixed on the lump underneath. Her gaze was so unabashed that at first I was uncomfortable, but then I wondered at myself – modesty? me? – adjusted the towel and got over it.
“Hm, sure, but I wouldn’t want you to cut those pretty albeit filthy feet.” Her turn to be taken aback. Was that a compliment or an insult? A sexual insinuation or nuanced disgust? “Wait here while I get the broom and stuff.” I made a conscious decision to continue wearing the towel, although as soon as I was out of her sight I rewrapped myself and made sure the towel was really secure. Retrieving the broom and dustpan from the narrow kitchen closet which seemed to have been built specifically for brooms and mops, I returned to the front hallway. “Here. You do dustpan duty. No way am I crouching in this towel.”
“Too bad.” I’m beginning to suspect that if I play my cards right....
I swept the shards from inside the hallway into a compact pile. I tried to be thorough because we all padded around the house barefoot at one time or another. When I was satisfied with that part of the job I opened the now superfluous door frame and stepped out onto the porch to resume sweeping, all the while making conversation. “So, how do you know Michael?”
“I just met him at Swanky’s.”
“I guess he must’ve made an impression.”
“Yea. He seemed like such a nice guy....”
“He is, but he’s irrepressible. I swear to God, I think the part of his brain that’s supposed to control impulsive behavior doesn’t function very well, and that’s when he’s sober. Get him drunk and anything is possible.” By this time I had another neat pile of all the visible shards on the porch. “All right, I think it’s safe for you to navigate. Put the dustpan right there.” She crouched, held the dustpan, looked up and quickly looked away. I think she may have gotten a glimpse under the towel. I pretended not to notice. “O.k., that’s one.”
“Where can I toss this?”
“Go right straight back through the hallway. It leads to the kitchen. The garbage can will be obvious.” I continued to sweep, trying to get any invisible fragments off the porch and into the bushes. I heard the clatter of broken glass from the kitchen, and she was back, dutifully crouching over the heap of broken glass in the hallway. We repeated the procedure and her voice came from the kitchen. “Where does the dustpan go?”
I had joined her; took the dustpan and returned it and the broom to the closet. We walked back to the front of the house, her mouth opened to say something, but her words suddenly replaced by an exclamation of pain.
“Ow! Damnit!” Immediately she began hobbling on the outer edge of her right foot. She had found a splinter of glass.
“Oh, I’m sorry! Sit down.” I guided her to a chair in the hall. My attitude was solicitous, but internally I was making sarcastic remarks about the wisdom of walking around barefoot. Freakin’ wannabe hippie chick. With great towel-oriented circumspection I knelt before her and examined the foot, but the sole was too dirty to see anything. “We’ll have to wash your foot. I can’t tell anything. Can you walk?”
“Sure. Let me use your shoulder.” She limped her way to the downstairs bathroom where we had originally met. I had her sit on the toilet with her feet propped on the bathtub. I washed both feet because I thought it would look stupid to have one clean foot and one dirty.
“You know, going around barefoot can be dangerous....”
“I know. I had shoes but took them off to dance at Swanky’s and they disappeared. I think somebody stole my shoes.” She seemed sober; maybe it was true.
“Jeez, some people will steal anything.” As I washed her feet the intimacy of our position manifest itself. It seemed strange that I did not know her name. “So, what’s your name?”
“Becky.”
“Becky what?”
“Bourbon.”
“Any relation to the liquor?”
“No, but supposedly there is French royalty in our background. What’s your name?”
“Jeff Phillips.”
“Oh, Michael mentioned you.”
“Nothing too horrible, I hope.”
“Oh no, he seems to think you’re terribly intelligent. He called you a genius.”
“He was drunk.” Finally I saw a tiny glitter in one of the lines crossing the sole of her foot. Tweezers would have been nice, but, having none, I had no choice but to squeeze it out. “This may hurt a little.” I captured the twinkle between the nails of both thumbs and pushed down while squeezing, hard. She cursed and white-knuckled the edge of the toilet seat, but didn’t complain. Eventually the splinter emerged with an insignificant smear of blood. “I think you’ll live.”
“Thank you Doctor.”
“So, Becky, do you get high?” In 1972 that and “What’s your sign?” were universal pick-up lines. I actually read books on astrology so I could maintain more than a four-line dialogue on the subject. I knew what an Ephemeris was, and had had my own chart cast. If necessary, I could get a good hour out of “What’s your sign?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got some really good stuff upstairs.”
“You should have said that before, but better late than never.”
She was walking normally as we ascended the stairs to my room. She went first and I studied the sway of her ass on the stairs. Her derriere was nicely round but certainly not petite; however, given the admirable size of her rack of lamb, she was well balanced. My room was in the front of the house; it had two large windows overlooking the street. I closed the door behind me and sat at the desk – how odd to think of a typewriter sitting on that desk – rummaging through a drawer until I found my casually concealed stash. She looked around and, observing the sparsity of furniture, sat gingerly on the edge of the bed – I’m trying to recall Lennon’s line from Norwegian Wood; “I noticed there wasn’t a chair.” I rolled the joint quickly with a long-lost expertise, lit it, inhaled deeply, and handed it to her. Still holding my breath I put a genuine vinyl LP on the turntable – God knows what, but the Beatles would be a good guess – and finally exhaled, feeling slightly lightheaded.
Arching her back as she held her breath, she looked momentarily stunning. Amazing what posture can do for a woman. I felt the need to converse, but my head was still swimming, “So....”
“Good shit,” she grunted against held breath, and then exhaled a mighty cloud of white smoke.
“Yea,” I returned to the chair, staggering imperceptibly, and took the joint from her. “So,” I reiterated before toking, “who the hell is Becky Bourbon?”
She laughed, a slight glaze entering her eyes. One hit shit. You can’t get that stuff any more. “I’m a freshman....”
“Second semester?”
“Yea.” We were already into spring, the end of the semester well in view.
“Major?” It was my turn to grunt against held breath.
“Dunno,” I handed her the joint, “Psych maybe.”
Exhaling, “I’m a Psych major.” Two hits and I was buzzed.
Her turn to hold her breath, “Yea?”
I thought she’d said ‘year?’ “Senior,” I replied, and drifted off till she exhaled. I was snatched from my reverie by the sound of giggling..
“What were we talking about?” She seemed unduly amused.
“I have no clue.”
There were several false starts like that, but we sat there getting stoneder and stoneder, carrying on the incoherent, desultory exchange that passes for conversation among the chemically demented, laughing for no reason, feeling lost for a moment, then forgetting to feel lost. Eventually I ended up sitting on the bed next to her, towel askew, all but gone. Eventually my hand touched hers, and she did not recoil. Eventually the gumption just hit me, like a bolt of chutzpah from Adonai. “So, Becky, you want to get naked?”
“O.k.” Jackpot!
So she does. There is nothing coy about Becky’s stripping; it is methodical, almost industrious. Her linen panties and white cotton bra – D cup at least, I’ll bet – reveal a distinctive lack of sophistication, and the expression on her face speaks of firm resolve, as if she had made her mind up about something and is now committed to it. She will not meet my gaze, and seems shy. Zoftig, curvaceous, a little plump, nobody’s cover-girl but not bad. Cute. Cute is quite doable, fine by me. Her best features are her tits and her calves; she has those muscular, acutely defined calves that you often see on short women, and which I am convinced are the affect of standing on tip-toe, or wearing higher-than-average heels, which I suppose comes to the same thing.
As I observe her mechanistic strip-tease, my towel begins to rise like a circus big-top, the elephants slowly pulling the center support to vertical. She stands flushed and naked, and towel-less stand I, erect in more postures than one. “Come here.”
“There is one thing I have to tell you,” her hands cover her pussy.
This can’t be good news. “Yea?”
“I’m a virgin.”
“I’m sorry.” It just seemed like the thing to say; as if she had confessed some deep, personal disfigurement. I mean, what are you supposed to say to a naked woman who has just informed you of her virginity as you stand there sprouting a skyrocket?
“But no, I still want you to, I still want to....”
“Are you telling me that you want me to take your virginity?”
“Yes.”
“I think I can manage that. I’ll be gentle.” I take her in my arms, crushing her bosom to my chest, prodding the undergrowth at the joint of her legs. She kisses with such wanton force – desperate, dramatic, overdone – that I actually cut the inside of my lip on my own tooth. “Whoa, slow down, this is a marathon not a sprint.”
“I’m a little anxious....”
“I see that. Relax. Lay down here.” I settle on the bed next to her, resting on one elbow, the free hand feathering over her breasts and abdomen and pussy and thighs. “Is that why you let Michael pick you up? You were determined to lose your virginity, tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. It’s time. I’m ready. I really want it.” She speaks like someone who had memorized a line. Clearly she had thought long and hard about this, and is standing stubborn against the superego’s onslaught.
“O.k., you have to relax. Have you ever had an orgasm before?”
“Yes. I’ve masturbated.” She speaks this with pride.
“Good, then you know what it’s like. I’m going to make you come, and I’m going to do all the work. I want you to close your eyes and pretend like you’re going to sleep.” She looks at me as if I am crazy. “Seriously, pretend you’re going to sleep.” Obediently she lays in an obviously artificial posture of sleep. Raising off my elbow I resituate myself, “I want you to spread your legs.”
“Even I know that much.” There is something petulant about her response.
“No Becky, I’m not informing you, I’m directing you. As we make love I will tell you to do certain things, get into certain positions, arch your back, take my cock into your mouth. A good lover knows how to take direction. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Now spread your legs wider. Good girl.” I nuzzle my muzzle into her pussy and touch her clitoris with my tongue. She clenches for a moment. “Relax.” I run my tongue up and down and through all the fleshy vaginal folds; she has scrubbed herself or douched so thoroughly that she has no flavor and no scent whatsoever. Note to self: Inform her that flavor and scent are good things.
Cunnilingus is like dancing. You have to learn your partner, learn her moves, get the rhythm, try different steps, make several forays until you get it right. Then you’re in sync, moving together, following the tongue’s lead, undulating in counterpoint. When she comes it takes her by surprise; she jumps as if startled, groans and pushes my face down into her pussy and then pushes me away.
“Did I make you come?”
“I’m not telling.”
I kneel between her legs and poise the head of my cock like a spear or a battering ram. Stroking between labia, I can find no discernible opening, so I aim where I figure the opening approximately ought to be and press on. “This may hurt a little bit, but it’s only because it’s the first time. It won’t hurt in the future.” Already her face is screwed up in erotic distress and she emits muffled, staccato “ow” sounds. As if in a fairy tale, a door opens where there was none before, and I find myself entering her. She is tight, and very dry. I rock gently, with no forward momentum, waiting for the lubrication. When I can move without excessive friction, a channel clearly established, I penetrate deeper. Her groans originate from the gut now, she sounds more like a woman than a little girl.
When finally our pelvic bones grind like mortar and pestle, she speaks between panting breaths, “Do me.”
“Lift your legs. Like this. Rest your ankles on my shoulders.” Soon her toes point and hips tilt toward the ceiling, thighs pinned wide by mine, my hand on her ass; I dig for maybe another gratifying inch. At the furthermost end of her love canal – too bad those morons in Buffalo permanently ruined that metaphor – there is something hard, like a pebble. I think it is her cervix. Each time I touch it she jerks, as if from an electrical shock. I kiss her and this time the kiss is real. “Are you ready to take direction?”
“Yes.”
I start withdrawing and rise to my hands and knees; she protests weakly. Sitting on the edge of the bed I direct her to the floor, to kneel between my legs. When she is gazing up at me, her face illuminated by an aura like a nun at prayer, I place the tip of my cock on her lips. “Kiss it,” she complies, a dainty darting kiss. “Lick it,” she does, discovering the sandy edge of the glans where I had been circumcised, finding the texture fascinating. This is o.k. by me, her tongue can explore all it wants. When she takes the tip of my cock into her mouth, it is without being told. “Suck it,” I say anyway, to maintain the illusion of control. As is almost always the case with women, her idea of sucking is entirely too gentle. I tell her to hold the haft of my cock in her hand, tightly, and suck as hard and fast as she can, the more noise and head-movement the better. It takes some practice, as if she cannot believe I actually want to be sucked that hard, but finally she gets the hang of it, and before we are through she could’ve sucked the chrome off a Hurst four-speed gear shifter.
I don’t want to come in her mouth; it seems like the high crime of losing her virginity should be celebrated with a wad of ejaculate deep in her abdomen. “Come up here on the bed.”
“Hm?”
“Yes, I want to fuck you now.” She seems reluctant as her lips slide down the length of my cock, and she kisses the tip in parting just like an expert. I stand with her and gesture, “On the bed.” She begins to lay on her back; the missionary is the only position she knows. “No, kneel, right here, on the edge of the bed.” An erotic a choreographer, I arrange her until her knees perch near the selvage of the mattress, not so near to lose their purchase but near enough to yield me easy access standing from behind; her unpainted toes hang over the edge and point to the floor, ass high and wide, advertising its little pink rosebud like a trumpet, head buried in a pillow. I stand between the splayed buttocks and toy with introducing her to anal penetration, but decide against it; too intense for her first time, marginally traumatic. I enter her pussy, wet and open now, and pierce it without resistance to my full length; she gasps in disbelief.
“I think I like it better, like this.”
“That’s because it’s your second time. I told it wouldn’t hurt in the future.”
“God, you’re so big, and so deep in me.”
“That’s what we like to hear girl.”
My hands on her ass, I guide her hips ferociously up and down the length of my cock. With each slap of my pelvis against her buttocks there is a spanking sound, and twice I pump with such wild abandon that I fall out of her. Both times we groan simultaneous dismay and sigh simultaneous pleasure as I reenter. Mostly she makes a continuous murmuring “Ahhh” sound, not seeming to pause for breath. I do not recall my own vocalizations, if any.
When a man senses the first stirrings of orgasm, it is a remote thing, a tingling about the perineum, an involuntary clenching which begins with the gluteus maximus (the big muscles that comprise the cheeks of the ass) and, if given free reign, quickly proceeds from the trapezius to the toes; even the facial muscles become involved. The young and inexperienced (ha! I was 21 or 22 at the time, and I speak about “the young”; I was, however, fairly experienced) take this initial stirring as a signal to piston harder, faster, farther, so that they come almost immediately; hence, the typical sexual interlude lasts about seven to ten minutes. The sexual epicure – for such I fancied myself, and still do, as age has forced me to take seriously the Epicurean advice to indulge one’s pleasures in moderation – reads it as a signal to back off, draw things out, make it last as long as possible. Death is always right around the corner. What’s the rush?
No mean feat, the force of will which stops me and draws me out. “Is something wrong?” still the insecure virgin, in her mind at least.
“I’m not ready to come. Guys are petty much good for one orgasm, then they’re shot for hours.” Hours. Remember that? Now it’s more like three or four days, and that’s with pharmaceutical assistance. It must have been rough on the fifty-something farts in those days, when the magic of Viagra et al was as yet undiscovered. “But you can come more than once.”
I roll her onto her back and begin manually manipulating her clitoris as I suck and nibble her nipples, biting and licking till they swell to pink minerals. The bulbous breasts divaricate on either side of her torso. I insert my middle finger into the aperture of her newly explored terra incognito to see if she has that place on the front of the vaginal wall (or the vaginal ceiling, given that she is supine) which sends some women, but unfortunately not all, into spastic orgasmic paroxysms of pleasure. I don’t think the term “G-spot” had been coined yet. Perhaps I was an (unpublished) pioneer in its discovery. I knew only that some women could come that way, and come violently, a reasonable facsimile of a male orgasm, unlike the typically more subtle clitoral orgasm. I remember, at the time, that there was much outrage in feminist literature over the Freudian distinction between the clitoral and vaginal orgasm, and his supposed claim (which I have yet to encounter in his writings) that the clitoral orgasm was somehow immature, and that the psychologically well adjusted woman should be capable of achieving vaginal orgasm. Perhaps Freud had discovered the G-spot, maybe his wife had one, and being a Victorian man of (possibly) limited experience, he did not realize that the presence of a G-spot is not a universal phenomenon. I don’t think it’s a matter of maturity, any more than any sex act is, but I think Freud was right about the existence of different kinds of female orgasm, though I think the vaginal (G-spot) orgasm is limited to a blesséd minority.
As it turns out, Becky is one of the privileged few. Still attending to her breasts, I put downward pressure on her abdomen with my hip bone, and internal upward pressure with the tip of my exploring finger. No, nope, nothing, POW! It is like a grand mal seizure. She screams, actually ululates a brief and high-pitched yowl, arching her back so suddenly, so forcefully, and so far that the impact of her sternum against my nose makes me see stars, and for a moment I think my nose may be bloody. Becky’s face contorts somewhere between pleasure and pain; she writhes until the spasms settle into a kind of whole-body shiver, as if she is suffering from hypothermia. “Stop, I can’t take any more.” I remove my finger and attend less aggressively to her breasts. “What in holy hell was that?”
“Never had one before?” Of course not, she had been a virgin, previously unpenetrated.
“No. God. What did you do to me?”
“That was a vaginal orgasm.” A confirmation of Freudian theory I might’ve added, but didn’t. If she stuck with psychology, she’d get it sooner or later. “The other one was a clitoral orgasm. They seem to be different. What was it like?”
“Jee-sus, it was like being torn from my body and thrown into a place of dancing lights. It was like an electrical current in every cell of my body. Holy shit.”
“What’s the clitoral orgasm like?”
“Oh, gee, more like a warm wave of pleasure, like laying in the surf and letting the warm water rush all over your body. But the intensity....”
“Of the vaginal orgasm?”
“Yea, it’s excruciating, but not in a bad way.”
“Did you know that some women can’t have that kind of orgasm; at least, that’s my experience.”
“You are experienced, aren’t you.”
“Well...,” I feign modesty, although I do have Michael to keep me humble, whose exploits far exceed my own. She is gazing into my eyes with a little more depth of feeling than I think appropriate for what I assume to be a one-night stand, so I say, “Now it’s my turn,” and mount her.
I take her in the missionary position because I want her to see that it wasn’t just the rear entry that had made intercourse less painful; I want her to understand that the ordeal of lost chastity is over for her, once and for all. Penetration is wet and easy and instantaneous and deep. A kind of hiccoughing groan, almost a guffaw, precedes a long “Mmmm,” as if she is savoring gourmet chocolate. The vaginal muscles grip me like the fingers of a fist; no longer a virgin, she is still a newcomer to sex. She splays her legs widely, elevating them slightly, like the wings of a gliding albatross, toes pointing to opposite walls and inscribing small circles in the air with every thrust of my hips; just like a woman who knows how to fuck. I guess it comes naturally.
I prop my torso on my elbows and our tongues play tag as our pelvises mill this way and gnash that way; apparently she has also learned how to kiss. I suppose it should come as no surprise that copulation is driven by instinct, but I thought kissing was a social convention.
This time when I feel the perineum tingle I do not stop. Deeper, probing, searching for the pebble I believe to be her cervix, finding it, she groans and the sense of power sets me off. My ass rigidifies to the consistency of two bowling balls sitting in the return rack, waiting to be handled. “Grab my ass, push me into you.” She takes the direction eagerly; my arms extend and I raise my upper body as if doing a push-up, fingers gripping the blanket involuntarily, toes curling and even my legs bend at the knee. Every muscle contracts, and then the searing white-light explosion, the out-of-body pleasure that nobody tells you is the exclusive property of youth. Middle aged men have orgasms, but not like that. I pump reflexively, mechanically, until every ounce of viscous fluid is forced deep into the recesses of her belly.
It was the early 1970s, AIDS was still a decade away, women had just gotten – or were about to get – the federal right to an abortion, and the pill was still fairly new; women seemed to pop them like candy in those days. Unwanted pregnancies and safe sex were not major concerns at the time; in fact, I don’t recall ever using a condom or hearing the phrase “safe sex” till more than a decade later.
Finally the post-coital fatigue overcomes me and I lower myself onto her chest, hugging the abundant breasts. I am still semi-tumid, but the fight has gone out of me. “Squeeze me” I direct her, but she misunderstands and returns my hug. “I mean, squeeze my cock with the muscles in your pussy.” She does, and I slide out with one last rush of pleasure.
Rolling off of her, I stare paralytically at the ceiling. I’d like to imagine that “Here Comes the Sun” was playing, but that’s pure poetic license. After some moments we both say “That was good” and laugh at the coincidence of our remarks.
“O.k., your turn.” She seems less depleted than me. “What was your orgasm like?”
“What was it like? Shit. It was like, like your pussy turned into a taloned claw, ripped off a piece of my soul, squeezed it until it became a rock the size of a watermelon, and then pushed it out through a pinhole.”
“God, that sounds terrible. I’ve heard descriptions of childbirth that sound kind of like that.”
“Yea, in fact, that’s what it is; I plagiarized the last part from an old girlfriend. But the difference is, childbirth is painful. Imagine all that intense, searing, blinding pain transformed into equally intense, equally searing, equally blinding pleasure. That’s the male orgasm.” Or, at least, that’s the male orgasm if the male happens to be in his early twenties.
“No wonder you guys are so....”
“Male?”
“Motivated. It explains a lot.”
I don’t remember much about our conversation after that. Maybe it was awkward because I had no expectation of a repeat engagement. Maybe I dozed briefly. But I remember her being dressed – me too, partly; I donned a pair of pants – and walking down the stairs, me in the lead this time. I think we kissed and said good-bye. She let herself out the remnants of the front door with thoughtless unconcern for any more invisible splinters that might be lurking (none were), and disappeared into what had become a night in late spring. She came in through the bathroom window, she left through the shattered front door, and I never saw her again. Neat and tidy. No sloppy emotional loose ends to clean up, just like a masturbation fantasy. Except that it didn’t really end like that.
Really, she did come back. Days or weeks later, I forget the span, someone shouted up the stairs, “Jeff, there’s somebody at the door for you.” At the door? That’s odd; nobody waits at the front door, everybody just walks in and knocks on the door of the individual room.
“O.k.,” I descended the stairs and there she was, through the now intact but no longer beveled plate glass. She was cute, mini-skirted, saddle shoes and knee socks, sexy in a little-girl kind of way. I was wondering if she had come for sex, and if she had, what a gift! But at the exact moment that I opened the door, from somewhere behind me, the overbearing, obnoxious and inconsiderate voice of Michael called out, jeering: “Hey Jeff, how come you always get the ugly ones?”
She wasn’t ugly; mousey, perhaps, but cute. She wasn’t the stunning runway model-type that Michael, to everyone’s bewilderment, always ended up with. But I had never managed to achieve that standard, neither then nor now. There was nothing wrong with Becky, but that callous statement and its unfortunate timing affected both of us. Her smile melted and was replaced with a look of shame, her brown eyes – I still remember they were brown – seemed to plead with me. And me, worthless coward that I am, I caved, like Agamemnon being ridiculed and goaded into sacrificing Iphegenia. I have always suspected that Achilles was at the head of that, and I also suspect that was the real cause of the bad blood between the two great mythical heroes. Fortunately, I have no Clytemnestra but time.
I closed the door.
She walked off into the darkness, head hung, shoulders slumped, and I really didn’t see her again. Thirty-five years later I still feel empathetic pain from that insult. It’s no use blaming Michael, poor dead Michael, de mortuus negare malum; he was just being Michael, and it would never have dawned on him that he had done something wrong. Still, I should have defended her, I should have said, “Shut the fuck up asshole, you brought her here,” not that he would have had the slightest idea what I was talking about. I should have invited her in, taken her upstairs, left the knee socks and saddle shoes on while I hitched up the mini-skirt and bent her over my desk. But I didn’t, I collapsed under the weight of derision, and I regret it.
Becky, if you’re out there, if you can read my thoughts or, maybe someday, this story, and you happen to recognize yourself, know that I am sorry for that gratuitous injury. It wasn’t true, and it wasn’t your fault. I’m fifty-six years old now, fifty-seven soon, divorced twice, two kids I rarely hear from and almost never see, and all alone. Maybe we could have had something, maybe it would have been better. But I was an undeserving coward, and I am truly sorry.

S. Dan Warhorse